The Intentional Spectrum and Intersubjectivity: Phenomenology and the Pittsburgh Neo-Hegelians

by Michael D. Barber

Overview

World-renowned analytic philosophers John McDowell and Robert Brandom, dubbed “Pittsburgh Neo-Hegelians,” recently engaged in an intriguing debate about perception. In The Intentional Spectrum and Intersubjectivity Michael D. Barber is the first to bring phenomenology to bear not just on the perspectives of McDowell or Brandom alone, but on their intersection. He argues that McDowell accounts better for the intelligibility of empirical content by defending holistically functioning, reflectively distinguishable sensory and intellectual intentional structures. He reconstructs dimensions implicit in the perception debate, favoring Brandom on knowledge’s intersubjective features that converge with the ethical characteristics of intersubjectivity Emmanuel Levinas illuminates.

Phenomenology becomes the third partner in this debate between two analytic philosophers, critically mediating their discussion by unfolding the systematic interconnectionamong perception, intersubjectivity, metaphilosophy, and ethics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780821443682
Publisher:	Ohio University Press
Publication date:	05/18/2011
Series:	Series In Continental Thought , #39
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	326
File size:	562 KB

About the Author

Michael D. Barber is dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of philosophy at St. Louis University. He is the author of several books on the phenomenology of the social world, his most recent being The Participating Citizen: A Biography of Alfred Schutz.

Table of Contents

Preface 1: The Debate about Perception 2: The Debate about Perception 3: The Fullness of Perception 4: Tradition and Discourse, I-We and I-Thou 5: McDowell's Wittgensteinian Quietism 6: Self-Reflectivity, Radical Reflection, and Consciousness 7: The Levels of Ethics 8: Phenomenology, the Intentional Spectrum, and Intersubjectivity Notes Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

Michael Barber's The Intentional Spectrum and Intersubjectivity: Phenomenology and the Pittsburgh Neo-Hegelians carefully and thoroughly analyzes for the first time ways in which Brandom's and McDowell's thinking, particularly about perception, can be illuminated by phenomenological thought, particularly that of Husserl and Levinas. Animpressive scholarly accomplishment and a solid contribution to contemporary phenomenological analysis.”—James Swindal, author of Reflection Revisited: Jürgen Habermas's Discursive Theory of Truth

From the Publisher