Husserl and Other Phenomenologists

Ronny Miron

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367220389
• eBook ISBN: 9781351729321
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Husserl and Other Phenomenologists addresses a fundamental question: what is it in the thinking of the founding father of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), that on the one hand enables the huge variety in the phenomenological discourse and, at the same time, necessitates relying on his phenomenology as a point of departure and an object before which philosophizing is conducted.

The contributors to this volume, each with his or her own focus on a specific figure in the phenomenological school vis-à-vis Husserl's thinking, demonstrate that every reference to Husserl is necessarily bound up with modifying his ideas and crossing the boundaries of his phenomenology. In this sense, and given the insight that Husserlian phenomenology is already imbued with the potential modifications and revisions, the post-Husserlian phenomenologies may be included together with Husserl in one so-called 'Phenomenological Movement'. The discussions in the book open for philosophers and intellectuals a window upon phenomenology, which has been one of the richest and most influential cultural phenomena since its very appearance at the beginning of the twentieth century. The book also conveys the complex interpretive dynamic within which a given framework of ideas becomes a sort of magnetic field, with attracting and repelling forces acting on its participants, and thanks to which the great ideas of modernity maintain their vitality and relevance a hundred years after their first appearance. This book was originally published as a special issue of The European Legacy.

Husserl and Other Phenomenologists

Ronny Miron

The Program for Hermeneutic and Cultural Studies, The Interdisciplinary Unit, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

ABSTRACT

This article addresses a basic question: what elements in Husserl’s phenomenology can account for the variety of post-Husserlian phenomenologies? The answer, I suggest, is that Husserl’s idea of reality, particularly his notion of givenness vis-à-vis self-givenness, facilitated the work of his followers by offering them at once a firm ground and a point of departure for their inquiries. However, adopting Husserl’s phenomenology as their starting point did not prevent his followers from developing their own independent phenomenological theory. Moreover, despite the elusive particulars that shape one’s individual experience of the world, so it transpires, Husserl’s thinking which was different and beyond their own observations and actual experiences, namely, transcendent, appears to have been a genuine guide along their path to achieve meaning. This interpretation thus gives precedence to a metaphysical point of departure, that is, to Husserl’s idea of reality as ‘givenness’, in launching phenomenological investigation—over any specific aspect of his work—as that which continues to sustain phenomenological discourse.

Introduction

The question of the relation of Husserl’s theory of phenomenology and the various phenomenologies that followed it has long occupied scholars. Herbert Spiegelberg, for example, argues that phenomenology is an “elusive philosophy, hence there is no such thing “as a system or school called ‘phenomenology’ with a solid body of teachings.” For Spiegelberg, “the common name of phenomenology, whether claimed from the inside or imposed from the outside” does not refer to “a common substance,” which is why the “assumption of a unified philosophy subscribed to by all so-called phenomenologists is an illusion.” Thus seeing the various phenomenologies as empirical expressions of Husserlian phenomenology and even as concretizations of its principles, Spiegelberg admits that it is difficult “to extricate the essential structure of phenomenology from its empirical expressions.” However, since not all these expressions are “equally adequate manifestations of the underlying idea,” but rather “the varieties exceed the common features,” he concludes: “Phenomenology itself is given through various appearances.”¹ Unlike Spiegelberg, Dorion Cairns argues that “the peculiar character of phenomenology lies not in its content but in the way the latter is attained” and describes that method as “phenomenological”: “No opinion is to be accepted as philosophical knowledge unless it is seen to be adequately established by observation of what is seen as itself given ‘in person.’ Any belief seen to be incompatible with what is seen to be itself given is to be rejected. Towards opinions that fall in neither class… one is to adopt an ‘official’ philosophical attitude of neutrality.”² It appears that for Cairns the very participation in an agreed methodological procedure or even just “an understanding of what the one using the method sets up as the thing to be actualized by its means” suffices for including different phenomenologies in one general framework. Clearly, both approaches capture an important element in phenomenological thinking, yet they seem unable to discern the imprint of the common Husserlian infrastructure: while Spiegelberg overemphasizes the individuality of the phenomenologists, Cairns points to a more general element, which, however, does not constitute a distinctive method peculiar to phenomenologists alone.

The interpretation proposed in this article seeks to unveil the facilitating element in Husserl’s thinking, which allowed his followers to draw on his theory without hindering them from establishing their own independent phenomenological observations. We can examine this element, which is a constant of phenomenological investigation, by means of the Husserlian “nucleus” (Kernbestand), which “is not a concrete essence in the constitution of the noema as a whole, but a kind of abstract form that dwells in it.”³ Husserl explains that the complete objective meaning around which the various intentional experiences “group themselves,” the “central ‘nucleus’,” is essentially the selfsame and persists in the various experiences that are “the ‘object simpliciter’, namely, the identical element which is at one time perceived, a second time directly represented, and a third time exhibited in figured form in a picture, and so forth, indicates only one central concept” (§91, 191–92). Husserl depicts the object’s mode of being as “prescribed,”⁴ yet the constancy enabled by this prescription implies that within the object itself there is “‘something”’ “‘self-same’,” “determinable” (§131, 257), and “expressible”:

Logical meaning (Bedeutung) is an expression. The verbal sound can be referred to as expression only because the meaning which belongs to it expresses; it is in it that the expressing originally lies. “Expression” is a remarkable form, which permits of being adapted to every “meaning” (to the noematic “nucleus”), and raises it to the realm of the “Logos”, of the conceptual, and therewith of the “general” (§124, 273)

Thus the inherent position of the object, which is secured by the intentional framework, is not sufficient to ensure that we can grasp its logical meaning; rather, to do so, the object must carry within itself an expressible and positive force. The aim of Husserl’s phenomenology was to uncover both the objective and the subjective conditions of knowledge. The illumination of these conditions throughout his work enabled the consolidation of the ideas of the subject and the object, which are proper to phenomenological investigation. Husserl explains: “The ‘object’ is referred to, is the goal aimed at, set in relation to the Ego only (and by the Ego itself).” Moreover, the attitude of the Ego to the object, which “bears the personal ray in itself is thereby an act of the Ego itself [that] ‘lives’ in such acts.” However, he insists that “This life does not signify the being of any ‘contents’ of any kind in a stream of contents, but a variety of describable ways in which the pure Ego in certain intentional experiences, which have the general mode of the cogito, lives therein as the ‘free essence’ which it is” (§92, 195).

The involvement of the subject in the very positing of the phenomenological object, however, does not bring about its subjectivization, nor does the personal element pertaining to the phenomenological subject obstruct it from being involved in the elucidation of the conditions of knowledge. Quite the opposite, in the phenomenological investigation both the object and the subject are encompassed in the abstractedness which is precisely what enables approaching the desired “one” and “general” in phenomenology. Husserl’s insistence on this abstractedness is apparent already in his early writings, where he asserts that even a practical discipline assumes a fundamental logical lawfulness that can be studied. With respect to the object, this refers to the validity of logical laws, while with respect to the subject, the search aims at the “a priori conditions of knowledge which can be discussed and investigated apart from all relation to the thinking subject and towards the idea of subjectivity in general.”⁵ Husserl responds to this challenge with his idea of “pure logic” that seeks to uncover the a priori logical laws that are necessary for all the uses of logic in all forms of knowledge.⁶ The importance of “pure logic” lies precisely in its not being a normative discipline that articulates the correctness of the rules of logic.⁷ Husserl explains: “If everything which has being is rightly recognized as having being, and as having such and such a being… then without doubt we may not reject the self-justifying claims of ideal being. No interpretive skill in the world can in fact eliminate ideal objects from our speech and our thought.”⁸ It follows from this that no matter whether the phenomenon under discussion is real or ideal, the phenomenologist will always seek its most general and ideal aspects.

This conspicuous abstractedness, especially when applied to the basic principles of Husserlian phenomenology, is central to my argument. As opposed to positive arguments, which one can accept or reject, an abstract infrastructure can serve as a framework for a wide range of approaches. Husserl’s statement on the nature of phenomenological investigation—“there is nothing to limit us” in the first person—may thus be extended to the phenomenologists who followed him, who, while relying on the more general elements of his phenomenology, developed their own independent phenomenologies. This point is particularly relevant when we turn to Husserl’s seminal idea of “givenness” (Gegebenheit). This term, which Heidegger called “the magic word” (Zauberwort) of phenomenology, entails not only Husserl’s idea of reality as the realm where meaning is the product of reflection, but also the possibility of its continuous modification through repeated acts of reflection. This then is how I would characterize the status of Husserl’s phenomenology for the phenomenologists who followed him—as something given—from which meaning can be derived and thus immediately and perpetually altered. This dynamic of modification and confirmation, which follows directly from Husserl’s notion of mere givenness vis-à-vis self-givenness, and whose process I will delineate below, also characterizes the relation between his phenomenology and the phenomenologies that came in its wake.

My aim in taking Husserl’s idea of givenness as a facilitating element—at once a firm ground and a secure point of departure—for the various transformations of post-Husser-lian phenomenological discourse, is neither historical nor psychological, and deliberately avoids any reference to specific strands of phenomenology. Following Husserl, I see this discussion from “[t]he viewpoint of function,” which “covers the whole phenomenological sphere pretty nearly, and in the last resort all phenomenological analyses enter its service” (Ideas, §86, 179). The importance of this functional viewpoint is that “[i]nstead of the single experiences being analyzed and compared, described and classified, all treatment of detail is governed by the ‘teleological’ view of its function in making ‘synthetic unity’ possible” (§86, 179). Husserl explains that this form of analysis

seeks to inquire how this self-same factor, how objective unities of every kind… are “known” or “supposed,” how the identity of these suppositions is constituted by conscious formations of very different type yet of essentially prescribed structure, and how these formations should be described on strict methodical lines. (§86, 179)

Husserl himself relates functional analysis to the reflexive-transcendental nature of phenomenology as a rigorous methodical framework. Accordingly, while my interpretation is the product of my own reflection on his ideas, it is supported by what I see as indispensable elements in his phenomenology that can clarify its relationship to the work of his followers. Obviously, my interpretation is subject to Husserl’s insight that any mode of experience should aspire to be absolutely valid but ought to be regarded as “a kind of secondary objectification within the compass of the total objectification of the thing” (§44, 84).

From “Givenness” to “Self- Givenness”

The fundamental principle of Husserl’s phenomenology is that “Natural Knowledge begins with experience (Erfahrung) and remains within experience.”⁹ This principle is succinctly expressed in the phrase he coined, which became the catchword of phenomenology: “back to the ‘things themselves’,”¹⁰ that is, to focusing on things that deliver themselves to one’s observation or experience. According to Husserl, in any sense experience in which our consciousness is directed at an individual object, it “brings it to givenness” (Ideas, §3, 13). At the starting point of our relation to the world that surrounds us, the object (Objekt) has a formal ontological meaning that is everything that might be subjected to true or false predication.¹¹ One’s addressing towards this object is signified as “an outer perception,” which is simply part of our “primordial experience of physical things” (§3, 9–10). In Logical Investigations, Husserl clarifies that the ego as an empirical object “remains an individual, thing-like (dinglicher) object,” and as such is given to its phenomenal properties in which it “has its own internal make-up (inhaltlich Bestande).”¹² Thus outer perception, which is unaware of the mutually constitutive processes that ties together the object and the subject, is what Husserl calls the “natural attitude” or “natural knowledge,” which he describes as follows:

I find continually present and standing over against me the one spatio-temporal fact-world to which I myself belong, as do all other men found in it and related in the same way to it. “This fact world”, as the word already tells us, I find to be out there, and also take it just as it gives itself to me as something that exists out there. All doubting and rejecting of the data of the natural world leaves standing the general thesis of the natural standpoint. (§30, 55–56)

It is thus the immediate, datum-point givenness of things, when the “I, the real human being, am a real object just like others in the natural world” (§33, 62), that furnishes “the entrance gate of phenomenology” (§30, 55).

Yet, as Husserl explains, since human experience “compels our reason to pass beyond intuitively given things” towards “physical truth” (§47, 90), we cannot adhere to that datumpoint where the meaning of the object and the subject is merely empirical. Indeed, he points out that already the word “phenomenon,” his primary destination, “is ambiguous in virtue of the essential correlation between appearance and that which appears. φαινόμενον (...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Husserl and Other Phenomenologists
• 2 Husserl and Levinas: The Ethical Structure of a Philosophical Debt
• 3 Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre: Presence and the Performative Contradiction
• 4 Intentionality, Consciousness, and the Ego: The Influence of Husserl’s Logical Investigations on Sartre’s Early Work
• 5 From Husserl to Merleau-Ponty: On the Metamorphosis of a Philosophical Example
• 6 Husserl and Jacob Klein
• 7 A Tale of Two Schisms: Heidegger’s Critique of Husserl’s Move into Transcendental Idealism
• Bibliography
• Index