Martina Reuter

Merleau-ponty's Notion Of Pre-reflective Intentionality*

This article presents an interpretation of Merleau-Pontys notion of pre-reflective intentionality, explicating the similarities and differences between his and Husserls understandings of intentionality. The main difference is located in Merleau-Pontys critique of Husserls noesis-noema structure. Merleau-Ponty seems to claim that there can be intentional acts which are not of or about anything specific. He defines intentionality by its “directedness”, which is described as a bodily, concrete spatial motility. Merleau-Pontys understanding of intentionality is part of his attempt to rewrite the relation between the universal and the particular. He claims that meaning is intrinsic to the phenomenal field and impossible to analyse by a distinction between form and matter. Still, Merleau-Pontys notion of meaning and philosophy is strictly opposed to any naturalized philosophy. This becomes explicated at the end of the article, where his attempt to embody intentionality is compared to Daniel Dennetts corresponding approach.

Psychologizing Cartesian Doubt Feminist Reading Strategies and the “Unthought” of Philosophy

Recently many feminist critics of the history of philosophy have attempted to analyze the “unthought” elements residing beneath the thoughts expressed on the surface of philosophical texts. By trying to capture unthought elements‚ feminist philosophers have tried to explicate gendered implications hidden in philosophical texts which are‚ on the surface‚ gender neutral. This feminist search for the “unthought” foundation of philosophy has used two main methodological strategies. One strategy has been based on textual analyses. Feminist philosophers as diverse as Luce Irigaray‚ Michele le Doeuff and Genevieve Lloyd have studied how the imagery of a philosophical text contributes to its meaning and have attempted to illuminate how metaphorical and other imagery structures of philosophical texts contain gendered implications. Many of these readings are—more or less directly—inspired and empowered by the framework of deconstruction. One guideline for these approaches is the awareness that the meaning of a text cannot be reduced to what is said on its surface. Further‚ the meaning of a philosophical text must be recognized as produced by the text itself‚ which means that it cannot be traced back to any intentions outside the text. To the extent that the philosophical canon devaluates women or the feminine‚ it must be shown how this devaluation happens in specific canonical texts. The other main feminist strategy for uncovering the philosophical unthought has been guided by a search for psychocultural motives hidden in the texts. While the textual strategy focuses on meanings as they are expressed in the philosophical texts as such‚ the psychocultural reading strategy focuses on the motives which have guided the production of the

Concepts and Concept Formation in Early Modern Philosophy

The Renaissance witnessed a revival of ancient and Arabic philosophical traditions, such as Platonism, Skepticism and Averroism. Renaissance syncretism was especially influential at the universities in Northern Italy, where several scholars reinterpreted Medieval Latin conceptions of intelligible species. In the sixteenth and seventeenth century, university teaching in most European universities was dominated by second scholasticism. Francisco Suarez was the most philosophically inventive, as well as most influential, among these early modern scholastics (1).

Physiognomy as Science and Art

The chapter examines Johann Caspar Lavater’s studies of physiognomy. Lavater attempted to systematize principles on which we could detect human character traits and dispositions by observing the physical appearance of persons. His optimism regarding the possibility to “read” a person’s character from the person’s bodily features was based on his understanding of the individual as a unique whole. Lavater combined this holism, anticipatory of Romanticism, with an Enlightenment ideal of systematization and geometrical exactness. The chapter focuses on three aspects of Lavater’s conceptual framework: his view of the soul, the relation between the particular and the universal, and the relation between necessity and accidentiality, including the possibility of freedom. It is claimed that Lavater’s attempt to conceptualise the relation between the particular and the universal interestingly resembles the view later systematised by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790). A comparison with Kantian aesthetics will illuminate more closely why and how Lavater’s theory is pseudo-scientific. When considering the relation between necessity and freedom, Lavater defends the view that necessity is inherent in the constitution of a person’s physiognomy, and he takes a critical distance from the Enlightenment belief in the power of education. The chapter concludes by examining to what extent Lavater’s physiognomical theory influenced the thought of the early feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft. It is claimed that Wollstonecraft emphasises the role of education also in relation to bodily constitution and questions Lavater’s preference of necessity over freedom.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Mary Wollstonecraft on the imagination

ABSTRACT The article compares Rousseau’s and Wollstonecraft’s views on the imagination. It is argued that though Wollstonecraft was evidently influenced by Rousseau, there are significant differences between their views. These differences are grounded in their different views on the faculty of reason and its relation to the passions. Whereas Rousseau characterizes reason as a derivative faculty, grounded in the more primary faculty of perfectibility, Wollstonecraft perceives reason as the faculty defining human nature. It is argued that contrary to what is often assumed, Wollstonecraft’s conception of the imagination is not primarily characterized by its Romantic features, but rather by the close affinity she posits between reason and the imagination. This close affinity has several consequences. One consequence is that she is less worried than Rousseau about the imagination wandering without external constrains, because she believes in reason’s ability to guide the imagination by choosing its objects. Ultimately the difference between Rousseau’s and Wollstonecraft’s views on the imagination helps us understand why she was a passionate philosopher of the Enlightenment while he was one of its first, perceptive and most articulate critics.

Psychology of Gender

Throughout the history of philosophy authors have used claims about women’s deficient psychological capacities in order to justify their inferior position in society. Likewise, male and female defenders of women have most often based their arguments on claims about psychological equality, if not similarity, between the sexes. This chapter traces the major developments and shifts in philosophical discussions about gendered aspects of the soul from Antiquity until the Enlightenment.

The Significance of Gendered Metaphors1

This article examines the roles of gendered metaphors in philosophical texts. Paul Ricoeurs detailed study of how metaphors constitute meaning provides the starting‐point for an evaluation of the feminist debate on the “maleness of reason”. It is claimed that Ricoeurs hermeneutical framework provides a broader analytical basis for the understanding of metaphor than Jacques Derridas famous study of the metaphorical origin of concepts, which has been used by feminist thinkers (Lloyd, Irigaray) in order to unveil the impact of gendered metaphors. The author utilizes Ricoeurs idea that metaphors are part of a creative redescription of experienced reality. This redescription affects meaning also in cases where metaphors are not conceptually or theoretically constitutive. Looked upon from this perspective gendered metaphors do affect our understanding of philosophical texts, including for example conceptions of reason, even if these metaphors have not constituted the concept of reason. Recently some feminist scholars have questioned whether metaphors have actually excluded women from philosophy or science and suggested that instead of focusing on exclusion, feminists should focus on reinterpreting the philosophical canon and unveiling the considerable amount of women that have in fact all along been engaged in philosophical and scientific activities. In her conclusion the author agrees on the importance of rewriting the canon, but questions the implicated opposition between attempts to unveil gendered meanings and attempts to unveil forgotten women. Following Ricoeur, the author suggests that the project of rewriting a less male‐dominated philosophical canon is in itself a kind of redescription which thus affects our understanding of the very nature of philosophy.