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The Practical Obscurity of Philosophy: Husserl’s “Arbeit der Probleme der letzten Voraussetzungen

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Abstract

I argue that the teleological-historical reflections of the Crisis are an effort to clarify what Husserl calls the “ultimate presuppositions” of phenomenology. I begin by describing the kind of presuppositions revealed in natural-attitude and phenomenological reflection. I then consider how the ultimate presuppositions become problematic for Husserl. After clarifying the distinction between these presuppositions and those already handled by the reduction, I consider the appropriateness of the new reflections Husserl undertakes in order to address them.

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Notes

  1. The preface to the Crisis implies that its Eigenständigkeit as an introduction depends upon its teleological approach: “… Sonach wird sie zu einer eigenständigen Einleitung in die Transzendentale Phänomenologie” (Hua VI, p. xxiv). See also §26, where Husserl argues that “our kind of teleological approach to history” has a “methodical function for the definitive construction of a transcendental philosophy which satisfies its most proper meaning” (1970, p. 98). See also Teleologie in der Philosophiegeschichte, for the view that the teleological-historical framework of the Crisis is more “principled” and “systematic” than the approach that begins with absolute subjectivity (Hua XXIX, p. 426).

  2. There is, of course, naivete within the phenomenologically purified field: unnoticed difficulties, overlooked connections between problems, incomplete or faulty variations, etc. However, as soon as the reduction to transcendental life is attained, it is evident that it is a field of final evidences: “any attempt to inquire behind it would be absurd” (Hua VI, p. 192; 1970, p. 188). On the other hand, the evidences of the world are henceforth titles for transcendental problems.

  3. Husserl formulates the epoché as follows: “In the fundamental findings we have presupposed nothing, not even the concept of philosophy, and thus we shall also proceed in the future. Formulated explicitly, the philosophical epoché that we are undertaking shall consist of our completely abstaining from any judgment regarding the doctrinal content of any previous philosophy and effecting all of our demonstrations within the limits set by this abstention” (Hua III, pp. 39–40; 1982, pp. 33–34).

  4. By exhibiting the “essential subjective correlates” of world-directed life, phenomenology sets forth “the full and true ontic meaning of objective being and thus of all objective truth” (Hua VI, p. 179; 1970, p. 176).

  5. Carr’s translation of the Foreword can be misleading. From “Sonach wird sie zu einer eigenständigen Einleitung in die transzendentale Phänomenologie.” he translates: “Accordingly, it becomes, in its own right, an introduction to transcendental phenomenology.” The decision to translate eigenständig—the most obvious meaning of which is “independent,” or “self-contained”—as “in its own right” makes it seem that Husserl wants to say that this investigation is also an introduction, just like the others. In fact, he is describing this introduction as one that can stand on its own.

  6. In fact, the millennia long task is oriented toward the production of one single unified product. See Hua XXIX, pp. 377–378, where Husserl compares philosophy to “ordinary vocations”: “Durch Lehre über Übung…pflanzt sich die Erzeugungsmethode fort und somit das Werden von immer neuen Exemplen von Erzeugnissen der jeweiligen Artung. Verhält es sich hinsichtlich des Philosophenberufes bzw. der Aufgabe ‘Philosophie’ nicht fatal anders? Liegt nicht im Sinne der Philosophie (in ihrem ‘Begrif’) die absolute Einmaligkeit?.

  7. This is also evident from Husserl’s attitude toward Ideen, which does not arrive at transcendental subjectivity through historical critique. Even in Teleologie in der Philosopheigeschichte, and despite his ongoing dissatisfaction with Ideas as an introduction to phenomenology, Husserl judges that treatise to present a basically valid philosophical method (Hua XXIX, p. 399).

  8. This is far from the only important consequence of Husserl’s reflections on philosophy as a Beruf. For Husserl, properly vocational values are discovered in a loving pursuit in which they become “mine” in a privileged sense. One cannot relinquish their pursuit without becoming fundamentally dissatisfied with oneself. This possibility of dissatisfaction is crucial to the “necessity” Husserl claims for the transformations phenomenology is to effect at the levels of both philosophical and global history.

  9. Husserl’s Crisis-period reflections on Europe are primarily found in part one of the Crisis, the “Vienna Lecture,” and several manuscripts on historicity collected in Hua XXIX. We will not here consider the reflections on Europe contained in the Kaizo essay of 1923. The content of Husserl’s Europe-concept is already developed there. One may argue, however, that Husserl considers Europe within the confines of a reflection on social ethics and is not yet aware of the methodological importance the concept has for the systematic presentation of phenomenology as philosophy.

  10. Contrast, for instance, Jan Patočka’s approach to the Europe-problem in Plato and Europe, which begins from the hypothesis that “Europe has disappeared” (1996, p. 83; 2002, p. 89).

  11. Rodolphe Gasché recognizes Husserl’s intention well when he writes that Greece overcomes its national bounds via the “constitutive foreignness of the universal” (2009, p. 70). It is not the alien homeworld, but the manifestation of the universal itself that unseats the nation or the factual community of nations as the ultimate horizon for the verification of truth-claims.

  12. Husserl presents his concept of renaissance as if it were identical with that employed by historians to describe a “period” in European history. In fact, it points to paradoxes inherent to European history as such. In particular, there is the problem of whether Europe can appropriate Greece through acts of cultural memory, which would appeal to a spiritual continuity running from ancient Greece through the Roman, Hellenic and Medieval developments. Can an appeal to lineage appropriate the Greek essence as what it was? Or is the only proper appropriation a disowning of every “middle-age” that would link present European culture to Greece as its historical parent. These and other associated questions warrant an in-depth study.

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Acknowledgments

The author is the recipient of a research grant from the Belgian American Educational Foundation and thanks the Foundation for its support.

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Knies, K. The Practical Obscurity of Philosophy: Husserl’s “Arbeit der Probleme der letzten Voraussetzungen”. Husserl Stud 27, 83–104 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-011-9089-7

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