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Husserl Stud (2008) 24:159166
DOI 10.1007/s10743-008-9037-3
Kenneth Liberman, Husserls Criticism of Reason: With Ethnomethodological Specications.
Lanham/MD: Lexington Books, 2007, 212 pp, US$ 65 (hardcover), ISBN 978-0-7391-1118-5
Lars Frers
Published online: 28 May 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008
In this work, Kenneth Liberman explores the reective enterprise that we call phenomenology. His goal is to further develop the potential of thinking reason. While he recognizes the importance of Husserls reexive rigor in advancing this eld, he argues that Garnkels ethnomethodological rigor can give new momentum to the phenomenological critique of reason, a critique on which the future of freedom depends (p. xv).
When Harold Garnkel introduced ethnomethodology as an area of research, he envisioned it as a radical project (p. 101) in the context of social scientic work, one rooted in phenomenology. (Garnkel was a student of Gurwitsch and Schtz.) Ethnomethodology focuses on performances in the real world, or, in its own terms, on naturally occurring, ordinary activities. This undertaking is not particularly novel; ordinary life has been examined and interpreted by many writers before Garnkel. Ethnomethodology is unique, however, because it studies sense or meaning only as it is put into play by the actors themselves. Thus, it investigates the ethno-methods of interpretation and communication employed by members who co-participate in regulating their common, practical affairs. Using this framework, Liberman does not talk about phenomenology but instead does phenomenology, thus demonstrating how reason actually develops and unfolds in its encounters with the life-world as a concrete site.
The book can be divided into two sections. The rst is concerned with philosophy and follows the conventional disciplinary practice of discussing texts and arguments. It engages not only Husserl, but also phenomenologists like Heidegger, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, Gendlin, and others, focusing exclusively on those arguments that build upon, criticize, or enhance Husserls investigations into the workings of reason. In the second part of the book, however, Liberman brings
L. Frers (&)
Darmstadt University of Technology, Choriner Strae 60, 10435 Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected]: http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/*frers
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ethnomethodology into full play, thus integrating the movements of ordinary life with the world of inert formal reasoning. Looking at thinking reason as an orderly practice that unfolds in concrete social settings, Liberman seeks to develop...