Publication Date

7-1982

Advisor(s) - Committee Chair

Edward Schoen

Degree Program

Department of Philosophy & Religion

Degree Type

Master of Arts

Abstract

Since the time of Descartes, it has been an implicit assumption of western thought that human reality is composed of two totally distinct substances: the physical (extended) and the non-physical (non-extended). Explaining the nature of these two substances, and the relation between them, has been a central dilemma in western philosophy ever since. Edmund Husserl believed these categories are the result of latent abstraction in our way of conceiving the world and have no place in reality itself. By explicating the implications of Brentano's observation that all consciousness is consciousness of something' (the theory of intentionality) and by effecting a radical attitude shift beyond all naive acceptances to the apodictic ground of pure experience, Husserl believed he could gain immediate access to the categories of reality itself. From the standpoint of this apodictic realm of pure experience--which Husserl believed to be prior to all mental abstractions--a non- dualistic (in the substantial sense) view of human reality could be obtained. Emphasis is placed on the collapse and replacement of Cartesian categories by the radical categories of transcendental phenomenology.

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | Philosophy

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