From: Everdell-AT-aol.com
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2000 00:08:54 EDT
Subject: Re: Modernism & Phenomenology



In a message dated 6/2/00 9:06:12 AM, AnnKatrin Jonsson asks:

<<I'm interested in phenomenology (Husserl, Merleau-Ponty etc) and its 
relation to modernism (literature). Could anyone help me with readings or 
contacts?>>


There's a chapter on Husserl and another two on literature (fiction and 
poetry) in my own book, The First Moderns (Chicago, 1997, pb, 1998) with a 
lot of references.  Among the many, you'll probably want these four which 
start with literature:

Kumar, Jitendra, “Consciousness and Its Correlates: Eliot and Husserl” 
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 28(Mar, 1968), 332-52

Menand, Louis, Discovering Modernism: T.S. Eliot and His Context, NY: Oxford 
U.P., 1987

Schwartz, Sanford, The Matrix of Modernism: Pound, Eliot, and Early Twentieth 
Century Thought, Princeton, NJ: Princeton U.P., 1985

Steadman, John M., “Eliot and Husserl: The Origin of the ‘Objective 
Correlative’“ Notes and Queries, n.s. 5(June, 1958), 261-62

And these, which I found helpful in explaining the abstruse (and sometimes 
genuinely confused) Husserlian texts, and also establishing the odd 
relationship between phenomenology and its equally modernist contemporary, 
the "analytic" philosophy of Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein et al.

Bell, David,  Husserl, NY: Routledge, 1990

Bell, ed., The Analytic Tradition: Philosophical Quarterly Monographs, v1, 
Cambridge: Blackwell, 1990 (incl. Husserl & Russell)

Biemel, Walter, “Les phases décisives dans le développement de la philosophie 
de Husserl,” in Husserl, Cahiers de Royaumont: Philosophie 3(Paris: Minuit, 
1959)

Cobb-Stevens, Richard, Husserl and Analytic Philosophy, Boston: Kluwer 
Academic Publishers, 1989

Findlay, J.N., Wittgenstein: A Critique, Boston: Routledge, 1984 (vs 
Wittgenstein using both Husserl & Russell)

Hill, Claire Ortiz, Word and Object in Husserl, Frege, and Russell: The Roots 
of Twentieth-Century Philosophy, Athens, OH: Ohio U.P., 1991

Mohanty, J. N., Husserl and Frege, Bloomington, IN: Indiana U.P., 1985

Resnik, Michael D., Frege and the Philosophy of Mathematics, Ithaca, NY: 
Cornell U.P., 1980 (incl. Husserl & Russell)

Simons, Peter, Philosophy and Logic in Central Europe from Bolzano to Tarski: 
Selected Essays, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992 (incl. Husserl as a forerunner of 
analytic philosophy à la Russell)

Smith, Barry & David Woodruff Smith, eds., The Cambridge Companion to 
Husserl, NY: Cambridge U.P., 1995

Tatarkiewiecz, Wladyslaw, “Abstract Art and Philosophy” in British Jnl of 
Aesthetics 2(1961-62) (Husserl, Meinong, Ehrenfels, Wiener Kreis)

Tragesser, Robert S., Husserl and Realism in Logic and Mathematics, 
Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1984

Willard, Dallas, Logic and the Objectivity of Knowledge: Studies in Husserl’s 
Early Philosophy, OH: Ohio U.P., 1984

And maybe these two, more contemporary with Modernism itself, and giving you 
a sense of how phenomenology made its way at the time:

Ortega y Gasset, José, Phenomenology and Art, tr. Philip W., Silver, NY: 
Norton, 1975 including article from series “On the Concept of Sensation,” 
Revista de libros (Jun, Jul, Sep, 1913), “Sensation, Construction, and 
Intuition,” Spanish Association for Advancement of Science, 1913, and 
“Preface for Germans,” MS c1934.  All on Husserlian phenomenology

Osborn, Andrew D., The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl in Its Development from 
His Mathematical Interests to His First Conception of Phenomenology in 
Logical Investigations, NY: International Press, 1934

The relation between Modernism in the arts and contemporary philosophical 
movements is a remarkably neglected subject.  It's not only Eliot, but Eliot 
is a fine example.  He was reading Husserl for his doctorate in philosophy in 
Marburg, Germany, when WW1 broke out in 1914.  Three years earlier in July, 
1911, he had finished "Prufrock" in the same country (Munich), and then told 
a visiting Conrad Aiken that he had to return to Harvard to “study 
philosophy.” Among the things he found in Husserl and appropriated was the 
Husserlian phrase and notion, "objective correlative [objektive Korrelat]."

Good hunting,
-Bill Everdell, Brooklyn