Marvin Farber e il progetto di una naturalizzazione della fenomenologia

Usually scholars think of Marvin Farber as an American pupil of Husserl and his figure is given historical and institutional credit. It is also said that his thought misrepresented the intentions of the master and that his idea of a naturalization of phenomenology was devoid of hermeneutical grounds. All this has fed the myth of his heresy, the idea that his philosophical proposal could be summarized as a devia- tion from the orthodox canon. In this paper the legitimacy of this perspective is widely discussed. Is it really correct to think of him as a child of the phenomenol- ogical continental tradition transplanted on American soil? Or would it not be more fruitful to consider him, beyond the canon, as an American philosopher fully im- mersed in the epistemological debates of his time? The paper argues in favor of this way of interpretation, discussing Farber’s own theoretical proposal in conjunction with the ecosystem of the American philosophical history.