Book Review: Four Phenomenological Philosophers: Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty

Four Phenomenological Philosophers: Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty by Christopher Macann, Routledge, London (1993) 221pp, £7.95 PB.

This is a difficult but also an important book. It is difficult because it is not an introduction to Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, nor is it an introduction to phenomenology (which does not even appear in the index!). It is, in fact, what the author tells us at the end of his short preface - "a textbook in the strict and literal sense of that word, that is, a book designed to help students come to terms with the texts."

The texts in question are Heidegger's Being and Time, Sartre's Being and Nothingness, Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception and a number of writings of Husserl as there is, in Macann's view, no one text that represents his phenomenological thinking in the way in which, say, Being and Nothingness represents Sartre's.

In other words, the reader is unlikely to profit greatly from this book unless s/he has some familiarity with the texts on which it is a commentary.

Nevertheless it is an important book. There is as far as I know no other book that covers in ca 200 pages (and at small expense) these phenomenological texts. And if you are familiar with them, you will find Macann's comments extremely helpful: succinct, lucidly written, throwing light on a number of obscure issues. But it is not a book with which to start your quest - it is one to enjoy after you have been on the way for some time. Hans W. Cohn

Hans W. Cohn