Husserl: Works, Misc

Leonard Nelson is known primarily as a critic of epistemology in the Neo-Kantian meaning of the term. The aim of this paper is to investigate the presuppositions and consequences of his critique. I claim that what has rarely been discussed in this context is the problem of the possibility of metaphysics. By the impossibility of epistemology Nelson means the possibility of metaphysical knowledge. I intend to devote this paper to the analysis of this problem in relation to the Neo-Kantian background.

The paper develops the argument presented in my earlier article, Intentional Reference and Its Object in Husserl’s Transcendental Idealism. It contains further considerations on the proper understanding of Husserl’s notion of noema. My aim is not only to present an interpretation of Husserl’s text, but primarily to understand what constitutes an intentional reference of an act of consciousness. I agree with some of Husserl’s claims in Ideas, Book I, that noema, sense and intentional object are basically the same. This standpoint (...) implies, however, a drastic reinterpretation of the notion of an object. I refer to Ingarden’s conception of a purely intentional object to show the difficulties connected with regarding noema as an object separate from consciousness but still existentially dependent on it. Analyzing Husserlian notion of a noematic core I emphasize the relevance of universals for Husserl’s theory of consciousness. (shrink)

The following issues are considered in the paper: The proper understanding of the ‘attempt to doubt’ recommended by Husserl in Ideas, Book I, as a point of departure on a way to the transcendental reduction. How intentional reference of an act of consciousness is possible and what it consists in, according to Husserl. A logical dependence between the characteristics of intentional reference and the standpoint of transcendental idealism in Husserl’s Ideas, Book I. How to understand Husserl’s claim that the intentional (...) object is equivalent to sense. I arrive at the conclusion that a fully consistent interpretation of Husserl’s declarations regarding the aforementioned issues does not seem to be possible; for one needs to modify Husserl’s standpoint in certain respects. These considerations will be carried on in an article titled ‘The Noema as Sense. The Problem of the Object of Consciousness in Husserl’s Transcendental Idealism’, forthcoming in Diametros. (shrink)

Betrachtet man die Geschichte des Begriffs ‚Phänomenologie‘, ist nicht auf den ersten Blick klar, was darunter zu verstehen ist. Wie Schuhmann (1984 ) herausgearbeitet hat, tritt dieser Begriff in der Philosophiegeschichte auf, noch lange bevor Edmund Husserl sich ihn zu Eigen machte, um sein eigenes philosophisches Projekt zu beschreiben. Auch hinderte Husserls Versuch, diesen Begriff für die Beschreibung seines eigenen einmaligen Projekts zu beanspruchen, seine Zeitgenossen (z.B. Pfänder, Reinach, Stein) keineswegs daran, denselben Begriff ebenfalls zur Beschreibung ihrer jeweiligen Projekte und (...) Methoden zu verwenden. Es versteht sich also, dass Husserl selbst beträchtlichen Aufwand betrieb, um zu definieren, was der Begriff ‚Phänomenologie‘ in seinen Augen zu bedeuten hatte. Zum Zeitpunkt der Publikation des ersten Buches seiner Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie im Jahre 1913 charakterisiert Husserl Phänomenologie als eine neue Wissenschaft, die sich von jeder anderen, bereits geschichtlich verankerten Wissenschaft wie Physik, Psychologie oder Kulturwissenschaft unterscheidet (Hua III/1, 1). Diese Darstellung von Phänomenologie lässt auf Anhieb eine wichtige Abweichung von seiner einstigen Gleichsetzung von Phänomenologie und deskriptiver Psychologie in den Logischen Untersuchungen (1901) erkennen. In der breiteren philosophischen Landschaft wären angesichts Husserls positiver Bestimmung dessen, was diese phänomenologische Wissenschaft ist, möglicherweise auch heute noch viele genauso irritiert wie einige der damaligen Teilnehmer des VI. Kongresses für experimentelle Psychologie, denen Husserl 1914 erklärte: „Analog wie die reine Geometrie Wesenslehre des ‚reinen‘ Raumes bzw. Wissenschaft von den ideal möglichen Raumgestalten ist, ist die reine Phänomenologie Wesenslehre des ‚reinen‘ Bewusstseins, Wissenschaft von den ideal möglichen Bewusstseinsgestalten (mit ihren ‚immanenten Korrelaten‘)“ (Schumann 1914, 144-5). Was heute wie damals für ein Verständnis dieser Darstellung von Phänomenologie der Klärung bedarf, ist Husserls Beschreibung der Phänomenologie als einer Wesenslehre, d.h. einer reinen oder eidetischen Wissenschaft, ebenso wie seine Aussage, deren Untersuchungsgegenstand sei das von ihm sogenannte reine Bewusstsein. Nur indem man die beiden Bedeutungen von ‚rein‘ erhellt, die hiermit angesprochen sind, wird auch deutlich, inwiefern Husserl behaupten kann, Phänomenologie unterscheide sich von anderen Wissenschaften: sowohl von empirischen wie Physik oder experimenteller Psychologie als auch von anderen eidetischen Wissenschaften wie Geometrie und deskriptiver Psychologie. Diese Erläuterung zeigt nicht nur, inwiefern Phänomenologie von all diesen Disziplinen verschieden ist, sondern auch, inwiefern sie mit ihnen zusammenhängt – und damit ist gerade die Idee der Phänomenologie begründet. (shrink)

A translation, from German into Estonian, of § 15, and § 18, (a)-(c), of Husserl, E. (1952). Ideen zu einer Reinen Phänomenologie und Phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch. Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution (Husserliana, Vol. IV). (M. Biemel, Ed.) The Hague, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff. Translated title: “The Constitution of Material Nature.”.

A translation, from German into Estonian, of § 15, and § 18, (a)-(c), of Husserl, E. (1952). Ideen zu einer Reinen Phänomenologie und Phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch. Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution (Husserliana, Vol. IV). (M. Biemel, Ed.) The Hague, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff. Translated title: “The Constitution of Material Nature.”.

The question that arises in this article is whether we can find elements of phenomenology in Bernard Lonergan’s Trinitarian theology.With help of other Lonergan scholars, I have discovered that modern thinking plays an important role in the theology and philosophy ofthis Jesuit author. Moreover, the terminology of modern philosophy coexists with the terminology of classical and especially Tomisticthought. This article is interested in the elements that Lonergan takes from the modern philosophy and emphasizes the centrality ofHusserlian phenomenology among the other (...) modern authors used by Lonergan. Following the research of the Jesuit thinker, I speakabout two parallel realities coexisting in his Trinitarian theology. Lonergan tries to realize their synthesis, but at the same time healso recognizes their distinctiveness. The most relevant result of this coexistence is obtained through the replacement of the metaphysical differentiation between the level of substance and the level of the three Persons, so that, instead of having the elements of classical theology, Lonergan predicates at the same time that God subsists as well as the Trinitarian Persons subsist. Through this assertion he emphasizes the identity between God’s existence and the existence of the three divine Persons, and eliminates the classical differentiation that might be closer to the danger of subordinating the three Persons to the one God. (shrink)

The following text, which is now published for the first time, comes from Husserl’s manuscript A III 1 and was probably written in 1914. The text belongs to a bundle of pages which Husserl wrote down during the presentation and examination of the “Staatsexamensarbeit” of his student Jean Hering. The work “Die Lehre vom Apriori bei Lotze” was done by Hering in the summer semester 1914 in order to receive a degree that would qualify him as a secondary school teacher. (...) Although this “Staatsexamensarbeit” was never published, Hering used parts of it for his article which appeared in the Jahrbuch, “Bemerkungen über das Wesen, die Wesenheit und die Idee. Edmund Husserl zum 60. Geburtstag gewidmet”. Husserl characterized pages 5 to 8 of the manuscript A III 1 as his “own reflections” on Hering’s work. These pages are published as “Text Nr. 5” in Husserliana XLI. What follows here are pages 9 to 16 of this manuscript, which Husserl called “free excerpts”. (shrink)

Husserl’s legacy of research manuscripts has been revered as a resource containing the deepest insights of his later work and criticized because such manuscripts present work in progress rather than completed “results.” I suggest that these materials are far more than fragments calling for careful interpretation; instead, they belong to a different genre and should be taken up in an attitude of research directed toward working out unsolved problems rather than in an attitude focused on interpreting pregiven texts. After sketching (...) some elements of the research practice this entails, I review some of the ways in which Husserl’s research results have been appropriated and emphasize the need for further phenomenological investigation in the spirit of the “rigorous science” Husserl envisioned. (shrink)

The Essential Husserl, the first anthology in English of Edmund Husserl's major writings, provides access to the scope of his philosophical studies, including selections from his key works: Logical Investigations, Ideas I and II, Formal and Transcendental Logic, Experience and Judgment, Cartesian Meditations, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, and On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time. The collection is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in twentieth-century philosophy.

This essay aims, first of all, at underlining the peculiar idea of perception that emerges from Husserl’s Ding und Raum. Vorlesungen 1907. In analysing the constitution of the Thing and the external perception, Husserl describes an activity which is, at the same time, legal and dependent from the data of reality. In so doing, he manages to avoid both the scepticism, which is ingrained in the idea of perception as simple and spontaneous opening to facts, and the idealism that, on (...) the contrary, cuts off its essential connection with the external reality. Husserl’s interpretation of Tactility confirms his ability to avoid the accusation of relapsing into a kind of realist or idealist metaphysical dialectics. In these lessons he analyses Touch not as a simple and immediate contact with things or self-perception without any residue, but as stratified, complex and not linear perception, which represents a moment of the constitution of one’s own body. (shrink)

A brief reconstruction of the first two sections of Edmund Husserl's Vorlensungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins is done, showing how, making use of the phenomenological method, the author develops his transcendental theory of time. A revaluation of the meaning of "perception of time" allows him to establish the basis which are, in our perspective, able to give an account of one of the most debatable questions about time, its asymmetry or unidirectionality. We furthermore discuss the main difficulties that affect (...) Husserl in this project.Apresentamos uma breve reconstrução das duas primeiras seções de Vorlensungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins, de Edmund Husserl, em que analisamos a maneira pela qual ele desenvolve uma teoria transcendental do tempo, trazendo-a para o campo de seu método fenomenológico. A partir de uma reavaliação do significado de "percepção do tempo", ele oferece critérios que, a nosso ver, seriam capazes de dar conta de uma das características mais discutidas do tempo, sua assimetria ou unidirecionalidade. Discutimos também as principais dificuldades enfrentadas por este projeto. (shrink)

In Edmund Husserl’s philosophy, experience is the result of some intentional processes that stand on the platform of hyletic givenness. These processes are globally called “constitution” and are articulated in lower and higher levels according to their grade of complication. This paper focuses on the lowest level of constitution, i.e. time consciousness, as resulted from Husserl’s 1817–18 manuscripts and written in the Bernau mountain resort. It argues for the existence of a so-called originary stream of time consciousness, which has a (...) specific role in the order of constitution, and it states that its constitutional-intentional status is highly instable. (shrink)

The article comments upon Husserl’s attempts to outline, in a brief text dated 1922/23, the concept of Quasi-Konstitution. With its help, Husserl wishes to address the way objects are and can be constituted in the realm of pure phantasy. In discussing the various strata of their constitution, he reaches several problematic issues, concerning concordance, individuality, inter-subjectivity or reality. However, the chief aspect that governs Husserl’s reflections is the questionable relation between phantasy and the manifold senses of “possibility”.

The objective of the article is a comparison of three texts by Edmund Husserl: Ideen I, its revision in Hua XXXIV and Epilogue of Ideen III. There are internal and external connections between these three texts which – also as a justification of this comparison – will be examined in this article. The comparison should give answers to several questions: Why did Husserl decide to do this revision? What changes did he make? Should we regard these changes as important interventions (...) into certain phenomenological topics? What are the results of this comparison for the phenomenological method? By means of these texts several chosen phenomenological themes – such as the problematic of consciousness, intentionality, natural and phenomenological attitudes, method etc. – can be presented, as well as a new view of them 16 or 17 years later. The last text introduces also Husserl’s résumé of the idea of philosophy. (shrink)