Hardcover
2001 · Chicago
by Cumming, Robert Denoon;
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001. Hardcover. Very good. Hardcover. 9 1/4" X 6 1/4". Very mild shelf wear to covers, corners, and edges of cloth over boards. Small sticker to bottom edges of rear boards of all volumes. Pages are clean and unmarked. Bindings are sound.
ABOUT THIS SET:
Volume One: “Philosophy as . . . a rigorous science . . . the dream is over,” Edward Husserl once declared. Heidegger (Husserl’s successor), Derrida, and Rorty have propounded versions of “the end of philosophy.” Cumming argues that what would count as philosophy’s coming to an end can only be determined with some attention to disruptions which have previously punctuated the history of philosophy. He arrives at categories for interpreting what is at issue in such disruptions by analyzing Heidegger’s and Husserl’s break with each other, Heidegger’s break with Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty’s break with Sartre.
In this analysis Cumming deals with how a philosophy can be vulgarized (as Heidegger’s was by Nazism but in Heidegger’s own view by Sartre), with problems of periodization, with how the history of philosophy can be disinguished as a philosophical discipline from intellectual history. Cumming also elaborates an analogy between a philosophical method and style.(Publisher)
Volume Two: “Husserl had captured me, I saw everything in terms of the perspectives of his philosophy,” wrote Sartre of his conversion to Husserl’s phenomenology. In the present volume Cumming analyzes Sartre’s transformation of Husserl’s phenomenological method into a rudimentary dialectic. Cumming thus provides an introduction to phenomenology itself, and more generally to the ways in which debts to previous philosophies can be refurbished in later philosophies. He shows how phenomenology, which for Husserl was a theory of knowledge in which “we can always presume sincerity,” becomes for Sartre a theory in which imagination, self-deception, and role playing are crucial.
Cumming also shows that conversion is not merely a personal predisposition of Sartre’s—further manifest in his later conversions to Heidegger and to a version of Marxism. Conversion is also philosophical preoccupation, illustrated by the “conversion to the imaginary” whereby Sartre explains how he himself, as well as Genet and Flaubert, became writers. Finally, Cumming details how Husserl’s phenomenological method contributed both to the shaping of Sartre’s style as a literary writer and to his theory of style.(Publisher)
Volume Three: Philosophers are committed to objective understanding, but the history of philosophy demonstrates how frequently one philosopher misunderstands another. The most notorious such breakdown in communication in twentieth-century philosophy was between Husserl and Heidegger. In the third volume of his history of the phenomenological movement, Robert Denoon Cumming argues that their differences involve differences in method; whereas Husserl follows a “method of clarification,” with which he eliminates ambiguities by relying on an intentional analysis that isolates its objects, Heidegger rejects the criterion of “clarity” and embraces ambiguities as exhibiting overlapping relations.
Cumming also explores the differences between how deconstruction—Heidegger’s procedure for dealing with other philosophers—is carried out when Heidegger interprets Husserl versus
when Derrida interprets Husserl. The comparison enables Cumming to show how deconstruction is associated with Heidegger’s arrival at the end of philosophy, paving the way for the deconstructionist movement.(Publisher)
Volume Four: In this final volume of Robert Denoon Cumming’s four-volume history of the phenomenological movement, Cumming examines the bearing of Heidegger’s philosophy on his original commitment to Nazism and on his later inability to face up to the implication of that allegiance. Cumming continues his focus, as in previous volumes, on Heidegger’s connection with other philosophers. Here, Cumming looks first at Heidegger’s relation to Karl Jaspers, an old friend on whom Heidegger turned his back when Hitler consolidated power, and who discredited Heidegger in the denazification that followed World War II. The issues at stake are not merely personal, Cumming argues, but regard the philosophical relevance of the personal.
After the war Heidegger disavowed Sartre, a move related to Heidegger’s renunciation of his association with the phenomenological movement at large, and one that illustrates the dynamics of the history Cumming himself has completed. Serving as convincing punctuation for this remarkable series, this book demonstrates the importance of the history of philosophy in coming to grips with the proclaimed end of philosophy.(Publisher). (Inventory #: 16442)
ABOUT THIS SET:
Volume One: “Philosophy as . . . a rigorous science . . . the dream is over,” Edward Husserl once declared. Heidegger (Husserl’s successor), Derrida, and Rorty have propounded versions of “the end of philosophy.” Cumming argues that what would count as philosophy’s coming to an end can only be determined with some attention to disruptions which have previously punctuated the history of philosophy. He arrives at categories for interpreting what is at issue in such disruptions by analyzing Heidegger’s and Husserl’s break with each other, Heidegger’s break with Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty’s break with Sartre.
In this analysis Cumming deals with how a philosophy can be vulgarized (as Heidegger’s was by Nazism but in Heidegger’s own view by Sartre), with problems of periodization, with how the history of philosophy can be disinguished as a philosophical discipline from intellectual history. Cumming also elaborates an analogy between a philosophical method and style.(Publisher)
Volume Two: “Husserl had captured me, I saw everything in terms of the perspectives of his philosophy,” wrote Sartre of his conversion to Husserl’s phenomenology. In the present volume Cumming analyzes Sartre’s transformation of Husserl’s phenomenological method into a rudimentary dialectic. Cumming thus provides an introduction to phenomenology itself, and more generally to the ways in which debts to previous philosophies can be refurbished in later philosophies. He shows how phenomenology, which for Husserl was a theory of knowledge in which “we can always presume sincerity,” becomes for Sartre a theory in which imagination, self-deception, and role playing are crucial.
Cumming also shows that conversion is not merely a personal predisposition of Sartre’s—further manifest in his later conversions to Heidegger and to a version of Marxism. Conversion is also philosophical preoccupation, illustrated by the “conversion to the imaginary” whereby Sartre explains how he himself, as well as Genet and Flaubert, became writers. Finally, Cumming details how Husserl’s phenomenological method contributed both to the shaping of Sartre’s style as a literary writer and to his theory of style.(Publisher)
Volume Three: Philosophers are committed to objective understanding, but the history of philosophy demonstrates how frequently one philosopher misunderstands another. The most notorious such breakdown in communication in twentieth-century philosophy was between Husserl and Heidegger. In the third volume of his history of the phenomenological movement, Robert Denoon Cumming argues that their differences involve differences in method; whereas Husserl follows a “method of clarification,” with which he eliminates ambiguities by relying on an intentional analysis that isolates its objects, Heidegger rejects the criterion of “clarity” and embraces ambiguities as exhibiting overlapping relations.
Cumming also explores the differences between how deconstruction—Heidegger’s procedure for dealing with other philosophers—is carried out when Heidegger interprets Husserl versus
when Derrida interprets Husserl. The comparison enables Cumming to show how deconstruction is associated with Heidegger’s arrival at the end of philosophy, paving the way for the deconstructionist movement.(Publisher)
Volume Four: In this final volume of Robert Denoon Cumming’s four-volume history of the phenomenological movement, Cumming examines the bearing of Heidegger’s philosophy on his original commitment to Nazism and on his later inability to face up to the implication of that allegiance. Cumming continues his focus, as in previous volumes, on Heidegger’s connection with other philosophers. Here, Cumming looks first at Heidegger’s relation to Karl Jaspers, an old friend on whom Heidegger turned his back when Hitler consolidated power, and who discredited Heidegger in the denazification that followed World War II. The issues at stake are not merely personal, Cumming argues, but regard the philosophical relevance of the personal.
After the war Heidegger disavowed Sartre, a move related to Heidegger’s renunciation of his association with the phenomenological movement at large, and one that illustrates the dynamics of the history Cumming himself has completed. Serving as convincing punctuation for this remarkable series, this book demonstrates the importance of the history of philosophy in coming to grips with the proclaimed end of philosophy.(Publisher). (Inventory #: 16442)
