The guiding dictum of phenomenology is "to the things themselves. " This saying conveys a sense that the "things," the "phenomena" with which we are confronted and into which we seek some insight are not as immediately accessible as may be imagined. Phenomena, however, are often hidden not by their distance from us, but by their very proximity, by the fact that they are taken for granted as being self-evident and understood by all. Even the most common, everyday phenomena and the words used to describe them often reveal, upon closer inspection, a degree of complexity which had previously been unsuspected. Upon interrogation, that which had been taken to be self-evident and widely understood shows itself otherwise; assumed self-evidence frequently masks unintelligibility and common understanding can be a sign of a lack of understanding. One phenomenon which is extremely proximate in our times is the phenomenon of "crisis. " To be sure, one can hardly avoid the word these it abound in periodicals and newspapers, but also, in days. Not only does the learned journals of medicine, political science, economics, art, and law, barely does an edition appear without the discussion of a crisis of one sort or another within these respective fields. One is tempted to remark, along with Umberto Eco, that "crisis sells well. "l One is also inclined to be suspicious of the collective malaise of academics.

In The Crisis of Meaning and the Life-World, Ľubica Učník examines the existential conflict that formed the focus of Edmund Husserl’s final work, which she argues is very much with us today: how to reconcile scientific rationality with the meaning of human existence. To investigate this conundrum, she places Husserl in dialogue with three of his most important successors: Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, and Jan Patočka. For Husserl, 1930s Europe was characterized by a growing irrationalism that threatened to undermine its legacy of rational inquiry. Technological advancement in the sciences, Husserl argued, had led science to forget its own foundations in the primary “life-world”: the world of lived experience. Renewing Husserl’s concerns in today’s context, Učník first provides an original and compelling reading of his oeuvre through the lens of the formalization of the sciences, then traces the unfolding of this problem through the work of Heidegger, Arendt, and Patočka. Although many scholars have written on Arendt, none until now has connected her philosophical thought with that of Czech phenomenologist Jan Patočka. Učník provides invaluable access to the work of the latter, who remains understudied in the English language. She shows that together, these four thinkers offer new challenges to the way we approach key issues confronting us today, providing us with ways to reconsider truth, freedom, and human responsibility in the face of the postmodern critique of metanarratives and a growing philosophical interest in new forms of materialism.

The Crisis of the European Sciences is Husserl's last and most influential book, written in Nazi Germany where he was discriminated against as a Jew. It incisively identifies the urgent moral and existential crises of the age and defends the relevance of philosophy at a time of both scientific progress and political barbarism. It is also a response to Heidegger, offering Husserl's own approach to the problems of human finitude, history and culture. The Crisis introduces Husserl's influential notion of the 'life-world' – the pre-given, familiar environment that includes both 'nature' and 'culture' – and offers the best introduction to his phenomenology as both method and philosophy. Dermot Moran's rich and accessible introduction to the Crisis explains its intellectual and political context, its philosophical motivations and the themes that characterize it. His book will be invaluable for students and scholars of Husserl's work and of phenomenology in general.

"Shedding new light on the theme of "crisis" in Husserl's phenomenology, this book reflects on the experience of awakening to one's own naïveté. Beginning from everyday examples, Knies examines how this awakening makes us culpable for not having noticed what was noticeable. He goes on to apply this examination to fundamental issues in phenomenology, arguing that the appropriation of naïve life has a different structure from the reflection on pre-reflective life. Husserl's work on the "crisis" is presented as an attempt to integrate this appropriation into a systematic transcendental philosophy. Crisis and Husserlian Phenomenology brings Husserl into dialogue with other key thinkers in Continental philosophy such as Descartes, Kant, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida. It is suitable for students and scholars alike, especially those interested in subjectivity, responsibility and the philosophy of history"--

​This edited collection discusses phenomenological critiques of formalism and their relevance to the problem of responsibility and the life-world. The book deals with themes of formalization of knowledge in connection to the life-world, the natural world, the history of science and our responsibility for both our epistemic claims and the world in which we live. Readers will discover critiques of formalization, the life-world and responsibility, and a collation and comparison of Patočka’s and Husserl’s work on these themes. Considerable literature on Husserl is presented here and the two themes of epistemic responsibility and the life-world are discussed together. This work specifically emphasizes the interrelatedness of these existential aspects of his work – self-responsibility and the crisis – as not only epistemological, but also related to human life. This volume also introduces Jan Patočka to English-speaking readers as a phenomenologist in his own right. Patočka shows us, in particular, the significance of the modern abyss between our thinking and the world. Readers will discover that this abyss is of concern for our everyday experience because it leads to a rupture in our understanding of the world: between the world of our living and its scientific construct. We see that Patočka continually emphasized the relevance of Husserl’s work to existential questions relating to human responsibility and the life-world, which he admits is left largely implicit in Husserl’s work. This edited collection will spark discussion on the question of responsibility against the backdrop of formalized knowledge which is increasingly inaccessible to human understanding. Despite the complexity of some of the analyzed ideas, this book discusses these themes in a clear and readable way. This work is scholarly, exact in its discussion and authoritative in its reading, but at the same time accessible to anyone motivated to understand these debates.

Martin Heidegger’s thinking is a complex, and his terminology is as nuanced, as any thinker in the history of philosophy. As the historian of philosophy par excellence, he also exhibits both a greater appreciation and mastery of previous thinkers than any almost any other philosopher before or since. The Historical Dictionary of Heidegger's Philosophy, Third Edition addresses this dual challenge of reading, understanding, and interpreting Heidegger’s vast writings. The book provides a comprehensive and detailed account of the key terms shaping Heidegger’s philosophy, as well as outlining the development of his thought spanning the entirety of his career spanning almost sixty years. The Dictionary also includes a discussion of Heidegger’s seminal writings, the spanning his entire Gesamtausgabe (Complete Edition) up through volume 99 (of the projected 102 volumes). This third edition of Historical Dictionary of Heidegger's Philosophy, Third Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 800 cross-referenced entries that provides a clear and comprehensive exposition of the key developments in his life and his thought. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Martin Heidegger.

Steven Crowell has been for many years a leading voice in debates on twentieth-century European philosophy. This volume presents thirteen recent essays that together provide a systematic account of the relation between meaningful experience (intentionality) and responsiveness to norms. They argue for a new understanding of the philosophical importance of phenomenology, taking the work of Husserl and Heidegger as exemplary, and introducing a conception of phenomenology broad enough to encompass the practices of both philosophers. Crowell discusses Husserl's analyses of first-person authority, the semantics of conscious experience, the structure of perceptual content, and the embodied subject, and shows how Heidegger's interpretation of the self addresses problems in Husserl's approach to the normative structure of meaning. His volume will be valuable for upper-level students and scholars interested in phenomenological approaches to philosophical questions in both the European and the analytic traditions.