Belief and Its Neutralization

Marcus Brainard is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation in Munich. He edited, translated, and provided the introduction to Heribert Boeder's Seditions: Heidegger and the Limit of Modernity, also published by SUNY Press.

• Preface I. Introduction: The Task of Thinking 1. The Idea of Phenomenology 1.1 The Crises, its Source and Dimensions1.2 Natural Order and Critique1.3 Systems and Norms1.4 Ethos, Ought, Teleology 2. The System of Husserlian Phenomenology: Ideas I 2.1 Polarities2.2 The Order of Critique2.3 The Whole and its Parts II. Phenomenological Propaedeutics 1. Logical Considerations: Facts and Essence 1.1 The Realm of the Natural1.2 Individual and Essence, Possibility and Necessity1.3 Factual and Eidetic Sciences 2. Between Scylla and Charybdis: The Principle of All Principles 2.1 Phenomenology and Philosophy2.2 Empiricism, Naturalism, Skepticism2.3 Idealism2.4 The Blindness of Theory2.5 The First Principle2.6 Dogmatism 3. The Epoché and the Phenomenological Reductions 3.1 The Attitudes of Consciousness3.2 The General Thesis3.3 The Instrumentalization of Cartesian Doubt3.4 The Attitudinal Leap3.5 The Family of Reductions3.6 The Primacy of the Universal Epoché 4. The Field of Phenomenological Research: Pure Consciousness 4.1 The Phenomenological Residuum4.2 The Modifiability of Consciousness I: Actionality and Inactionality4.3 The Modifiability of Consciousness II: Intentionality4.4 Immanent and Transcendent Perception4.5 Consciousness and the Natural World4.6 Merely Phenomenal and Absolute Being4.7 The Destruction of Transcendence4.8 The Annihilation of the World4.9 From the Natural to the Phenomenological Sphere III. The Disclosure of the System's Lowermost Limit: Subjectivity 1. The Science of Phenomenology 1.1 The FIrst Negative Account: Phenomenological Method and its Dissenters1.2 The First Positive Account: The Aim and Method of Phenomenology1.3 The Second Negative and Positive Accounts: Intuition and First Science 2. First Categories: The Archimedean Point and its Other 2.1 Phenomenology as Rigorous Science2.2 The Pure Ego and its Lived Experience2.3 Intentionality and Constitution 3. The Noetic-Noematic Correlation: Towards the Basis of Conscious Life 3.1 The Functionality of Intentional Reference3.2 The Discovery of the Noema3.3 The Modifiability of Consciousness3.4 Belief-and Being-Characteristics 4. The Doctrine of the Neutrality Modification 4.1 The Epoché and the Neutrality Modification4.2 Neutrality and Reason4.3 Supposing and Neutrality4.4 Fantasy and the Neutrality Modification4.5 Fantasy, Aesthetic Consciousness, and the Neutrality Modification4.6 The Abyss between Positional and Neutral Consciousness4.7 The Levels of Consciousness4.8 Detours and Direct Routes: The Universality of the Neutrality Modification4.9 The Transition to the Logical and its Obstruction 5. The Realm of Logos 5.1 Higher Level Features of Consciousness: Synthetic Consciousness5.2 Positional and Neutral Syntheses5.3 The Expression of Syntheses5.4 The Directions of Synthesis5.5 The Logical Strata5.6 Expression, Judgment, Belief IV. Towards the System's Uppermost Limit: Reason 1. The Referentiality of the Noema 2. The Verdict of Reason 2.1 The Nature of Reason2.2 Forms of Rational Consciousness and Evidence2.3 Hierarchies of Belief, Reason, Evidence, and Truth2.4 The Animating Force of the Originary, Immediate, Direct2.5 Being and Thinking2.6 The Prescriptive Function of Essence2.7 Belief and Normality2.8 Phenomenology and the Acquisition of the World 3. Towards Absolute Reason V. Conclusion: The Phenomenological Movement Postscript Notes Bibliography Index of Names

"This book articulates Husserl's phenomenological system within the context of its guiding intentions. The result is an overpowering work of scholarship, allowing it to be unquestionably ranked as the best discussion on Husserl's Ideas I, now or in the foreseeable future." — Burt C. Hopkins, editor of Husserl in Contemporary Context: Prospects and Projects for Phenomenology"Brainard's achievement is not to have merely written about Husserl, but instead to have let Husserl speak for himself. The author has worked his way into the philosopher's thought so well that he has been able to grasp and discuss the various steps of Husserl's thought from within. To grasp a thinker in this way, the interpreter must himself be animated by a philosophical eros, and Brainard most certainly is." — Walter Biemel, editor of several volumes of Husserl's collected works (Husserliana)