Abstract
In the first part of this Chapter there is a brief review of my personal experiences with Dorion Cairns, including how and why I came to become his Literary Executor. The Chapter then provides a focused overview of his philosophical life and central ideas, especially his life-long reflections centered on unraveling and developing appropriate language to express adequately and accurately the Husserlian conception of phenomenological method, especially evident, Cairns shows, in Husserl’s exploration of what, in his Logical Investigations, he refers to what the “cautiously shrewd person” does when faced with what is believed to be showed turns out to reveal the basic features of that method. Our already acquired familiarity, in short, especially when matters are vitally important, provides the soundest clue to understanding what Husserl frequently called the fundamental principle of phenomenological method.
In his other writings—most unpublished in his lifetime—Cairns similarly elucidate others of Husserl’s central ideas, and beyond that extends his carefully worked out reflections to other issues, including important concepts in ethics and value theory. Of equal importance, I think, are Cairns remarkable translations of Husserl’s at time quite difficult texts, making what would otherwise be inaccessible to us.
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Notes
- 1.
Cairns, Dorion. 1933. The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl. Dissertation.
- 2.
Before he came to The Graduate Faculty at The New School, except for his dissertation at Harvard 1933, he published only four articles. (1) 1939, Some Results of Husserl’s Investigations. The Journal of Philosophy, XXXVI (April 27), pp. 236–238. [Reprinted in “The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and its Interpretation” ed. Joseph Kockelmans. (New York, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1967, p. 147–149.] (2) 1940. An Approach to Phenomenology. In Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl ed. Marvin Farber. New York, NY: Greenwood Press, 1968, pp. 3–18. (Revised and Updated in 1973). (3) 1940. The Ideality of Verbal Espressions. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. 1: 452–462. (Revised and Updated in 1973. (4) 1942. Phenomenology/and other entries. In The Dictionary of Philosophy ed. Dagobert D. Runes. New York, NY: The Philosophical Library, pp. 231–234.
- 3.
See complete list at the end of his article.
- 4.
Conversations with Husserl and Fink, edited by Richard M. Zaner, Springer, 1976. Largely prompted by the questions and concerns of his students, including Cairns, (from the second period, I931–I932, except for the initial conversation), this book provides a significant, intriguing, and always fascinating insight into both the issues which were prominent to Husserl at this time, and the way he had come to view the systematic and historical placement of his own earlier studies.
- 5.
Kersten, Fred and Zaner, Richard (Eds.), Phenomenology: Continuation and Criticism: Essays in Memory of Dorion Cairns, Phaenomenologica 50, Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973. The volume was intended to be in “honor” of Cairns, but his death occurred just before the volume was completed.
- 6.
Kersten, Fred and Zaner, Richard (Eds.), Phenomenology: Continuation and Criticism: Essays in Memory of Dorion Cairns, Phaenomenologica 50, Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973. See Husserl’s letter to E. Parl Welch, pp. 171–176, esp. 176.
- 7.
He knew he would soon die; he also knew himself very well indeed, for he understood—as he repeatedly emphasized numerous times—that this was a task at once unwieldy and, as he expressed the point, “probably impossible”. Indeed. As we went over and through the file drawers filled with these writings—most of them tumbled about in no recognizable order and little if any serious effort to identify the topics or each “set” of papers scattered here and there—he was emphatic in his sense that the job with which he was about to entrust me was cumbersome and most likely impossible. So, he instructed me with rare emphasis, eliciting a true promise from me, that I should never—“I mean it, Zaner, never”—let my work on his papers interfere with my own work, never put mine aside to work on his. I was thus emphatically instructed that his papers must never come before I did what, as he said, I had to do for myself.
- 8.
With support from his endowed chair, Embree’s research assistants over two decades transcribed some 5000 pages and nearly 1,000,000 words. Nineteen posthumous articles were published from the Nachlaβ in various professional journals internationally to make his name known; they will be included in Volume II of “The Philosophical Papers of Dorion Cairns” published in The Phaenomenologica series sponsored with Springer by the Husserl Archive at Leuven. Volume I is Cairns’s Harvard dissertation of 1933. Subsequent volumes will include editions of his courses on epistemology, thinking, axiology, and ethics, etc. and then the ultimate but incomplete book manuscript based chiefly on his intentionality courses will finally be edited under its final title, An Husserlian Account of Minds.
In his life Cairns did however publish two translations of Husserl assigned to him by his mentor, namely Cartesian Meditations (1960) and Formal and Transcendental Logic (1969). At my request, Cairns let me take the latter home with me for summer vacation and, with advice from his good friend, H. L. Van Breda, I undertook to read through Cairns’ manuscript of his translation and while returning it to Cairns the following September, made sure that a copy of it was sent directly to Father Van Breda so it could then be prepared for publication—just as I had done earlier with Cairns’ translation of the Cartesian Meditations, to circumvent his usual habit of continuing to work on the translation. Translations of portions of Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen and Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins are in his Nachlaβ and he was working on a translation of the Ideen before his death, an effort that Kersten brought to completion. After Cairns’s death, his Guide to Translating Husserl (1973) and Conversations with Husserl and Fink (1976) were seen through the press by Zaner. There are also substantial portions Schutz’s Aufbau and a “Guide for Translating Schutz” in the Nachlaβ that was probably done in memory of his friend. It finally deserves mention that Father van Breda at Louvain and director of the Husserl Archives strongly supported Cairns,
- 9.
Husserl, Edmund, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Vol. 1: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie (Husserliana, vol. III). English translation by Fred Kersten, General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, Vol. II of Edmund Husserl: Collected Works. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982. Vol. 2: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution (Husserliana, Vol. IV. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950, 1952.
- 10.
Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen (1901–1902). Eng tr by J. N. Findlay, London: Routledge, 1973.
- 11.
Edmund Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917) (Husserliana: Edmund Husserl – Collected Works), Tr. John Barnett Brough, Springer Science series, 1991.
- 12.
Zaner, Richard. 1975. “Hume and the Discipline of Phenomenology: An Historical Perspective”. In: Phenomenological Perspectives: Essays in Honor of Herbert Spiegelberg. P. Bossert (ed.). Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 14–30.
- 13.
Husserl expresses the point emphatically; see his Formal and Transcendental Logic, trans. Dorion Cairns, Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1956, pp. 277–78.
- 14.
Edmund Husserl Cartesian Meditations, tr. Dorion Cairns, Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960, pp 13f.
- 15.
Essay is included in F. Kersten and R. Zaner (Eds.), Phenomenology: Criticism and Continuation: Essays in Memory of Dorion Cairns, Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973, pp. 223–238. This essay was for too long largely unappreciated; the version included in this book is carefully corrected and revised by Cairns in 1972 just prior to his death.
- 16.
Cairns, Dorion. “An Approach to Husserlian Phenomenology”, ibid. p. 14.
- 17.
Ibid, p. 224.
- 18.
Ibid, p. 225.
- 19.
Edmund Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic, tr. Dorion Cairns (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), pp. 277f.
- 20.
Zaner, Richard. 1970. “The Phenomenology of Epistemic Claims: And its Bearing on the Essence of Philosophy”, in M. Natanson, ed., Phenomenology and Social Reality: Essays in Memory of Alfred Schutz, Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 17–34.
- 21.
Cairns, loc. cit., p. 227.
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Zaner, R. (2019). The Role of Dorion Cairns in the Reception of Phenomenology in North America: The First “Born American” Phenomenologist. In: Ferri, M.B. (eds) The Reception of Husserlian Phenomenology in North America. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 100. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99185-6_7
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