Husserl’s Preemptive Responses to Existentialist Critiques

Husserl Studies, 2023

Exactly three decades have passed since Lester Embree reprimanded phenomenology scholars for reading Husserl-"incredibly", he added-as the "father of existential phenomenology". (1993: xi) His short, impassioned discussion named no names, but one can imagine the kind of reader Embree could've had in mind; in their zeal for defending Husserl from the barrage of charges of intellectualism, quietism, solipsism, etc., they overcorrected and subsequently lost sight of the genuinely new and salient contributions of his eminently transcendental philosophy. Embree highlights what he takes to be a substantive difference between existential and transcendental inquiry, anchored in their diverging phenomenological interests. The former is characterized by a "reflective-descriptive philosophical preoccupation with concrete individual human subjectivity" (1993: xii), whereas the latter is focused primarily on philosophy of science and deals with nonworldly subjectivity. Although its philosophical project has "great continuing merit", existential phenomenology, he concludes, is not transcendental. (1993: xi) A lot has happened in the Husserl-world since, and we now have access to much more of the relevant Nachlass-material than would have been readily available thirty years ago. In addition to an up-to-date knowledge of that primary material, the sensibilities of the modern Husserl reader are also shaped, perhaps in equal measure, by the voluminous secondary literature on the modalities and limitations of transcendental phenomenology that has appeared since. In light of these additional sources, how should we evaluate the putative sharp contrast between existential and transcendental concerns? Plausibly, phenomenological description of the existential makeup of concrete subjectivity ought to be a part of the broader transcendental project, at the very least. But how do the two fit together? This question yields a further issue. Life and death, freedom and necessity, anxiety and happiness, values, moral principles, lifeshaping choices-i.e., the building blocks of concrete human existence-are all clusters of

This volume brings together essays by leading phenomenologists and Husserl scholars in which they engage with the legacy of Edmund Husserl’s philosophy. It is a broad anthology addressing many major topics in phenomenology and philosophy in general, including articles on phenomenological method; investigations in anthropology, ethics, and theology; highly specialized research into typically Husserlian topics such as perception, image consciousness, reality, and ideality; as well as investigations into the complex relation between pure phenomenology, phenomenological psychology, and cognitive science. TABLE OF CONTENTS: Preface by U. Melle PART I The Nature and Method of Phenomenology 1 Husserl on First Philosophy by R. Sokolowski 2 Le sens de la phénoménologie by M. Richir 3 Transzendentale Phänomenologie? by R. Bernet 4 Husserl and the ‘absolute’ by D. Zahavi 5 Husserls Beweis für den transzendentalen Idealismus by U. Melle 6 Phenomenology as First Philosophy: A Prehistory by S. Luft 7 Der methodologische Transzendentalismus der Phänomenologie by L. Tengelyi PART II Phenomenology and the Sciences 8 Husserl contra Carnap : la démarcation des sciences by D. Pradelle 9 Phänomenologische Methoden und empirische Erkenntnisse by D. Lohmar 10 Descriptive Psychology and Natural Sciences: Husserl’s early Criticism of Brentano by D. Fisette 11 Mathesis universalis et géométrie : Husserl et Grassmann by V. Gérard III Phenomenology and Consciousness 12 Tamino’s Eyes, Pamina’s Gaze: Husserl’s Phenomenology of Image-Consciousness Refashioned by N. de Warren 13 Towards a Phenomenological Account of Personal Identity by H. Jacobs 14 Husserl’s Subjectivism: The “thoroughly peculiar ‘forms’” of Consciousness and the Philosophy of Mind by S. Crowell 15 “So You Want to Naturalize Consciousness?” “Why, why not?” – “But How?” Husserl meeting some offspring by E. Marbach 16 Philosophy and ‘Experience’: A Conflict of Interests? by F. Mattens PART IV Phenomenology and Practical Philosophy 17 Self-Responsibility and Eudaimonia by J. Drummond 18 Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer phänomenologischen Theorie des Handelns: Überlegungen zu Davidson und Husserl by K. Mertens 19 Husserl und das Faktum der praktischen Vernunft:Anstoß und Herausforderung einer phänomenologischen Ethik der Person by S. Loidolt 20 Erde und Leib: Ort der Ökologie nach Husserl by H.R. Sepp PART V Reality and Ideality 21 The Universal as “What is in Common”: Comments on the Proton-Pseudos in Husserl’s Doctrine of the Intuition of Essence by R. Sowa 22 Die Kulturbedeutung der Intentionalität: Zu Husserls Wirklichkeitsbegriff by E.W. Orth 23 La partition du réel : Remarques sur l’eidos, la phantasia, l’effondrement du monde et l’être absolu de la conscience by C. Majolino 24 Husserl’s Mereological Argument for Intentional Constitution by A. Serrano de Haro 25 Phenomenology in a different voice: Husserl and Nishida in the 1930s by T. Sakakibara 26 Thinking about Non-Existence by L. Alweiss 27 Gott in Edmund Husserls Phänomenologie by K. Held"

Husserl and othe Phenomenologists , 2016

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. (This article appears in a special issue "Husserl and other Phenomenologists" which i edited for The European Legacy: Towards New Paradigms, 21, 5-6, 2016)

Springer Verlag, 2023

This text examines the many transformations in Husserl’s phenomenology that his discoveries of the nature of appearing lead to. It offers a comprehensive look at the Logical Investigations’ delimitation of the phenomenological field, and continues with Husserl’s account of our consciousness of time. This volume examines Husserl’s turn to transcendental idealism and the problems this raises for our recognition of other subjects. It details Husserl’s account of embodiment and examines his theory of the instincts. Drawing from his published and unpublished manuscripts, it outlines his treatment of our mortality and the teleological character of our existence. The result is a genetic account of our selfhood, one that unifies Husserl’s different claims about who and what we are.

Journal of Philosophical Investigations , 2019

In this paper I discuss some significant aspects of Husserl's phenomenology which could not be adequately known without studying the manuscripts, unpublished during his lifetime and then published gradually since 1950 by Husserl Archives in Leuven founded by Father van Breda in 1939. The aspects I discuss here are listed under 6 subjects: Husserl's phenomenological analyses of the constituting corporeal subjectivity, Husserl's phenomenological analysis of the conditions of possibility of representifications, concept of I-consciousness, conception of transcendental subjectivity as intersubjectivity, the development of Husserl's conception of phenomenological philosophy, and Husserl's metaphysics. This paper is drawn from, and an extension of, a lecture given at the Catholic University of Louvain in the occasion of 80th anniversary of the foundation of the Husserl Archives.

The central thesis of this paper is to specify the main features of Husserl's phenomenology and also its significance in philosophy. The first section of this paper will examine Husserl's main features of phenomenology, which are; the mind and the body, the epoché, consciousness and intentionality, inter-subjectivity and also the life-world. Then, I will proceed to examine the importance of Husserl's theories in philosophy.

2019

My purpose in this occasion is to play down two views that characterized the mainstream reception of Husserl's work, based mostly on what he published during his lifetime. On the one hand, that his method and phenomenological philosophy remained dependent of the Cartesian paradigm and the models of theoretical sciences; on the other hand, that his eidetic method and phenomenology, were caught in a "logicism of essences." The publication of his 1936 Crisis and, later on, the careful historical-critical George Heffernan (2015/2016) has pointed out two phenomenological "schisms" surrounding the reception of Husserl's transcendental turn during the first decades of the 20 th century. Both were intimately related, not only in their content-in that they dealt with Husserl's 1913 publication of Ideas I-but also in their continuity, despite the temporal gap between them. He contends that the second, "Phenomenological-Existential Schism," between 1927-1933, triggered by Heidegger's Being and Time, could not have taken place without the first "Great Phenomenological Schism," between 1905-1913. Indeed, the early München and Göttingen schools of phenomenology, inspired by Husserl's 1900-1901 Logical Investigations, slowly perceived a change in the master's courses and correspondence. None seemed to understand Husserl's doubts concerning his Logical Investigations' account of the correlation between immanence and transcendence since 1903, which finally lead him to introduce as early as 1904/05 the phenomenological reduction. 2 This move was interpreted by his early followers as abandoning his earlier "realism of essences" compatible with a theory of knowledge founded on phenomenology as descriptive psychology. Thus his "transcendental idealism," "developed during the decisive years from 1903 to 1910" (Kern 1964: 180), was interpreted as a relapse into a sort of subjective relativism. Heidegger-also "fascinated" by Husserl's Logical Investigations (Heidegger 1969: 82)-already took distance with Husserl since 1913, and thus shared with Scheler, Pfänder, Stein, Ingarden, Reinach, and others, the same "perplexity" "at the perceived primacy of theory over practice, reflection over action, logic over ethics, essence over existence, eternity over history, science over life, objects over things, or, in a word, Bewusstsein over Dasein" (Heffernan 2016: 236). Yet the first external sign of the estrangement between Husserl and Heidegger was their "failed attempt (…) to compose together an article on phenomenology for the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1927-1928)" (Heffernan 2016: 238). Heidegger's 1925 Marburg lectures on the History of the Concept of Time, highlights not only the virtues of the Logical Investigations (also acknowledged by Dilthey) (GA 20: 30) but also of Ideas I's third and fourth parts as an "essential advance beyond all the obscurities prevalent in the tradition of logic and epistemology" (GA 20: 67). Yet he carries out in the same lectures a demolishing "immanent critique" of Ideas

Philosophical Inquiries X/2 , 2022

Dan Zahavi's latest book on Husserl has many merits. Not only does it offer a clear, sharp, and detailed reconstruction of the Husserlian phenomenological project, but it also stands out for its ambitious aim of highlighting the usefulness of a sound reading of historical texts to address theoretical questions. To do this, Zahavi choses to focus less on the analyses Husserl devoted to various concrete topics than on the general "methodological and metaphilosophical" (p. 2) aspects of his philosophy. These latter correspond to the three topics evoked in the book's subheading, which one might summarize into three questions: What does a phenomenological method amount to? Is phenomenology necessarily a transcendental philosophy? And what (if any) metaphysical implications does it entail? Despite the massive interpretative work that Husserlian scholarship has been undertaking during the last decades, a great deal of unjustified prejudices and misunderstandings on these issues remains. Thus, for instance, Husserl's approach is often misinterpreted as introspectivist, internalist, representationalist, phenomenalistic, solipsistic, Cartesian-to mention only a few. Throughout the book, Zahavi sweeps away many of them one by one, by showing them as baseless when compared with a cautious reading of Husserl's theses. Admittedly, not all the controversies faced in the book derive from such superficial and rough readings. Quite the contrary, most of them have challenged appreciable scholars, and even the phenomenologists who worked close to Husserl himself. This is chiefly the case for the question as to how to understand Husserl's claim of idealism. And, as I perceive it, the several reflections carried on are basically different steps to address and settle this issue and discuss its main implications, in the light of contemporary philosophy. In this sense, the core of the book is represented by chapter 4, in which Zahavi illustrates the kind of idealism Husserl was committed to. The three forerunning chapters deal with the methodological role of reflection to carry phenomenological investigation (ch. 1) and with Husserl's conceptions of phenomenology before (ch. 2) and after (ch. 3) the so-called transcendental turn.

Introduction to "Husserl and Other Phenomenologists" , pp.465-466, 2016

This introduction appears in a special issue "Husserl and other Phenomenologists" which i edited for The European Legacy: Towards New Paradigms, 21, 5-6, 2016)

Philosophy of Mind: The Key Thinkers , 2013