"Understanding Phenomenology" provides a guide to one of the most important schools of thought in modern philosophy. The book traces phenomenology's historical development, beginning with its founder, Edmund Husserl and his "pure" or "transcendental" phenomenology, and continuing with the later, "existential" phenomenology of Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The book also assesses later, critical responses to phenomenology - from Derrida to Dennett - as well as the continued significance of phenomenology for philosophy today. Written for anyone coming to phenomenology for the first time, the book guides the reader through the often bewildering array of technical concepts and jargon associated with phenomenology and provides clear explanations and helpful examples to encourage and enhance engagement with the primary texts.

In this book, Robert Sokolowski argues that being a person means to be involved with truth. He shows that human reason is established by syntactic composition in language, pictures, and actions and that we understand things when they are presented to us through syntax. Sokolowski highlights the role of the spoken word in human reason and examines the bodily and neurological basis for human experience. Drawing on Husserl and Aristotle, as well as Aquinas and Henry James, Sokolowski here employs phenomenology in a highly original way in order to clarify what we are as human agents.

The problem of human knowing has been foundational for the enterprise of philosophy since the time of Descartes. The great philosophers have offered different accounts of the power and limits of human knowing but no generally acceptable system has emerged. Contemporary writers have almost given up on this most intractable issue. In this book, Brian Cronin suggests using the method of introspective description to identify the characteristics of the act of human understanding and knowing. Introspection--far from being private and unverifiable--can be public, communal, and verifiable. If we can describe our dreams and our feelings, then, we can describe our acts of understanding. Using concrete examples, one can identify the activities involved--namely, questioning, researching, getting an idea, expressing a concept, reflecting on the evidence and inferring a conclusion. Each of these activities can be described clearly and in great detail. If we perform these activities well, we can understand and know both truth and value. The text invites readers to verify each and every statement in their own experience of understanding. This is a detailed and verifiable account of human knowing: an extremely valuable contribution to philosophy and a solution to the foundational problem of knowing.

The experience of illness is a universal and substantial part of human existence. Like death, illness raises important philosophical issues. But unlike death, illness, and in particular the experience of being ill, has received little philosophical attention. This may be because illness is often understood as a physiological process that falls within the domain of medical science, and is thus outside the purview of philosophy. In Phenomenology of Illness Havi Carel argues that the experience of illness has been wrongly neglected by philosophers and proposes to fill the lacuna. Phenomenology of Illness provides a distinctively philosophical account of illness. Using phenomenology, the philosophical method for first-person investigation, Carel explores how illness modifies the ill person's body, values, and world. The aim of Phenomenology of Illness is twofold: to contribute to the understanding of illness through the use of philosophy and to demonstrate the importance of illness for philosophy. Contra the philosophical tendency to resist thinking about illness, Carel proposes that illness is a philosophical tool. Through its pathologising effect, illness distances the ill person from taken for granted routines and habits and reveals aspects of human existence that normally go unnoticed. Phenomenology of Illness develops a phenomenological framework for illness and a systematic understanding of illness as a philosophical tool.

What are the foundations of human self-understanding and the value of responsible philosophical questioning? Focusing on Heidegger's early work on facticity, historicity, and the phenomenological hermeneutics of factical-historical life, Hans-Helmuth Gander develops an idea of understanding that reflects our connection with the world and other, and thus invites deep consideration of phenomenology, hermeneutics, and deconstruction. He draws usefully on Husserl's phenomenology and provides grounds for exchange with Descartes, Dilthey, Nietzsche, Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Foucault. On the way to developing a contemporary hermeneutical philosophy, Gander clarifies the human relation to self in and through conversation with Heidegger's early hermeneutics. Questions about reading and writing then follow as these are the very actions that structure human self-understanding and world understanding.

A new Translation with Afterword of Hegel's Monumental work The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) G.W.F. Hegel's "The Phenomenology of Spirit," published in 1807, is one of the foundational texts of German idealism. Through a narrative of historical and philosophical developments, Hegel explores the evolution of consciousness from immediate sensory experience to the highest form of self-aware Spirit. Engaging with a diverse array of figures and movements, from ancient Greek thought to his contemporary German Idealists, Hegel presents a complex analysis of human experience and its inherent contradictions, culminating in the realization of absolute knowing. The work's intricate dialectical method, wherein concepts evolve through thesis-antithesis-synthesis progressions, has greatly influenced modern philosophy and the humanities.

This book approaches the topic of intercultural understanding in philosophy from a phenomenological perspective. It provides a bridge between Western and Eastern philosophy through in-depth discussion of concepts and doctrines of phenomenology and ancient and contemporary Chinese philosophy. Phenomenological readings of Daoist and Buddhist philosophies are provided: the reader will find a study of theoretical and methodological issues and innovative readings of traditional Chinese and Indian philosophies from the phenomenological perspective. The author uses a descriptive rigor to avoid cultural prejudices and provides a non-Eurocentric conception and practice of philosophy. Through this East-West comparative study, a compelling criticism of a Eurocentric conception of philosophy emerges. New concepts and methods in intercultural philosophy are proposed through these chapters. Researchers, teachers, post-graduates and students of philosophy will all find this work intriguing, and those with an interest in non-Western philosophy or phenomenology will find it particularly engaging.