Short answers, pulled from the story.
Steven Crowell is an American philosopher and professor emeritus at Rice University, where he taught from 1983 to 2022. He is known for his work on twentieth-century European philosophy, particularly phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, and post-structuralism, with a sustained focus on the thought of Husserl and Heidegger.
Crowell earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale University in 1981. He joined Rice University two years later and remained there for the duration of his academic career.
Crowell's major books include Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning (Northwestern University Press, 2002), Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger (Cambridge University Press, 2013), and the co-edited volume Transcendental Heidegger (Stanford University Press, 2007).
Normativity refers to what makes a claim or judgment correct or binding rather than merely preferred. Crowell's 2013 Cambridge University Press book places this concept at the center of his reading of Husserl and Heidegger, arguing that phenomenology has important contributions to make to debates about the sources of meaning and reasons in human experience.
Crowell taught at Rice University from 1983 to 2022, a period of nearly four decades. He holds the title of professor emeritus following his retirement.
Maurice Natanson was a philosopher who played a significant role in bringing European phenomenological thought into American philosophical and social discourse. Crowell edited The Prism of the Self: Philosophical Essays in Honor of Maurice Natanson, published by Kluwer in 1995, as a tribute to Natanson's influence on the field.