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Dialectic and Difference: Finitude in Modern Thought (Contemporary Studies in Philosophy and the Human Sciences)
English (translation)
Original French
Original French
177 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1985
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November 22, 2015
I had not read anything on phenomenology in probably ten years when I picked up Dialectic and Difference. The book consists of a series of essays focusing on Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology in the context of modern philosophy. Taminiaux organizes the essays historically, beginning with a comparison of the political philosophies of Hegel and Hobbes and then treating in turn, Kant, Marx, and Husserl in light of the phenomenological projects of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. By offering his inquiry as comparative studies, Taminiaux establishes the continuities and discontinuities of the modern project and twentieth century phenomenology.
This approach offers a kind of explanatory service. He demonstrates how Hegel provides an advance on Hobbes’ positivistic political theory. He provides a fairly standard reading of Marx’s treatment of art as ideology, providing historical context in Plato and Nietzsche. He shows how Heidegger takes up the dialectics of Hegel’s phenomenological approach and he investigates the ontological difference that Heidegger first discovers in Husserl’s phenomenology. He closes by providing an interesting explication of the tensions in Merleau-Ponty’s works between two notions of truth: Husserlian reduction and aesthetic production.
Taminiaux does more, however, in these essays. He demonstrates how, for Heidegger and for Mereleau-Ponty, the approach to philosophical questioning is as much a part of the truth of philosophy and a philosopher’s truth as the phenomena discovered in the process of questioning. Thus, Taminiaux shows that in Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty’s confrontations with their predecessors—Kant, Hegel, and Husserl---the truth of the confrontation consists in how understanding a philosopher leads beyond the philosophy being examined to an encounter with truth. The process for both philosophers consists not in establishing a correct reading, but in opening the horizon of their predecessors thought in order to begin questioning anew.
Overall the Taminiaux offers an illuminating set of essays that capture both the content and the spirit of the philosophers he examines.
This approach offers a kind of explanatory service. He demonstrates how Hegel provides an advance on Hobbes’ positivistic political theory. He provides a fairly standard reading of Marx’s treatment of art as ideology, providing historical context in Plato and Nietzsche. He shows how Heidegger takes up the dialectics of Hegel’s phenomenological approach and he investigates the ontological difference that Heidegger first discovers in Husserl’s phenomenology. He closes by providing an interesting explication of the tensions in Merleau-Ponty’s works between two notions of truth: Husserlian reduction and aesthetic production.
Taminiaux does more, however, in these essays. He demonstrates how, for Heidegger and for Mereleau-Ponty, the approach to philosophical questioning is as much a part of the truth of philosophy and a philosopher’s truth as the phenomena discovered in the process of questioning. Thus, Taminiaux shows that in Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty’s confrontations with their predecessors—Kant, Hegel, and Husserl---the truth of the confrontation consists in how understanding a philosopher leads beyond the philosophy being examined to an encounter with truth. The process for both philosophers consists not in establishing a correct reading, but in opening the horizon of their predecessors thought in order to begin questioning anew.
Overall the Taminiaux offers an illuminating set of essays that capture both the content and the spirit of the philosophers he examines.
Displaying 1 of 1 review