William A. Earle

Infobox_Philosopher
region = Continental Philosophy
era = 20th-century philosophy
color = #B0C4DE

name = William A. Earle
birth = 1919
death = October 16, 1988
school_tradition = Existentialism, Phenomenology
main_interests = Contemporary continental philosophy, History of ideas, Rationalism, Irrationalism, Cultural criticism, Surrealism
influences = Karl Jaspers, Søren Kierkegaard, Platonism
influenced = Peter Suber,
notable_ideas = Singularity of each human existence, intuitive basis of knowledge |

William A. Earle (1919 – October 16 1988) was a twentieth century American philosopher.

Earle was an important figure within the movements of existentialism and phenomenology. He had particular expertise in the thought of Karl Jaspers and was an authority on surrealism. His interests included cultural criticism, the history of ideas, aesthetics, film, filmmaking, and mysticism. Students and colleagues regarded him as a strikingly independent, richly provocative educator and thinker.

Life

Earle was born in Saginaw, Michigan. After service in World War II, he studied at the University of Aix-Marseilles under Gaston Berger and at the University of Chicago under Charles Hartshorne and received PhDs from both institutions.

From 1948 to 1982 he taught philosophy at Northwestern University, with visiting lectureships at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. In 1962 Earle, along with John Daniel Wild, James M. Edie, and others, founded the [http://www.spep.org Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy] .

William Earle died in Evanston, Illinois. [Edward S. Casey, "Memorial Minutes: William Earle 1919-1988," "Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association", vol. 63, no. 1 (Sep/1989), pp. 31-2.]

Philosophy

Earle's thought is infused with an appreciation of the singularity of human existences and with a sensibility that is both aesthetic and ethical. He wrote that he considered his books "Objectivity" (1955), "The Autobiographical Consciousness" (1972), and "Mystical Reason" (1980) as a continuous set of works in which one idea is examined from three successive points of view. [See "Mystical Reason", Appendix V, pp. 201-203.] In "Objectivity" he defended the objectivity of the being of the phenomenological object. In "The Autobiographical Consciousness" he explored the phenomenological subject, the "I" or self conceived both as an embodied existence and as transcendental. And in "Mystical Reason" he argued, in a "strictly philosophical" way, that the transcendental ego is identical with absolute being or God himself, proposing that there is a kind of mysticism at the core of all truly rational philosophy.

Quotations from Earle's works

On the objective reality of the world

:"The problem of knowledge is essentially, what does mind know? Does it know what is, or does it know only what it creates in the very act of knowing it? And the view for which I have argued is that all cognitive consciousness is an acquaintance with what is, or with reality.... The mind does not have to infer its way out of itself; it is always outside itself looking at an object.... If we must have a name for this old idea of the truth, it is perhaps an 'acquaintance' theory. When we are aware of something, we are not aware of something that 'corresponds' to something else; nor is the awareness itself a correspondence to anything. Nor is our view that of the coherence theory.... Our analysis finally is metaphysical.... The mind, in its cognitive dimension, intends Being."::— "Objectivity", pp. 153-7.

On human nature and human life

:"The very posing of the question 'What is man?' is itself an invitation to forget who we are."::— "The Autobiographical Consciousness", p. 91.

:"The laws of perception have been analysed "ad nauseum"; but my life is not in the least concerned with the "laws" of perception, but rather with "what" I perceive, and that remains absolutely contingent, accidental, non-deducible, and therefore "surprising" in principle.... Surprise also happens to be the condition of jokes, love, zest, and in effect a general synonym for life itself."::— "The Invisibility of the World", in "Evanescence", p. 59.

On value theory and ethics

:"It would be a mistake to divorce the general consideration of value from ontology, by isolating it in some 'value theory.' Values for me represent the way I finally want to be."::— "The Autobiographical Consciousness", p. 182.

On literature

:"When literature is purest, when it is not trying to do what it cannot do in any case, it never gives a scientific explanation of anything, it delivers no laws of human existence, it neither urges nor threatens us with anything.... At its best, literature simply presents or records singular human existences in their singular situations, making their absolute choices of life."::— "The Autobiographical Consciousness", p. 95.

On God and truth

:"The transcendental ego is... in its essence, the essential intuition of God by God. This intuition itself constituting the ego may be explicit as in the perfection of mystic experience, or implicit, down through any number of grades of consciousness."::— "Mystical Reason", p. 100.

:"Truth... is related to "troth", which is the same as loyalty or faith. When true, I am faithful to friends and the God in them and in me.... The passion for truth which men of good will manifest is certainly not a matter of ascertaining the exact chemical composition of water or the number of grains of sand on the beach. It always was and remains a passion for recognizing and honoring the divinity in oneself and the other."::— "Mystical Reason", pp. 106-7.

Major works

Books

*cite book
title=Objectivity: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology
publisher=Noonday Press
location = New York
year = 1955 157 pages. Revised edition issued in 1968 by Quadrangle Press, Chicago.

*cite book
last = Earle | first = William
coauthors = James M. Edie and John Wild
title=Christianity and Existentialism
publisher=Northwestern University Press
location = Evanston, Illinois
year = 1963 186 pages.

*cite book
title=The Autobiographical Consciousness: A Philosophical Inquiry into Existence
publisher=Quadrangle Press
location = Chicago
year = 1972 235 pages. ISBN 0-8129-6164-1 (paper), ISBN 0-8129-0191-6 (cloth)

*cite book
title=Public Sorrows and Private Pleasures
publisher=Indiana University Press
location = Bloomington and London
year = 1976 175 pages. ISBN 0-253-34678-9

*cite book
title=Mystical Reason
publisher=Regnery Gateway
location = Chicago
year = 1980 205 pages. ISBN 0-89526-677-6

*cite book
title=Evanescence: Peri-phenomenological Essays
publisher=Regnery Gateway
location = Chicago
year = 1984 120 pages. ISBN 0-89526-830-2

*cite book
title=Imaginary Memoirs
publisher=W. Earle
year = 1986 (3 vols.)

*cite book
title=A Surrealism of the Movies
publisher=Precedent Publishing
location = Chicago
year = 1987 173 pages. ISBN 0-913750-02-6 (paper), ISBN 0-913750-16-6 (cloth)

Translations

*cite book
last= Jaspers
first= Karl
authorlink = Karl Jaspers
others = translated by William Earle
title= Reason and Existenz
publisher=Noonday Press
location = New York
year = 1955

econdary References

*cite book
others = Edward S. Casey and Donald V. Morano, eds.
title=The Life of the Transcendental Ego: Essays in Honor of William Earle
publisher=State University of New York Press
location = Albany
year = 1986 217 pages. ISBN 0-88706-170-2 (paper), ISBN 0-88706-171-0 (cloth)

* [http://star.txstate.edu/02/11/14/opinions.html "Professor's maverick ways leave lasting mark"] Jeffrey Gordon's recollection of William Earle.

Notes