On the Method of Careful Looking
Dietrich von Hildebrand: Was ist Philosophie? (Gesammelte Werke, Habbel/Kohlhammer, 1976). English edition: What Is Philosophy?
In this book Hildebrand describes what philosophical thinking actually is: an attentive looking at what shows itself. Not construction, not speculation, not mere conceptual analysis — but the readiness to take reality as it gives itself. The book is at the same time a defense of philosophy against every attempt to reduce it to the philosophy of science or the analysis of language. Anyone who wants to understand why this book’s method proceeds the way it does will find the best explanation here.
Dietrich von Hildebrand: Sittlichkeit und ethische Werterkenntnis (Patris-Verlag, 1982) (Morality and the Knowledge of Ethical Values).
A study of how we come to know moral values. Hildebrand shows that the knowledge of the good is not a mere matter of feeling but a genuine grasp of an objective reality. This book is especially valuable for anyone who wonders whether objective values really exist — or whether everything is just a matter of taste.
Josef Seifert: Back to Things in Themselves (Routledge, 1997).
A philosophical foundation of realistic phenomenology, written in English. Seifert shows that the phenomenological method — the “return to the things themselves,” as Husserl put it — need not lead to idealism, but can lead instead to knowledge of things as they really are. For anyone who wants a deeper understanding of this book’s philosophical method.
Roman Ingarden: Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt (Niemeyer, 1964/65). English edition: Controversy over the Existence of the World.
Ingarden’s monumental work is perhaps the twentieth century’s most thorough attempt to clarify the fundamental structures of that which is: What does it mean to exist? What modes of being are there? What distinguishes a self-sufficient entity from a non-self-sufficient one? The work is long and rigorously academic, but for the philosophically minded reader it is a gold mine. The distinction between different modes of being and forms of existence, which played a role in this book, goes back essentially to Ingarden.
Full bibliographic details in the Bibliography.
Further reading: On Understanding Being and Essence →