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The article focuses on the relevance of communication studies for human sciences. Communication studies is often proposed as a synthetic approach to the human sciences outright, an interdisciplinary inquiry capable of linking the researches of specialized human sciences to the philosophical foundations of the project of human scientific inquiry itself. The author says that from the standpoint of the relation between philosophy and the human sciences, the constitution of perception, institutions and thought by media of communication is the thesis proper to communication studies, the thesis from which its larger significance derives. According to the author, by describing the precise point at which a theory of communication diverges from a theory of scientific meaning, it is possible to note a significant convergence between phenomenology and a Marxist critique of a semiotic theory of language.

This paper aims to trace the evolution of Bachelard‘s thought as he gropes toward a concrete formulation of a philosophy of the imagination. Reverie, the creative daydream, occupies the central position in Bachelard‘s emerging metaphysic, which becomes increasingly ’’phenomenological‘‘ in a manner reminiscent of Husserl. This means that although Bachelard does not use Husserlian terms, he appropriates the following features of (Husserlian) phenomenology: 1. a desire to ’’embracket‘‘ the initial (rationalistic) impulse; and 2. an aspiration to apprehend in its entirety, the creative epiphany of an image. Ultimately, this paper aims to show that there is a sense in which Bachelard‘s metaphysical concerns in his poetics are an outgrowth of (rather than radical break from) his earlier scientific and epistemological concerns. What results in reverie is an aesthetic intentionality providing a metaphysic of the imagination: the aesthetic object, such as fire or water, is an object only insofar as it enables/calls forth a subject to enter into a receptive, self-aware and cosmic state of being; subject-ness and object-ness are intimately and archetypally intertwined. Bachelard‘s ’’new poetics‘‘ results from his transplantation/cross-fertilization of the general epistemology of the ’’new scientific spirit‘‘ on to/across his aesthetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper lays the groundwork for developing a thorough-going phenomenological description of different phenomena of violence such as physical, psychic and structural violence. The overall aim is to provide subject-centered approaches to violence within the social sciences and the humanities with an integrative theoretical framework. To do so, I will draw primarily on the phenomenological accounts of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Alfred Schutz, and thereby present guiding clues for a phenomenologically grounded theory of violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1979 the author spent the summer at a National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminar at Princeton with Richard Rorty, an experience which had numerous consequences, including a very Rortyan paper subsequently published in Human Studies called "Social theory," without wholes. Over this summer he has also worked on a manuscript that grew out a long article published in Human Studies on Max Weber and the fact-value distinction entitled "The limits of reason and some limitations of Weber's morality." The research that he was doing in the Princeton library was primarily concerned with filling in the context in which Weber had made his famous statements about fact and value, and also with examining the sequel of those writings in subsequent philosophy. This topic represents an important and distinctive strand in the tradition of continental philosophy, something that has now increasingly come to be recognized.

This paper investigates the claims made by both Freudian psychoanalysic thought and Husserlian phenomenology about the unconscious. First, it is shown how Husserl incorporates a complex notion of the unconscious in his analysis of passive synthesis. With his notion of an unintentional reservoir of past retentions, Husserl articulates an unconscious zone that must be activated from consciousness in order to “come to life.” Second, it is explained how Husserl still does not account for the Freudian unconscious. Freud's unconscious could be called, in phenomenological terms, a repressed retentional zone that differs from both near and far retention. Finally, an analysis is offered for the significance of this psychoanalytic argument for phenomenology. Does phenomenology provide a complete account of the psychical life of the subject without the Freudian unconscious? Does phenomenology suggest, as is often done, that Freud's “discovery” of the unconscious is a fantastical invention? Or, does the Freudian unconscious represent a true stumbling block for phenomenology? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although birth marks the entrance of a human being into the world and establishes the very possibility of experience the philosophical implications of this event have been largely ignored in the history of thought. This is particularly troubling in phenomenology in general and in the work of Martin Heidegger in particular. While Heidegger raises the issue of birth he drops it very quickly on the path to defining Dasein‘s existence as constituted from the standpoint of death, as being-towards-death. In this paper I argue, contra Heidegger, that intentional existence can only be understood from the standpoint of birth. I begin by showing that intentionality inheres in a double difference that is fundamentally dependent on birth insofar as birth is an original differentiating from prenatal existence. I conclude with the argument that only a philosophy that regards Dasein from the standpoint of birth, as being-from-birth, can give an adequate account of humans as beings who live with others and who can initiate sense constitution and action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a summary of all of the papers within the issue. The author ties together a common theme among the articles: ideas about "the other." Practical as well as theoretical aspects of "the other" are presented. The author mentions the philosophies of several philosophers including Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Alfred Schutz, Emile Durkheim, Emmanuel Levinas, Erving Goffman, and Harold Garfinkel. Also mentioned is the development of ideas of the self in respect images of "the other."

The article introduces various essays on humanities. The principle just expressed is intensified in the case of the next five papers. Each of them focuses on one of Kurt Wolff's books: "Moon's on Surrender and Catch. Each writer has a history of involvement with Wolff's work in general and the idea of surrender-and-catch in particular that stretches beyond any single text. All are familiar with his other work, and all know Wolff as a friend, colleague, or teacher. Hence, each chosen text serves as the pivot off of which the author is confronted with the influence of a broader involvement with Wolff's ideas on his or her ways of thinking. The text itself is addressed within this historical thickness within which the writer's contact with it is set. It is appropriate that these essays should have this character. Wolff's work calls uncover and confront the grounds of our perceptions, feelings, conduct, and thoughts. John Dewey said that philosophy is "thinking which has become conscious of itself."