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Abstract
This essay focuses on Husserl's conception of the natural attitude, which, I argue, is one of his most important contributions to contemporary phenomenology. I offer a critical exploration of this concept's productive explanatory potential for feminist theory, critical race theory, queer theory, and disability studies. In the process, 1 draw attention to the rich, multi-faceted, and ever-changing social world that can be brought to life through this particular phenomenological concept. One of the most striking features of the natural attitude, as Husserl describes it, is that it is not natural at all, but rather, is a developmental phenomenon that is acquired through, and profoundly influenced by, specific socio-cultural practices. To de-naturalize the natural attitude, then, is to recognize that the natural attitude is not fixed or innate but relative to a particular time period and culture, and therefore always capable of being changed.
Keywords
Natural Attitude - Husserl - Phenomenology - Feminist Theory - Critical Race Theory - Disability Studies
Lately, 1 have been thinking a lot about the powerful role particular phenomenological concepts have played in introducing scholars and students to the discipline. Edmund Husserl's "natural attitude'' is once such term, and undoubtedly influenced the formation of others that followed, including Martin Heidegger's "the they," Jean-Paul Sartre's "bad faith," and Simone de Beauvoir's description of women in patriarchal society as the "second sex." All of these concepts are centrally concerned with our social existence in the world, and, more particularly, with how we live meaningfully (or, as Heidegger, Sartre, and Beauvoir might argue, often non-meaningfully) with the others who share it with us. My own introduction to most of these philosophers and these terms is indelibly associated not only with the professors with whom I first studied them but also with the actual places where I first discussed them, and I imagine that this might be true for many other phenomenologists as well. Thus, "the they" always brings back memories of Karsten Harries' Being and Time seminar on the 2nd floor of Connecticut Hall on Yale University's Old Campus. "Bad faith" calls forth the image of Ron Santoni's living room at Denison University where I sat, with my fellow philosophy majors, listening to Santoni explain the subtle existential implications of Sartre's...