Husserl's article "Phenomenology" for the Encyclopaedia Britannica (or rather the semblance of it which survived the translation from his German original into English) appeared in its Fourteenth Edition of 1929, to remain there in subsequent editions until 1955, when it was replaced for some ten years by a new article written by Professor J. N. Findlay.About the original invitation to Husserl to contribute such an article very little is known today. No correspondance has survived in the Husserl Archives at Louvain or in those of the Britannica. One might suspect some connection with Husserl's four lectures at the University of London in 1922.(1) But the interval seems suspiciously long, especially since Husserl does not seem to have started writing until 1927.
The preparation of Husserl's German text went through the probably unmatched number of four surviving drafts. Their history has been traced in some detail by the editor of three of them, Walter Biemel, for volume 9 (1962) of Husserliana, where they appeared as supplementary texts to Husserl's lectures on "Phenomenological Psychology" of 1925.(2) The reason for this unusual amount of care was apparently not so much the challenge of the assignment as the chance for a joint production with Martin Heidegger, at that time still in Marburg, a hope which, however, completely miscarried, as Husserl himself put it in retrospect in a letter on January 6,1931, to Alexander Pfander. For nothing of Heidegger's draft for version II was absorbed in the final text.(3) A detailed study of the four versions would be of considerable interest in itself, but is irrelevant to this occasion, since only one such version seems to have been used by the translator.
Until 1962 only the English text, printed in the Britannica itself, was known, which was republished in 1960 in an anthology by Roderick M. Chisholm,(4) where, however, one revealing correction was made based on "information by Professor H. L. Van Breda" in the last sentence: the replacement of 'phenomenalists' (as the addressees of phenomenology) by 'phenomenologists', although the word 'phenomenalist' actually occurs in the original of Christopher V. Salmon's "translation." (5)
Biemel in his preface characterized this translation as "very free." However, I must confess that when I personally began to compare the four versions of the German original with the English text (which had always puzzled me), I found myself unable to decide which one could have possibly served as the model for the eventual product. However, it is more than likely that Salmon worked from the "fourth last version" (6); at any rate, this is what Biemel assumes.(7) In fact Husserl's remaining original copy states on the outside of the folder: "The bracketings are mere indications for abridgments proposed in order to make it possible to keep within the prescribed narrow space of the English article (Salmon)."
The spatial restriction, of which Husserl seems to have been insufficiently aware in composing his German text, may well have been the major explanation for what happened to the article. About the scope of this restriction we now have at least indirect information through a Freiburg diary kept by W. R. Boyce Gibson, known to readers of Husserl chiefly through his translation of the Ideas. For on November 19, when Husserl lent Boyce Gibson the manuscript of the original, he also told him that Salmon had to reduce it from 7,000 (German) to 4,000 (English) words, a telescoping which, considering the ratio of words in German and English, meant cutting the article at least in half. (8) But even this next to impossible assignment is no full explanation for what happened between the German original and the English translation. To trace this in detail would be an interesting task, but not in the present context. However, what must at least be mentioned is the fact that the fifteen sub-headings of the German text dropped out completely in the translation and that even Part III, entitled "Transcentental Phenomenology and Philosophy," disappeared, although Part II ("Transcendental Phenomenology") now shows a single sub-heading toward the end, entitled "Phenomenology, the Universal Science." In Part I ("Phenomenological Psychology") there was also one new sub-heading halfway through, "Phenomenological-psychological and Eidetic Reductions." The text itself contains formulations which cannot be tracked down to the original, among them such amazing statements as that the goal of phenomenological psychology is "comprehending the being of the soul." Perhaps the worst case is the following new sentence: "The 'I' and the 'we', which we apprehend, presuppose a hidden 'I' and 'we' to whom they are 'present'." This sentence is reprinted in italics in Realism and the Background of Phenomenology and repeated in the "Editor's Introduction" (9) by Chisholm, who, however, was not responsible for this change. Besides, the "transcendental" is characterized as "that most general, subjectivity, which makes the world and its 'souls' and confirms them." There is no basis in the original for these interpretive substitutions.
A particularly dangerous departure from Husserl's original occurs in Salmon's rendering of his definition of phenomenology at the very beginning of the article, as revealed by a comparison of the new translation with the following start in the Britannica version:
Phenomenology denotes a new, descriptive, philosophical method, which, since the concluding years of the last century, has established (1) an a priori psychological discipline, able to provide the only secure basis on which a strong empirical psychology can be built, and (2) a universal philosophy, which can supply an organum for the methodical revision of all the sciences.I merely want to point out that this "translation" reverses the order of phenomenological philosophy and phenomenological psychology; that it implies that the new a priori psychology has been already "established" since before 1900; that the new method has also established a "universal philosophy,"i.e., presumably an all-comprehensive system, and not only "the tool for a rigorously scientific philosophy"; that it supplies also a tool for the "methodical revision of all the sciences," not only "makes possible a methodical reform."One may sympathized with the plight of the space-pressed would-be translator, especially in the later sections of the text. But one might at least have hoped for some indication that the author of this text was no longer "E.Hu." as the signature under the article still implied, but rather that the reader was confronted with free and at times wild paraphrases of Husserl's own text. However, this may well have been impossible under the editorial rules of the Britannica.
Nothing seems to be known about the aftermath of the publication. Whether Husserl himself saw the published article, either in a complete set of the Britannica or in a reprint, is no longer ascertainable. All that can now be found in the Husserl Archives is the dedicated personal copy of Salmon's typescript without reading marks.
There are, however, some strange pieces of negative evidence for Husserl's final response. When at the end of his "Author's Preface to the English Edition" of his Ideas Husserl suggested additional readings, he failed to list the Encyclopaedia article, his only other published text in English, on which he had spent so much time and labour four years before. Only W. R. Boyce Gibson mentioned this article in his own "Translator's Preface" in introducing C. V. Salmon, its translator, as his helper. Nor am I familiar with any other mention of this article in Husserl's later writings, letters (except the one to Pfander) and conversations, including those with Dorion Cairns (unpublished). Clearly, Husserl did not consider the final result of his effort a success.
Unfortunately he had ample reasons. But now, thanks to the labours of Prof. Richard E. Palmer, Husserl can at last speak to the Anglo-American readers he had in mind without the Procrustean restrictions of space-conscious word counters and paraphrasers. At least in this piece, in contrast to the London lectures, Husserl did refer to the British empiricists as pacemakers for transcendental phenomenology. It remains to be seen whether the unabridged and faithfully rendered article can now speak to the condition of his readers. It is certainly the concisest introduction to phenomenology he ever prepared and the one on which he worked hardest. It is also the first piece he wrote for publication in the Anglo-American world through its most respected reference work.
NOTES
- See Herbert Spiegelberg, "Husserl in England: Facts and Lessons," pages 54-66 below.
- See Walter Biemel, "Einleitung des Herausgebers," Husserliana 9: xv. See also Biemel, "Husserl's Encyclopaedia Britannica Article and Heidegger's Remarks Thereon," in Frederick Elliston and Peter McCormick, eds., Husserl: Expositions and Appraisals (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame, 1977) pp. 286-303; and Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, 2nd ed. (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1965), pp 279-81. For other information see Roman Ingarden, Brief an Roman Ingarden, Phaenomenologica 25 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1968), pp 153ff. Ingarden, whom Husserl asked to criticize the third and fourth versions, seems to have made merely technical suggestions.
- There is now a translation of this version under the title "Martin Heidegger: The Idea of Phenomenology" by John N. Deely and Joseph A. Novak in The New Scholasticism 44 (1970): 325-44.
- Roderick M. Chisholm, ed., Realism and the Background of Phenomenology (New York: Free Press, 1960), pp. 118-28.
- Salmon, M.A. Oxon, Ph.D. Freiburg, died in 1960 and could no longer be contacted about this and related matters. For other information about him and his relation to Husserl, see Herbert Spiegelberg's notes to W. R. Boyce Gibson, "From Husserl to Heidegger: Excerpts from a 1928 Freiburg Diary by W. R. Boyce Gibson," Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 2 (1971): 58-83.
- Phanomenologische Psychologie, pp. 277-301.
- Ibid. p. 592.
- Gibson, "From Husserl to Heidegger," p. 71.
- Chisholm, ed., Realism, p.21.
Arlen Wolpert
(Draft of December 25,2008)
http://world.std.com/~awolpert/gtr586.html
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