Dermot Moran
MA, MPhil, PhD (Yale), MRIA, DLitt (NUI)
Joseph Chair in Catholic Philosophy,
Boston College and
Visiting Professor of Philosophy, UCD
Boston College and
Visiting Professor of Philosophy, UCD
Publications
Dermot Moran is an internationally recognized expert in phenomenology (esp. Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty) and medieval Christian philosophy (especially Neoplatonism, Johannes Scottus Eriugena, Meister Eckhart, Nicholas of Cusa), with 5 published monographs, 1 co-authored book, 10 edited books (some multi-volume), 34 peer-reviewed journal articles (in top-ranking, international, peer-reviewed journals e.g. Synthese, Journal of the History of Philosophy, Continental Philosophy Review), 100 chapters in refereed collections (major publishers: Oxford UP, Cambridge, Routledge, Stanford), and over 280 invited scholarly and conference presentations, including more than 50 plenary and keynote addresses.
Dermot Moran’s first monograph, The Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena: A Study of Idealism in the Middle Ages (Cambridge UP., repr. 2004), was extensively, favourably reviewed (18 reviews; 116 citations), and is internationally a standard reference work. His 600-page monograph, Introduction to Phenomenology (Routledge 2000; 2nd ed in press) won the Ballard Prize for Phenomenology, USA (2001), has been translated into Chinese (2 versions: Simplified and Classic) and Spanish, with over 20 favourable reviews and 1426 citations. His 2005 monograph, Edmund Husserl: Founder of Phenomenology (Polity), has 9 positive reviews (“outstanding” Times Higher Education Supplement) and 110 citations. Moran’s fourth monograph Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Cambridge U.P. 2012) already has 4 reviews and 10 citations. Dermot Moran’s The Husserl Dictionary (Bloomsbury 2012), co-authored with Joseph Cohen has 19 citations.
Dermot Moran’s edition of Husserl’s Logical Investigations (Routledge, reprinted 2012) has 2487 citations.
Dermot Moran’s The Phenomenology Reader, co-edited with Tim Mooney (Routledge, 2002) has 169 citations.
Although the h-index is not usually used in European philosophy, Prof. Moran’s h-index is currently a very respectable 12 [i-10-index = 15] with 4676 citations [2267 since 2010] (Google Scholar, accessed 17 April 2015).
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In preparation.
In press.
Medieval Neoplatonism and the Dialectics of Being and Non-Being
Book ChapterIn preparation.
In preparation
Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences: The ‘Teleological-historical Way’ into Transcendental Philosophy
Book ChapterIn press.
In preparation.
In preparation.
Eriugena on the Five Modes of Being and Non-Being: Reflections on his Sources
Book ChapterIn press.
In press.
In press.
Defending the Objective Gaze as a Self-transcending Capacity of Human Subjects
Book ChapterIn press.
In press.
Art and Experience: Reflections on Husserl’s and Heidegger’s Phenomenological Approaches to Art- Works
Book ChapterIn press.
“Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?”: The Phenomenology of Joint Agency
Article In Refereed JournalsIn preparation.
The Reception of Eriugena in Modernity: A Critical Appraisal of Eriugena’s Dialectic Philosophy of Infinite Nature
Book ChapterThe Phenomenological Approach
Book ChapterKant on Intuition
Book ChapterHusserl’s Phenomenology of Spirit: A Reading of the Crisis of European Sciences and Related Manuscripts
Book ChapterHusserl’s and Heidegger’s Transcendental Projects: From the Natural Attitude to Functioning Intentionality
Book ChapterIn press.
Husserl and Gurwitsch on Horizonal Intentionality. The Gurwitch Memorial Lecture 2018
Article In Refereed JournalsGurwitsch is the philosopher of consciousness par excellence. This paper presents
a systematic exposition of Aron Gurwitsch’s main contribution to phenomenology,
namely his theory of the ‘field of consciousness’ with its a priori structure of theme,
thematic field, margin (halo and horizon). I present Gurwitsch as an orthodox defender
of Husserlian descriptive phenomenology, albeit one who rejected Husserl’s
reduction to the transcendental ego and Husserl’s overt idealism. He maintained with
Husserl the priority of consciousness as the source of all meaning and validity but he
rejected Husserl’s transcendental idealism in favour of a ‘levels of existence’ approach.
Gurwitsch’s project was to show the continuity between Gestalt psychology (stripped
of its naturalism) and Husserlian eidetics. I explain his concepts of theme, thematic
field, margin and horizon as a consistent development of Husserlian thought. I conclude
by claiming that neither Gurwitsch nor Husserl fully appreciate how the horizons
of an entity can support radical novelty and the application of entirely new
contexts.
Edith Stein’s Philosophical Conversions: From Husserl to Aquinas and Newman
Book ChapterWhat is the Phenomenological Approach? Revisiting Intentional Explication,
Article In Refereed JournalsIn this paper I outline the main features of the phenomenological approach, focusing on the central themes of intentionality, embodiment, empathy, intersubjectivity, sociality and the life-world. I argue that phenomenology is primarily a philosophy of intentional explication that identifies the a priori, structural correlations between subjectivity and all forms of constituted objectivities apprehended in their horizonal contexts. Intentional description reveals the structurally necessary, meaning-informing interactions between embodied subjectivity (already caught in the nexus of intersubjectivity) in the context of embeddedness in the temporal, historical, and cultural life-world. I shall defend phenomenology as a holistic approach that rightfully defends the role of subjectivity in the constitution of objectivity and recognizes the inherent limitations of all forms of naturalism, objectivism and scientism.
Review of Hans Bernhard Schmid and Gerhard Thonhauser (eds.), From Conventionalism to Social Authenticity: Heidegger's Anyone and Contemporary Social Theory
Book ReviewIntentionality: Lived Experience, Bodily Comportment, and the Horizon of the World
Book ChapterHusserl’s Hermeneutics: From Intuition of Lived Experiences to the Horizonal Life-World
Book ChapterConscious Thinking and Cognitive Phenomenology: Topics, Views and Future Developments
Book ChapterAristotle’s Conception of οὐσία in the Medieval Christian Tradition: Some Neoplatonic Reflections
Book ChapterAddress of the President of the Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie
Book ChapterThe New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy
Recognition and ReviewsThe New Yearbook of Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy is entitling Part I of its 17th volume “Phenomenonology, Idealism, and Intersubjectivity: A Festschrift in Celebration of Dermot Moran’s Sixty-Fifth Birthday.”
The collection includes works from Dr. Moran’s former students, and from colleagues, past and present, and he is grateful to all involved for this honor!
For more information: https://www.routledge.com/The-New-Yearbook-for-Phenomenology-and-Phenomenological-Philosophy-Volume/Burns-Szanto-Salice-Doyon-Dumont/p/book/9780367183691
The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy Volume 17, 1st Edition (2018)
Part 1: Phenomenology, Idealism, and Intersubjectivity: A Festschrift in Celebration of Dermot Moran’s Sixty-Fifth Birthday
Table of Contents:
1. Editors’ Introduction Timothy Burns, Thomas Szanto, Alessandro Salice,
2. Husserl’s Account of Action: Naturalistic or Anti-Naturalistic? A Journey through the Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins Andrea Staiti
3. Essence, Eidos, and Dialogue in Stein’s ‘Husserl and Aquinas. A Comparison’ Mette Lebech
4. Twenty-first Century Phenomenology? Pursuing Philosophy With and After Husserl Steven Crowell
5. Merleau-Ponty and Developing and Coping Reflectively Timothy Mooney
6. Grief and Phantom Limbs: A Phenomenological Comparison Matthew Ratcliffe
7. Back to Space Lilian Alweiss
8. Hating as Contrary to Loving Anthony J. Steinbock
9. Do Arguments About Subjective Origins Diminish the Reality of the Real? Thomas Nenon
10. God Making: An Essay in Theopoetic Imagination Richard Kearney
11. Husserl’s Awakening to Speech: Phenomenology a ‘Minor Nicolas de Warren
The Phenomenology of the Social World: Husserl on Mitsein as Ineinandersein and Füreinandersein
Article In Refereed JournalsABSTRACT. In this paper I discuss Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological
account of the constitution of the social world, in relation to some
phenomenological contributions to the constitution of sociality found in
Husserl’s students and followers, including Heidegger, Gurwitsch,
Walther, Otaka, and Schutz. Heidegger is often seen as being the first to
highlight explicitly human existence as Mitsein and In-der-Welt-Sein, but it
is now clear from the Husserliana publications that, in his private research
manuscripts especially during his Freiburg years, Husserl employs many
of the terms associated with Heidegger, e.g. Mitwelt, Weltlichkeit,
Allt.glichkeit, Zeitlichkeit, and Geschichtlichkeit, and had detailed
discussions of various forms of social constitution. It is clear that Husserl
and Heidegger were exploring these themes in dialogue with one another,
and that Husserl, in fact, has a rich phenomenology of sociality that is
worth exploring in its own right. In this paper, I will outline some of the
key aspects of Husserl’s contribution.
KEYWORDS. Phenomenological Movement; Social World; Husserl; Schutz;
Heidegger; Patočka.
“Phenomenology and Pragmatism: Two Interactions. From Horizontal Intentionality to Practical Coping
Book ChapterLived Body, Intersubjectivity and Intercorporeality: The Body in Phenomenology
Book ChapterIntercorporeality and Intersubjectivity: A Phenomenological Exploration of Embodiment
Book ChapterHusserl’s Layered Concept of the Human Person – Conscious and Unconscious
Book ChapterThe phenomenology of Edmund Husserl had a permanent and profound impact on the philosophical formation of Paul Ricoeur. One could truly say, paraphrasing Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s brilliant 1959 essay “The Philosopher and his Shadow,” that Husserl is the philosopher in whose shadow Ricoeur, like Merleau-Ponty, also stands, the thinker to whom he constantly returns. Husserl is Ricoeur’s philosopher of reflection, par excellence. Indeed, Ricoeur always invokes Husserl when he is discussing a paradigmatic instance of contemporary philosophy of “reflection” and also of descriptive, “eidetic” phenomenology. Indeed, I shall argue in this chapter that Husserl’s influence on Ricoeur was decisive and provided a methodology which is permanently in play, even when it has to be concretized and mediated by hermeneutics, as Ricoeur proposes after 1960.
Husserl and Brentano
Book ChapterEdith Stein’s Encounter with Edmund Husserl and her Phenomenology of the Person
Book ChapterDie Cartesianischen Meditationen/Méditations cartésiennes
Book Chapter“Editors Introduction,” Empathy, Sociality, and Personhood. Essays on Edith Stein’s Phenomenological Investigations
Book ChapterIn this paper I explore Husserl’s and Foucault’s approaches to the historical a priori and defend Husserl’s richer notion. Foucault borrows the expression ‘historical a priori’ from Husserl and there are continuities, but also significant and ultimately irreconcilable differences, between their conceptions. Both are looking for ‘conditions of possibility,’ forms of ‘institution’ or instauration, and patterns of transformation (breakthroughs, disruptions), for scientific knowledge. Husserl identifies the ‘a priori of history’ with the ‘historical a priori’ and believes that the ‘invariant essential structures of the historical world’ (Crisis of European Sciences) can be identified. Foucault, on the other hand, is less interested in the Kantian inquiry into the limits or legitimization of knowledge than in the relation between knowledge and power. Foucault rejects the idea of universal and necessary a priori structures and denies that the structure of the conceptual framework (‘episteme’) governing an era can be fully determined. Both Foucault and Husserl contrast ‘inner’ history with external history, but, I argue, Foucault misconstrues Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology as a form of ‘absolute subjectivity’ against which his ‘archaeological’ method reacts. In fact, Foucault’s own conception of the historical a priori is ambiguous and fails to have explanatory value precisely because it misunderstands the need for the a priori to be both universal and necessary, and offers no account of the ‘a priori of historicity’ which, for Husserl, is essential to human cultural life.
Introduction. Phenomenological Discoveries Concerning the ‘We”: Mapping the Terrain
Book ChapterIneinandersein and l’interlacs: The Constitution of the Social World or ‘We-World’ (Wir-Welt) in Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Book ChapterHusserl’s Phenomenology and the Project of Transcendental Self-Knowledge
Book ChapterThis introduction presents a state of the art of philosophical research on cognitive phenomenology and its relation to the nature of conscious thinking more generally. We firstly introduce the question of cognitive phenomenology, the motivation for the debate, and situate the discussion within the fields of philosophy (analytic and phenomenological traditions), cognitive psychology and consciousness studies. Secondly, we review the main research on the question, which we argue has so far situated the cognitive phenomenology debate around the following topics and arguments: phenomenal contrast, epistemic arguments and challenges, introspection, ontology and temporal character, intentionality, inner speech, agency, holistic perspective, categorical perception, value, and phenomenological description. Thirdly, we suggest future developments by pointing to four questions that can be explored in relation to the cognitive phenomenology discussion: the self and self-awareness, attention, emotions and general theories of consciousness. We finalise by briefly presenting the six articles of this Special Issue, which engage with some of the topics mentioned and contribute to enlarge the discussion by connecting it to different areas of philosophical investigation.
The early medieval Irish Christian philosopher John Scottus Eriugena is important both for translating into Latin the works of Greek mystical writers such as Dionysius the Areopagite and for his major treatise Periphyseon (On the Division of Nature, c. 867CE) in which he produced a cosmology which included both God and nature. Eriugena thinks of the divine nature as a ” nothingness ” that transcends all being and non-being. Creation is to be understood as the self-manifestation of this transcendent nothingness in the from of being. Eriugena thinks of the human mind too as a form of nothingness which escapes all limitation and definition. Eriugena’s work was hugely influential on later medieval mystics including Meister Eckhart. His work has been compared with Buddhism. I will explore in this paper whether this comparison is justified.
This is a draft document. Please do not quote without permission. See the published version in Moran, Dermot. (D. 莫兰), 一个论及‘无’的西方思想家：约翰.司各脱.爱留根那 , “A Western Thinker of Nothingness: John Scottus Eriugena,” translated into Chinese by 刘素民, Prof. Liu Sumin, 世界哲学, World Philosophy Vol. 6 (2016), pp. 52–57.
Lived Body, Intercorporeality, Intersubjectivity: The Body as a Phenomenological Theme
Book ChapterJohn Scottus Eriugena and the Idealist Tradition of Christian Neoplatonism
Book ChapterHuman Studies. Special Issue on Edith Stein. 2015. DOI 10.1007/s10746-015-9363-3
in Ľubica Učník, Ivan Chvatík, and Anita Williams, eds, The Phenomenological Critique of Mathematisation and the Question of Responsibility – Formalisation and the Life-World. Contributions to Phenomenology (Dordrecht: Springer, 2015), pp. 107–132
Thane Martin Naberhaus reviews Dermot Moran’s Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction for the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
Please see the attached link.
David J. Bachyrycz reviews Dermot Moran’s Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction for Husserl Studies.
Abstract
The person is a concept that emerged in Western philosophy after the ancient Greeks. It has a multiple origination in Alexandrine grammar (first, second, third person), Roman Law (free person versus slave) and Latin Christian Trinitarian theology, epitomized by Boethius’ definition – a person is an individual substance of a rational nature. In this paper I trace some aspects of the history of the concept of person and evaluate contemporary analytic approaches in the light of the Husserlian phenomenological account of the person.
Keywords
Phenomenology, person, naturalism, Husserl, first-person, embodiment, Lynne Rudder Baker
Book Chapter: 'Christian Neoplatonism and The Phenomenological Tradition: The Hidden Influence of John Scottus Eriugena'_2014
Book ChapterDonald Landes reviews Dermot Moran’s Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction for the Canadian Journal of Philosophical Review.
Intentionality: Some Lessons from the History of the Problem from Brentano to the Present_2013
Article In Refereed JournalsThe 17 original essays of this volume explore the relevance of the phenomenological approach to contemporary debates concerning the role of embodiment in our cognitive, emotional and practical life. The papers demonstrate the theoretical vitality and critical potential of the phenomenological tradition both through critically engagement with other disciplines (medical anthropology, psychoanalysis, psychiatry, the cognitive sciences) and through the articulation of novel interpretations of classical works in the tradition, in particular the works of Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre. The concrete phenomena analyzed in this book include: chronic pain, anorexia, melancholia and depression.
Sebastian Luft reviews Dermot Moran’s The Husserl Dictionary for the International Journal of Philosophical Studies.
“Even the Papuan is a Man and not a Beast”: Husserl on Universalism and the Relativity of Cultures_2011
Article In Refereed JournalsThe Phenomenology of Personhood: Charles Taylor And Edmund Husserl_2009
Article In Refereed JournalsFink’s Speculative Phenomenology: Between Constitution and Transcendence_2007
Article In Refereed JournalsChristian Lotz reviews Dermot Moran’s Edmund Husserl: Founder of Phenomenology for Teaching Philosophy.
Please see attached link.
Javier Carreño reviews Dermot Moran’s Edmund Husserl: Founder of Phenomenology for the Tijdschrift voor Filosofie.