Abstract
We begin with the starting point of transcendental phenomenology, the transcendental reduction. After outlining the basic features of the epoché, or bracketing of the world’s validity-claim, which is the condition for the progressive “turn-back” (re-ductio), we then proceed to other themes which relate Husserl’s reduction to broader concerns of his philosophy and especially the foundations of ethics and social philosophy, the theme of this book. We will start with Husserl’s favorite metaphor.
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Notes
See Thomas Prufer, “Welt, Ich, Zeit in der Sprache,” Philosophische Rundschau, 20 (1973).
See the text in Edmund Husserl und die phänomenologische Bewegung: Zeugnisse in Text und Bild, ed. Hans Rainer Sepp (Freiburg/Munich: Alber, 1988), 240–241.
Max Scheler, Schriften aus dem Nachlass, Vol. II Erkenntnislehre und Metaphysik (Bern: Francke, 1979), 254.
Cited in Klaus Held, Lebendige Gegenwart (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1966), 193. Cf. the frequent amazement of Augustine at the abyss (“penetrate amplum et infinitum. Quis ad fundum eius pervenit?”) to which his investigations have led him in Confessions, Bk. X, ch. 8. For the shudder (tremendum fascinans) cf. the “et inhorresco et inardesco” of XI, 9.
This text is translated in Husserl: Shorter Works, P. McCormick and F.A. Elliston, ed. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980), 356–357. See also Briefe an Roman In garden (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1968), 26. The rhizōmata pantōn echo the theme of B IV 6 where transcendental subjectivity is called the root and source of all being. Cf. my “Being’s Mindfulness: The Noema of Transcendental Idealism.”
The text and translation may be found in Human Context, 4 (1950), 246; the translation may be found also in Husserl: Shorter Works, 360–364. For some other references to “the Mothers” see Hua VI, §42 and Hua XV, §34, p. 597.
The relevant passage is in Faust II/1, lines 6213–6304. I am indebted to Erich Trunz’s commentary in Goethes Faust (Hamburg: Christian Wegner, 1968), 546 ff.
The quote is taken from the Mundaka Upanishad, I, 2, 7, as cited in E. Deutsche, Advaita Vedanta (Hawaii: University Press of Hawaii, 1973), 210. For an occasional use by Husserl of the spinning metaphor, see Hua XV, 210 and Hua XI, 108.
Hua XV, 640. For the primal belief, see, e.g., Hua III, §§103–104. and 117. Also A VI 34. For world-base see Experience and Judgment, §7 and Hua XVII, §89b and Appendix II; for the relation of primal belief, world-base and epoché, see especially Hua VI, §§38–43.
For more substantive treatments of the issues involved in the epoché, see the following discussions (to which I am much indebted): Thomas Prufer, “An Outline of Some Husserlian Distinctions and Strategies, especially in ‘The Crisis,”’ Phänomenologische Forschungen 1 (1975), 89–104; also his “Welt, Ich, und Zeit in der Sprache,” Philosophische Rundschau 20 (1974); and Elizabeth Ströker, “Das Problem derEpochéin der Philosophie Edmund Husserls,” Analecta Husserliana, I (1970), 170–185.
See “The London Lectures” (M II 3 a, 29–30 of Landgrebe’s transcription; the relevant text is transcribed on p. 325 of Hans Rainer Sepp, Edmund Husserl und die phänomenologische Bewegung (Munich: Karl Alber, 1988).
Thus Husserl can say that the object (Gegenstand) of the universal epoché is “the intentional relation of my total life toward the objective all-ness which has come and comes to be posited in this total life” (Hua VIII, 159). And thereby the world is not lost nor is its true sense a disengagement of the being of the world and every judgment about it. Rather it is “the way to the uncovering of the correlating of all unity-formations of being tome and my meaning-having and meaning-giving subjectivity (Hua XV, 366).
Robert Sokolowski, Husserlian Meditations, (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 192.
See my “Being’s Mindfulness: The Noema of Transcendental Idealism.” I do not pretend to do justice to the issues raised by Scheler in his critique of Husserl. Scheler’s points, cf. e.g., his Schriften aus dem Nachlass II: Erkenntnislehre und Metaphysik (Bern: Francke, 1979), 108–109, merit much more attention than they have received. I am presenting the reduction within the context of relating it immanently to Husserl’s ethics. Scheler, I believe, holds that the transcendental reduction is not compatible with ethics. We will turn to this topic shortly. Nevertheless it seems noteworthy that Scheler’s critique of the “phenomenological reduction” mingles the eidetic reduction with what Husserl called the phenomenological reduction. He thus sees the reduction in the context of separating the essences or forms from “reality” and not in the context of uncovering the correlation to the life of the mind. (See the essay “Idealism and Realism” in Selected Philosophical Papers (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 115–117.) On the other hand, Scheler’s own concern, namely with the origins and features of the sense of “reality,” which he holds must first be made thematic before one is in a position to talk about its reduction, merits more attention than Husserl gives it. For Scheler the sense of reality is tied to the experience of resistance. This claim merits attention even within a Husserlian framework. For example, Husserl’s frequent reference to perceptual reality as what fits into the spatial-temporal-causal matrix must include reflection on how it correlates with the lived-body’s experience of perceptual objects in terms of the causality that the body’s agency is capable of experiencing from and exercising on other bodies, e.g., through its forceful contact. (See Hua XV, 319 ff. where this precise issue is discussed.) And does not the analogous filling of intentions, which is another way Husserl discusses the primal perceptual reality, (e.g., of Lake Monroe, “in the flesh,” in contrast to its being first mentioned but not recalled, then remembered, then described, then imagined, then rendered in a photograph, and finally experienced leibhaftig through seeing, swimming or sailing), admit to a description of resistance, i.e., its being “in the flesh” implies its resistance to being taken as emptily intended (in expectations, imagination, memory, picturing, etc.); or rather, this resistance can be said as well to be the meaning of its being “in the flesh.” On this point, see the fine discussion of Ullrich Melle, Das Wahrnehmungsproblem and seine Verwandlung in phänomenologischer Einstellung (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1983), 135–136. Melle observes that the functioning lived bodily consciousness anticipates not by way of a re-presencing presentation but rather as expecting its success and a smooth unhindered continuation of its activity. In this respect the experience of resistance is less an index of reality than of a certain kind of reality, e.g., one which we are not prepared for or which is uncongenial to our orientation. Finally, the absolute transcendence of other minds is surely correlated with an experience of an I-can which is not mine, i.e., an experience of what most essentially resists my will in its most spontaneous source-point precisely because what I make present is the self-conscious capacity and will of an Other and not mine.
Klaus Held, “Phänomenologie der Zeit nach Husserl,” Perspektiven der Philosophie 7 (1981), 185 ff.
See Thomas Prufer, “Heidegger, Early and Late, and Aquinas,” in Edmund Husserl and the Phenomenological Tradition, Robert Sokolowski, ed. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 199–200.
Iso Kern called attention to this text in C 10 which highlights the “dualism” in the primal presencing; see his excellent Idee and Methode der Philosophie (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1975), 155. Cf. my “A Précis…”, 129–134.
Quoted in A. Diemer, Edmund Husserl (Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain, 1965), 308; see also my “From Mythos to Logos…”
Cf. H.-G. Gadamer, Philosophische Rundschau, XI (1963), 32.
See Husserl-Chronik, ed. K. Schuhmann (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1977), 295; Dorion Cairns, Conversations with Husserl and Fink (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1976), 22–23; my “A Précis…”; and “Divine Knowledge…”; “Transcendental Phenomenology and Zen Buddhism.”
See especially his talks on Fichte’s idea of Humanity in Hua XXV. Paul Natorp, Husserl’s longtime friend, summarized for him the spirit of German Idealism in his presentation, as Husserl put it, of the meaning of world-evolution “as the unfolding of God and the creation of the world in subjectivity.” This, he said upon reception of Natorp’s Deutscher Weltberuf (Jena: Diederichs, 1918). Husserl confessed to identifying fully with this spirit as a world-view “which alone makes possible a ‘blessed life’!…” and to which transcendental phenomenology is an education. See Husserl’s letters to Natorp and Rickert, cited in Iso Kern, Husserl and Kant (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1965), 35. The following text of Natorp (Deutscher Weltberuf, 125 ff.) nicely presents the proximity of Neo-Kantian and Husserlian theology to Eckhart as well as the infinite task of world-creation, a theme which was foreign to the medievals for the most part: For I, you, we are all of God. We all can awaken the deathless will of God in us and put it into operation for the salvation of us all. For if salvation is possible then it is won. We should not wait for God to give us a “push from without.” He must come to life in us; we must live and want him, otherwise he remains eternally dead. This sentiment is restated in essentials by Husserl in the text from Hua XXVII, 122, cited in the body of the text.
See, e.g., C 11 IV, 13; and A VI 34. See also Klaus Held, Lebendige Gegenwart (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1966), 39–45 and Husserl’s remarks on his universal voluntarism in Dorion Cairns’ Conversations with Husserl and Fink, 61. In Ch. II we will discuss the phenomenon of will and the passive-synthetic Hintergrundsentscheidungen (mentioned in the Conversations) or position-takings.
For a review of Husserl’s theory of practical reason with another focus, see Gerhard Funke, “Kritik der Vernunft and ethisches Phänomenon,” Phänomenologische Forschungen 9 (1980), 33–89.
Robert Sokolowski, Husserlian Meditations, §12.
J.G. Fichte, Werke II, (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971), 263.
Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? - Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 333.
See The Human Context 4 (1972); in Shorter Works, 363.
Hector-Neri Castaneda, “On the Phenomeno-logic of I” Proceedings of the XIVth International Congress of Philosophy (Vienna: Herder, 1968), Vol, III, 260–266.
Cf. John Drummond’s wrestle with these matters in the context of Husserl’s “foundationalism” in his Husserlian Intentionality and Non-Foundational Realism: Noema and Object (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990), 235 ff. and also his “Modernism and Postmodernism: Bernstein or Husserl,” Review of Metaphysics, XLII (1988), 275–300.
For a fine discussion of the primacy of the pre-reflexive self-consciousness and the non-mediated character of this self-appearing and how this consideration relates to the issues of amnesia and puzzles of personal identity, see Dieter Henrich, Fluchtlinien: Philosophische Essays (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1982), 134–151.
Cf. Helmut Kuhn, Sokrates (Munich: Kösel, 1959), who, in spite of distancing Socrates from transcendental phenomenology (242) illustrates how the Socratic quest involves an ethical epoché.
While writing The Crisis Husserl seems to have made the distinction between the transcendental and the ethical taking stock of oneself when he notes that “we must distinguish between a broader and narrower concept of self-reflection (Selbstbesinnung); a pure ego-reflection (Ichreflexion) and a reflection upon the whole life of the ego as ego; and reflection (Besinnung) in the pregnant sense of inquiry back into the sense or teleological essence of the ego.” See Hua VI, 556; trans. 392. I take this “broader” sense to refer to the way the transcendental egological reflection encompasses the ethical.
Eugen Fink, “Husserl’s Philosophy and Contemporary Criticism,” in R. O. Evelton, ed., The Phenomenology of Husserl (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1970), 104–105. I have underlined “appeal” and “imperatively requires.” The original text can be found in Fink’s Studien zur Phänomenologie (1930–1939) (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1966), 110.
Thomas Prufer, “Reduction and Constitution,” Studies in the Philosophy and History of Philosophy (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1972), 343.
Cf. Laches 194e ff.; See Helmut Kuhn, Sokrates, 109.
The objection that Husserl deceives himself in thinking that we can ever exercise an epoché on our elemental sensible/sensual involvement in the world (see Iso Kern, Idee and Methode der Philosophie, 33) is perhaps met with Husserl’s acknowledgment that the most elemental constitution of being in passive synthesis is irrepressible — what I take to be the major discovery of the transcendental reduction. This elemental wakefulness draws near to Kern’s notion of sensibility. Yet the difficult problem of sleep, trance, etc., raises the possibility of there being the most elemental constitution of being while and even though there is a suspension of the worlddoxa. Cf. my “Phenomenological Time…”
See the VI. Cartesianische Meditation, Part I, 194.
My major source for ascribing this position to Husserl is Hua XIII, 205 ff. and Husserl’s note on page 143 of the VI. Meditation, Part I. Fink’s discussions on these matters (in this work) at 45–46, 117–127, 143–145 do not seem to conflict with this position.
René Toulemont, L’éssence de la société selon Husserl (Paris: PUF, 1962), 256. Waldenfels, in his equally important path-breaking and critical study of Husserl’s social philosophy, quotes the same passage and adds “Indeed [love] requires more, namely a radical surpassing also of the transcendental order in its egocentrism, which is missing in Husserl… a radical ethic explodes the transcendental scheme…” Bernhard Waldenfels, Das Zwischenreich des Dialogs (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1971), 308. It should be increasingly evident in the course of this work why I believe Husserl’s transcendental “egology” is not properly an “ego” and is surely not egocentric so that it excludes the concerns of dialogical philosophy; it too establishes accord between Gesinnung and Besinnung.
Klaus Held, “Husserl’s Rückgang auf das phainómenon and die geschichtliche Stellung der Phänomenologie,” Phänomenologische Forschungen 10 (1980), 89 ff. For a text of Husserl’s which connects the reduction to a willful self-restraint or containment of will, see Hua 111 /2, 646.
See, e.g., M. Pohlenz, Stoa and Stoiker, (Zurich: Artemis, 1950), 139–141.
See William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (New York: Viking Penguin, 1985), 198; and P.-H. Proudhon, Selected Works, 88.
The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier: Selected Texts, trans. and ed. with introduction, Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu (Boston: Beacon, 1972), 94–95.
James Marsh’s “Dialectical Phenomenology: From Suspension to Suspicion,” Man and World, 17 (1984), 121–141, finds in Husserl’s epoché Cartesian bourgeois origins and a prejudice against prejudice, i.e., against a subjectivity which is “enworlded,” “situated,” “embodied,” etc. Marsh proposes that the final moment of the epoché is not suspension but suspicion. As will become evident to the reader there are similar political concerns in this book. However, as will also become evident, there is a sustained effort to show, on the one hand, that Husserl is not indifferent to the concerns of such critics, indeed, he is more radical than the Marxists in the way the anarcho-communists have always been; but, on the other hand, there is no need to despair of transcendental phenomenology as a Cartesianism which interferes with concerns about social justice, community, etc. Husserl’s ideal of “rigorous science” and “prejudice against prejudice” is not at all disconnected with a philosophic foundation for a humane social order. And it surely has the goal of founding statements such as conclude Marsh’s essay, e.g., “Phenomenology is the disoccluding of what is ‘veiled’… Being is the revelation of what hides behind false, mundane, and fetishized appearances.” Without something like the transcendental phenomenological foundationalist principles this is just world-view talk or the expression of one’s “prejudices.”
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Hart, J.G. (1992). The Transcendental Reduction and Ethics. In: The Person and the Common Life. Phaenomenologica, vol 126. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7991-9_1
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