Jocelyn Benoist

During the spring quarter, Professor Jocelyn Benoist is the White's Visiting Professor in Humanities at the University of Chicago. He is also Professor of Theory of Knowledge and Contemporary Philosophy at the University of Paris-I, Panthéon-Sorbonne, as well as a distinguished Member of the Institut Universitaire de France, and a permanent member of the Husserl Archive of Paris (Ecole Normale Supérieure-CNRS). He now has a regular visiting appointment in the Philosophy Department of the University of Chicago. His early work is primarily on Husserl and Kant, read as forerunners of the French phenomenological tradition. He subsequently developed strong interests in Analytic Philosophy, as well as in the Austrian Philosophical tradition, showing the latter to be an important common source of both Phenomenology and Analytic Philosophy. These historical investigations led him to a systematic concern with basic questions regarding intentionality, recognizing it to be the fundamental common concept of phenomenology and contemporary analytic philosophy of mind . In the most recent phase of his work, he has been pursuing a systematic critique of the concept of intentionality that appears at the crossroads of contemporary philosophy of mind and language, developing it from a perspective that takes its inspiration equally from central trends in the phenomenological tradition (especially from Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty) and from certain trends in the analytic tradition (especially from Frege, Wittgenstein, and Austin). Professor Benoist has taught as a Visiting Professor at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland), Northwestern University, Université Laval (Québec), and Keio University (Japan). Among his numerous publications, the following books are especially noteworthy: Kant et les limites de la synthèse, 1996; Représentations sans objet : aux origines de la phénoménologie et de la philosophie analytique, 2001 ; Intentionalité et langage dans les Recherches logiques de Husserl, 2001 ; and, finally, Les limites de l'intentionalité: Recherches phénoménologiques et analytiques, 2005.

CV (PDF)


Contact

office: Stuart 202-B
office phone: 773/702-8513
email: jocelyn.benoist@ens.fr

Selected Publications

  • Two (or Three) Conceptions of Intentionality (PDF)
  • Intentionality and Reality (PDF)
  • Theories of Reference in Both Early Phenomenology and Early Analytic Philosophy (PDF)
  • Varieties of Semantic Objectivism (PDF)
  • Edmund Husserl, Logik. Vorlesung 1896
    Husserl Studies, Volume 19, Number 3, 2003 , pp. 237-242(6) (Link)

Please see my CV (PDF) for a complete list of publications.

Courses

20615 / 30615. Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception.

The Phenomenology of Perception (first published in 1945) is Maurice Merleau-Ponty's masterpiece, and one of the landmarks of phenomenology in the 20th century. With this book, phenomenology took a decisive turn towards a philosophy of embodiment and perceptual rootedness in the world. This perspective, which has continued to deeply influence the development of Continental thought for the last half-century, opens up a different perspective on a number of the issues that dominate contemporary Anglophone cognitive science and philosophy of mind. More strikingly still, the book is now being accorded a second reception in recent years by people working in these areas. Thus it has come to pass that this classic of French phenomenology is now playing a central role in contemporary debates again, in philosophy and beyond. This introductory class will be dedicated to a systematic reading of this work in English translation.  Jocelyn Benoist

50102. Husserlian Semantics (Meaning and Intentionality).

This seminar will be dedicated to a systematic investigation of Husserl's theory of sense and reference. This theory played a leading role in the development of what Husserl called 'phenomenology', but it is also of interest as one of the most significant theories of these topics to emerge at the beginning of the 20th century, usefully to be compared with those of Frege, Russell and others. We shall read as our basic text Husserl's First Logical Investigation, first published in1901 (in its English translation), where he sets forth his 'theory of meaning'; but we shall also study a number of additional texts, including the lectures that he gave in 1908 on the theory of meaning, as well as the opening of his Sixth Logical Investigation (also from 1901) and the attempted rewriting of it in 1913-1914. This seminar is meant to serve both as a historical introduction to an important dimension of Husserl's overall phenomenology, as well as an occasion in which to focus on and explore specific issues in the philosophy of language and mind of continuing interest on which phenomenology can still shed considerable light. Among the topics to be explored in this connection are the following: the distinction between sense and nonsense, propositional reference, 'empty' reference, proper nouns, indexicality, context-dependence, 'subjective' and 'objective' meaning, and, more generally, the problem of the relation between meaning and intentionality. Jocelyn Benoist

23550/33550. Husserl on Intentionality.

Open to college and grad students. This course will sketch a general introduction to Husserlian phenomenology. We shall place the birth of Husserlian phenomenology in the context of the Austrian philosophy of the end of the XIXth century, tracing it back to both the Brentanian purpose of a descriptive psychology and Bolzano's objective semantics. We shall consider how phenomenology in the Husserlian sense, as a new philosophical discipline, is defined between logic and psychology in Husserl's 'Logical Investigations' (1900-1901). Then we shall pay attention to the turn the philosopher took between 1905 and 1913, that he himself describes as 'transcendental'. We shall, finally, wonder how far the developments of Husserl's thinking after World War I might alter that 'transcendental phenomenology', as a phenomenology of the pure ego and of the absolutely constitutive consciousness. Jocelyn Benoist. Spring 2006.

53950. Introduction to Austrian Philosophy: States of Affairs

Open to grad students. This course will deal with the shared Austrian roots of both phenomenology and Analytic philosophy. In the first place, it will give the students a sketch of the richness of the Austrian logical and psychological tradition at the end of the XIXth century and before (from Bolzano to the Brentanian school, in its diversity), shedding thus a new light on both Husserl's and early Wittgenstein's thought. We shall show that both of them could be read, in different ways, as heirs to this tradition. Then, the course will contrast the side of early Analytic philosophy (the early Wittgenstein, but also before him to some extent even Russell, in his discussion with Meinong) that can be reasonably connected to this tradition with the side that cannot (Frege). We shall therefore not only deal with the possible contrast between early phenomenology and early Analytic philosophy, but also with a contrast that belongs to early Analytic philosophy itself. In this survey, we shall take the perspective of the propositional reference problem, paying attention to the introduction by authors belonging to both traditions, over the same span of time (1870-1914), of the notion of 'state of affairs' (Sachverhalt) or any substitute for them. Why use this kind of concept, and, as to some key authors (like Frege), why avoid it? We shall read texts by Bolzano, Brentano, Frege, Meinong, Russell, Husserl, Wittgenstein (Tractatus) and perhaps a few others. Jocelyn Benoist. Spring 2006.