Philosophy

Faculty and Staff Directory

Daniele De Santis

Instructor
Philosophy

Contact Information

Email

desantid@seattleu.edu

Office

CASY

Biography

I was born in Genzano di Roma, Italy, in 1983. I enrolled in the University of Rome I “La Sapienza” in 2002 where I majored in Philosophy with a M.A. thesis on Jacques Derrida’s early interpretation (1953-67) of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology. In the fall of the year 2009 I started my Ph. D. dissertation at the University of Rome II “Tor Vergata”: it deals with the so-called “ontologist phenomenologists” of the Gottingen and Munich circles, such as Jean Héring, Roman Ingarden and Herbert Spiegelberg. In 2011 I spent the winter semester in Freiburg at both the Husserl and Fink Archives looking for unpublished writings and documents. Then I moved to Berlin where I studied at the Humboldt-Grimm-Zentrum. My current main interest is Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, but I am also interested in the origins and consequences of the phenomenological movement. Regarding the roots of Husserl’s phenomenology in the 19th century I deal above all with Brentano and the Brentanian School as well as with Bolzano’s Wissenschaftslehre. With regard to Husserl’s students, I am interested in all the three of the German phenomenological circles (Gottingen, Munich, Freiburg) as well as in the French and Italian developments of his phenomenology. Currently I am working on two papers. The first is devoted to an analysis of Husserl’s highly disputed method known as “eidetic variation” in connection with the notions of “conflict” and “passive modalizations” of consciousness. The second paper I am currently working on is about Husserl’s conception of the “a priori” where I strive to follow and develop further a Mikel Dufrenne’s suggestion, according to which in Husserl “a proliferation of the a priori corresponds to the desire to discover the path to an authentic science”. Apart from my philosophical interests, I admire literature and poetry. My favorite authors are: Thomas Bernhard, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Carlo Emilio Gadda. In music I listen to everything from classical and opera to hip-hop and rock. I also like to cook and love good food and wine, especially red.