Phenomenology and its Critics: August 2008

Recommended Supplemental Readings

The following are suggestions for your philosophical reports. Other texts may be used [if approved], since this is not intended to be a comprehensive list of secondary literature.

*****

Badiou, Alain, Infinite Thought : Truth and the Return to Philosophy [eds. & trs. O. Peltham & J. Clemens], Continuum Publishing Group, 2003, ISBN: 0826467245. This is an anthology oftranslations of some of Badious's more recent short works that appeared here and there. It includes the brilliant essay on 9/11.

Alain Badiou, Ethics [tr. P. Hallward], Verso Press, New York, 2002, ISBN 1-85984-435-9. This is a short treatise on the ethical implications of Badiou’s theoretical work. The Polemical introduction alone is worth the read! The English translation also contains interesting interviews with Badiou. This is probably the best text to begin with when approaching Badiou’s work.

--------, Manifesto for Philosophy [tr. N. Mararasz], State University of New York Press, Albany, 1999, ISBN 0-7914-4220-9. This short work includes an interesting critique of Heidegger and what Badiou regards as the sophistry that results from it. It is a difficult text, but invaluable for putting together various aspects of Badiou’s work. The account of the conditions necessary for philosophy to be done is remarkable.

---------, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism (Cultural Memory in the Present)[tr. R. Brassier], Stanford University Press, 2003, ISBN: 0804744718. Badiou begins by stating unequivocally that he is not interested in Paul's good news.... Badiou examines the role of the subject with respect to the event in a concrete situation.

Barbaras, Renaud, The Being of the Phenomenon [trs. L. Lawlor & T. Toadvine], Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2004. Barbaras is currently having a lot of influence upon Merleau-Ponty scholarship. His quirky reading of Merleau-Ponty prizes Merleau-Ponty’s relation with the sciences and human sciences and distances his relation to phenomenology.

Barker, Jason, Strong Thought, Pluto Press, 2002, ISBN: 0745318002. This was the first book about Badiou's thought in English. It provides a nice account of Badiou's work up to that point.

de Beauvoir, Simone, The Second Sex, Vintage Books, New York, 1989. Merleau-Ponty famously scandalized the French academics when he taught this text in his lecture series. It is a brilliant existential-phenomenological account of what it is to be a woman in modernity. This landmark work was perhaps 30 years ahead of its time and continues to inspire men and women to think critically about sex and gender today.

Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble [rev. ed.], Routledge, New York, 1999. Judith Butler is one of the greatest philosophers alive today. Her landmark work offers much needed feminist critiques of phenomenolgy, psychoanalysis, and poststructuralism. Her reading of Merleau-Ponty is especially informed and important.

Carmen, Taylor & Mark B. N. Hansen, The Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005. Hooray!—Apparently Merleau-Ponty officially became a philosopher in 2005, when a couple of analytic hacks decided to call their pals and speak with authority about the significance of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. There are exactly three good essays in this volume, by Judith Butler, Renaud Barbaras, and Claude Lefort.

Cataldi, Sue L. Emotion, flesh, and Depth, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1993. This careful and sensitive account is inspired by Merleau-Ponty's later thought. It contains accounts of personal experiences that are sometimes haunting and sometimes beautiful, but always very good.

Dauenhauer, Bernard P., Silence, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1980. I remain thoroughly inspired by this careful philosophical analysis of silence. Dauenhauer masterfully weaves together accounts of Merleau-Ponty and Kierkegaard, among others.

Davis, Duane H., (ed.) Merleau-Ponty's Later Works and Their Practical Implications: The Dehiscence of Responsibility, Humanity Books, Amherst, NY, 2001, ISBN: 1573928623. Admittedly, I am a little biased here, but this is the best collection of essays on the ethical and political aspects of Merleau-Ponty's thought that I know of. There are five essays on ethics, and five essays on politics by some of the most important Merleau-Ponty scholars in the world.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, University of Minnesota Press, 1985, ISBN: 0816612250. Perhaps the most important and most read of the collaborative works Deleuze did with Guattari, this work tries to indicate how capitalistic culture is a machine that produces schizophrenia. This book also makes important contributions to the philosophy of sexuality. There is an important preface by Michel Foucault.

-----------, What is Philosophy?, Columbia University Press, 1996, ISBN: 0231079893. One of the very important series of books Deleuze wrote in collaboration with the psychoanalyst Guattari--perhaps the least read of these, unfortunately.

Deleuze, Gilles,, The Logic of Sense [ed. Boundas, trs. M. Lester & C. Stivale], Columbia University Press, 1990, ISBN: 0231059833. This is an amazing, influential, and enigmatic book--Deleuze at his best and most perplexing. Here he draws upon Lewis Caroll and Leibniz, among others. Deleuze writes extensively on the nature of the event here in the course of elaborating the logic of his strange new empiricism.

-----------, Deleuze: A Critical Reader [P. Patton, ed.], Blackwell Publishers, 1996, ISBN: 1557865655. This is a nice anthology that Patton put together to provide a single volume containing some of the most important work by Deleuze. It is, of course, no substitute for the works it draws upon, but it can be a handy place to start researching a topic.

Derrida, Jacques, Speech and Phenomena [tr. D. Allison], Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1973. I like Dave Allison just fine, but the title is a terrible mistranslation—it’s La voix et le phénomène—voice and phenomenon. Anyway, until this is retranslated [good extra credit project!]this is what we have in English. It is a groundbreaking examination of Husserl reframed in terms of Saussure. In effect, it proposes a new radical position in hermeneutics that has come to be called ‘deconstruction’. Derrida argues for important and controversial positions about the play between the signifier and the signified.

-----------, Margins of Philosophy [tr. A. Bass], University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1982. Original and brilliant studies in language, writing, and textuality that define Derrida’s position with respect to Heidegger, Hegel, phenomenology, and structuralism. Three essays are particularly indispensible: “Différance” [showing the differences between writing and speech]; “The Ends of Man” [critical of Heidegger and phenomenology]; and “White Mythology” [an amazing account of metaphor].

-----------, Of Grammatology [tr. G.C. Spivak], Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1974. A tour de force on speaking, writing, language, signification, meaning, culture, etc. This is one of the most significant works written in the twentieth century, and a real hallmark of the French lingustic turn. This is important to read alongside Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty to critically re-frame phenomenology. There is nice work on exemplarity and Rousseau here as well.

------------, Writing and Difference [tr. A. Bass], University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1978. More original and brilliant essays that further define Derrida’s posiiton with respect to phenomenology, structuralism, and psychoanalysis. The essay “Violence and Metaphysics” is a truly outstanding essay that critiques the important French philosopher Levinas.

Dillon, Martin C., Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1988. This is the finest account of the development of Merleau-Ponty’s overall career that exists so far. Dillon is the head of the International Merleau-Ponty Circle.

----------- (ed.), Merleau-Ponty Vivant, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1990. There are some excellent essays in this volume, written by some of the most important Merleau-Ponty scholars.

Flynn, Thomas R., Sartre, Foucault, and Historical Reason [2 volumes], University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2007. Tom Flynn is equally authoritative in his readings of Sartre and Foucault. No one does a better job of showing the relation of Foucault’s poststructural account of history to existential phenomenology.

Foucault, Michel, The Archaeology of Knowledge [tr. A.M. Sheriddan Smith], Pantheon Books, New York, 1971. This is regarded as one of the central works of Foucault. This English edition includes a translation of an additional important essay, “The Discourse on Language.” This is a more theoretical work than some of Foucault’s works, but it still manifests his meticulous analysis. His terminology here is to describe the history of ideas at the level of “things said,” as an ‘archive’, and his analysis as an ‘archeology’. As always, Foucault is interested in examining the power structures involved in what makes us accept some things said as true or significant.

----------, Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 1961-1984, [ed. S. Lotringer; trs. L. Hochroth & J. Johnston], Semiotext(e), New York, 1989. Foucault was really a charismatic guy. His interviews allow the reader to a kind of self-consciousness of his own significance with respect to the history of ideas, history and philosophy. These are really important and provide some nice “glue” to some of his other works so we can continue to construct the dientity known as Michel Foucault.

-----------, The Foucault Reader, [ed. P. Rabinow], Pantheon Books, New York, 1984. This collection of essays is very important—if for no other reason than it contains Foucault’s brilliant parallel to kant, “What is Enlightenment?”. There is something ironic about any collection of Foucault’s work being called THE Foucault Reader. One wonders: what are the power structures that produce such works?

----------, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-77 [ed. C. Gordon], Pantheon, New York, 1980. This collection contains two lectures from January, 1976 that are essential for readers of Foucault. Here he defines his important terms ‘acheology’ and ‘genealogy’ quite clearly. I quite like these lectures, but the book ives a nice overview of many other themes Foucault addressed in his prolific career: sexuality, the history of medicine, punishment, the staus of Marxism, power structures, epistemology, etc.

Hallward, Peter, Badiou: A Subject to Truth, University of Minnesota Press, 2003, ISBN: 0816634610. Hallward is part of a group of scholars in England who follow Badiou's thought and Deleuze's very closely. This book has an interesting forward by Slavoj Zizek. No, I guess I am not cool enough to know what the subtitle means, either.

Harvey, Irene, Derrida and the Economy of Difference, Indiana University Press, Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1986, ISBN: 0253316855. Unfortunately this is out of print. It was the first important philosophical analysis of Derrida's work. It is a bit sanguine, but provides a fine general introduction into the promise and peril of Derrida's early work. I remember Stanley Rosen mocking the book when it came out [fine praise there!], calling it a "careful, scholarly, systematic introduction to Derrida's work--threfore it has noting to do with Derrida's work." That was the kind of arrogance philosophers still feel compelled to manifest when discussing Derrida's works, which most don't bother to read. Hence her defensive style....

Harvey, Irene, Labyrinths of Exemplarity: At the Limits of Deconstruction, State University of New York Press, 2002, ISBN: 0791454649. She had this almost complete in 1986! It has sat around since then.... I am really glad that she finally put out this work. In a sense, though, it is not timely, since she was pushing Derrida's thought somewhere that, on the one hand it has since gone, and on the other hand, confines him to his early work. Nonetheless, there is much to be explored in the topic of exemplarity, and no one has looked into this area any better than this author.

Heidegger, Martin, Basic Writings [tr. & ed., D. Krell], Harper and Row, New York, 1977. Martin Heidegger is one of the most important phenomenologists. This is a fine collection of important essays by Heidegger written from just after Being and Time (1927) until the very end of his career (he died in 1976).

---------, Being and Time [tr. Joan Stambaugh], State University of New York Press, Albany, 1996. This is the translation we used to pass around in xerox form; meeting in shadows, whispering, while it was withheld by the press and the older translation by Robinson and Macquarrie was the only one available. Heidegger wrote it in 1927. This is, I think, the most influential book in philosophy of the 20th century. Its influence on contemporary French thought cannot be overestimated. In time, this translations’s own limitations became more obvious when the allure of the forbidden was dispelled.

Johnson, Galen and Michael Smith [eds.], Ontology and Alterity in Merleau-Ponty, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1990. This is an indispensable anthology that captures the flavor of the meetings of the International Merleau-Ponty Circle. Especially relevant to our task are the essay by Lefort [Merleau-Ponty's most famous student] and the reply by M. C. Dillon, as well as the contributions by M. Westphal and Joseph Flay.

Kockelmans, Joseph J., Martin Heidegger: A First Introduction to His Philosophy, Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh, 1965. The best general introduction I know of. This is written from a sympathetic, almost reverent, perspective. It nicely situates Heidegger within the Phenomenological tradition.

-----------On Heidegger and Language, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 1972. This is based upon a very important conference at my alma mater, Penn State, in 1969. It provides a variety of perspectives on the topic in one resource.

----------On the Truth of Being: Reflections on Heidegger’s Later Philosophy, Indiana University Press, 1984. This is an invaluable resource for reading and comprehending the enigmatic later writings of Heidegger. Kockelmans not only restates Heidegger’s most important insights, but also provides cross-references between Heidegger’s works.

--------- (ed.), Phenomenology, Anchor Books, Garden City, 1967. This is a fine anthology of material related to “orthodox” phenomenology as well as early “existential phenomenology.” He includes a couple of pieces by Husserl from Ideas and the Crisis, which you already have; but also many important secondary sources. I think his own essays are clear and concise, and almost every sentence has a useful footnote that leads us to other important works. This is first-rate scholarship!

Lyotard, Jean-François, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge [tr. G. Bennington & B. Massumi] University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1984. This little treatise is one of the most important and influential works in recent French thought. Lyotard’s provocative work addresses language, knowledge, culture, science, etc. It can be read as an important companion to Foucault’s works on power and knowledge.

Madison, Gary B. The Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty: A Search for the Limits of Consciousness [tr. Madison], Ohio University Press, Athens, OH, 1981. This is one of the most-cited secondary works available in English about Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological philosophy. Madison worte it in French in the 1970's, then revised and translated it. It was the most important work in English of Merleau-Ponty for many years--perhaps it still is, though it is dated and does not reflect contemporary scholarship about Merleau-Ponty. It also gives an important alternative to Dillon’s work. Their disagreements have produced some of the best discussions over the years in Merleau-Ponty scholarship.

Mallin, Sam, Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1979. This general overview of Merleau-Ponty's thought is probably best-known for the translation of the very-detailed table of contents Merleau-Ponty included in his Phénomènoligie de la perception but which was greatly abridged in the English translation. The first and last chapters contain material relevant to Merleau-Ponty's political thought.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Phenomenology of Perception [tr. Smith], Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1986. This is generally regarded as Merleau-Ponty's Magnum Opus. It appeared originally in 1945. It represents the first systematic analysis of human embodiment in the history of Western philosophy. It is also sometimes seen as the transitional work where Merleau-Ponty moves from psychology to philosophy, while determining his own distinctive existential appropriation of phenomenology.

-----------, The Primacy of Perception [ed. J. Edie], Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 1964. This anthology was not edited by Merleau-Ponty. It is a selection of some very important essays spanning Merleau-Ponty's career, including Eye and Mind, the only essay Merleau-Ponty finished and published from the period of his latest thought.

-----------, Sense and Non-Sense [trs. Dreyfuss & Dreyfuss], Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 1964. This anthology orignally appeared in 1948. The essays in Parts Two and Three are directly related to the theme of this course. It includes both theoretical pieces on the philosophy of history and political philosophy and "period pieces."

-----------, Signs [tr. McCleary], Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 1964. This anthology originally appeared in 1960. The Preface was written last, and is one of the few examples of the new direction his thought was taking at the end of his career. There are also several political essays--"period pieces" written over a span of many years.

-----------, The Visible and the Invisible [ed. C. Lefort, tr. A. Lingis] Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 1968. This is the manuscript Merleau-Ponty was working on when he died. The fourth chapter is one of the most famous essays in all of his writing, and certainly shows the promise of his latest turn of thought. The manuscript as a whole, however, is rough, contains repetitions, and does not give a sense of the project he envisioned as a whole. Lefort selected some of the working notes Merleau-Ponty left for the book for this publication to attempt to remedy that problem. Unfortunately, there are many, many more untranscribed working notes that are equally important, in my opinion.

O'Neill, John, The Communicative Body, Nothwestern University Press, Evanston, 1989. O'Neill is a sociologist who has leftist leanings. He has a great command of Merleau-Ponty's thought as a whole, and has translated some of Merleau-Ponty's work into English [including Humanism and Terror]. O'Neill takes Merleau-Ponty's idea of wild being [l'être sauvage] and uses it as an ontological foundation for a new sociology he calls "wild sociology." This is a collection of two small books published earlier in O'Neill's career joined by a few newer essays.

Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness [tr. H. Barnes], Pocket Books, New York, 1956. This may have been published by pocket books, but you’ll need areally big pocket for this tome. The cover rightly proclaims it as “the principal text of modern existentialism.” It is impossible to understand what Merleau-Ponty was trying to develop without some understanding of Sartre. Vain, verbose, and as desperately in need of an editor as this work may be, it is also brilliant and delicious in many places. It is also frustrating and inconsistent throughout. Have fun!

Schrag, Calvin O., Communicative Praxis and the Space of Subjectivity, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1981. I think that this is the book Schrag will be remembered for in the long run. He takes seriously the contemporary critiques of subjectivity, while holding onto some aspects of the notion. In short, he begins a project over his next three or four books that radicalize the existential-phenomenological approach in philosophy.

-----------Experience and Being: Prolegomena to a Future Ontology, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 1968. This remains one of the best contributions by an American to phenomenology. Schrag’s thought is closely aligned to Merleau-Ponty’s at this stage in his thinking.

Schmidt, James, Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Between Phenomenology and Structuralism, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1985. Schmidt's work is a nice contrast to Silverman, since he moves in essentially the same framework but from the perspective of a social scientist. There is a lot of good stuff here about Weber's influence on Merleau-Ponty, which becomes explicit in Adventures of the Dialectic.

Silverman, Hugh J., Inscriptions Between Phenomenology and Structuralism, Routledge and Kegan Paul, New York, 1987. This book brilliantly situates Merleau-Ponty's thought in a more contemporary context by stressing the intertwining of structuralism, post-structuralism, and Merleau-Ponty's existential phenomenology. He shows how influencial Merleau-Ponty's appropriation of structuralism has been, despite the consipcuous lack of reference of these authors to his thought.

Richardson, William J. S.J., Heidegger—Through Phenomenology to Thought, Martinus Nijhoff, TheHague, 1963. This was generally regarded as the first important and “authorized” critical commentary on Heidegger’s work. It even has an introduction by Heidegger [where Heidegger dismisses the central idea of the work, by the way!]. This is a mammoth and difficult work; but it is cited as more often than any other work on Heidegger in the secondary literature. Richardson was the first to stress the importance of the way Heidegger moves away from his phenomenological philosophy in Being and Time.

Spiegelberg, Herbert, The Phenomenological Tradition, Martinus Nijhoff, TheHague, 1960. This indispensable two-volume classic is the most comprehensive account of phenomenology in its various guises. It is especially good at the early works in phenomenology; but it also serves as a great introduction to all of the phenomenologists and lists important (early) secondary sources.

Taminiaux, Jacques Dialectic and Difference [Eds. & trs. Crease & Decker], Humanities Press, Atlantic Highland, 1985. Taminiaux was a student of Merleau-Ponty's in the early 1950's. This is a fine collection of essays that bear upon the development of continental political thought in general. His essay on Merleau-Ponty's "hyperdialectic" is the finest essay I have seen on the subject.

Whiteside, Kerry H., Merleau-Ponty and the Foundation of an Existential Politics, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1988. This is the finest book in English on Merleau-Ponty's political philosophy, which is not meant to be as lavish a compliment as it may sound. Whiteside has certainly done his homework; but his reading of Merleau-Ponty's thought suffers from his Straussian influence and his own rather short-sighted dismissal of the later work. And he is political scientist, not a professional philosopher by trade. Nonetheless, this is a fine piece of work, and well worth the trouble to work through.

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