SoPHeRe Webinars

A webinar project to be held in Autumn 2022 by Peter Costello to go over important subjects that Husserl pursues individually.


https://sophere.org/phenomenology-seminars/

Details from Peter Costello

In his Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy Husserl gives a powerful introduction to phenomenology as a method of description of lived experience. The subject of much discussion, the first volume of this project attempts to lay out many of the important topics that Husserl later pursues individually. Eidetic intuition (the direct perception of essences), the natural attitude and phenomenological reduction, the structure of perceptual consciousness (noesis and noema), and the transcendental or pure character of consciousness that reveals itself within the reduction–these are each the subject of important initial discussions in this systematic work.

I propose that we read together one large section in each meeting. We will stick very closely to the text and we will hold off from bringing in other Husserlian works or the work of commentators until after we have gone together through each section as if for the first time. We will move slowly, sometimes poring over one paragraph, and yet still try to balance our time so that we can make it through one chunk in a two- to three-hour meeting.

Each session, I will pose some questions or speak for a brief period (15 minutes or so) on the topics of the day. But these are actions of mine that are designed to get those present to discuss in a democratic way the issues as they arise in the text. The point of the webinar is for each of us to wrestle with this text as if a new topology. We want to walk through the book together, without trying to outdo one another as scholars or as participants. This requires practice and patience from all of us. Mutual participation in a venture such as this is somewhat difficult but very pleasant when we can find new meanings to works that we thought we knew. So questions are welcome as are insights that take what Husserl writes and apply it to our direct lived experience of everyday situations, things, other persons, etc.

Because the focus will be on the text itself and on building a community of readers, we will not necessarily be talking a great deal about religious experience per se. However, the discussion of this book is methodically important to building up a phenomenological possibility of describing religious experience. How one understands perception as such, consciousness as such, etc. will have a lot to say about how one understands the experience of the sacred or the divine.

Dates: Friday September 23 at 12 noon EST, Friday October 14 at 12 noon EST, Friday November 18 at 12 noon EST, Friday December 16 at 12 noon EST

Email contact: [email protected]

Active membership in the Society for the Phenomenology of Religious Experience is required – for applying please follow https://sophere.org/membership/