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Article 1536 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: rcj@caen.engin.umich.edu (R o d Johnson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Heidegger (really Husserl)
Message-ID: <gtm_vX@engin.umich.edu>
Date: 24 Nov 91 03:26:05 GMT
References: <15110@castle.ed.ac.uk> <1991Nov22.210528.10844@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu> <1991Nov24.005252.24389@nuscc.nus.sg>
Organization: Adult Children of Deconstructionists
Lines: 71

In article <1991Nov24.005252.24389@nuscc.nus.sg> smoliar@hilbert.iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar) writes:
>What Heidegger has to
>contribute to artificial intelligence seems to be largely based on his own
>attempts to explain Husserl, 

I'm not sure what you mean here.  Where did Heidegger attept to
"explain" Husserl?  His (allegedly) great early work, Being and Time",
was written as he claimed his intellectual independence from Husserl,
but I see little attempt to follow Husserl there.  If anything, it was
a reaction *against* the transcendental move in Husserl's "middle"
period.

>most of whose writings are ALSO impenetrable
>and tend to have a very hard time of it when renedered in the English
>language.

Husserl's not that bad!  The "transcendental" period ("Ideas" and
"Cartesian Meditations") is rough going, but both earlier and later
writing is easier.  Much of "Logical Investigations", especially the
Third and Fourth Investigations, are relatively easy to read (and
critical sources of much of later linguistic work, btw, though largely
unacknowledged as such).  Among the later work, "Crisis" is
well-written, but so is much of "Formal and Transcendental Logic".

>However, there is one Husserl title in English that I found both readable and
>fascinating;  and I was delighted to discover after reading it that one Husserl
>authority I admire calls it the only English translation of Husserl worth
>reading.

[It's David Carr's translation of "Krisis", which *is* very good.]

Oh pooh.  The first translation of "Logical Investigations" had some
notorious problems, and the Boyce-Gibson translation of "Ideas" is a
mess, but Dorion Cairns' versions of "Cartesian Meditations" and
"Formal and Transcendental Logic" are just fine (this is not to say
they're easy or that I fully understand them; they may have problems
as books, but as translations they do quite well).  David Carr, whose
work you cite, has written on the difficulties of translating Husserl,
and he, as do most others, look to Cairns as the "dean" of Husserl
translators; for Cairns to manage "Cartesian Meditations" was no mean
feat.  I imagine the translation of "Sein und Zeit" has its problems
too, if anyone ever bothered to read the damn thing, but no one ever
talks about how poorly Heidegger was served by his translators.  (Do I
sound peeved?  I am.  I think Husserl's alleged impenetrability is
used as an excuse not to read him; when I hear that complaint from
people who claim to have read Heidegger, or Kant, or De Man, or
Aristotle, it's irritating.  *Every* philosopher presents exegetical
difficulties.  If he's worth it, you do the work.  If he's not worth
it, it's not because it's hard to read.)

There are lots of good secondary sources.  Erazim Kohak's "Idea and
Experience" (U of Chicago Press) is a good and readable introduction
to the "Ideas" phase.  Suzanne Bachelard's excellent study of FTL is
indispensible for understanding the late Husserl ("A Study of
Husserl's _Logic_", Northwestern U.  Press).  But the best, hands
down, is "Husserlian Meditations" by Robert Sokolowski, an exposition
in plain language of some of the more difficult parts of Husserl's
work.  Follesdal's work on noesis and noema (in the Dreyfus volume, I
think) is useful, and geared for cognitive scientists, for whom Aron
Gurwitsch's work would also be a fruitful place to look.  Gurwitsch, a
student of Husserl's, wrote several works extending Husserl's
pre-transcendental philosophy and making connections with psychology;
best known is "The Field of Consciousness" (Duquesne U Press) and
"Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology" (Northwestern).  All of
these are aimed at non-phenomenologists.

--
    Rod Johnson  *  rcj@caen.engin.umich.edu  *  (313) 764-3130

    "In hell it is difficult to tell people from other people"
                                          --Jack Spicer


