Husserl and Sellars on the problem of epistemic and categorial givenness

Abstract

This paper explores the conditions of possibility of a thematic comparison between Husserl’s concept of givenness and Sellars’s critique of the “entire framework of givenness”. Our aim is to suggest that Husserl’s framework of givenness is not encompassed by Sellars’s critique of the Myth of the Given. After introducing the state of the art of the debate concerning Husserl and the contemporary problem of the given, we analyse whether the Husserlian notion of givenness would be an instance of either the “epistemic given” or the “categorial given” criticized by Sellars. We argue that this is not the case. Concerning the categorial given, we face the challenging argument put forward by O’Shea that however phenomenologically rich our concept of given may be, it would fall prey of the Myth of the Categorial Given. We argue that this objection does not apply to Husserl’s theory of categorial givenness.