Reddit reviews Introduction to Phenomenology

Lee Braver's A Thing of This World reads a number of continental figures through the lens of the realism/anti-realism debate. As a result, it touches on a lot of epistemic issues. It's also really accessible and comprehensive. It might be a great starting point.

Husserl might be a good thinker to look at, since his concerns are more frequently directly epistemic in comparison to thinkers like Deleuze or Derrida. Unfortunately, I don't know of any good introductory textbooks to recommend though I'm sure there are some! I've heard good things about this one though: http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Phenomenology-Dermot-Moran/dp/0415183731/ref=pd_sim_b_8?ie=UTF8&refRID=0D5CK2SXTC27T8HBQFE7

My introduction has been through Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger, but its main topic isn't epistemology and isn't always accessible.

Dermot Moran's Introduction to Phenomenology is excellent, with a chapter devoted to each of the major figures.

I haven't read them myself but I have it on very good authority that the best two intro texts to Levinas' thought are two books by Adriaan Peperzak: Beyond: The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas and To The Other: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas

A background in phenomenology and continental thought is also very helpful. For phenomenology if you need it Introduction to Phenomenology by Dermot Moran is pretty good. One thing to keep in mind while you read is that Levinas, rather than invent new terms, uses very familiar ones in very distinct ways. He is supposedly trying to radically depart from the general trajectory of western thought, or possibly even articulate something different altogether (partially as a result of his 'phenomenological reduction'). He does often define what he means by things like "religion", "metaphysics" and "ontology", for example, so be sure to flag any 'definitions' when you come across them. If possible it might be good to try to put together a reading group as it is the type of work that everyone will latch onto something different, so brining those points of contact together can be very fruitful.

I've seen Levinas come up on this sub a few times in the past little while so it might be worth it to even see if people around here want to read through with you, though face-to-face conversation might be better (that was a lame 'Levinas joke'!)

Hopefully someone more versed in Sartre will be able to help you out. But based on my studying him at undergrad, the idea is that what's special about the for-itself is that it's able to think of things that don't exist (nothingness), and imagine possibilities for itself that aren't realised. So, I as a conscious human can imagine myself being other than I am, for example, as flying through the air even though I'm sitting. A stone, though, an in-itself, doesn't have this gap between what it is and what it can think itself as being.

So then I'd want to say 'nonself-identical' just means something like 'has consciousness and thus lacks any defined once for all essence because is able to contemplate alternate possibilities for itself' and 'internal negation' is the distance between oneself considered as in-itself and as for-itself brought about by this ability.

But I'm not a Sartre expert, and also personally I think looking too hard for precision here is a mistake. The textbook we used (https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Phenomenology-Dermot-Moran/dp/0415183731) wasn't too complimentary about Sartre's technical ontological skills, and I agreed with it, though you might check out https://www.amazon.com/Sartres-Being-Nothingness-Readers-Guides/dp/0826474691 and https://www.amazon.com/Commentary-Jean-Paul-Sartres-Nothingness-Reprint/dp/0226096998/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=JZ8S92AXKWP0FC21AAB7 for more sympathetic readings (I haven't read the former but guess it's good).

No really, it's a great book. Only about 200 pages, and explains how to think phenomenologically in a very simple and accessible way. Towards the end, it shows how Continental phenomenology as a tradition compares to modernist philosophy, postmodernism, and pre-modern Western philosophies like Thomism.

It also goes over all the broad sub-movements within it, like existential phenomenology, Heidegger's philosophy of Being, poststructuralism, etc, but for a longer (400 something pgs.) overview of Continental philosophy from a historic perspective a better book might be Intro to Phenomenology by Moran.

Also, another book recommended to me (currently on my reading list) by Kaufer and Cheremo goes over the contemporary project to combine phenomenological insights with cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and psychology.