Phenomenology: The Roots of Catholic Phenomenology  

Phenomenology has been one of the main philosophical movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and has occupied the attention of Catholic thinkers from the beginning. The purpose of this course is to acquaint students with some aspect of this tradition, and to form a judgment of the tradition from a Catholic perspective. This class aims to trace out a lesser-known current of phenomenological reflection from its original founder Edmund Husserl through Scheler and some of his followers, both faithful and critical.  In addition to some of the founding texts of the movement, we will read a selection of principal works from select authors both inside and outside of the Catholic tradition, such as Merleau-Ponty, on the one hand, and Stein, von Hildebrand, and Wojtyła, on the other.