Abstract
In this paper, I will examine the possibility of first philosophy from a phenomenological point of view. I will do this by assessing Levinas’s criticism of Husserl’s conception of first philosophy. In Sect. 1, I will delineate Husserl’s conception of first philosophy. In Sect. 2, I will introduce Levinas’s conception of ethics as first philosophy and sketch out his criticism of Husserl’s conception of first philosophy. In Sect. 3, I will assess Levinas’s criticism of Husserl’s conception and show that from a phenomenological point of view, it is possible to develop first philosophy only in a relative sense and not in an absolute sense. The possibility of first philosophy in a relative sense implies that both Husserl’s and Levinas’s conceptions of first philosophy have some limitations and should be revised, since in a certain way, they are each conceived from an absolute point of view. In Sect. 4, I will show that the conception of first philosophy in a relative sense is a phenomenological one and sketch out some basic features of first philosophy in a relative sense.
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Notes
Descartes (1978, p. 14).
It should be noted that Husserl’s concept of first philosophy is not clear; in fact, it is ambiguous in many respects. He normally considers transcendental phenomenology—first of all, transcendental theory of knowledge—to be first philosophy. In this case, the second philosophy that is the counterpart of first philosophy in this sense includes formal ontology, regional ontology, metaphysics, and the empirical sciences. But sometimes he considers eidetic phenomenology to be the first philosophy (Hua IX, p. 298). In this case, eidetic phenomenology is not identical with transcendental phenomenology or transcendental theory of knowledge. It includes, besides transcendental phenomenology, such disciplines as formal ontology, regional ontology, and even eidetic metaphysics. The second philosophy that is the counterpart of first philosophy in this sense is empirical science and the metaphysics of facticity or the factual. In this paper I do not deal with the problem of the ambiguity of the concept of first philosophy in Husserl, since it does not play any important role for the thesis that I will develop below. In fact, Levinas does not pay any attention to the ambiguity of the concept of first philosophy in Husserl, and simply considers the transcendental theory of knowledge to be the first philosophy in Husserl. I have dealt with the problem of the ambiguity of Husserl’s concept of first philosophy in a working paper on “E. Husserl’s Idea of First Philosophy Revisited.”
Levinas (1998), “Ethics as First Philosophy,” subsequently cited with the abbreviation EFP.
Levinas (1969), subsequently cited with the abbreviation TI.
“This implication of the non-intentional is a form of mauvaise conscience; it has no intentions, or aims, and cannot avail itself of the protective mask of a character contemplating in the mirror of the world a reassured and self-positing portrait. It has no name, no situation, no status. It has a presence afraid of presence, afraid of the insistence of the identical ego, stripped of all qualities. In its non-intentionality, not yet at the stage of willing, and prior to any fault, in its non-intentional identification, identity recoils before its affirmation. It dreads the insistence in the return to self that is a necessary part of identification. This is either mauvaise conscience or timidity; it is not guilty, but accused; and responsible for its very presence” (EFP, p. 81).
Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (1981, pp. 9ff., 61ff.), subsequently cited with the abbreviation OBBE.
Perspective plays a decisive role in the conception of first philosophy in a relative sense, since it is always from a certain perspective that a philosophy could be called the first philosophy in a relative sense. This is the reason why the idea of first philosophy in a relative sense has nothing to do with a kind of free constructivism. In other words, it is the perspective itself that provides the orientation with which a first philosophy is developed, and thus it becomes impossible to hold that first philosophy in a relative sense could be a free construction.
It should be noted that genetic phenomenology has its own critical potential. The critical potential of genetic phenomenology is distinct from that of both Husserl’s static phenomenology and Levinas’s ethics. It is similar to that of Nietzsche’s geneology.
For example, see Appendix XLV (<1916>/1917) of Hua XIII on “Phenomenological Problems of the Origin. Concerning the Clarification of the Sense and Method of Phenomenological Constitution,” where Husserl makes a distinction between the static-phenomenological and the genetic-phenomenological concept of origin.
Barnes (1995, p. 69) considers the science of first principles, the study of being qua being, theology, and the investigation into substance to be the important disciplines of Aristotelian metaphysics. With respect to these four disciplines, he writes as follows: “The four characterizations of metaphysics do not cohere: there is no one science which they all describe, and hence there is (in a sense) no such thing as Aristotelian Metaphysics” (p. 108). For this reason, he claims that “the Metaphysics is a farrago, a hotch-potch” (p. 68).
Aristotle (1968) Metaphysics, 1012 b–1013 a.
Descartes (1978, p. 14).
Ibid.
Husserl also maintains that God is a transcendency and should be excluded through the transcendental phenomenological reduction. See (Hua III/1, p. 124f.; 1982, pp. 133ff.).
Kern (1975, p. 341).
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Acknowledgements
This paper was presented at the XXVth International Symposium of Eco-ethica, Copenhagen, October 31–November 6, 2006. I thank Professor Tomonobu Imamichi and Professor Peter Kemp for their kind invitation to the symposium. It was also presented at the 3rd BESETO Conference of Philosophy, Tokyo, January 10–11, 2009. I thank Professor Junich Murata for his kind invitation to the conference.
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Lee, NI. Phenomenological Reflections on the Possibility of First Philosophy. Husserl Stud 26, 131–145 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-009-9064-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-009-9064-8