I. WESTERN PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE1. The Meaning of the Present Crisis and the Historicity of Philosophy
What is the nature of the present crisis to which phenomenological philosophy is asserted by Husserl to offer a solution? If the existence of Western man appears critical and problematic, it is because he has allowed himself to become unfaithful to his idea, the very idea that defines and constitutes him as Western man. That idea is no other than the idea of philosophy itself: the idea of a universal knowledge concerning the totality of being, a knowledge which contains within itself whatever special sciences may grow out of it as its ramification, which rests upon ultimate foundations and proceeds throughout in a completely evident and self-justifying fashion and in full awareness of itself. Closely connected with this idea, whose inception in ancient Greece in the 7th and 6th centuries B.C. marks the historical beginning of Western man, is the idea of a truly human, i.e., philosophical, existence, an existence oriented towards the ideas, ideals, and norms of autonomous reason, which alone permits Western man to live in conformity and at peace with himself.
Paradoxically enough, it is owing to the one-sided and, therefore, distorted as well as distorted realization of the idea of philosophy since the Renaissance - viz., its realization through the positive sciences - that Western man has lost sight of the idea which makes him what he is and has thus become alienated from himself. In the course of their development, expansion, and growth (which Husserl is ready to admire), the sciences have undergone a process of specialization and technization. Perhaps this was unavoidable; but it has led to forsaking those very philosophical aspirations out of which Western science was born and by which it had been sustained in the 17th and 18th centuries. Who indeed can today look at science as the thinkers of those centuries did? Who can still maintain that science has the function of enabling Western man to renew himself under the idea of his rationality, to lead an authentic existence as a rational being, to order freely and reasonably his relations to his environment, his fellow-men, and himself? In the prevailing positivistic interpretation, the sciences appear as expedients to predict facts and events and to manipulate them. All questions concerning human reason, which is but a title for "eternal" or atemporal ideas and norms - among them true knowledge, authentic value, genuinely good action, etc. - are eliminated from the sciences, not only from the natural sciences which anyhow confine themselves to the corporeal aspects of reality, but from the humane sciences as well. In the latter, too, man is regarded merely as to his factuality, as an object like any other one in whose study the objectivistic methods of the natural sciences must be emulated. However, if the human mind and human rationality are either overlooked or explained away in a naturalistic fashion, the sciences themselves become unintelligible. Since they are products and creations of the human mind, the foundations upon which they rest, the sense of their procedures and accomplishments, and the limitations of their legitimacy cannot be brought to light except by referring the very products to the generating and producing mental activities. If this most essential context is overlooked - in recent times it has increasingly become the tendency to disregard it - the sciences appear as most ingenious technical devices which one may learn to use and which, if properly handled, will yield most remarkable, even marvelous, results but whose interior mechanism and functioning remain utterly obscure.
The crisis of the Western sciences does not concern their technical validity. What is in question is the meaning of the sciences in a philosophical sense and, no less important, their human significance. They familiarize us with facts and their concatenations, with the conditions under which certain facts occur. In a world in which there are merely facts and in which man himself appears as nothing but a most complex fact, there is no room for the norms and ideas of reason. They become unintelligible. Science, it seems, has nothing to say regarding things that matter most for human existence. Hence the growing skepticism, if not hostility, with regard to the sciences extends to reason itself, whose paramount manifestations and creations the sciences are. Losing faith in reason, Western man loses faith in himself. All the irrationalistic and anti-intellectualistic tendencies which have of late made their appearance on the Western scene are symptoms of the disease which has befallen Western man, of his estrangement from himself, of his betrayal of himself, that paradoxical betrayal through partial realization. For his salvation, Western man must not try to escape from himself; on the contrary, he must endeavor to find himself again. At this point phenomenological philosophy appears in its historical significance and mission. It purports the return to the idea of philosophy, through certainly not to any philosophical system of the past. Resuscitating the idea of philosophy in the classical sense in which it was conceived in Greece, re-orienting Western man towards this idea as the telos of his historical existence, phenomenology permits him to become again true to himself.
It is not by an accident or through a blind fate that Western man has fallen into his present existential crisis. To show how that crisis grew organically in the history of Western thinking and to convince his readers that at the present historical stage phenomenology is necessitated by the meaning of Western history, or, more correctly, by the sense of the historicity of Western man, if the very foundations of his historical existence are to be retrieved, Husserl engages himself in historical considerations of a particular kind. In view of the vital role which, according to him, philosophy has played for Western culture, his historical studies bear upon the history of philosophy. The purpose of his historical considerations is not to satisfy an interest in the past for its own sake. The contemporary philosopher has to be made aware of his position within a historical context of the task which he has to assume if he is to be faithful to his vocation as a philosopher. It is the essential inner historicity of the philosopher and the realization of the idea of philosophy that has to be disclosed. Husserl's history of philosophy is at the same time, a philosophy of history.
What Husserl sets out to study is not a plurality of philosophical systems, considered as historico-cultural phenomena and the logical or other concatenations that might obtain between them; nor does he emphasize their dependency and influence upon the products of other historico-cultural activities. Rather, he embarks upon the history of the very idea of philosophy,its inauguration in Greek antiquity, its renewal in the Renaissance, its subsequent transformations. Such an idea can be apprehended and have efficacy in different modes, that of explicitness to a greater or lesser degree as well as those of comparative obscurity, sedimentation, and mere traditionality. Its historical effectiveness consists in orienting and polarizing the intentions of the philosophers, thus unifying from within the historical process whose telos the idea in question is. If the history of philosophy is more than a mere sequence of conflicting and contradictory systems, if it has context and coherence, this is by virtue of a "concealed unity of intentional interiority." To disclose and to render explicit that "concealed unity" is the purpose of Husserl's historico-teleological reflections. Such reflections differ from historical studies in the usual sense insofar as they cannot be carried out in an "inductive" manner by the analysis and comparison of texts and other documents, including the self-interpretations of the historical philosophers. Behind and beneath all documentary evidence, there is the orientation of the philosopher towards the teleological idea of philosophy, that very idea which gives unity and meaning to the historical process as a whole. A teleological idea -- which, because it displays itself in the medium of history, by necessity undergoes transformations and yet preserves its identity -- defines an infinite task. All philosophical theories as formulated in documents must be seen under the perspective of that infinite task. They must be considered as to the fulfillment which they bring to that task at the respective phases within the encompassing historical context. The historical significance of a philosophical theory consists precisely in its contribution towards the infinite task.
Made aware of the essential reference of every philosophical endeavor to a teleological idea and of the place of that endeavor within a teleological organized and unified context, we at once become aware of the inner historicity of philosophy. We, the philosophers of the present age, are by no means free arbitrarily to choose our directions, our problems, our points of departure. Assuming the vocation and the responsibility of philosophers, we find ourselves within a certain historical situation, and we have to accept that situation. History does not denote a past behind us and extraneous to us. On the contrary, the past is contained and implied within our present. Our intentions as philosophers of the present age continue, and are in continuity with, the intentions of our intellectual ancestors, because we not only possess a historical heritage but are historical beings throughout.
Such efficacy of the past within the present can assume two forms. Either the past is but a sediment, merely a tradition, a transmitted acquisition which we silently accept as a matter of course without being aware of its historical nature. Or else the acquisition of the past may be revitalized and re-instated, resuscitated from their sedimentary condition and this by referring them to the very motives which instituted them originally and determine their formation. Far from satisfying a mere curiosity in the past, Husserl's historico-teleological reflections are meant to enable us, the contemporary philosophers, to see and to understand ourselves - that is, to find our specific task within the infinite task. Through such reflections, the historical context of philosophy is to be revivified so that we may become aware of our place within that context and of the specific task assigned to us at that place. As matters stand, our specific task is no other than a renewal and a new transformation of the very idea of philosophy. If, as Husserl contends, transcendental phenomenology proves to be the specific task which we have to assume at the present historical period, phenomenological philosophy is not a private concern of an individual philosopher or a particular school, nor is it one possible philosophy among others equally possible. Rather, it appears as a historical "necessity" - that is, as demanded at the present phase of the history of philosophy by that history in its totality, by the very idea of philosophy itself."
2. The Rise of Philosophy in Ancient Greece
In the Viennese Lecture Husserl concerns himself mainly with the institutive inception of philosophy in Greek antiquity. This inception purports a radical modification of, or departure from, the pre-philosophical and pre-theoretical attitude. To understand this departure, we have to describe briefly the pre-theoretical attitude.
Normally and originally man lives naively in a specific "world" (Umwelt) which he takes for granted and unquestionably accepts as reality. Prior to a philosophical and theoretical culture of Greco-Western style, the Umwelt is essentially and even necessarily of a mythico-magical nature. Deities, demons, mythical powers of every description are to be counted among the realities of the Umwelt; their influence extends to things and happenings of all kinds. The Umwelt is thus thoroughly imbued with meaning and significance; it is constituted by the sense which is bestowed upon it by the members of a certain community. To them their Umwelt is their reality: the world as it appears to them, as they take it to be, conceive of it, interpret it. Conceptions and interpretations may and do change in the course of the history of a given community, and this purports a corresponding transformation of its Umwelt. For the same reason, the Umwelt of one community may be highly different from that of another one. Umwelt has an essentially mental denotation. As the product of the collective mentality of a community, Umwelt proves relative to that community at a certain period of its history.
As long as the pretheoretical attitude prevails, all activities not only take place within the Umwelt and are oriented by the accepted traditional conceptions, but they are also pursued for the sake of living and finding one's way within the Umwelt. All activities, including those of cognitive or speculative nature, are motivated by, and essentially related to, practical human interests. Practicality must not be construed in a crude utilitarian sense; it purports reference to human purposes and to the general welfare of individuals as well as the community. Notions like knowledge, error, truth, falsity, reality, appearance, etc. are here relative not only to the nature and structure of the Umwelt in question but also to a given specific situation, to needs and desires to be satisfied at the moment, to courses of action to be taken, to plans and designs to be carried out, etc. Cognitive and speculative activities remain confined within a finite horizon, the sense of finitude being defined by the relativities mentioned. At the level in question, neither the relativity nor the finitude can obviously be disclosed and apprehended as such.
According to Plato and Aristotle, "wondering" marks the beginning of philosophy. "Wondering" is interpreted by Husserl as suspension (epoche) of all practical interests and adoption of the attitude of the detached onlooking observer. In this new attitude, as contrasted with the practico-mythical one, there arises the conception of "being as it is in itself" in contradistinction to the many Umwelten, that of the philosopher's own community as well as those of other communities. Every such Umwelt is now relegated to the status of an appearance or, as Husserl puts it, representation of the world (Weltvorstellung). Along with the notion of "being as it really is in itself" there is conceived the idea of knowledge in the sense of episteme: i.e., knowledge of "being as it really is in itself" in contradistinction to "opinion" (doxa) which is related to Umwelt and to situations within the Umwelt. The goal of the philosopher who has devoted himself to the theoretical life is to attain episteme - that is, absolute truths valid always and for everybody, regardless of the situation in which one might find oneself, independently of any practical purposes and needs, irrespective of the community to which one belongs. Such truths can only be about entities which are not subject to change or variation but remain forever identical with themselves. In other words, they can only be about ideal entities like the Platonic archetypes in which the particular things partake and which these things approximate to a higher or lesser degree or like the ideal geometrical elements (points, straight line, plane) and whatever ideal geometrical figures can be constructed by means of these elements, in contradistinction to the empirical spatial configurations which are given in a more or less vague typicality and are, therefore, affected by a comparative indeterminateness or unpreciseness. Philosophy and theology in general originate in the disclosure of infinite horizons and the apprehension of ideal entities. Empirical things are referred to ideal norms or, which is the same, limit-poles, i.e., ideal poles located at infinity. As contrasted with the man of the pre-theoretical attitude, who concerns himself only with what pertains to his Umwelt and in the pursuit of all his activities remains within a finite horizon, the philosopher, who conceives of ideal entities as "being as it really is in itself," orients himself towards infinity and finds himself confronted with infinite tasks. An infinite task is denoted by the very idea of episteme itself, an idea which proves an ideal norm and an ideal limit-pole with respect to every cognitive endeavor. Not only is every truth concerning matters of fact referred to the idea of absolute truth in the sense of episteme, of which the former is a relative approximation, but every single theoretical result, every single truth within the meaning of episteme acquires the sense of a transitional phase within an infinite process oriented towards an ideal pole: viz., the idea of episteme as totally and definitively accomplished.
Conceived with regard to the theoretical domain, which in the strict sense is constituted by this very conception, the notion of ideal norms and ideal limit-poles to which empirical occurrences are to be referred is in no way confined to that domain. On the contrary, the conception in question becomes relevant for every domain of culture; it revolutionizes all traditional norms such as justice, beauty, morality, and the like. In a sense in which this holds for no other culture, Western culture, even beyond the theoretical domain, proves essentially Ideenkultur, oriented towards ideal norms, assuming infinite tasks, and growing within infinite horizons. This distinctive feature results from the central and vital role which the idea of philosophy, as the idea of an infinite task, not a particular philosophical system as a historical fact, played at the institutive beginning and therefore also during the historical growth of Western culture. On account of the historical inception of Western culture, the idea in question proves to be its immanent telos. The rise of the idea of philosophy in Greek antiquity marks the appearance on the historical scene of a new type of man who in all his finitude assumes infinite tasks and whose historicity has the sense of... This new typoe of man must not be considered as just one anthropological type beside others. The appearance of Western man purports the incipient actualization of a potentiality proper to man as such.... For his well-being, his wholesomeness, his very existence, Western man must remain faithful to his idea and immanent telos which make him to be what he is."
3. Galileo's Inauguration of Modern Science
During the Renaissance the closely related ideas of "being as it really is in itself" and knowledge in the sense of episteme are at once revived and transformed. This transformation finds its expression in the work of Galileo. Reality comes to be conceived of as a thoroughly rational universe accessible to a totally rational (i.e., mathematical) science. The mathematization of nature is Galileo's consequential accomplishment by which all future development of the modern period has been decisively determined.
Galileo inherited the traditional Euclidean geometry, which he accepted as a self-contained and autochthonous science, i.e., a science having no roots or foundations outside of itself. However, perceptual experience of common everyday occurrences within the world in which we live and within which we pursue all our activities, the Umwelt or Lebenswelt, is prior to and underlies geometry as a "foundation of sense." In the Lebenswelt we encounter bodies whose special forms are only typically determined, i.e., determined within a more or less vaguely circumscribed range of variability. Spatial forms, magnitudes, etc. present themselves more or less in fluctuation, when observed under varying conditions. Practical necessities lead to the development of the art of measurement by which the vagueness, the lack of precision, and the relativity of the perceptual experience of spatial configurations are overcome to the extent to which this is required by the demands of the given situation and the conditions of social life. Not only does the accuracy of measurement depend upon the available techniques, but the practice of measuring, determining, obtaining more precise results, etc. is throughout oriented towards practical goals. Techniques may be perfected: if they are actually perfected, they are so with a view to practical purposes and tasks. Whatever measurement meets the demands of a given practical situation is accepted as sufficiently accurate and satisfactory.
On this basis, geometry arises by the process of idealization, a specific mental operation sui generis through which there is constituted a universe of ideal entities, ideal limit-forms, the geometrical figures in the proper sense. Such figures can be determined with absolute accuracy, i.e., exactness; they are absolutely identical with themselves and free from every vacillation; their properties can be ascertained in a totally unambiguous manner. Spacial configurations and forms as given in perceptual experience may now be referred to the geometrical figures as ideal poles which the former approximate to a greater or lesser degree. Moreover, geometry develops methods of constructing more and more complex geometrical figures out of a very few elementary ones, like straight lines, triangles, circles, etc. In the final analysis, all possible geomentrical figures may be generated by means of constructive operations upon the elementary ideal entities. Geometry provides a method of definitively overcoming the relativism of perceptual experience and the limitations of the practical art of measurement. Geometrical methods yield a body of results valid in all situations and under all conditions. Because of their cogent conclusiveness these results must be accepted by everyone who applies those methods. In other words, the methods of geometry lead to the discovery of absolute truths, i.e., truths holding for everybody, and to the disclosure of "being as it really is in itself." Here the idea of episteme seems finally attained.
Established, developed, and practiced in the course of centuries, the method of geometry grows into an technique which may be acquired and become habitual, which one may learn to master and to use. This process is at the same time one of consolidation and obfuscation, obfuscation, namely, of the historico-intentional "origin" of geometry, its rootedness in the pre-geometrical experience of the Lebenswelt. The latter remains what it is, and we continue living and pursuing all our activities within it whether or not we are in the possession of the geometrical method or, for that matter, any scientific method. It is but the last phase of the process of origination of geometry, the accomplished result to which this process leads, that is retained, while the process itself is lost sight of. When geometry is thus taken as constituted and established, in severance from the very process of its origination, it undergoes a certain transformation of sense. It is not understood as a mental accomplishment of a higher order, involving the process of idealization and, therefore, founded upon and presupposing pre-geometrical experience of the Lebenswelt upon which idealization is performed. Having become a tradition, an established and consolidated acquisition at the disposal of whomever learns to master its methods, geometry appears to rest on its own grounds. The validity of its results seems self-evident, the function of its method to yield episteme seems to involve no problem whatever and is taken for a matter of course.
For Galileo, geometry exists already in the historical form of traditionality, i.e., it has undergone the mentioned transformation of sense. He inherits geometry as an established science which, on account of its absolute and universal validity, he considers as the prototype, model, and standard of knowledge. Consequently geometry must be applied to experience in order to discover reality as it is in itself in contradistinction to the the varying appearances and phenomena. The geometrical method, and this method alone, allows for disclosure within experienced things of that content which belongs to those things as they really are and which is not affected by changes in their manner of appearance. Again the notions of "being as it really is in itself" and genuine knowledge prove correlative of one another.
Galileo's first step consists in an abstraction. Only the corporeal aspect of things and of the world at large is taken into consideration. The only subjects of study are spatial configurations and spatio-temporal events. Spatiality and temporatity play a privileged role also in the pre-theoretical experience of the Lebenswelt; no matter what the nature of the things encountered in the Lebenswelt might be, they exhibit spatial and temporal characteristics. Space and time provide the framework within which things are experienced in the Lebenswelt. The mathematization of the spatial and temporal features and characteristics purports their quantification. The art of measurement which, historically speaking, underlies geometry in the sense that, as mentioned, geometry arises out of it by means of the operation of idealization, acquires, in turn, a new meaning in the light of geometry and mathematics at large, once they are established. To be sure, the accuracy of every actual measurement is still relative to the available technique and will remain so forever. Yet, the perfection of techniques of measurement is now emancipated from the concern with practical goals and needs arising in concrete situations. Because of the reference to ideal limit-poles, actual perfections of techniques come now to be conceived of under the perspective of the idea of infinite perfectibility (infinite in principle, of course, not in fact). A series of measurements performed by means of progressively perfected techniques not only yields results of increasing accuracy, but these results can now be interpreted as closer and closer approximations to a numerical value which, though it might not be obtainable by any actual measurement, determines the quantity in question as that quantity really is. Spatial configurations, temporal intervals, etc. are in themselves numerically determined, in the sense of geometrico-mathematical exactness, though our knowledge of them takes by necessity the form of an asymptotic process. In the things as they are in themselves, there are realized, as their determinations, those very ideal limit-poles towards which the actual empirical measurements converge.
Far from being confined to static phenomena, the mathematization of nature extends to change and variation as well. As given in common everyday experience, the Lebenswelt not only extends into an indefinite open spatio-temporal horizon, but it also exhibits causality of a certain style. Changes do not occur at random but with typical uniformity. Variations in some respect are regularly accompanied or followed by variations in another respect. In all variation and change the world presents an invariant general style of variation and change. On this account things are connected and hang together; the world as a whole appears as a unified totality. Regularity, uniformity, the invariant style of the world, make possible inductions and predictions, though on a rather limited scale and of relative accuracy. To obtain genuinely philosophical knowledge of the world, one has to go beyond the empty generality that all happenings are causally determined. A method must be found which permits specification of the general causality of the world and construction of infinities of causal connections on the basis of what is accessible to actual experience, finite and fragmentary. Such a method is mathematization, more specifically, algebraization. Phenomena which change along with one another are symbolized by variables between which laws of functional dependency are established as hypotheses. These hypotheses lend themselves to verification; the phenomena in question are subjected to measurement under the perspective, of course, of ideal limit-poles to be approximated. Still this method is of limited application as long as merely special configurations and temporal intervals but not the specific qualities - color, sound, thermal and tactile phenomena - are accessible to quantification, i.e., measurement of increasing accuracy and oriented towards ideal limit-poles. The general causality which prevails in the Lebenswelt involves spatio-temporal configurations and specific qualities alike. Every change, whether in the former ot the latter, occurs in typical and uniformly regular connection with some other change. In physics of the Galilean style, all happenings and changes which concern the specific qualities are referred to spatio-temporal events in such a manner that all qualitative aspects of the world are conceived of as causally dependent upon spatio-temporal events. Qualitative phenomena indicate spatio-temporal events, i.e., events completely describable in terms of spatiality and temporality and, hence, accessible to mathematization. These events have come to be considered as the objective content of the specific qualities - i.e., the real condition of things, a condition which at once reveals and conceals itself in their qualitative aspects. It must be stressed that the occurrences experienced in the Lebenswelt in no way motivate the interpretation of the specific qualities as causally dependent, and unilaterally so dependent, upon spatio-temporal events. This interpretation which is the distinctive mark of modern physics is regarded by Husserl as a hypothesis which, all verification notwithstanding, forever remains a hypothesis. "Verification" here means a sequence of particular verifications: a sequence of correct theories, special hypotheses, and their verifications - briefly, nothing less than the historical process of the development of science. By its very nature, science of the style inaugurated by Galileo is a progressive historical process which passes from phase to phase, each phase being the "science of a certain time." This historical process is progressive so far as it approximates an ideal goal, viz., "nature as it really is in itself." Nature as modern science conceives it really to be in itself proves to be an ideal infinite pole towards which an infinity of theories and verifications converge.
By means of referring the specific qualities to underlying spatio-temporal processes, an indirect mathematization of the former is accomplished such that laws of functional dependency may now encompass all features and aspects of experience. Formulated as mathematical equations, these laws permit predictions and inductions surpassing by far, both in scope and accuracy, those of pre-theoretical common experience. The causality of the Lebenswelt, which merely purports typical regularity and uniformity, is also idealized and mathematized: all events in "nature as it really is in itself" are strictly determined by exact laws. Laws of nature are the formulae of functional dependency by which the mathematized phenomena are correlated with one another. These laws of functional dependency, the laws of nature stated in mathematical form which is their proper and genuine form, are considered to express the true condition of nature.
Thus the mathematization of nature is complete. A universe of ideal mathematical entities related to one another by exact laws is substituted for the Lebenswelt, which is relegated with all its features to the status of a mere subjective phenomenon or appearance. In whatever disguise nature may present itself in experience, especially perceptual experience, taken as it is in itself, it must be considered as a "mathematical manifold." Subjective phenomena have significance only so far as they may serve as indications of the true - i.e., mathematical - condition of things, indications which are vague and, moreover, are merely by way of concealment. A specifically modern concept arises which we may term nature of the physicist in contradistinction to nature as experienced. Experienced nature is the fundamental stratum of the Lebenswelt, our reality and our only one, which alone is and may ever be given in experience. Nature of the physicist proves to be a tissue of ideas and ideal constructions (Ideenklied). Under the import of the growing prestige of the developing physics, a prestige stemming from its success, both theoretical and practical, that tissue of ideas which a closer philosophico-historical analysis reveals as result and product of a special method and, hence, as correlate of specific mental operations, has come to be considered, by scientists and educated laymen alike, as reality, as "nature as it truly and objectively is" to the total disregard of the Lebenswelt. So completely has the latter been eclipsed that up to the present time even philosophical reflections on science, its meaning and bearing, not to speak of scientific discussions in the technical sense, start from, and abide by, idealized and mathematical nature, no question ever being raised as to the genealogy of nature of the physicist. Considered from a philosophical point of view, the abandonment of the principle of determinism in contemporary microphysics and the other departures from classical physics prove to be, according to Husserl, of less radical significance than they are often presented to be. All the innovations in question concern only mathematized nature - i.e., nature as interpreted in terms of mathematical entities and formulae. The very existence of the Lebenswelt is lost sight of, and, hence, its relation to nature of the physicist is not seen as a problem at all.
By way of abstraction and idealization, Galileo arrives at the conception of nature as a closed and self-contained corporeal world within which all events are determined in advanced. With this the path is opened up for the later Cartesian dualism. The very idea of the world undergoes a radical transformation so far as the world is divided into mind and matter. Notwithstanding the utter heterogeneity of the extended and the thinking substances, the latter is conceived after the model of the former. Mental states, "modifications of consciousness," are supposed to occur according to causal laws of a style analogous to those which prevail in physical nature. This naturalistic conception of the mind as well as the idea of a "mechanistic" biology - i.e., a biology reducible in the final analysis to the general laws of physics - are expressions of the physicalistic objectivism or rationalism which is established and gradually consolidated in consequence of Galileo's inauguration of the "new science." Reality is seen throughout as a systematic context in which all occurrences are rationally determined; the new idea of reality is an extension and generalization of the idea of nature of the physicist. The cognitive style of the Galilean physics defines the ideal of scientific knowledge in general. Philosophy as the universal science of the totality of being must assume the form of a universal mathematics as in Spinoza's Ethica, the first universal ontology more geometrico."
4. The Dawn of Transcendental Subjectivism
Rationality necessarily refers to a mind, whether human or divine, as its principle or source. It is in conformity with the logic of the historical situation as it developed under the impact of Galileo's institution of the "new science" that, along with the conception of the world as a rational system and universe of ideal entities accessible to mathematical knowledge, those mental functions and operations come to the fore whose products and creations are the mathematical theories. The objectivistic trend seems to motivate a complementary trend in the opposite direction, viz., towards the subjective realm, the realm of consciousness. In no thinker does the duality and polarity of these trends, which soon prove antagonistic to one another, appear more clearly than in Descartes.
Descartes conceives the idea of a new philosophy as a universal mathematics, and he gives to this idea a partial realization in his analytical geometry. By the arithmetization of geomentry he anticipates Leibniz's idea of a mathesis inversalis and prepares the way for the complete formalization of mathematics which has been brought to culmination in our day. For us, mathematics has become a technique or an art of combining and manipulating symbols which are devoid of any meaning and are merely defined in terms of the operations which may be performed upon them, operations, which, in turn, are also defined only by certain exclusively formal properties, as, for example, commutativity. To avoid misunderstandings, let us stress that Husserl insists upon the legitimacy and even necessity of the formalization and technization of mathematics and mathematical physics, provided only that we do not lose sight of the source from which the formalizing methods derive their sense and their cognitive significance. On the other hand, intending to lay down ultimate foundations for physicalistic objectivism and rationalism, Descartes was led to the discovery of the realm of consciousness. He thus inaugurated a development in the course of which the very idea of the rationalism came to be uprooted altogether. Two philosophical trends whose antagonism marks the history of modern philosophy take their departure from Descartes: on one side, the rationalistic trend as represented by Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibniz, and, in Husserl's interpretation, Kant; on the other, the empiricistic trend as developed by Locke, Berkeley, and Hume.
Husserl interprets Descartes' discovery of the ego cogito in the light of the development which the Cartesian doubt is given in phenomenology under the heading of the "phenomenological reduction." By this interpretation Husserl claims to disengage hidden implications of Descartes' universal doubt, or, as Husserl also says, the "Cartesian epoche," implications of which Descartes was perhaps not fully aware himself, which at any event he failed to render completely explicit, but in which Husserl sees the driving force and the telos of modern philosophy. Descartes' universal doubt discloses the absolute and apodictic certainty of the existence of the ego as the doubter and performer of the epoche as well as of the totality of his acts of consciousness (cogitations). To every cogitatio there belongs inseparably its cogitatum, i.e., that which presents itself to the mind through the cogitatio in question. The universal epoche engulfs all certainties, convictions, and beliefs, those of our scientific as well as prescientific life. It also engulfs the belief in the existence of the Lebenswelt as given in perceptual experience, that world in which we live, which we take for granted as the basis for all our endeavors. Certainties do not discontinue being experienced. However, they may now be taken only as experienced convictions; we forsake making use of them as valid convictions on the basis of which to proceed. The Lebenswelt continues to appear, to be perceived; but it is now regarded merely as an experienced world, as a world presenting itself, a cogntatum of cogitationes, an "idea," or, as Husserl likewise says, a phenomenon. It remains a real world, but its reality is no longer simply accepted as a matter of course, as a certainty upon which further certainties may be built. In Husserl's interpretation, Descartes' epoche yields more than merely the axiomatic proposition ego cogito or sum cogitans. In other words, the epoche discloses the realm of cogitationes and corresponding cogitata as an apodictic sphere of absolute being which has priority and precedence with regard to every domain of being and existence so far as it proves its absolute apodictic presupposition.
Descartes identifies the ego (i.e., the realm of consciousness) with the human soul, while the human body falls under the epoche. The notion of a pure soul as different from the body is, however, the result of an abstraction, that very abstraction which leads to the concept of a pure corporeal nature. The soul proves to be what remains of the world after corporeity has been abstracted. However, the abstraction in question is not performed within the epoche. Rather, it is taken over from considerations previous to the epoche - specifically, considerations based upon the unquestioned belief in the existence of the world. In other words, Descartes relies upon the Galilean certainty that there exists a corporeal nature whose true being, as it really is in itself, is accessible to mathematical knowedge. His goal is to provide an ultimate foundation and justification for Galilean science and physicalistic objectivism as yielding metaphysically valid knowledge. Having discovered the cogito and identifying it with the soul, Descartes finds himself confronted with the task of transcending the ego, of arriving, by way of inferences, at existents "exterior" to the ego. In his interpretation of the ego, this must mean exterior to the psychological domain. By his insistence on subjectivity, Descartes has opened up an entirely new direction and orientation for modern philosophy. However, his conception of subjectivity proves affected by an ambiguity. On the one hand, it is to the realm of consciousness that he refers all validities and resorts for the validation of objective science and also of the existence of the world. Herein appears the motive of transcendental subjectivism in its earliest form. On the other hand, the ego is identified with the soul, and the realm of consciousness with the psychological domain. Hence the ego is conceived of as a mundane existent to be dealt with in the objective science of psychology, objective so far as it is patterned after the model of physics. Considering that the world and all mundane existents, including the ego or the "I" in the psychological sense, are constituted through, and derive the sense of their existence (Seinssinn) from, cogitationes and functions of the ego as disclosed by the epoche, it is obviously absurd to conceive of the latter ego as a mundane existent. These ambiguities, incompatibilities, and inconsistencies have impelled Husserl to reinterpret and to radicalize the Cartesean epoche or, as he puts it, to disengage its full meaning and true import far beyond what Descartes had seen himself. The ego which is disclosed by the epoche proves to be, when rightly understood, the transcendental ego with reference to which one can no longer meaningfully speak of "exteriority."
In a certain sense Locke seems to take over from Descartes the problem of accounting for the objectivity of knowledge and science. However, in Locke's treatment the problem is transformed into that of the natural history of human cognitive functions and their accomplishments. The mind is conceived of as a kind of closed and self contained "space" in which data appear, disappear, and are combined with one another in a variety of forms. Setting out to trace the psychological genesis of the combinations and complications of data, Locke describes the history of a mundane existent (the mind), and he takes it for granted that this mundane existent has its history among, and under the influence of, other mundane existents: viz., external bodies and events which act upon sense organs and thus give rise to "ideas of sensations." Descartes' problem as to how cogitationes as occurrences in the closed interiority of the soul can acquire cognitive significance with regard to existents exterior to the soul is supplanted in Locke by an inquiry into the psychological and even psycho-psychological genesis of acquisitions whose objective validity is not seen as a problem at all.
The motive of transcendental subjectivism, which seems altogether absent from Locke's philosophy, reappears in its full force in Berkeley and, still more, in Hume. Inheriting from Locke the sensualistic conception of the mind and developing it to its utmost, Hume arrives at a complete skepticism. All objective categories prove to be fictions; those of scientific thinking like number, quantity, continuity, geometrical figure, etc. no less than those of common experience of the perceptual world as the identity of persisting thing, the identity of the self, the causal connection. What the psychological analysis discovers are nothing but appearing and vanishing data, "impressions" and "ideas" (in the specific Humean sense), and regularities, as a result of the various forms of association, in the appearance and grouping of "ideas." It is possible to give a psychological explanation of the origin of those fictions; to do that is Hume's endeavor. But the fictions have to be seen and recognized as fictions.
A highly paradoxical situation arises in which Husserl sees the germ or even the incipient phase of the present crisis of the sciences. They are in a flourishing growth, they proceed from one theoretical conquest to the other, not to speak of their practical success. They seem to bear the stamp of exemplariness and finality. The ways of reasoning and the methods of the sciences, especially the mathematical and physical sciences, cannot but appear conclusive and absolutely evident to whomever follows those lines of thought. Yet, when the attempt is made to account for this conclusiveness and for the accomplishments of science in terms of the functions and operations of the mind whose products and creations the sciences are, it appears in the light of Hume's analysis that the sciences and the evident conclusiveness of their methods are utterly unintelligible.
Still more important than Hume's theoretical failure which finds its expression in his skepticism - a failure resulting from his sensualistic conception of consciousness - is, according to Husserl, his formulation of the problem in question. Hume's formulation, Husserl maintains, surpasses in radicalness even that of Descartes. It is not sufficient to establish, as Descartes did, the indubitability and priority of consciousness. Both the constructed universe of science in its specific objectivity and the perceptual world of common experience (the Lebenswelt) have to be referred to consciousness; they must be seen as cogitata of cogitations, as deriving their existence from functions and operations (Leistungen) of consciousness. To Hume the naivete of our common experience becomes a problem, our very naivete in taking for granted as an unquestioned certainty and a matter of course (Selbstverstandlichkeit) the existence of the world in which we find ourselves. Behind Hume's skepticism Husserl discerns the discovery of a world-riddle (Weltratsel) of an entirely new type: Solving the riddle purports nothing less than accounting for the world, its objectivity, and the unquestioned certainty of its existence in subjective terms, or, to put it differently, revealing the world as a correlate and product of subjective functions, activities, and operations. By raising this problem, Hume challenges the objectivism not only of the mathematical and mathematizing sciences but also of common experience and all traditional thinking. Thereby the very idea of philosophy is transformed in a most radical way. Its task is no longer to construct or to discover true objective reality, reality as it is in itself behind and beneath the appearances. Rather, philosophy is concerned with the world and the universes of a higher order, like that of science, as originating in consciousness. Philosophy passes from objectivism to transcendental subjectivism.
Kant, as Husserl sees him, does not pursue what Husserl considers as the true Humean problem. Kant's interpretation of, and reaction to, Hume's sensualism and skepticism is determined by his affiliation with the rationalistic tradition as represented by Leibniz and Wolff. When Kant speaks of dogmatism, he has in view not the certainties of common experience in pre-theoretical everyday life but the rationalistic philosophy whose metaphysical claims he endeavors to invalidate. Human knowledge, resulting from the interplay of "sensibility" and "understanding," has to confine itself to the realm of experience and cannot penetrate into any "reality" behind experience. On the other hand, since Kant stresses subjectivity over and against objectivism, his philosophy has to be regarded as genuine transcendental philosophy, though not yet in a definitive form, because it is not resting upon ultimately clarified foundations. More or less the same is to be said about Kant's successors, the thinkers who belonged to the school of German idealism.
Since the time of Galileo up to the present day, modern philosophy, Husserl maintains, is torn between the opposite tendencies of objectivism and transcendentalism. Objectivism has found its realization in the establishment and growth of the positive sciences, which, in the course of time, have undergone increasing specialization and technization. Technization of the sciences means their transformation into arts by means of which one may accomplish many admirable things but which rest on unclarified foundations and on unquestioned presuppositions. Art in this sense is certainly not episteme. By its very nature, episteme demands going back to the ultimate sources of sense, radical disclosure of presuppositions and examination of foundations. The technization of the sciences implies their severance from philosophy. Thus the idea of a universal objectivistic philosophy, which had been the driving force behind Galileo's inauguration of physics and the great aspiration of the beginning of the modern era, has degenerated from within, a process which has entailed the loss of faith in reason itself. As to the subjectivistic trend, there have been most impressive attempts at establishing a transcendental philosophy. But, Husserl points out, none of the thinkers who embarked upon such an attempt has thus far attained a full awareness of the very task and program of a transcendental philosophy; none, moreover, has succeeded in elaborating a clear and workable conceptual apparatus. With regard to Kant and German idealism, Husserl speaks of constructive mythical concepts beset by obscurities. In these attempts one has to see prefigurings that have the greatest value and importance, to be sure, and yet are no more than preliminaries.
At the root of the present crisis of philosophy, Husserl discerns the breakdown of objectivism, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the failure of transcendental subjectivism to consolidate itself. In this situation two problems have to be faced. The one concerns the Lebenswelt, for which, as we have seen, modern science has substituted a tissue of ideal constructions which passes for reality. The other problem is that of an adequate conception of the mind; this leads to a discussion of modern psychology and of the very idea of psychology itself. In what follows we shall survey Husserl's reasoning along the lines mentioned, which will be to converge towards transcendental phenomenology."
II. THE LEBENSWELT
1. General Characteristics of the Lebenswelt
Under the impact of modern science as inaugurated by Galileo, the Lebenswelt - i.e., the world of common experience - has been superceded by the objectively true and valid universe of science which, in the thinking of modern Western man, passes for reality. Whereas no "objective" entity - objective in the sense of science - is, in principle, accessible to direct and immediate experience in the proper sense of the term, the Lebenswelt does present itself, actually or virtually, in such experience, perceptual experience as well as its derivative forms like memory, representation, imagination, etc. Since the universe of science proves to be a tissue of ideal constructs, or, as Husserl puts it, a theoretico-logical superstructure, its conception and apprehension is of the same nature as that of any infinite ideas, e.g., geometrical ones. The construction of the universe of science involves, as a mental accomplishment, certain specific operations, especially that of idealization. Obviously, idealization presupposes materials to be idealized. By virtue of its intrinsic sense as a superstructure, the universe of science requires a foundation upon which it rests and upon which it is constructed. This foundation is no other than the Lebenswelt and the evidence of common experience - the term "evidence" denoting, as always with Husserl, bodily presence or self-presentation of the object in question. All theoretical truth - logical, mathematical, scientific - finds its ultimate validation and justification in evidences which concern occurrences in the Lebenswelt. If Husserl assigns to the evidences of the Lebenswelt a privileged status with respect to those of objective and scientific theory, it is in the sense of the latter being founded upon the former. That is to say, the mental operations, whose products and constituted correlates objective theory and the objective universe of science are, presuppose those acts of consciousness through which the Lebenswelt appears as ever-present and pre-given, i.e., as existing independently of, and prior to, all scientific activity. For an ultimate clarification of the universe of science, one has, therefore, to turn to the Lebenswelt and bring out the role which it plays, in several respects, in the construction and constitution of science.
Radical philosophical reflection must begin by rendering explicit the universal "presuppositions" which underlies all our life and all our activities. This "presupposition" is the unquestioned and even unformulated acceptance of the world in which we find ourselves and with which we always have a certain familiarity. At every moment of our life, we concern ourselves in some mode or other, with things, animals, fellow-men, etc., which present themselves as mundane existents, and we conceive of ourselves as also belonging to the world. None of these existents is ever given in isolation. Every one of them refers to a context into which it is inserted; it appears within an all-encompassing and indefinitely extended horizon: the world-horizon. Unlike particular mundane existents which may occasionally appear and disappear, the world is continually present to our mind as the universal field of all our actual and possible activities of any nature whatever. If the world is always there as pre-given, if living means living in the world, it is because the world announces itself along with the appearance of every particular mundane existent with which we might be dealing. The inexplicit and inarticulate awareness of the world pervades all our activities and enters into them as their most general, though unformulated, "premise" or "presupposition." Correspondingly, the world, silently accepted as a matter of course, proves to be the ground upon which we pursue all our activities, whatever their orientation.
To be sure, the world includes nature. The nature here in question is obviously nature as given in direct and immediate experience and not the idealized nature of physics. However, the world comprises more than mere nature. Among the existents by which we find ourselves surrounded, there are not only natural things -i.e., objects which may exhaustively be described by indicating their color, shape, size, weight, etc. - but also instruments, books, objects of art, and so on: in short, objects which have human significance, serve human ends and purposes, satisfy human desires and needs. Because the world contains objects of this kind and, therefore, proves to be the frame within which we lead our human existence, we speak of it as our Lebenswelt.
Within the Lebenswelt, we encounter our fellow-men and take it for granted that they not only exist in the world but are also aware of it, that they are confronted with the same things and objects as we are, though to each of us, depending upon his point of view, the objects and the world at large may and do appear under varying aspects and perspectives. It is one of the unquestioned and even unformulated certainties of common experience that the world is one and the same for all of us, a common intersubjective world.
Encountering our fellow-men ... ...
... under construction ..
V. CONCLUDING REMARKS
In our day and age it has become fashionable to denounce rationalism as a source of evil and to hold it responsible for the present crisis, both intellectual and moral. This view is the more dangerous because it contains a half-truth. According to Husserl, the present crisis is the crisis of naturalistic objectivism or objectivistic rationalism, the crisis of Western science in the phase of extreme technization in which it has forsaken those philosophical aspirations from which it historically arose. In other words, it is the crisis of a specific historical form of rationalism, the form which rationalism has assumed since the Renaissance. Historical forms of rationalism, however, must be distinguished from the idea of rationalism or rationality, a Platonic idea which is specified and approximated in those historical forms. Surmounting a certain historical form of rationalism is one thing; abandoning the very idea of rationalism is quite another.
Since philosophy aims at knowledge, universal, ultimately founded, and totally justified, philosophy and the idea of rationalism are one and the same. Abandoning rationalism is forsaking philosophy altogether. More is at stake than a technical discipline or a special cultural activity. Western man in his specific historicity, we remember, makes his appearance along with, and owing to, the rise of the idea of philosophy or rationalism in Greek antiquity. This idea defines essentially the sense of his existence and determines his history. The appearance of Western man means more than the appearance of one possible human type besides others. It marks the first disclosure of a possibility pertaining to man as such. Surrender to the anti-rationalistic and anti-intellectualistic tendencies, a surrender urged upon us from many quarters, is nothing short of self-betrayal of Western man and betrayal of the teleological destiny and idea of man at large. This destiny is none other than the autonomy of reason which actualizes itself in a historical process, viz., through the historical transformations of the idea of rationalism.
Just the faithful adherence to the idea of rationalism may become a compelling motive to surmount a historical form of rationalism whose limitations have become apparent. As to the specific modern form of rationalism, its limitations spring from its constructive character. In the elaboration and development of mathematical and other rational systems (the sciences and scientific theories), the producing activity of reason which is involved in these elaborations, and whose accomplished products those systems are, is overlooked, and, moreover, the Lebenswelt, the necessary base of departure for all theoretical constructions, is eclipsed. Engrossed in, and preoccupied with, his products, the scientist and theoretician effaces himself; he loses sight of the processes of production and of whatever these processes presuppose. Along the same line of argument, Husserl points out the failure of Hume and also of the psychologists of the late 19th century to see that the activity of reason which gives rise to their psychological theories, and whose products these theories are, must itself be accounted for in terms of sensations, law of association, and whatever other data of consciousness and laws of psychological causality are assuming as elementary: i.e., in the very terms in which the theories in question conceive of consciousness and mental life. Traditional modern rationalism proves to be affected by a naivete which, according to Husserl, has led to the present crisis. Overcoming the crisis requires surmounting that naivete by making the mind increasingly aware of itself or, to use an expression of Hegelian provenience, by making the mind return to itself.
Phenomenology, Husserl claims, opens up a new chapter in the history of rationalism by establishing a new form of rationalism which, on account of its radicalism, is to supersede the historically transmitted forms - radicalism understood in the etymological sense of going to the roots. It is the very idea of rationalism that motivates and necessitates this transition at the present phase of the historical development of both philosophy and the sciences. Far from abandoning the idea of rationalism, phenomenology brings it to higher fulfillment.
In concluding, let us contrast the general orientation of phenomenology with that of traditional rationalism, not only modern but also ancient which culminated in the philosophy of Plato. Throughout history, episteme was opposed to doxa; for doxa was conceived as related to the world of common experience, episteme to the realm of "being as it really is in itself," a realm with regard to which the world of common experience has been relegated to a position of inferiority in some sense or other. Under the heading of the Lebenswelt, the world of common experience is rehabilitated by phenomenology as the reality from which all conceptions and constructions of other domains of existence start and to which these domains essentially refer. Accordingly, the doxa is reinstated in its rightful place. Moreover, defined in a broad and all-inclusive sense, the Lebenswelt comprises the products and accomplishments of all cultural activities, hence also the sciences, their results and theories. This means that episteme in the traditional sense, e.g., specific scientific episteme, also falls under the concept of doxa, differences of level and scope notwithstanding. Yet phenomenology does not relinquish the search for episteme. However, episteme in the specific phenomenological sense is not episteme as opposed to doxa. Rather it is the episteme of the very doxa, of all possible doxa. It is episteme concerning the mind and its life in which originate the Lebenswelt as well as whatever other domains of being and existence there are, along with their specific objectivities and validities."
July 24,2008
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