The Reception of Husserlian Phenomenology in North America, 1st ed. 2019 Contributions to Phenomenology Series, Vol. 100

This book presents a historiographical and theorical analysis of how Husserlian Phenomenology arrived and developed in North America. The chapters analyze the different phases of the reception of Edmund Husserl?s thought in the USA and Canada. The volume discusses the authors and universities that played a fundamental role in promoting Husserlian Phenomenology and clarifies their connection with American Philosophy, Pragmatism, and with Analytic Philosophy. 

Starting from the analysis of how the first American Scholars of Edmund Husserl's thought opened the door to the reception of his texts, the book explores the first encounters between Pragmatism and Husserlian Phenomenology in American Universities. The study focuses, then, on those Scholars who fled from Europe to America, from 1933 onwards, to escape Nazism - Felix Kaufmann, Alfred Schutz, Aron Gurwitsch, Herbert Spiegelberg, Fritz Kaufmann, among the most notable - and illustrates how their teaching provided thevery basis for the spreading of Husserlian Phenomenology in North America. 

The volume examines, then, the action of the 20th Century North-American Husserl Scholars, together with those places, societies, centers, and journals, specifically created to represent the development of the studies devoted to Husserlian Phenomenology in the U.S., with a focus of the Regional Phenomenological Schools.

Part I. Husserl’s Students Between Europe and North America Chapter 1: Husserl at Harvard:The Origins of American Phenomenology.- Chapter 2. Phenomenology’s Inauguration in the American Curriculum in Winthrop bell’s 1927 Harvard Course.- Chapter 3. The Freiburg Encounter: Aron Gurwitsch and Edmund Husserl on Transformations of Consciousness.- Part II.Establishment at the New School.- Chapter 4. The Place of Phenomenology at the New School for Social Research.- Chapter 5. The Golden Age of Phenomenology at the New School for Social Research, 1954-1973.- Chapter 6. The Checkered Legacy of Marvin Farber’s Idiosyncratic Understanding of Phenomenology.- Chapter 7. The role of Dorion Cairns in the reception of Phenomenology in North America. The first “born American” Phenomenologist.- Part III. Some notable Husserlian Phenomenologists in North America.- Chapter 8. Important 20th Century American Husserl Scholars.- Chapter 9. Herbert Spiegelberg: From Münich to North America.- Chapter 10. Jitendra Nath Mohanty: A Phenomenological Vedāntin.- Chapter 11. Philosophy and the Integrity of the Person: The Phenomenology of Robert Sokolowski.- Chapter 12. A.-T. Tymieniecka: a phenomenologist in the United States The adventures of a Polish-born American.- Part IV. The Spreading of Phenomenology in North America. Societies and Centers.- Chapter 13. The History of the Husserl-Archives Established in Memory of Alfred Schutz at The New School for Social Research.- Chapter 14. The Impact of North American Phenomenological Organizations: The Chronicle Revisited.- Chapter 15. History of the Husserl Circle.- Chapter 16. The Society of Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy.- Chapter 17. A History of the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, Inc..- Chapter 18. The Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center at Duquesne University and Phenomenology in North America.- Part V. North American Phenomenological Journals.- Chapter 19. Importing Phenomenology: The Early Editorial Life of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.- Chapter 20. Two North American Phenomenological Journals: “Husserl Studies” and “The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy”.- Part VI. Regional Phenomenological Schools.- Chapter 21. Phenomenology in America (1964-1984).- Chapter 22. California Phenomenology.- Chapter 23. Dallas Willard: Reviving Realism on the West Coast.- Chapter 24. Husserl and the Pittsburgh School.- Chapter 25. From Consciousness to Being: Edith Stein’s Philosophy and its reception in North America.- Part VII. Husserlian Phenomenology from an Analytical Perspective.- Chapter 27. The Analytic Reception of Husserlian Phenomenology in the United States. History, Problems, and Prospects

Dr. Michela Beatrice Ferri (1983) is faculty at the Holy Apostles College and Seminary (CT, U.S.A.) .  After obtaining a B.A. (2005) and a M.A. (2007) both in Philosophy, she earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy in 2012 at the University of Milan (Italy), with a dissertation dedicated to the first reception of Edmund Husserl's thought in the United States of America. She has been visiting Ph.D. Student at the New School for Social Research in New York (2010) and at the Husserl-Archives in Leuven (2011). She has been visiting researcher at the CSTMS of the University of California Berkeley (2014). Her researches concentrate on the reception of Husserlian Phenomenology in Italy and in the United States of America, on the history of Phenomenology, on Phenomenological Aesthetics, on Modern and Contemporary Aesthetics, on the dialogue between Philosophy, Visual Arts, Architecture, and Cultural Studies, on Aesthetics of the Sacred Art and on Christian Iconography, on Jewish Studies with afocus on history of the Holocaust.

 Dr. Carlo Ierna is currently lecturer in Modern Philosophy at the University of Groningen and the Radboud University Nijmegen, and has recently also been affiliated with the Free University of Amsterdam as well as having been a member of the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of the Sciences (2017). After completing his PhD (2009) and a postdoc (2012) at the Husserl-Archives Leuven, he obtained a prestigious Dutch NWO VENI grant to work on the ideal of “Philosophy as Science” in the School of Brentano (2012-2016). He has been visiting fellow at Harvard University (2014) and visiting researcher at the Brentano Archives Graz (2014). His recent work concentrates on the School of Brentano, early phenomenology, and Gestalt psychology, with a focus on symbolic intentionality and the philosophy of mathematics.