Advancing the Dialogue: An Editor's Reflections

Abstract

In the spring 1969 semester, as a first-year graduate student in philosophy, I first encountered phenomenology within unique circumstances for which I remain profoundly appreciative. Although I had heard the term before ? in its Hegelian context?I arrived at the University of Texas at Austin from a tradi? tional (historically-focused) undergraduate philosophy department without, to the best of my recollection, any recognition of the names of Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, Merleau-Ponty, or Ricoeur. In retrospect, I suspect that my undergraduate department avoided the dominance of analytic philosophy that characterized most philosophy departments at that time by (in effect) ending philosophical history with the nineteenth century. That's a slight ex? aggeration: we did study twentieth century Philosophy of Science; the Phi? losophy and Literature course introduced existentialism via Sartre; and the American Philosophy course emphasized Dewey. That limited exposure changed radically in Spring 1969, when I had the extraordinarily good fortune to enroll in a lecture course, Introduction to Phe? nomenology, taught by Richard Zaner, as well as a seminar on the Logical Investigations taught by Quentin Lauer S. J., who was visiting from Fordham University. The result was near-total immersion in what was for me a totally new, and yet immensely compatible, way of thinking ? even, an alternative attitude and very way of being: Husserlian phenomenology. (The immersion is only "near" total because the semester's work was rounded out by a semi? nar on Marx's ontology taught by Dieter Hendrich and the auditing of Charles Hartshorne's seminar in process philosophy). Very early on, I learned that this new way of thinking and being, phenom? enology, was not "natural." Dick Zaner solemnly instructed us on this truth. Phenomenology, he said, was "an unnatural act" that enabled us ? if we were patient and diligent in applying ourselves to attending to "the things them? selves" ? to discern what was so "natural" as to be unnoticed. More specifi? cally, he carried on the interest of his own teacher, Alfred Schutz, in applying that power of discernment to a phenomenology of the social world. This fo? cus would lead him, within a few years, toward the intersection of phenom? enology and clinical ethics, toward describing "the things themselves" as constituted by being human (even, remaining human) in the midst of medical exigency, and into using that descriptively warranted knowledge to work for