Readers abound in
philosophy—feminist readers, cognitive science readers, Aristotle readers—name
a figure or movement and you will surely find, at least, a few readers. All the same, many complain about readers: they
cut-and-paste great author’s works, they always seem to leave out something (or
somebody) critical for the discipline, and they encourage students to not read the
entirety of the primary sources.

Despite some of these worries about readers, I am a
fan of a well-edited reader. 
Overwhelmed by the masses of primary and secondary literature in most
philosophical fields, I find a reader to be a friendly welcome into a new
area. Robert C. Solomon’s second edition
of Phenomenology and Existentialism
is an excellent introduction to the difficult concepts and authors of the
phenomenological movement and 20^th-century existentialism. (It is worth noting that neither Nietzsche, nor
Kierkegaard make an appearance in this reader, Solomon chooses to focus on existentialists
influenced, directly or indirectly, by Edmund Husserl.)

Before commenting on the book’s strengths, two
weaknesses should be mentioned. First,
since a reader is often an introduction into the area or author, it is important
to have full citations and a useful bibliography. A serious oversight in this book (in its third edition) is that Solomon
has sometimes neglected to cite page numbers of the main texts. You are, thus, left to search through tombs such
as Husserl’s Logical Investigations
or Sartre’s Being and Nothingness to
find where the passage is taken from. Second,
parts of Solomon’s introduction might be interesting for someone familiar with
the kind of debates in phenomenology and the continental—analytic divide, but
seems out-of-place in a reader which would serve largely an introduction. Solomon rails against any thinkers who take
existentialism to be “a revolt against Western philosophy” and argues for its
inclusion in “traditional Western epistemology and Husserl’s phenomenology.”
(pg. 38).   He argues against any “continentalist”
who might question his insertion of analytic philosophers such as Wilfrid
Sellers. This polemic is neither well-defended,
nor appropriate. A summary of the
author’s works and lives would have been more suitable. Knowing where Solomon stands on the
analytic-continental debate is not helpful in trying to understand the notoriously
difficult philosopher who dominates the reader—Edmund Husserl.

The strength of the reader lies in its structure and
use of non-canonical authors. Instead
of taking the typical structure of a reader—texts by author in chronological order—Solomon
has chosen the texts by theme. The
reader is broken down into various sections with selections from the classics (i.e.,
Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre) and commentators on these philosophical
topics (i.e., Chisholm, Schmitt, Ryle, Olafson). For example, in the second section of part one, “The
Phenomenological Reduction,” Solomon includes selections from Edmund Husserl’s Ideas on the reduction, followed by
Merleau-Ponty’s expose of Husserl, and finally Richard Schmitt’s critique of
these very themes. Edmund Husserl’s
reduction suggests that in order to find a rigorous manner in which to
understand our experience, we must “bracket” questions of existence and examine
the phenomena as it presents itself to us. 
However, this is easier said than done without falling into a kind of solipsism. Merleau-Ponty favors a reading where the
world as we live it is never fully suspended.  In other words, he transforms Husserl into an existentialist
phenomenologist. Schmitt points out
that if Husserl truly wants to ground a transcendental phenomenology (which
arguably is the case, despite Merleau-Ponty’s assessment) through the
reduction, he never manages to clearly separate contradictory terminology and,
thus, “Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology is a big muddle.” (pg. 144). Such a section promotes an interesting debate
about Husserl’s reduction leading the reader to be interested enough to find
out more.

Husserlian phenomenology tends to be a self-enclosed
discipline involving much internal debate among scholars and, thus, struggles
to demonstrate Husserl’s relevance to more general philosophical
questions. Solomon’s reader does an
admirable job of drawing out the reasons why he has such a great influence and
why the study of Husserl remains interesting today. Existentialists such as
Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus do not suffer from exclusion from the intellectual
world, but sometimes suffer from its opposite. 
Since they are so well-read and accepted by non-academics, they are
sometimes seen as not “real” philosophers.  Since the reader focuses on the impact of Husserl’s themes on
existentialist philosophy, it demonstrates the continuity between his work and that
of the existentialists.

Solomon includes a famous passage from Husserl on
the transcendental ego in the first section “Consciousness and the Ego” of part
three “Self and Others.” The next two
selections are from Sartre and Martin Heidegger both taking up the themes of
Husserl. Sartre disagrees that one has
to speak of a transcendental I—“Now, it is certain that phenomenology does not
need to appeal to any such unifying and individualizing I.” (pg. 398) Heidegger extends his critique further and
stops speaking of “subjects” and “egos” altogether. By including this passages next to one another, one can see how
the existentialists developed their thought out of some of Husserl’s key
theses.

However, some of the most beloved themes of lovers
of existentialist philosophy receive little attention, since Solomon focuses on
traditional epistemological issues (meaning, truth, consciousness). Only the last fifty pages of a 500-page
reader are devoted to freedom and ethics.  
I do not consider this a failing of the reader simply given the
constraints of such a book. Solomon’s
choice of continuity at the price of expansiveness demonstrates the inevitable
limits of what a reader can provide. In conclusion, this book can be highly recommended
to a philosopher interested in phenomenology but unsure of where to begin, or
as a textbook for a course on phenomenology.

© 2002 Talia Welsh
 

Talia Welsh is a Ph.D. student in
Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She is writing a
dissertation on Merleau Ponty’s psychology.

Categories: Philosophical