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Husserl’s transcendental philosophy and the critique of naturalism

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Abstract

Throughout his career, Husserl identifies naturalism as the greatest threat to both the sciences and philosophy. In this paper, I explicate Husserl’s overall diagnosis and critique of naturalism and then examine the specific transcendental aspect of his critique. Husserl agreed with the Neo-Kantians in rejecting naturalism. He has three major critiques of naturalism: First, it (like psychologism and for the same reasons) is ‘countersensical’ in that it denies the very ideal laws that it needs for its own justification. Second, naturalism essentially misconstrues consciousness by treating it as a part of the world. Third, naturalism is the inevitable consequence of a certain rigidification of the ‘natural attitude’ into what Husserl calls the ‘naturalistic attitude’. This naturalistic attitude ‘reifies’ and it ‘absolutizes’ the world such that it is treated as taken-for-granted and ‘obvious’. Husserl’s transcendental phenomenological analysis, however, discloses that the natural attitude is, despite its omnipresence in everyday life, not primary, but in fact is relative to the ‘absolute’ transcendental attitude. The mature Husserl’s critique of naturalism is therefore based on his acceptance of the absolute priority of the transcendental attitude. The paradox remains that we must start from and, in a sense, return to the natural attitude, while, at the same time, restricting this attitude through the on-going transcendental vigilance of the universal epoché.

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Notes

  1. Husserl (1975b §§ 17–51). The second volume is published in two volumes as Husserliana XIX/1 and XIX/2, ed. Ursula Panzer (1984), trans. John Findlay (2001). Hereafter ‘LU’ followed by the Investigation number, paragraph number and pagination of English translation (vol. 1 = I; vol. 2 = II), followed by Husserliana volume and page number.

  2. The critical edition of the Crisis was published as Husserl (1954), trans. David Carr (1970). Hereafter ‘Crisis’ followed by English pagination and Husserliana (hereafter ‘Hua’) volume and page number.

  3. Earlier versions of the paper were presented to the Philosophy Colloquia at Northwestern University (27 January 06), The New School for Social Research (23 February 06), King’s College London (15 March 06) and the 36th Meeting of the Husserl Circle, Wellesley College (22 June 06). I am grateful to commentators for their comments including Cristina Lafont, Tom McCarthy, Steve Crowell and Tom Nenon.

  4. Husserl (2002a, pp. 249–295); originally Logos. Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Kultur 1 (1910–1911), pp. 289–341 (reprinted in Husserliana vol. XXV). Hereafter ‘PRS’ with Brainard pagination, followed by German pagination of original.

  5. Husserl (1931). The German text was not published until 1950 as Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, hrsg. Stephan Strasser, Husserliana I (1950), trans. D. Cairns as Cartesian Meditations. An Introduction to Phenomenology (1960). Hereafter ‘CM’ followed by page number of English translation, and Husserliana volume and page number.

  6. See Husserl (2006).

  7. Husserl speaks of Hume’s ‘naturalized sensualism, which could see only a collection of data floating in an insubstantial void’ in Formal and Transcendental Logic § 100; see Husserl (1974a, p. 227); trans. D. Cairns as Formal and Transcendental Logic (1969, p. 257). Hereafter ‘FTL’ followed by the page number of the English translation and the volume and page number of the Husserliana edition. Husserl also sees Hume as a transcendental thinker (Erste Philosophie I, Husserl (1965), Hua VII 176) and even thinks the transcendental motif was kept alive in a strange way even in Mill, and especially in Avenarius (Crisis, p. 195; VI 198).

  8. See later Hua XXXIV 258, where Husserl (2002b) accuses anthropologism of ‘falsely absolutizing a positivistic world’.

  9. For an overview of naturalism in the twentieth century, see Keil (2008).

  10. This technique of diagnosing a common failure under opposing intellectual systems is regularly exploited by Hilary Putnam—who himself is a great admirer of Husserl in this regard. Putnam is one of the most relentless critics of reductive naturalism, a position he formerly espoused (under the influence of Quine among others). The project of a naturalistic scientific metaphysics is disastrous, for Putnam, because it is in essence a reductive scientism, ‘one of the most dangerous contemporary tendencies’, leading ultimately to scepticism and the destruction of the human point of view. This is almost an exact repetition of Husserl’s views in the Crisis and Putnam like Husserl points to Galilean science as a major culprit. See Putnam (1983, p. 211).

  11. E. Husserl, letter to Rickert, December 1915, in Briefwechsel, ed. K. Schuhmann in collaboration with E. Schuhmann. Husserliana Dokumente, 10 Volumes (1994a), vol. 5, p. 178. See also Kern (1964, p. 35).

  12. See Jonas Cohn’s letter of 31 March 1911 to Husserl, in Husserl, Briefwechsel, ed. K. Schuhmann and E. Schuhmann, Vol. 5, p. 17.

  13. Hilary Putnam explicates his internal, pragmatic or commonsense realism ‘with a human face’ in terms of what stands counter to it, namely, metaphysical or scientific realism, on the one hand, and various forms of conceptual relativism which involve a loss of world, on the other. Putnam’s emphasis is on safeguarding our common-sense intuitions about the world, while resisting any move towards absolute metaphysics, and while rejecting all forms of dualism, especially the dualism of the world in itself and the world as it appears, and the dualism of facts and values. He does this by showing that each side of his contrast pair is caught in a countersensical set of claims, see Moran (2000, pp. 65–104).

  14. Husserl refers to LU in PRS, pp. 254, 295, and again in Ideas I, § 20, pp. 37–38; Hua III/I 37–38.

  15. Incidentally, the ‘sensation-monism’ here is a reference to Mach’s phenomenalist theory in his Analysis of Sensations (Mach, 1914, revised and expanded 1913). Bertrand Russell would later acknowledge in his My Philosophical Development (1995, p. 134) that his ‘neutral monism’ was inspired by Mach’s book and the view developed by William James (2003) in his Essays in Radical Empiricism. Mach’s sensationalism is summed up in the following passage of his Analysis of Sensations:

    We see an object having a point S. If we touch S, that is, bring it into connexion with our body, we receive a prick. We can see S, without feeling the prick. But as soon as we feel the prick we find S on the skin. The visible point, therefore, is a permanent nucleus, to which the prick is annexed, according to circumstances, as something accidental. From the frequency of analogous occurrences we ultimately accustom ourselves to regard all properties of bodies as ‘effects’ proceeding from permanent nuclei and conveyed to the ego through the medium of the body; which effects we call sensations. By this operation, however, these nuclei are deprived of their entire sensory content, and converted into mere mental symbols. The assertion, then, is correct that the world consists only of our sensations. In which case we have knowledge only of sensations, and the assumption of the nuclei referred to, or of a reciprocal action between them, from which sensations proceed, turns out to be quite idle and superfluous. Such a view can only suit with a half-hearted realism or a half-hearted philosophical criticism.

    Mach is advocating a kind of neutral monism of sensations. Mach is responsible for the term ‘sensation complexes’ that appears in Husserl. Mach writes in the Analysis of Sensations:

    Let us consider, first, the reciprocal relations of the elements of the complex A B C…, without regarding K L M … (our body). All physical investigations are of this sort. A white ball falls upon a bell; a sound is heard. The ball turns yellow before a sodium lamp, red before a lithium lamp. Here the elements (A B C…) appear to be connected only with one another and to be independent of our body (K L M…). But if we take santonin, the ball again turns yellow. If we press one eye to the side, we see two balls. If we close our eyes entirely, there is no ball there at all. If we sever the auditory nerve, no sound is heard. The elements = A B C…, therefore, are not only connected with one another, but also with K L M; To this extent, and to this extent only, do we call A B C… sensations, and regard A B C as belonging to the ego. In what follows, wherever the reader finds the terms “Sensation,” “Sensation-complex,” used alongside of or instead of the expressions “element,” “complex of elements,” it must be borne in mind that it is only in the connexion and relation in question, only in their functional dependence, that the elements are sensations. In another functional relation they are at the same time physical objects. We only use the additional term “sensations” to describe the elements, because most people are much more familiar with the elements in question as sensations (colours, sounds, pressures, spaces, times, etc.), while according to the popular conception it is particles of mass that are considered as physical elements, to which the elements, in the sense here used, are attached as “properties” or “effects.”

    Mach concludes:

    Thus the great gulf between physical and psychological research persists only when we acquiesce in our habitual stereotyped conceptions. A colour is a physical object as soon as we consider its dependence, for instance, upon its luminous source, upon other colours, upon temperatures, upon spaces, and so forth. When we consider, however, its dependence upon the retina (the elements K L M …), it is a psychological object, a sensation. Not the subject matter, but the direction of our investigation, is different in the two domains. (Mach, 1914, see also Chap. II., pp. 43, 44).

  16. See Husserl (1952a); trans. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer as Ideas pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Second Book, Husserl Collected Works III (1989). Hereafter ‘Ideas II’.

  17. For a discussion of Husserl’s relation to Avenarius and other positivists, see Summer (1985).

  18. In his letter of December 1915 to Rickert, Husserl says that even ‘in his naturalistic beginnings’ his soul ‘was filled with a secret nostalgia (Sehnsucht) for the old Romantic land of German Idealism’ (Briefwechsel, vol. 5, p. 178, my trans.). Rickert inspired this longing as Windelband, ‘not a genuinely creative thinker’ (ibid., p. 177) did not. Husserl likewise speaks of phenomenology as the secret nostalgia of modern philosophy in Ideas I § 62, p. 142; Hua III/1 118.

  19. Husserl also thought there was an unresolved ‘extreme empiricism in Bolzano’ which he criticizes in his Draft Preface to the 1913 Revision of LU. See Husserl (1975a). See also Von Duhn (2003, pp. 21–33).

  20. Mark Textor has indicated to me that that is actually a misrepresentation of Bolzano’s propositions in themselves since some of them can never be instantiated or thought and hence cannot be exactly equivalent to senses. According to Textor’s Bolzanos Propositionalismus (1996), Husserl misread Bolzano on this point. Husserl turns Bolzano’s Sätze an sich into species or types of assertoric or judgemental contents. This may be a good idea, but it is not what Bolzano intended. For Bolzano, the Satz an sich is one of his basic concepts, not reducible to anything like a ‘type’ or ‘species’ of assertoric content , rather the Satz figures in the analyses of many (if not all) concepts. For example, Bolzano will argue that a Satz an sich cannot be a judgemental content, for some Sätze an sich cannot be judged. No one cannot judge 1 = 2, it is manifestly incoherent. Perhaps one can say that a Satz an sich can be the content of a judgement or its negation can be judged. But then there may contents which cannot be judged at all: there will never be evidence that can determine our judgement. This is no conclusive argument against Husserl, but makes the difficulties of reducing Satz an sich to something we already know and accept clear.

  21. Husserl, however, was unsatisfied with a certain ‘psychologising of the universal’ he detected in Lotze (1888) Logic (1874) § 316. See Husserl (1994b, p. 1); Hua XXII 156. For his critique of Lotze, see LU II §10 I 322, No. 5; Hua XIX/1 138.

  22. A similar transcendental account of Platonic Ideas (as laws governing thoughts and not things) is to be found in Paul Natorp, Platos Ideenlehre (1903, revised edition 1922), trans. Politis (2004). See also Politis (2001, pp. 47–62).

  23. See Kaufmann (1940, pp. 124–142).

  24. Husserl (1977a, § 61, p. 116); trans. Kersten (1983, p. 139). Hereafter ‘Ideas I’.

  25. See Husserl’s draft Encyclopedia Brittanica article, Trans. Phen., p. 95; Hua IX 247. Husserl repeats this criticism of Brentano in Crisis § 68 and elsewhere.

  26. Husserl’s Amsterdam Lectures are translated in Husserl (1997, see especially, p. 219); Hua IX 310.

  27. Husserl (1985), trans. Claire Ortiz Hill, Husserl (2008).

  28. Husserl (1997, p. 219); Hua IX 309–310 (hereafter: Trans. Phen.).

  29. Husserl (1973b, § 8, p. 34).

  30. On the natural attitude, see Luft (2002a, pp. 114–119) and idem, ‘Husserl’s Phenomenological Discovery of the Natural Attitude’, in 1998, pp. 153–170; see also Bermes (2004).

  31. See the texts in Husserliana Vol. XXXIV, and Luft (2002b, pp. 35).

  32. An attitude, for Husserl, has a very broad range, it aims not just at individual things but at a whole context or world or ‘field’ of things and puts them in perspective in a particular light. It may be passively in the background or actively adopted. The concept of ‘attitude’ is already to be found in both the empirical psychology of Husserl’s day and in the Brentanian school. See the article ‘Einstellung,’ in J.Ritter et al. (eds) Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie Bd II, (Ritter, 1971), pp. 417ff.

  33. Husserl has a broad range of terms for the natural attitude (die natürliche Einstellung) including the ‘pre-scientific’ (VI 121, 152, 156) or ‘extra-scientific attitude’, the ‘natural theoretical attitude’ (Ideas I § 50, p. 113; Hua III/1 94), the ‘natural-naïve attitude’ (V 148) and with the correlative discovery of the notion of ‘world’ (die Welt), initially understood as ‘my natural surrounding world’ (meine natürliche Umwelt, Ideas I § 28), the world in which I find myself all the time and which supplies the necessary background for all intentional acts, and for all other worlds which it is possible to inhabit (e.g., the world of science, the world of mathematics, the world of religious belief, and so on), my ‘natural worldly life’ (natürliches Weltleben, Crisis VI 121, 152, 156), the ‘pregiven life of experience’ (die vorgegebene Erfahrungswelt, Crisis VI 1).

  34. See XIII 196–199 where Husserl discusses the influence of Avenarius’ conception of das Vorgefundene. Husserl was also influenced by Mach (1903); English translation Mach (1914).

  35. Husserl (1974b, pp. 9–56); Erste Philosophie (1923/1924). Erster Teil: Kritische Ideengeschichte. Hrsg. R. Boehm, Hua VII (1965, pp. 230–287). The reference here is to p. 20 of the English translation and Hua VII 244.

  36. Fink (1966c, § 4, p. 11) (my translation).

  37. Husserl greatly resented the Heideggerian accusation that his phenomenology was oriented to the theoretical and ignored or undervalued the practical nature of our being-in-the-world. In fact, Husserl lays great stress on the non-theoretical nature of the natural attitude. It is, however, only when we come to recognise the natural attitude for what it is, that we break with it and adopt the philosophical, theoretical attitude which, as Husserl says in Vienna Lecture (1935), is still a form of praxis, ‘theoretical praxis’ (see Crisis, p. 111; VI 113).

  38. Fink, Z-XIII, 1934, 2a (cited in Luft, op. cit., p. 90 n. 23).

  39. Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie. Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1925, hrsg. W. Biemel, Hua IX (1968), trans. J. Scanlon as Phenomenological Psychology. Lectures, Summer Semester 1925 (1977b). Hereafter ‘Phen. Psych.’ followed by section number, page number of the English and then the Husserliana volume and page number. The reference here is Phen. Psych. § 44, p. 168; Hua IX 2.

  40. Fink (1966b, pp. 157–178); trans. Arthur Grugan (1972, pp. 5–28), see esp. p. 9 [German, p. 159].

  41. See Bruzina (2004, p. 186).

  42. The inability of the natural attitude to gain a critical stance on itself has echoes in similar to Heidegger’s claim that common sense is the enemy of philosophy.

  43. Fink (1966a, p. 14).

  44. Ibid.

  45. Fink, ‘What Does the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl Want to Accomplish?’ Research in Phenomenology, op. cit., p. 10.

  46. Merleau-Ponty (1945), trans. C. Smith as Phenomenology of Perception (1962). Henceforth ‘PP’ followed by page number of English translation; then, pagination of French edition. The reference here is to p. 419n; 365n.

  47. Merleau-Ponty (1966), trans. as ‘The Metaphysical in Man,’ by Hubert Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus, Sense and Nonsense (1964, p. 92).

  48. See Zahavi (2001) for an exploration of the meaning of Husserl’s transcendental intersubjectivity as an open field between personal subjects.

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  1. University College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland

    Dermot Moran

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Moran, D. Husserl’s transcendental philosophy and the critique of naturalism. Cont Philos Rev 41, 401–425 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-008-9088-3

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