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Husserl'S Concept of Philosophy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 June 2010
Extract
As philosophers speak, they think that there are things whicht they can see and speak about as philosophers. But what are these things? And what is the general character of the philosopher's statements? How can we find out whether they are true? If, as is widely agreed, the philosopher does not rely on empirical research, in which direction ought we to look for the evidence to support philosophieal statements? Husserl's transcendental-phenomenological reduction, we propose to show, can best be understood as an attempt to indicate the nature and direction of the specifically philosophieal concern. The reduction, as he understood it, determines the domain of philosophieal research, the character of philosophical statements, and the direction in which we can look for evidence to support such statements. In this paper we shall concentrate on the Ideas, the work which Husserl published in 1913 as a general introduction to phenomenology.
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- Information
- Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , December 1966 , pp. 425 - 442
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- Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1966
References
1 Husserl, Edmund, Ideen zu einer reinen Phaenomenologie und phaenomenologischen Philosophie I, Husserliana III, The Hague: 1950, p. 64 (Gibson's, W. R. Boyce Translation, p. 108). Although we indicate the pages of this translation in our references, the actual translations appearing in the text of this paper are our ownGoogle Scholar.
2 Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, ed. Black, M. and Geach, P., Oxford: 1952, p. 151Google Scholar. Cf. Quine's, W. V.Mathematical Logic, Cambridge, Mass., 1955, par. 4Google Scholar.
3 For a recent study of the structure and weaknesses of this argument, see Kern, I., Husserl und Kant, The Hague: 1964, par. 18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Ideen I, p. in (Transl., p. 147).
5 Critique of Pure Reason, A III; cf. A 252.
6 Ibid., B 25.
7 Ideen I, p. 119 (Transl., p. 154).
8 Ibid., p. 221 (Transl., pp. 259–60)
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid., p. 222 (Transl., pp. 260–61).
11 Ibid., p. 321 (Transl., p. 366).
12 Husserl, E., Erfahring und Urteil, Hamburg, 1954, pp. 419–20Google Scholar.
13 Ideen I, pp. 219, 304 (Transl., pp. 258, 346); cf. Ideen III, Husserliana V, p. 89.
14 Ibid., paragraphs 85 and 90.
15 Ibid., p. 223 (Transl., p. 262). It should be carefully noted that the existence referred to when we say that the objects of intentional acts do not have to exist is not to be understood in the sense of existence in space and time. What is meant is not that intentional acts may be directed to objects that do not enjoy extramental existence in space and time. This is of course true. But it is not what is meant by the thesis under discussion. Of an intentional act directed to an object that is not spatio-temporal it must also be said that its object does not have to exist. As will be seen in par. III of this study, “existence” or “reality” are to be taken as referring to epistemic situations in which the object (whether spatio-temporal or not) is given in such a mode that consciousness cannot reasonably refuse to assert its existence or reality. Therefore the thesis in question here means that in order to be an act directed to a particular object the act does not have to achieve such an epistemic proximity to the object that it is in a position rationally to assert its real existence, whether this existence be spatio-temporal or not. Moreover, even when it does achieve this proximity it cannot be said that the intentional act entails the existence of its object.
16 Ibid., pp. 223–4 (Transl., pp. 262–3).
17 Ibid., pp. 224–5 (Transl., pp. 263–4).
18 Ibid., pp. 320–1 (Transl., 365–6).
19 “Reality” and “real,” it should be noted, are here not used to refer to a particular domain of objects, but to a particular mode in which objects (of whatever domain) are given as real. See note 15.
20 Ibid., pp. 321–2 (Transl., pp. 366–7).
21 Logische Untersuchungen, vol. II, vi.
22 Ibid., p. 567 (First Edition); Ideen I, pp. 323, 344.
23 Ideen I, p. 333 (Transl., p. 379).
24 Ibid., p. 334 (Transl., p. 380).
25 It seems to us that Fernando Molina is wrong when he states that for Husserl “rationality is essentially definable in terms of passivity and receptivity” (“The Husserlian Ideal of a Pure Phenomenology,” An Invitation to Phenomenology, ed. Edie, J. M., Chicago: 1965, p. 174)Google Scholar.
26 Not the other way round. The seeing of essences (Wesensschau), for example, is not a rare, extraordinary type of sense-experience, as seems often to be thought.
27 Ideen I, pp. 250–1 (Transl., pp. 291–2).
28 Ibid., p. 335 (Transl., p. 381).
28 Ibid., p. 52 (Transl., p. 92). Cf. also p. 44 (84).
30 Ibid.
31 This epistemically favourable situation does not occur isolated from experience as a whole, but it has a specifiable context with reference to which it stands out as showing the object itself.
32 Ibid., par. 43.
33 In one place (Formale und Transzendentale Logik, p. 249) Husserl remarks that Descartes' critique of external experience, emphasizing the possibility of being wrong as inseparably connected with it, was thus led to lose sight of the basic meaning of experience as what gives us access to the object itself.