Emmanuel Levinas, 1906-1995

NEWS Emmanuel Levinas, 1906-1995 mmanuel Levinas, who died in Paris on 25 December 1995, was born on 12 January 1906 in Kovno (Kaunas) in Lithuania. His parents were practising Jews and part of an important Jewish community. Most members of his family were killed by the Nazis. Levinas grew up reading the Bible in Hebrew, […]

An Introduction to Derrida

AN INTRODUCTION TO DERRIDA DC.Wood Introduction In 1967 Derrida made an impressive entrance onto the French intellectual stage by publishing two collections of essays and a short study of the early Husserl (1967, 1,2,3). The importance of this intervention stemmed from the fact that while he endorsed the critical distance from phenomenology that was de […]

Husserl and Phenomenology

Here, then, is a rundown of the argument: 1 The emergence of image-specificity through Western art is indirectly linked (but not directly until the present) with the emergence of the bourgeoisie and the values of individualism in their wake. Its technical qualitative change comes with the invention of photography and with the technological developments in […]

The rhythm of alterity: Levinas and aesthetics

The rhythm of alterity Levinas and aestheticsgary peters The evocative remarks of Emmanuel Levinas on art and rhythm have received little attention. In opening the question of the aesthetic, indeed the questionable nature of the aesthetic for Levinas, the intention here is to redress the balance at a time when the ethical dimension of his […]

‘Affectivity’, British Society for Phenomenology Conference,British Society for Phenomenology Conference, 3–5 April 1998, Oxford; John Macmurray 6–9 April 1998, Aberdeen;

News Affectivity British Society for Phenomenology Conference, 3–5 April 1998, OxfordWebbʼs critical questioning focused on the issue of whether Heidegger is able to think radically enough the differentiation – which occurs in and through the saying of language – between a thing and its horizon of givenness, which is thereby the dimension of the thingʼs […]

Thinking politically with Merleau-Ponty

Merleau-Pontyʼs fertile and provocative approach to philosophy was abruptly terminated by his death in 1961. Paul Ricoeurʼs judgement that he was the greatest of the French phenomenologists1 has frequently been cited since then, yet a second demise occurred during the 1960s: this time at the hands of phenomenologyʼs structuralist and poststructuralist critics. Although their targets […]

Does phenomenology have a future?

Writing towards the end of his life, the outlook for phenomenology seemed bleak even to Husserl: ʻPhilosophy as science, as serious, rigorous, indeed apodictically rigorous science – the dream is over.ʼ [1] This apparently gloomy assessment was echoed, some three decades later, by Heidegger, who observed, also towards the end of his life, that the […]

What is feminist phenomenology?: Thinking birth philosophically

What is feminist phenomenology? Thinking birth philosophically Johanna oksala In one curious and exceptional fragment from 1933 Husserl discusses sexuality phenomenologically. Even if his taciturnity and his heterosexual prejudices concerning sexuality hardly make him a very original thinker on the topic, this fragment is interesting in relation to the question of the phenomenological importance of […]

Jacques Derrida, 1930–2004

Obituary symposium Jacques Derrida, 1930–2004 David Cunningham In an interview with Le Monde published a couple of months before his death at the age of 74 from pancreatic cancer on Friday 9 October 2004, Jacques Derrida confirmed what many already knew, that he was ʻdangerously illʼ, ʻat war against myselfʼ. If questions of ʻsurvivalʼ had […]

7th International Conference on Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology, University of Heidelberg, 23–26 September 2004

Conference report Time, memory and history7th International Conference on Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology, University of Heidelberg, 23–26 September 2004 Jointly organised by the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Heidelberg, the Society for Philosophy and the Science of the Psyche, and the International Network for Philosophy and Psychiatry, this conference was an opportunity for […]

The African intellectual: Hountondji and after

The African intellectual Hountondji and after Omedi ochieng Every thought, however original it may be, is to some extent shaped by the questions that it is asked. Paulin J. Hountondji, The Struggle for MeaningOne of the characteristic features of African philosophy is that it tends to pose epistemological questions in terms that preserve their dialectical […]