Phenomenology of Dialogue: INTENTIONALITY THESIS REVISITED, #1

By Dr. Anjana Bhattacharjee

The term 'phenomenology of dialogue' has been used in Professor Goutam Biswas' book 'Art as Dialogue' in the context of dialogical explication of aesthetic experience. In this book, I have problematised the issue of epistemological monism so far as phenomenological approach is concerned. Through the comparative study of the trajectories of Martin Buber, Mikhail Bakhtin and Emmanuel Levinas, I have projected the possibility of an alternative paradigm to end the tension between agent-oriented and participant-oriented view of intentional structure of consciousness and thus set a trend, which is called Phenomenology Of Dialogue.

 

Dr. Anjana Bhattacharjee, the author of this book, Is Principal of Ramanuj Gupta Degree College, Silchar. Born in Guwahati in 1977, she passed her M.A. Degree in Philosophy from Assam University, Silchar in 2000. She was awarded the Ph.D degree by Assam University, Silchar in 2008. Her love for Phenomenology made her mind to work on a revisited theory of Intentionality thesis. As a lover of music, she also qualified herself in Masters of Music and was awarded position in all over India.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Author Tree Publishing
• Release date: Jul 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9789391078669

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Authors Tree Publishing

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Published By Authors Tree Publishing 2021

Copyright © Dr. Anjana Bhattacharjee 2021

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ISBN : 978-93-91078-66-9

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PHENOMENOLOGY

OF

DIALOGUE

INTENTIONALITY THESIS REVISITED

By

Dr. Anjana Bhattacharjee

Table of Contents

Declaration   vi

Preface   vii

Acknowledgements  viii

Introduction: The concept of intentionality in Husserl, Sartre and Merleau Ponty.           1-21

I and Thou : The philosophical anthropological

background of Martin Buber's Phenomenology of

Dialogue and Intentionality thesis revisited.  22-39

Dialogical epistemology of Mikhail Bakhtin and the concept of intentionality.         40-56

Emmanuel Levinas' concept of ‘Other’: An Extension of the Phenomenology of Dialogue.     57-72

A Critical and comparative look on the thesis of Buber, Bakhtin and Levinas.        73-88

Conclusion.       89-95

Bibliography       96-99

To

My husband

Sudip

For his encouragement

And support

Declaration

I hereby declare that the book entitled Phenomenology of Dialogue : Intentionality Thesis Revisited is an original work which is an extract of my own work submitted for my PhD., carried out in the Department of Philosophy, Assam University, under the supervision of Late Professor Goutam Biswas, in 2007.

Dr. Anjana Bhattacharjee

Preface

The term 'phenomenology of dialogue' has been used in Professor Goutam Biswas' book 'Art as Dialogue' in the context of dialogical explication of aesthetic experience. In this book, I have problematized the issue of epistemological monism so far as phenomenological approach is concerned.

Through the comparative study of the trajectories of Martin Buber, Mikhail Bakhtin and Emmanuel Levinas, I have projected the possibility of an alternative paradigm to end the tension between agent-oriented and participant-oriented view of intentional structure of consciousness and thus set a trend, which is called Phenomenology of Dialogue.

Acknowledgements

I am extremely grateful and indebted to my PhD supervisor, Late Dr. Goutam Biswas who had been the Professor of the department of Philosophy, Assam University, for his encouragement, uncounted contribution, patience, suggestion and extra-thoughtfulness to carry out my thesis successfully and this piece of work is result of that.

I am grateful to Professor S.A.Shaida, Senior fellow, ICPR, New Delhi, for his critical comments and suggestions during my PhD work. I am specially thankful to Professor V.C. Thomas of the Department of Philosophy, Pondichery University for his valuable suggestions during that period. Thanks are due to Professor Tapadhir Bhattacharjee, Professor N.B. Biswas, Professor Abhik Gupta, for their kind support and help for accomplishment of the work.

I am also thankful to my parents and in-laws whose contribution is so pervasive that it has become invisible. I am grateful to my husband Sudip, who bore the brunt of my pre-occupation with this work.

My thanks are due to Authors Tree Publishing who has helped in my publishing this book.

Dr. Anjana Bhattacharjee

Chapter I

Introduction: The concept of intentionality in Husserl, Sartre and Merleau Ponty

T

he Phenomenology of dialogue is founded upon a notion of intentionality which differs from intentionality as explained in traditional phenomenological literature beginning from Edmund Husserl right up to Jean Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau Ponty. In the history of phenomenology the explication of the concept does not lead us beyond the impasse between subjectivity and objectivity; nor does it enable us to envision the epistemic range of humans beyond the dichotomy.

Intentionality of consciousness from the traditional phenomenological viewpoint claims that the world must be constructed as an object of Consciousness, a meaning for an ‘I’. A primacy of subjectivity as ‘I’ or agent continues through the writings of Husserl even in the later phase of his phenomenology where the world is acknowledged as lived-world or environing world. As Josef Bleicher points out, "The central insight derivable from the transcendental reduction shows that within our consciousness there functions the self-given, absolute or primal 'ego' as the carrier of all meaning horizons and of the lebenswelt, the ultimate unique centre of functioning in all constitution.¹ But the concern for other which was undercurrent in Husserl's later phenomenology received further prominence in the existential phenomenology of Sartre and Merleau Ponty. What is of much relevance today in the phenomenological exercise is an articulated concern for a type of experience in which something is given to me, indeed thrusts itself upon me, that can never be translated as a meaning 'for' me. In fact as Emmanuel Levinas observes it, Husserl's phenomenology is a culmination of the entire western tradition of philosophical reflection, a tradition that has been a destruction of consciousness. According to Levinas, all notions of transcendence within the western epistemological tradition are related to a return, i.e., a movement of intentionality originating within the subject, perceiving a transcendence and then returning to the self in which the accumulated knowledge of experience is stored. But this notion of self as a centre point is now questionable because the experience of the other human being which is precisely an experience of something that manifests itself to me as not mine , as more than the thematic content of my own intentional consciousness. Intentionality - thesis therefore is fated to include a tension between an agent-oriented and the other-oriented reflection upon intentional acts. Whether it is possible to conceive of intentional acts as originating from a dialogical space which prioritizes neither ‘I’ as known or the ‘other’ as known but instead proposes an alternative phenomenology called 'phenomenology of dialogue' and an alternative epistemology called 'dialogical epistemology' is the central concern of the work.

Intentionality-thesis in its traditional orientation:-

A. Husserl:-

With Franz Brentano, intentionality is merely a psychological characteristic of the mental life. As Husserl excluded psychologism from phenomenology, intentionality is conceived by him as more than a mental fact, it is a methodological concept within its framework of an investigation into the essential structure of knowledge. Husserl treated psychologism as an adjunct of naturalism. His critique of naturalism includes this conclusion of psychologism. His grounds for excluding psychologism from the realm of phenomenology may be briefly outlined as follows:-

Psychology cannot yield more than empirical universals, which results from generalization from physical phenomenon, physical dispositions and organic processes.

Psycho logistics logic fails to recognize the fundamental distinction between ideal laws and real laws.

If logical laws originated in psychological factualities they would have psychological content. But no logical law is to be treated as a law of mental life.

The primary concept in the contest of phenomenological philosophy