The Sources of Husserl's 'Ideas I'

Andrea Staiti, Evan Clarke, Andrea Staiti, Evan Clarke

• Editore: De Gruyter
• Anno: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783110551600
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Filosofía
• Categoria: Filosofía moderna

Despite an ever-growing scholarly interest in the work of Edmund Husserl and in the history of the phenomenological movement, much of the contemporaneous scholarly context surrounding Husserl's work remains shrouded in darkness. While much has been written about the critiques of Husserl's work associated with Heidegger, Levinas, and Sartre, comparatively little is known of the debates that Husserl was directly involved in. The present volume addresses this gap in scholarship by presenting a comprehensive selection of contemporaneous responses to Husserl's work. Ranging in date from 1906 to 1917, these texts bookend Husserl's landmark Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy (1913). The selection encompasses essays that Husserl responded to directly in the Ideas I, as well as a number of the critical and sympathetic essays that appeared in the wake of its publication. Significantly, the present volume also includes Husserl's subsequent responses to his critics. All of the texts included have been translated into English for the first time, introducing the reader to a wide range of long-neglected material that is highly relevant to contemporary debates regarding the meaning and possibility of phenomenology.

Part IBackground (1905–1913)

Rodney Parker

Theodor Elsenhans

Theodor Elsenhans (1862–1918) began his career studying theology in Tübingen, but became deeply interested in philosophy, receiving his doctorate in 1885. In the years immediately following, he published a number of pieces, including Wesen und Entstehung des Gewissens (Elsenhans 1894), “Das Verhältnis der Logik zur Psychologie” (Elsenhans 1896),5 and Selbstbeobachtung und Experiment in der Psychologie (Elsenhans 1897). In 1902, Elsenhans completed his Habilitationsschrift, Das Kant-Friesische Problem (Elsenhans 1902), in Heidelberg. In 1908 he accepted a professorship in Dresden – where he lived out his career – and continued to develop his work on Kant and Fries concerning epistemology. In addition to his work on the theory of knowledge, Elsenhans was interested in the relationship between psychology and other areas of philosophy as well (Elsenhans 1912).

In January 1917, Max Frischeisen-Köhler, then the editor of Kant-Studien, sent Husserl a copy of Elsenhans’ forthcoming article “Phänomenologie und Empirie” (Elsenhans 1918). This paper was the third installment in the Elsenhans-Linke debate (Elsenhans 1915; Linke 1917), and Frischeisen-Köhler implored Husserl to write a response of his own, suggesting the title “Begriff und Tragweite der Phänomenologie,” perhaps being able to finish it over the Easter holidays (Husserl 1994b, 49–50). In April of that year, Edith Stein wrote to Roman Ingarden concerning Husserl’s promised contribution to the debate:

During the holidays…[Husserl] wrote Einleitung in die Phänomenologie (Introduction to Phenomenology) divided into two sections Phänomenologie u. Psychologie (Phenomenology and Psychology) and Phän. u. Erkenntnistheorie (Phen. and Epistemology)…I am trying to get him to see that he should dress up the piece, use it as an answer to Elsenhans, and then submit it for publication in Kant-Studien. At the moment, however, he is not convinced. He is indeed committed to an answer but intends to prepare a special reply (Stein 2014, 57–58).

Husserl did not end up publishing these two treatises in the Kant-Studien, nor any other response to Elsenhans – perhaps due to Elsenhans’ death on 3 January 1918 – though Frischeisen-Köhler had begun announcing that a volume by Husserl titled Das Wesen der Phänomenologie would be forthcoming in the Ergänzungsheft series. “Phänomenologie und Psychologie” and “Phänomenologie und Erkenntnistheorie”, along with the draft of the “special reply” to Elsenhans, “Zur Kritik an Theodor Elsenhans und August Messer. Edith Steins Ausarbeitung” (also included in this volume p. 449–468), can be found in (Husserl 1987).

References

Elsenhans, Theodor (1894): Wesen und Entstehung des Gewissens: Eine Psychologie der Ethik. Leipzig: Engelmann.

Elsenhans, Theodor (1896): “Das Verhältnis der Logik zur Psychologie.” In: Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 109, pp. 195–212.

Elsenhans, Theodor (1897): Selbstbeobachtung und Experiment in der Psychologie: Ihre Tragweite und ihre Grenzen. Tübingen: Mohr.

Elsenhans, Theodor (1902): Das Kant-Friesische Problem. Heidelberg: Hörning.

Elsenhans, Theodor (1912): Lehrbuch der Psychologie. Tübingen: Mohr.

Elsenhans, Theodor (1915): “Phänomenologie, Psychologie, Erkenntnistheorie.” In: Kant-Studien 20, pp. 224–75.

Elsenhans, Theodor (1918): “Phänomenologie und Empirie.” In: Kant-Studien 22, pp. 243–61.

Farber, Marvin (1967): The Foundation of Phenomenology: Edmund Husserl and the Quest for a Rigorous Science of Philosophy. Albany: SUNY Press.

Fisette, Denis (2010): “Descriptive Psychology and Natural Sciences: Husserl’s early Criticism of Brentano.” In: Philosophy, Phenomenology, Sciences: Essays in Commemoration of Edmund Husserl. Carlo Ierna, Hanne Jacobs, and Filip Mattens (Eds.). Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 221–53

Husserl, Edmund (1903): “Bericht über deutsche Schriften zur Logik aus den Jahren 1895–1899 (III).” In: Archiv für systematische Philosophie 9 (3), pp. 393–408.

Husserl, Edmund (1987): “Zur Kritik an Theodor Elsenhans und August Messer. Edith Steins Ausarbeitung .” In: Husserliana XXV: Aufsätze und Vorträge (1911–1921). Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp (Eds.). Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, pp. 226–248

Husserl, Edmund (1994a): Husserliana Dokumente III. Briefwechsel: Band 5. Die Neukantianer. Karl Schuhmann (Ed.). Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Husserl, Edmund (1994b): Husserliana Dokumente III. Briefwechsel: Band 8. Institutionelle Schreiben. Karl Schuhmann (Ed.). Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Husserl, Edmund (2001): Logical Investigations I. J. N. Findlay (Trans.). London/New York: Routledge.

Linke, Paul Ferdinand (1917): “Das Recht der Phänomenologie: Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Th. Elsenhans.” In: Kant-Studien 21, pp. 163–221.

Stein, Edith (2014): Letters to Roman Ingarden. Hugh Candler Hunt (Trans.). Washington: ICS Publications.

Translated by Erin Stackle

Theodor Elsenhans. Selections from Textbook of Psychology

Lehrbuch der Psychologie

Tübingen: Mohr (1912)

Chapter One: Psychology as Science

Section Four: The Method of Psychology

BThe Method of the Treatment of Material

[48] It seems hardly possible to separate the method of treatment of the material of psychology from the method of acquiring it. Now, were it the case that concepts were already made available in observation with which to classify the psychological object, and were a distinct experimental design already to correspond to the distinctly scientific posing of a question, then the beginning of a ‘treatment’ would seem to be already given just with these. But actually, instead, the entire classification by concepts allows itself, almost without difficulty, to be distinguished from the ‘making available’ of concepts, and the acquisition of the experimental results to be distinguished from their processing; our further survey concerning the method of psychology will show that it is expedient to address particular consideration to the treatment of the material.

IThe Idea of a Merely ‘Descriptive’ Psychology

In one case, however, every fundamental would escape this distinction. This would be the case, were psychology required to ‘describe’ what is readily available, without mediation. This idea of a ‘describing’ or ‘descriptive psychology’ has, in various forms, until the most recent time,6 found its adherents: These approximate more or less to the first extensive justification we have of this standpoint, given by Wilhelm Dilthey. Dilthey’s justification is thus best for evaluating the standing of this method.

Explanatory psychology, Dilthey claims, gives itself the task corresponding to ‘explanation’ in the natural sciences, “to subordinate [the phenomena of its realm] to a vast all-embracing causal coherence by means of a limited number of unambiguously determined elements.” Psychology can only reach this, its goal, if it transfers onto mental life the way of forming hypotheses characteristic of the natural sciences, through which a causal coherence is supplementarily added to what is given. Psychology is not, however, entitled to make this transfer.

So, psychology is ‘spellbound in a fog of hypotheses’—for example, its teaching of the parallelism between the nervous operations and the mental operations—for which “the possibility for testing them against the mental [psychischen] facts is in no way apparent” (Dilthey 1894, p. 1309). In the inner-world, the living nexus was given, rather, in consciousness, and did not need to be introduced only subsequently through hypotheses as is the case with the physical phenomena. Psychology, on this model, has only the inner facts to describe and to analyze, and the gaps to fill in.

IIDescribing and Explaining

To gainsay the psychologists opposed to this model, H. Ebbinghaus, in particular, lent words. “Explanatory psychology,” he says, “does not only somehow explain and construct [49] out of merely hypothetical assumptions, but rather, the vast majority of its adherents in the past, and the entirety of its independent adherents in the present, employ it to first prepare the resources for its explanations through the most careful study of what is given. It thus practices for a long time precisely the procedure that Dilthey holds as advisable” (Ebbinghaus 1896, p. 195).

Mere description could simply not be the task of a science. Descriptive psychology itself does not even content itself with the mere describing, analyzing, and generalizing of what is given, but rather, it recognizes that ‘what is given’ features gaping holes, which our thinking urgently demands we fill. In filling these holes, however, it proceeds exactly as explanatory psychology.

This instructive back and forth of the two opposing standpoints sufficiently designates the weakness of a psychology that wants to only ‘describe’. We further complete what has been said through reference to the nature of the ‘describing’.

What happens while we describe that ‘sensory world’? We designate the mental processes with words, which are, however, themselves taken from the psychological language. We speak of ‘sensations’, ‘ideas’7 [Vorstellungen], ‘feelings’, ‘drives’, and with these [words] we subordinate the relevant processes under certain psychological concepts.

We can then either content ourselves with the vague popular word meaning, which confuses, for example, sensation and feeling, or we can strive for scientific clarity and exactness. We will probably prefer the latter.

Then, however, we stand already in the realm of ‘explanatory psychology’, to whose main task such an exact classification belongs, and which, through the disclosure of the causal nexus, itself first makes possible complete classification.

IIIThe Inevitable Deduction from Innate Capabilities

In addition, there is a further point. Especially for the ‘most exact’ psychologists, those psychological concepts are collective names for the reactions to stimuli of psychophysical organisms. While such a psychologist speaks in this way about sensation, attention, pitch memory, weariness, etc., with these he makes his own the inevitable explanation of innate capabilities, which cannot be avoided in the whole organic world. He thereby lapses hopelessly into a standpoint which concerningly evokes the old ‘psychology of faculties’.8

In fact, this way of explanation is in no way to be avoided. We can do nothing other than presume such dispositions, whose unfolding in the interplay with the outer world first makes mental life possible. Psychology has, until now, neglected these concepts all-too much, and we will try, in a later segment, to make up for this omission.

Here, our task is only to indicate that the use of such concepts in modern psychology only differentiates it from the old ‘psychology of faculties’ through the fact that it builds onto the established knowledge with critical diligence the realization that, within certain boundaries, an examination through experiments is possible and that—this is the most important point—the main principle holds: to reduce, if possible, the number of hypotheses. Every psychological collective name has the tendency to the designation of a ‘faculty’, or to become an innate capability, since, as a process in a psychophysical organism, it points to its overall conditions of living.

The important thing is to simplify, if possible, the explanatory process based on it, i.e., to reduce to a minimum the application of those concepts of innate capabilities. There can be no talk of the complete elimination of the same—for this the fight between Locke and Leibniz about innate ideas, discussed earlier, is a telling example. [50]

IVThe General Method in the Treatment of the Material

Psychology, thus, can go no other way in the treatment of its material than can science in general. Our desire for understanding is satisfied whenever it is permitted us to ascertain the spatial and temporal characteristics of an object, to classify it in a system of clear and distinct concepts, and to survey completely its causal relationships to other objects.

Spatial characteristics come into consideration in psychology only for the bodily organs and processes, which stand in relation to the mental. So the task of psychology is fulfilled whenever it is permitted to investigate the temporal relationships of the mental operations, to apprehend the individual components of the mental life in clear and distinct concepts, to make clear their development and causal relationships, and, in the context of this knowledge, to learn to understand the mental life as a coherent whole.

Literature:9

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Kant, Immanuel (1839b): Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht. In: Sämtliche Werke VII, Friedrich Schubert und Karl Rosenkranz Wilhelm (eds.). Leipzig: Leopold Voss.

Comte, Auguste (1880): Einleitung in die positive Philosophie. Leipzig: Fues’s Verlag.

Brentano, Franz (1874). Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte I. Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot.

Wundt, Wilhelm (1883): “Die Aufgaben der experimentellen Psychologie.” In: Essays. Leipzig: Engelmann, pp. 127–154.

Wundt, Wilhelm (1887): “Selbstbeobachtung und innere Wahrnehmung.” In: Philosophische Studien 1, pp. 615–617.

Volkelt, Johannes (1887): “Selbstbeobachtung und psychologische Analyse”. In: Zeitschrift für Philoso...