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Ordinary experience and the epoché: Husserl and Heidegger versus Rosen (and Cavell)

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Abstract

In various publications, Stanley Cavell and Stanley Rosen have emphasized the philosophical importance of what they both call “the ordinary.” They both contrast their recovery of “the ordinary” with traditional philosophy, including the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl. In this paper, I address Rosen’s claims in particular. I argue that Rosen turns the real situation on its head. Contra Rosen, it is not the case that the employment of Husserl’s epoché distorts the authentic voice of “the” ordinary—a voice that is clearly audible only from within everyday life. For (pace both Cavell and Rosen) there is no single “voice” of the ordinary: There are many such “voices,” not all of which are to be relied upon. Therefore, if we want to achieve an adequate grasp of ordinary experience, and Rosen does want this, we precisely need the epoché to curtail the misleading messages of certain other “voices of the ordinary.” Moreover, and somewhat surprisingly, this positive evaluation of the Husserlian epoché finds support in Heidegger’s writings from the twenties. I argue that Heidegger, too, believed that the epoché was an indispensable tool for the philosophical attempt to capture ordinary experience.

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Notes

  1. Cavell (1988, p. 171).

  2. Cavell (1988, p. 171).

  3. Cavell (1988, pp. 25–26).

  4. Rosen (2002, pp. 4–5).

  5. Rosen (2002, p. 5).

  6. Rosen (2002, p. 6).

  7. Rosen indeed wonders whether the “puzzle of the relation between philosophy and ordinary experience” isn’t already “contained within the disagreement between Plato and Aristotle” (Rosen 1999, p. 239).

  8. Rosen (2002, p. 6).

  9. Steeves (2006, pp. xiii–xiv).

  10. Cavell (1994, p. 62).

  11. Cavell (1994, p. 66).

  12. Cavell (1994, p. 67).

  13. Cavell (1994, p. 66).

  14. Rosen (1999, pp. 234–235).

  15. Rosen (2002, pp. 44–45).

  16. Rosen (2002, pp. 82–83).

  17. Rosen (2002, p. 88).

  18. Rosen (2002, p. 83).

  19. Rosen (2002, pp. 301–302).

  20. Hubert Dreyfus, in particular, has insisted on a marked contrast between Husserl’s perspective of a detached, disengaged spectator, and Heidegger’s involved, engaged perspective (Dreyfus 1991).

  21. Rosen (2002, p. 117).

  22. Rosen (2002, p. 296).

  23. Rosen (2002, p. 302).

  24. But see, for example, some of the texts collected in Sect. 4 of Husserl (2008), where Husserl emphasizes that it is “ridiculous” (lächerlich) to doubt the existence of the world and maintains, contra Descartes, that all doubt presupposes the being of the world (Husserl 2008, pp. 236, 251–288). See also the criticism of Descartes in Husserl (2002, pp. 405–419).

  25. Heidegger (1994, §§ 3, 47–48).

  26. This is fortunate, for one may question whether the Cartesian Way is even coherent (see Overgaard 2002).

  27. Rosen (2002, p. 6).

  28. Russell (1956, p. 156).

  29. Crick (1995, p. 31).

  30. Damasio (2000, p. 320).

  31. I do not think my criticism of Crick and Damasio commits me to skepticism with respect to the neuroscience of perception. To quote Husserl: “When it is actually natural science that speaks, we listen gladly and as disciples. But it is not always natural science that speaks when natural scientists are speaking” (Husserl 1976a, p. 45). No doubt Damasio and Crick in some sense base their views of perception on scientific findings. Nevertheless, when they present those views they speak as philosophers, and it better not be the case that theirs are the only views that can accommodate the scientific facts. After all, if taken seriously, those views seem to undermine the practice of natural science, which is based on observation (and hence perception) if anything is.

  32. Rosen (2002, p. 174).

  33. Rosen (2002, p. 179).

  34. Moore (1953, p. 115, my emphasis). See Somerville (1986) for discussion.

  35. Moore (1959, p. 44).

  36. Moore (1953, p. 3); cf. Moore (1959, p. 45).

  37. Moore (1959, p. 41).

  38. Moore (1953, p. 4).

  39. Moore (1953, p. 4).

  40. For a succinct presentation of eliminative materialism, and an answer to the incoherence objection, see Churchland (1988, pp. 43–49).

  41. Though I do think something not totally unlike the epoché is needed in these contexts as well, as should be evident from the discussion in Sect. 3. However, I shall not pursue this point any further.

  42. Indeed, in a recent book Cavell also speaks of “my ordinary”, describing the skeptic as someone who “replaces my ordinary, the very vulnerability and inarticulateness of it, its inhabitability” (Cavell 2005, p. 134).

  43. Although Stephen Mulhall, in his book on Cavell, points out that the latter’s appropriation of ordinary language philosophy is “by no means a simple iteration of orthodox understandings of it” (Mulhall 1994, p. 5), Mulhall at the same time emphasizes that Cavell’s philosophy must be understood in the context of ordinary language philosophy (see Mulhall 1994, pp. xii, 2–20).

  44. Sokolowski (2000, p. 50).

  45. “The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something—because it is always before one’s eyes.)” (Wittgenstein 1963, § 129).

  46. Broad (1927, p. 240).

  47. See for example, Robinson (1994, p. 54), Schwitzgebel (2006), and Smith (2002, p. 172).

  48. There is one, not implausible, view that has recently been advocated by Noë (2002): namely that a tilted coin looks both elliptical (in one sense) and round (in another sense). This is not, however, the view most people advocate. They deny that the coin looks round, claiming that it only looks elliptical. Usually, they go on to suggest that the reason we do not mistake tilted coins for elliptically-shaped (i.e., damaged) coins is that we “know” that coins are round.

  49. Hume (1975, pp. 151–152).

  50. Merleau-Ponty (1964, pp. 14–15), for example.

  51. The distance cannot be too great. We all know how difficult it is to tell the size of an object on a distant hillside.

  52. See Rock (1977, pp. 352–353).

  53. Heidegger (1993a, p. 34).

  54. Husserl (1952, pp. 152–153); cf. Husserl (1976b, p. 191).

  55. Husserl (1976b, p. 184); cf. Husserl (2002, p. 481).

  56. Husserl (1962, p. 273; cf. pp. 249–250).

  57. Cf. Husserl (1976a, p. 64).

  58. Husserl (2002, p. 222).

  59. Husserl (2002, p. 223).

  60. This is of course an idealization. There is no switch that simply “switches off” (ausschalten—this is literally what Husserl says) the natural attitude so as to offer a hermetically closed phenomenological work environment. It is rather a constant struggle to keep one’s phenomenological view clear. And for a number of reasons (some of which have to do with language, which—fortunately—wasn’t designed with transcendental philosophy in view) I don’t think there can be such a thing as a completely “pure”, “uncontaminated” phenomenological description. But this is a topic for another occasion.

  61. Husserl (2002, p. 81).

  62. Cf. Husserl (1976b, p. 147); and Husserl (2008, p. 119).

  63. Husserl (1976a, p. 217; cf. pp. 233, 303 for variations). See also Husserl (2008, p. 86) for the variant “Erscheinendes als Erscheinendes in Wie.”

  64. In Overgaard (2004, p. 43) and Overgaard (2008) I discuss various examples.

  65. Spiegelberg (1965, p. 299).

  66. Heidegger (1976, p. 146).

  67. The relation between these questions is discussed extensively in Overgaard (2004).

  68. Heidegger (1993a, p. 42).

  69. Cf. Heidegger (1993a, pp. 49, 114).

  70. Heidegger (1993a, p. 127).

  71. Heidegger (1993a, p. 16).

  72. Heidegger (1982, p. 3).

  73. Heidegger (1994, p. 260).

  74. Heidegger (1994, p. 262, my emphasis).

  75. Heidegger (1994, p. 263, my emphasis).

  76. Heidegger (1979, p. 136).

  77. Heidegger (1979, p. 136).

  78. Cf. Heidegger (1993a, p. 15).

  79. Heidegger (1993a, p. 67).

  80. Heidegger (1993a, pp. 200–201).

  81. Tugendhat (1970, p. 263). For a similar argument, see Crowell (2001, especially chapter 10).

  82. Thanks to Paul Gilbert for this piece of information.

  83. [D]ie Philosophie ist nichts als ein Kampf gegen den gesunden Menschenverstand!” (Heidegger 1995, p. 36).

  84. Cf. Heidegger (1993b, p. 30).

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Acknowledgments

A first draft of this paper was presented at the conference “Husserl and Heidegger: Convergences and Divergences,” held at the University of Crete in September 2007. A later version of the paper was presented at the 7th Annual Meeting of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology, University of Tampere, in April 2009, and at the Colloquium for European Philosophy, University of Warwick, in May 2009. I am indebted to all audiences for valuable comments and criticism, and to Panos Theodorou, Leila Haaparanta, Mirja Hartimo, and Stephen Houlgate for their hospitality. Thanks also to an anonymous referee for Continental Philosophy Review for helpful comments on the penultimate draft.

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Overgaard, S. Ordinary experience and the epoché: Husserl and Heidegger versus Rosen (and Cavell). Cont Philos Rev 43, 307–330 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-010-9146-5

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