James R Mensch
Biographic Data
| ID | 4492573 |
|---|---|
| NAME | James R Mensch |
| GIVEN NAMES | James R |
| FAMILY NAME | Mensch |
| SIGNATURE | MENSCH J R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Charles University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5644-0580 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 6 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Embodiment and intelligence, a levinasian perspective
The Crisis of Legitimacy
In recent years, the West has increasingly experienced a sense that the political aspects of its social life have undergone a profound alteration. There is a sense of blockage, of non-responsiveness, a feeling that the political class no longer represents the interests of the broader society. Underlying all of this is a loss of legitimacy. What exactly is legitimacy? How does it function? How is it lost? These are the questions that I address in …
Husserl’s Phenomenology
Remembering and Forgetting as a Function of Life
As Derrida observes, the ideal of a perfect memory has a spectral quality. The desire to achieve it is like the wish of Hanson, the fictional archaeologist, to go beyond the physical remains to grasp the past itself. What seduces us is the thought that remembering is like mechanical reproduction. We forget, however, that a photograph does not remember what we looked like any more than a recording remembers the sound of our voice. Only a living be…
Phenomenology and Aristotle’s Concept of Being-at-Work
Husserl, as is well known, bases his study of appearing on subjective functions. He also makes appearing prior to being insofar phenomenology grants being to entities only to the point that they can appear. Both positions result in the paradox that he presents in the Crisis, where he asks: “How can human subjectivity, which is a part of the world, constitute the whole world, i.e., constitute it as its intentional product...? The subjective part o…
Subjectivity Viewed as a Process
Husserl, in his late manuscripts, made a number of apparently opposing assertions regarding the subject. These assertions are reconciled once we realize that they apply to the different stages of the genesis of the subject. This means that the subject has to be understood as a process – i.e., as continually proceeding from the living present, which forms its core, to the developed self that each of us is. As such, the subject cannot be identified…
Subjectivity in the Age of Pandemics
The current pandemic that originated in a “wet” market in Wuhan has often been compared to the threat we face with climate change. The former originated in the trade in wild animals, which has driven many species to the point of extinction. In fact, we face an unprecedented rate of species loss due to pressures on habitats, pollution, and human predation. The threat of climate change originates with our uncontrolled use of fossil fuels, which, in…
Violence and the return of the religious
Temporality and embodied self-presence
Patočka’s Transformation of Phenomenology
At first glance the conjunction of phenomenology and practice seems to be a contradiction in terms. Husserl's phenomenology is informed by the exercise of the epoché, where we suspend every thesis that we have regarding the natural world. The result, Husserl declares, is that the epoché "utterly closes off for me every judgment about spatiotemporal existence." Its focus is not on such existence, but on the evidence we have for it. Does this mean …
Violence and existence
Senseless Violence
The claim of this article is that the perpetrators of violence are “liminal” figures, being inside and yet outside of the world in which they act. It is this liminality, this existing on the border, that makes their violence senseless. Because of it, their actions can be understood in terms neither of the actual reality of their victims nor of the imagined reality that the perpetrators placed them in. Sense, here, fails, for the lack of a common …
Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre
In this essay I explore the divide that separates Heidegger and Sartre from Husserl. At issue is what Derrida calls the “metaphysics of presence.” From Heidegger onward this has been characterized as an interpretation of both being and knowing in terms of presence. To exist is to be now, and to know is to make present the evidence for something’s existence. Husserl’s account of constitution assumes this interpretation. By contrast, Heidegger and …
Desire and Selfhood
As Hegel observed in his Phenomenology of Spirit, “Self-consciousness, for the most part, is desire.” Phenomenologically, the “object of consciousness is itself... present only in opposition” to consciousness, while consciousness is felt as the absence of the longed-for object. According to Hegel, when desire is satisfied, this opposition ends and self-consciousness ceases. My essay seeks to answer the question of why desire never really terminat…
Violence and Selfhood
The temporality of Merleau-Ponty’s intertwining
Public Space
After Modernity
Aristotle and the Overcoming of the Subject-Object Dichotomy
Intersubjectivity and Transcendental Idealism
Violence and Selfhood
Senseless Violence
The claim of this article is that the perpetrators of violence are “liminal” figures, being inside and yet outside of the world in which they act. It is this liminality, this existing on the border, that makes their violence senseless. Because of it, their actions can be understood in terms neither of the actual reality of their victims nor of the imagined reality that the perpetrators placed them in. Sense, here, fails, for the lack of a common …
Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre
In this essay I explore the divide that separates Heidegger and Sartre from Husserl. At issue is what Derrida calls the “metaphysics of presence.” From Heidegger onward this has been characterized as an interpretation of both being and knowing in terms of presence. To exist is to be now, and to know is to make present the evidence for something’s existence. Husserl’s account of constitution assumes this interpretation. By contrast, Heidegger and …
Intersubjectivity and Transcendental Idealism
Aristotle and the Overcoming of the Subject-Object Dichotomy
After Modernity
Public Space
The temporality of Merleau-Ponty’s intertwining
Violence and Selfhood
Desire and Selfhood
As Hegel observed in his Phenomenology of Spirit, “Self-consciousness, for the most part, is desire.” Phenomenologically, the “object of consciousness is itself... present only in opposition” to consciousness, while consciousness is felt as the absence of the longed-for object. According to Hegel, when desire is satisfied, this opposition ends and self-consciousness ceases. My essay seeks to answer the question of why desire never really terminat…
Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre
In this essay I explore the divide that separates Heidegger and Sartre from Husserl. At issue is what Derrida calls the “metaphysics of presence.” From Heidegger onward this has been characterized as an interpretation of both being and knowing in terms of presence. To exist is to be now, and to know is to make present the evidence for something’s existence. Husserl’s account of constitution assumes this interpretation. By contrast, Heidegger and …
Violence and existence
Senseless Violence
The claim of this article is that the perpetrators of violence are “liminal” figures, being inside and yet outside of the world in which they act. It is this liminality, this existing on the border, that makes their violence senseless. Because of it, their actions can be understood in terms neither of the actual reality of their victims nor of the imagined reality that the perpetrators placed them in. Sense, here, fails, for the lack of a common …
Patočka’s Transformation of Phenomenology
At first glance the conjunction of phenomenology and practice seems to be a contradiction in terms. Husserl's phenomenology is informed by the exercise of the epoché, where we suspend every thesis that we have regarding the natural world. The result, Husserl declares, is that the epoché "utterly closes off for me every judgment about spatiotemporal existence." Its focus is not on such existence, but on the evidence we have for it. Does this mean …
Violence and the return of the religious
Temporality and embodied self-presence
Remembering and Forgetting as a Function of Life
As Derrida observes, the ideal of a perfect memory has a spectral quality. The desire to achieve it is like the wish of Hanson, the fictional archaeologist, to go beyond the physical remains to grasp the past itself. What seduces us is the thought that remembering is like mechanical reproduction. We forget, however, that a photograph does not remember what we looked like any more than a recording remembers the sound of our voice. Only a living be…
Phenomenology and Aristotle’s Concept of Being-at-Work
Husserl, as is well known, bases his study of appearing on subjective functions. He also makes appearing prior to being insofar phenomenology grants being to entities only to the point that they can appear. Both positions result in the paradox that he presents in the Crisis, where he asks: “How can human subjectivity, which is a part of the world, constitute the whole world, i.e., constitute it as its intentional product...? The subjective part o…
Subjectivity Viewed as a Process
Husserl, in his late manuscripts, made a number of apparently opposing assertions regarding the subject. These assertions are reconciled once we realize that they apply to the different stages of the genesis of the subject. This means that the subject has to be understood as a process – i.e., as continually proceeding from the living present, which forms its core, to the developed self that each of us is. As such, the subject cannot be identified…
Subjectivity in the Age of Pandemics
The current pandemic that originated in a “wet” market in Wuhan has often been compared to the threat we face with climate change. The former originated in the trade in wild animals, which has driven many species to the point of extinction. In fact, we face an unprecedented rate of species loss due to pressures on habitats, pollution, and human predation. The threat of climate change originates with our uncontrolled use of fossil fuels, which, in…
Husserl’s Phenomenology
Embodiment and intelligence, a levinasian perspective
The Crisis of Legitimacy
In recent years, the West has increasingly experienced a sense that the political aspects of its social life have undergone a profound alteration. There is a sense of blockage, of non-responsiveness, a feeling that the political class no longer represents the interests of the broader society. Underlying all of this is a loss of legitimacy. What exactly is legitimacy? How does it function? How is it lost? These are the questions that I address in …
Epistemology (18 works) · Philosophy (18 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Law (8 works) · Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (8 works) · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism (8 works) · Political science (7 works) · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Psychology (6 works)