Reading Old Texts in New Ways: Employing ‘Outmoded’ Thought in Enacting a Living Phenomenology
This paper amplifies a growing movement within philosophy to take a critical analysis of traditional texts/figures for the sake of transforming the status quo at the level of scholarship and in the world. It is my belief that philosophy academia is suited to engage with “the real world.” I examine how we can use philosophical methods in a new way to understand why and how people, including scholars, act detrimentally (i.e., perpetuating racist, sexist, ideas/behaviors in their research) despite their interest in the common good. I suggest that philosophers, specifically in critical phenomenology, can enact self-reflection as part of their critical work by turning to Michel Foucault’s later writings on subjectivity.