Edmund - Husserl-Philosophy - And.the - Crisis.of - European.man (Theoria) PDF
Edmund - Husserl-Philosophy - And.the - Crisis.of - European.man (Theoria) PDF
Edmund - Husserl-Philosophy - And.the - Crisis.of - European.man (Theoria) PDF
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PHENOMENOLOGY
AND THE
CRISIS OF PHILOSOPHY
QUENTIN LAUER
HARPER TORCHBOOKS
The Academy Library
. HARPER It ROW, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
Contents
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71
HARPER TORCHBOOK
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150
istic sciences here fail to perform the service that in their own
sphere the natural sciences perform so competently?
Those who are familiar with the spirit of modern science will
not be embarrassed for an answer. The greatness of the natural
sciences consists in their refusal to be content with an observational empiricism, since for them all descriptions of nature are
but methodical procedures for arriving at exact explanations, ultimately physico-chemical explanations. They are of the opinion
that "merely descriptive" sciences tie us to the finitudes of our
earthly environing world. 4 Mathematically exact natural science,
however, embraces with its method the infinities contained in its
actualities and real possibilities. It sees in the intuitively given a
merely subjective appearance, and it teaches how to investigate
intersubjective ("objective") 5 nature itself with systematic approximation on the basis of elements and laws that are unconditionally universal. At the same time, such exact science teaches
how to explain all intuitively pre-given concretions, whether men,
or animals, or heavenly bodies, by an appeal to what is ultimate,
i.e., how to induce from the appearances, which are the data in
any factual case, future possibilities and probabilities, and to do
this with a universality and exactitude that surpasses any empiricism limited to intuition. 6 The consistent development of exact
sciences in modern times has been a true revolution in the technical mastery of nature.
4 I am using an expression borrowed from Dewey to translate the Husserlian Umwelt, a term Husserl uses frequently only in his last period. In
the light of the Cartesian Meditations we must remember that though such
a world is subjectively "constituted," it is still not a private world, since its
constitution is ultimately "intersubjective."
5 Like Kant, Husserl saw "necessity" and "universality" as the notes that
characterize genuinely valid objectivity. Not until his later works (Ideen
II and Cartesian Meditations), however, does he explicitly see "intersubjective constitution" as the ultimate concrete foundation for universal objectivity.
6 Here Husserl is giving to the term "intuition" the limited meaning of
sense intuition that it has for Kant.
153
is referred, is in each individual instance causally based on corporeality. It is thus understandable that the practitioner of humanistic science, interested solely in the spiritual as such, gets no
further than the descriptive, than a historical record of spirit,
and thus remains tied to intuitive finitudes. Every example manifests this. A historian, for example, cannot, after all, treat the
history of ancient Greece without taking into consideration the
physical geography of ancient Greece; he cannot treat its architecture without considering the materiality of its buildings, etc.,
etc. That seems clear enough.
What is to be said, then, if the whole mode of thought that
reveals itself in this presentation rests on fatal prejudices and is
in its results partly responsible for Europe's sickness? I am convinced that this is the case, and in this way I hope to make understandable that herein lies an essential source for the conviction
which the modern scientist has that the possibility of grounding
a purely self-contained and universal science of the spirit is not
even worth mentioning, with the result that he flatly rejects it.
It is in the interests of our Europe-problem to penetrate a bit
more deeply into this question and to expose the above, at first
glance lucidly clear, argumentation. The historian, the investigator of spirit, of culture, constantly has of course physical nature
too among the phenomena with which he is concerned; in our
example, nature in ancient Greece. But this is not nature in the
sense understood by natural science; rather it is nature as it was
for the ancient Greeks, natural reality present to their eyes in
the world that surrounded them. To state it more fully; the
historical environing world of the Greeks is not the objective
world in our sense; rather it is their "representation of the world,"
i.e., their own subjective evaluation, with all the realities therein
that were valid for them, for example the gods, the daemons, etc.
Environing world is a concept that has its place exclusively in
the spiritual sphere. That we live in our own particular environconsciousness. For Husserl, self-consciousness is a mark of "personality"
rather than "spirituality."
154
ing world, to which all our concerns and efforts are directed,
points to an event that takes place purely in the spiritual order.
Our environing world is a spiritual structure in us and in our
historicallife. 9 Here, then, there is no reason for one who makes
his theme the spirit as spirit to demand for it any but a purely
spiritual explanation. And this has general validity: to look upon
environing nature as in itself alien to spirit, and consequently to
desire to support humanistic science with natural science and thus
presumably to make the former exact, is nonsense.
Obviously, too, it is forgotten that natural science (like all
sciences as such) is a title for spiritual activities, those of natural
scientists in cooperation with each other; as such these activities
belong, as do all spiritual occurrences, to the realm of what
should be explained by means of a science of the spirit. 10 Is it
not, then, nonsensical and circular, to desire to explain by means
of natural science the historical event "natural science," to explain
it by invoking natural science and its laws of nature, both of
which, as produced by spirit,l1 are themselves part of the problem?
Blinded by naturalism (no matter how much they themselves
9 In this connection one should consult the Second Cartesian Meditation,
where Husserl insists that the only reality that the world can have for one
who would approach it scientifically is a phenomenal reality. If we are to
understand it scientifically, our analysis of it must be purely phenomenological, i.e., it is the phenomenon "world" that we must analyze. "We
shall direct our attention to the fact that phenomenological epoche lays
open (to me, the meditating philosopher) an infinite realm of being of a
new kind, as the sphere of a new kind of experience: transcendental experience" (Cartesian Meditations, p. 66). Cf. ibid., p. 69: "Now, however,
we are envisaging a science that is, so to speak, absolutely subjective, whose
thematic object exists whether or not the world exists."
10 Because of the context here, it is imperative that "Geisteswissenschaft"
not be translated as "humanistic science."
11 From his earliest days Husserl never tired of insisting that there can
be no "natural science" of science itself. It is the theme of Logische Untersuchungen and is perhaps most eloquently expressed in Formale und
transzendentale Logik, whose purpose is to develop a "science of science,"
which, Husserl holds, can be only a transcendental (constitutive) phenomenology.
155
156
158
159
attitude19
160
161
first in this nation, a general cultural spirit that draws the whole
of mankind under its sway and is therefore a progressive transformation in the shape of a new historicity.22
This rough sketch will gain in completeness and intelligibility
as we examine more closely the historical origin of philosophical
and scientific man and thereby clarify the sense of Europe and,
consequently, the new type of historicity that through this sort of
development distinguishes itself from history in general.23
First, let us elucidate the remarkable character of philosophy
as it unfolds in ever-new special sciences. Let us contrast it with
other forms of culture already present in prescientific man, in his
artefacts, his agriculture, his architecture, etc. All manifest classes
of cultural products along with the proper methods for insuring
their successful production. Still, they have a transitory existence
in their environing world. Scientific achievements, on the other
hand, once the method of insuring their successful creation has
been attained, have an entirely different mode of being, an entirely different temporality. They do not wear out, they are imperishable. Repeated creation does not produce something
similar, at best something similarly useful. Rather, no matter how
many times the same person or any number of persons repeat
these achievements, they remain exactly identical, identical in
sense and in value. Persons united together in actual mutual
understanding can only experience what their respective fellows
have produced in the 'same manner as identical with what they
22 Under the verbiage of this extremely difficult paragraph is hidden
a profound insight into the transformation that takes place in men when
they begin to look beyond facts to ideas. The only way to describe the horizon
thus opened is to call it "infinite." Whether this began only with the Greeks
is, of course, open to dispute. Still, the Greeks are the intellectual first parents of Western man.
23 With the advent of philosophical and scientific ideals history itself becomes historical in a new and more profound sense. It is unfortunate, however, that Husserl fails to see history as the progressive concretization of the
ideal.
16 3
nor is this any longer everyone in the finite sense the term has in
prescientific life. 26
Having thus characterized the ideality peculiar to science, with
the ideal infinities variously implied in the very sense of science,
we are faced, as we survey the historical situation, with a contrast
that we express in the following proposition: no other cultural
form in the pre-philosophical historical horizon is a culture of
ideas in the above-mentioned sense; none knows any infinite
tasks-none knows of such universes of idealities that as wholes
and in all their details, as also in their methods of production,
bear within themselves an essential infinity.
Extra-scientific culture, not yet touched by science, is a task
accomplished by man in finitude. The openly endless horizon
around him is not made available to him. His aims and activities,
his commerce and his travel, his personal, social, national,
mythical motivation-all this moves about in an environing
world whose finite dimensions can be viewed. Here there are no
infinite tasks, no ideal attainments whose very infinity is man's
field of endeavor-a field of endeavor such that those who work
in it are conscious that it has the mode of being proper to such an
infinite sphere of tasks.
With the appearance of Greek philosophy, however, and with
its first definitive formulation in a consistent idealizing of the new
sense of infinity, there occurs, from this point of view, a progressive transformation that ultimately draws into its orbit all ideas
proper to finitude and with them the entire spiritual culture of
mankind. For us Europeans there are, consequently, even outside
the philosophico-scientific sphere, any number of infinite ideas (if
we may use the expression), but the analogous character of
infinity that they have (infinite tasks, goals, verifications, truths,
26 If "everyone" simply includes the sum total of all existing subjects,
it does not have the universal significance that Husserl demands. In the
sense in which he understands it, "universal" is inseparable from "essential."
One is reminded of the critics who accuse Husserl of being "scholastic."
Cf. p. 82 supra.
The attitude that pursues "knowledge for its own sake." It is pre-
munal form in which the interest works itself out, the corresponding, essentially new attitude of the philosophers and the scientists
(mathematicians, astronomers, etc.). These are the men who, not
isolated but with each other and for each other, i.e., bound together in a common interpersonal endeavor, strive for and carry
into effect theoria and only theoria. These are the ones whose
growth and constant improvement ultimately, as the circle of
cooperators extends and the generations of investigators succeed
each other, become a will oriented in the direction of an infinite
and completely universal task. The theoretical attitude has its historical origin in the Greeks.
Speaking generally, attitude bespeaks a habitually determined
manner of vital willing, wherein the will's directions or interests,
its aims and its cultural accomplishments, are preindicated and
thus the overall orientation determined. In this enduring orientation taken as a norm, the individual life is lived. The concrete
cultural contents change in a relatively enclosed historicity. In its
historical situation mankind (or the closed community, such as a
nation, a race, etc.) always lives within the framework of some
sort of attitude. Its life always has a normative orientation and
within this a steady historicity or development.
Thus if the theoretical attitude in its newness is referred back
to a previous, more primitive normative attitude, the theoretical
is characterized as a transformed attitude. 2s Looking at the historicity of human existence universally in all its communal forms
and in its historical stages, we find, then, that essentially a certain
style of human existence (taken in formal universality) points to
a primary historicity, within which the actual normative style of
culture-creating existence at any time, no matter what its rise or
fall or stagnation, remains formally the same. In this regard we
are speaking of the natural, the native attitude, of originally
cisely in this that the "infinity" of the horizon consists: there is no assignable practical goal in which its interest can terminate.
28 Here the play on words involved in Einstellung and Umstellung is impossible to render in English.
166
how makes this world itself his theme, where he conceives an enduring interest in it.
But here more detailed explanations are needed. Individual
human beings who change their attitudes as human beings belonging to their own general vital community (their nation),
have their particular natural interests (each his own) . These they
can by no change in attitude simply lose; that would mean for
each ceasing to be the individual he is, the one he has been since
birth. No matter what the circumstances, then, the transformed
attitude can only be a temporary one. It can take on a lasting
character that will endure as a habit throughout an entire life
only in the form of an unconditional determination of will to take
up again the selfsame attitudes in a series of periods that are
temporary but intimately bound together. It will mean that by
virtue of a continuity that bridges intentionally the discreteness
involved, m~n will hold on to the new type of interests as worth
being realized and will embody them in corresponding cultural
forms. 31
Weare familiar with this sort of thing in the occupations that
make their appearance even in a naturally primitive form of
cultural life, where there are temporary periods devoted to the
occupation, periods that interrupt the rest of life with its concrete
temporality (e.g., the working hours of a functionary, etc.).
Now, there are two possibilities. On the one hand, the interests
of the new attitude will be made subservient to the natural interests of life, or what is essentially the same, to natural practicality. In this case the new attitude is itself a practical one. This,
then, can have a sense similar to the practical attitude of the
politician, who as a state functionary is attentive to the common
good and whose attitude, therefore, is to serve the practical interests of all (and incidentally his own). This sort of thing ad31 Neither philosophy nor science nor, for that matter, any professional
interest can become the exclusive interest in any man's life. But it is true
that one is designated philosopher, scientist, etc., by the predominant interest
which has an intentional continuity throughout all the occupations of his
daily life.
168
169
almost exclusively to
the programmatic aspects of phenomenology-getting it "off the ground,"
so to speak-he found little time himself for the sort of thing he describes
here. But many of his students did. Much of the contemporary interest in
Husserl, manifested in a wide variety of areas, is due to a desire to learn
how to do what Husser! suggests.
170
171
172
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actual life have been satisfied or working hours are past. Curiosity, too (not in the sense of an habitual "vice"), is a modification,
an interest raised above merely vital interests and prescinding
from them.
With an attitude such as this, man observes first of all the
variety of nations, his own and others, each with its own environing world, which with its traditions, its gods and demigods, with
its mythical powers, constitutes for each nation the self-evident,
real world. In the face of this extraordinary contrast there arises
the distinction between the represented and the real world, and a
new question is raised concerning the truth-not everyday truth
bound as it is to tradition but a truth that for all those who are
not blinded by attachment to tradition is identical and universally
valid, a truth in itself. Thus it is proper to the theoretical attitude
of the philosopher that he is more a\ld more predetermined to
devote his whole future life, in the sense of a universal life, to the
task of theoria, to build theoretical knowledge upon theoretical
knowledge in infinitum. 37
In isolated personalities, like Thales, et al., there thus grows up
a new humanity-men whose profession it is to create a philosophicallife, philosophy as a novel form of culture. Understandably there grows up at the same time a correspondingly novel
form of community living. These ideal forms are, as others understand them and make them their own, simply taken up and made
part of life. In like manner they lead to cooperative endeavor and
to mutual help through criticism. Even the outsiders, the nonphilosophers, have their attention drawn to the unusual activity
that is going on. As they come to understand, they either become
philosophers themselves, or if they are too much taken up with
3T To characterize "essentially" the "path of motivation" from mere cu.
riosity about the world to a universal philosophical science of the world is
of course, extremely aprioristic. We are simply told how it must have bee~
(the danger of all "essential" intuition). It remains true, however, that there
is no better introduction to philosophy than a history of the pre-Socratic
attempts to know the secrets of the world-without doing anything about it.
174
175
17 6
the battle will carryover into the sphere of political power. At the
very beginning of philosophy, persecution sets in. The men dedicated to those ideas are outlawed. And yet ideas are stronger
than any forces rooted in experience. 38
A further point to be taken into consideration here is that
philosophy, having grown out of a critical attitude to each and
every traditional predisposition, is limited in its spread by no
national boundaries. All that must be present is the capacity for
a universal critical attitude, which too, of course, presupposes a
certain level of prescientific culture. Thus can the upheaval in
the national culture propagate itself, first of all because the
progressing universal science becomes a common possession of
nations that were at first strangers to each other, and then because a unified community, both scientific and educational, extends to the majority of nations.
Still another important point must be adduced; it concerns
philosophy's position in regard to traditions. There are in fact
two possibilities to observe here. Either the traditionally accepted
is completely rejected, or its content is taken over philosophically,
and thereby it too is reformed in the spirit of philosophical
ideality. An outstanding case in point is that of religion-from
which I should like to exclude the "polytheistic religions." Gods
in the plural, mythical powers of every kind, are objects belonging to the environing world, on the same level of reality as animal
or man. In the concept of God, the singular is essentia1. 39 Looking at this from the side of man, moreover, it is proper that the
reality of God, both as being and as value, should be experienced
as binding man interiorly. There results, then, an understandable
blending of this absoluteness with that of philosophical ideality.
In the overall process of idealization that philosophy undertakes,
38 One is reminded of the contrast made by Aristotle between "men of
experience" and "men of science" (Metaph. A 981a). In a more striking
way Socrates met this in his conflict with the "practical" politicians of his
day.
39 Again, a phenomenological essential intuition, that says nothing regarding the "existence" of God.
177
God is, so to speak, logicized and becomes even the bearer of the
absolute logos. I should like, moreover, to see a logic in the very
fact that theologically religion invokes faith itself as evidence and
thus as a proper and most profound mode of grounding true
being. 40 National gods, however, are simply there as real facts
of the environing world, without anyone confronting philosophy
with questions stemming from a critique of cognition, with questions of evidence.
Substantially, though in a somewhat sketchy fashion, we have
now described the historical movement that makes understandable how, beginning with a few Greek exceptions, a transformation of human existence and of man's entire cultural life could be
set in motion, beginning in Greece and its nearest neighbors.
Moreover, now it is also discernible how, following upon this, a
supernationality of a completely new kind could arise. I am
referring, of course, to the spiritual form of Europe. It is now no
longer a number of different nations bordering on each other,
influencing each other only by commercial competition and war.
Rather a new spirit stemming from philosophy and the sciences
based on it, a spirit of free criticism providing norms for infinite
tasks, dominates man, creating new, infinite ideals. These are
ideals for individual men of each nation and for the nations
themselves. Ultimately, however, the expanding synthesis of
nations too has its infinite ideals, wherein each of these nations,
by the very fact that it strives to accomplish its own ideal task in
the spirit of infinity/1 contributes its best to the community of
nations. In this give and take the supernational totality with its
40 Nowhere, it seems, has Husser! developed this profound insight wherein
he sees faith as a special kind of evidence, permitting theology, too, to be
a science. In different ways this is developed by Scheler in his philosophy
of religion, by Van der Leeuw and Hering in their phenomenology of religion, and by Otto in his investigations of "the sacred."
411m Geiste der Unendlichkeit: The expression, scarcely translatable into
English, bespeaks a spirit that refuses to stop short of infinity in its pursuit
of truth. In Husser! himself, one hesitates to see it as a plea for a metaphysics, but in a Scheler, a Heidegger, a Conrad-Martius, it becomes just
that; d. Peter Wust, Die Au/erstehung der Metaphysik (Leipzig, 1920).
179
I, too, am quite sure that the European crisis has its roots in a
mistaken rationalism. 43 That, however, must not be interpreted
as meaning that rationality as such is an evil or that in the totality
of human existence it is of minor importance. The rationality of
which alone we are speaking is rationality in that noble and
genuine sense, the original Greek sense, that became an ideal in
the classical period of Greek philosophy-though of course it
still needed considerable clarification through self-examination.
It is its vocation, however, to serve as a guide to mature development. On the other hand, we readily grant (and in this regard
German idealism has spoken long before us) that the form of
development given to ratio in the rationalism of the Enlightenment was an aberration, but nevertheless an understandable
aberration.
Reason is a broad title. According to the good old definition,
man is the rational living being, a sense in which even the
Papuan is man and not beast. He has his aims, and he acts with
reflection, considering practical possibilities. As products and
methods grow, they enter into a tradition that is ever intelligible
in its rationality. Still, just as man (and even the Papuan) represents a new level of animality-in comparison with the beast-so
with regard to humanity and its reason does philosophical reason
represent a new level. The level of human existence with its ideal
norms for infinite tasks, the level of existence sub specie aeternitatis, is, however, possible only in the form of absolute universality, precisely that which is a priori included in the idea of
philosophy. It is true that universal philosophy, along with all
the particular sciences, constitutes only a partial manifestation
of European culture. Contained, however, in the sense of my
entire presentation is the claim that this part is, so to speak, the
43 Husserl's constant plea has been for a return to the "rationalism" of
Socrates and Plato (d. "Philosophy as Rigorous Science," p. 76 supra), not
to the rationalism of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe. His own
inspiration, however, is traceable far more to Descartes, Hume, and Kant
than to Socrates and Plato.
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181
task, the totality of being, involves still other aspects. When inadequacy reveals itself in obscurities and contradiction, then this
becomes a motive to engage in a universal reflection. Thus the
philosopher must always have as his purpose to master the true
and full sense of philosophy, the totality of its infinite horizons.
No one line of knowledge, no individual truth must be absolutized. Only in such a supreme consciousness of self which
.
'
Itself becomes a branch of the infinite task, can philosophy fulfill its function of putting itself, and therewith a genuine humanity, on the right track. To know that this is the case, however,
also involves once more entering the field of knowledge proper to
philosophy on the highest level of reflection upon itself. Only on
the basis of this constant reflectiveness is a philosophy a universal
knowledge.
I have said that the course of philosophy goes through a period
of naivete. This, then, is the place for a critique of th~ so renowned irrationalism, or it is the place to uncover the naivete of
that rationalism that passes as genuine philosophical rationalitY,
and that admittedly is characteristic of philosophy in the w~le
modern period since the Renaissance, looking upon itself arHae
real and hence universal rationalism. Now, as they begin,
sciences, even those whose beginnings go back to ancient timeS,
are unavoidably caught up in this naivete. To put it more exactly,
the most general title for this naivete is objectivism, which is given
a structure in the various types of naturalism, wherein the spirit is
naturalized. 46 Old and new philosophies were and remain naively
objectivistic. It is only right, however, to add that German ideal";
ism, beginning with Kant, was passionately concerned with over'
coming the naivete that had already become very sensitive. Still,'
it was incapable of really attaining to the level of superior reflectiveness that is decisive for the new image of philosophy and
of European man.
What I have just said I can make intelligible only by a few
all.
182
sketchy indications. Natural man (let us assume, in the prephilosophical period) is oriented toward the world in all his
concerns and activities. The area in which he lives and works is
the environing world which in its spatiotemporal dimensions surrounds him and of which he considers himself a part. This continues to be true in the theoretical attitude, which at first can be
nothing but that of the disinterested spectator of a world that is
demythologized before his eyes. Philosophy sees in the world the
universe of what is, and world becomes objective world over
against representations of the world-which latter change subjectively, whether on a national or an individual scale-and thus
truth becomes objective truth. Thus philosophy begins as cosmology. At first, as is self-evident, it is oriented in its theoretical
interest to corporeal nature, since in fact all spatiotemporal data
do have, at least basically, the form of corporeality. Men and
beasts are not merely bodies, but to the view oriented to the environing world they appear as some sort of corporeal being and
thus as realities included in the universal spatiotemporality. In
this way all psychic events, those of this or that ego, such as
experience, thinking, willing, have a certain objectivity. Community life, that of families, of peoples, and the like, seems then
to resolve itself into the life of particular individuals, who are
psychophysical objects. In the light of psychophysical causality
there is no purely spiritual continuity in spiritual grouping;
physical nature envelops everything.
The historical process of development is definitively marked
out through this focus on the environing world. Even the hastiest
glance at the corporeality present in the environing world shows
that nature is a homogeneous, unified totality, a world for itself,
so to speak, surrounded by a homogeneous spatiotemporality and
divided into individual things, all similar in being res extensae
and each determining the other causally. Very quickly comes a
first and greatest step in the process of discovery: overcoming the
finitude of nature that has been thought of as objective-in-itself,
finitude in spite of the open infinity of it. Infinity is discovered,
18 3
184
and in general of a world knowledge is undertaken. The extraordinary successes of natural knowledge are now to be extended
to knowledge of the spirit. Reason had proved its power in nature.
"As the sun is one all-illuminating and warming sun, so too is
reason one" (Descartes). 48 The method of natural science must
also embrace the mysteries of spirit. The spirit is real49 and objectively in the world, founded as such in corporeality. With this
the interpretation of the world immediately takes on a predominantly dualistic, i.e., psychophysical, form. The same causality-only split in two-embraces the one world; the sense of
rational explanation is everywhere the same, but in such a way
that all explanation of spirit, in the only way in which it can be
universal, involves the physical. There can be no pure, self-contained search for an explanation of the spiritual, no purely inneroriented psychology or theory of spirit beginning with the ego in
psychical self-experience and extending to the other psyche. 50 The
way that must be traveled is the external one, the path of physics
and chemistry. All the fond talk of common spirit, of the common
will of a people, of nations' ideal political goals, and the like, are
romanticism and mythology, derived from an analogous application of concepts that have a proper sense only in the individual
personal sphere. Spiritual being is fragmentary. To the question
regarding the source of all these difficulties the following answer
is to be given: this objectivism or this psychophysical interpretation of the world, despite its seeming self-evidence, is a naive
one-sidedness that never was understood to be such. To speak of
the spirit as reality (Realitiit) , presumably a real (realen) annex
48 Regulae ad directionem ingenii, Rule 1. The quotation is verbally inaccurate (probably from memory), but the sense is the same.
49 For Husser!, real has a distinctively different meaning from reel!. The
former is applied only to the material world of facts; the latter belongs to
the ideal world of intentionality. Cf. Ideen I, pp. 218-20.
50 Cf. Husserl's Encyclopaedia Britannica article, "Phenomenology," where
he develops the notion of a "pure" psychology independent of psychophysical considerations.
18 5
186
187
beginning they necessarily presuppose themselves as a group of
men belonging to their own environing world and historical
p~riod. By the sa~e token, th~y ?o not see that in pursuing their
alms they are seekmg a truth m Itself, universally valid for everyone. By its objectivism psychology simply cannot make a study
of the soul in its properly essential sense, which is to say, the ego
that acts and is acted upon. Though by determining the bodily
function involved in an experience of evaluating or willing, it
may objectify the experience and handle it inductively, can it do
the same for purposes, values, norms? Can it study reason as some
sort of "disposition"? Completely ignored is the fact that objectivism, as the genuine work of the investigator intent. upon
finding true norms, presupposes just such norms; that objectivisJp.
refuses to be inferred from facts, since in the process facts .~
already intended as truths and not as illusions. It is troe, of
course, that there exists a feeling for the difficulties p~tfteTe,
with the result that the dispute over psychologislllis flc\~~d into
a flame. Nothing is accomplished, hbwever,by>t1f~g a
psychological grounding of norms, above all ot'Jl~Jor truth
in itself. More and more perceptible becomes.~overall need
for a reform of modern psychology in its en~.As yet, however, it is not understood that psychology ~its objectivism
has been found wanting; that it simplyfai4 ~. .~. at the proper
essence of spirit; that in isolating the soul andffi~g it an object
of thought, that in reinterpreting psyc~ysically being-incommunity, ;t is being absurd. True, it
labored in vain,
and it has established many empirical~, even practically
worthwhile ones. Yet it is no more a real~hology than moral
statistics with its no less worthwhijoknowledge is a moral
science. 54
In our time we everywhere meet
burning need for an
understanding of spirit, while the unclarity of the methodological
and factual connection between the natural' sciences and the
I1aStiot
the
188
18g
cerning it, however, the natural sciences give merely the appearance of having brought nature to a point where for itself it is
rationally known. For true nature in its proper scientific sense is
a product of the spirit that investigates nature, and thus the
science of nature presupposes the science of the spirit. The spirit
is essentially qualified to exercise self-knowledge, and as scientific
spirit to exercise scientific self-knowledge, and that over a.nd over
again. Only in the kind of pure knowledge proper to sCIence of
the spirit is the scientist unaffected by the objection that his accomplishment is self-concealing.56 As a consequence, it is absurd
for the sciences of the spirit to dispute with the sciences of nature
for equal rights. To the extent that the former concede to the
latter that their objectivity is an autonomy, they are themselves
victims of objectivism. Moreover, in the way the sciences of the
spirit are at present developed, with their manifold disciplines,
they forfeit the ultimate, actual rationality which the spiritual
Weltanschauung makes possible. Precisely this lack of genuine
rationality on all sides is the source of what has become for man
an unbearable unclarity regarding his own existence and his
infinite tasks. These last are inseparably united in one task: only
if the spirit returns to itself from its naive exteriorization, clinging
to itself and purely to itself, can it be adequate to itself.57
Now, how did the beginning of such a self-examination come
about? A beginning was impossible so long as sensualism, or
better, a psychology of data, a tabula rasa psychology, he~d the
field. Only when Brentano promoted psychology to bemg a
science of vital intentional experiences was an impulse given that
could lead further-though Brentano himself had not yet over56 If the proper function of true science is to know "essences," there
seems little question that the sciences of nature neither perform nor pretend to perform this function. If, in addition, essences are, only insofar as
they are "constituted" in consc~ousnes (u~timately spirit), then only a science
of spirit can legitimately lay clal~ to.the title.
.,
57 One is reminded of Hegel s dictum that when reason IS COnsCIOuS to
itself of being all reality, it is spirit. T~e difference in the paths by which
Hegel and Husser! arrive at this conclUSIOn should be obvious.
190
come objectivism and psychological naturalism.58 The development of a real method of grasping the fundamental essence of
spirit in its intentionalities and consequently of instituting an
analysis of spirit with a consistency reaching to the infinite, led to
transcendental phenomenology. It was this that overcame naturalistic objectivism, and for that matter any form ?f objectivism,
in the only possible way, by beginning one's philosophizing from
one's own ego; and that purely as the author of all one accepts,
becoming in this regard a purely theoretical spectator. This attitude brings about the successful institution of an absolutely
autonomous science of spirit in the form of a consistent understanding of self and of the world as a spiritual accomplishment.
Spirit is not looked upon here as part of nature or parallel to it;
rather nature belongs to the sphere of spirit. Then, too, the ego is
no longer an isolated thing alongside other such things in a pregiven world. The serious problem of personal egos external to or
alongside of each other comes to an end in favor of an intimate
relation of beings in each other and for each other.
Regarding this question of interpersonal relations, nothing can
be said here; no one lecture could exhaust the topic. I do hope,
however, to have shown that we are not renewing here the old
rationalism, which was an absurd naturalism, utterly incapable
of grasping the problems of spirit that concern us most. The
ratio now in question is none other than spirit understanding
itself in a really universal, really radical manner, in the form of a
science whose scope is universal, wherein an entirely new scientific thinking is established in which every conceivable question,
whether of being, of norm, or of so-called "existence,"59 finds its
place. It is my conviction that intentional phenomenology has for
the first time made spirit as spirit the field of systematic, scien58 For his part, Brentano complained that his theory of intentionality had
been transformed by Husser! into an a priori idealism.
59 Existenz: Husser! was never particularly sympathetic to "existentialism."
To him it smacked too much of irrationalism. A rational science of philosophy could only be an essentialism. In such a science, existence could be
significant only as "possible existence."
191
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