Papers 2020- by Dan Zahavi
Edmund Husserl
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2025
My new Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Edmund Husserl
Australasian Philosophical Review, 2024
I am indebted and grateful to all the commentators for their insightful contributions. I find mys... more I am indebted and grateful to all the commentators for their insightful contributions. I find myself agreeing with a good deal of their responses, and even those I don't agree with have provided me with a productive opportunity to further refine and clarify my view. Let me also express a special word of gratitude to Andrew Inkpin and Marilyn Stendera for inviting me to contribute with the lead article and for managing the whole process in such a constructive manner. 'I, You, and We: Beyond Individualism and Collectivism' can to some extent be seen as a precis of a book that was yet to be written. Since submitting the lead article, I have managed to finish the book in question, which in addition to offering more extensive analyses of all the themes briefly addressed in the article also covers many additional topics (Zahavi 2025).
Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Nursing, 2023
Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, 2023
The use of ideas, methods, and concepts from
philosophical phenomenology by nonphilosophical
disc... more The use of ideas, methods, and concepts from
philosophical phenomenology by nonphilosophical
disciplines and practices
At its core, phenomenology is a philosophical
endeavor. Its task is not to expand the scope of our
empirical knowledge, but rather to step back and
investigate the fundamental structures, relations,
and capacities that are presupposed by any such
empirical investigation. Given the distinctly philosophical
nature of this venture, one might reasonably
wonder whether phenomenology can
offer anything of value to other disciplines. Can
it at all inform empirical work? However, there
can be no doubt about the answer to such questions.
Phenomenology has been a source of inspiration
for empirical science and the world beyond
academic philosophy from the very start. Experimental
psychology and psychiatry were among
the first disciplines to take inspiration from
Husserl’s call to attend to the phenomena. Already
in 1912, Karl Jaspers published a short article
outlining how psychiatry could profit from Husserlian
phenomenology, and in the
following decades prominent psychologists and
psychiatrists such as Katz, Schilder, Binswanger,
Straus, Buytendijik, and Minkowski all engaged
with phenomenology in their research and practice.
Since then, many other disciplines and practices,
including sociology, anthropology,
comparative literature, architecture, nursing, and
psychotherapy, have engaged with and drawn on
ideas from phenomenology. More recently, phenomenology
has also proven an important source
of inspiration for theoretical debates in qualitative
research, for embodied cognitive sciences, and for
disciplines such as disability studies and critical
race theory.
The applicability of phenomenology has been
part of its enduring appeal, but what exactly is
applied phenomenology, how does it differ from
non-applied or pure phenomenology, and what is
the best way to practice and use phenomenology
in a nonphilosophical context?
In the following overview, I will touch upon
some of the more principled questions that the
notion of applied phenomenology gives rise to, I
will provide a few examples of what I take to be
successful instances of applied phenomenology,
and I will briefly summarize some current controversies
and open questions.
In his book A Phenomenological Approach to Quantum Mechanics: Cutting the Chain of Correlations S... more In his book A Phenomenological Approach to Quantum Mechanics: Cutting the Chain of Correlations Steven French presents an interpretation of Fritz London's and Edmond Bauer's 1939 monograph La théorie de l'observation en mécanique quantique that acknowledges and engages with the phenomenological theorizing underlying their approach to the measurement problem. My aim in the following contribution is twofold. I will first offer some historical and systematic arguments for why it might indeed be worthwhile to explore the link between phenomenology and quantum mechanics. In the second part of the paper, I will then look closer at French's interpretation, especially his understanding of reflection, and express some reservations about a central argument of his. In his book A Phenomenological Approach to Quantum Mechanics: Cutting the Chain of Correlations Steven French presents an interpretation of Fritz London's and Edmond Bauer's 1939 monograph La théorie de l'observation en mécanique quantique that acknowledges and engages with the phenomenological theorizing underlying their approach to the measurement problem. My aim in what follows will be twofold. I will first offer some historical and systematic arguments for why it might indeed be worthwhile to explore the link between phenomenology and quantum mechanics. In the second part of the paper, I will then look closer at French's interpretation and express some reservations about a central argument of his. Georg-August-Universität Göttingen is world-renowned for its outstanding mathematicians and physicists.
In recent publications, Jay Garfield and Anil Seth have both written about the you. Whereas Garfi... more In recent publications, Jay Garfield and Anil Seth have both written about the you. Whereas Garfield is a Buddhist scholar who advocates a no-self view, Seth is a neuroscientist who defends a radical form of representationalism. But is it really possible to speak meaningfully of a you (and of a we) if one denies the existence of the self, and if one declares the world of experience a neuronal fantasy? In the following, I will criticize both accounts. I will argue that they both, in different ways, are unable to deal with a real other, and drawing on the work of Husserl, I will argue that a proper understanding of the you doesn’t merely require accepting the reality of the self, but also the existence of a shared lifeworld.
In an article entitled “Phenomenology and mindfulness” published in Journal of Consciousness Stud... more In an article entitled “Phenomenology and mindfulness” published in Journal of Consciousness Studies in 2021, we criticized recent attempts to define phenomenology as a kind of meditative practice, one that like certain forms of mindfulness aims to observe our experience in careful detail in order to describe it. As we argued, to do so is to miss out on the proper philosophical character of phenomenology. In their chapter “Phenomenology and mindfulness-awareness”, Natalie Depraz, Claire Petitmengin and Michel Bitbol take us to task and accuse us of promoting a “reductionist”, “poor”, “extremely limited”, and “trivializing” understanding of both phenomenology and Buddhism. Let us in turn reply to the criticism of our understanding of 1) phenomenology and 2) Buddhism and mindfulness.
Many accounts of collective intentionality target rather sophisticated types of cooperative activ... more Many accounts of collective intentionality target rather sophisticated types of cooperative activities, i.e., activities with complex goals that require prior planning and various coordinating and organizing roles. But although joint action is of obvious importance, an investigation of collective intentionality should not merely focus on the question of how we can share agentive intentions. We can act and do things together, but it is not obvious that the awe felt and shared by a group of Egyptologists when they gain entry to a newly discovered pharaonic tomb can or should be analyzed in the same way as, say, a heist that a group of criminals carefully plan and execute together. The aim of the article is to better understand the kind of emotional sharing that can occur between two individuals who are perceptually co-present. Does the sharing involve a kind of phenomenal fusion? Is it a matter of sharing one and the same token experience? It will be argued that both of these recent suggestions must be rejected as misleading in favor of an account that sees emotional sharing as a form of emotional integration that involves constitutively interdependent processes of empathy, second-personal address, and identification.
Sociologists tend to see G. H. Mead's conceptualization of self as fundamentally correct. In this... more Sociologists tend to see G. H. Mead's conceptualization of self as fundamentally correct. In this paper, we develop a critique of Mead's notion of the self as constituted through social interactions. Our focus will be on Mead's categorial distinction between the socially constructed self and subjective experience, as well as on the tendency of post-Meadian sociologists to push Mead's position in ever more radical directions. Drawing inspiration from a multifaceted understanding of selfhood that can be found in Husserlian phenomenology, we then propose that the most basic level of selfhood is anchored in irreducible subjective experience.
One of the aims of the 40th Annual Spindel Conference
was to discuss whether the ongoing, but rel... more One of the aims of the 40th Annual Spindel Conference
was to discuss whether the ongoing, but relatively distinct,
investigations of relational autonomy and collective
intentionality could crossfertilize. Whereas the concept
of relational autonomy was developed to do justice to the
relational character of selfhood, and as an alternative to
traditional conceptions of autonomy, which were accused
of exaggerating the self-reliance
and social independence
of the self, recent discussions of collective intentionality
have often centered on the question of whether and how
collective intentions differ from aggregations of individual
intentions. As different as they might otherwise be,
theoretical explorations of autonomy and collective intentionality
intersect at a crucial point: both require an
understanding of the relationship between the self and
the group, between individual subjectivity and social life.
The aim of the following paper is to argue that the collective
intentionality literature contains insights that cannot
merely contribute to our understanding of autonomy, but
also prevent us from taking our relationism too far.
Recent years have seen an upsurge of interest in the second-person perspective, not only in philo... more Recent years have seen an upsurge of interest in the second-person perspective, not only in philosophy of mind, language, law and ethics, but also in various empirical disciplines such as cognitive neuroscience and developmental psychology. A distinctive and perhaps also slightly puzzling feature of this ongoing discussion is that whereas many contributors insist that a proper consideration of the second-person perspective will have an impact on our understanding of social cognition, joint action, communication, self-consciousness, morality, and so on, there remains considerable disagreement about what exactly a second-person perspective amounts to. What is the difference between adopting a second-person and a third-person perspective on another? How does one relate to another as a you and how does that differ from relating to another as a he, she or they? In the following, I will consider three different proposals and argue that a promising but somewhat overlooked account can be found in the work of Husserl.
Husserl's writings on sociality have received increasing attention in recent years. Despite this ... more Husserl's writings on sociality have received increasing attention in recent years. Despite this growing interest, Husserl's reflections on the specific role of communication remain underexplored. In this paper, we aim to fill this gap by reconstructing the various ways in which Husserl draws systematic connections between communication and communalization. As will become clear, Husserl's analysis converges with much more recent ideas defended by Margaret Gilbert and Naomi Eilan.
The contemporary debate on collective intentionality in analytic philosophy has lasted
several d... more The contemporary debate on collective intentionality in analytic philosophy has lasted
several decades, but questions concerning the nature of ‘we’ and the relation between
the individual and the community are obviously far older. We can find a particularly
rich discussion in early phenomenology. Indeed, while starting out with an interest
in the individual mind, phenomenologists began their exploration of dyadic forms
of interpersonal relations shortly before the start of World War I and were already
deeply engaged in extensive analyses of collective forms of intentionality a few
years later. A distinctive feature of the phenomenological contribution was its
exploration of the relation between the first- and second-person singular and the
first-person plural perspectives. How are I, you, and we intertwined? The aim of this
paper is to present some core insights from this early debate.
Is selfhood socially constituted and distributed? Although the view has recently been defended by... more Is selfhood socially constituted and distributed? Although the view has recently been defended by some cognitive scientists, it has for long been popular within anthropology and cultural psychology. Whereas older texts by Mauss, Geertz, and Markus and Kitayama often contrast a Western conception of a discrete, bounded and individual self with a non-Western sociocentric conception, it has more recently become common to argue that subjectivity is a fluid intersectional construction that is fundamentally relational and conditioned by discursive power structures. I will assess the plausibility of these claims and argue that many of these discussions of self and subjectivity remain too crude. By failing to distinguish different dimension of selfhood, many authors unwittingly end up advocating a form of radical social constructivism that is not only incapable of doing justice to first-person experience, but which also fails to capture the heterogeneity of real communal life.
Phenomenology has recently been invoked in a large number of publications on mindfulness. The cen... more Phenomenology has recently been invoked in a large number of publications on mindfulness. The central claim being discussed is whether phenomenology should be viewed as a kind of meditative technique or practice, which involves carefully attending to present moment experience without imposing judgments or presuppositions. Elsewhere, we have argued against this claim (Stone & Zahavi 2021). In this chapter, rather than focusing on mindfulness and phenomenology qua ‘first-person methods’ that might be compared, contrasted, or combined, we focus on some of the underlying assumptions and theoretical commitments of the contemporary mindfulness movement. We ask: What are the main ideas informing contemporary mindfulness, and should they be accepted on phenomenological philosophical grounds? In particular, we critically discuss the way in which experience, temporality, and the mind-world relation are being conceived in the context of contemporary mindfulness, as these are topics about which phenomenology has a great deal to say
What goes on in the diagnostic interview, when considered not only as a clinical tool but also as... more What goes on in the diagnostic interview, when considered not only as a clinical tool but also as a specific kind of interpersonal encounter? Might research on interpersonal understanding shed any light on the diagnostic interview? In the following, we address these questions by drawing on recent discussions about second-person and third-person relations. The chapter is structured as follows. In Sect. 4.2, we describe some peculiarities of the diagnostic interview and highlight how it involves
a complex interplay between different sources of diagnostically relevant information. In Sect. 4.3, we turn to research on interpersonal understanding. We reconstruct and critically assess some recent discussions about second-person relations, and present our own take on this notion. In Sect. 4.4, we elaborate on a conceptualization
of second-person relations which foregrounds the roles of reciprocity and
communication. In Sect. 4.5, we return to the diagnostic interview and assess the implications of our discussion.
Whereas classical Critical Theory has tended to view phenomenology as inherently uncritical, the ... more Whereas classical Critical Theory has tended to view phenomenology as inherently uncritical, the recent upsurge of what has become known as critical phenomenology has attempted to show that phenomenological concepts and methods can be used in critical analyses of social and political issues. A recent landmark publication, 50 Concepts for Critical Phenomenology, contains no reference to psychiatry and psychopathology, however. This is an unfortunate omission, since the tradition of phenomenological psychiatry – as we will demonstrate in the present article by surveying and discussing the contribution of Jaspers, Minkowski, Laing, Basaglia, and Fanon – from the outset has practiced critical thinking, be it at the theoretical, interpersonal, institutional, or political level. Fanon is today, a recognized figure in critical phenomenology, even if his role in psychiatry might not yet have been appreciated as thoroughly as his anticolonial and antiracist contributions. But as we show, he is part of a long history of critical approaches in psychopathology and psychiatry, which has firm roots in the phenomenological tradition, and which keeps up its critical work today.
Today, many philosophers write on topics of contemporary interest, such as emerging technologies,... more Today, many philosophers write on topics of contemporary interest, such as emerging technologies, scientific advancements, or major political events. However, many of these reflections, while philosophically valuable, fail to contribute to those who may benefit the most from them. In this article, we discuss our own experience of engaging with nursing researchers and practicing nurses. By drawing on the field of philosophical phenomenology, we intervene in a longstanding debate over the meaning of "empathy" in nursing, which has important implications for nursing research, training, and practice. However, our intention is not only to introduce and discuss this philosophical intervention. Rather, we present this intervention as a model for how philosophers might successfully engage with the field of nursing, and perhaps with other fields as well, with the aim of effecting positive change in research or practice. The article proceeds in five parts. First, we introduce the problem of conceptual clarity in nursing and explain why many nursing concepts are still in need of refinement. Second, we discuss the origins of the concept of empathy in nursing and outline the challenges associated with borrowing theory from other fields. Third, we explain how nurses tend to conceptualize empathy today, drawing upon the psychological distinction between cognitive and emotional empathy. Fourth, we discuss our intervention in this debate and explain how we attempt to resolve existing conceptual confusions by developing the concept of empathy from the ground up. Fifth, we conclude by briefly reflecting upon some of the challenges of interdisciplinary engagement and providing some recommendations based upon our own experience.
Our aim in this article is to argue against the claim that phenomenology in the classical sense o... more Our aim in this article is to argue against the claim that phenomenology in the classical sense of the term is a kind of meditative technique or practice involving the careful observation of present moment experience for the purposes of description. In sections 1. and 2. we give an overview of the contemporary presentation of mindfulness, as well as pointing to some ambiguities that will be relevant to our subsequent discussion. Section 3. offers a brief survey of the various comparisons people have made between phenomenology and mindfulness. As will become clear, the majority have based their comparison on a specific interpretation of Husserl’s key methodological tools, the epoché and reduction. In section 4. we argue that said interpretation is mistaken, and that Husserl’s enterprise is very different from the practice of mindfulness, and then in section 5., we examine two examples of the claim we are criticizing, namely recent articles by Natalie Depraz and Michel Bitbol.
Empathy has recently been described as a dark force of immorality by Bloom and Bubandt and Willer... more Empathy has recently been described as a dark force of immorality by Bloom and Bubandt and Willerslev. In my paper, I contrast their discussion and definition of empathy with the account of empathy found in phenomenology. After highlighting the many differences, I discuss the moral significance of the phenomenological notion of empathy
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Papers 2020- by Dan Zahavi
philosophical phenomenology by nonphilosophical
disciplines and practices
At its core, phenomenology is a philosophical
endeavor. Its task is not to expand the scope of our
empirical knowledge, but rather to step back and
investigate the fundamental structures, relations,
and capacities that are presupposed by any such
empirical investigation. Given the distinctly philosophical
nature of this venture, one might reasonably
wonder whether phenomenology can
offer anything of value to other disciplines. Can
it at all inform empirical work? However, there
can be no doubt about the answer to such questions.
Phenomenology has been a source of inspiration
for empirical science and the world beyond
academic philosophy from the very start. Experimental
psychology and psychiatry were among
the first disciplines to take inspiration from
Husserl’s call to attend to the phenomena. Already
in 1912, Karl Jaspers published a short article
outlining how psychiatry could profit from Husserlian
phenomenology, and in the
following decades prominent psychologists and
psychiatrists such as Katz, Schilder, Binswanger,
Straus, Buytendijik, and Minkowski all engaged
with phenomenology in their research and practice.
Since then, many other disciplines and practices,
including sociology, anthropology,
comparative literature, architecture, nursing, and
psychotherapy, have engaged with and drawn on
ideas from phenomenology. More recently, phenomenology
has also proven an important source
of inspiration for theoretical debates in qualitative
research, for embodied cognitive sciences, and for
disciplines such as disability studies and critical
race theory.
The applicability of phenomenology has been
part of its enduring appeal, but what exactly is
applied phenomenology, how does it differ from
non-applied or pure phenomenology, and what is
the best way to practice and use phenomenology
in a nonphilosophical context?
In the following overview, I will touch upon
some of the more principled questions that the
notion of applied phenomenology gives rise to, I
will provide a few examples of what I take to be
successful instances of applied phenomenology,
and I will briefly summarize some current controversies
and open questions.
was to discuss whether the ongoing, but relatively distinct,
investigations of relational autonomy and collective
intentionality could crossfertilize. Whereas the concept
of relational autonomy was developed to do justice to the
relational character of selfhood, and as an alternative to
traditional conceptions of autonomy, which were accused
of exaggerating the self-reliance
and social independence
of the self, recent discussions of collective intentionality
have often centered on the question of whether and how
collective intentions differ from aggregations of individual
intentions. As different as they might otherwise be,
theoretical explorations of autonomy and collective intentionality
intersect at a crucial point: both require an
understanding of the relationship between the self and
the group, between individual subjectivity and social life.
The aim of the following paper is to argue that the collective
intentionality literature contains insights that cannot
merely contribute to our understanding of autonomy, but
also prevent us from taking our relationism too far.
several decades, but questions concerning the nature of ‘we’ and the relation between
the individual and the community are obviously far older. We can find a particularly
rich discussion in early phenomenology. Indeed, while starting out with an interest
in the individual mind, phenomenologists began their exploration of dyadic forms
of interpersonal relations shortly before the start of World War I and were already
deeply engaged in extensive analyses of collective forms of intentionality a few
years later. A distinctive feature of the phenomenological contribution was its
exploration of the relation between the first- and second-person singular and the
first-person plural perspectives. How are I, you, and we intertwined? The aim of this
paper is to present some core insights from this early debate.
a complex interplay between different sources of diagnostically relevant information. In Sect. 4.3, we turn to research on interpersonal understanding. We reconstruct and critically assess some recent discussions about second-person relations, and present our own take on this notion. In Sect. 4.4, we elaborate on a conceptualization
of second-person relations which foregrounds the roles of reciprocity and
communication. In Sect. 4.5, we return to the diagnostic interview and assess the implications of our discussion.