Some Parallels between Phenomenology and Pragmatism. Intentionality, Attention and Precategorial Dimension in Husserl and Royce

Monti, Rocco

doi:10.22034/iyp.2021.245796

Some Parallels between Phenomenology and Pragmatism. Intentionality, Attention and Precategorial Dimension in Husserl and Royce

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Rocco Monti

University of Milan, Department of Philosophy

10.22034/iyp.2021.245796

Abstract

My aim in this paper is to show how Josiah Royce’s philosophy contains many themes that will be at the core of Husserl’s philosophical investigations. This paper is divided in two sections. The first one outlines the start point of these two philosophers, contextualizing their background and showing how they share a common purpose: put the experience at the center of their thought. For this reason, I want to analyze how they treat the concept of attention in relation to that of intentionality to argue that their philosophies are strictly anchored to the givenness of the experience. In the second one I deal with the rising of the precategorial dimension (prior to any objectivation), as a possibility of experience itself, making a parallel between the Husserlian concept of Lebenswelt and that Roycean of World of Appreciation. Through this distinction they both criticize the scientific, naturalistic and objectivistic Weltanschaung, showing how its method is founded in an intuitive and non-thematic relation with the world experience that comes ontologically before the scientific description.

Keywords

Phenomenology

Pragmatism

Intentionality

Precategorial

Attention

Subjects