Dermot Moran

Boston College, Philosophy, Faculty Member

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Dermot Moran is the Inaugural Holder of the Joseph Chair in Catholic Philosophy, Boston College. He was, from 1989 until his retirement, NUI Statutory Professor of Philosophy (Logic & Metaphysics) at University College Dublin. He is an elected Member of the Royal Irish Academy and of the Institut International de Philosophie (IIP). Publications include: Introduction to Phenomenology (2000), Edmund Husserl: Founder of Phenomenology (2005), Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (2012) and, co-authored with Joseph Cohen, Husserl Dictionary (2012). Edited works include: Husserl’s Logical Investigations, 2 vols. (Routledge, 2001), The Shorter Logical Investigations, The Phenomenology Reader, co-edited with Tim Mooney (Routledge, 2002), Phenomenology. Critical Concepts in Philosophy, 5 Volumes, co-edited with Lester E. Embree (Routledge, 2004), The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophy (Routledge, 2008); The Phenomenology of Embodied Subjectivity (Springer 2014) co-edited with Rasmus Thybo Jensen,; Empathy, Sociality, and Personhood. Essays on Edith Stein’s Phenomenological Investigations, co-edited with Elisa Magrì (Springer, 2017); Conscious Thinking and Cognitive Phenomenology, co-edited with Marta Jorba (Routledge, 2018); and, with Anya Daly, Fred Cummins, James Jardine, Perception and the Inhuman Gaze. Perspectives from Philosophy, Phenomenology, and the Sciences (Routledge, 2020).

Recent articles include: D. Moran, "The Phenomenology of Joint Agency,” in Special Issue: The Phenomenology of Joint Action: Mechanisms, Structure and Functions, ed. Franz Knappik and Nivedita Gangopadhyay, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2021, pp. 1-28; and D. Moran, “Husserl and the Greeks,” Special Issue, ‘Phenomenology in Dialogue with Ancient Philosophy’, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology vol. 52 no. 2 (2020), 98–117; D. Moran, “Being and Nothingness in Meister Eckhart and in the Phenomenological Tradition,” Meister Eckhart und die Phänomenologie, herausgegeben von Martina Roesner und Roberto Vinco. Meister-Eckhart-Jahrbuch, vol. 17. Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 2023, pp. 107-143; and D. Moran, 6. “La actitud personalista: Edmund Husserl, Max Scheler y Edith Stein,” Areté. Revista de Filosofía (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú), vol. XXXIV no. 1 (2022), pp. 171–205
Address: Boston College, Dept. of Philosophy, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA

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La actitud personalista: Edmund Husserl, Max Scheler y Edith Stein

Areté

Este artículo discute las considerables semejanzas entre las concepciones de la persona defendida... more Este artículo discute las considerables semejanzas entre las concepciones de la persona defendidas por Husserl, Scheler y Stein, según las cuales la persona es un valor absoluto que se ejercita en tomas de posición. Para los fenomenólogos clásicos (Husserl, Scheler y Stein), la ética concierne a la persona en su totalidad, incluyendo las dimensiones afectiva y racional, el intelecto y el corazón, así como la volición. Las personas se distinguen por su agencia libre, por su capacidad para reconocer normas, y por su habilidad para interactuar responsablemente con otros agentes personales en el contexto del mundo-de-la-vida comunitario e histórico.

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The phenomenology of joint agency: the implicit structures of the shared life-world

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences

We do lots of things together in a shared manner. From the phenomenological point of view, does j... more We do lots of things together in a shared manner. From the phenomenological point of view, does joint or shared agency need a conscious sense of shared agency? Yet there are many processes where we seem to just go along with the group without conscious intent. Building on the classic phenomenological accounts of Edmund Husserl, Alfred Schutz, Martin Heidegger (and the synthetic account of Berger &amp; Luckmann), I want to emphasize the thick horizon of the life-world as a fundamental condition for intentional shared agency. Joint agency has divergent forms with their own peculiar intentionality, attentivity, anticipations and expectations, and embeddedness in a pre-predicative tacit knowledge in the overall live-world. Phenomenology recognizes that even ego-centered activities that appear to be fully &#39;agential&#39; can be carried out in an anonymous un-owned manner, in the manner which Heidegger calls &#39;das Man&#39;, or &#39;the one&#39;. This suggests that tacit belonging to the collective &#39;we&#39; undergirds individual agency. Husserl, Heidegger, and Schutz all have accounts of this &#39;anonymous&#39;, pre-predicative kind of group participation. Phenomenology has rich accounts of anonymous, voluntary, shared, social participation that demand a new concept of agency, one neglected in the current literature in philosophy of action.

A Brief Apology for a Catholic Moment. By Jean-Luc Marion. Trans. Stephen E. Lewis

Journal of Church and State

Being-with (Mitsein)

The Cambridge Heidegger Lexicon

Diseccionando las experiencias mentales: las reflexiones fenomenológicas de Husserl sobre “Erlebnisen” en “Ideas”

No nos interesan las facticidades [Faktizitäten] de la conciencia y de sus cursos [Abläufe], pero... more No nos interesan las facticidades [Faktizitäten] de la conciencia y de sus cursos [Abläufe], pero sí los problemas esenciales [Wesensprobleme], que aquí habría que formular. (Husserl, Ideas § 135, p. 412; Hua III/1 312)En el presente artículo me centraré en las siguientes cuestiones: (a) que hay de nuevo en las Ideas de Husserl (b) la necesidad de una epoché trascendental o una reducción para acceder a la correlación noesis-noema (c) la estructura compleja de Erlebnis intencional y algunos aspectos de noesis y noema (d) las leyes eidéticas identificadas por Husserl y, finalmente, (e) algunas observaciones sobre el papel del ego en la corriente de las vivencias (Erlebnissstorm)What interests us are not the facticities [Faktizitäten] of consciousness and in-stances of it elapsing [Abläufe], but ra-ther the problems of its essence [Wesensprobleme], problems which would need to be formulated there. (Husserl, Ideas, § 135, p. 269; Hua III/1 312)In this paper I shall focus on the followin...

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Defending theTranscendental Attitude: Husserl’s Concept of the Person and the Challenges of Naturalism

Phenomenology and Mind, 2014

The person is a concept that emerged in Western philosophy after the ancient Greeks. it has a mul... more The person is a concept that emerged in Western philosophy after the ancient Greeks. it has a multiple origination in Alexandrine grammar (first, second, third person), Roman law (free person versus slave) and latin christian Trinitarian theology, epitomized by Boethius' definition-a person is an individual substance of a rational nature. In this paper i trace some aspects of the history of the concept of person and evaluate contemporary analytic approaches in the light of the husserlian phenomenological account of the person.

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Making sense: Husserl’s phenomenology as transcendental idealism DERM OT MORAN

The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophy

The twentieth century was one of the most significant and exciting periods ever witnessed in phil... more The twentieth century was one of the most significant and exciting periods ever witnessed in philosophy, characterised by intellectual change and development on a massive scale. The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophy is an outstanding and authoritative survey and assessment of the century as a whole. Twenty-two chapters written by leading international scholars examine and assess the central topics, themes, and philosophers of the twentieth century, presenting a comprehensive picture of the period for the first time: Early Analytic Philosophy - ...

There is no brute world, only an elaborated world': Merleau-Ponty on the intersubjective constitution of the world

In his later works, Merleau-Ponty proposes the notion of 'the flesh' (la chair) as a new 'element... more In his later works, Merleau-Ponty proposes the notion of 'the flesh' (la chair) as a new 'element', as he put it, in his ontological monism designed to overcome the legacy of Cartesian dualism with its bifurcation of all things into matter or spirit. Most Merleau-Ponty commentators recognise that Merleau-Ponty's notion of 'flesh' is inspired by Edmund Husserl's conceptions of 'lived body' (Leib) and 'vivacity' or 'liveliness' (Leiblichkeit). But it is not always recognised that, for Merleau-Ponty, the constitution of the world of perception, the problem of embodiment or incarnation, is at the very same time one with the problem of the experience of others in what Husserl called Einfühlung or Fremderfahung and indeed one with the problem of the constitution of the commonly shared world 'for all'. As Merleau-Ponty put it in his late essay 'The Philosopher and His Shadow' in Signs, 'the problem of Einfühlung, like that of my incarnation, opens on the meditation of sensible being, or, if you prefer, it betakes itself there'. In other words, the problem of the apprehension of the other is part of the overall apprehension of the transcendent world. In this paper I want to meditate on the relations between embodiment, experience of others, and experience of the world in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy. I will take particular note, as in the title of this presentation, on the claim made by Merleau-Ponty in The Visible and the Invisible that 'there is no brute world, only elaborated world' (il n'y a pas de monde brut, il n'y a qu'un monde élaboré). In this paper I shall explicate the relations between embodiment, experience of others, and experience of the world in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy. I shall explore the enigmatic claim made by Merleau-Ponty in his The Visible and the Invisible that 'there is no brute world, there is only an elaborated world' (il n'y a pas de monde brut, il n'y a qu'un monde élaboré). 2 I shall primarily focus on Merleau-Ponty's unfinished manuscript The Visible and the Invisible, published posthumously with a selection of Working Notes in 1964, edited by his long-term friend Claude Lefort (1924-2010), but I shall also argue that much that Merleau-Ponty says there is already foreshadowed and predelineated in his Phenomenology of Perception (1945) 3. There is not, contrary to appearances, a radical shift between the earlier and the later Merleau-Ponty, although the later Merleau-Ponty made a more sustained effort to develop a new vocabulary to express his developing ontological insights. Merleau-Ponty-partly through the influence of his friend Eugen Fink as well as through his reading of the later Heidegger-came more and more to appreciate the importance of the very problem of 'world'. Thus already in Phenomenology of Perception

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Intentionality: Some lessons from the history of the problem from brentano to the present

Intentionality ('directedness', 'aboutness') is both a central topic in contemporary philosophy o... more Intentionality ('directedness', 'aboutness') is both a central topic in contemporary philosophy of mind, phenomenology and the cognitive sciences, and one of the themes with which both analytic and Continental philosophers have separately engaged starting from Brentano and Edmund Husserl's groundbreaking Logical Investigations (1901) through Roderick M. Chisholm, Daniel C. Dennett's The Intentional Stance, John Searle's Intentionality, to the recent work of Tim Crane, Robert Brandom, Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi, among many others. In this paper, I shall review recent discussions of intentionality, including some recent explorations of the history of the concept (paying particular attention to Anselm), and suggest some ways the phenomenological approach of Husserl and Heidegger can still offer insights for contemporary philosophy of mind and consciousness.

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The Phenomenology of Embodied Subjectivity

Contributions to Phenomenology, 2013

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Fink's Speculative Phenomenology: Between Constitution and Transcendence

Research in Phenomenology, 2007

In the last decade of his life (from 1928 to 1938), Husserl sought to develop a new understanding... more In the last decade of his life (from 1928 to 1938), Husserl sought to develop a new understanding of his transcendental phenomenology (in publications such as Cartesian Meditations, Formal and Transcendental Logic, and the Crisis) in order to combat misconceptions of phenomenology then current (chief among which was Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenology as articulated in Being and Time). During this period, Husserl had an assistant and collaborator, Eugen Fink, who sought not only to be midwife to the birth of Husserl's own ideas but who also wanted to mediate between Husserl and Heidegger. As a result of the Fink-Husserl collaboration there appeared a rich flow of works that testify to the depth with which transcendental phenomenology had been rethought. Bruzina is the chief scholar of this material. This paper attempts both to disentangle the relationships between the phenomenologies of Husserrl, Heidegger, and Fink and to assess critically the value of Bruzina's contribution.

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Heidegger?s Critique of Husserl?s and Brentano?s Accounts of Intentionality

Inquiry, 2000

Inspired by Aristotle, Franz Brentano revived the concept of intentionalit y to characteriz e the... more Inspired by Aristotle, Franz Brentano revived the concept of intentionalit y to characteriz e the domain of mental phenomena studied by descriptive psychology. Edmund Husserl, while discardin g much of Brentano's conceptua l framework and presuppositions , located intentionalit y at the core of his science of pure consciousnes s (phenomenology). Martin Heidegger, Husserl's assistant from 1919 to 1923, dropped all referenc e to intentionalit y and consciousnes s in Being and Time (1927), and so appeared to break sharply with his avowed mentors, Brentano and Husserl. Some recent commentator s have sided with Heidegger and have endorsed his critique of Husserl and Brentano as still caught up in epistemological , representationalis t approaches to intentionality. I argue that Heidegger is developing Husserl, focusing in particular on the ontological dimension of intentionality , not reversing or abandoning his account. Heidegger's criticisms of representationalis m merely repeat Husserl's. Furthermore, I argue that Husserl's account of cognitive intentionality , which recognize s the importance of the disintereste d theoretica l attitude for scienti c knowledge, has been underestimate d and misunderstoo d by Heidegger, who treats scienti c cognition as a de cient form of practice. In short, Heidegger is more dependent on Husserl than he ever publicly acknowledged .

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The Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena

Idealistic Studies, 1992

Medieval philosophy: from St. Augustine to Nicholas of Cusa

Together with a comprehensive selection of the fragments and testimonia in translation this guide... more Together with a comprehensive selection of the fragments and testimonia in translation this guide provides an introduction, a commentary and a presentation of Presocratic views in context. Amongst Plato's dialogues, you are advised first to read The Apology, the Phaedo, the Symposium, and the Republic in either the Oxford Classics or the Hackett translations. Central excerpts of Aristotle's works are provided in either: Ackrill, H. (ed.) (1987) A New Aristotle Reader, Oxford: Clarendon Press (numerous reprints).

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Immanence, Self-Experience, and Transcendence in Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein, and Karl Jaspers

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 2008

Phenomenology, understood as a philosophy of immanence, has had an ambiguous, uneasy relationship... more Phenomenology, understood as a philosophy of immanence, has had an ambiguous, uneasy relationship with transcendence, with the wholly other, with the numinous. If phenomenology restricts its evidence to givenness and to what has phenomenality, what becomes of that which is withheld or cannot in principle come to givenness? In this paper I examine attempts to acknowledge the transcendent in the writings of two phenomenologists, Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein (who attempted to fuse phenomenology with Neo-Thomism), and also consider the influence of the existentialist Karl Jaspers, who made transcendence an explicit theme of his writing. I argue that Husserl does recognize the essential experience of transcendence within immanence; even the idea of a physical thing has "dimensions of infinity" included within it. Similarly, he asserts profoundly that every "outside" is what it is only as understood from the inside. Jaspers too makes the experience of transcendence central to human existence; it is the very measure of my own depth. For Edith Stein, everything temporal points toward the timeless structural ground which makes it what it is. Transcendence is an intrinsic part of being itself. Furthermore, the very lack of self-sufficiency of my own self shows that the self requires a ground outside itself, in the transcendent. There is strong convergence between the three thinkers studied on the concept of transcendence, which is indeed a central, if largely unacknowledged, concept in phenomenology both in Husserl and his followers (Stein), but also, through Jaspers, in Heidegger.

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Adventures of the Reduction

American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 2006

In his illuminating Aquinas Lecture Jacques Taminiaux offers a bold interpretation of certain con... more In his illuminating Aquinas Lecture Jacques Taminiaux offers a bold interpretation of certain contemporary European philosophers in terms of the way in which they react to and transform Husserl's phenomenological reduction. He highlights issues relating to embodiment, personhood, and value. Taminiaux sketches Husserl's emerging conception of the reduction and criticizes certain Cartesian assumptions that Husserl retains even after the reduction, and specifically the assumption that directly experienced mental acts and states ...

The Destruction of the Destruction: Heidegger's Versions of the History of Philosophy

Martin Heidegger: Politics, Art and Technology, 1994

Introduction to Phenomenology

INTRODUCTION TO PHENOMENOLOGY For years philosophers have been looking for a clear, engaging, acc... more

Nationalism, Religion and the Education Question

The Crane Bag, 1983

Writing in An Claidheamh Soluis in April 1903 Padraig Pearse declared:" take up the Irish pr... more Writing in An Claidheamh Soluis in April 1903 Padraig Pearse declared:" take up the Irish problem at what point you may, you inevitably find yourself in the end back at the education question. The prostitution of education in this land has led to many other prostitutions. Poisoned at its source, the whole stream of national life has stagnated and grown foul."'

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Dermot Moran

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