Phenomenology and the cartesian tradition

Journal of Philosophy, Culture and Religion, 2017

The search for knowledge that is true and certain has been fervent from time immemorial. Since it is the nature of man to know, to cogitate and to understand, it becomes imperative to set out the conditions under which one can properly say that this is the foundation of knowledge, this is the route to knowledge, this is knowledge per se, and this is how we `ought' to benefit from knowledge. This paper therefore seeks to periscope knowledge in the light of Descartes methodic Doubt and Husserl`s phenomenological Epoche. It is important to point out that both Descartes and Husserl were involved in a demolition exercise of previously acquired knowledge in order to establish a firm foundation for certain true, indubitable knowledge. I shall expose their views and hermeneutically subject them to serious metaphysical lashing in the light of a better interpretation of human cognition comprehended within a metaphysical framework. It is pertinent to observe that the problem of skepticism arises from the method of science and not from the structure of reality. For knowledge to be knowledge in strictu sensu, it must be in line with the structure of reality and its ultimate support.

This essay suggests loosening pedagogical boundaries in order to prepare children for useful philosophical reflection, particularly ontological boundaries. The argument for this is that the analytic-continental distinction is muddier than most realize. I explain analytical developments in logic from 1884 to 1931 in a way designed to show there should be no real distinction between analytic and Continental philosophy. I suggest this explanation provides sufficient support for dismissing ontological boundaries in certain philosophical contexts as well as in early philosophical education.

2013

One of the most appealing features of Descartes’s natural philosophy was its origin in a strong-justificatory metaphysical foundation. In this essay, I discuss his passage from the certainty of his metaphysics to the knowledge of the existence of bodies and the establishment of a natural philosophy that is ‘more than morally certain’. This discussion is made in connection with the way Descartes’s ideas were developed by some of his early philosophical heirs, such as Jacques du Roure, Gerauld de Cordemoy, and Jacques Rohault. My interest is to analyse how each of these Cartesians unwrapped the argument for the existence of bodies and how their solution to this problem reveals new paths for solving Descartes’s quest for certainty in natural philosophy.

From the 1820s and, more or less markedly, until the death of Victor Cousin in 1867, French spiritualism was characterized by a strong return of metaphysics, directed by a triple reaction.

2019

For the contemporary philosophy of the mental, it is fruitful for us to return to Cartesian intuition and to attempt to present a “cleansed Cartesianism”, because the intuition takes effect in the fields of epistemology, semantic and linguistic internalism, externalism, and linguistics (Chomsky, Fodor). In this article, we present the following series of six sketches (1.-5.), leading towards a new correction of Cartesian internalism which we hope will cleanse and unleash a fresh outlook on Cartesianism because if we are to finally put aside pragmatism, we must realize that Cartesianism is in the offing when it comes to the lively scholarly discourse around the philosophy of the mind and related subjects: the feature of the subject’s point of view (1.); the dilemma of Cartesian knowledge (2.); a review of Cartesian reflection (3.); the ‘Kantian I’ (as well as Castañeda’s reinterpretation) (5.); the monadological foundation of subjectivity (7.); we conclude with a correction and outlook (7.). We find it of particular interest to connect what we call the ‘dilemma of Cartesian knowledge’ (2.) with “Fichte’s original insight” (4.), Reinhold’s “Elementary Philosophy”, and the “Early Romance ‘Constellation’ (6.) as rediscovered by Dieter Henrich and continued by Manfred Frank. The foundational subject here is the regress and circle as well as the problem of “philosophical deduction” in the philosophy of reflection, Elementary Philosophy, and German Idealism in general. Manfred Frank has long connected this problem to contemporary philosophy of the mental (mind), as we describe in “The Early Romance Constellation” and “Fichte’s Original Insight” (6., 4.) The rebuilding of a Cartesian view hints that we might well promote the theme of pre-reflective consciousness—going back to Jean-Paul Sartre—within the new architecture of philosophy of the mental as a fundamental question. Pre-reflective consciousness has not been recognized adequately in either the rationalistic or the empiricist accounts of “modern philosophy”; nor within the discourse around German Idealism. Looking back, the important thing is: Within modern egology, the function of pre-reflective consciousness is covered by the I-axiom as the foundation of knowledge. We conclude with a correction of the Cartesian view, the limit of self-consciousness, and a brief treatment of current cooperations of the exchange of European and American philosophers (7.) "Studia z Historia Filozofii" / "Studies in the History of Philosophy" / Vol 10, No 3 (2019), pp. 77-109.

2014

This paper assesses a discussion on how to understand the relationship between Husserl’s Cartesian way and the later ontological way to the transcendental reduction: Is the Cartesian way flawed such that the ontological way constitutes a principal correction to it or is the ontological way a logical completion of an insufficient but nonetheless necessary Cartesian way? A reading with the purpose of rendering probable that this discussion allows for a third alternative is proposed in this paper. Such a reading claims that both ways are individually sufficient. The ontological way is thus taken to be a clarification of certain underemphasized however not principally missing elements in the Cartesian way.

Renaissance Quarterly, 2016

Acta Philosophica Fennica: Rearticulation of Reason, Recent Currents, 2010

s anti-Cartesian ism has been a persistent point of interest among his Anglophone readership. Over the past 20-30 years/ philosophers such as Hubert Dreyfus, Richard Rorry, John Haugeland, Mark Okrent, and Robert Brandorn have turned to Heidegger's Being and Time in order to launch a pragmatist critique of Cartesian philosophy.' But not only the pragmatists have reinforced the picture of Heidegger as an unyielding anti-Cartesian philosopher. Robert Pippin, William Blattner, and Charles Guignon have all criticized the pragmatist readings of Heidegger. That Heidegger's work is anti-Cartesian, howev-5 As opposed to Jacques Taruiniaux, who emphasizes the Cartesian legacy in Heidegger's work by referring to his later Nietzsche lectures (1936-40), I will concentrate on Heidegger's early work. The focus on the Nietzsche lectures weakens Taminiaux's reading on rwo fronts. First, even though Taminiaux is able to point out some affinities between Descartes and Heidegger, he cannot, with reference [Q the Nietzsche lectures alone, more specifically determine what these affinities consist in. Second, because of his focus on this later text, Taminiaux ends up asking whether "fimdamenral ontology is not more Cartesian than it claims to be." My claim, by contrast, is a stronger one. Drawing on the early lectures, I propose that nor only is Heidegger's oncology "more Cartesian than it claims to be," but that Heidegger, in this period, deliberately pursues the task of phenomenologically appropriating what he, at the time, takes to be a Cartesian turn to the "1aru." See Jacques Taminiaux, "On a Double Reading of Descartes," in Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, ed. and trans. Michael Gendre (SUNY Press, Albany, NY, 1991), 171. I> In Heidegger's words, "Do we in our time have an answer to the question of what we really mean by the word 'being'? Not at all