Materialist Phenomenology: Trần Đức Thảo's Reading of Edmund Husserl

• Thesis title in Czech: Materialistická fenomenologie: Trần Đức Thảova interpretace Edmunda Husserla
• Thesis title in English: Materialist Phenomenology: Trần Đức Thảo's Reading of Edmund Husserl
• Key words: fenomenologie|Tran Duc Thao|Edmund Husserl|marxismus|materialismus
• English key words: phenomenology|Tran Duc Thao|Edmund Husserl|Marxism|materialism
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2021/2022
• Thesis type: Bachelor's thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Institute of Philosophy and Religious Studies (21-UFAR)
• Supervisor: Daniele De Santis, Dott. Ric.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 04.05.2022
• Date of assignment: 04.05.2022
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 06.05.2022
• Date and time of defence: 14.09.2023 10:00
• Date of electronic submission: 14.08.2023
• Date of proceeded defence: 14.09.2023
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: prof. Mgr. Miroslav Petříček, Dr.

Guidelines

Post-war France saw many attempts to reconcile the phenomenological project with Marxism. One of those endeavors is represented by Tran Duc Thao's work Phénoménologie et Matérialisme Dialectique. Thao was one of the first to gain access to Husserl's unpublished works in Leuven, and in his evaluation of Husserl's phenomenology found himself facing an unsurpassable contradiction between the theoretical principles of the Husserlian method and the results of his concrete analyses. Although admittedly not satisfied with his own solution to the problems of Husserlian phenomenology, Thao's account of the latter was influential among the thinkers of his time and laid the groundwork for future attempts at overcoming these problems. The present theses will try to follow Thao's reading of Husserl in the first part of Phénoménologie et Matérialisme Dialectique and the reasons that led him to assume a standpoint from which the only way to overcome the difficulties of phenomenology was the path of dialectical materialism. The thesis will further try to carve out Thao's own conception of phenomenology and what, despite the criticism he had for Husserl's work, led him to regard it as a starting point for all his further theoretical endeavors.

References

Primary literature:

Husserl, Edmund. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie. Edited by Walter Biemel. The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976. [= Hua VI.]

Husserl, Edmund. Ideen zur einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution. Edited by Marly Biemel. The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1952. [= Hua IV.]



Thảo, Trần Đức. Phénoménologie et Matérialisme Dialectique. Paris: Minh Tan, 1951. English translation by D.J. Herman, D.V. Morano. Phenomenology and Dialectical Materialism. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 49. Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster & Tokyo: D. Reidel, 1986.

Thảo, Trần Đức. “La Phénoménologie de l’Esprit et son contenu réel”. Les Temps Modernes 36 (1948): 492-519. English translation: “The Phenomenology of Mind and Its Real Content”. Telos 8 (1971): 91-110.

Thảo, Trần Đức. “Marxisme et phénoménologie”. Revue Internationale 2 (1946): 168-174. English translation by Nicolas de Warren. “Marxism and Phenomenology”. Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 30.2 (2009): 327–335.

Secondary literature:

Benoist, Jocelyn. “TWO (OR THREE) CONCEPTIONS OF INTENTIONALITY.” Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 69, no. 1 (2007): 79–103. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40890138.

Herrick, Tim. “‘A Book Which Is No Longer Discussed Today’: Tran Duc Thao, Jacques Derrida, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty”. Journal of the History of Ideas 66, no. 1 (2005): 113–31. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3654310.

Takács, Ádám. “Time and Matter: Historicity, Facticity and the Question of Phenomenological Realism.” Human Studies 41, no. 4 (2018): 661–76. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44980123.