Pragmatic Perspectives in Phenomenology Routledge Research in Phenomenology Series

Pragmatic Perspectives in Phenomenology offers a complex analysis of the pragmatic theses that are present in the works of leading phenomenological authors, including not only Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, as it is often the case within Hubert Dreyfus? tradition, but also Husserl, Levinas, Scheler, and Patocka. Starting from a critical reassessment of existing pragmatic readings which draw especially on Heidegger?s account of Being-in-the-world, the volume?s chapters explore the following themes as possible justifications for speaking about the pragmatic turn in phenomenology: the primacy of the practical over theoretical understanding, criticism of the representationalist account of perception and consciousness, and the analysis of language and truth within the context of social and cultural practices. Having thus analyzed the pragmatic readings of key phenomenological concepts, the book situates these readings in a larger historical and thematic context and introduces themes that until now have been overlooked in debates, including freedom, alterity, transcendence, normativity, distance, and self-knowledge. This volume seeks to refresh the debate about the phenomenological legacy and its relevance for contemporary thought by enlarging the thematic scope of pragmatic motives in phenomenology in new and revealing ways. It will be of interest to advanced students and scholars of phenomenology who are interested in moving beyond the analytic-continental divide to explore the relationship between practice and theory.

Introduction: Localizing the Pragmatic Turn in Phenomenology

Ondřej Švec and Jakub Čapek

Part I: Contemporary Pragmatic Readings of Phenomenology

1. On Layer Cakes: Heidegger’s Normative Pragmatism Revisited

Mark Okrent

2. Heidegger’s Pragmatist Readers

Thomas Nenon

3. Primordiality and the Pragmata. A Critical Assessment of Rorty’s Challenge to Heideggerian Nostalgia

Andreas Beinsteiner

4. Two Forms of Practical Knowledge in Being and Time

Tucker McKinney

5. Discursive Intentionality as Embodied Coping. A Pragmatist Critique of Existential Phenomenology

Carl B. Sachs

Part II: Pragmatic Readings Challenged by the History of the Phenomenology

6. The Limits of Dreyfus’ View of Husserl: Intentionality, Openness, and praxis

Witold Płotka

7. On Dreyfus’ Naturalization of Phenomenological Pragmatism: Misleading Dichotomies, and the Counter-Concept of Intentionality

Sophie Loidolt

8. Perceptual Faith beyond Practical Involvement: Merleau-Ponty and His Pragmatist Readers

Jakub Čapek

9. Max Scheler and Pragmatism

Zachary Davis

10. From Circumspection to Insight

Eddo Evink

Part III: Opening up Perspectives

11. Freedom and The Theoretical Attitude

James Mensch

12. The Primacy of Practice and the Pervasiveness of Discourse

Ondřej Švec

13. Making Sense of Human Existence (Heidegger on the Limits of Practical Familiarity)

Mark Wrathall

14. Exemplary Necessity: Heidegger, Pragmatism, and Reason

Steven Crowell

Ondřej Švec is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. His publications include a book about phenomenology of emotionsand various articles on lifeworld, historical conditions of objectivity, overcoming subjectivism in phenomenology and French historical epistemology.

Jakub Čapek is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. His areas of specialization cover twentieth-century German and French philosophy, especially phenomenology and hermeneutics, philosophy of action, philosophy of perception and questions of personal identity.