Husserl (The Routledge Philosophers) 2nd Edition by David Woodruff Smith (PDF)

Description

This second edition of David Woodruff Smith’s stimulating introduction to Husserl has been fully updated and includes a new ninth chapter featuring contemporary issues confronting Husserl’s phenomenology. It introduces the whole of Edmund Husserl’s thought, demonstrating his influence on philosophy of mind and language, on ontology and epistemology, as well as ethical theory, and on philosophy of logic, mathematics, and science.Starting with an overview of Husserl’s life and works, and his place in twentieth-century philosophy and in Western philosophy as a whole, Smith introduces Husserl’s conception of phenomenology, explaining Husserl’s innovative theories of intentionality, objectivity, subjectivity, and intersubjectivity. In subsequent chapters Smith covers Husserl’s logic, metaphysics, realism and transcendental idealism, epistemology, and (meta)ethics. Finally, the author assesses the significance and implications of Husserl’s work for contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive science.Also included is a timeline, glossary, and extensive suggestions for further reading, making Husserl,second edition, essential reading for anyone interested in phenomenology, twentieth-century philosophy, and the continuing influence of this eminent philosopher.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review Praise for the first edition:”…fulfils its aims admirably, providing an advanced introductory survey of the whole of Husserl’s vast empire, together with provocative and illuminating interventions on a number of important particular points and disputes.” – Wayne Martin, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews”This is a first-rate volume… the text is rich with historical background and comment. But it is the clarity and depth of understanding with which David W. Smith explains the material that is so overwhelmingly present. An excellent work.” – Gayle L. Ormiston, Marshall University, USA”A masterful presentation of the entire range of Husserl’s thinking, seen from the perspective of a leading analytical phenomenologist.” – Barry Smith, University of Buffalo, USA About the Author David Woodruff Smith is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine, USA. He is the author of Mind World: Essays in Phenomenology and Ontology (2004) and the co-editor (with Amie L. Thomasson) of Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind (2005).

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Basically, an excellent, in-depth yet still reasonably concise overview covering all the major and important points of Husserl’s philosophical background, the motivations for his project and of course, the actual material of his major philosophical works and ideas.I am studying this in conjunction with Husserl’s Ideas I and it is an excellent companion guide.D.W. Smith is kind of a Husserl expert and doesn’t afraid of anything. I would buy this book to support the cause.

⭐This text provides both an amazingly accessible overview to a very dense thicket of texts by Husserl as well as fascinating insights into Husserl, including a famous penultimate chapter on value theory that is really interesting. Highly recommended … a highlight in the Routledge series on philosophers!

⭐I stopped reading in the third chapter. I had hoped it would provide a sort of advanced introduction to Husserl for trained philosophers coming to him for the first time; I found myself wondering instead whether the author has had any serious philosophical training. Everything is left at hopeless levels of generality. For example, when he tries to show how Husserl’s work in “logic” (and I use the quotation marks advisedly) connects with other important work, he says in effect only that Husserl rubbed elbows with logicians – they attended his lectures, or “cited his notions,” or “drew on his conceptions” – and “The aforementioned are of course giants of 20th-century mathematical-philosophical logic.” He simply announces that Husserl belongs with Aristotle and Kant on the “short list” of great systematic philosophers – although perhaps he got this idea from Husserl himself. He notes that as Frau Husserl escorted visitors out, she would ask them, “Is he as great as Plato?” and one wonders where Frau Husserl got this notion… He uses terms much more loosely than one expects from a philosopher (e.g. “Husserl’s concern with the ontology of essences (eidos, species or universals) takes its place…” – what on earth is he trying to say?). Or try this: “Philosophy has traditionally been divided into some four main areas, including [sic] logic, epistemology, metaphysics or ontology, and ethics….Phenomenology…forms a fifth main area of philosophy.” When he does get close to arguing for something, one wonders whether he is familiar with the problem or with its history. For example, an individual Socrates involves three entities – the concrete individual Socrates, the form of humanity, and Socrates own concrete instance of humanity. Husserl needs this third entity, we are told, because (following Aristotle!) the humanity in Socrates is numerically distinct from the humanity in Plato. Golly, I thought Aristotle had a much more famous, different answer…you see what I mean. When he talks history, all he does is mention names. When he talks problems, all he does is use philosophical-sounding words. He notes the view of Husserl that the technical work of mathematical logic is the work of clever technicians, whereas the philosopher does something much more important. I just do not have any sense that Smith has ever worked the levers of the systems to which he refers. When I was younger I had a notion that Husserl had this very effect on students – they took his word for things instead of doing the work themselves, and talked in grand generalities – and Smith gives me no reason to revise that much earlier view. A hundred pages of nonsense is enough – time to shut the book.

⭐Reading Husserl is extremely difficult and that’s why explanatory works such as D. W. Smith’s are so important. Not only is this work well-written, the author has gone out of his way to explain technical terms/matters that non-specialists such as myself would find difficult. I like the topic arrangement of the chapters and the obvious firm grasp of understanding that Smith has of Husserl’s phenomenology. I can thoroughly recommend his work.However, the only thing I didn’t like was the book – the physical object itself. Every time I tried to read it, the book was trying to close itself! This was due to the fact that the width (13.8 cm.) is too small for a book of 480 pages. It was also printed-on-demand. The content of the book doesn’t deserve this penny-pinching policy of the publishers.

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