Husserl's Phenomenology: Knowledge, Objectivity and Others 9781472546876

Citation preview

To Jane, who came out of the jungle and taught me how to live and how to love

Acknowledgements

This project could not have even been started, let alone brought to fruition, had it not been for the help, support, and in£uence of many people. Past teachers, family and friends, have o¡ered mostly quiet, but sometimes loud, support that has been more important to me than they will ever know. Among those teachers, family and friends, I owe a special debt of thanks to ¢ve individuals. Will Coe, who introduced me to philosophy and fostered in me a passion for the pursuit of answers to key questions in the human experienceöI would not have pursued philosophical studies, a life in academia, or meaning in my life had it not been for his friendship, humor, and inspiration. Claudia Schmidt, who read and commented on drafts of parts of the manuscriptödespite its £aws, the ¢nal product is better because of her keen eye and sensitive advice. John Meech, whose friendship and conversation have fueled my pursuit of pathways through tough issuesö I would not have had the discipline to ¢nish were it not for that fuel. Pol Vandevelde, whose mentorship, friendship, and quiet con¢dence in me have made an impactöI would never have gained entry into Husserl's texts or been willing to take philosophical risks had it not been for his in£uence. Lina Castellanos Hermberg whose love and support have allowed me to ¢nish this project, and given me the courage to do soöI am in awe of her intelligence, her strength, her courage, her capacity for love, and her belief in me. Each of you has helped me to grow as a philosopher and as a person. My gratitude is unending.

Preface

In the Western philosophical tradition, knowledge and knowers have been viewed primarily in atomistic terms and the predominant focus of epistemologists has been on individual epistemic agents.1 This individualistic approach to thinking about knowledge was re-solidi¢ed in the seventeenth century by Rene¨ Descartes and the hyperbolic doubt he introduced as part of his quest for a certain starting point of all knowledge and foundation for all science. The ¢rst thing Descartes's doubt uncovered with certainty was the doubting subject itselfödoubting/knowing/thinking. From this solipsistic starting point, Descartes hoped to found all knowledge and science. Despite their vast di¡erences, the starting point of the theories of knowledge since Descartes has been almost unanimously atomistic. The attempt to limit the scope of epistemology to isolated knowers without demonstrating that we are, in fact, isolated individual epistemic agents not only relies on a signi¢cant presupposition but also appears to make it impossible to provide a complete account of the nature of human knowledge. After all, one reasonöperhaps the main reasonösolipsism is such a dissatisfying view is that we don't appear to be isolated beings, and thus isolated knowers. Any system of thought suggesting we are such agents without providing a convincing demonstration of that point doesn't seem to accurately portray our existence. In recent decades, several philosophers have recognized this shortcoming and taken seriously the notion that we may not be atomistic knowers by investigating the role of social relations in knowledge. The central question of these thinkers is whether knowledge is best understood socially or atomistically. Those who argue for the former view have come to be called ``social epistemologists.''2 However, it appears that any view that incorporates the relevance of social relations and contexts risks becoming a form of relativism or being limited to ¢nding only contingent truths rather than the necessary truths for which scientists and philosophers are searching. After all, such a view holds that knowledge is relative to, and thus contingent upon, particular social relations and their contexts. Consequently, it seems

x

Preface

that non-atomistic epistemologies have the burden of establishing the possibility of the universal validity or objectivity of knowledge. On the one hand, then, if our theory of knowledge is atomistic, we are in danger of solipsism. On the other hand, if we take the social dimensions of knowledge seriously, certainty appears to be lost and truths attained look only contingently true, and the charge of relativism lies in waiting. Edmund Husserl, the father of phenomenology, was ¢rmly rooted in his philosophical tradition. Like Descartes, Husserl aimed at the establishment of a rigorous science with universally valid results. He hoped his phenomenology would give new life to the ancient hope for philosophy as the all-embracing science, providing genuine knowledge and insight into the conditions for the possibility of our everyday lives. In order to arrive at such insight, Husserl took note of the natural standpoint from which we usually go about our lives, recognized that such a standpoint incorporates a multitude of unsubstantiated presuppositions, and advocated the suspension of judgment regarding the things about which such assumptions are routinely made. This excluding of the a¤rmation, denial, or even doubting of empirical facts about things in the world (including oneself as a part of the world) from his interrogation, along with the radical change in attitude that accompanies such a bracketing, comprises the methodological core of Husserl's philosophy. What is left after the reduction seems to be merely the subject and its experience, i.e., consciousness. Everything else seems to have been excluded from the interrogation. With his phenomenology, then, Husserl found presuppositionless certainty but seemingly at the expense of being able to say that anything or anybody existsöthat is, at the expense of the world. It is easy to see, then, why Husserl has often been read as having held the sort of individualistic approach mentioned above and why he would be accused of falling into solipsism's trap. Husserl was aware of the possibility of his work being interpreted solipsistically, and he expended quite a lot of energy trying to resolve the apparent problem, aiming to make science and knowledge of the world possible without abandoning his phenomenological method. The key to Husserl's solution is his notion of empathy. Most commentators who have discussed empathy have done so in relation to solipsism and with particular attention to Husserl's discussion of intersubjectivity, his solution to the solipsistic dilemma. Unfortunately, commentators have paid little attention to empathy in relation to the other side of the problem: the universal validity or objectivity of knowledge. It is this aspect of Husserl's notion of empathy, i.e., its relationship to knowledge, that is the topic of this book. In the literature on the problems of solipsism and the possibility of intersubjectivity in Husserl's texts, the main focus has been on one particular

Preface

xi

work: the Cartesian Meditations. Many of these commentaries focus on empathy as it contributes to the establishment of intersubjectivity in response to the problem of solipsism. The limitation of such a treatment, however, is that it focuses on the establishment of the possibility of other subjects, and not on empathy's relationship to knowledge (although the two are not unrelated). That is, most of the work done on Husserl's notion of empathy focuses only on the one aspect of our problem (the issue of solipsism) while all but ignoring the other side of the problem (the possibility of non-solipsistic objective knowledge). To date, despite the vast amounts of insightful and revelatory commentary on Husserl, there has been no in-depth investigation of the relationship between empathy and knowledge in the work Edmund Husserl published (and what little work that has been done on this topic is limited in its scope).3 This book will begin to ¢ll the gap. We will see that empathy, and thus Others, are related to one's knowledge on the view o¡ered in each of Husserl's introductions to phenomenology. Empathy is signi¢cantly related to knowledge in at least two ways and Husserl's epistemology might, consequently, be called a social epistemology: empathy not only helps one build evidence for validity and thus solidify one's knowledge but also helps to broaden one's knowledge by a¡ording access to what others have constituted and known. These roles of empathy are not at odds with one another; rather, both are at play, at some level, in each of the introductions. Such a reliance on empathy, however, might give us cause to consider the degree to which Husserl's is a transcendental philosophy in the sense Husserl claimed it was. Perhaps it was his refusal (or inability?) to abandon his commitment to such transcendentiality that kept Husserl from fully stepping on to the non-atomistic path he cleared for his successors.

Abbreviations The following investigation is primarily concerned with Edmund Husserl's three introductions to phenomenology. Those three texts will be cited parenthetically as follows: Ideas

Ideas: A General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans. W.R. Boyce Gibson (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1931). Copyright # 1931 George Allen & Unwin. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK. Copyright # 1962 Macmillan Publishing Company. Reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group. The German text used is the third volume of Husserliana.

CM

Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. Dorion Cairns (Dordrecht, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1950). Copyright # 1950 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Reproduced with kind permission from Springer Science and Business Media. The German text used is the ¢rst volume of Husserliana.

C

The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. with an introduction by David Carr (Evanston [IL]: Northwestern University Press, 1970). Copyright # 1970 Northwestern University Press. Passages used with permission from Northwestern University Press. The German text used is the sixth volume of Husserliana.

Hua

This is the abbreviation used for Husserliana, the standard edition of Husserl's texts in German. Whenever I modify a translation or make reference to the German text, whether it is one that has been translated into English or not, the text will be cited as Hua, followed by the volume number, followed by the page number. For example, Hau III, 19 is page 19 of the Hau edition of Ideas. The volumes referred to in the following text are: I, III, VI, XIII, XIV, XV (Ideas, CM, C, Zur PhÌnomenologie der IntersubjectivitÌt. First Part, Zur PhÌnomenologie der IntersubjectivitÌt. Second Part, Zur PhÌnomenologie der IntersubjectivitÌt. Third Part, respectively).

Chapter 1

Introductions: Husserl's Phenomenological Enterprise and the Following Chapters

Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born Matthew Arnold1

Edmund Husserl (1859^1938) was one of the most important and in£uential philosophers of the twentieth century. One would be justi¢ed in calling Husserl both the last great representative of classical modern philosophy and the transition by which a new philosophical world came into being. The list of thinkers who claim Husserl as in£uential to their work is impressive and includes leading ¢gures from every ``school'' of contemporary Continental philosophy as well as many ``analytical'' philosophers. Husserl achieved this in£uence in spite of his texts, which are notoriously di¤cult and with which he was rarely completely satis¢ed. So dissatis¢ed was he that he o¡ered three separate texts labeled ``introduction'' to phenomenology. In this book I o¡er an examination of the interplay between empathy and knowledge as presented in the introductions published by Husserl. Those three introductions are: Ideas: A General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology which ¢rst appeared in German in the 1913 inaugural issue of Jahrbuch fÏr Philosophie und PhÌnomenologische Forschung; Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology which is an outgrowth of a set of lectures which was given in Paris in 1929 and published in French in 1931; and The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy which was written between 1934 and 1937 but of which only the ¢rst two parts were published during his lifetime (in Philosophia). In investigating the empathy-knowledge link, I am looking into whether, on Husserl's view, the knowing agent is an individual subject in isolation from Others, i.e., whether, and the extent to which, Others are a condition of the possibility of knowledge. Husserl is usually read as holding, as did many of his modern predecessors, that we are isolated individual knowersö in fact, he has even been accused of being a solipsist (in Ideas and the Cartesian

2

Husserl's Phenomenology

Meditations) who later changed his mind (in The Crisis). What will surface in the course of this investigation is a reading of Husserl that suggests that the theme of other subjects being involved in one's knowledge emerges in his early phenomenological writings and receives its most dramatic and innovative statement in his last published text. We will also see that there is some continuity in Husserl's texts on this point. Although this is not yet the standard reading of Husserl's corpus, it is a reading that emerges organically out of an investigation of the texts as we examine the links between empathy and knowledge.

1.1 Introduction to Husserl's Phenomenological Project2 Although he did not spend a great deal of time in his texts discussing the history of philosophy, Husserl saw his enterprise as being directly related to the great thinkers of the past. He saw himself as seeing the goals toward which his predecessors were unsuccessfully groping more clearly than they did and making possible the attainment of those goals.3 Along the same vein as some of his modern predecessors, Husserl sought to accept as true only that for which he had appropriate evidence and he saw his charge to be the grounding of all true science and philosophy. His avenue for doing so was to produce a phenomenology that could be a ¢rst philosophy: genuine philosophy, the idea of which is to realize the idea of Absolute Knowledge, has its roots in pure phenomenology, and this in so earnest a sense that the systematically rigorous grounding and development of this ¢rst of all philosophies remains the perpetual precondition of all metaphysics and other philosophy ``which would aspire to be a science'' (Ideas 45^46). By ``Absolute Knowledge'' Husserl did not mean the absolute validity or truth of knowledge. He meant, rather, knowledge of what is absolutely given. Consequently, although this passage appears to help justify a foundationalist reading, the foundation Husserl was after and the way he saw phenomenology being the ground for all philosophy and science were quite di¡erent from those sought by his predecessors. Husserl was not so much looking for a set of absolute and certain truths, nuggets of absolute certainty with which to build his foundation; he was seeking to uncover the way to have ``things'' given absolutelyöhe was seeking an originary form of givenness. However, as will be seen in chapters 2 and 3, certainty and givenness are related and certitude remains a motivating goal.

Husserl's Phenomenological Enterprise

3

At its core, Husserlian phenomenology is a method for gaining access to puri¢ed phenomena by means of epoche¨s and reductions through which one can rid oneself of presuppositions and thus become free to have genuine insights.4 As Husserl saw it, what is needed is to: set aside all previous habits of thought, see through and break down the mental barriers which these habits have set along the horizons of our thinking, and in full intellectual freedom proceed to lay hold on those genuine philosophical problems still awaiting completely fresh formulation which the liberated horizons on all sides disclose to usöthese are hard demands. Yet nothing less is required (Ideas 43). There has been some debate about how literally to take Husserl's statements about setting aside all presuppositions. It isn't very reasonable to think Husserl truly believed one could entirely eliminate all presuppositions. Herbert Spiegelberg has argued that Husserl only wanted to eliminate those presuppositions which ``have not been thoroughly examined.''5 Marvin Farber has gone so far as to suggest that Husserl was concerned only with particular sorts of presuppositions: metaphysical, scienti¢c, psychological.6 Of course, those three categories are not mutually exclusive and, together, they cover most of the fundamental presuppositions with which we operate. The terms ``bracket,'' ``suspend'' and ``epoche¨'' are more often and more accurately used with regard to assumptions and presuppositions than the terms ``eliminate'' or ``set aside.'' As Dare, Welton, and Coe remind us: ``to bracket an assumption is not to discard it permanently, for in most cases that would be impossible. Rather, it is to disengage it temporarilyöto see around it.''7 This is the sense in which one ought to take the setting aside of our presuppositions. Tracing out the speci¢c reductions that yield full intellectual freedom is no easy task, partly because Husserl wrote of many di¡erent sorts of reductions without always carefully delimiting them. For example, Ideas makes reference to several sorts of reduction in addition to the phenomenological reduction: a philosophic reduction (½18), a reduction regarding natural sciences (½30), reductions concerning logic (½59) and sciences like geometry (½60) and psychology (½64). This plurality is not limited to Ideas; at least eight forms of reduction can be found in The Crisis.8 How many sorts of reductions there are is one question; whether or not some of those are di¡erent names for the same reduction is a di¡erent matter altogether. Sometimes Husserl wrote as if the reductions are all distinct from each other but at other times he wrote as if they are various aspects of the same movement.9 Since, for the purposes of this investigation

4

Husserl's Phenomenology

into a possible empathy-knowledge link, the speci¢c delineations of all of the reductions is not of primary importance, I will take my cue from David Michael Levin who discusses reductive ``aspects'' or ``stages''10 and I will write of reductive ``moments'' rather than enter into a lengthy debate about whether they are separate reductions or levels of the same reduction, or even how many such moments there are. We can glean the sense of Husserl's project without trying to untangle that knotöa knot made even tighter by the fact that Husserl did not formulate the meaning and the function of the phenomenological reduction in an unambiguous and de¢nitive fashion. At least, he seems to have not been entirely satis¢ed with his articulations of the issue.11 Despite those di¤culties, three main aspects or moments of reduction can be outlined in such a way that Husserl's phenomenological enterprise begins to come into focus. These moments are the phenomenological, the transcendental, and the eidetic. We live our everyday, workaday, lives based on a multitude of metaphysical assumptions that we seldom make the e¡ort to examine with care. We make our breakfasts, wash our dishes and drive to work. We turn on our computers, read our books and discuss the thoughts, feelings, and theories of other people. We do all of this on the basis of assumptions about the existence of the eggs, dishes, cars, and other thinking people. These existential assumptions (as well as some about causality and the constancy of the world) underlie and make possible the normal living of our lives. Together, our metaphysical assumptions comprise what Husserl called the natural attitude. The natural attitude is that attitude under which we normally live the bulk of our lives, and it includes the belief in the existence of an external material reality that extends in both space and time, the belief in objects in the world that interact causally, the belief that the world is by and large very much as we perceive it to be, etc. Not only does the natural attitude make living our everyday lives possible, it also underlies and makes possible the pursuits of the natural and human sciences. Because the natural attitude involves assumptions and commitments that are philosophically problematic yet made uncritically (and largely without our even being aware of them), the attitude is naive. Sciences resting on this naivety are, according to Husserl, suspect and his method rests in setting aside the assumptions of the natural attitudeö bracketing them in order to see around them. This bracketing of the metaphysical assumptions and commitments regarding the world of objects and then looking at what remains is what is usually called the phenomenological reduction.12 After the existence of the objects of the world has been bracketed (not denied, merely put aside so one can ``look beyond'' it and see what is there

Husserl's Phenomenological Enterprise

5

and what makes the assumptions of the natural attitude possible), what remains is the investigator's conscious experience and the objects of that experienceöphenomena. That is to say, from within the natural attitude we believe that things are present in space and we are aware of time passing, etc. When we perform the epoche¨, all of those judgments and the commitments those judgments entail are bracketed out of the investigation and we are left with a residuum of pure consciousnessöconsciousness as absolute existence, whose objects are correlates of consciousness. After the phenomenological reduction, ``we must always bear in mind,'' Husserl reminded us, ``that what things are . . . they are as things of experience'' (Ideas 147). Every experience has, however, both a subject and an object. The phenomenological aspect of reduction £ows quite naturally, then, into the transcendental. The transcendental reduction is, one might say, ``the uncovering of the subjective pole of consciousness, the transcendental ego, as the necessary correlate of the objective pole in every conscious act.''13 This subjective pole of consciousness is transcendental in the sense of being the meaning-giver of conscious experience. By ``meaning'' in this context, Husserl usually just meant something like ``holding together'' or ``being coherent'' or ``making sense.'' The transcendental ego is that to which experiences make sense or are coherent. As Husserl wrote in the Cartesian Meditations: ``this world, with all its Objects . . . derives its whole sense . . . from me as the transcendental Ego, the Ego who comes to the fore only with the transcendental-phenomenological epoche¨'' (CM 26). The transcendental ego functions, then, to bestow unity and meaning on all acts of consciousness (and thus their objects). This bestowing of meaning is what Husserl called ``constitution'' (which is, then, creation in an epistemological sense of bestowing meaning, but not in the metaphysical sense of the bestowing of existence).14 With these two reductive moments, Husserl moved away from fact toward meaning and revealed the source of that meaning. From this phenomenological standpoint, the objects of investigation are phenomena, consciousness, meaning-constitution, and the relationships between them. These two reductive moments are often grouped together as the transcendentalphenomenological reduction, by both Husserl and commentatorsöafter all, the one leads directly into the other. By the phenomenological moment of reduction that brackets the natural attitude (or the common-sense view that experience can be explained in terms of transcendent reality), phenomena are uncovered as what one can fruitfully investigate. Phenomena, however, are subjective experiences, and thus the focus on phenomena leads almost seamlessly to the transcendental moment of reduction. The reductions to phenomena and transcendental ego still seem to limit one to individual and particular phenomena. This was not Husserl's

6

Husserl's Phenomenology

goal. Since he was striving to put a solid ground beneath all science and philosophy, Husserl was interested in uncovering essences or universality. He saw phenomenology as including an eidetic reduction that leads the investigator from the realm of individual facts to essential universality. In his introduction to Ideas, for example, Husserl distinguished his phenomenology from psychology (even that psychology called phenomenological) and suggested that: As over against this psychological ``phenomenology,'' pure or transcendental phenomenology will be established not as a science of facts, but as a science of essential Being (as ``eidetic'' Science); a science which aims exclusively at establishing ``knowledge of essences'' (Wesenserkenntnisse) and absolutely no ``facts.'' The corresponding Reduction which leads from the psychological phenomenon to the pure ``essence'' . . . ``essential'' universality, is the eidetic Reduction (Ideas 44). The intuition of essences, i.e., the eidetic reduction, makes true science possible. For, on Husserl's view, ``no fully developed science of fact could subsist unmixed with eidetic knowledge'' (Ideas 63). The eidetic moment of reduction is accomplished by means of free variation by the imagination. By imaginatively varying the example at hand and noting the elements that are constant, the essential structure of the phenomenon displayed in the example is made apparent. For example, by imaginative variation of a particular three-dimensional object, I can weed out all of the accidental qualities of the object. I can, that is, imagine the object there rather than here, as seen from that side rather than this side, blue rather than its current color, etc. I cannot, however, imagine that object as having only one side (i.e., as not having a back) without violating or destroying the object in question. That is, through such variation, I can arrive at what is the essence of the object, its three-dimensionality. This process is not one of abstraction. It is not the process of considering multiple examples of the same type of thing and abstracting what they have in common and what makes these things cannot be what they are. Imaginative variation starts with one fact, one instance, and ¢nds the eidos ``within'' that instance. The essence is part of one's experience and, one could say, imaginative variation brackets the contingent and individualizing characteristics of phenomena and thereby moves one to the necessary and general. This generalized moment of a phenomenon is the eidos or essence. As Paul Ricoeur put it, imaginative variation is a sort of ¢ction that ``is the path from the fact to the eidos of the experienced `reality,' and it permits our grasping a consciousness as an a priori possibility.''15

Husserl's Phenomenological Enterprise

7

One could also utilize the process of imaginative free variation with regard to physical objects in general and see the eidos of only being able to be perceived perspectivally or with regard to acts of consciousness (not just the objects of consciousness). By doing so, one can get at the essence of conscious activity. That is to say, on Husserl's view, one can investigate the act of perception and utilize free variation of imagination to discover what remains constant in perception, regardless of the object or circumstances, and arrive at perception per se. Such an investigation could be extended to other acts of consciousness (e.g., imagination, memory, deduction, etc.) and thereby uncover the eidos, consciousness. In addition to objects and acts of consciousness, the process can also be carried out with regard to the subject-pole of experience (i.e., to the transcendental ego uncovered in the transcendental moment of reduction). Since it arrives at essences, the eidetic moment of reduction uncovers an atemporal realm of pure possibilities and the ideal realm reached by eidetic reduction is the source of apodictic certainty and that certainty is, on Husserl's view, to provide the foundations of all legitimate knowledge. When all three aspects of experience (objectpole, conscious act, subject-pole) are under the eidetic reduction, what is found to be true about my conscious experience must be true of every actualizable consciousness.16 Although I've presented the reductive moments in a particular sequence, one ought not think that there is such a linear progression. In fact, it could be argued that the phenomenological reduction, which brackets the existence or independence of the world, entails the eidetic reduction.17 Ezarim Koha¨k reminds us that there is a sort of eidetic moment at work in everyday experience as well as in phenomenology. After all, I only have to try to force one regulation tennis ball into one ordinary wine bottle to realize that no normal tennis ball will ¢t into the opening of a wine bottle (or any opening that size, for that matter). There is, that is to say, an ``in principle'' quality to our ordinary experience which is our seeing eide¨ in addition to objects. Thus, even ordinary experience relies on a sort of eidetic reduction and this is ``crucial for the phenomenologicalötranscendental reduction. [For,] if we were to apply . . . the phenomenological epoche¨ simply to factual, particular experiences, the result would be a solipsistic subjectivism, a purely private perspective on purely private experiences.''18 Just as the three reductive moments are linked, the eidetic moment reveals that object, consciousness, and subject imply and entail each other. To be an object, that is, is to be the object for some subject. Consciousness is intentional and thus entails both subject and object. The subject of such a relationship is no subject in the absence of an object or the act by which the two are in relation (i.e., consciousness). The three are correlates of each

8

Husserl's Phenomenology

other. Consequently, some commentators have summarized Husserl's phenomenology by suggesting that the reductive moments sketched above are the means by which Husserl gained access into his investigation and that his primary concern was with the investigation of the activity of consciousness, or the investigation of intentionality, or of the subject, or even the investigation of that which transcends consciousness. One might also emphasize the epistemological and characterize Husserl's main concern as being the evidentiary relationship between subject and object (i.e., the evidence with which objects are given to subjects). Each of these descriptions has been supported in print with reference to Husserl's texts,19 but they need not be seen as competing and con£icting interpretations of Husserl or as instantiations of a serious inconsistency on Husserl's part. The situation is not really that problematic. There is a sense in which all of those views regarding Husserl's main concern are captured by Rudolf Bernet's summary that Husserl's phenomenology was developed out of his concern with ``the `validity,' that is to say, the `being-true' of objects'' based on how they are related to the subject in experience.20

1.2 Some Terminology I will de¢ne and explain most of the technical terminology as it arises within the following chapters, but a few of the terms used throughout merit a brief discussion here. The last of the characterizations of Husserl's project o¡ered above suggests that in addition to his quest to o¡er a ¢rm ground for true science, Husserl was concerned with the validity of objects based on how they are given in consciousness. (Perhaps they will turn out to be the same thing?) Objects that are valid o¡er, one might say, Objective validity upon which scienti¢c knowledge could be basedöand that was Husserl's goal. There is an ambiguity here that needs to be brought to the surface. The word ``objective'' has more than one sense.21 In one sense, ``objective'' means being an object for consciousness. For this sense of objective, Husserl usually used the word GegenstÌndlich (and for an object in the sense of being an object of consciousness, he used Gegenstand ). This is most often translated as ``objective'' (with a lower-case ``o''), and I will occasionally refer to it in that way, but more frequently, I will use ``objective in the sense of being an object for consciousness.'' For such an object, I will usually use ``object for consciousness'' or ``intentional object.'' This sense of ``objective'' or ``objectivity'' makes no reference to the existence of objects out there in the ``real'' world; it refers to objects as experienced.

Husserl's Phenomenological Enterprise

9

There is, also, ``objective'' in the sense of being there for everyone, as opposed to being as it is for only a particular subject or a particular act of consciousness. This is what we often mean when we oppose that which is objective to that which is merely subjective; it is an objectivity that involves a generality or a sort of universality. Such objectivity is at the basis of all sciences claiming to get at any truths other than merely subjective ones. The term Husserl usually used for this sort of objective is objectiv; it is usually translated as ``Objective'' (with a capital ``O'') (and for this sort of object, he used Objekt). When dealing with this sort of Object or Objectivity, I will either use a phrase like ``objective in the sense of being there for all'' or I will follow the practice using a capital ``O'' to di¡erentiate Objective (i.e., being there for everyone) from objective (i.e., being an object for consciousness). It is belief in and judgment about Objects that is held in suspension by the phenomenological reduction (e.g., CM 20). As a science of essential being, as an eidetic science, phenomenology is interested in and attempting to ground Objectivity in the sense of being universal and necessary. Such a science is not only interested in this sort of Objectivity, but also in the truth regarding such matters. Consequently, Husserl was interested in Objective validity in the sense of the validity, the being-true, of that which is Objective in the universal sense. Validity is the ``being-true'' of something, and truth, for Husserl, is always connected with evidence and evidence is what makes a true belief knowledge.22 Much will be said about evidence and validity later on. For now, it is su¤cient to keep in mind that truth, evidence, and knowledge are interrelated and that if one has arrived at Objectively valid results, one has arrived at both truth and knowledge. The optimal scenario, then, is the case in which the object is given to consciousness in such a way that it is clearly and indisputably valid or true, regardless of time, place, or circumstance (i.e., it is valid and objective in the sense of being such for everyone, always). It is on this sort of Objectivity that rigorous science can stand. It is such Objective validity, then, that was Husserl's goal and motivation. The other term that needs to be clari¢ed for the purpose of the present discussion is ``empathy.'' ``Empathy'' is used to translate the German word EinfÏhlung (although sometimes it is also used to translate Fremderfahrung). By ``empathy,'' Husserl did not mean someone's identifying with the feelings, situation, motives of another person, as we sometimes use the word in everyday discourse. By ``empathy,'' Husserl meant the experiencing of another egoöi.e., the experiencing of another as another subject with experiences, feelings, thoughts, motives, etc. This is often called the experience of Others. I will follow Husserl's use and, when discussing empathy,

10

Husserl's Phenomenology

I will usually refer to the experience of another as another subject or the experience of an Other (with a capital ``O'').

1.3 Foreshadowing the Following Chapters Objectively valid results are the aim of any genuine philosophy (e.g., CM 5), so Objective validity is what Husserl was working to explore. It is at the heart of knowledge, in Husserl's view, and it is the target of his phenomenological method. The text you are reading is an investigation of the relationship(s) between empathy and knowledge in the three introductions to phenomenology Husserl published. As such, it is concerned with both Objective validity and with empathy. The three introductions to phenomenology will be treated chronologically in the next three chapters: chapter 2 will focus on Ideas, chapter 3 on the Cartesian Meditations, and chapter 4 on The Crisis of European Sciences. Each of the next three chapters will ¢rst £esh out how, according to the text in the spotlight, one attains knowledge of things and what sort of evidence is required for that knowledge to be validated and taken as truth. After that, each chapter will address the role of empathy in that text. Much of the work in this text will be archeologicalödigging through Husserl's introductions to ¢nd the most important pieces related to evidence, certainty, Objectivity, and Others. In that respect, the book will o¡er a useful introduction to Husserl for non-specialists. Insofar as the pieces will be put together to o¡er a new reading of Husserl, the book will also be of interest to those specialists who emphasize the texts Husserl actually published and whose concern with problems of intersubjectivity and empathy goes beyond their possibility to address related issues like validity and the degrees of evidence along with questions like whether empathy contributes to knowledge or just to the validation of what one already knows. Husserl ¢rst treated empathy in 1905,23 and Ideas (1913) is the ¢rst major text he published after he started working on empathy. Ideas is also the text with which Husserl reached a full-£edged phenomenology. Consequently, if one is to concentrate on or give priority to texts Husserl prepared for publication, and one is interested in Husserl's treatment of empathy, Ideas is the most suitable place to start. Once he started working on empathy and intersubjectivity, those issues were of lifelong concern for Husserl.24 Just as starting with Ideas makes sense because of its inaugural nature, ending with The Crisis, the last text Husserl prepared for publication and the text in which Husserl most directly considered the life-world, is also appropriate. The fact that Husserl considered both of those texts to be introductions to

Husserl's Phenomenological Enterprise

11

phenomenology might lead one to consider how the other introduction, the Cartesian Meditations, is related to the ¢rst and the last. Additionally, the Meditations is the text in which Husserl most famously and most directly treated the problem of experiencing someone else as another subject and, for this reason, is clearly at the heart of any study of Husserl's treatment of empathy. Of course, when investigating an empathy-knowledge link in Husserl's thought, one could focus on the so-called Intersubjectivity Volumes in Husserliana. After all, Husserl himself suggested that the largest and most important part of his life's work was to be found in his manuscriptsöthe same manuscripts from which the Intersubjectivity Volumes were gathered.25 There is much to be found in those volumesöthorough study of them promises to be fruitful.26 However, although one can get a very good sense of Husserl's thought and attitude by investigating these manuscripts, there is always extra conjecture when it comes to any one particular text because they include drafts of volumes Husserl published, working notes, investigations and analyses by which Husserl was entering and re-entering the problems related to intersubjectivity. Was this Husserl's ¢nal answer? Was he happy with this particular treatment and presentation, or did he ¢nd it lacking? This guessing game is an added layer on top of that which is always involved when treating a text made public by such an intense thinker as Husserl. By focusing on the texts that Husserl prepared for publication, one can be assured that (at least at the time of publication) the views o¡ered in the text represent views he would have been willing to defendöan assurance not always available when studying the working papers. Focusing on the three main texts that Husserl termed as introductions to phenomenology, even in the limited sense of investigating Husserl's treatment of a speci¢c issue, as the following pages do, one gets a glimpse at the ``progression'' of Husserl's phenomenologyöthus also providing a framework for organizing a study of the posthumously published texts and an introduction of sorts to Husserl. As indicated above, the next chapter focuses on Ideas. On the view put forth in Ideas, the objects of one's knowledge, perception, memory, etc., are intentional objects. That is, since consciousness is intentional, every conscious act involves an objectöbut these objects are phenomena, not something that lies beneath the phenomena like things-in-themselves (hence the term ``phenomenology''). In Ideas, we see that intentionality is responsible for objectivity in the sense of one's having access to an object. The intentional object brings with it or refers to perspectives on the object other than the one the subject actually has at the time. If it turns out that those expected perspectives on the object cannot be met in experience, the experience of the

12

Husserl's Phenomenology

object explodes and one realizes that it is not the object it was thought to be. If, on the other hand, those other perspectives come to fruition, that aspect of the full experience is ful¢lled and the object (as a meaningful whole experience) moves toward validity. In principle, an isolated, atomistic subject can experience the lack of explosion. Consequently, according to what is explicit in Ideas, objective validity, in the sense of the validity of an object for consciousness, might be had in isolation. What cannot be had in such isolation is Objective validity in the sense of being valid and there for all people and all timesöthe sort of Objectivity on which Husserl hoped to found science. The multiple perspectives to which an individual perspective refers and which comprise the complete intentional object, however, bring with them the possibility of perspectives and points of view had by other subjects (or the same subject at other times, in other circumstances) and this helps to con¢rm an object's transcendence because if it is there for Others as well, it is not dependent upon or related to any particular subject or perspective. Additionally, the perspectives had by Others are often involved in ful¢llment/explosion of an intentional objectöharmony with other subjects is ful¢lling while disharmony is explosive. As the sphere of those agreeing in their judgments about something grows, more perspectives and possibilities are included and progress toward adequacy (i.e., perfect and complete evidence) is made. Thus, in Ideas, empathy serves mainly to buttress or con¢rm what one could already know on one's own. Ideas also o¡ers a brief treatment of the degrees of apodicticity pertaining to judgments and veridical statements. Implicit in the use of such statements is an intersubjective community, for if I were alone, language (and thus predications) would be senseless. Consequently, the use of such statements begs for an explanation of how it is that empathy is possible even within the reduction that has taken everything but the subject's conscious experience out of playöeven within the phenomenological moment of reduction. These statements must be involved in the development of harmony or disharmony with other subjects (and how could such harmony surface if not through such statements?). So, in order for the experience of Others to truly solidify one's knowledge, the possibility of the inclusion of the perspectives of other subjects to be included in one's conscious experience must be established. Establishing that possibility is one of the tasks of Husserl's second introduction to phenomenology. Much of what is o¡ered in the Cartesian Meditations is a re-phrasing of the transcendental idealism of Ideas. However, in the last half of the text (i.e., in the Fifth Meditation), Husserl acknowledged the apparent threat of solipsism to which his transcendental phenomenology

Husserl's Phenomenological Enterprise

13

might be vulnerable, and then he went on to o¡er his descriptive phenomenology of our experience of others as other subjects. In o¡ering this description of empathy, the Fifth Meditation examines one of the conditions of the possibility of what was implicit in Ideasöthe experience of Others, and thus the inclusion of perspectives other than one's own. Establishing this possibility, the Cartesian Meditations makes possible objectivity in the sense of an object being there for everyone. That is, outlining how the experience of others as other subjects is possible, the Meditations moves beyond Ideas in that it moves from objectivity toward Objectivity. If the same thing is there for everyone, even if we have di¡ering perspectives, the intersubjectivity required for the harmony of experience is possible, and Objective validity becomes that which is maintained by intersubjective harmony. On the view put forth in the Cartesian Meditations, validity comes to the picture with intersubjective harmony. Empathy has, then, a role in the attainment of validity similar to the role it had in Ideas insofar as it a¡ords validity and certainty to the object in question. However, in the Meditations, this role for empathy takes center stage and Husserl put a greater emphasis on the world as intersubjective than he did in Ideas. This shift in emphasis signi¢es a move away from a view of an isolated individual having knowledge that is then validated toward a view in which the world is intersubjective, rather than my world or your world, and we might not even be able to have this knowledge in isolation. We should keep in mind, though, that even in Ideas, Husserl asserted that it is an intersubjective world. In the Cartesian Meditations, he thought he demonstrated both that and how it is an intersubjective world. Thus, we will come to a point at which we suspect that each subsequent text gets at or uncovers some of the conditions of the possibility of the view presented in the previous text. What emerges is a reading in which these roles and issues are di¡erent strands of Husserl's thoughtörather than a distinct and di¡erent early view, intermediary view, and mature view, or something like that. More on that in chapter 5. In moving from Ideas to the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl used the notion of empathy to help him move from the isolated individual knower to the subject as one pole of an intersubjective dynamic through which knowledge gains its Objective validity. In the Cartesian Meditations, this intersubjective dynamic still prioritizes the ¢rst subject, despite Husserl's claims that the various subjects are equal (indeed, they need to be equal if Others truly have more to do with knowledge than the con¢rmation of what the ¢rst subject already knows). The prioritization of the ¢rst subject rests in the fact that the empathetic relationship and intersubjectivity are established from within the sphere of ownness ``belonging'' to an individual subject in

14

Husserl's Phenomenology

complete isolation from Others. Thus, despite its overcoming of solipsism, the Meditations is not entirely successful in moving to a truly egalitarian and intersubjective stance. Also problematic for the view put forth in the Cartesian Meditations is a dependence on an awareness of Others insofar as the description of ``pairing'' as the vehicle for empathy relies on previous experiences involving the members of the pair. Consequently, there is a non-trivial sense in which the experience of other subjects is a condition for the possibility of the view o¡ered in the Meditations. Of course, the experience of Others is a condition for the possibility of a description of the experience of Others, in the trivial sense that without such an experience there would be nothing to describe. However, the prior experience of Others that is implicit in the ``mechanics'' of pairing is not trivial. More on that in chapter 3. The mutual understanding and veridical statements touched upon in the Ideas and the intersubjective harmony investigated in the Cartesian Meditations bring to the surface the need for further investigations. In The Crisis, Husserl's description of the life-world as always already there, underlying and informing every intentional act, takes another step in the move from isolated individual knowers to an intersubjective epistemology. In The Origin of Geometryöan appendix to The CrisisöHusserl not only linked the notion of empathy with that of a communication community, but he also investigated the role of language in the establishment of something as an object that is accessible to all (rather than merely the intentional object of a single act of consciousness). Something becomes accessible to all by being articulated, repeated, and recorded. Through such records, a subject can empathize with, and trace the path back through those who came before and thus know what Others know (or have known). That is, objects of geometry (to use Husserl's example) become objects for all by being recorded in writing (one would think other more modern methods, such as tape-recordings, video, etc. would do the job too). Once recorded, someone can carefully trace back through the records, see them as expressions of intentional states and empathize with the ¢rst geometers who experienced those intentional states, and in turn, re-access the kind of idealities the ¢rst geometers accessed, thereby gaining knowledge. The text focuses on objects of geometry, but the process is the same for any intentional object. With the third introduction to phenomenology, then, the role of empathy has shifted yet again. In Ideas, empathy helps to solidify one's knowledge by con¢rming it. In the Cartesian Meditations, there is a heavier emphasis on empathy and a more direct treatment of Others, but the relationship between empathy and knowledge is largely the same as in the earlier text.

Husserl's Phenomenological Enterprise

15

In The Crisis, Husserl examines the role of empathy in broadening one's knowledge by a¡ording the ability to gain access to the knowledge others have (and have had). This late view o¡ers the possibility of objectivity in the sense of being there for everyone across time. We might say, then, that there are two roles for empathy found in Husserl's introductions to phenomenology: the solidi¢cation of one's knowledge via intersubjective harmony; and the furthering of one's knowledge by making possible access to what others know. Perhaps the treatment can begin to be charted:

Ideas

Cartesian Meditations

The Crisis

Focus

Individual ego: perceiving the world and ``getting'' objects

Individual ego (I^IV) and its constitution of intersubjectivity (V) and communal world

Intersubjectivity and the life-world (communication in The Origin of Geometry)

Empathy

Asserted and glanced at (but not explicitly focused upon): truth statements and judgments involve intersubjective harmony and this harmony can help to move toward validity

Explicit and at the surface (not an afterthought). This text shows how what was glanced at in Ideas might be possible

Fundamental. Without empathy, there can be no intersubjective life-world and without the horizon ``o¡ered'' by Others, one cannot even have an intentional object

Role of Empathy

Empathy solidi¢es one's knowledge by means of intersubjective harmony (which requires experiencing Other subjects)

The theory of empathy explains how one can experience Others and thus makes possible the intersubjective harmony referred to in Ideas

Empathy helps one expand one's knowledge by making it possible to access the knowledge of Others and make it one's own

Objectivity

In the sense of accessing objects; the individual constitutes objects

In the sense of being there for all, but the individual is still the source, so that ``all-ness'' is suspect

True Objectivity in the sense of being there and valid for all (even across time)

16

Husserl's Phenomenology

The following pages will demonstrate that this table can be read in both directions. That is, just as the earlier works are, in a sense, preparatory for the later works, the later works respond to the earlier worksömaking what is problematic in the earlier works less problematic (and thus, in some instances, uncovering what makes doctrine of the earlier works possible). I will argue in chapter 5 that this dual role, and the shift in emphasis from the early text to the late text, does not indicate a change of heart or an abandonment of the early view. If we consider the earlier work to focus on objectivity and the later work to focus on Objectivity or on intersubjectivity, we will see that Eugen Fink was right to say that ``one cannot establish between objectivity and intersubjectivity a relationship such that one or the other is prior; rather, objectivity and intersubjectivity are indeed co-original.''27 The view developed in the following pages is that the two are co-original but that only one of these strands takes center stage at any given time in Husserl's texts. Although Husserl couldn't put it so strongly, and was in this sense ``wandering between two worlds,'' there is a sense in which for Husserl all knowledge is intersubjective and, in hindsight at least, the concept of the individual knower who can attain knowledge cannot be supported because the individual knower is not a reality.28 This suggests that in Husserl there are to be found the seeds of an epistemology that is radically social but, at the same time, appears to be in tension with Husserl's adherence to a uni¢ed transcendental ego at the base of all knowledge. With this basic progression of treatment and argument in mind, it is time to move to Husserl's ¢rst o¤cial introduction to phenomenology: Ideas: A General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology.

Chapter 2

Ideas: Con¢rming What One Might Already Know

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. Walt Whitman1

As indicated in the previous chapter, Husserl was concerned with consciousness, its structure and acts, but this concern was primarily with the validity, the being-true of objects on the basis of the way they are given to or constituted in conscious experience. That is to say, at the core of his quest to establish philosophy as a rigorous science and the ground for all rigorous science, Husserl was concerned with accounting for the Objective validity of experience. Three senses of objective are prominent in Husserl's thought: being an object of consciousness; being there for everyone; and being there for everyone in such a way that, given the evidence, one cannot reasonably imagine it otherwiseöObjectively valid, with the universality of the second sense of objective in combination with the certainty of apodicticity. The ¢rst two senses are prerequisites for the third and Husserl's main focus in his ¢rst introduction to phenomenology was on the ¢rst sense of objective. According to the doctrine of Ideas, it looks as though one can truly attain this sort of objectivity in isolation and that one's experience of other subjects (empathy) has no epistemological roleöor, at best, its role is to con¢rm one's knowledge. However, implicit in what is articulated in Ideas are the seeds of a second role for empathy as a prerequisite for furthering one's knowledge.2 Ideas was the ¢rst work Husserl published as an introduction to phenomenology, but it wasn't his ¢rst in£uential work. By 1913, when Ideas was published in the inaugural issue of Jahrbuch fÏr Philosophie und PhÌnomenologische Forschung, Husserl's Logical Investigations (vol. 1 published in 1900, vol. 2 published 1901) had already generated both a following and critics. On the view Husserl articulated in the Logical Investigations, validity is obtained via ful¢llment. Ful¢llment occurs when a subject's presumptive grasp of something

18

Husserl's Phenomenology

meets with the object in a moment of clarity or knowledge (Erkennen). This meeting of the subject and the object changes the subject's presumptive grasp into a moment of genuine insight. On this view, a person can think of something and thus have an intentional object, but that is just to have a subjective or presumptive grasp. It is neither objectivity nor knowledge of the object. At this stage, when the object is a subjective one, the grasp of it is without the clarity of knowledgeöit is, to use Husserl's term, empty. Such an intention can be ¢lled, partially ¢lled, or not ¢lled. An empty intention is ¢lled by the subjective or presumptive grasp of something meeting with that something in a moment of intuitive clarity.3 Ful¢llmentöthat which moves one from an empty, uncertain, subjective or presumptive grasp of something to a full-blooded understanding or knowledge of itöis the ground of truth and knowledge. In the Logical Investigations, Husserl had set up a sort of correspondence theory of knowledge: the intended meaning must meet with (i.e., coincide with or correspond to) its object in a moment of perfect adequacy.4 The moment of ful¢llment is the moment in which evidence is givenöthe moment of knowledge. As Adorno put it: in the Logical Investigations, Husserl ``de¢nes evidence as ful¢lment, and it functions for him as the criterion of truth.''5 Many of the objects we hope to know about are perceptual objects and the ful¢llment regarding perceptual objects depends on perceptual experience. But the fact that one can never have a complete ``view'' of external objects in perception presents some di¤culties for the doctrine of ful¢llment.6 Since perceptual experiences of objects are perspectival, one can never meet an external, perceptual object with the adequacy required for complete ful¢llment. Thus, one can't really reach the truth about such mattersöat best, one can reach an incomplete, subjective, or presumptive grasp of the thing experienced. So, the Logical Investigations' doctrine of empirical ful¢lment is problematic when it comes to perceptual objects, but the di¤culties of the doctrine are more pervasive than that. Husserl began with the subject's mental act (the presumptive grasp), and the criterion by which presumption and knowledge are distinguished from one another is also a mental act (the subject's experience of ``meeting the object''). Thus there is no way to move from what the subject judges and presumes to be fact to what is actually fact, from what seems to be the case to what one knows to be the case. That is to say, as GÏnther Patzig suggests, ``the daring bridge called evidence, which was intended to connect judgment with fact, had the drawback, rather unfortunate in a bridge, that it ended up on the same side of the river from which it began.''7 Since Husserl began with what seems to the subject to be the case (i.e., a subjective or presumptive grasp) and he grounded knowledge on the evidence of ful¢llment (i.e., on the intuition

Con¢rming What One Might Already Know

19

had by the subject), his doctrine of ful¢llment doesn't take us where it promisesöit is a bridge that merely does a u-turn and comes back to the bank on which it began. Husserl's heavy reliance on the subject empirically meeting the object in question in the Logical Investigations' account of understanding and knowledge sabotages that very account and makes truly objective knowledge an impossible dream.8 Written a little more than a decade later, Ideas o¡ers, among other things, an alteration of the Logical Investigations' doctrine of ful¢llment. In this move beyond the Logical Investigations, Husserl abandoned the notion of the actual perceptual meeting of the object in a moment of clarity as the de¢nitive-yetimpossible source of evidence and knowledge. Instead, Husserl adopted the view of ful¢llment as a regulative idea which motivates further investigation and o¡ers a goal. Movement toward that goal brings stronger evidence.9 The next sections of this chapter will brie£y sketch the doctrine of the noematic ful¢llment put forth in Ideas and glance at the notion of evidence involved in that doctrine as well as the di¡erent levels of certainty to be found in Ideas. Shortcomings of the doctrine will surface, but it will also become clear that empathy has a place in Ideas: explicitly, empathy helps to solidify evidence and con¢rm what one can know in isolation; implicitly, empathy is a condition of the possibility of knowledge.

2.1 Noema: Beyond the Logical Investigations' Perceptual Ful¢llment The move from the Logical Investigations to Ideas is not a complete abandonment of one theory to be replaced by another. It is, rather, an expansion or alteration of a theory. Many key concepts and doctrines are treated in both texts and those treatments have some points of commonality despite the disguise of the changes of terminology. In Ideas, there is still a doctrine of ful¢llment, but rather than being the meeting of an object in adequacy, once and for all, ful¢llment is an on-going meeting of the expectations that accompany an intentional act. But let's not get ahead of ourselves; the process should be viewed in the larger context of Husserl's introduction to phenomenology. As one would expect, Husserl's ¢rst introduction to phenomenology emphasizes the study of phenomena (i.e., objects of consciousness): in his search for a certain ground for all knowledge and science, Husserl was led through the phenomenological reduction to consciousness and the view that consciousness is intentional. By intentionality, Husserl meant the directionality of acts of consciousness. That is, consciousness is a word that

20

Husserl's Phenomenology

describes directional acts, not a thing. As directional, each act of consciousness is directed toward something (e.g., Ideas 120, 141, or 257). That is to say, when one loves, one loves something; when one fears, one fears something; when one thinks, one thinks of something . . . when one perceives, one perceives some'' is the most thing. The claim that ``to be conscious is to be conscious of oft-o¡ered and succinct articulation of the notion of intentionality. The intentionality of consciousness holds, even if the object of consciousness does not exist anywhere outside that particular act of consciousness. That is, if I think of or fear unicorns, I am still conscious of unicorns, even if they do not exist except as ¢ctional or imaginary. And, having conducted the phenomenological reduction, one is unconcerned with what is normally (i.e., from the natural standpoint) called the ``real'' existence of the objects. After the reduction, all that remains in the legitimate ¢eld of inquiry is consciousness itself. As something of which one is conscious, the object of consciousness is a coherent whole, a unity of sortsöit is meaningful, even if it is an imagined unicorn or even if I don't yet know what it is.10 There are both technical and non-technical uses of meaning, and Husserl was sometimes ambiguous in his use of the term, but by this sort of meaning (Sinn), Husserl usually meant something like ``making sense'' or ``being coherent.''11 Experience is meaningful to the extent that it holds together and makes sense. Careful discussion of meaning, objects, acts of consciousness, etc., can be di¤cult and confusing. To help with his discussions of conscious acts and their objects, Husserl adopted the Greek terminology noema (what is thought) and noesis (the act of thinking).12 Every act of consciousness involves a meaningful object of consciousness and a meaning-bestowing act (e.g., Ideas ½88). The meaningful object of consciousness is noematic and the act of consciousness (which, of course, is object directed) is noetic. Or, as Schutz suggested, the experienced is the noema and the experiencing is the noesis.13 Since my investigation into Husserl is primarily concerned with objectivity and related concepts, my treatment will be mainly in terms of noemata (the plural of noema). This is not to imply that the noematic rather than the noetic aspect of intentionality is primary. Quite the contrary, they are a pair. The noetic and the noematic are truly correlative (Ideas 258, 267, 271). As correlates, there is not one without the other and to discover one is to discover the other that comes as part of the package. Thus, to tell the story of the noema is to tell the story of the noesis only in language which focuses on the meaning rather than the act.14 In adopting this Greek terminology Husserl was trying to avoid some of the philosophical baggage carried by the vocabulary of his earlier works. He was also emphasizing that he was discussing acts of consciousness and

Con¢rming What One Might Already Know

21

their objects from the philosophical standpoint (i.e., from within the reduction) rather than from the natural standpoint of everyday language.15 On the view put forth in Ideas, the phenomenon is the thing to be studied: the object of perception, for example, and its relationship to the act of perception, is what concerns the phenomenologist (e.g., Ideas 135, 147, 148). This means that not only is consciousness intentional, it is functionally equivalent to pure experience from within the phenomenological reduction.16 By focusing on the intentional structure of consciousness, Husserl was able to avoid the trap of an ``appearance'' vs. ``real thing'' (or phenomenon vs. noumenon) dichotomy that plagued the Logical Investigations and the theories of several other thinkers. That of which one is conscious is the intentional object, but it can be accessed only from a limited number of perspectives at a time. Taking the case of sense perception of a physical thing as an example, the immediate perception is only one perspective on the physical thing.17 This perceptual presentation is called the noema (Ideas 258) and it is the single aspect or point of view through which the intentional object is accessed. The thing perceived, the intentional object, is a system of ``noemata'' that is referred to by the noema of the immediate perception. Husserl sometimes called this system of noemata the ``full noema.'' The intentional object is, then, this system of noemata but only some of those noemata are immediately graspedöthe rest of them are apperceived.18 That apperceived object is objective (in our ¢rst sense of the wordöit is an object for consciousness). It is, or presents, an in¢nitely large set of expectations to which the noema refers: what the object would be like from the other side, how it would feel and smell, etc., the object or experience as-imagined or as-remembered rather than as-seen, etc. These expectations are testable, in principle at least, and ful¢llable by consciousness of the object from the appropriate different perspectives. It is the ful¢lling of the noemata within the system that allows one to con¢dently assert that one perceives this particular object rather than something else. If the expectations are tested but unful¢lled, the perception ``explodes'' and another one takes shape. As the expectations are ful¢lled, others come to the surface. We are better able to make sense of the terminology and ¢t the pieces together by turning to one of the few examples Husserl o¡ered in the text. ``Let us suppose that we are looking with pleasure in the garden at a blossoming apple-tree,'' the example begins (Ideas 258). This conscious experience is di¡erent when described from the phenomenological point of view than when described from the natural standpoint. From the natural standpoint, the tree and the perception of it (and even the accompanying pleasure) are di¡erent things (Ideas 259) and one is left with the problem of

22

Husserl's Phenomenology

linking the perception with the ``real'' tree (i.e., the tree-itself or what Husserl sometimes called ``the tree plain-and-simple''). From the phenomenological standpoint, however, the ``transcendent reality of space'' and the notion of a distinction between the subject's perspectival experience and the external object being perceived have been bracketed out of consideration and ``nothing remains but the perception; there is nothing real out there to which it relates'' (Ideas 259). That is, the move to the phenomenological standpoint via the epoche¨ e¡ectively eliminates the distinction between the experience and the external world, and ``we have no such question to put as whether anything corresponds to it [perception] in `the' real world'' (Ideas 259). According to Husserl, the world of conscious experience is the only world of which we can legitimately speak when speaking philosophically or phenomenologically. What concerns the phenomenologist is not some mysterious, elusive tree-itself in the ``external world'' to which one's perception corresponds: that tree plain-and-simple could burn away without altering the description and analysis of the experience of the tree-as-seen with pleasure (Ideas 259^60). What concerns the phenomenologist here is the experience of perception and pleasure: the [ap]perceived apple tree in bloom in this garden, and so forth (Ideas 263). Looking at the tree, my eyes focus on something of a particular grouping of sizes, shapes, groups and patterns of colors, etc. (what Husserl sometimes called the hyletic data of the experience). Yet the intentional object is a meaningful whole (the data synthesized)öI am conscious of the tree, the apperceived tree. That is, I apprehend the complete tree based on the immediate single-perspective noema as an aspect of the tree. The view from one perspective brings with it, or refers to, a system of noemata and that system of noemata is the meaningful intentional objectöthe blooming apple tree as-seen (rather than the tree as-imagined, or hallucinated, e.g., or something else altogether). This apperception of the apple tree in bloom brings with it expectations that are associated with the meaning of an apple tree (and with the noemata that constitute the object of consciousness). I expect, for example, that I will experience the same tree if I blink my eyes and then open them while never turning my gaze in a different direction. I expect the bark of the tree to have a certain sort of texture. I expect the leaves to make certain sorts of noises if a breeze comes through. I expect my foot to meet painful resistance if I give the tree a good hard kick. I expect the tree to be three-dimensional and that I will ``see'' the same tree if I walk to the other side and look at it. And so on. Whether I actively think about it or not, all of this, and more, is apperceived based on the perspective I have of the tree and the full noema that perspective refers to and thus I ``see'' an apple tree in bloom.19

Con¢rming What One Might Already Know

23

In looking at the tree in the garden, I [ap]perceive it as a seen apple tree. That is the object I constitute. If I close my eyes and then open them, only to ¢nd the tree has disappeared, the perception of the tree as-seen explodes. I have been mistaken about the as-seen aspect of the tree, but re-constitute the tree-as-hallucinated, as-imagined, as-projected by some unseen mechanism, or as something else that is consistent with the data I have. Since it was a conscious experience, the consciousness is of something, so the noematic system of the exploded perception must be replaced by something. The immediate perception (the single-perspective noema that refers me to the other noemata) is experienced and there is no doubting that. What I might be wrong about is the full noema (the noematic system which is the intentional object, the apple tree as-seen with pleasure). That full noema can be found to be wrong and the perception exploded. But if there is no such explosion, that full noema can be veri¢ed as more and more perspectives are had and expectations are ful¢lled; that is how I move to a more dependable and complete knowledge of the tree-as-seenömotivated by the idea of the tree in complete givenness. Quickly, another example: I look out my window and see a house across the street. What my physical eyes focus upon is a group of shapes and colors, with di¡erent visual textures in particular proportion and arrangement. What I perceive (i.e., the immediate perception, the noema) is the side of a house. That is already a meaningful object, but in experience I usually [ap]perceive a house built by someone, with a front, a back, and bedrooms, used for particular sorts of activities, etc. The house is the intentional object of my experience and that sight involves a set of expectations. If I walk across the street and discover that what I took to be a house is just an image on canvas, the experience of the house as-seen explodes because some of the noemata and expectations referred to in constituting the house cannot be ful¢lled, but I come to experience the painting of a house, or whatever seems most appropriate based on the data. It is in the ful¢llment of the expectations associated with my perspective on the house that my initial grasp of the house is re-con¢rmed and solidi¢ed, even if complete ful¢llment is impossible because the system of noemata involved is in¢nite. Every intentional object has an unlimited number of possible perspectives. Not all intentional objects are spatial and neither are all the possible perspectives of an intentional object. Other aspects of the full noemaö i.e., other possible perspectivesöinclude the ``howness'' of the experience: as-seen, as-hallucinated, as-remembered, as-imagined, as-feared, as-pleasurable, etc. The examples we've looked at are of perception but they are paradigmatic of the relationships between subject, object, act of conscious, and meaning (Ideas 117^18, 198^99, 265). The basic description of

24

Husserl's Phenomenology

the perception of the front of a house, at the beginning of the house example, would parallel that with the house as a whole. The description of other experiences, Husserl held, is also accomplished by means of his discussion of noemata.20 The quick descriptions of my experiences of seeing an apple tree in bloom in the garden and looking across the street to see a house brings to the surface the notions of knowledge and evidence. After all, the descriptions suggest that if noematic expectations are ful¢lled, the subject has more evidence that the initial apperception was correct but if the expectations are tested and the experience explodes, the subject was wrong about the ¢rst apperception and must replace it with something consistent with the data (including whatever exploded the ¢rst apperception).

2.2 Evidence and Certainty Continuing with the last example, the house across the street: because this particular perception is consistent with other, very di¡erent, systems of noemata (a hallucination of a house or a movie set, for example, or perhaps a di¡erent sort of building, etc.), no single noema can establish that this really is a house (in the everyday sense of the term: a three-dimensional structure, built by someone as a dwelling, transcending my awareness of it, etc.). That is, I apperceive the house, but because that same view is consistent with di¡erent experiences, it is possible that although I am certain about the experience, I might be wrong about seeing a house rather than, say, a life-sized photo of a house.21 How can one con¢rm that one is right? What sorts of evidence and reassurance are available? Unlike in the Logical Investigations, on the view put forth in Ideas and afterward, the search for evidence is not the search for that additional experience or spark of light from above that turns one's belief into true belief: Evidence is, in fact, not some sort of conscious indicator a¤xed to a judgment . . . calling to us like a mystical voice from a better world: Here is the Truth! . . . [it] is a uniquely special mode of positing . . . (e.g., the mode of insight into the noematic composition that gives an essence ``originally'') (Ideas 400/Hua III 354, translation modi¢ed slightly).22 Ideas is the text in which Husserl ¢rst developed a phenomenology of evidence. But as George He¡ernan suggests, the account of evidence in Ideas is more di¤cult to understand than the accounts Husserl o¡ered in other

Con¢rming What One Might Already Know

25

major texts.23 This di¤culty is partly the result of Ideas o¡ering much discussion of various modes of evidenceöclarity and distinctness vs. obscurity and confusion (½½67^69, 123^25), mediate or derivative evidence vs. immediate and original or pure evidence (½½136^45)öbut not nearly as much about evidence per se. The di¤culty in getting at Husserl's explanation of evidence is also partly due to the fact that Husserl, having made layer upon layer of distinction and o¡ered dichotomy within dichotomy, did not always make explicit much of what is implicit in what he was writing about evidence and the search for Objectively valid knowledge.24 These di¤culties aside, a glance at evidence in Ideas can be helpful. Despite not having as much to say about evidence in general as about speci¢c aspects of evidence, Ideas does o¡er quite a lot about evidence. We can access the key relationships between evidence, Objectivity, empathy by following the outlines of two sets of distinctions found in Ideas: (1) three degrees of evidence: perfect evidence, adequacy, and apodicticity; and (2) three sorts of certainty: adequacy, de facto apodicticity, de jure apodicticity. Very early in Ideas, Husserl moved away from facts and the world toward essences and consciousness. This move was a step in Husserl's search for a grounding for science: in the ¢rst chapter of the section one of Ideas, Husserl suggested that genuine scienti¢c evidence is obtained in regard to essences rather than facts and in the second main section of the text, he went on to argue that genuine scienti¢c evidence must be achieved in relation to consciousness rather than found in the external world. The movement away from the facts about the external world to essences discovered in consciousness is motivated by Husserl's quest for ``perfect evidence'' (Ideas ½½32, 88, 97, 139) . Perfect evidence is both adequate and apodictic (Ideas 54, 60).25 By ``adequate'' or ``adequacy,'' Husserl meant complete: I have an adequate grasp of something if I grasp it in every possible way from every possible perspective. Adequacy is possible only with regard to immanent experiences (about this, Husserl felt Descartes was right).26 Because adequacy requires a grasp from every possible perspective, it is impossible to have an adequate perception of physical objects because our grasp of them is always limited in perspective. After all, it is their very inability to be adequately grasped by any one subject that makes them transcendent (e.g., Ideas ½131).27 By ``apodictic'' or ``apodicticity,'' Husserl meant certain. Husserl set his sights on evidence that is apodictic, or indubitable, as opposed to assertoric, or dubitable. The search for apodicticity explains the move from external world to consciousness; after all, as Descartes reminded us, one may be mistaken about the tree one sees, but one cannot be mistaken about the experience of seeming to see a treeöthe experience,

26

Husserl's Phenomenology

the consciousness of the tree. Or, as Husserl put it with respect to empathy: although ``no nonsense lies in the possibility that all alien consciousness which I posit in the experience of empathy does not exist . . . my empathy and my consciousness in general is given in a primordial and absolute sense'' (Ideas 144). Perfect evidence, again, is both apodictic (i.e., certain) and adequate (i.e., complete). While it is true that adequacy brings with it apodicticity, the converse is not necessarily true. One cannot have complete evidence and be left in doubt, but one can be certain even if one does not have an exhaustively complete grasp of something. That is to say, even though adequacy is not possible regarding transcendent objects, apodicticity may still be possible and adequacy serves as the motivating goal which can help to guarantee the apodicticity of evidence (e.g., Ideas ½143).28 Everything, on the view put forth in Ideas, rests on evidence and, as Husserl put it: No theory we can conceive can mislead us in regard to the principle of all principles: that every primordial dator Intuition [i.e., every originally objectgiving intuition] is a source of authority (Rechtsquelle) for knowledge, that whatever presents itself in ``intuition'' in originary form (as it were in its bodily reality), is simply to be accepted as it gives itself out to be, though only within the limits in which it then presents itself (Ideas 92, Husserl's emphasis).29 So, according to the principle of all principles, originally given intuition is the source of legitimation of knowledgeöit is bedrock, so to speak. Although such intuition is relative to the subject, it is given to, not created by or invented by, the subject. The originally object-giving intuition which is a source of authority or validity of knowledge is, in other words, the self-evidence of self-givenness in experience (cf. Ideas 400). Thus, the selfevidence of the dator intuition is the kernel of certainty needed in order to have any knowledge, and on this certain evidence, all else restsöso it is original not only in the sense of not being derivative, but also in the sense of being the origin of all other knowledge.30 If the fundamental legitimizing source of knowledge, the object-giving intuition, is complete (i.e., encompassing every possible perspective), it is adequate. If not, the best it can be is apodictic. Remember, though, that the object-giving intuition is to be accepted ``only within the limits in which it presents itself '' (Ideas 92). Sometimes those limits are due to the kind of experience or its object (as when the experience is perception of a physical thing). The limits of object-giving intuition may hinder having adequate access to the object, but adequacy remains the target; in striving for adequacy, apodicticity is attainable. Husserl reminded readers of Ideas

Con¢rming What One Might Already Know

27

that immanent perception/experience is indubitable, and thus certain, but transcendent perception or experience (i.e., experience of transcendent ``things'') is dubitable: In contrast to this [immanent perception], it is, as we know, an essential feature of the thing-world that no perception, however perfect it may be, gives us anything absolute within its domain . . . every experience (Erfahrung), however far it extends, leaves open the possibility that what is given, despite the persistent consciousness of its bodily self-presence, does not exist (Ideas 144). Now, even if the experience of a transcendent thing-world does not provide adequacy regarding that thing-world, the immanent experience of that selfpresence of the transcendent world does provide some certainty. Even when an experience prohibits adequacy, Husserl held that movement from a lessthan-certain and limited grasp of something to a more certain and less limited grasp is possible (Ideas 401). Thus we are faced with the question of how such a move is to be made, and that is really just a restatement of the question posed above about how one might gain assurance about the noema of an experience being part of this particular noematic complex rather than the other possibilities. It is a question of con¢rming the ``rightness'' of the meaning of the intentional relationship between subject and objectöit is a question of validity. The quick answer to that question of validity was sketched at the end of ½2.1, above: one can gain such assurance or con¢rmation through noematic ful¢llment. That is, if I look across the street and apperceive a house (in the everyday sense of ``house''öwith a front and a back, bedrooms, used for living in, etc.), that apperceived object goes beyond the hyletic data gathered by my senses and it brings with it a complex of relationships and expectations that are not included in the brute dataöthe other side of the house, or the inside, or the types of materials used in construction, or that it was built by someone, for example. If subsequent experiences contradict those expectations, then the experience explodes. If the subsequent experiences meet expectations, some of the noemata are ful¢lled. That answer is rough and we need to supplement it by taking note of three sorts of certainty at play in the text. In the process of looking at the distinction between three certainties and the relationships between them, the ways in which the experience of Others underlies the doctrine o¡ered in Ideas will become more apparent. The three key types of certainty in Ideas are adequacy, which has already been touched upon, and apodicticity arrived at by two di¡erent paths. Thus far, I've proceeded as if there are just two

28

Husserl's Phenomenology

pertinent categories of evidence and certaintyöadequate and apodictic. Apodictic evidence is certain; adequate evidence is apodictic and complete. However, the category of apodictic evidence needs to be divided into two because two sorts of apodictic evidence, in addition to adequate evidence, can be found in Husserl's textsöeven though Husserl did not explicitly give voice to the distinction in Ideas.31 Those two sorts of apodicticity are di¡erentiated by the path by which the apodictic certainty is attained, and I will follow Harry P. Reeder's terms which he took over from Jose¨ Huertas-Jourda32 in calling them de facto apodicticity and de jure apodicticity. As previously noted, adequacy is a mostly unattainable target we strive to hit. That leaves apodicticity as our primary evidential concern. Together, the two paths to apodictic certainty explain how the object-giving intuition can be the source of the validity of knowledge, and how one can be certain about an experience but later come to modify that stance when the noematic expectations are unful¢lled. That is, recognition of the distinction between de facto and de jure apodicticity allows us to make sense of situations in which one is certain about something (with the appropriate evidence for being certain) and yet turns out to be wrong. The distinction also explains how we grow more con¢dent in our knowledge and can have an apodictic knowledge that is objective in the sense of being available to all, and this lies at the heart of the scienti¢c knowledge Husserl sought. Recall that lying at the heart of the principle of all principles is the self-givenness of lived evidence which is a source of legitimate knowledge (Ideas 92). De facto apodicticity is the correlate of self-givenness. De jure apodicticity, on the other hand, is the correlate of a judgment linked with a linguistic formulation of de facto evidence (and, perhaps, an intersubjective critique). It might strike some people as odd for me to claim that Husserl linked judgments and predication with apodicticityöafter all, this suggestion is contrary to what is often considered the ``standard'' reading of Ideas. Granted, in Ideas, Husserl did not focus on this distinction between two sorts of apodicticity and the connection between apodicticity and predication, but the text does o¡er support for the claim. Often, that support is lying in the background or on the fringes as other key points or distinctions are being made. For example, in Ideas ½6, while articulating and distinguishing between two correlations,33 Husserl suggested that judgment and truth belong together as a system and that a judgment is an asserted proposition while truth is a true proposition. Not only are judgment and truth linked, but because they are propositional, predication is involved.34 So predication comes along with both judgment and truth (though in di¡erent ways). Consequently, whatever the certainty of what is meant or what is obtained in

Con¢rming What One Might Already Know

29

truth, it is not the self-evidence of the originally object-giving intuition at the heart of the principle of principlesöit is not de facto apodicticity. Even if it is not de facto, Husserl did link such predication with apodicticity: The consciousness of necessity, or more particularly consciousness of a judgment, in which there is consciousness of a predicatively formed a¡air complex as a particularization of an eidetic universality, is called an apodictic consciousness; the judgment itself, the asserted proposition, is called an apodictic (also an apodictically ``necessary'') consequence of the general proposition [the universal judgment] to which it is connected (Ideas 60/Hua III 19^20, translation modi¢ed). Here, Husserl connected judging, truth, propositions and apodicticity in the eidetic sphere, but he went on to suggest that the connections ``hold good for any realm of discourse, and not only for such as are purely eidetic'' (Ideas 60). Thus even though the predicative process was not Husserl's main concern here, it is clear that in Ideas Husserl linked apodicticity to both self-evident intuitions and predicative processes. Thus we need to acknowledge that Husserl held that there is more than one path to apodicticity. The results of the di¡erent paths can be labeled as di¡erent sorts of apodicticity. The apodictic certainty of the self-evident intuitions which are a source of all legitimate knowledge is what I've labeled de facto apodicticity and for apodicticity that is the result of a predicative process I use the label de jure apodicticity. The upper limit, the strongest apodicticity, the perfect limit to which de jure apodicticity strives, is adequacy. Husserl held that ``every imperfect givenness (every inadequate object-giving noema) contains within itself a rule for the possibility of its perfecting'' (Ideas 413, Husserl's emphasis omitted) and thus suggested that apodicticity includes or refers not only to the idea of adequacy but also a rule for its possibility. He also held that to every object there corresponds ``the idea of a possible consciousness in which the object itself can be grasped in a primordial [i.e., originary] and also perfectly adequate way'' (Ideas 395). Even if no single actual living subject can attain this adequacy, the having of an object in apodicticity suggests adequacy as a goal to be approached.35 It should be noted here that Husserl didn't explicitly use the labels de facto and de jure apodicticity and some commentators don't even ¢nd that Husserl explicitly made the distinction between adequacy and apodicticity in Ideas. Elisabeth StrÎker, for example, has suggested that Husserl didn't even really

30

Husserl's Phenomenology

make the distinction between adequate and apodictic evidence explicit in the 1913 text: ``most probably Husserl equated these two types of evidence [i.e., adequate and apodictic] up until 1925 . . . [but] in fact the distinction is basically sharp.''36 Although StrÎker and others are right to point out that Husserl did not explicitly emphasize the distinction in 1913 as much as he did later, the text of Ideas contradicts the claim that he did not even make the distinction in 1913. For example, in ½½137^38 Husserl reminded his audience of the di¡erences between adequate and inadequate evidence and suggested that some instances of inadequate evidence can be more rational or dependable than others. These sections suggest that some instances of evidence, despite not being adequate, can be dependableöeven as dependable as is humanly possible, and thus indubitable and certain. These are instances of apodictic evidence: certain yet not adequate. I am not suggesting that Husserl emphasized this distinction in Ideas, but I am suggesting that, despite what some other commentators hold, both the distinction between adequacy and apodicticity and the distinction between two sorts of apodicticity can be made on the basis of what Husserl did articulate in the text. It is also the case that although adequate evidence is apodictic, not all apodictic evidence is adequate and thus those who suggest that in Ideas apodictic ˆ adequate ˆ self-evident/transparent are misguided.37 In fact, although some have suggested that Husserl wrote Ideas as if adequacy and apodicticity are the same, Husserl actually criticized the philosophical tradition for making such an identi¢cation and treating apodictic evidence as a sort of yardstick against which judgments are measured.38 Yet, evidence can be measured against adequacy and pushed in that direction. There is a connection between the teleological nature of apodicticity and the source of Husserl's critique of the traditional view of apodictic evidence. As Reeder put it: The teleological nature of de jure apodictic evidence makes it corrigible and subject to future criticism. Thus, the highest form of evidence attainable is not God-like or absolute, although it is as ``absolutely certain'' as humans can attain, and is su¤cient to withstand the assaults of the skeptics.39 De jure evidence is subject to future criticism (because once something has been predicated it is there to be criticized either by the original subject or by Others), and that criticism makes it possible to move up the path of certainty toward adequacy by taking into account as many of the possible points of view as possibleöreaching, in the best case, an asymptote to perfect adequacy of evidence.

Con¢rming What One Might Already Know

31

We can now integrate the distinction between two sorts of apodicticity into one of our running examples of noematic ful¢llment. I see an apple tree in bloom. By now, it is old news that the hyletic sense data I take in is of shapes and colors and relative sizes, all in particular orientations to one another; and, if I am outside, perhaps the data include an aroma from the blossoms or the sound made by a tree, etc. Yet I see an organized whole, three-dimensional tree because I apperceive the aspects that I do not take in with my sense organsöthe other side of the tree, the tops of the leaves, the apples to come, the uses of such a tree, etc. The noematic complex is the intentional object (i.e., the apple tree in bloom as seen) and it brings with it many expectationsöwhether I am actively aware of them or not. In many cases, I make no judgment about the noematic complexöthat is, I don't usually think to myself: ``Hmm, I wonder if that really is an apple tree in bloom. If it is a tree, I ought to be able to go lean against it.'' We often remain at the pre-predicative, pre-judging, level of de facto selfevidence. Whether I make a judgment about it or I take it as what was presented by my initial apperception, if I take my lunch out into the garden and sit down under the tree and lean against it with no di¤culties, I have been reassured that it is a real tree because some of the aspects of the noematic complex to which my immediate perception referred have been ful¢lledö and I have more evidence that this is a real tree than I did initially, even if I never doubted or questioned it. If, however, I meet no solid object when I lean back against the tree, the full noema explodes and I immediately know that I was wrong about it being real a treeöso I consider other possibilities that are consistent with my initial object-giving intuition (for the principle of all principles still holds and the originally object-giving intuition is still the source of all authority for knowledge). My apperception of the tree is an object-giving intuition and is to be taken in its selfevidenceöI ``have'' the tree with de facto apodicticity. Much of the time, this is enough, and we do not make judgments or form propositions regarding this evidence. That is, we often accept things based on this self-evidence, at least until presented with reason not to do so. However, that is having an object in the most basic sense of objectivity (GegenstÌndlicheit) rather than having Objectively valid knowledge. At other times, one makes a judgment based upon or related to the de facto evidence. Perhaps the judgment is about what sort of tree it is: apple, or cherry, or what variety of the species, etc. Perhaps the judgment is an aesthetic one: that is a beautiful tree. Regardless of what the actual judgment is, it is a judgment, a proposition, a predicative act, a move from de facto toward de jure apodicticity. In a sense, predication displays one's intentional object to oneself and to everyone, making it possible for one's memory and for

32

Husserl's Phenomenology

Others to enter into the testing-and-ful¢llment process. If, for instance, my judgment is that it is an apple tree of species X, and others agree, the level of my certainty about the tree increases. If an expert on fruit trees walks by while I am eating my lunch in the shade of the tree and concurs with my judgment, yet another step toward that ever-elusive adequacy has been taken. Growing harmony among the various perspectives on the tree adds to the evidence; disharmony threatens to explode the experience of the apple tree. So, I can know the apple tree on my own, and I can con¢rm this and build my certainty. If I make judgments about the experience and allow Others to become involved, they can help to con¢rm what I took to be true in isolation (and, of course, they can also show me that I was not entirely correct and how I was mistaken). Looking at the closing chapter of Ideas, one can see the same ideas summarized in di¡erent terms: Reason begins with ``seeing'' acts in which objects are given in self-evidence (½136), allows for di¡erent kinds of self-evidence (½137), and forms the ideal of a perfectly adequate consciousness of any object (½142); at the same time, however, Husserl stressed that this perfect adequacy is unattainable for objects in the natural world (½143), but still remains the goal which motivates the strengthening of the apodictic certainty (½145).40

2.3 Empathy, Intersubjectivity and Knowledge The previous sections touched upon the kinds of evidence and certainty involved in Ideas and the movement toward the strongest evidence possible. That movement toward adequacy involves predication, and thus the experiencing of Others (i.e., the experience of others as other subjectsö empathy). Consequently, empathy is required for movement on the path from object-giving intuition to noematic ful¢llmentöfrom de facto to de jure certainty.41 Empathy is also required for the attainment of certainty that is Objective; for without the experience of Others, one cannot sensibly speak of a ``there for all.'' On the other hand, other subjects do not seem to be required, at least in the explicit account in Ideas, for the attainment of the certain knowledge at the level of de facto apodicticity, self-evidence, and this is the kernel of certainty that lies at the origin of all knowledge. Thus, empathy has a role to play in the attainment of objective knowledge in Ideas, but that role is one of con¢rming and solidifying knowledge which one could otherwise have attained in isolation and taking that into the public arena so that ``there for everyone'' can make sense and it can be pushed further

Con¢rming What One Might Already Know

33

toward adequacy by the incorporation of other perspectives and critical review. Such is the main doctrine in the text. So far, our focus has been on the text. One might wonder at this point whether the doctrines of evidence and perception o¡ered in Ideas are in accord with experience. Are the examples of the tree in the garden or the house across the street re£ective of the way we experience things, and does the same sort of model hold when the object is not a physical thing? This is, of course, a legitimate question to ask of any aspect of Husserl's thought since he insisted time and again that experience is both intelligible and the point from which our investigations must start. One might also wonder how it is that, when looking across the street, one can come to see the shapes and colors one sees when looking out the window as a house (a uni¢ed whole) as well as how it is possible to experience other subjects. The account outlined thus far, according to which we see houses without contact with Others and a larger context, needs to be buttressed. After all, I could never know what a house is if it weren't for Others. If I were always and only in isolation, that noematic complex would not have the meaning it has for me. Additionally, e¡ective language use involves multiple subjects and thus Others are required by the predication involved in judgments and in truth claims as well as de jure apodicticity. In other words, the intersubjective realm, and consequently other subjects, seem to underlie the account of perception that Husserl o¡ered in Ideas although he o¡ered it there as if the individual transcendental ego were bedrock. My eyes have access to light rays and I take in hyletic data but I apperceive and ``see'' a house. The above pages sketched the story behind seeing a house and the expectations that accompany that apperception. In answer to the question about how one can know one is ``right'' in saying that it is a house as seen rather than something else, the notion of noematic ful¢llment was touched upon, as was the distinction between the two sorts of apodicticity to be culled from the text. What has not been discussed, and what is not articulated su¤ciently in Ideas, is how it is that I come to experience those visual textures and shapes to be a house rather than something else. From whence come those complex noematic meanings? Husserl was aware of this di¤culty with what we have considered thus far. In the two introductions to phenomenology he published after Ideas, the answers begin to be worked out. In the Cartesian Meditations, he spent a fair amount of energy working out a doctrine of how I can know others as Others. The Crisis of European Sciences includes a discussion of how one inherits meanings from one's life-world. In that way, those texts begin to articulate and investigate some of the conditions of possibility for the doctrine put forth in Ideas. Before turning to those discussions, though,

34

Husserl's Phenomenology

let's take notice what Husserl did say about empathy and intersubjectivity at the time of his writing of Ideas. 2.3.1 What is explicit in Ideas The emphasis in Ideas is on subjectivity (individual, transcendental subjectivity) and the noetic-noematic account of conscious experience. What the text explicitly focuses on, in terms of evidence and knowledge, is that the self-evidence of dator intuition is the bedrock of knowledge and that this is, as self-evident, unmediated by Others. Looking at some of the commentaries on Ideas might give one the impression that Husserl had very little of substance to say about empathy and intersubjectivity in that textödespite the fact that Others seem to be prerequisite for his doctrines of noematic ful¢llment and evidence. Husserl did, however, have something to say about the matter, and it shows up in the beginning, middle, and end of Ideas. By and large, the substantive points Husserl made in Ideas about empathy and intersubjectivity are asserted rather than argued; nevertheless, they are key points. In ½1 of Ideas, Husserl wrote that empathy is a dator intuition, but that it is not primordial or originary (Ideas 52). So, in contrast with outer perception which is the primordial experience of physical things or inner perception which is the primordial experience of ourselves and our states of consciousness (Ideas 51), empathy is an object-giving but not primordial conscious experience. It is not primordial because we experience Others ``through the perception of their bodily behavior'' (Ideas 52).42 Empathy is, then, one's experience of another subject on the basis of something elseö the Other's body and behavior. My perception of the body and behavior may be original, but my perception of the other as an other subject is not. In ½29, having just begun his discussion of the natural standpoint, Husserl asserted that what is true of himself is true of Others as well, and that the world in which he ¢nds himself is an intersubjective world. He suggested that we experience the world as an intersubjective world and we experience others as Others (i.e., as other subjects). One of the most pertinent passages reads: Whatever holds good for me personally, also holds good, as I know, for all other men whom I ¢nd present in my world-about-me. Experiencing them as men, I understand and take them as Ego-subjects, units like myself, and related to their natural surroundings. But this in such wise that I apprehend the world-about-them and the world-about-me objectively as one and the same world, which di¡ers in each case only through

Con¢rming What One Might Already Know

35

a¡ecting consciousness di¡erently. . . . For each . . . the ¢elds of perception and memory actually present are di¡erent, quite apart from the fact that even that which is here intersubjectively known in common is known in di¡erent ways, is di¡erently apprehended, shows di¡erent grades of clearness, and so forth. Despite all this, we come to understandings with our neighbours, and set up in common an objective spatio-temporal fact-world as the world about us that is there for us all, and to which we ourselves none the less belong (Ideas 105, my emphasis). Our experience does suggest that Husserl's assertion here is correct. After all, if experience suggested a solipsistic world, philosophers would not be so resistant to solipsistic views. Husserl continued his line of thought regarding intersubjectivity in ½48 where he suggested that if we assume that there is something real out there, ``we perceive that the transcendent must be experienceable, and not merely by an Ego conjured into being as an empty logical possibility but by any actual Ego'' and what can be perceived ``by one Ego must in principle be conceivable by every Ego'' (Ideas 150). Consequently, even though ``it is not true that everyone stands or can stand in a relation of empathy'' with everyone, it is possible, at least in principle, and the ``worlds of experience sundered in point of fact may still be united together through actual empirical connexions into a single intersubjective world, the correlate of the unitary world of minds'' (Ideas 150). Empathy, then, is that which makes possible an intersubjectively Objective world (with the capital ``O''). Recognizing that there may be some di¤culties with the view that the world is intersubjective yet I, as subject, constitute it, Husserl asked, in ½53, about what he later called the paradox of subjectivity: how is it that consciousness can be both that within which all that is transcendent is constituted (and what does the constituting) and also a real event within the world? He answered that this is possible only on the basis of consciousness's participation in ``the transcendence of material Nature.'' That is, it is only possible for consciousness to enter the constituted world by means of its being connected with a body in ``a natural unity'' (Ideas 164). It is through the experienced relation to the body that consciousness becomes ``real in a human and animal sense'' (Ideas 164). Husserl also asserted here that it is because of our embodiment that mutual understanding and belonging to one world is possible. That is to say, embodiment is a requirement for the relations of empathy that make possible intersubjectivity and an intersubjective world. By the time we get to Ideas ½135, Husserl's discussion has shifted from how the intersubjective sphere is constituted to the intersubjective constitution of

36

Husserl's Phenomenology

objects. Just as every intentional experience has a noema by which it is related to the object, so every object is an object of consciousness. Here, Husserl wrote that ``every real natural thing is represented by all the meanings and signi¢cant positions with their £uctuating ¢lling.'' That is, every object is represented ``by the system of all possible `subjective modes of appearing', in which it can be noematically constituted as self-identical.'' So, the intentional object is the system of noemata and this constituting of the object relates ``to a possible community-consciousness . . . for whom one thing as the self-same objective real entity must be given and identi¢ed intersubjectively'' (Ideas 374^75). Even within the phenomenological reduction, then, Others and intersubjectivity are tacitly referred to by the constitution of any real thing. How is this so? We have already seen most of the pieces of the beginnings of an explanation. The brief treatment of noema, apperception, and ful¢llment earlier in this chapter remind us that apperception of anything includes perspectives which are not exhausted by the thing's appearance to the subject (e.g., I cannot simultaneously see the front and the back of the tree I see in the garden). Those perspectives could very well be had by other subjects and thus, as Dan Zahavi put it, ``the object refers to those other subjects, and is for that reason intrinsically intersubjective.''43 At the end of Ideas, in the 151st of 153 sections, Husserl moved to a discussion of the levels of constitution. He suggested that if we consider the basic perceptual consciousness of a thing, ``we relate ourselves to a single stream of consciousness, to the possible perceptions of a single perceiving personal subject.'' Among these possible perspectives there are various strata of uni¢cation and the ``uppermost stratum of this formation is that of the substantial-causal Thing'' (Ideas 419). At this level, the individual subject is at center stage, but Husserl went on to discuss the next levelöthe level of the intersubjective thing. This level is ``a constitutive unity of higher order. Its constitution is related to an inde¢nite plurality of subjects that stand in relation of mutual understanding. The intersubjective world is the correlate of the intersubjective experience, mediated, that is, through empathy'' (Ideas 420). This is the layer of unities of sensory things already constituted individually by the many subjects. We are referred, then, to ``the new factor of empathy and to the question how it plays a constitutive part in `objective' experience and gives unity to those separated manifolds'' (Ideas 420). Thus Husserl viewed the intersubjective level as a level at which we are forced to face the question of how empathy plays a role in objective experience. Here at the close of the book, Husserl was presenting the question mainly as an indication of what his subsequent studies and texts would treat, not as something he would address any more substantively in Ideas than he already had. We have seen that Ideas o¡ers some things from which

Con¢rming What One Might Already Know

37

we can begin to piece together an answer, but Husserl did not o¡er a rigorous inquiry into the matter in Ideas. 2.3.2 What he was working on in the same time period In 1931, some eighteen years after the ¢rst publication of Ideas, Husserl wrote a preface to the English edition of Ideas. This was published as an author's preface to the Boyce Gibson translation and it is the only commentary on Ideas Husserl published. In this commentary, Husserl reiterated the point made above that intersubjectivity provides the grounding for the real world. He also acknowledged that Ideas is incomplete and lacks ``the proper consideration of . . . transcendental intersubjectivity'' (Ideas 18). According to Husserl, the solution to these shortcomings ``should have been furnished in a Second Volume'' which he had planned to publish very soon after the ¢rst (Ideas 18). That second volume was never published by Husserl, but it has been published posthumously. Interestingly, Husserl's preface to the Boyce Gibson translation was also published as an epilogue to the Rojcewicz and Schuwer English translation of the second volume of Ideas. Although the content of the preface and the epilogue is essentially the same, the latter includes a very telling footnote that was omitted in the former.44 Here is that note: My lectures at GÎttingen in 1910^11 already presented a ¢rst sketch of my transcendental theory of empathy, i.e., the reduction of human existence as mundane being-with-one-another to transcendental intersubjectivity. See the extensive descriptions in the ¢fth part of my forthcoming Cartesian Meditations. A short pre¨cis of the path followed is given in my Formal and Transcendental Logic, ½96.45 According to his footnote, then, Husserl had already worked out his theory of empathy and intersubjectivity before he wrote Ideas, and that theory was o¡ered primarily in the Cartesian Meditations.46 In Ideas, Husserl asserted that empathy is a kind of object-giving intuitionöfor it gives the Other as another conscious subject. Which comes ¢rst, empathy or transcendence of objects, is not entirely clear in Ideas but there is already a sense in which Others are object-giving in that they assure one of the transcendence of the ``physical'' world. Objects are transcendent because they are not dependent on any one perspective and it is their inability to be adequately captured by any single perspective that assures us of their transcendence. The in¢nite perspectives on transcendent objects mean that there are perspectives which are beyond my grasp and this

38

Husserl's Phenomenology

opens the possibility of perspectives had by Others, thus making the objects intersubjective in a way. Experiencing an intersubjective object is one way of experiencing Others, and thus of empathy.47 Other than o¡ering the pieces of the argument that I have pointed to, and suggesting without much argument that the lived body plays a role, however, Husserl did not explore or expand upon this theme in Ideas. The fact that Husserl had worked out his theory of empathy before he wrote Ideas, and that he planned to present a version of it in the second of the three Ideas volumes (of which he actually wrote a draft in 1912), might help explain the omission of that theory from the text of Ideas and make it easier to take seriously what he said about empathy in Ideas: he had begun a text in which it would be o¡ered in detail. Looking at the GÎttingen Lectures of 1910^11, which have been made available in the works published posthumously,48 one ¢nds evidence that Husserl had been working on his theory of empathy for at least a few years before writing Ideas. There are several points of contact or overlap between the lectures and what Ideas o¡ers on the subject. After an investigation of ``The Ego in the Natural Attitude'' (½1), the lectures go on to discuss ``The Lived Body and its Spatiotemporal Surroundings'' (½2) and ``The Localization of Experiences in the Lived Body'' (½3) before treating ``Empathy and the Foreign Ego'' (½4). The essential point to be gleaned from sections 2 and 3 is that it is via the lived body (rather than a corpse or non-animate entity) that consciousness relates to the world: ``each ego ¢nds itself as having an organic lived body.''49 The lived body is ``always and inescapably there'' in perception and it is the ``central member [Zentralglied ] of the thingly apprehended surroundings.''50 The lived body is not consciousness, but it is the central point of the ego's experiences of the surrounding worldöas if consciousness emanates from the lived body. Husserl put the point as follows: ``the experiences of the ego become recognized on the basis of experience (which each ego makes and which determines its judgments), as being in a . . . sphere governed by the lived body, by its lived bodily [leiblichen] states and processes.''51 Having suggested the distinction between the lived body and the physical body, Husserl o¡ered a very brief account of empathy.52 Based in part on the recognition of one's own lived body, one is presented (in that surrounding world of which the lived body is the center) with something that ``the ego notes as a lived body.'' Since ``each lived body must belong to an ego,'' this other lived body must ``belong'' to another ego. Thus, the ego ``sees the [other] lived body as `supporter' of the [other] ego-subject, but it does not `see' the experientially discovered foreign ego in the same sense that it sees itself.'' The other subject is thus ``posited in the manner of `empathy.' '' Each lived body is the middle point of its spatiotemporal world but

Con¢rming What One Might Already Know

39

``for each ego, the other egos are not midpoints'' and it is each ego being the middle point for itself and the ``surrounding points'' for each other ego that establishes ``the one and the same'' spatiotemporal totalityöthe one world with many ego-subjects living lived bodies.53 It is this process of ¢nding the other subject in the other's body (i.e., the experiencing of the Other) that Husserl called empathy, and many aspects of this process will remain the same in Husserl's later treatments of intersubjectivity and empathy. As o¡ered in the lectures of 1910^11, this process is one of apperception at two levels: ¢rst, the level of apperceiving the body which one can have from only one perspective at a time, and, second, the level of apperceiving the Other based on the body.54 As such, the account both enlightens and is enlightened by the text of Ideas. It enlightens the larger text by o¡ering an account in which some of the assertions of Ideas are put into a more coherent context. It is enlightened by the larger text in the sense that it is in Ideas that we are o¡ered an account of how the apperception involved in the lecture-account of empathy works. The GÎttingen Lectures o¡er a sketch of what happens in empathy. An account of how it happens (or at least how it is possible) requires the notion of pairing and is the focus of the Fifth of the Cartesian Meditations as well as the next chapter of this investigation into knowledge, Objectivity, and Others.

Chapter 3

Cartesian Meditations: From Individualism to Objectivity

But ours, so truly parallel, Though in¢nite, can never meet Andrew Marvell1

Remember: Husserl was concerned with consciousness, its structure and acts, but this concern was primarily with the validity, the truth of objects on the basis of the way they are experienced. In Ideas, validity is the result of harmony (both the harmony of the expectations involved in a noematic complex with subsequent experiences and harmony with other subjects). There is an implicit notion of empathy left unexplored in that text. The Cartesian Meditations o¡ers the most celebrated (and maligned) part of Husserl's explicit treatment of empathy and intersubjectivityöhis theory of empathy by which Husserl sought to uncover a path from the isolated ego to intersubjectivity. The theory of empathy is, in part, an attempt to get out of the apparent predicament of solipsism that is faced by a move to the transcendental ego (a move Husserl made in both Ideas and the Cartesian Meditations). By ``empathy,'' Husserl still meant, in the Cartesian Meditations, one's experience of Othersöthat is one's experience of others as other subjects. Empathy is not the experience of feeling what the Other feels and it is not the thinking of what the other person thinks. For, as Merleau-Ponty reminds us, ``I shall never in all strictness be able to think the other person's thought. I can think that he thinks . . . [through empathy] I know unquestionably that that man over there sees, that my sensible world is also his, because I am present at his seeing.''2 As it did in Ideas, in the Cartesian Meditations, intersubjective harmony serves as the guarantee of validity. As the path to intersubjectivity, the theory of empathy presented in the Cartesian Meditations plays a vital role in the attainment of Objectively valid knowledge. Husserl saw the job of the Cartesian Meditations, especially the Fifth Meditation, to remedy a de¢ciency in Ideas. In the preface to the English edition of Ideas (1931), Husserl suggested that phenomenology is to be distinguished from subjective idealism because its doctrine of intersubjectivity provides

From Individualism to Objectivity

41

grounding for the ``real'' world. Although some people read Ideas as presenting a subjective idealism, Husserl claimed that such an interpretation is only appropriate to the extent that Ideas ``su¡ers . . . from a lack of completeness.'' What is lacking in Ideas is ``the proper consideration of transcendental solipsism or transcendental intersubjectivity'' (Ideas 18). Husserl used the preface to inform his English-reading audience that the works more recent than Ideas, including and especially the Cartesian Meditations, ``contain an essential supplement in the detailed treatment of the fundamental problem of transcendental intersubjectivity, wherewith the solipsistic objection completely collapses'' (Ideas 30).3 Intersubjectivity is a requirement for Objectivity (i.e., an object's being accessible to everyone). After all, if objects can be experienced by Others, they cannot be reduced to being only my intentional correlates. Thus, the development of a transcendental intersubjectivity and the establishment of access to Others helps Husserl in his quest for both Objectivity and validity. That is to say, as Dan Zahavi summarizes: the intersubjective experienceability of an object guarantees its real transcendence . . . [and] only insofar as I experience that Others experience the same objects as myself, do I really experience these objects as objective and real. Only then do the objects appear with a validity.4 The experience of others as other subjects is not merely a way out of the methodological problem of solipsism to which the phenomenological reduction seems to lead; since it is a requirement for intersubjectivity, empathy is a condition of the possibility of any knowledge of external, transcendent objects or the world whatsoever.5 Consequently, contrary to what some early commentators suggested, Husserl did not introduce the theme of intersubjectivity into his philosophy merely as a response to the question of solipsism.6 The role of intersubjectivity is much more signi¢cant than that. For Husserl, especially in his writings after Ideas, the theory of intersubjectivity serves as a guarantee for actuality, for the world of transcendent objects. Without intersubjectivity, there would be no bridge between consciousness and the world.7 Ideas, with its dual paths to apodicticity, and its bold assertions about intersubjectivity and harmony, opened a legitimate space for discussing and investigating the possibility of multiple subjects having harmonious evidence regarding the same object. That sort of project is furthered in the Cartesian Meditations with the establishment of the possibility of intersubjectivity and a description or theory of how empathy is possible. Because of its importance to the doctrine of intersubjectivity, empathy plays a signi¢cant role in

42

Husserl's Phenomenology

the establishment of Objectivity in addition to helping to solidify one's knowledge. Once in the intersubjective sphere, my intentions include a horizon of co-intentions with Others. Continued harmony within this sphere is what a¡ords Objectivity as well as a condition of the possibility for validity. The importance of the role of empathy accounts for the disproportionate amount of space dedicated to this issue in the Meditations, for the Fifth Meditation is nearly as long as the ¢rst four combined. Although empathy plays a role in the establishment of Objectivity, Husserl's conceptualization and use of empathy in the Cartesian Meditations still seems to prioritize the original ego. Despite the fact that intersubjectivity can a¡ord harmony to one's knowledge, and even make validity possible, the intersubjectivity is still rooted in (i.e., constituted by) the transcendental ego. In a sense, then, the stance taken in the Cartesian Meditations is like that stance o¡ered in Ideas except that in the former Husserl went through the trouble of explicating how empathy and intersubjectivity are possible.

3.1 Evidence and Certainty In the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl remained committed to the idea of validity and making judgments based on evidence. Evidence, for Husserl, was always of the same basic form: genuine evidence is self-evidence, i.e., an evidential experience is the consciousness of the thing itself, in person . . . self-givenness.8 In the ¢rst two sections of the Cartesian Meditations Husserl allied himself with Descartes' quest for absolute certainty upon which philosophy can be reformed into ``one all-inclusive science'' (CM 1). He then reviewed the reduction by which Descartes took stock of things that are ``absolutely evident.'' The result of this method, as is well known, was the conscious ego. The goal of this procedure of doubt (as well as the goal of Husserl's phenomenological reduction) is ``apodictically certain ways by which, within his own [the meditator's] pure inwardness, an Objective outwardness can be deduced'' (CM 3); the goal, according to both Descartes and Husserl, is an apodictic foundation. Husserl continued, in the Cartesian Meditations, to distinguish between various levels or kinds of certainty in a manner similar to the way he distinguished them in Ideas. The di¡erence in the kinds or levels of certainty lies in the evidence, the ``mental seeing of something itself '' (CM 12), the experience of the presence to consciousness of the thing itself, in person, so to speaköthe self-givenness of the thing.9 Such a givenness, however, and thus evidence, admits of degrees of perfection. The evidentiary ideal is, as it

From Individualism to Objectivity

43

was in Ideas, adequacyöthe perfect and complete matching of perfect evidence with the states of a¡airs. In the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl o¡ered a sort of de¢nition of adequate, perfect, evidence by juxtaposing it to inadequate, imperfect, evidence: imperfection, as a rule, signi¢es incompleteness, a one-sidedness and at the same time a relative obscurity and indistinctness that qualify the givenness of the a¡airs themselves or the a¡air-complexes themselves: i.e., an infectedness of the ``experience'' with unful¢lled components, with expectant and attendant meanings. . . . The corresponding idea of perfection would be that of ``adequate evidence'' (CM 15). This sort of perfection is rarely approached (the exception is the ego's access to its own experience) and one of Husserl's aims was to explore that impossibility.10 We can, however, be certain without having perfectly adequate evidence. Adequacy, with its perfection of evidence, serves science as an ideal it strives to reach but can only come asymptotically close. That is, science ``is obliged to modify its `truths' again and again, it nevertheless follows the idea of absolute or scienti¢cally genuine truth; and accordingly it reconciles itself to an in¢nite horizon of approximations, tending toward that idea'' (CM 12). This is its own sort of perfection: apodicticity. Apodicticity can obtain even when the evidence is not complete and adequate. Every evidence, i.e., every evidential experience, is ``a grasping of something itself that is, or is thus, a grasping in the mode `it itself,' with full certainty of its being, a certainty that accordingly excludes every doubt'' (CM 15). So all evidence involves certainty and the lack of doubt, but being unable to doubt it now does not preclude the conceivability that what is now evident could become doubtful or even prove to be an illusion at some other time or under some other circumstances. Apodictic evidence, however, does preclude this conceivability of doubt; it is evidence that is not merely certainty of the a¡airs or a¡air-complexes (states-of-a¡airs) evident in it; rather it discloses itself, to a critical re£ection, as having the signal peculiarity of being at the same time the absolute unimaginableness (inconceivability) of their non-being, and thus excluding in advance every doubt as ``objectless,'' empty (CM 15^16). This passage introduces us to a notion of critical re£ection in the context of Husserl's discussion of evidence. Such re£ection is at the core of the grounding of our judgments and, thereby, science (CM 10). The grounding

44

Husserl's Phenomenology

of one's judgments relies on evidence since the grounding of judgments shows their truth (CM 10). If a judgment is grounded, it is something about which one can be certain. Such evidence is not given all at once, but is a synthesis of a process of investigation. In this process of o¡ering and evaluating phenomenological descriptions of experience, two layers are involved: the prepredicative and the predicative; the experience and the description. The layers are related in such a way that the predicative includes pre-predicative evidence. That which is meant or, perchance, evidently viewed receives predicative expression; and science always intends to judge expressly and keep the judgment of the truth ¢xed, as an express judgment or as an express truth. But the expression as such has its own comparatively good or bad way of ¢tting what is meant or itself given; and therefore it has its own evidence or nonevidence, which also goes into the predicating. Consequently evidence of the expression is also a determining part of the idea of scienti¢c truth, as predicative complexes that are, or can be, grounded absolutely (CM 11). Thus, the critical re£ection to which Husserl referred in describing the certainty reached by de jure apodictic evidence involves mediation by predication and judgment, but it is based upon the immediacy of pre-predicative, de facto, experience. In other words, de jure apodicticity (predicative evidence) is based on the de facto evidence of the originally object-giving intuition at the core of the principle of all principles in Ideasöwhat Husserl, in the Cartesian Meditations, called the ``self-givenness'' of an a¡air complex. The question arises: Do we have experiences that can serve as the basis of critical re£ection that would lead to apodicticity? Common sense might suggest that we doöour everyday action as it relates to the world indicates that we have such evidence of the world. Husserl, however, was not so easily persuaded (CM 17); after all, in order for an experience to be apodictic, we would have to be unable to doubt that experience. Since a particular experienced thing can ``su¡er devaluation as an illusion'' (CM 17), we must take care not to naively accept such things as evidence about the world. We shouldn't be too quick to accept ``evidence'' from our senses, without appropriate criticism, but we should not simply give up on such evidence. That is, we should take care not to jump to either extreme. What Husserl thought we should do is remain steadfastly aware of the fact ``that the evidence of world-experience would . . . need to be criticized with regard to its validity and range before it could be used for the purposes of a radical grounding of science'' (CM 17). Husserl held that we will, if we meditate carefully, be led to transcendental subjectivity: ``the turn to the ego cogito as the ultimate and apodictically

From Individualism to Objectivity

45

certain basis for judgments, the basis on which any radical philosophy must be grounded'' (CM 18). This turn to the ego is the phenomenological method and it rests on the bracketing of the outside, ``objective,'' world. As in Ideas, in the Cartesian Meditations Husserl held that when I make the turn to the ego, when I perform the phenomenological reduction and refuse to simply accept the existence of the world outside my conscious experience of it as true (without question and criticism), I focus on ``my pure living, with all the pure subjective possessions making this up'' (CM 20). So, it is not that by the epoche¨ and reduction I have taken the world out of play; rather, I have simply reminded myself that I have apodictic evidence only for my experiences (i.e., phenomena), but not any sort of thing in-itself in the real world, so to speak, which underlies each phenomenon. Thus, in terms of the evidence, at this stage of the meditation I can enter no world other than the one that gets its sense and acceptance of status [Sinn und Geltung] in and from me, myself . . . . if I direct my regard exclusively to this life itself, as consciousness of ``the'' worldöI thereby acquire myself as the pure ego, with the pure stream of my cogitationes (CM 21). This means, then, that the being of the pure ego and its cogitations, ``is antecedent to the natural being of the worldöthe world of which I always speak, the one of which I can speak'' (CM 21). Without repeating Descartes' blunder of separating the material and thinking realms in the absence of evidence that such a separation is even called for, Husserl gave us a version of the cogito that leaves the meditator with apodictic evidence of being conscious (he did this via the phenomenological epoche¨). The objects of consciousness are also certain, but as phenomena for consciousness, not as things in themselves. Re£ection on the epoche¨ reveals not only that one can attain apodictic evidence, but also that there is ``a core that is experienced `with strict adequacy,' namely the ego's living present'' (CM 22). Careful re£ection and investigation of this kernel of adequacy should lead one to what can be known with certainty. The pure ego is, then, the source of the pre-predicative certainty (i.e., de facto apodicticity) on which judgments can be grounded and thus Objectively valid science can be developed.11

3.2 Famous Di¤culty Faced by This Approach In his search for perfect evidence capable of underlying Objectively valid knowledge and rigorous science, Husserl turned to the ego in isolation from

46

Husserl's Phenomenology

any unexamined presuppositions about the objects of its experience. One result is the realization that one is capable of having apodictic access to the objects of consciousnessöthe phenomena, the intentional objects of consciousness. Through implementation of the phenomenological reduction, one is able to gain the certainty sought in the quest for objectivity, but seemingly at the expense of the ``thereness for everyone'' of Objectivity. ``Isn't,'' one might ask, ``the sort of objectivity o¡ered by the phenomenological method impoverished?'' After all, aren't phenomena dependent on the meditating ego? How can they then be there for everyone? Is it even possible for a philosophy that tries to attain a ¢rm foundation for knowledge in the indubitable experience of consciousness to achieve a sense of Objectivity, independent of a particular constituting consciousness? By ridding oneself of unexamined presuppositions about transcendent objects, especially what Kathleen Haney calls ``the insidious presupposition that knowledge of objects is independent of a knowing subject,''12 one is able to get to the ego as the center of certainty upon which one can hope to base Objectively valid knowledge or a rigorous science. Victory!öa kernel of adequacy has been found. But the problem remains: how can we account for the experience of the real world, which we experience as independent of any particular meditating ego? How is it possible for the world to be autonomousöthat is, independent of subjectivity? After all, once the phenomenological reduction has been performed, the world ``can have its meaning as existing (seiende) reality only as the intentional meaning-product of transcendental subjectivity'' (Ideas 21). Husserl's response to this dilemma was to wonder whether there really are only two possibilities. Is it the case that objects must be either independent of consciousness, but ungrounded, or grounded, but dependent on consciousness? Is it the case that objects must be either independently real, but ungrounded and naively accepted; or grounded by my constituting consciousness and thus not independently real? That is the problem of objectivity in the sense of there being objects which transcend consciousness and are thus possibly there for everyone (the sort of objects that everyday experience would suggest). Sometimes this is called a problem of solipsism. Put otherwise, this problem of objectivity arose for Husserl out of his aim for a rigorous science which demands that one rid oneself of the inherited interpretation of the real world, independent of the subjectivity which grasps it. A real world, as opposed to an imaginary world or to a world that is only in the thinker's mind, is what one must establish if one is to place science on a rigorous foundation. By real, Husserl meant transcendent, temporal, not dependent upon the acts of any particular ego, and there for everyoneö the sort of thing we take for granted when still in the natural attitude of

From Individualism to Objectivity

47

everyday life. What Husserl suggested in the preface to Ideas is that objects with an intersubjective dimension are legitimately taken to be real or actual (i.e., transcendent to a particular consciousness). The meaning of the real world, the sense of being independent of my transcendental consciousness, is derived from intersubjective agreement. As Haney puts it, ``the shared world of intersubjective agreement is the real world. The intersubjective dimension of experience accounts for the meaning `objective.' ''13 Intersubjective agreement requires the experience of Others and is also importantly related to evidence and grounding. Critical re£ection provides the path upon which most apodicticity is to be found. That critical re£ection is based upon the immediacy of pre-predicative experience but involves mediation by predication. So, although it may be based upon an immediate experience of the individual, the critical re£ection of grounding and evidence is linguistic and involves communication. Such communication is possible only if one is capable of experiencing Others. It is clear, then, that in the quest for certainty upon which Objective validity is to be based, Husserl relied on the experience of other subjects for both the ``thereness for everyone'' of Objectivity and the evidence for apodicticity, despite having adopted a rather solipsistic position (via the phenomenological reduction) in order to disclose certainty. As Paul Ricoeur puts it, ``Husserl's phenomenology is drawn between two seemingly opposed requirements: on the one hand, it must follow the reduction through to the end and maintain its wager on the constitution of the sense alter ego `in' and `arising' from the ego; on the other hand, it must account for the originality, the speci¢city, of the experience of the others, precisely as the experience of someone other than I.''14 The problem addressed by the Fifth Meditations is the possibility of intersubjective accord which can make possible Objectively valid knowledge.

3.3 From the Ego to Others Husserl was aware of the apparent solipsistic bias due to his phenomenological reduction and its correlate realization that the ego is the source of all sense of the world and its objects (CM 26). And he admitted that solipsism appears to be a pressing problem for phenomenology: ``When I, the meditating I, reduce myself to my absolute transcendental ego by phenomenological epoche¨, do I not become solus ipse; and do I not remain that, as long as I carry on a consistent self-explication under the same phenomenology?'' (CM 89). If the answer to this question is ``yes,'' then how can phenomenology hope to ``solve the transcendental problems pertaining to the Objective

48

Husserl's Phenomenology

world '' (CM 89)? After all, the ``reduction restricts me to the stream of my pure conscious processes and the unities constituted by their actualities and potentialities. And indeed it seems obvious that such unities are inseparable from my ego and therefore belong to his concreteness itself '' (CM 89). With the problem stated this way, it is tempting to misread Husserl as having been concerned primarily with a local problem, i.e., with a di¤culty that is unique to phenomenology because of its method. The problem, however, is a genuine and global philosophical problem: it is the problem of the nature of our experience of other conscious beings and the possibility of an Objective world or Objectively valid knowledge. Husserl's treatment, in the Cartesian Meditations, of the apparent problem of solipsism is a description and explication of the possibility of one's experience of others as other subjects and the role of Others as a condition of the possibility of an Objective world. The cornerstone of his treatment is an explication of the possibility of empathy and it involves three main components: reduction to the sphere of ownness , apperception and pairing. 3.3.1 Reduction to the Sphere of Ownness In characteristic fashion, Husserl's ¢rst response to the problem of solipsism was to warn that we ought not to jump to conclusions about whether or not other egos are actually only in us, constituted by us, or whether, because we experience Others, our transcendental phenomenological starting point is wrong.15 That is, it might seem easy to avoid the problem by saying that the world is constituted ``immanently'' in the ego and is only the subject's ``ideas'' and behind those ideas is a world that exists in itself (CM 89^90). One ought not do this without proper phenomenological explication because to do that would be to adopt a naive transcendental realism, and that would be a mistake in Husserl's view: But perhaps there is some mistake in thoughts like these. Before one decides in favor of them and the ``self-understood'' propositions they exploit, and then perchance embarks on dialectical argumentations and selfstyled ``metaphysical'' hypotheses (whose supposed possibility may turn out to be complete absurdity), it might indeed be more ¢tting to undertake the task of phenomenological explication indicated in this connexion by the ``alter ego'' and carry it through in concrete work (CM 90). This passage suggests two criticisms of transcendental realism: it is a mistake to make the undefended assumption that some things are ``self-understood'' or self-evident (for here the transcendental realist fails to be radical and

From Individualism to Objectivity

49

rigorous in doing philosophy); and by making such assumptions, the transcendental realist is being contradictory. The contradiction lies in the fact that as a transcendental philosopher, this kind of realist believes ``that every sense that any existent whatever has or can have for me . . . is a sense in and arising from my intentional life'' (CM 91), but the transcendental realist has assumed that there is something self-evident in-itself, regardless of any intentional life. The brilliance of this ¢rst response is that it brings into question the assumption that Others are things in themselves and thus Husserl ``transformed the charge of solipsism into a challenge to phenomenology to solve the problem of others.''16 Despite this critique of naive realism, there is still a problem to be solved. After all, within myself, within the limits of my transcendentally reduced pure conscious life, I experience the world (including others) . . . not as (so to speak) my private synthetic formation but as other than mine alone [mir fremde], as an intersubjective world, actually there for everyone, accessible in respect of its Objects to everyone. . . . What is the explanation of this? (CM 91). Husserl suggested that, in order to try to make sense of our experiences of the world and of Others, we need ``to begin with a systematic explication of the overt and implicit intentionality in which the being of others for me becomes `made' '' (CM 91^92). The task Husserl sought to accomplish in the Fifth Meditation, then, is an investigation and explication of our experiences of Others, not the metaphysical problem of proving their existence.17 The problem is ``a special one, namely that of the `thereness-for-me' of others, [a] theory of experiencing someone else'' (CM 92), but there is much more at stake than merely making sense of the way in which Others are experienced. A theory like the one Husserl o¡ers as a solution to the problem of experiencing Others ``contributes to the founding of a transcendental theory of the Objective world'' (CM 92). Although the problem is, at base, the special problem of experiencing someone else, it leads to the possibility of an Objective world. Since the problem is one of experiencing someone else, of the therenessfor-me of Others, it makes some sense to begin with a careful look at those experiences and follow the ``transcendental clue'' o¡ered by them, the experienced Others (CM 90).18 Husserl described his experience of Others: In changeable harmonious multiplicities of experience, I experience others as actually existing and, on the one hand, as world Objectsönot

50

Husserl's Phenomenology

as mere physical things belonging to Nature, though indeed as such things in respect of one side of them. They are in fact experienced also as governing psychically in their respective natural organisms. Thus peculiarly involved with animate organisms, as ``psycho-physical'' Objects, they are ``in'' the world. On the other hand, I experience them as subjects for this world, as experiencing it (this same world that I experience) and, in so doing, experiencing me too, even as I experience the world and others in it (CM 91). What emerges from this look at the experienced Others is, then, that Others exist 1. 2. 3. 4.

as physical things but also as animate organisms which are the subjects of the same world I am subject of and thus the relationship is (or can be) reciprocal: I experience Others in the world and they experience the same world with me in it.

It is this experience of Others that needs to be explained. In order to avoid begging the question by bringing Others and things that are there-for-everyone into his explication of them, or naively assuming things as evident without defending that assumption (what he accused the transcendental realists of doing), Husserl introduced a new reduction: ``the reduction of transcendental experience to the sphere of ownness'' (CM 92): a prime requirement for proceeding correctly here is that ¢rst of all we carry out, inside the universal transcendental sphere, a peculiar kind of epoche¨ with respect to our theme. For the present we exclude from the thematic ¢eld everything now in question: we disregard all constitutional e¡ects of intentionality relating immediately or mediately to other subjectivity, and delimit ¢rst of all the total nexus of that actual and potential intentionality in which the ego constitutes within himself a peculiar ownness (CM 93). The motive for insisting on this additional and peculiar sort of epoche¨ was to make the analysis appropriately radical. Since the Other ¢gures as a special transcendence, the temptation to assume the truth of this transcendence must be put aside through an abstention appropriate to this temptation. Husserl called this abstention the ``reduction to the sphere of ownness.'' That much is clear and without controversy. What has been an item of contention, however, and what seems less clear to some readers, is whether this new and peculiar reduction is possible and how it is really anything new

From Individualism to Objectivity

51

or beyond the reduction to the transcendental sphere.19 Husserl took this reduction to the sphere of ownness to be an addition to the phenomenological reduction (CM 95). Looking at the passage (above) in which Husserl introduced it, however, one might be skeptical of Husserl's claim that the move to the sphere of ownness is something more than the phenomenological reduction. Just what did Husserl mean by ``constitutional e¡ects of . . . other subjectivity''? It would appear to include everything that requires the sense ``other subjects'' for its constitution. This would include all cultural objects and sense corresponding to them as well as physical objects and nature as a whole (CM 92). Physical things are not all that require the sense ``other subjects'' for their constitution; the earlier discussion of evidence and grounding reminded us that truth and evidence also require the sense ``other subjects.'' Husserl made claims and judgments about the sphere of ownness. If these claims and judgments are grounded, they require the sense ``other subjects'' and the statement that all constitutional e¡ects of other subjects, immediate or mediate, are excluded from the sphere of ownness seems to be false.20 It seems that if there is any world which would not include the constitutional e¡ects of other subjects, that world is a world of private objects, but Husserl held that a person's experience is ``wholly una¡ected'' by the reduction to the sphere of ownness (CM 98). If my experience is wholly una¡ected, I continue to experience what I take to be an intersubjective world. This tension might be resolved if we are mindful of the distinction between using a concept and discussing a concept. Husserl did not assert that he made no use of the sense ``other subjects'' in his analysis, rather he said that he was excluding the e¡ects of the constitution of other subjects from his theme: what is speci¢cally peculiar to me as ego, my concrete being as a monad, purely in myself and for myself, with an exclusive ownness, includes my every intentionality and therefore, in particular, the intentionality directed at what is other; but, for reasons of method, the synthetic e¡ect of such intentionality (the actuality for me of what is other) shall at ¢rst remain excluded from the theme (CM 94). One can make use of a concept without ever discussing it and that opens up an interpretation of ``disregarding all constitutional e¡ects of other subjectivity'' that is a bit di¡erent than performing a new reduction, so perhaps we can get somewhere by this move to the sphere of ownness after all. Of course, this raises another problem because to read Husserl this way is to read him as contradicting himself because the reduction to the sphere of ownness is, on this reading, really nothing beyond the phenomenological

52

Husserl's Phenomenology

reduction. After all, if the synthetic e¡ects of other subjectivity are identical with the actuality for me of what is Other, then the reduction to the sphere of ownness is nothing over and above the phenomenological reduction. For it is precisely by the phenomenological reduction that we adopt a neutral attitude toward what we take to be actual when we are in the natural attitude. Husserl held that he was excluding the constitutional e¡ects of other subjects from the theme in order to ``delimit the total nexus of actual and potential consciousness whereby an ego constitutes his ownness'' (CM 93). To disregard certain phenomena, however, is not to perform a reductionöafter all, we disregard certain phenomena every time we analyze one thing as opposed to another. If a shift of attention were su¤cient for a reduction (as it would have to be on this reading of the reduction, when combined with Husserl's claim that the move to the sphere of ownness is a reduction over and above the phenomenological reduction), there would be a reduction for every subject matter to be analyzed. The ``reduction'' to the sphere of ownness would be, on such a reading, no reduction at all because it would be no di¡erent than focusing one's attention. We can make better sense of Husserl's reduction to the sphere of ownness, and the possibility of performing such a reduction, if we remember that Husserl's project at this point is to explain how the sense Other present in experience can come to beöto track down, so to speak, the noema Other. For Husserl, to study the constitution of the alter ego is to see how this sense is unveiled in me (CM 90)önot the Other him/her self, but the sense Other. Concentrating on the sense, I see that Others are objects in the world and subjects for this world (CM 91). Continuing with an intentional analysis, I see that even the Others' existence is in some sense more primordial than the existence of the things of the objective world, because ``the existencesense (Seinssinn) of the world and of Nature in particular, as Objective Nature, includes after all . . . thereness-for-everyone'' (CM 92). Consequently, I do not ¢nd myself in the presence of natural things, some of which happen to possess the additional character of being indicative of being Others; rather, as Gaston Berger writes, ``the objective existence of things presupposes . . . the existence of a plurality of subjects: the object is essentially only an intentional intersubjective unity.''21 It is a complex web: the object implies the Other; the Other, in turn, implies my own ego. In order to untangle the web, I should ¢rst be clear about the world as a whole and what is mine (and from me) within it. This is the task of the reduction to the sphere of ownness. In contrast to what is mine and from me, there is what is foreign to me. Within the world common to us all, Others are characterized by what Berger calls the di¡erent spaces of foreignness (di¡erences in being ``there'' rather than ``here'', etc.).22

From Individualism to Objectivity

53

The phenomenological reduction put into question the meditator's general ontological faith in things, including Others, and made the world apparentöa world of phenomena. The reduction to the sphere of ownness, however, goes beyond this. More than a general questioning of an ontological faith in things, the problem of the Other makes it necessary to put into question the sense or meaning which refers to Others, either directly or indirectly. What is being selected, via this additional reduction, is being selected from within the ¢eld already uncovered by the phenomenological reduction. So, the one reduction questions the ontological faith in things, and the result is a ¢eld of phenomena. The other reduction applies to that ¢eld and puts out of consideration all that refers, in any way, to Others (this includes not only their persons, but also their books, histories, cultural objects . . . even their e¡ect on the meditator). The reduction to the sphere of ownness is not one of ontology, but one of sense and meaning. It applies to what remains after the phenomenological reduction has been carried out, thus the reduction to the sphere of ownness presupposes the phenomenological reduction and so they must be the results of two di¡erent epoche¨s and the reduction to ownness is not the same as the phenomenological reduction. Husserl was not denying the existence of Others and their in£uence but he was insisting that nothing about their existence or sense be accepted without careful examination and appropriate evidence. That is, he was not wiping the slate clean, even of language and abstract concepts, and then hoping to say ``Okay, now let us reconstruct, re-create, Others, language, concepts, and the world'' (for that would be impossible). Rather, what he was doing was saying, ``My experience suggests Others: depending only on that for which I have good evidence, can I make sense of that experience? How so? The ¢rst step must be to bracket all assumptions about what Others are and bring to me.'' Within the phenomenological reduction, the meditator is left with the apodictic certainty of her/his cognitions. If one is to build a system of knowledge, or if one is to know about the world, one ought to start with that about which one is certain and for which there is appropriate evidence. After the phenomenological reduction, this starting point is the ego itself; by focusing on the sphere of ownness, Husserl was starting with that about which he was certain and for which he had good evidence. Starting anywhere else would make attaining apodicticity a magic trick. The role of the move to the sphere of ownness is crucial; it discloses that the meditator is a physical, animate organism. Because the physical organism is key to the pairing by which empathy is explicable,23 the pure ego needs to be transformed into a physical organism if we are going to be able to establish the possibility and explication of our experiences of Others and

54

Husserl's Phenomenology

of the Objective world. The ¢rst signi¢cant thing noticed in the sphere of ownness is that there are bodies in nature. Juxtaposed to those bodies (KÎrper), is my body which is not a body like rocks and books are bodies, but is, rather, an animate organism (Leib): Among the bodies belonging to this [puri¢ed] ``Nature'' and included in my peculiar ownness, I then ¢nd my animate organism as uniquely singled outönamely as the only one of them that is not just a body but precisely an animate organism: the sole Object within my abstract world-stratum to which, in accordance with experience, I ascribe ¢elds of sensation (belonging to it, however, in di¡erent mannersöa ¢eld of tactile sensations, a ¢eld of warmth and coldness, and so forth) (CM 97). The passage continues, suggesting that my body, as an animate organism, is something I rule: the only Object ``in'' which I ``rule and govern'' immediately, governing particularly in each of its ``organs.'' Touching kinesthetically, I perceive ``with'' my hands; seeing kinesthetically, I perceive also ``with'' my eyes; and so forth; moreover I can perceive thus at any time. Meanwhile the kinesthesias pertaining to the organs £ow in the mode ``I am doing,'' and are subject to my ``I can'' (CM 97). But I don't rule ``my'' body in the way I rule my car by mediating its actions or the way I rule my washing machine by ``asking'' it to wash my clothes (by loading the machine, adding detergent, turning the machine on). I perceive through this Leib. That is, I rule it immediately because it is, in a sense, me. The kinesthetic actions of my body are my actions, as the continuation of the passage makes clear: ``Furthermore by calling these kinesthesias into play, I can push, thrust, and so forth, and can thereby `act' somaticallyöimmediately, and then mediately'' (CM 97). As the meditator I ¢nd that I am not only a subject governing a body and acting on nature, but also an object to be perceived and, perhaps, acted upon: As perceptively active, I experience (or can experience) all of Nature including my own animate organism, which therefore in the process is re£exively related to itself. That becomes possible because I ``can'' perceive one hand ``by means of '' the other, an eye by means of a hand, and so forthöa procedure in which the functioning organ must become an Object and the Object a functioning organ. And it is the same in the case of my generally possible original

From Individualism to Objectivity

55

dealing with Nature and with my animate organism itself, by means of this organismöwhich therefore is re£exively related to itself also in practice (CM 97). Distilling the above, the self, as unveiled in the sphere of ownness, is apperceived as being 1. a physical thing among other physical things 2. yet distinct in that it is an animate organism which has a ¢eld of sensations 3. a body in which I rule and govern (immediately) 4. re£exiveöboth subject and object. Notice that Husserl, and in fact any careful meditator, has not found four separate ``things'' here. That is to say, one ought to take care not to reify these components of the self and think, for example, of the self-as-subject as one thing, but the self-as-object as a second and distinct thing: it is rather the case that these are di¡erent dimensions of the same self. Consequently, by carrying out this reduction to the sphere of ownness, one gains an insight into oneselföa richer and more carefully drawn picture of oneself. The experience of the Other has served as the meditator's clue for how to proceed, and the reduction to the sphere of ownness has a¡orded a clearer picture of what belongs properly to the sense me and what is other than me or from me. Thus, the exercise has revealed an immanent transcendence (CM 103). That is, the sphere of ownness, from within which the sense of the Other will be constituted, includes its world of objectsöalbeit a world of objects devoid of any sense or indication of Others. But objects are not things-in-themselves existing, untouchably, ``out there''; they are rather, objects for consciousness, intentional objects. Each conscious act has, according to Husserl's thesis of intentionality, an intentional object as its correlate. The threeöego, act of consciousness, and intentional objectögo together; they are independently describable, but not truly separable. One might say, that since there is conscious activity here, it can be discussed in terms of noesis or noema or the relationship between them. This is true, even in the sphere of ownness. Within the sphere of ownness, consciousness is still the relationship of noesis to noema: on the noetic side is the ego as animate organism with actual and potential mental processes and sensory experiences and on the noematic side is the world as the ego's intentional correlate. As objects on the noematic side of the relationship, they go beyond or transcend the particular noetic act that intends them. As objects within the sphere of ownness, however, they remain immanent.24 One way to think of this is to remember that the sphere of

56

Husserl's Phenomenology

ownness (that which ``belongs'' properly to me) includes objects that are not of me. That is to say, the sphere of ownness contains immanent objects that are transcendent because they go beyond the ego and its acts.25 3.3.2 Apperception and pairing By following the method of reduction through to the point at which he was able to recognize that the sphere of ownness includes its world of objects, Husserl avoided the problem of building an unbridgeable gap between self and objects. He also avoided such an unbridgeable gap between self and Other. Rather than dig such a trench, Husserl carefully uncovered the ground upon which the sense Other can be constituted. The ground uncovered by the reduction to the sphere of ownness serves, then, as a sort of foundation for the explanation of one's experience of Others. As Husserl put it: This unitary stratum [uncovered by the move to ownness] . . . is distinguished by being essentially the founding stratumöthat is to say: I obviously cannot have the ``alien'' or ``other'' as experience, and therefore cannot have the sense ``Objective world'' as an experiential sense, without having this stratum in actual experience; whereas the reverse is not the case (CM 96). That is, I cannot relate to Others except by having the sort of sensory experiences of them that Husserl described. Consequently, the sphere of ownness is prior, explanatorily, to empathy as well as to any other form of social consciousness. To have an object that is ``there for everyone'' and be secure in the knowledge that it is the same object for each of us and that we mean something by everyone, in other words, we must ¢rst clear the ground and get to the sphere of ownness from which the Others (who comprise ``everyone'') can be constituted, i.e., made meaningful. To ``get to'' Others is not the ¢nal goal. Rather, it is the crucial step ``toward [the] constitution of an Objective world'' (CM 108). If the Other cannot be constituted, or if the Other turns out to be immediately accessible to the meditator, there can be no Objective world because there would be a world for only oneöthe Other would either not be or would be the same as the meditator (CM 109).26 That is to say, if an Objective world is possible, the Other cannot be immediately present in the sphere of ownness but a basis by which one can become indirectly or mediately aware of the Other must be locateable within this sphere. In the sphere of ownness, ``A certain mediacy of intentionality must be present here, going out from the substratum, `primordial world.' '' This intentional going out from subject to object to make present, here, a there-too, is ``a kind of

From Individualism to Objectivity

57

making `co-present,' a kind of `appresentation' '' (CM 109). Appresentation is a process much like the apperception by which we acquire the sense of things and entities in the world. In fact Husserl sometimes used the words apperception and appresentation interchangeably.27 In apperception, when I look at a book or a house from the front, for example, I do not physically see the back, yet the back and the inside are made co-present with the front: ``the strictly seen front of a physical thing always and necessarily appresents a rear aspect and prescribes for it a more or less determinate content'' (CM 109). That is, I perceive the book, not just its front: the front of the book is seen, directly; the back of the book is apperceived; and the book (front, back, inside, etc.) is perceived. It is not that I see the front and think to myself, ``well, if there is a front, there must be a back, and if so, this is a book''; what I perceive is the book. Part of the meaning of book is to have both a front and a back and so my experience with other books and my understanding of the word ``book'' motivate my seeing the front and apperceiving, in the same act, the back of the book. Apperception is not an argument from analogy in which I notice some characteristic of what I am seeing now that is similar to other things called books that I've seen before and since the other books I've experienced before had both fronts and backs, I conclude, by analogy, that this book I am seeing now also is a book.28 Husserl held that apperception is not [an] inference, not a thinking act. Every apperception in which we apprehend at a glance, and attentively grasp, objects given beforehand (perhaps the already-given everyday world) . . . points back to a ``primal instituting,'' in which an object with a similar sense was constituted for the ¢rst time (CM 111/Hua I 141, translation modi¢ed slightly).29 Rather than being a deduction or an inference, apperception is a single complex act of apprehendingöI ``see'' the book and am pointed to all aspects of books with which I have been acquainted before. That is, by knowing what books are and seeing what looks like a book, I take it as a book unless and until given reason to doubt that it is a book. Husserl o¡ered the following as one of his few examples: The child who already sees physical things and understands, let us say, for the ¢rst time the ¢nal sense of scissors; and from now on he sees scissors at the ¢rst glance as scissorsöbut naturally not in an explicit reproducing, comparing, and inferring (CM 111). Appresentation is the complex act of apprehending whereby something acquires the sense of being an Other. As such, appresentation is how the having of thoughts and feelings, the consciousness, of an Other are made

58

Husserl's Phenomenology

co-present with something directly accessible to me in the sphere of ownness. Yet, the appresentation of the Other and the apperception of the book di¡er in an important way. When I apperceive the back of the book, I can con¢rm (or dis-con¢rm) that apperception by looking at what I expect to be the back: if my expectation is ful¢lled, the apperception is solidi¢ed. I can do that with the bodies of others; I cannot do that with Others (with the subjectivity of Others, or with animate organisms). That is, I cannot turn the Other over or walk to the rear and look (so to speak) at the ego or the thoughts and feelings of the Other. The apperception of the body of the other can be con¢rmed or discon¢rmed by this type of further investigation, but this is not so with the ego of an Other.30 Husserl took notice of this di¡erence, but rather than abandon the idea that we appresent Others because appresentation cannot be veri¢ed in the same way that apperception of physical objects can be veri¢ed, he asked what allows or motivates one to appresent an Other (CM 109).31 As noted above, in the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl held that what allows one to anticipate or apperceive scissors or the back of the book is one's past experience with scissors and books, and with the backs of other similar things, as well as an understanding of ``scissors'' and ``book.'' The di¡erence(s) between things like books and scissors, on the one hand, and Others, on the other hand, brings to the surface the question of what motivates or allows the appresentation of Others. Having successively taken note of the experience of Others, the reduction to the sphere of ownness, what is disclosed about the subject in this sphere, and the notion of apperceptionöall on the path to Objectivityöthe meditator has come a long way. However, questions remain. How are we to make sense of the Other? How is it that one can, upon seeing a body, appresent an Other, or perceive the body as that of an animate organism? These are really questions about what facilitates the appresentation. Husserl's answer is in terms of the physical appearance and bodily movements of Others and the concept of pairing. Husserl was describing his experience and then investigating how such experience is possible. What he experienced is ``the world (including others) . . . not as [his] private synthetic formation . . . [but] as an intersubjective world, actually there for everyone, accessible in respect of its Objects to everyone'' (CM 91). How is it possible that we experience the world and Others in this way? Most of the pieces of the puzzle have been laid out above. The ¢rst pieces are the description of the experience of an Other (CM 91, quoted above) and the description of the self as disclosed in the sphere of ownness (CM 97, quoted above). There is a remarkable similarity; in both cases, what is revealed is something that is

From Individualism to Objectivity 1. 2. 3. 4.

59

a physical thing among other physical things, but is an animate organism which has a ¢eld of sensations and is thus a subject which rules or governs its body and is re£exiveöboth subject and object, experiencing the world and Others but also being experienced.

This similarity in appearance and behavior brings about or motivates the appresentation whereby that which might otherwise be apperceived as a body (KÎrper) acquires the sense of being an Other.32 The similarities given to me, the meditator, between my physical appearance and movements and those of the others are what lead me to ascribe subjectivity to them, even within the reduced sphere of ownness, and call them Others. Appresentation is a particular sort of apperceptionöa particular sort of co-intending the presence of one or more aspects of a thing, on the basis of the actual presence of another. It is through apperception that, when presented with a pro¢le, I perceive the physical object. It is through appresentation that, when presented with the body and actions of someone else, I perceive the Otherösubjectivity and all. So, how is it that the subjectivity of the Other can be co-intended in the presence of the body of the Other? Husserl's answer: pairing (CM 113). Pairing is not an active thought process of matching things upölike pairing socks when doing laundry, based on the similarities one notices and the process of elimination. Pairing, rather, ``is a primal form of passive synthesis'' (CM 112). Husserl's introduction of pairing and his ¢rst example of it in action point to two sorts of pairing. He introduced pairing as follows: Pairing is a primal form of that passive synthesis which we designate as ``association,'' in contrast to passive synthesis of ``identi¢cation.'' In a pairing association the characteristic feature is that, in the most primitive case, two data are given intuitionally, and with prominence, in the unity of a consciousness and that, on this basis . . . as data appearing with mutual distinctness, they found phenomenologically a unity of similarity and thus are always constituted precisely as a pair. . . . On more precise analysis we ¢nd essentially present here an intentional overreaching, coming about genetically (and by essential necessity) as soon as the data that undergo pairing have become prominent and simultaneously intended: we ¢nd, more particularly, a living mutual awakening and an overlaying of each with the objective sense of the other (CM 112^13). Pairing is, then, a passive synthesis in which the members of the pair are intended simultaneously by means of the sense of the one overlaying and awakening the sense of the other, and vice versa.

60

Husserl's Phenomenology

Although Husserl did not explicitly distinguish between them, this passage already suggests two sorts of pairing: ``pairing of association'' and ``pairing of similarity.'' This terminology is mine, not Husserl's, but making the distinction helps us see how I can apperceive another subject, based on perceiving another body. The passage clearly calls pairing an ``association'' and contrasts it to identity, hence the phrase ``pairing of association.'' The passage goes on to suggest that in a pair, there is a ``unity of similarity,'' hence my phrase ``pairing of similarity.'' They can be distinguished and each called pairing because in each case there is a passive synthesis by which the givenness of the one member of the pair awakens the sense of the other. Recognizing these two sorts of pairing is the only way to consistently read what Husserl wrote about pairs.33 Husserl explicitly stated that the Other's body and my body are paired based on their similarities (CM 113); he also wrote that the other ego is paired with my ego (CM 112). However, since I cannot have immediate access to the other ego (CM 109), that synthesis must be mediated by something other than my being presented with similarities between the Other's ego and mine. Although he did not use the term ``pairing'' in this context, Husserl did indicate that my ego and body are a pair (CM 113) and that the Other's ego and body are a pair (CM 114). There is even the indication that my ego-body (my psycho-physical Ego) and the Other's ego-body are a pair (CM 120). It is this pair of pairs that o¡ers me mediated access to the other's subjectivity. In pairing of association, two data are given in the unity of consciousness and, on the basis of those data being given simultaneously and with similar prominence, they are associated with each other so that they form a pair: the thought of the one brings with it the shadow of the other; the meaning of the one a¡ects the meaning of the other.34 The absence of one might even cause the experience of the other to ``explode.'' Forrest Williams o¡ers the following helpful example of a pairing of association: if I see knife-and-fork, each retains its own meaning for me, yet something of what is involved in the noema ``knife'' transfers to the noema ``fork,'' and vice versa, without any confusing the two at all. For, if I see a knife and a sheath together, the [full] noema ``knife'' is di¡erent than it was before, being a¡ected by the noema ``sheath'' (and vice versa).35 That is to say, the knife is a¡ected by the other member of its pair: it has one sense when paired with a fork and a somewhat di¡erent sense when paired with a sheath. When one sees one member of a pair, its meaning is a¡ected by the other member of the pair. That is to say, they are a pair; presence of the one brings with it the shadow of the other, an indication of the other.

From Individualism to Objectivity

61

The core of the meaning of knife belongs to the knife and this is overlaid with that of the sheathöeven when all one sees is the sheath. This transfer of sense works in both directions, i.e., seeing the sort of knife that is paired with a sheath will bring with it the overlaid sense of the sheathöthe overlaying and awakening of sense is mutual.36 Again, the overlaying of sense is passive. It is not normally the case that one sees a butter knife and then deduces or infers that there is other dinnerware associated with it. Of course, such observation and deduction does sometimes happen. Just as a child might need to go through some active processes of thought and deduction to ¢rst come to understand what scissors are but once that has been done ``he sees scissors at the ¢rst glance as scissorsö but naturally not in an explicit reproducing, comparing, and inferring'' (CM 111), I might not initially pair the knife and the fork, but once I understand those items, I grasp them, passively, as a pair. In pairing of similarity, two data are given with similar prominence and are seen as similar yet distinct: on that basis they become a unity of similarity and are thus normally constituted as a pair. One does not intend one sock and then the other and then the fact that they are folded together and decide that there is a pair of socksöone grasps them as a pair of socks such that if one of the socks is missing, it is noticed as missing because the two have been given to consciousness as a pair. Husserl used the language of pairing of similarity in the passage from CM 113 (quoted above) where he suggested that it is because of the similarity of the Other's body to mine that we must enter into a relationship of a pair of animate organisms. In both sorts of pairing, intuitive presence of one member of the pair serves as the basis for co-intending the other part of the pair. It is as if the thought of one member ``awakens'' that of the other, to use Husserl's term. That is to say, there is ``an intentional overreaching'' so that there is ``a living mutual awakening and an overlaying of each with the objective sense of the other'' (CM 113). Pairing, with its intentional overreaching or mutual awakening of sense, is what motivates the co-intending involved in the apperception of physical objects (as in our running example of looking out the window and seeing a house: the view of the front of the house awakens a co-intending of the other aspects of the house) as well as in the appresentation of the other ego, the other subjectivity. In the case of the Other, it works in the following way. In the sphere of ownness, what is the meditator's ``own'' is her body, her consciousness, and her experiences. Husserl's investigation of the sphere of ownness established that what is present to the meditator is not her body, separate from her ego, but herself as animate organism: an ego-body pair, lived body. That is to say, although Husserl did not use the term ``pair''

62

Husserl's Phenomenology

when discussing the animate organism, the body and ego are in a pairing relationship. The meditator's body brings with it the sense of being an animate organism, and is thus linked to subjectivity: ``my lived body is always there and sensuously prominent; but, in addition to that and likewise with primordial originariness, it is equipped with the speci¢c sense of an animate organism'' (CM 113). As an animate organism, such a body is linked with the meditator's subjectivity (for a human body which is not linked with such subjectivity is usually considered to be a corpse, not an animate organism).37 Husserl's observation that even within the sphere of ownness, the meditator's body is always there with the meditator can also be articulated in the terms Husserl used when introducing the notion of pairing. That is what the observations that the two are always there with each other and that the ego has a body amount to: the meditator's body and the meditator are given as a unity and are thus always constituted as a pair (CM 112). As a pair, the presence of the bodily aspect of an animate organism brings with it, or mutually awakens, the sense of the subjectivity involved in an animate organism, and vice versa. This last claim related to the ego-body pair is suggested by Husserl's description of pairing and his observations of the way in which the meditator's ego and body are always given together. The relationship between the two is a pairing of association: the investigator's body and subjectivity are given in such a way as to be always-already associated with one another. As with each instance of pairing, it is only after-the-fact, so to speak, that the parts of the pair can be separated into ego and body. As in all pairings, it is the pair which is apperceived and it is only in the light of that pair that either member can be isolated conceptually from the other.38 Not only is the animate organism a pair, that pair becomes part of a pairing of similarity with other animate organisms. It is through this pairing of similarity that the experience of the Other is explained: [the meditator's body] is equipped with the speci¢c sense of an animate organism. Now in case there presents itself, as outstanding in my primordial sphere, a body ``similar'' to mineöthat is to say, a body with determinations such that it must enter into a phenomenal pairing with mineöit seems clear without more ado that, with the transfer of sense, this body must forthwith appropriate from mine the sense: animate organism (CM 113). This is a case of pairing of similarity: for it is on the basis of the similarities between the bodies of the meditator and the Other that the sense animate organismöwhich is associated with the sense of the meditator's bodyöis awakened within, or overlaid onto, the body of the Other which would

From Individualism to Objectivity

63

otherwise be apperceived merely as KÎrper and not as Leib. Because the other body is an animate organism (and an animate organism is a subject-body pair), this pair of pairings ``takes'' the investigator from the sphere of ownness to the Other's subjectivity.39 At this point, all the pieces of the puzzle of the possibility of the experience of Others are before us. My experience of the Other must be mediated and the ``mechanics'' of that mediation is the simultaneous pair of pairings. I start from within the sphere of ownness and what I ¢nd there when I ``look'' at myself is an animate organism (subjectivity-body paired by association). This pair cannot, by itself, get me to the Other. But I also ¢nd, from within the sphere of ownness, objects that are similar to me and paired with me. I ¢nd, that is, through a pairing of similarity with myself as animate organism, other animate organisms. This pairing by similarity awakens a co-intending of the Other as another subject because an animate organism is a subject-body pair and in a pairing relationship the intuition of one member (e.g., the body) brings with it or overlays onto the other member (e.g., the subjectivity). This appresentation of the Other based on my ``view'' of some aspects of the animate organism (i.e., its physicality and behavior) occurs in much the same way as the sight of a tree in the garden awakens perspectives of the fullnoema not actually ``seen'' by the subject such that what is experienced is the tree in the garden (not just one perspective of the tree). Both experiences are examples of passive synthesis which occur all at once and automatically. In the case of the Other: ``What I actually see,'' Husserl reminded us, ``is not a sign and not a mere analogue, a depiction in any natural sense of the word; on the contrary, it is someone else'' (CM 124). As instances of pairing, both sorts of pairing involved in appresentation of the Other are primal, primordial, rather than the result of a thought process like deduction (e.g., CM 111, 112). It is only in some sort of analytical hindsight that the ``steps'' can be separated and discussed. Because that discussion cannot simultaneously treat every aspect of one's experience of the Other, it cannot help but take on an air of ``¢rst this, then that,'' but there is nothing about the pair of pairings that says they cannot happen simultaneously. In fact, if what I see is someone else and not a mere sign of someone else, they must happen simultaneously. Both serve as conditions of the possibility of the experience of Others: if all I can do is pair the other body with my body, there is no link to subjectivity and thus no bridge from me to the Other; if I can pair my body and my subjectivity, i.e., if I perceive that I am an animate organism, but I cannot pair with the other animate organism, there is still no bridge from me to the Other. Both pairings are required, and if both come to fruition, I experience the other as another subject.

64

Husserl's Phenomenology

Although Husserl didn't emphasize the pair of two kinds of pairs, he did claim that ``with the associative overlapping of the data founding the apperception, there takes place an association at a higher level'' (CM 119). The reading I have presented takes the apperception of an animate organism to be the apperception to which Husserl referred here and the association with the Other to be the association at a higher level. Husserl reminded us here that this all happens simultaneously: with the overlapping of the data which founds the apperception of the animate organism there is an association, at a higher level, with subjectivityönot one, then the other, but they come together. With pairing, Husserl o¡ered a theory of empathyöa theory of how the possibility of experience of Others can be explainedödespite the apparently solipsistic ego left by the phenomenological reduction. The theory involves a reduction to the sphere of ownness (in part to avoid the naive mistakes of realism and in part to establish the scope of that to which the ego has immediate access). Within the sphere of ownness, the meditator realizes that she is an animate organism and that all that is immediately hers is her experience. Part of this experience from within the sphere of ownness is the apperception of the bodies of Others. An Other is never given to me in just the same way that I appear to myself, here; rather the Other looks like I would look if I were there.40 Those bodies are so similar to the meditator's, in both appearance and behavior, that they pair with the animate organism which is the meditator. In that pairing of similarity the sense of being animate, which involves having an ego, is made co-present by the other body and an Other is appresented and experienced. The Other ego is not given in immediate self-presence, and thus the evidence for this ego is not perfectly adequate; nevertheless, it can be certain. The Other ``continues to prove itself as actually an animate organism, solely in its changing but incessantly harmonious `behavior' '' (CM 114). The harmony here is a harmony with the meditator's own behavior as well as with what would be expected based on the Other's current behavior and situation. If there is some disharmony about its behavior, the ``Other'' becomes a pseudo-organism rather than an animate organism (CM 114). That is to say, using the language of Ideas, if there is disharmony, the noematic complex shows itself to be other than what the meditator took it to be and the experience of the Other explodes.

3.4 Objects, Intersubjective Harmony, Objectivity Husserl's theory of empathy accomplishes several things. It o¡ers a picture of how experience of others as other subjects is possible, even from an

From Individualism to Objectivity

65

egocentric starting pointöthus o¡ering the possibility of objects being there for everybody and not dependent on any one subjective point of view. It o¡ers the meditator's ¢rst truly transcendent Object. It also solidi¢es the possibility of an intersubjective world. When Husserl took stock of what was within his sphere of ownness, he found himself and that there were things that stood in immanent transcendenceöthey were not him, but they were, because they were intentional objects within the sphere of ownness, still immanent. The body (KÎrper) of the Other is such an immanent transcendence. The Other, however, the other subjectivity, is not such an immanent transcendence: ``Accordingly the intrinsically ¢rst other (the ¢rst `non-Ego') is the other Ego'' (CM 107). This is truly transcendent and not directly accessible to the meditator.41 Consequently, while o¡ering his theory of empathy, Husserl o¡ered the ¢rst truly transcendent object of consciousness. Not only that, but Husserl showed the possibility of other Objects; for it is in being experienceable by Others that something becomes Objective. After all, unless it is experienceable by Others, there is the possibility that it is merely an illusion or dependent in some other way on my ego.42 Objects are experienceable by Others in at least two, related, ways: the Other is experienced as a subject who is truly Other than the meditator; and the Other and the meditator share a meaning and a nature or world. As a subject, the Other has intentional objects (that is what it means to be a subject). Consequently, ``the other Ego makes constitutionally possible a new in¢nite domain of what is `other': an Objective Nature and a whole Objective world, to which all other Egos and I myself belong'' (CM 107). That is, because the Other is a co-giver of sense, not the giver of separate and unique sense, the Other is the guarantee of the possibility of truly transcendent objects as well as of the possibility of an intersubjective world in which objects can be there for everyone. More signi¢cantly, the Other is experienced ``as if I were standing over there, where the Other's body is'' (CM 123) and since objects are experienceable by me, they are by the Other as wellöas if I were there. It is, in fact, the di¡erence between me and the Other that reveals that the world as Objective rather than my own private enterprise. This is possible, on Husserl's view, because `` `my' whole Nature is the same as the Other's'' (CM 123). The Other and I share the natural world. This shared world both makes possible, and is revealed by, the pairing between us. For pairing rests on the ``mutual being for one another, which entails an Objectivating equalization of my existence with that of all others'' (CM 129).43 In the pairing by which the Other is made available as another subject, there is a moment of presentation and this moment demands a common nature by which the two are fused

66

Husserl's Phenomenology

(CM 122). Each member of the pair mutually awakens the other and thus they can function, interchangeably, as subject or object. Encountering another subject who sees the same world as I do but from a di¡erent perspective reveals the world as experienceable by Others and thus my world is merely one perspective on a world that stands outside of meötranscending me and my acts of consciousness. The Other is, then, both the ¢rst real object that transcends the meditating ego and the condition of the possibility of other independent and transcendent Objects. But the Other is not simply a second egopole that is an entirely separate center of a world than the meditator is. That arrangement would not yield the world we experience, nor would it serve as the basis of a transcendent world, there-for-everyone. The Other o¡ers the opening to a world of common meaning and, thus, intersubjectivity (rather than multiple isolated subjectivities). As Husserl summarized the point: Quite rightly, therefore, we speak of perceiving someone else and then of perceiving the Objective world, perceiving that the other Ego and I are looking at the same world, and so forthöthough this perceiving goes on exclusively within the sphere of my ownness. That does not at all contravene the fact that the intentionality of this sphere transcends my ownness (CM 124). Thus the theory of empathy outlined in the Cartesian Meditations, which yields Others, transcendent objects, and an intersubjective world, is an essential element in Husserl's quest for Objective validity. It is ironic that the problems of the Other and solipsism which, in the opening of the Fifth Meditation, were problems to be [re]solved, have turned out to be the guarantor of an objective world and (because of the critical element involved in de jure evidence) also of truly apodictic access to things other than the present experience of the meditating consciousness. Without avoiding the problem, Husserl managed to turn it upside-down in a constructive manneröall the while, for the most part, avoiding the sort of naivety he so strongly criticized.

3.5 Progress and Problems In the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl echoed much of what he articulated in Ideas insofar as he was led by the quest for certainty and advocated the phenomenological epoche¨ by which the kernel of adequacy, the meditating

From Individualism to Objectivity

67

ego, is attained. From that seed, a world of intersubjective harmony and Objectivity was harvested. Empathy plays a crucial role in that harvest. Having begun with doubt on the order of Descartes' hyperbolic doubt, Husserl's Cartesian Meditations (most signi¢cantly the Fifth Meditation) has accomplished quite a lot. Husserl's approach has the merit of meeting the problem of accounting for real objects, independent of consciousnessö a problem with which any transcendental philosophy must dealöhead on, without taking refuge in posited entities such as Descartes' non-deceiving God, Kant's things-in-themselves, etc. The phenomenological reduction brackets the presupposition of a world of real ``external'' objects, but the theory of empathy and the resultant intersubjectivity provide the ground for justifying such a world while remaining within transcendental consciousness. The Cartesian Meditations does indeed ¢ll the gap left by Ideas (as Husserl promised in the 1931 preface to Ideas). Husserl's theory of empathy also opens up an intersubjective realm, and intersubjective harmony is what emerges from the critical discussion involved in the grounding of judgments and the attainment of de jure apodicticity. This critical discussion o¡ers a sort of bridge between the adequacy of Husserl's version of the cogito and all other certaintyöand it has, as a condition of its possibility, the intersubjective community the possibility of which is explained by Husserl's theory of empathy. Consequently, not only does the Cartesian Meditations ¢ll a gap in the treatment o¡ered by Ideas, it also presents a stronger role for empathy: in Ideas, empathy and intersubjective harmony could con¢rm the knowledge one can supposedly have in isolation, but according to the doctrine of empathy in the Meditations, empathy is involved in the having of objects and the attainment of knowledge about such objects. Despite all that is accomplished by the Cartesian Meditations, serious di¤culties remain. In making this apparent progress out of solipsism back into the world, the Fifth Meditation ignores the genesis of the ego (actually, such genesis is kept out of the picture by the reduction to the sphere of ownness). In his theory's dependence on association, apperception, pairing, etc., Husserl was dependent on things that involve either the genesis of the subject or prior intersubjective experienceöcomplete with the sense imbued upon it by other subjects. Some critics have argued that it is impossible to get to the sphere of ownness and then philosophize about it. Even if one admits the possibility of getting to the sphere of ownness and reporting on it, it is di¤cult to see how one can truly constitute (or even make sense of) the Other from within the sphere of ownness. The apperception and pairing Husserl relied upon in his theory of empathy make sense in a world in which I have had experiences

68

Husserl's Phenomenology

with scissors (to use Husserl's example) and come to understand what they are . . . then I can apperceive them as a pair of scissorsöbut until then? The same question holds for Others: his theory seems to make sense in a world in which I have come to understand Others, for then I can apperceive them as Othersöbut until then? Put otherwise, among the conditions of the possibility of empathy as described in the Cartesian Meditations are the meditator's embodiment and the other body. These are relatively unproblematic. However, also among the conditions of the possibility of empathy are an awareness of and familiarity with Others and concepts like animate organism (perhaps not the term, but its sense of being di¡erent than but not entirely separate from having a body). Husserl's discussion in the Fifth Meditation, however, does not seem to leave room for these sorts of awareness and familiaritiesöafter all, they are imbued with the sense Other and thus were left out of the picture by the reduction to the sphere of ownness. Consequently, the move, from within the sphere of ownness, through embodiment and apperception to the appresentation of the Other is not possible in the way that Husserl told the story. What is needed is some sort of mechanism for (or at least a description of or the establishment of the possibility of ) a sort of feedback loop on which the awarenesses and familiarities that will be required for the appresentation of another subject can take place within, or survive the reduction to, the sphere of ownness. Once that has been established, Husserl's theory of empathy will work. At this point, one might be tempted to accuse Husserl of having begged the question of Others. However, this is not a legitimate accusation because the theory of empathy was o¡ered as an explication of the conditions of the possibility of experiencing others as other subjectsönot as proof that Others exist. It is, perhaps, better to label Husserl's theory of empathy outlined in the Fifth Meditation as incomplete rather than mistaken or wrong. For Husserl's outlining of the need for the body and for some mechanism or process of co-presenting that which is not immediately present seems to be on target. The treatment of the problem in the Fifth Meditation, however, does not adequately address the issue of how communicationöwhich his discussion of evidence earlier in the Cartesian Meditations requiresöis possible. There is, then, an unresolved tension in the Cartesian Meditations. The Fifth Meditation o¡ers a path from apparent solipsism, through the sphere of ownness, to Others and, ¢nally, to an intersubjective world. Along that path, Husserl contends, not only does the meditator uncover Others, but there is an equalization among us such that neither I nor the Other is superior or prioröwe share a meaning in the pair which we comprise. On the other hand, the entire journey rests on the nugget of adequacy discovered via the phenomenological reduction (the meditating ego) and the

From Individualism to Objectivity

69

meditator's sphere of ownness. That is to say, despite the claim to an equalization of meditator and Other, and despite the degree to which the Other must be presupposed in order for the pairing and appresentation to ¢t into Husserl's description of the process, Husserl held that the ``illusion of a solipsism'' has been exposed and the so-called problem has been dissolved, even though . . . the proposition that everything existing for me must derive its existential sense exclusively from me myself, from my sphere of consciousness, retains its validity and fundamental importance (CM 150). To the end of the text, then, and despite the fact that he realized the importance of Others, Husserl prioritized the meditating ego over Others. He insisted on the priority of the unitary egoöand this calls into question the intersubjective world at which he spent so much time arriving. It also makes questionable the importance of Others in the process of critical re£ection and discussion by which intersubjective harmony and (de jure) apodictic evidence and Objective validity are attained. Without really asking the question of the possibility of the experience of Others, Husserl's last text, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology from 1936, investigates the possibility of attaining that apodicticity through communication. Such an approach promises to put the meditator and Others on a more equal plane (as the equalization Husserl touched upon would require). That late work also gets at some of the conditions of the possibility of the sort of awarenesses and familiarities upon which the Fifth Meditation relies. Ideas placed its emphasis on the transcendent thing as the guide for, and the goal of, its analysis. That analysis suggests that one can have valid knowledge of transcendent things by oneselföin isolation and without the help of other subjects. The phenomenological method, however, puts into question the possibility of the existence of such a transcendent thing and Husserl found himself making bold assertions regarding Others and intersubjectivity. The Cartesian Meditations uncovered the conditions of the possibility of such transcendent things and outlined a way for one to experience Others, despite the phenomenological reductionöthus completing Ideas by investigating the conditions of possibility of much of what Ideas discussed. The discussion in the Meditations, however, relies on an awareness of and understanding of Others which precedes the establishment of the possibility of the experience of Others. The Crisis will complete that investigation by getting at some of the conditions of the possibility of the ego's pre-re£ective awarenessöthus making the analysis in Ideas possible, but at the expense of

70

Husserl's Phenomenology

the unitary ego as the basis of everything. As far as empathy goes, Ideas assumed its possibility and took it for granted; the Cartesian Meditations o¡ered a theory of how such experiences of Others are possible, thus making possible Objective validity; The Crisis will investigate not so much the possibility of empathy, but what can be attained via empathy and communion with Others via communication. It is to The Crisis that the next chapter turns.

Chapter 4

The Crisis of European Sciences: Intersubjective and Empathetic Underpinnings

I met a traveler from an antique land Percy Bysshe Shelley1 The past's lips are not deceased Kabir2

Husserl was concerned with consciousness, its structure and acts, but this concern was primarily with the validity of Objects based on how they are experienced. On the view articulated in Ideas, validity is attained via harmony (either the harmony that moves one's experience toward adequacy, the harmony involved in noematic ful¢llment, or harmony between multiple subjects). On the view articulated in the Cartesian Meditations, validity still comes to fruition via harmony, but the world, its objects and knowledge are all presented as intersubjective. Ideas placed the emphasis on the transcendent thing as a guide for, and the goal of, its analysis. The phenomenological method, however, seems to put into question the very possibility of the existence of such a transcendent thing and of the other subjects involved in solidifying one's own knowledge of things. The Cartesian Meditations uncovered the conditions of the possibility of such transcendent things and the experience of Others. The discussion in the Meditations, however, relies on an awareness and understanding of other subjects preceding the establishment of the possibility of experiencing them through the theory of empathy. Ideas took empathy for granted. The Cartesian Meditations o¡ered a theory of empathy, thus explicating the possibility of objectivity and Objectivity. Despite its advancement over Ideas regarding the Objectivity that science requires, there is a tension in the Cartesian Meditations: the apperception and pairing at the heart of the Fifth Meditation's theory of empathy make sense in a world where one is already aware of and familiar with Others and common concepts, but the sphere of ownness from which Others are explicated seems to preclude such awareness and familiarity. In the Cartesian

72

Husserl's Phenomenology

Meditations, Husserl didn't adequately address the issue of the communication required for the evidence needed to attain apodicticity and Objective validity in an intersubjective world. Yet, even with these shortcomings, Husserl was right to note that a consequence of his analysis of intersubjectivity in the Cartesian Meditations is that there is no longer a phenomenological problem of the existence of a shared, communal world (e.g., CM 123^24). That is, intersubjectivity and a shared world are truly correlative such that an analysis of the one is at the same time an analysis of the other (CM 75).3 In The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Husserl o¡ered an investigation of the pre-awareness of Others and the world as well as the possibility of attainting apodicticity through communication. He did this without really asking the question of the possibility of the experience of Others which had been a major focus of the Meditations, yet this text begins to explicate that which was presupposed by but left unsaid in the Cartesian Meditations.4 Since our concern is with knowledge, Objectivity, and Others, and since knowledge and Objectivity rely on evidence, a brief reminder of evidence as it appears in The Crisis is in order. From there, we shall take a look at intersubjectivity and the life-world on which that evidence is built and how it is possible for intellectual objects to be Objectively valid across time. Much of Husserl's treatment of evidence in this last text echoes what he said in earlier texts, but the emphasis of The Crisis is such that one can no longer take seriously the notion of an isolated, atomistic knower. There is a sense, then, in which Husserl's treatment of evidence in The Crisis is ``one long last look backward before looking forward forever.''5

4.1 Evidence and the Life-World In The Crisis, Husserl's emphasis shifted away from a focus on the knowing subject and its relationships to its object to a focus on the life-world on which those relationships are built.6 This shift in emphasis away from the individual subject to the life-world in which such subjects ¢nd themselves is not as radical a change in the thought of Husserl as it might ¢rst appear. In fact, without neglecting the signi¢cance of this change in emphasis, one ought to remember that much of what is going on in Husserl's dicussion of the life-world was lurking in the shadows of the earlier texts.7 In chapter 5, my suggestion will be that in terms of the focusö transcendental ego and intentional object (Ideas), intersubjectivity (Cartesian Meditations), life-world (The Crisis)öHusserl's three introductions to phenomenology are interconnected.

Intersubjective and Empathetic Underpinnings

73

To take note of Husserl's change in emphasis in The Crisis is not to suggest that there is no room in that text for a discussion of evidence akin to those discussions in Ideas and the Cartesian Meditations. Indeed, the life-world and evidence are related and ``the life-world is a realm of original [self ] evidences'' (C 127).8 From the perspective of evidence, then, the question of The Crisis is largely that of the relation between scienti¢c evidence and life-world evidence.9 The answer is that the evidence of the sciences (absolute, abstract, deductive, etc.) is founded on or grounded in the evidence of the life-world (subject-relative, concrete, intuitive, etc). Husserl put it as follows: we have two di¡erent things: life-world and objective-scienti¢c world, though of course [they are] related to each other. The knowledge of the objective-scienti¢c world is ``grounded'' in the self-evidence of the lifeworld. The latter is pregiven to the scienti¢c worker or the working community as ground (C 130).10 So, even as late as 1936, true evidence remained, for Husserl, self evidence and ``self-evidence means nothing more than grasping an entity with the consciousness of its original being-itself-there [Selbst-da]. . . . [I]n this selfevidence, what has been realized is there, originaliter, as itself '' (C 356).11 The evidence of the sciences is built upon the evidence of the life-world in which we experience things themselves-there. Just as in the ¢rst two introductions to phenomenology, in The Crisis, Husserl held that at the base of all evidence and knowledge is the evidence of self-presenceöthe object of consciousness being-itself-there, Selbst-da. All other ``evidences'' are built upon that base. Unlike in the previous texts, however, there is little talk in The Crisis of adequate evidence or of the distinction between adequate and apodicticöalthough the practical goal clearly remains apodicticity. In fact, the term ``adequate'' almost never appears in the body of the text. When it does appear, it is not typically in the context of a discussion of adequate vs. apodictic evidence; it is, rather, used as an adjective much the way we use the term in our everyday discourse, but in such a way that still re£ects his insistence in the earlier texts on reserving the term ``adequate'' to perfect evidence.12 Despite the lack of a discussion of the distinction between adequate evidence and apodictic evidence, Husserl continued to write of more than one sort of evidence. Besides the distinction between objective-scienti¢c evidence and life-world evidence, The Crisis also suggests that evidence is to be ``di¡erentiated according to the species, genera, and regional categories of what is and also according to all spatiotemporal modalities'' (C 166).

74

Husserl's Phenomenology

Di¡erentiating evidence based on that to which it is related, Husserl held that phenomenological evidence is special: ``Every [kind of] self-evidence is the title of a problem, with the sole exception of phenomenological self-evidence, after it has re£ectively clari¢ed itself and shown itself to be ultimate self-evidence'' (C 189, my emphasis). That is, Husserl continued to write both of di¡erent sorts of evidence and varying degrees of perfection of evidence. Additionally, much like in Ideas and the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl prioritized phenomenological and adequate evidence in The Crisis. Although such evidence is the target, it is not widely achievable and thus mostly serves to motivate the quest for the more attainable apodictic evidence (e.g., C 224). Nothing is ever before consciousness Selbst-da. Every intentional act involves horizons and thus brings with it other expectations, concepts, relationships, etc. Sorting out the pregiven and making room for the Selbst-da experience is hard work, and perhaps even not possible. Husserl gradually introduced and uncovered the notion of the life-world early in The Crisis while discussing Galileo and the crisis of the sciences.13 The great accomplishment of Galileo on which modern science is built was the mathematization of nature. The mathematization of nature is also what, in Husserl's eyes, led to the crisis for which the book was titled (C ½½8^9). In order to ``overcome the vagueness and relativity of ordinary experience,'' David Carr summarizes, ``science performs a set of abstractions and interpretations upon the world as it originally presents itself.''14 First, science abstracts from the world and focuses on the shape-aspect of things and then it interprets those shapes as pure geometrical shapes so that it can deal with them in geometrical terms. Consequently, the objective-scienti¢c world and its truths are abstractions from and interpretations of the everyday ``world of sense experience'' (C 24), the ``intuitively given surrounding world'' (C 25). This everyday world of sense experience, the intuitively given world, is the life-world. Because it is that which science interprets and from which science abstracts, the life-world is the meaning fundament of the objective-science world (C 48). After all, science would make no sense and have no meaning if it had no connection to what it interprets and abstracts from. One might say that science constructs whereas the lifeworld is the source of the materials with which science constructs; science is concerned with abstractions whereas the life-world is concrete; science interprets what is given whereas the life-world is the realm of the given. The life-world is, then, ``prescienti¢c'' (C 43); it is prior to science both historically and epistemologically. Not only is the life-world the meaning fundament and the source of the self-evidence, it is also always already there as that which underlies every intentional act. The life-world is like a ``¢rst intentional heading, an index

Intersubjective and Empathetic Underpinnings

75

or guideline for inquiring back into the multiplicities of manners of appearing and their intentional structures'' (C 172). Without going into great detail, we already see that the life-world is the realm of the pregiven in relation to which we live and are conscious; it also provides a backdrop or horizon against which objects of consciousness attain harmony and thus validity (C ½47). The life-world informs all evidentiary relationships.

4.2 Pregivenness: Passivity and Intersubjectivity We live and are conscious against a background of the pregiven. That which is pregiven is pre-given, not as a Kantian thing in itself, but in a context with some meaning as part of the life-world in which we always already live and which furnishes the ground for all cognition. That is, we experience and are conscious of objects, and these objects are pregiven in the life-world and are dependent on the life-world for the sense of their pregivenness: we, as living in wakeful world-consciousness, are constantly active on the basis of our passive having of the world; it is from there, by objects pregiven in consciousness, that we are a¡ected; it is to this or that object that we pay attention, according to our interests; with them we deal actively in di¡erent ways (C 108, my emphasis). Because it is already imbued with sense that I did not provide, the world that is passively at the basis of my conscious activity reveals that some Other must have been involved in its constitution, thus things appear from within a horizon of intersubjectivity.15 It is the life-world that provides this horizon. If, for example, I see a car driving o¡, this sight already presupposes much that is not actually present in my physical activity of seeing the car but is included in both my apperception and in my statement that I see a car driving o¡. One way of discussing this excess is in terms of a noematic system and apperception, a© la Ideas. Another way of discussing what is presupposed and what exceeds the object of perception is by means of passivity and horizons.16 In fact, in many respects, the discussion of perception in The Crisis in terms of expectations and horizons is a re-articulation of the discussion of apperception and the full noematic complex in Ideas, with the di¡erence that the discussion in terms of horizons more explicitly involves Others than does the discussion in terms of noematic complexes. The entire context surrounding my information gathering is ¢lled with sedimented meanings that are assumed and in the background, but never actually given by me in

76

Husserl's Phenomenology

any identi¢able process. I did not, for instance, process data directly related to the painted metal frame-members of the car or the stop sign down the blocköbut they are clearly part of my claim about a car driving o¡, even if I have not actually seen or even considered them when I make the claim. These assumed aspects of or perspectives on the perception are its horizon. David Bell o¡ers a nice summary of this sense of the term ``horizon'': To say that an intentional object appears under some aspect, but that that appearance contains within it tacit allusions to other possible ways in which it might also appear is, in Husserlian terms, to say that every adumbration is surrounded by a horizon of other, possible adumbrations. Within the structure of the intentional object of a given experience, that is, we can distinguish between those aspects of the object what are explicitly present, as actual, and those that are present, but only tacitly, as possible.17 Those tacit aspects surround the intentional object as an empty horizon of possibilities. Husserl distinguished between internal horizons and external horizons. Internal horizons have to do with the perspectives and facets of an object that are not part of the hyletic data but are part of the apperceived, i.e., intentional, object. External horizons have to do with the background of other objects, and other possible situations, that are co-present with the object under consideration. James Mensch helpfully discusses these two sorts of horizon in terms of series of relationships. The internal horizon is the object in relation to the other possible perspectives one could take on itöthis makes the object transcendent as an object. The external horizon is the object in relation to the surrounding worldöthis makes the object one among many objects in the world.18 In my perception of the car, I perceive more than my eyes actually take in. I see one side of the car and perceive the car (complete with an interior, an underside, an engine, etc.). Other perspectives are added to the perspective I have on the caröother aspects of the car are apperceived.19 My view on the material object is perspectival and thus incomplete, but I perceive the object, not just one side of it. That is to say, the object is perceived within a horizon of possibilities. This sort of horizon is internal to all perception. The internal horizon includes all the ``views'' of the perceived object which I do not have right now but which are possible (if, for example, I sat inside the car or walked around it, etc.). Put otherwise: to perceive the car (or anything for that matter) is also to anticipate the other perspectives included in (or referred to by) the internal horizon of perception. These other perspectives are tacit allusions made in the perceptive act. For without them, I would perceive a bundle of shapes,

Intersubjective and Empathetic Underpinnings

77

colors, textures, etc., rather than a car. Since they are all part of the perceptive act, to perceive the car from one perspective involves all the other perspectives even if only passively. To see the car drive o¡ also entails, whether re£ectively or not, roads, a driver, tra¤c, a plan or decision to drive away, etc. That is to say, the perception of the car driving o¡, which is incomplete in the sense that it is perspectival, is also incomplete in the sense that is occurs against a background of other objects which are also present and in which we participate. This background or series of relationships is the external horizon. The meaning of what lies on this horizon is pregiven in my perception of the car. Husserl summarized these points about the horizons inherent in perception in the passages like this one: the individual thing is not alone; the perception of a thing is perception of it within a perceptual ¢eld. And just as the individual thing in perception has meaning only through an open horizon of ``possible perceptions,'' insofar as what is actually perceived ``points'' to a systematic multiplicity of all possible perceptual exhibitings belonging to it harmoniously, so the thing has yet another horizon: besides this ``internal horizon'' it has an ``external horizon'' precisely as a thing within a ¢eld of things; and this points ¢nally to the whole ``world as perceptual world'' (C 162). The external horizon links even the simple perception of an object to the whole perceptual world and thus to the life-world and Others in it (e.g., C 251). Husserl's summary mentions harmony. In a way similar to noematic ful¢llment, if further experience ¢ts in harmoniously with the assumptions and anticipations of an object's horizons, the experience and intentional object are con¢rmed. If such experience does not ¢t in harmoniously, the intentional object is undermined or altered. If, for example, I walk up to the ``car'' which I previously had only seen from the left side and ¢nd that only the left side exists and that the rest of the car is ``missing''öI no longer see a car. I see a toy or a fac°ade of a car. When I perceive a car, the car is given passively in the sense that it is opened by my sight, my general knowledge of cars, and my past experiencesöby a familiarity with the life-world and the place cars hold in it. Continued harmony with this life-world and past experiences validates my experience, and when there is a rupture in the harmony, the perception changes and I realize that what I took as a car was not a car and I correct myself (C 162).20 Returning to an example from chapter 2, as I sit here working at my computer, I look out the window and see the front of a house. Not only do I apperceive the rest of the house, in terms of its shape and

78

Husserl's Phenomenology

three-dimensionality, etc., but I also perceive that it is a building, built by somebody other than me, for some purpose, housing artifacts which were also produced by others, with ends in view, etc. I could say, as in chapter 2, that my single-perspective noema refers to or brings with it a noematic system and that system of noema is the intentional object, the house I see. In the terms used in The Crisis, the sight of the front of the house brought with it (as its internal horizon) the rest of the buildingöits inside, its back side, perhaps electrical circuits and windows, etc. This building is identi¢able only against, and thus also brings with it, a set of expectations and assumptions (as its external horizon) having to do with this house as having been built by somebody and being one among many on my city block, etc. Re£ecting on such experience reminds one that the pregiven which comes along with and allows for our everyday perception includes an intersubjective layer. The pregiven brings with it a web of meanings having to do with cities and blocks: what they are, how they ``arise,'' what they are for, etc. Eventually, in this way, this external horizon encompasses the perceptual world itself, despite the fact that we are rarely aware of this as we go through our daily routines. Now, if I walk across the street and see that what is there is just a fac°ade and not the building, I immediately adjust my perception and I perceive it as a fac°adeöconsciousness is still intentional, after all, so I must be conscious of something, even if it is not a house. This fac°ade, of course, already involves its own set of relationshipsöit was built by somebody, for some purpose, etc. In terms more akin to Husserl's: when I walked across the street, my expectations (of an interior of the ``house,'' etc.) are not ful¢lled and the object could not attain validity as a house and thus it could no longer ``live'' harmoniously with the horizons of a house. Consequently, the sense of the sight had to be correctedöstill, the new intentional object has both its internal and its external horizons. Every intentional act has both sorts of horizon. The examples o¡ered thus far are of human-made artifacts. Perception of artifacts involves external horizons and Others more obviously than other experiences do. As in Ideas, most of the examples here are perceptual, but perception is archetypal of all experience. It is clear, however, that natural objects are also experienced against the horizons. For instance, the example from Ideas of looking at an apple tree in bloom in the garden with pleasure (an example which is not of an artifact) involves both horizons. The internal horizon is fairly obviously at work here: it is the rest of the tree, the full noematic complex to which my single-perspective grasp of the tree refers. But, the external horizon is also at work here as the ¢eld of things within which and against which one can see the tree. It is a particular kind of thing against the horizon of other things and thus points, tacitly, to those other things.

Intersubjective and Empathetic Underpinnings

79

4.3 Intersubjectivity and Empathy in the Body of The Crisis Although just a sketch, our brief look at Husserl's view of the life-world as articulated in The Crisis already indicates the relationship between knowledge, Objectivity and Others. The life-world is the realm of the pregiven in relation to which we live and are conscious; it also provides that against which objects of perception or investigation attain harmony and thus validity. It is, thus, the meaning-fundament of all objective-scienti¢c knowledge. In some sense, then, the life-world is a condition of the possibility of science and of Objectively valid knowledge. As the pregiven horizon of experience, the life-world is also the realm of [pre]awarenesses and familiarities that is required if the appresentative pairing at the root of the theory of empathy in the Cartesian Meditations is to be possible.21 Intersubjectivity is an aspect of the life-world, the core of the life-world. So, intersubjectivity is a condition of the possibility of Objectively valid knowledge (even if sometimes only tacitly). A sort of intersubjectivity is also a condition of the possibility of empathy. By investigating the lifeworld and unveiling the intersubjective horizon at work there, The Crisis keeps open the possibility of an explanation of empathy that is in line with that of the Cartesian Meditations while also reminding us that a horizon of intersubjectivity is behind such empathy: The psychologist has the problematics of intentionality through his own original sphere [i.e., his sphere of ownness], but this is never isolable for him. Through the empathy of his original sphere of consciousness, through what arises out of it, as a component which is never lacking, he also already has a universal intersubjective horizon, even though he may not notice it at ¢rst (C 243). The intersubjectivity presupposed in the external horizon of perception and in the life-world, then, is not the result of empathy. Rather, intersubjectivity underlies empathy as a sort of original or tacit awareness of Others, as a sort of empathy-horizon which makes possible the conscious experience empathy: ``within the vitally £owing intentionality in which the life of an ego-subject consists, every other ego is already intentionally implied in advance by way of empathy and the empathy-horizon'' (C 255). The empathy-horizon is that horizon against which empathy can occur, whether one is actively aware of the horizon or not. So, the experience and theory of empathy uncover an intersubjectivity already there, they don't constitute the intersubjectivity. That is to say that ``when empathy steps in,'' the ``community, intersubjectivity [are] also already there, and empathy then merely accomplishes its disclosure.''22

80

Husserl's Phenomenology

Having disclosed an intersubjective horizon that is always already there, we can investigate it and the objects it reveals. Through careful questioning back we can retrace the path through the cognitions of Others to the objectivities constituted by other subjects and thus access them ourselvesöthis is the establishment of Objective validity. This questioning back is an empathetic act that is possible because Objectivity can be constituted linguistically. Husserl o¡ered his description of how Objectivity can be constituted through language in The Origin of Geometry, one of the supplemental texts to The Crisis.23

4.4 Empathy and Communication in The Origin of Geometry The above discussion points to the manner in which Husserl, in The Crisis, maintained that the intersubjective life-world is the basis, not only of the objective sciences, but of all intentional activity. That discussion also serves as a reminder that the external horizons of perception disclose the lifeworld as involving Others, unveiling a level of intersubjectivity that can account for the tacit awareness of Others that was required but unaccounted for in the Cartesian Meditations. Thus The Crisis helps us to ground Husserl's theory of empathy and soften the ¢rst of two criticisms of the Meditations' treatment of Others: the theory of empathy sketched in the Fifth Meditation only seems plausible if the meditator is somehow already aware of, or familiar with, Others. The second concern raised in the previous chapter remains: just how can communication work to make possible intellectual objects available to all with Objective validity? Without this ability, Husserl's claims that the scienti¢c rests on or is grounded in the prescienti¢c and that validity is a function of intersubjective harmony do not make sense. The Origin of Geometry, although its title can be misleading, treats the ideal objectivity, the ideality, of scienti¢c concepts by using geometry as a paradigmatic example of such idealities. By ideal in ``ideal objectivity'' or ``ideality,'' Husserl meant objects that are non-spatial and atemporal, but repeatable. This group would include the laws of logic, the truths of geometry and all sorts of universals, even meanings.24 Geometry is both a historical science with a historical beginning and ``objectively there for `everyone' (for actual and possible geometers, or those who understand geometry)'' (C 356). How can geometry have a historical beginning, with ¢rst geometers, and be there for everyoneöi.e., ``how does geometrical ideality (just like that of all sciences) proceed from its primary intrapersonal

Intersubjective and Empathetic Underpinnings

81

origin, where it is a structure within the conscious space of the ¢rst inventor's soul, to its ideal objectivity'' (C 357^58)? That is the central question of The Origin of Geometry.25 The main task of The Origin is, then, to examine how scienti¢c truths transfer from the subjective evidence of the ¢rst ``inventor'' or discoverer to Objective-intersubjective evidence and gain ideality. Husserl treated geometry and science in general, but the question is legitimate for any concept or cultural object of knowledge (including the city blocks involved in the earlier example and the scissors o¡ered in the Cartesian Meditations as an example of pairing). What about natural, as opposed to cultural, objects? Husserl didn't o¡er any signi¢cant and helpful discussion of this in his introductions to phenomenology, but it is not going too far to suggest that even the example from Ideasölooking out the window and seeing an apple tree in bloomöinvolves a cultural dimension. After all, in that example, I don't see some undi¡erentiated thing: I see an apple tree in a garden. Both apple tree and garden are idealities handed down within a culture. The notion of apple tree brings with it a long history of nomenclature and of classi¢cation of species. Gardens are planted by people with speci¢c uses in mind, and some uses for gardens are deemed more acceptable than others. Perhaps more signi¢cant is the fact that my perception of the apple tree (or anything, for that matter) can only happen against an external horizon which is the life-world and the life-world is given in such everyday experience (e.g., C 226). Because of its being what it is against this horizon, the apple tree is always-already imbued with a layer of meanings (and uses and expectations) inherited from a culture and tradition. It seems that if my object of experience is anything ``more'' than an undi¡erentiated blob, a some-thing-I-know-not-what, it involves a cultural layer. The short answer to the question of how something changes from an intrapersonal, subjective ideality to an intersubjective Objectivity is: through language. It is through language that Others are given access to constituted ideal objects. And, in fact, the ideal objects can become Objective, in the sense of existing always and for everyone, by means of linguistic documents. That is, writing allows for ideal objects to become sedimented thereby opening the possibility of true Objectivity.26 Once the sedimentation of meaning has occurred, the ideality can become part of the life-world. To primally constitute, as the ¢rst one for the ¢rst time, an ideal triangle or square is to constitute a ``spiritual product of a cultural world'' (C 356) which can then become a permanent feature of that world. Once it is a permanent feature of the world, such an ideality becomes part of the external horizon tacitly brought along with, and making possible, our experiences of individual objects. Language is the vehicle by which Others are a¡orded access

82

Husserl's Phenomenology

to constituted objects. Language, and its constitution of idealities, enables the objects of pure consciousness to exist in and be accessed by our spatiotemporal world: linguistic embodiment makes out of the merely intra-subjective structure the objective structure which . . . is in fact present as understandable by all and is valid, already in its linguistic expression . . . for all the future (C 358). On the view Husserl articulated in 1936, then, sedimentation and embodiment via language turns the intentional object of an individual subject into an Objective structure available to all, in principle at least. That suggests that language is necessary in order for us to access pre-constituted idealities and to know about triangles and city blocks and thus ``see'' houses, cars, and trees against the background of their external horizons. So, there is a fundamental social or cultural or communal aspect to these idealities. The transformation from intrasubjective object to an Object, accessible to multiple subjects across time, ``occurs by means of language, through which it [the ideality] receives, so to speak, its linguistic living body'' (C 358). By language, here, Husserl did not have a self-contained linguistic system or a personal linguistic competence in mind. Rather, he had a linguistic community in mind: ``a community of those who can reciprocally express themselves, normally, in a fully understandable fashion'' (C 359). Husserl sometimes linked such a linguistic community with an empathetic community (C 360). On the view articulated in The Origin of Geometry, the objective world is the correlate of language or the linguistic community: The objective world is from the start a world for all, the world which ``everyone'' has as a world-horizon. Its objective being presupposes men, understood as men with a common language. . . . Thus men as men, fellow men, worldöand, on the other hand, language, are inseparably intertwined; and one is always certain of their inseparable relational unity, though usually only implicitly (C 359). Consequently, the objective world is not an a priori world, independent of our linguistic activity; it is, rather, the intersubjective worldöinseparably intertwined with our linguistic activity.27 Not only does e¡ective linguistic activity make Objectivity possible, it is empatheticöit involves the experiencing of Others as other subjects. Thus, the Objective world is not independent of empathy. Notice that what Husserl said here, and in much of the discussion of The Origin of Geometry, had already been noted and discussed in the body of

Intersubjective and Empathetic Underpinnings

83

The Crisis itself. That is, The Origin of Geometry truly works with the main text. It explores the same themes by pushing them in a slightly di¡erent direction and investigating how we might avoid the crisis in which the modern sciences ¢nd themselves by remembering the conscious acts by which the abstractions of science came out of pretheoretical experience. The objective world's presupposition of Others is reminiscent of the external horizon and the fact that ``men, fellow men, world and . . . language are inseparably intertwined'' reminds us that the life-world is, as discussed above, intersubjective and also that it is a linguistic intersubjectivity. 4.4.1 From intrasubjectivity to objectivity: The process How does this happen? How does language turn the subjective object of consciousness into something Objective which is there for all people? In The Origin of Geometry Husserl outlined the process by which an ideality proceeds from its intrapersonal origin to its ideal Objectivity. That process involves three stages.28 At the ¢rst stage, the geometrical objectölike any objectöis given its initial meaning in the ``grasping [of ] an entity with the consciousness of its original being-itself-there [Selbst-da]'' (C 356). This is the way original evidence was described both in Ideas and the Cartesian Meditations as well as in the body of The Crisis. But questions arise here. If geometry were at this ¢rst stage, it would be based on nothing more than the mental constructions of an individual thinker and it would have nothing more than a purely subjective truth value. Geometry claims, however, to be Objectively valid, possessing ``from its primal establishment, an existence which is peculiarly supratemporal and whichöof this we are certainöis accessible to all [people] . . . [in] all ages'' (C 357). What is needed is an account of how the objects of geometry, or any ideal objects for that matter, become intersubjectively knowable in their immediate self-evidence and how they gain such Objectivity. The second stage of the process by which an intrapersonal ideality becomes Objective is communicative repetition of the ideality. In being repeated and understood (¢rst by the original subject and subsequently by Others), the object of one person's consciousness can be made an object for other subjects. Objectivity (in the sense of being available to and understood by more than one subject) arises ``in a preliminary stage,'' as soon as we take into consideration the function of empathy and fellow mankind as a community of empathy and of language. In the contact of reciprocal linguistic understanding, the original production and the product of one subject can be actively understood by others (C 360).

84

Husserl's Phenomenology

That is to say, by the empathy of ``reciprocal linguistic understanding,'' the production of one conscious beingöthe geometric theorem, for exampleö can be understood and thus be the harmonious intentional object of other conscious beings. By understanding the linguistic expression of an ideality o¡ered by one person, then, Others can understand the ideality. The passage continues: The productions can reproduce their likenesses from person to person, and in the chain of the understanding of these repetitions what is self-evident turns up as the same in the consciousness of the other. In the unity of the community of communication among several persons the repeatedly produced structure becomes an object of consciousness, not as a likeness, but as the one structure common to all (C 360). The claim here is that through language/empathy one subject can link to another and reproduce the ideality constituted by the Other. The second subject brings to self-evidence that which is evident to the ¢rst. At the second stage, the ideality is there, as itself, in self-evidence, with both subjects. The second subject has, then, not the idea that the ¢rst subject has ``produced''; the second subject has also produced the theorem. This can be con¢rmed through discussion and critical dialogueöthe same theorem is there for both subjects. So, objects can be taken out of the intrapersonal realm through the work of communication, but that is not yet Objectivityöfor although it makes the object available to multiple subjects, it is bound to the present (or to a living chain of speakers). The ideality reached in this second stage is valid to contemporary subjects in synchronic context, but it cannot have diachronic validity: ``what is lacking is the persisting existence of the `ideal object' even during periods in which the inventor and his fellows are no longer wakefully so related or even are no longer alive'' (C 360). The third stage of the constitution of the Objectivity of an ideality is that step by which the object becomes possible for multiple subjects across time. This third stage is the ``written, documenting linguistic expression'' (C 360) which sediments the scienti¢c ideality by making ``communications possible without immediate or mediate personal address'' (C 360^61). Inscribed in a written text, in other words, the ideal object experiences a transformation (C 361); once written (i.e., sedimented), a reader can reactivate its evidence again. The written expression develops the possibility of diachronic communication in addition to synchronic communication. Husserl wrote about the sedimentation of idealities in terms of written texts, but it seems any method of sedimentation (tape recordings, and digital media, for example) would make diachronic access possible.

Intersubjective and Empathetic Underpinnings

85

Written signs, just like other objects of sense perception, are capable of being experienced in common with Others, in intersubjective harmony. However, ``as linguistic signs they awaken . . . their familiar signi¢cations'' (C 361) in those who understand them. Like everything in the life-world, writing can be accessed either passively or actively. Oftentimes, the ``awakening'' is passive (analogous to the passivity of the other side of the house when I see one side and perceive a house). But what is awoken passively can be focused upon and made self-evident by being reactivated (C 361). Husserl o¡ered the following passage as an example of the di¡erence between understanding something at the level of passivity and actively bringing it to self-evidence: Consider, for example, the way in which we understand, when super¢cially reading the newspaper, and simply receive the ``news''; here there is a passive taking-over of ontic validity such that what is read straightway becomes our opinion. But it is something special . . . to have the intention to explicate, to engage in the activity which articulates what has been read (or an interesting sentence from it), extracting one by one, in separation from what has been vaguely, passively received as a unity, the elements of meaning, thus bringing the total validity to active performance in a new way. . . . What was a passive meaning-pattern has now become constructed through active production. This activity, then, is a peculiar sort of selfevidence (C 364). The distinction points to the seductive danger of languageöbased on the meaning of words, people can take the content of the experiences referred to, without redoing the enactment. It is one thing to be able to merely recite the Pythagorean theorem and it is another thing altogether to truly see how it is that the theorem holds true. The former is an instance of the seduction of language and of the merely passive taking-over of meaning to which Husserl referred. The latter is an example of tracing back through the record to the experience of an Other and thereby broadening one's knowledge. As Fink says, phenomenological propositions can be truly understood only when the situation of the givenness of sense is repeated . . . when ``the predicatively explicating terms are always veri¢ed again by phenomenologizing intuition.''29 Of course, because I cannot capture the horizons of Pythagoras' experience in adequacy, and because what I reactivate is based on the articulation of Pythagoras' experience, not his pre-predicative experience, I aim at adequacy but always fall short. Husserl was not suggesting that I can, in complete adequacy, experience the object with the same original self-presence that the ¢rst geometer had.

86

Husserl's Phenomenology

It is more accurate to consider the ¢rst geometer's experience serving as a motivation for reactivation in much the same way that the quest for adequacy serves as the motivation for our investigation which can, at best, yield apodicticity (along the lines of the discussion of the Cartesian Meditations in the previous chapter, and Ideas in the chapter before that). I may not be able to have the original presence the ¢rst geometer had, but documents o¡er me tools for reconstructing the horizon of his experiences and, through this reconstructive process, I can appresent the ¢rst discovery of a triangleö with its own sort of self evidence for me. There is a sense, then, in which the documents put me in community with the ¢rst geometer and thus communalize the ideal objects of his consciousness. By means of this communalization, the objects of the scientist become accessible and understandable for everyone, across timeöat least in principle. They become truly Objective (C 364) and valid (unless new data force an explosion of sense).30 Through the writing down of geometrical thoughts and axioms, the ideal objects of geometry are freed from the fate of particular minds and particular times and come to have Objective existence. Communicative sedimentation is what allows the objects of one consciousness to become eternally reactualizable by Others and thus obtain Objectivity in the most rigorous of its senses. The articulation of an object of consciousness makes it possible for other subjects to gain access to the object of another subject (or for the original subject, with the aid of memory, to revisit the object of consciousness). This articulation is an empathetic act and it is what makes possible the reactivation of the original self-evidence. At this stage, multiple subjects, via the empathy of a shared linguistic community, have access to the object. It is not that the multiple subjects have access to the object merely as observersöif these multiple subjects have done their work, they have the ideal objects that the ¢rst subject had as the ¢rst subject had themöin selfevidence. That is, it is one thing for me to recognize and utilize an expression of the Pythagorean theorem (e.g., ``a2 ‡ b2 ˆ c2 '' or ``the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equivalent to the sum of the squares of its sides'') and it is quite a di¡erent thing for me to trace back through Others by means of written signs and reactivate in my consciousness the self-presence of the theorem. The latter is the process of which Husserl was writing. 4.4.2 How far The Origin has taken us The present chapter began where the previous one left o¡: with the concern about the possibility of the awareness of Others required for the

Intersubjective and Empathetic Underpinnings

87

appresentation and theory of empathy as they are formulated in the Cartesian Meditations and wondering how it is possible for predicative evidence to be built upon pre-predicative self-evidence in such a way that Objectivity is possible. The two questions are two sides of a single question of the conditions of the possibility of Objectively valid knowledge. The quick tour of the life-world and the notion of horizons o¡ered in this chapter unveiled the empathy-horizon which provides the pre-awareness of other subjects that informs the theory of appresentation and empathy outlined in the Cartesian Meditations. That theory of empathy explained the recognition of Others which stands at the base of the possibility of intersubjective harmony and that harmony is required for Objective knowledge. The outlining of the process of the transformation of something intrasubjective into an Objectivity in The Origin of Geometry shows how predication and then sedimentation in documents of an object of consciousness can make Objectivity possible. The communication at work here is an empathetic experience in two ways: not only does communicative understanding require multiple subjects, but by means of reactivating what has been written one can bring to presence now what was ¢rst present to Others and this truly is the experience of others as other subjects. Consequently, both the main text of The Crisis and The Origin of Geometry suggest that the experience of Others is at the heart of the possibility of Objectively valid knowledge. The main text uncovers a condition of the possibility of empathy as well as the empathy-horizon underlying all experience in the life-world (and thus objective-scienti¢c knowledge). The Origin of Geometry explicates the process by which what is ¢rst available only to one subject can be made available to other subjects through language and ¢nally to all subjects after having been written down. As Suzanne Cunningham summarizes, the view of The Origin of Geometry is that Objectivity of meanings ``is accounted for by their formulation in language . . . [and] this position can be made clear only by tracing the e¡ect of Husserl's introduction of the Lebenswelt [life-world].''31 One can get to ideal objects only by starting with the experience of the individual and this experience is in the life-worldöthe life-world remains the ultimate meaning fundament. Initially, such experience is pre-predicative; it is a subject's experience of an individual object ``before any subsuming under general classes takes place.''32 One can push the object of this experience from the pre-predicative level to its objecti¢cation via predication, rendering it sharable, but it is stuck in the present (or at least it depends on a continuous chain of verbal communicationöit depends on speci¢c individual subjects). Writing down that articulation of the ideality releases it from the chains of the present and allows it to be Objectiveöindependent of any particular consciousness.33

88

Husserl's Phenomenology

At the predicative stage, the critical re£ection required to test whether the ideality is intersubjectively harmonious, and thus attain (de jure) apodicticity, is possible. If harmony is attained, the knowledge of the ideality attains a degree of validity in a way that parallels the discussion of the progression from de facto to de jure evidence in chapters 2 and 3, above. If there is disharmony, any claim to knowledge is without validity.

4.5 A Possible Threat to Objective Validity The view outlined above characterizes Objectivities as there for all people for all the future, but also as related to (i.e., sedimented in and produced by) a linguistic community. As soon as one admits the existence of universals that somehow cross cultural boundaries, the question of intercultural communication and of the possibility of incommensurability comes to mind, and that question opens the possibility of Objectivity being only culturerelative. Husserl maintained a quest for universality in the midst of the subject-relative life-world and he characterized his ideal of philosophy as a science from ultimate foundations which are revealed in apodictic evidence and cannot include any hidden presuppositions. In this respect, the ideal of phenomenology is directly opposed to any sort of relativism. Genuine science, for Husserl, must be nothing less than a matter of supra-temporal ideas. The only e¡ective remedy for the sickness of relativism is, according to Husserl, ``a scienti¢c critique and in addition a radical science, rising from below, based on sure foundations, and progressing according to the most rigorous methods.''34 By the time of The Crisis and The Origin of Geometry, however, Husserl could not present phenomenology as absolutely presuppositionless under the transparent gaze of transcendental subjectivity. As the above discussions reveal, Husserl's phenomenology was transformed into an inquiry that elucidated a prior givenness in which the transcendental subjectivity is lodged.35 Husserl had come to notice the decisive role of Others and our life-world in the formation of our living experiences and the sciences, but the life-world includes a tradition that is handed down to us and composed largely of idealities with individual historical origins. Consequently, the truths that depend on the life-world appear to be contingent rather than necessary (including all scienti¢c and Objective truths). When I look out my window and see an apple tree in the garden, that experience relies on the life-world, not only as that which provides a background against which I can have the experience, but as that which shapes and informs my experience. If it were not for the particular history of our

Intersubjective and Empathetic Underpinnings

89

life-world, I might see some transcendent object, but it wouldn't be an apple tree. Husserl's reliance on the life-world in his explanations of experience and meaning threatens to push his view into a sort of cultural relativismöa threat of which Husserl was aware. After pointing out the danger of losing our hold on truth, Husserl suggested that ``as we re£ect on this plight, we gaze backward into the history of our present humanity. We can gain selfunderstanding, and thus inner support, only by elucidating the unitary meaning which was inborn in this history from its origin'' (C 14). That is to say, in spite of his warnings against relativism, Husserl came to attach importance to historical context. Some commentators see this concern with history as a setback for Husserl and his project.36 Does Husserl's concern with the life-world imply or suggest a step toward a historical or cultural relativism? Husserl didn't think so. The late texts are full of passages indicating a presupposition of common understanding and common language. Husserl also wrote of an ideality ``identically the same in the `original language' of Euclid and in all translations'' (C 357). This indicates that nothing is lost in translation as well as that translation is possible across linguistic-cultural communities. Many disagree with Husserl about translation, but because of the empathetic aspect of questioning back, his claim might be justi¢ed. Nevertheless, the question still lingers: can a philosophy that takes into account the importance of history in humanity's conscious life still ful¢ll the aim of a transcendental philosophy.37 Are Objectivity and necessary universal truths possible in the non-atomistic view of The Crisis? Husserl's resolution of this problem is pointed to in a passage that also highlights the historical nature of all knowledge: the past of the community has become settled in various kinds of cultural facts, and Husserl spoke of all of civilization as one community, one civilization (C 368^69). History is, then, ``nothing other than the vital movement of the coexistence and the interweaving of original formations and sedimentations of meaning'' (C 371). If we are one community, one civilization, the historical dimension does not destroy the original meaning-formations and it is the task of transcendental phenomenology to uncover those meaning-formations and the conditions of their possibility. So, according to Husserl's last introduction, phenomenology's task is the historical disclosure of the sedimented meaning of cultural facts by means of a historical backward reference. This backward reference is to be accomplished by means of a careful questioning back through the sedimentations of meaning that lie between us and the originary formation of meaning. As we've seen, if it is to be successful, this questioning back needs to be empathetic and not merely performative. That is, in order to be successful, the questioning back needs to be an

90

Husserl's Phenomenology

experience that reaches the subjective experience of the original meaning formation rather than merely trace back through the string of de¢nitions between the investigator and the ¢rst sedimentation of the meaning in languageöit needs to be active rather than passive. In other words, we need to take care to remember that the language is not magic, and we need to avoid falling prey to the seductive danger of language. Even if we avoid that danger, can we expect to ¢nd non-culturally speci¢c original formations of meaning? Can we expect to ¢nd such a universal element in what seem to be historically relativized cultural facts? It seems naive to seek to display, and to claim to have displayed, a historical a priori, an absolute, supertemporal validity, after we have obtained such abundant testimony for the relativity of everything historical, of all historically developed world-apperceptions, right back to those of the ``primitive'' tribes (C 373). Husserl was aware of how unsettling his attempt to defend the search for a universal a priori might be. After all, every people, large or small, has its world in which, for that people, everything ¢ts well together, whether in mythical-magical or in Europeanrational terms, and in which everything can be explained perfectly. Every people has its ``logic'' and, accordingly, if this logic is explicated in propositions, ``it's'' a priori (C 373). Such talk of ``every people'' having its logic and it's a priori might lend itself to a relativistic reading of Husserl. Yet, Husserl continued to search for and try to articulate the possibility of a universal logic and a priori. To surrender to historical relativism would be to abandon what he took to be his responsibility as a philosopher. But where is the universal basis of a historical a priori to be found? Must one accept some sort of cultural relativism once the important role of the culturally informed life-world has been acknowledged? Often, in order to put a stop to the tide of relativism, the levy of an ethnocentrism is raised. But that isn't a satisfying move. Is there a satisfying way out of this predicament? It seems that if one regards cultural ``universals'' as readymade invariant parts of the pre-existing furniture of reality, there is little hope of success. If, however, one sees cultural ``universals'' as part of the evolution, so to speak, of the life-world, one might have an approach that is more likely to lead to a resolution of the problem. In other words, if the focus is on the a priori of the ``historical a priori '' there is little hope, but one can focus on the historical rather than the a priori.

Intersubjective and Empathetic Underpinnings

91

Can one legitimately extend a reading of Husserl's ``historical a priori'' in that direction? The above discussions have shown that The Crisis and The Origin of Geometry suggest that the answer is ``yes.'' For the world attains its Objectivity, and hence, validity, by virtue of intersubjective harmony. According to Husserl, the life-worldöthat world in which we live harmoniously and which attains validity through harmonyöis related to the world of a linguistic community and is the sole datum with which our phenomenological analysis (and all science) must begin. It is, in part, the world of sedimented objects (e.g., C 109, 226, 251). These pregiven sedimented objects which inhabit the life-world from which we must start include, importantly, the ideal objectivities of science, math and rationalityöafter all, Galileo did not start the science of geometry anew, he inherited it from the Greeks and, since it was part of his life-world, he took it for granted. The life-world comprises, then, the absolute foundation of all our practicesömoral, scienti¢c, philosophical, and everyday. The notion of an absolute foundation here is that of a whole whose parts depend on their participation in that whole for their existence, and are knowable only to the extent that we have the capacity to distinguish them as partial aspects of that whole. That is one of the points of the discussion of a perception's external horizon and the way it is that horizon that allows one to distinguish particular individual objects. This is not necessarily the notion of an a priori self-given immutable foundation, but it is the notion that one must always begin one's investigation from somewhere and that every beginning is in the context of the life-world, complete with its historical sedimentations. This is an a priori which is the indubitable basis of experience, but it is also historical by virtue of being lived and changing.38 It is like a river-bed: absolute bottom, yet somewhat in £ux. There is something almost common-sensical about this approach to the historical a priori: after all, we talk of the ``Newtonian'' as opposed to the ``Quantum'' worlds within our tradition; each was grounded in the a priori structures and beliefs sedimented and made Objective by its own linguistic-scienti¢c community, but our history indicates that those a priori are mutable. Such an interpretation of the historical a priori o¡ers the key to a solution to the problem in which Husserl seemed to have been caught. For it suggests both the fundamental character and the plasticity of all historical a priori. In particular, it opens up the possibility of the self-alteration of our own conceptual scheme which happens with the linguistic sedimentation of idealities and then the incorporation of those objects into the life-world. The Pythagorean theorem, for example, was not always part of our conceptual scheme. By being constituted in the mind of its ¢rst ``inventor'' or

92

Husserl's Phenomenology

discoverer, then articulated, shared, written, passed along, and ¢tting in harmoniously, the theorem has become part of our own conceptual scheme. It might be objected that the above reinterpretation is a mere variant of historical relativism. This is a reasonable concern, but the interpretation does not necessarily commit one to an ``anything goes'' rampant relativism because everything is grounded in the intersubjective life-world and if an individual makes a claim which cannot ¢t harmoniously into the lifeworld, the break in harmony calls for an alteration (either of the claim or of the life-world). So, despite its £uidity, the life-world is always already the ultimate ground for all intentional activity and claims. Whether we are trying to understand the world around us, ourselves, or alien cultures, we must always and can only start from our own belief systemöfrom our ``corner'' of the life-world. But in starting there ``we are conscious of the open horizon of our fellow men'' (C 358). As Richard Rorty put it: Beliefs suggested by another culture must be tested by trying to weave them together with beliefs we already have . . . we can always enlarge the scope of ``us'' by regarding other people, or cultures, as members of the same community of inquiry as ourselvesöby treating them as part of the group among whom unforced agreement is to be sought.39 Although we may recognize and be open to Others and other cultures, the life-world, as that which lies beneath all intentional activity, ``does have, in all its relative features, a general structure . . . to which everything that exists relatively is bound, [but which] is not itself relative'' (C 139). So, even if the cultures we recognize seem to be incommensurable, our common life-world and empathy ground the intentional activity of each person within each culture. Even the treatment of empathy and analysis of intersubjectivity in the Cartesian Meditations reveals/relies upon such a non-relativistic, even if £uid, life-world. But the dissolution of the problem of a communal world does not follow from the treatment of intersubjectivity: it is not that we analyze intersubjectivity and can then, after the fact, consider the world and identify it with what a community of monads have in common. Rather, the notion of a shared environment has played a crucial role in the analysis of intersubjectivity. This is a pair in which an analysis of the one is, at the same time, an analysis of the other: The following should be noted in this connection. It is implicit in the sense of my successful apperception of others that their world, the world

Intersubjective and Empathetic Underpinnings

93

belonging to their appearance-systems, must be experienced forthwith as the same as the world belonging to my appearance-systems; and this involves an identity of our appearance-systems . . . [It involves that we share a world] (CM 125). In fact, when intentional objects are present to one person but not to others, we speak of those objects as dreams or hallucinations and the likeönot as part of the ``real'' world. This implies that ``the objective world has existence by virtue of a harmonious con¢rmation of the apperceptive constitution . . . a con¢rmation . . . by the continuance of experiencing life with a constant harmoniousness'' (CM 125). The life-world of The Crisis is the correlate of the harmonious, intersubjective experience of the Cartesian Meditationsöit is the ``pregiven'' required in coming to intersubjectivity. It is worth noting here that the change away from the view of Ideas and even the Cartesian Meditations is more than semantic but not yet a complete abandonment of the views articulated in the previous works. The earlier works appeared to be dangerously solipsistic and atomisticöcouched almost exclusively in terms of the sensory data and synthetic activities which characterize the continuing experience of a single ego. In The Crisis, the world is no longer my world, ``the world is our world'' (C 108). The solitary transcendental ego has been ``replaced'' by ``the transcendental we'' capable of ``we-synthesis'' (C 172). The singular has been replaced by the plural but many of the crucial elements of Husserl's philosophy remain intact: objectivity and rationality are still explained as properties of experience which it possesses in virtue of its internal structure, the way it is given in consciousness, and the harmony and coherence of its horizons as they are ful¢lled by subsequent experience. The continuation of this sort of scheme might lead one to suggest that the only real change that has taken place is that in the later works it is our experience to which appeal is made whereas the earlier works appealed solely to my experience. That is, one might argue that the supposed change is primarily semantic since the crucial elements of Husserl's philosophy remain intact despite the change in focus from the singular to the plural. This sort of reading, however, fails to do justice to Husserl's development from the individual to the community. There is overlap between the early and the late texts, but the last phase of Husserl's philosophy is marked by much more than a substitution of the transcendental ``I'' by the transcendental ``we.'' Although concerned with many of the same issues throughout his career, the change in Husserl's thought seems to signal an almost complete rejection of the approach of the earlier works in which he began by isolating what is most simple (and most fundamental) and proceeded to

94

Husserl's Phenomenology

explain what is complex on that basis. For example, we were ¢rst introduced to hyletic data as the most primitive elements given to consciousness, then to the simple syntheses of identi¢cation which combine those data into complex wholes; only eventually, if at all and after much e¡ort, did we work up to a full description of intentional life in its rich varietyöincluding aesthetic experiences, value judgments, emotions, and the experiences of other people. In the later works, Husserl adopted a much more holistic view according to which what is given, the datum with which one must begin, is the life-worldönot any isolated atom of experience but something always already part of a series of relationships. After the change, we must not (and, in fact, cannot) go straight back to the supposedly immediately given sense data, as if they were immediately characteristic of the purely intuitive data of the life-world; rather, the life-world as a whole is the sole datum with which our phenomenological analysis must begin. Of course, this is only an apparent rejection of the earlier approach (of Ideas and Cartesian Meditations). After all, Husserl came to the investigation of intersubjectivity and then the life-world by investigating the individual ego. The threeöego, intersubjectivity, and life-worldöall presuppose and rest upon each other. To investigate one is to ¢nd the others in the background. To begin one's investigation with, or to focus on, one is to be led to the othersönot to reject them.

Chapter 5

Empathy-Knowledge Link(s): Husserl's Introductions to Phenomenology

Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born Matthew Arnold1 Focusing on a small group of related concepts, the previous chapters have o¡ered an introduction to Husserl's epistemology as presented in his published introductions to phenomenology. Having done the archeology of working through the treatment of evidence, empathy, intersubjectivity, and validity in those three texts, we can now piece things together: we can see that the texts rely on two roles of empathy in the attainment and solidi¢cation of knowledge, sketch the relationships between Husserl's introductions to phenomenology, and consider the e¡ect of the roles of empathy on the conception of Husserl's phenomenology as a transcendental philosophy. Such are the tasks of this chapter.

5.1 Two Relationships of Others to Knowledge In answer to the primary question of this investigationöwhether there is a link between empathy and knowledge in Husserl's phenomenologyöwe must say ``Yes.'' Not only that, but the texts rely on empathy, and thus multiple subjects, in two waysösometimes rather explicitly, and other times almost unnoticed. The one role for Others is their involvement in the solidi¢cation of one's knowledge by helping to move the evidence toward adequacy via intersubjective harmony. The other role is the furthering of one's knowledge by making access to idealities and cultural objects that others know or have known possible, without the knower having to actually have the originary experiences those other subjects had. In the 1913 text, Ideas, Others ful¢ll the ¢rst role mentioned above. That is, empathy is involved in the buttressing or con¢rming of one's knowledge via harmony that validates what one knows and can move the evidence

96

Husserl's Phenomenology

toward adequacy by introducing perspectives not otherwise taken by the individual subject. The focus in this text is individual conscious subjects. Consciousness is intentional and each object of consciousness, each intentional object, is a meaningful whole which brings with it or refers to perspectives on the object other than the perspective the subject actually has at the time. One's intentional object can be brought to validity through noematic ful¢llment in which those other perspectives of the object are brought to fruition. In this way, objectivity is attained (objectivity with a lower-case ``o'').2 Having such objectivity, individuals often make judgments about the objects of that knowledge. In Ideas, Husserl argued that there are degrees of evidence and o¡ered a brief treatment of the relationship between such judgments, language, and apodicticity. It is here that Others play a signi¢cant role in connection with knowledge. As the number of subjects agreeing with one's judgment about an object grows, more perspectives on the object are included and progress toward adequacy (i.e., perfect evidence) is made. Thus, in Ideas, one's experience of others as other subjects serves to buttress or solidify what one might already know on one's own. On the view put forth in 1929 which became the Cartesian Meditations, Others have a similar role in the attainment of validity as in Ideas insofar as they add to the certainty of one's grasp of the object in question, but where that role was in the background in the early text, it takes center stage in the later text. However, despite this similarity to Ideas, the Cartesian Meditations puts a greater emphasis than does Ideas on the world being an intersubjective world. In addition to largely re-articulating the view put forth in Ideas, the Cartesian Meditations o¡ers a descriptive phenomenology of our experience of other subjects.3 In o¡ering this description of empathy, Husserl's Fifth Meditation gets at one of the conditions of the possibility of what was involved (even if at times only implicitly) in Ideas: the inclusion of perspective other than one's own, and thus one's experience of Others. Establishing this possibility, the Cartesian Meditations makes possible objectivity in the sense of an object being there for multiple subjects. That is, outlining how one can experience others as other subjects, the Meditations moves beyond Ideas in that it moves from objectivity to Objectivity. Science aims at non-relative truths. This is a view Husserl clearly endorsed. After all, Husserl asked what ``what can be meant [by `scienti¢c' knowledge] other than what objective science has in view and does anyway? Is scienti¢c knowledge as such not `Objective' knowledge, aimed at a knowledge substratum which is valid for everyone with unconditioned generality?'' (C 124). His answer to this question is ``yes.'' That being the case, the establishment of objectivity in the sense of being there for everyone is a

Empathy-Knowledge Link(s)

97

crucial step in Husserl's quest to establish phenomenology as an eidetic science. Consequently, there is a sense in which the theory of empathy outlined in the Cartesian Meditations makes scienti¢c knowledge possible, in addition to the role of buttressing or validating one's knowledge by means of intersubjective harmony. In the 1936 text, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Others ful¢ll, primarily, the second role related to knowledge: the furthering of one's knowledge by making it possible for us to have access to the objects to which we have access. On the view o¡ered in The Crisis, things appear to a subject from within a horizon of intersubjectivity that links intentional objects to the life-world and to Others within the world. It is from within the intersubjective horizon, and thus in relation to Others, that the world is what it is and that an individual subject has the phenomena she has. To have an intentional object is, then, also to have an awareness of Others (even if it is only a tacit awareness). Also, if there were no Others, there would be no life-world which is the basis of all knowledge. So, any relationship with an object involves relationships with Others. The intersubjective life-world is at the ground of all intentional activity, and validity is attained via intersubjective harmony. Consequently, intersubjectivity (which requires empathy) is required for any knowledge of any objects whatsoever. In the supplementary text, The Origin of Geometry, Husserl o¡ered a theory of how Objectivity (with a capital ``O'') is made possible by predication and sedimentation in documents of that predication. The communication at work there is empathetic because communicative understanding requires multiple subjects and because by means of reactivating what has been written, one can bring to one's presence now what was ¢rst present to someone else and this is an experience of another as another subject. Such empathy makes idealities and Objects that others know or have known available to a subject without that subject having to actually repeat the originary experiences those others had. Thus there are two ways in which Husserl's introductions to phenomenology rely on Others where knowledge is concerned: the solidi¢cation of one's knowledge; and the furthering of one's knowledge by making Objects accessible. As summarized thus far, it might appear that the early and late texts con£ict with each other and that in adapting the late view, Husserl abandoned his earlier view. After all, in Ideas it looks as though isolated individual knowers are at work, but in The Crisis no such isolated epistemic agent seems possible. Careful re£ection, however, suggests that the two roles are mutually supportive. These two roles, and the shift from an emphasis on one in the early text to an emphasis on the other in the late text, do not

98

Husserl's Phenomenology

indicate a change of heart or an abandonment of the view o¡ered in the early text, but a growing emphasis on the role of empathy in supporting the Objective validity of knowledge.

5.2 Spiraling Conditions of Possibility: Relationships between the Texts The previous paragraph makes the somewhat contentious claim that, contrary to what might ¢rst seem to be the case, the changing emphasis on empathy and the di¡erent roles of Others in Husserl's introductions to phenomenology does not indicate an abandonment of the early view in favor of the late view. The claim is contentious because one of the roles of empathy is explicit in Ideas and the other role takes prominence in The Crisis. Also problematic is the fact that the Cartesian Meditations relies on a reduction to the sphere of ownness that appears to be incommensurable with the view put forth in The Crisis that intersubjectivity is always already the caseögiving rise to the appearance of a radical change of view. The fact that the two-fold reliance on multiple subjects has emerged out of an exploration of a single theme suggests a continuity within Husserl's texts. But that is not enough to support the claim that there is continuity. After all, the exploration of a single theme could lead one's view to evolve and thus instantiate an abandonment of one's early view in favor of an alternative, late view and this would suggest a change of heart. Such a change of heart is not likely in Husserl's case, however, because as de Boer suggests, there is more than an accidental thematic continuity displayed in Husserl's thought. Husserl's work exhibits ``a distinct unity'' and the major theme of his philosophy is ``ever more consistently unfolded, and consequently the ¢nal phase of his thinking can be regarded as the culmination of all previous phases.''4 In addition to the thematic continuity, my claim about cosistency of Husserl's thought can be supported on at least two other fronts: the relationships between the texts; and what is articulated in The Crisis itself. First, when looking at the ``progression'' of the texts, one can see that after Ideas, which in some ways was a furthering of and response to the Logical Investigations,5 each subsequent introduction gets at something that is a condition of possibility for the previous one. That is, although Husserl didn't articulate it this way, the three texts seem to give rise to and come out of one another with some continuity.6 The previous chapters have outlined that continuity by moving forward, chronologically, and presenting each text as giving rise to some question that is then addressed in the subsequent

Empathy-Knowledge Link(s)

99

text. The continuity can be seen when looking backward as well. That is, the discussion of horizons in The Crisis explains how it is that one has the preawareness of other subjects that is required for pairing (so central in the Cartesian Meditations) to come to fruition and Husserl's theory of empathy to work. And the theory of empathy in the Cartesian Meditations shows how it is possible that there is the interaction between multiple subjects necessary for the critical debate required for the establishment of the de jure apodicticity and intersubjective harmony at work in Ideas. Ultimately, then, there is a sense in which it is The Crisis that uncovers conditions of the possibility of one having an intentional experience as described in Ideas (i.e., one in which one perspective refers to other perspectives and the whole complex is the intentional object).7 I have argued that Ideas emphasizes a reliance on empathy as a means for solidifying one's knowledge. Although it is not the emphasis in Ideas, but rather left unsaid, the ¢rst introduction to phenomenology also entails a reliance on the other role of empathy: making objects of knowledge accessible. The view o¡ered in Ideas relies on the notions of intentionality and noematic ful¢llment. Consciousness is directed toward and constitutive of the meaning of objects. An element of all conscious activity, then, is the meaning the act has for the agent. That is to say, to be conscious is to be conscious of something, but the of something is a meaningful unity of some sortöit is some-thing. The noema is the meaning element of the conscious act and is thus that by which the object is available for consciousness. The view o¡ered in Ideas relies upon each subject having access to noemata. That access is implicit in the doctrine of noematic ful¢llment, but the text does not o¡er an adequate explanation of the source of the meaning involved in each conscious act. The explanation was, however, o¡ered by The Crisis in its discussions of the empathetic-communication community and the intersubjective life-world. That is, the view o¡ered by Husserl's late writings was implied by what Quentin Lauer called ``the ¢rst of all phenomenological intuitions''ö the view that consciousness is intentional.8 The doctrine of The Crisis underlies the view in Ideas, but the relationship moves in the other direction too. Even within the life-world, the description of intentionality in terms of the noema rings true. That is, despite the fact that Husserl wrote very little about noemata in The Crisis (at least not with that terminology),9 he still held that consciousness is intentional (e.g., C 85, 168) and his descriptions of intentionality from Ideas and the Cartesian Meditations do not contradict what he claimed in The Crisis. In fact, they can be read into The Crisis without doing violence to the view o¡ered in the late text. For example, in discussing sense perception in The Crisis, Husserl articulated the view, from Ideas, that the noema of one's conscious act

100

Husserl's Phenomenology

refers to an entire noematic complex and the entire complex is the intentional object. When writing, in The Crisis, of the perspectival nature of sense perception and of the way that the object ``seen'' is a synthesis of the perspectives that can be taken in with the eyes, Husserl o¡ered a description that could just as easily found itself in Ideas (other than the change in terminology): the pure thing seen, what is visible ``of '' the thing, is ¢rst of all a surface, and in the changing course of seeing I see it now from this ``side,'' now from that, continuously perceiving it from ever di¡ering sides. But in them the surface exhibits itself to me in a continuous synthesis; each side is for consciousness a manner of exhibition of it. This implies that, while the surface is immediately given, I mean more than it o¡ers. Indeed, I have ontic certainty of this thing [as that] to which all the sides at once belong (C 157^58). The language is di¡erent, but the dynamic at work here is clearly the same as that described in Ideas according to which something might be ``viewed'' from one perspective, but the other perspectives are apperceived and the synthesized whole is perceived. In following Husserl's treatment of empathy and of objectivity (in each of its senses), we can see, then, that each introduction opens a discussion that is pursued in the following one so that one ``£ows'' into the other in the sense that each investigates a condition of the possibility of the previous introduction. Yet, the discussion of constitution and noematic ful¢llment in Ideas explains how it is that one can have access to objects in the life-world; thus, the three introductions spiral, one into the nextöin a sense, neither is ``¢rst'' nor ``last''öand each turn of the spiral takes the investigator closer to the Objective validity which was Husserl's goal. The Crisis itself also o¡ers support for my claim that the move from Ideas to The Crisis is not indicative of a radical change of heart by Husserl regarding the role(s) of empathy in the attainment and solidi¢cation of knowledge. Despite the general shift in emphasis from the meditating ego to the intersubjective life-world as the source of meaning and the basis of knowledge, Husserl showed that he had not entirely let go of the view o¡ered in Ideas and the Cartesian Meditations. In The Crisis, Husserl addressed a paradox faced by phenomenology that was mentioned but not fully discussed in Ideasöthe paradox of subjectivity. The paradox is that of how ``a component part of the world, its human subjectivity, [can] constitute the whole world?'' (C 179). This is the paradoxical question of how the subject can be both the constitutor of and an object in the world. At the core of

Empathy-Knowledge Link(s)

101

his ``resolution'' of the paradox (C 182¡), Husserl turned to a view that is very much like the isolationist, individualistic view of Ideas and the Cartesian Meditations rather than the communal view that is the focus in The Crisis. This indicates that even though some of the terminology has changed, and the emphasis has shifted from subjectivity to intersubjectivity, the late text does not represent a total abandonment of the view o¡ered in his ¢rst introduction to phenomenology. Husserl clung to much of what is asserted in the earlier texts. As he was working through the intersubjective approach o¡ered in The Crisis, Husserl criticized the path to the phenomenological reduction taken in Ideas and the Cartesian Meditations (his so-called ``Cartesian Way''). His complaint against this way into the phenomenological reduction was that it seems to lead to an ego ``apparently empty of content . . . so one is at a loss, at ¢rst, to know what has been gained by it'' (C 155). Despite that criticism, however, Husserl had not entirely broken ties with the earlier starting point. He went so far in The Crisis to essentially restate it: only by starting from the ego and the system of its transcendental functions and accomplishments can we methodically exhibit transcendental intersubjectivity and its transcendental communalization, through which, in the functioning system of ego-poles, the ``world for all,'' and for each subject as world for all, is constituted (C 185^86). This is the same stance that is at the core of the view o¡ered in Ideas and in the ¢rst four of the Cartesian Meditations. Consequently, whether or not it sits comfortably with the rest of the text, Husserl, in The Crisis, did rely on an individualistic view in which the ego is the basis of all knowledge in addition to the intersubjective view in which the life-world is the basis of all knowledge. What Husserl's three introductions present, then, is not two or three separate and di¡erent views about the relationship between empathy and knowledge. What they present is a view in which there are two di¡erent strands at work.10 In some texts one strand is emphasized. In other texts, the other strand is emphasized. Yet both are at play throughout, even if only implicitly. Consequently, we can return to the summative table o¡ered in the introductory chapter and see that it really does need to be read simultaneously in both directions, horizontally. It is tempting to read this table left to right based on chronology (Ideas ! the Cartesian Meditations ! The Crisis, as I have treated the texts) or right to left based on the conditions of the possibility (The Crisis makes possible the theory of empathy in the Cartesian Meditations that makes possible some of what is asserted in Ideas).

102

Husserl's Phenomenology

However, since the discussion in Ideas on many key issues (intentionality, for example) informs The Crisis just as The Crisis and Meditations inform Ideas, the table should be read in both directionsöor as a circle that does not suggest a direction by default.

After all, The Crisis underlies Ideas (for the late text explains how it is that one can ``have'' a meaningful intentional object in the ¢rst place) and following through with the issues raised in Ideas leads to The Crisis.

5.3 Two Paths: A Decision Not Made The realization that multiple subjects are involved in the attainment and solidi¢cation of one's knowledge appears to £y in the face of any strong commitment Husserl might have had to a uni¢ed transcendental ego at the basis of his epistemology. After all, the uni¢ed transcendental ego is usually

Empathy-Knowledge Link(s)

103

thought of as an individual entity, not some sort of intersubjective community. This raises the question of the extent to which Husserl's phenomenology, based on the reading developed in the previous chapters, deserves the title ``transcendental''öa title to which Husserl adamantly adhered in each of his introductions to phenomenology (e.g., Ideas 253, CM 34, 250, C 100, 205f ). A philosophy is usually considered transcendental, at least according to Kant and many after him, if it investigates the a priori mode of knowledge of objects and conditions of the possibility of knowledge.11 Others have suggested that a transcendental philosophy is one that investigates what makes experience meaningful. Merleau-Ponty has taken a slightly di¡erent tack by suggesting that ``a philosophy becomes transcendental . . . by considering itself as a problem.''12 These conceptions are not as di¡erent as they might ¢rst seem and they can be combined. The following declaration shows that Husserl agreed with such a description of transcendental philosophy: ``I myself use the word `transcendental' in the broadest sense of the original motif . . . of inquiring back into the ultimate source of all the formations of knowledge, the motif of the knower's re£ecting upon himself and his knowing life'' (C 97). In other words, Husserl agreed with the modern tradition in considering a philosophy to be transcendental insofar as it involves re£ection on the ultimate a priori sources of knowledge, the conditions for the possibility of knowledge. The objects of knowledge are objects for us to the extent that they are meaningful and thus a transcendental philosophy is concerned also with the bestowal of meaning, constitution. Given this conception of transcendental, Husserl was right to hold that his was a transcendental project, and there is nothing problematic about his having done so. After all, each of his introductions to phenomenology is a self-re£ective enterprise involving an investigation into the conditions of the possibility of knowledge and into what makes experience meaningful. The discussions of intentionality, noematic ful¢llment, intersubjective horizon, apodictic evidence, life-world, and ideal objects are all part of an investigation of the conditions of the possibility of knowledge. What is problematic, however, is that Husserl went further than merely make the claim that his phenomenology is transcendental because he was re£ectively investigating the conditions of the possibility of our experience and knowledge. He also held that there is a uni¢ed transcendental ego at the core of his thought.13 Husserl conceptualized this ego in di¡erent waysöfrom a mere bundle of lived experiences, to a principle of uni¢cation, to the absolute source from which every intentional act and thus all meaning originates.14 All of these distinctions cannot be fully worked out here, and it is not at all clear that Husserl was both clear and consistent in his terminology and

104

Husserl's Phenomenology

distinctions regarding the various ``egos'' of which he wrote, but a brief look at a few of them will bring to the surface a troublesome tension in Husserl's texts, for there is a ``deep-seated ambiguity'' in Husserl's treatment of the ego.15 The transcendental ego could simply be the required subjectivity involved in any and all intentional activityöas such it is a necessary condition of the possibility of knowledge, but merely as a necessary place-holder and without content. That is to say, as Husserl put it (Ideas ½80), in all my intentional activity ``I am present, actually present,'' but ``if I perform the phenomenological epoche¨, the whole world of the natural setting is suspended, and with it, `I, the man.' '' However, no disconnecting can remove the form of the cogito and cancel the ``pure'' subject of the act. The ``being directed towards,'' ``the being busied with,'' . . . has this of necessity wrapped in its very essence, that it is just something ``from the Ego,'' or in the reverse direction ``to the Ego'' (Ideas 233, cf., Ideas 172). That is to say, in addition to an object, there must be a subject that is conscious of that intentional object and this is a logical necessity of intentionality. This required subject is what Husserl sometimes called the Ego, ``and this Ego is the pure Ego, and no reduction can get any grip on it'' (Ideas 233).16 This characterization of the pure ego as a necessary subject-pole of experience might be able to sit consistently side-by-side with the view that multiple subjects are required for the knowledge, if the pure transcendental ego were either merely a contentless placeholder or communal rather than an individual and personal ego. What makes this characterization of the transcendental ego troublesome for Husserl is that he indicated that the transcendental ego is related to the investigating person, the empirical ego (e.g., Ideas 166, CM 100, C 186, 264), and he objected to Kant's version of it because it appears to be devoid of content. Having objected to the view of the transcendental ego as the necessary subject-pole of experience on the grounds of its lack of content, Husserl sometimes held that the transcendental ego is the principle of the uni¢cation of consciousness and the underlying source of all experience and knowledge. As Bernet summarizes this aspect of Husserl's view: ``the pure ego is therefore not a simple `bundle' of the lived experiences of a consciousness, it is the common ground of their life.''17 In chapter 3, we saw that the pure ego is the source of the constitution of Other subjects, and thereby the intersubjective world in which we live, according to the Cartesian Meditations (see, e.g.,

Empathy-Knowledge Link(s)

105

CM 100). The uni¢ed transcendental ego is thus, the source of Objectivity and a condition for the possibility of Objectively valid knowledge.18 This view of the transcendental ego, however, is in tension with the view we have seen running through Husserl's works according to which empathy and the intersubjective life-worldönot an atomistic ego puri¢ed through reduction and not any a priori structure or contentöare the ``foundation'' of all knowledge. Husserl's texts lead to this view by continuously questioning his phenomenology and always working to get at the conditions of the possibility for what he had already claimed. Despite the developmental strength of the intersubjective view, however, Husserl held to a view very much like that of the individual as presented in Ideas and the Cartesian Meditationsöeven in his last text, The Crisis, in which the intersubjective life-world is most prominently the source of certainty and knowledge.19 The pull from one approach toward the otheröfrom the uni¢ed, singular ego to the intersubjective life-world, and vice versaöis understandable. When investigating consciousness, intentionality, objects of knowledge, etc., one has no choice but to begin where one is and each of us is an individual in a life-world surrounded and co-constituted by Others. What is found in the course of the reduction is shaped by the way one initially characterizes it. Because I am a subject in the midst of a life-world, I have a decision to make when beginning my phenomenological investigations: do I emphasize the subject or do I emphasize the life-world? This is a question facing Husserl, his interpreters, and his successors. Husserl never de¢nitively answered the question, and this has initiated the careers of many interpreters and successors. For, as Rudolf Bernet has perceptively suggested, many of the di¡erences in interpretations and uses of Husserl's thought can be accounted for because the later phenomenologists ``very often . . . have done nothing more than take a decision where Husserl leaves us with a question mark.''20 In the absence of a de¢nitive answer, I can take the reduction to lead to my experience, and this requires me to get at Others in a manner like that described in the Fifth Meditation. Once I have constituted and validated the existence of other subjects, I can speak in terms of a shared world or the world of our experience.21 Or, I can choose the path emphasizing the intersubjective life-world and take the reduction to lead to our world. Once our world has been constituted, I can uncover myself within that world. The points of commonality between the early and the late texts that helped me argue that Husserl never abandoned the one view in favor of the other indicate that Husserl did not fully commit to one path or the other. After all, those points of commonality remind us that in each introduction,

106

Husserl's Phenomenology

both pathsöindividualistic and intersubjectiveöare considered. The path of the individual was taken by Husserl's great modern predecessors; the path of intersubjectivity is being explored by contemporary social epistemologists and many of Husserl's successors. Husserl remained ambiguous on the question regarding which path is ``right'' or more appropriate. The tension between the views, and Husserl's ambivalence, can be seen when we put the following passages from The Crisis in each other's shadow: Subjectivity is what it isöan ego functioning constitutivelyöonly within intersubjectivity (C 172), and only by starting from the ego and the system of its transcendental functions and accomplishments can we methodically exhibit transcendental intersubjectivity (C 185). Despite Husserl's occasional prioritization of the individualistic path, suggesting that he was unable to abandon that approach for the intersubjective, the two roles of empathy on which Husserl relied suggest that he tried to walk both paths at the same timeöeven if doing so threatens to weaken the sense in which his is a transcendental philosophy. The path taken by focusing on the one role starts with an individual and uncovers or discloses Others who help buttress the individual's knowledge. The path taken by focusing on the other role of empathy emphasizes Others and only in their light does an individual come to have knowledge. There is evidence in his working notes that Husserl saw the ambiguity between the two paths and believed them to be equally legitimate. Husserl's recognition of the ambiguity was quite explicit: ``Reduction to transcendental subjectivity'' proves to be ambiguous. The subjectivity posited in the epoche¨ can be understood as ``my monadic own,'' the . . . subjectivity of the phenomenologizing ego, or as the transcendental intersubjectivity which encloses that subjectivity in itself.22 Rather than take a stand regarding the most fruitful approach for a transcendental phenomenology, Husserl suggested that either of the paths, either way of looking at the reduction, can be legitimately pursued: If one understands ``subjectivity'' to be the primordial concrete ego, the I-pole as pole of one's actual and possible acts, and as concretely with

Empathy-Knowledge Link(s)

107

them (thus as the pole of one's experiences and of what is inseparable from them), then we have, as a parallel concept, concrete intersubjectivity as the totality of the primordially concrete egos.23 Notice that Husserl said the concepts are parallel. He did not suggest that they can be pursued simultaneously, and he did not really answer the question of which is the more fruitful or appropriate path to take. It makes little sense, here, to try to psychoanalyze Husserl in order to ``see'' why he did not o¡er a clear and de¢nitive answer. Perhaps it is because he was unwilling or unprepared to bury the modern tradition and break ties with Descartes and Kant. Perhaps it is because he was led to the conception of a uni¢ed transcendental ego early on and was, as Schutz put it, stubborn and unwilling to let go of this early conviction.24 Perhaps he did not o¡er that de¢nitive answer because he saw the problems associated with each option. If the individualistic path is taken, and subjectivity is ``¢rst,'' how are an Objective world and Objectively valid knowledge possible? If everything relies on the individual transcendental ego and its sphere of ownness, how is solipsism truly to be avoided and Objectively valid knowledge possible? As the treatment of the Cartesian Meditations in chapter 3 demonstrated, even when it looked like Husserl was taking this individualistic path, he had to rely on the intersubjective realm in order to establish the possibility of such knowledge. If, on the other hand, the intersubjective path is taken, and intersubjectivity is ``¢rst,'' there needs to be some link between myself and Others in order for intersubjectivity to truly occur and in order for me to know anything. Along the lines of The Origin of Geometry, communication is a possible mechanism for such a link. However, this raises questions left unaddressed in Husserl's introductions. Is such communication a necessity or can I in principle think what I think without Others or communication? If the latter is the case, I might have to recreate the scienti¢c experiences that have come before me in order for me to have scienti¢c knowledge now. If such communication is not a necessity, how can one grow and gain knowledge within the intersubjective realm? Whatever the answers to these questions about communication, the turn to the intersubjective realm for establishing Objectively valid knowledge would eliminate the a priori or foundational aspect of Husserl's view and make questionable the extent to which such a phenomenology could called ``transcendental'' in the way that Husserl wanted. I opened this book with the suggestion that, like the protagonist of Matthew Arnold's poem, Husserl was wandering between two worlds. Husserl's continual return to an atomistic transcendental ego, even after he put that sort of epistemology into its grave by establishing the role of

108

Husserl's Phenomenology

Others in the attainment and validation of knowledge, is another instance of this wandering. Despite his reluctance to leave the more traditional, atomistic, approach behind and whole-heartedly embrace the intersubjective path, the introductions to phenomenology published by Edmund Husserl open the door to a new, more social approach to epistemology. Consequently, we should consider whether Schmitt and Corlett have been mistaken in identifying social epistemology as a ¢eld that opened up in the 1980s and 1990s.25 Husserl's epistemology was clearly social in the sense that Schmitt and Corlett use the term. Even if it was not seen as such for ¢fty years or so, Husserl's work brought into view a new world in which knowledge relies upon a social dimension. With this new world comes a host of questions Husserl did not bring himself to answeröopening the door to a new realm for his successors to explore.

Notes Preface 1.

2.

3.

J. Angelo Corlett, Analyzing Social Knowledge (Lanham [MD]: Rowman and Little¢eld, 1996), ix. The term ``atomistic'' as applied to epistemology is one I borrow from Corlett. Social epistemology is generally considered to be the ``study of the relevance of social relations, roles, interests, and institutions to knowledge. . . . Social epistemology centers on the question whether knowledge is to be understood individualistically or socially'' (Frederick F. Schmitt, ``Socializing Epistemology: An Introduction through Two Sample Issues'' in Socializing Epistemology: TheSocial Dimensions of Knowledge [Lanham: Rowman and Little¢eld, 1994], 1). This de¢nition is echoed by Corlett: ``by socialepistemology I mean the philosophical study of human knowledge obtained by individuals in a social context or by certain collectives'' (Analyzing Social Knowledge, 73). Both Schmitt and Corlett o¡er brief overviews of social epistemology in the opening pages of their books. I will not enter into discussion with the social epistemologists here, but I will o¡er a view of Husserl's epistemology that might make one wonder whether social epistemology had already been around several decades before Schmitt and Corlett suggest. In all fairness, there have been a few treatments of intersubjectivity and its relationship to objectivity. Standing out as the best of them are the books by Dan ZahaviöHusserl und die Transzendentale IntersubjektivitÌt: Eine Antwort auf die sprachpragmatische Kritik (Dordrecht, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996)öand Georg RÎmppöHusserl's PhÌnomenologie der IntersubjectivitÌt: Und ihre Bedeutung fur eine theorie intersubjektiver ObjektivitÌt und die Konzeption einer phanomenologischen Philosophie (Dordrecht, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992). My presentation has some points of contact and similarity with these works, but they both focus on the posthumously published manuscripts (working notes and drafts, primarily) that have been called the Intersubjectivity Materials (Hua XIII^ XV: Zur PhÌnomenologie der IntersubjektivitÌt. Text aus dem NachlaÞ. Erster Teil, 1905^ 1920, Zweiter Teil, 1921^1928, Dritter Teil, 1929^1935, ed. Iso Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1973). My work di¡ers signi¢cantly in tracing out the role of the experience of others as other subjects in the attainment of objectively valid knowledge as presented in the three introductions to phenomenology Husserl prepared for publication.

110

Notes to pp. 1^3

Chapter 1 1. Matthew Arnold, ``Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse,'' (lines 85^86) in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. II, 5th ed., ed by M.H. Abrams (Boston: W.W. Norton, 1986), 1389. 2. If you are looking for a more complete introductory treatment of Husserl, there are many good texts available. Among the best are Dermot Moran's Introduction to Phenomenology (London, New York: Routledge, 2000)öwhich not only o¡ers four chapters on Husserl, focusing on the works Husserl published, but also a chapter on Husserl's predecessors and chapters treating some of Husserl's students and successorsöand Bernet, Kern & Marbach's An Introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology (Evanston [IL]: Northwestern University Press, 1993)öwhich o¡ers a comprehensive treatment of Husserl's thought in a manner that is both thematic and chronological. Bernet, Kern & Marbach's thematic treatment focuses on issues on which controversies have centered and thus introduces the reader not only to Husserl's phenomenology, but also into the living tradition of phenomenology. 3. Robert C. Solomon, From Rationalism to Existentialism: The Existentialists and their Nineteenth-Century Backgrounds (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1972), 143. See, also, Ideas ½62. 4. Although Husserl often wrote as if reduction and epoche¨ are the same process, there is a distinction to be made. Interestingly, there is disagreement as to what that distinction is. Elisabeth StrÎker, for example, suggests that ``the distinction may be properly restored by seeing in the transcendental reduction the measure that leads to the attitude of the epoche¨'' (Husserl's Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. Lee Hardy [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993], 60n34). While StrÎker says that the reduction makes the epoche¨ possible, Dan Zahavi argues that the relationship is the reverseöthe epoche¨ makes the reduction possible (Husserl und die transzendentale IntersubjektivitÌt: Eine Antwort auf die sprachpragmatische Kritik [The Hague: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996], 7^8). Zahavi's reading is more appropriate: the epoche¨ is a bracketing, a suspending of judgment (StrÎker agrees with this), and by doing this, the reduction which leads us from the natural attitude to a transcendental attitude is possible. The two are interconnected (one does not perform the reduction except by performing the epoche¨, and the epoche¨ leads to the reduction) and since it is only on analysis that the two can really be separated, conceptually, and following Husserl's occasional lead, I will generally con£ate the terms or not use them as if they had been distinguished in any technical way. 5. Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement (The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1960), vol. 1, 83. 6. Marven Farber, ``The Ideal of a Presuppositionless Philosophy,'' in Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl, ed. Marvin Farber (Cambridge [MA]: Harvard University Press, 1940), 55. 7. Byron Dare, Don Welton & William Coe, Concepts of Leisure in Western Thought: A Critical and Historical Analysis (Debuque [IA]: Kendal/Hunt, 1987), 234.

Notes to pp. 3^5 8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

111

Dermot Moran (147) cites Philip J. Bossert as cataloging eight di¡erent forms of reduction in The Crisis. See, e.g., Ideas ½56 or C 186 (suggesting a plurality of reductions) or CM 21 (where he runs most of them together as a ``transcendental-phenomenological reduction''). David Michael Levin, in Reason and Evidence in Husserl's Phenomenology (Evanston [IL]: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 19, 24. See, e.g., Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, vol. 2, 690. David Bell, in Husserl (London, New York: Routledge, 1990) summarizes: Husserl's guiding thought is a simple one: If ontological commitment is the source of philosophical naivety, then the way to remove that naivety would be to remove those commitments. And the . . . reduction is just that: it is a procedure for reducing to zero the ontological commitments that comprise the natural attitude (Husserl, 164).

Bell's text is quite good as far as it goes, but since he is unable to see how the reductions are possible (Husserl, 162) and since Husserl maintained that anyone who misses the reductions cannot fully understand his thought, Bell might be more dependable for exegesis and basic criticism than he is as a guide into the intricacies of Husserl's thought. 13. Suzanne Cunningham, Language and the Phenomenological Reductions of Edmund Husserl (The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1976), 9. 14. Several well-meaning and thoughtful commentators have made the unfortunate mistake of reading Husserl's constitution of the world as a creative act, in the metaphysical sense. This the creative-idealist reading of Husserl is an interpretation to which Husserl objected. James Mensch's Intersubjectivity and Transcendental Idealism (Albany [NY]: State University of New York Press, 1988) on pp. 2^4 combined with 24, for example, appears to present Husserl as such a creative-idealist. Thoedore de Boer explicitly accepts and defends the creative-idealist reading of Husserl in The Development of Husserl's Thought, trans. Theodore Plantinga (The Hague, Boston: Martinus Nijho¡, 1978). For example, de Boer suggests that by means of the reduction, Husserl ``seeks to show that the world of natural science and the world of perception are dependent on consciousness for their existence'' (de Boer, 338)ödespite Husserl's claims that the world depends on consciousness for meaning (meaning, not existence). Roman Ingarden's On the Motives Which Led Husserl to Transcendental Idealism, trans. Arnor Hannibalsson (The Hague, Boston: Martinus Nijho¡, 1975) appears to be the father of this creative-idealist reading of Husserl, or perhaps one of its ¢rst sons. Since he was o¡ering such a reading while Husserl was still alive and writing (there are letters from Husserl objecting to Ingarden's reading), Ingarden was clearly one of the earliest to o¡er such a reading and then to criticize Husserl based on that [mis]interpretation.

112

Notes to pp. 6^11

15. Paul Ricoeur, Husserl: An Analysis of his Phenomenology, trans. Edward G. Ballard & Lester E. Embree (Evanston [IL]: Northwestern University Press, 1967), 91. 16. Cunningham, 12. 17. Ricoeur, Husserl, 91. 18. Ezarim Koha¨k, Idea and Experience: Edmund Husserl's Project of Phenomenology in Ideas I (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 35^36. 19. For examples, see, respectively, Bernet, Kern & Marbach, 88; Dorion Cairns, ``Theory of Intentionality in Husserl,'' ed. Lester Embree, Fred Kersten & Richard M. Zaner, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology (May 2001), 116; Bernet, Kern & Marbach, 59; Anthony J. Steinbock, Home and Beyond: Generative Phenomenology after Husserl (Evanston [IL]: Northwestern University Press, 1995), 14; David Michael Levin, 12. 20. Rudolf Bernet, ``Husserl,'' trans. Lilian Alweiss & Steven Kupfer in A Companion to Continental Philosophy, ed. Simon Critchley & William R. Schroeder (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 199. 21. In adopting these distinctions, I am following Dorian Cairns' translator's note to the Cartesian Meditations and his Guide for Translating Husserl (The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1973). 22. See, for example, Henry Pietersma, ``Truth and the Evident,'' in Husserl's Phenomenology: A Textbook, ed. J.N. Mohanty & William R. McKenna (Pittsburgh: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology and University Press of America, 1989), 216. 23. See Iso Kern's editor's introduction to Edmund Husserl, Zur PhÌnomenologie der IntersubjectivitÌt. Text aus dem NachlaÞ. Erster Teil. 1905^1929, ed. Iso Kern (The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1973), xxvi. Hereafter, this volume will be cited as Hua XIII. 24. The fact that the three Husserliana volumes on Intersubjectivity span the years 1905^35 (and Husserl died in 1938) attests to the degree to which empathy and intersubjectivity concerned Husserl unendingly. 25. Kern, in his introduction to Hua XV, cites a letter from Husserl to an acquaintance from March 1931 as saying that ``the largest and, I believe, most important part of my life's work is still in my manuscripts which, in their range, could hardly be surpassed'' (editor's introduction, Hua XV, lxvi). 26. Hua XIII, XIV, XV contain, in total, more than 2000 pages (over 1700 pages of Husserl's text, over 100 pages of editor's introductions, and over 170 pages of appendixes and notes). For the development of Husserl's thought on intersubjectivity and empathy within these volumes, see Iso Kern's introductions to the volumes. Natalie Depraz, ``Les ¢gures de l'intersubjectivite¨: E¨tudes des Husserliana XIII^XIV^XV Zur IntersubjectivatitÌt,'' Archives de Philosophie, 55 (1992), 479^ 98, o¡ers a summary of Kern's introductions to the volumes and then argues that, in those texts, there can be found three di¡erent approaches that coincide with the three ways into phenomenology outlined by Kern in his famous article ``Die drei Wege zur transzendental-phaenomenologischen Reduktion in der Philosophie Edmund Husserls,'' Tijdschrift voor Filoso¢e, 24 (1962), 303^49 which is available

Notes to pp. 11^18

113

in English as ``The Three Ways to the Transcendental Phenomenological Reduction in the Philosophy of Edmund Husserl,'' in Husserl: Expositions and Appraisals, ed. Frederick A. Elliston & Peter McCormick (Notre Dame [IN]: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977), 126^49. Also of interest, not so much in terms of Husserl's development, but in terms of summaries of the volumes themselves and initial commentary are: Gisbert Ho¡man, ``Zur PhÌnomenologie der IntersubjectivatitÌt,'' Zeitschrift fÏr philosophische Forschung, 29 (1975), 138^49 and Peter McCormick, ``Husserl and the Intersubjectivity Materials,'' Research in Phenomenology, 6 (1976), 167^190. As noted earlier, both Zahavi and RÎmpp put these volumes to extensive work in their books on intersubjectivity. A careful reading of both would o¡er insight to the three massive volumes from Husserl. 27. Eugen Fink, ``DiscussionöComments by Eugen Fink on Alfred Schutz's Essay, `The Problem of Transcendental Intersubjectivity in Husserl,''' in Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers III: Studies in Phenomenological Philosophy, ed. Ilse Schutz with an introduction by Aron Gurwitsch (The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1966), 86. 28. For a very di¡erent sort of argument that, according to Husserl, all knowledge is intersubjective, and thus involves Others, turn to the works of both RÎmpp and Zahavi. They argue it convincingly based largely on the Intersubjectivity texts and approaching the issues very di¡erently than I am approaching them here.

Chapter 2 1.

2. 3.

Walt Whitman, ``Song of Myself,'' (lines 1^3) in The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, 2nd ed., ed by Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Claire (Boston: W.W. Norton, 1988), 20. The second role of empathy, the furthering of knowledge, comes more explicitly to the fore in The Crisis of European Sciences (the focus of chapter 4). See, for example, Logical Investigations, volume II, trans. J.N. Findlay (New York: Humanities Press, 1970), 726, where Husserl concluded that ``a purely signitive presentation is without any fulness, and that all fulness rather resides in the actual `making present' (VergegenwÌrtigung) of properties that pertain to the object itself '' or 728 where he reminded us that: Signitive intentions are in themselves ``empty'' and . . . they ``are in need of fulness.'' . . . A signitive intention merely points to its object, an intuitive intention gives it ``presence,'' in the pregnant sense of the word, it imports something of the fulness of the object itself.

4.

For a more complete, yet still summative, treatment of knowledge and ful¢llment in the Logical Investigations, see David Bell, Husserl (London, New York: Routledge, 1990), chapter 3; or Bernet, Kern, & Marbach, An introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology (Evanston [IL]: Northwestern University Press, 1973), chapter 6.

114

Notes to pp. 18^21

5. Theodor W. Adorno, Against Epistemology: A Metacritique, trans. Willis Domingo (Cambridge [MA]: MIT Press, 1982), 149. 6. Several others have made this point and published careful arguments for it. See, for example, Bernet, Kern & Marbach who suggest that Husserl's doctrine of ful¢llment and evidence in the Logical Investigations ``appears to be questionable. Since the demand for adequate self-givenness of the object cannot be satis¢ed in large areas of scienti¢c cognition . . .'' (Bernet, Kern & Marbach, 187). 7. GÏnther Patzig, ``Husserl on Truth and Evidence,'' in Readings on Edmund Husserl's Logical Investigations, ed. J.N. Mohanty (The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1977), 194. 8. I'm not saying anything new here. Others have o¡ered this or a similar critique of the doctrine of ful¢llment in the Logical Investigations. See, for example: Bell, 146¡; Bernet, Kern & Marbach, 187; Adorno, 149. 9. See, e.g., Ideas 397 where Husserl indicates that the adequate appearing of objects is an ``Idea (in the Kantian sense)'' and that as an idea, it is ``the complete givenness [which] is . . . prescribedöas a connexion of endless processes of continuous appearing . . . a continuum of appearances.'' 10. Unlike some other thinkers, Husserl used ``meaning'' in both a linguistic and a nonlinguistic way. Husserl made the distinction between sensuous or perceptual meaning (Sinn) and conceptual or logical meaning (Bedeutung) which is expressible in language. It is, for example, an ordinary occurrence for someone to see an object, recognize it at some level, and examine its propertiesöall without recourse to linguistic meaning. But if the object is a tree and one thinks or asserts ``this is a tree,'' new intentional structures unite with the perceptual sense to produce linguistic meaning (Ideas ½124). 11. See, e.g., Erazim Koha¨k, Idea and Experience: Edmund Husserl's Project of Phenomenology in Ideas I (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 103. 12. The term noema appears to have been ¢rst used by Husserl in a draft of Ideas in 1912 (Rudolf Bernet, La Vie du suject: Reserches sur l'interpre¨ tation de Husserl dans la phe¨ nome¨ nologie [Paris: PUF, 1994], 73n.1). 13. Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers III: Studies in Phenomenological Philosophy, ed. Ilse Schutz with an introduction by Aron Gurwitsch (The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1966), 6. 14. On this point, also see Bell, 179. 15. John J. Drummond, ``The Structure of Intentionality,'' in The New Husserl: A Critical Reader, ed. Donn Welton (Bloomington [IN]: Indiana University Press, 2003), 71. 16. Koha¨k, 58¡. Note that Husserl's examples are in terms of experiences, not objects as they might stand ``outside'' of being experienced. 17. The doctrine put forth holds for all conscious-intentional acts, not just perception. Anger may evaporate or, when re£ected upon, alter slightly, but perception is a steady and repeatable source of insight (Ideas 198^99). Because sense perception is always available for inspection, Husserl's primary examples are in terms of perception of physical entities. As Dermot Moran puts it: ``Normally, our sense perceptions are not clouded, nor do they evaporate when re£ected on. They come

Notes to pp. 21^24

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

115

to grips with things in full bodily presence'' (Introduction to Phenomenology [London: Routledge, 2000], 128). Even though Husserl used perceptual examples as paradigmatic examples, they are just thatöexamples of the relationships under investigation (see, e.g., Ideas 117^18, 265). The term ``apperceive'' or ``apperception'' does not appear frequently in Ideas, but Husserl did use the term in other texts. When he used the term, Husserl sometimes used it almost as a synonym for ``perception.'' At other times, he used the term to signify that which exceeds the perspective from which one ``looks'' at something and forms the object as a whole. In a sense, we can perceive a pro¢le or aspect of an object but other aspects exceed that perception yet they are carried along with itötaken together, they form the intentional object . . . that which we apperceive. See, also, Donn Welton, The Other Husserl: The Horizons of Transcendental Phenomenology, (Bloomington [IN]: Indian University Press, 2000), 176. Here, I am focusing on the tree part of the experience of looking at the blossoming apple tree in the garden. The process and description work the same way for the apple part of the experience and the blossoming part, etc. (except that the expectations and meanings are di¡erent). Articulation of it is more complicated and di¤cult when it comes to the with pleasure part (largely because the movement toward ful¢llment of the noematic complex involves processes other than sense perception), but the same sort of noematic description applies to the with pleasure aspect of my experience of looking with pleasure at a blossoming apple tree in the garden. I have characterized the noema as that through which one grasps the objectöthe intentional object not some thing-in-itself, out there in the ``real world.'' I see a tree, not the noema, but I see a tree because my perceptual act involves a noema which refers to other noemata, the complex system of which constitutes the tree. This reading follows rather naturally from the text, but there is nothing akin to a consensus regarding the status of noemata. For discussion of signi¢cant contributions to this particular debate, see, among others, John J. Drummond, ``The Structure of Intentionality''; Robert C. Solomon, ``Husserl's Concept of the Noema''; and Dermot Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology, 155¡. Care should be taken here to avoid confusion about this claim. The point is that Husserl's doctrine of noematic ful¢llment is open-ended in the sense that ful¢llment is never ``complete'' and it allows for one being certain, and having appropriate evidence to warrant that certainty, but still being wrong or being found, in retrospect, to have been wrong. Even on this account, however, no one is in a position to say and believe that ``I am certain, but I might be wrong.'' Such a statement would be contradictory: one cannot simultaneously be certain of something and also doubt it, and that is precisely what the statement ``I am certain, but I might be wrong'' indicates. It is a statement that is antithetical to Objectivity and thus to Husserl's project. Husserl's term here is Evidenz and Boyce Gibson translates it as ``self-evidence.'' There is some disagreement among commentators as to how this is best translated

116

23.

24.

25. 26. 27.

28.

29.

Notes to pp. 24^26 into English. Some hold, like Boyce Gibson, that ``self-evidence'' is the appropriate choice and that translation is in line with the current quotation. Others translate it as ``evidence'' but then occasionally con£ate evidence and self-evidence. Still others use ``the evident'' to remind readers that when we are discussing evidence in Husserl, we are discussing ``that which is evident'' rather than an extra quality to be added to other objects. The one word ought to be translated in each of these ways, depending on the context of its use. For the sake of consistency, unless the context makes it inappropriate, I will continue to use ``evidence'' rather than the other common translations. George He¡ernan, ``Miscellaneous Lucubrations on Husserl's Answer to the Question `was die Evidenz sei': A Contribution to the Phenomenology of Evidence on the Occasion of the Publication of Husserliana Volume XXX,'' Husserl Studies, 15 (1998), 42. It is only fair to acknowledge here that Husserl did do considerable work regarding bringing into the spotlight that which is sometimes in the shadows in Ideas. In the following chapters, I will argue that one of the tasks of the Cartesian Meditations and The Crisis of the European Sciences is to trace out and make explicit some of what was only implicit in Ideas. See, e.g., He¡ernan, 41. See, e.g., Joseph J. Kockelmans, A First Introduction to Husserl's Phenomenology (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1967), 162^63. See, also, James Mensch, Intersubjectivity and Transcendental Idealism (Albany [NY]: State University of New York Press, 1988), 34, 63^64; David Michael Levin, Reason and Evidence in Husserl (Evanston [IL]: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 57^58; or Bernet, Kern & Marbach, 129. Although many commentators give this point no attention, it has been noted by some. Kathleen Haney, for instance, in ``Husserl's Critique of Reason,'' Analecta Husserliana, 34 (1991), 393, writes: ``According to Husserl, there are two orders of intuitive evidence for meaning constitution: 1) adequate evidence as the limit case toward which perceptual intuitions tend, and 2) apodictic evidence through which essences can be experienced.'' Cf., Koha¨k, or Bernet, Kern & Marbach, 125^30. Several other contemporary commentators (including, but not limited to, StrÎker and So¡er), however, still do not see this distinction. A few of those commentaries will be discussed shortly. Since this is Husserl's principle of all principles, a word of clari¢cation is in order. W.R. Boyce Gibson uses ``primordial dator Intuition'' for the German originÌr gebende Anschauung. ``Intuition'' works well for Anschauung. The di¤culties are with originÌr and gebende. In terms of the sense of the passage, Boyce Gibson has done a fair job by o¡ering ``primordial'' for originÌröexcept that ``originary'' or ``originally'' might be better since Husserl did, in other instances, use the word primordinal (see Dorian Cairns, Guide for Translating Husserl [The Hague: Nijho¡, 1973], 88). The important point is that such an intuition is ¢rst, not derivative of others.

Notes to pp. 26^30

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

117

As far as gebende goes: in the sense that ``dator'' means ``object-giving,'' Boyce Gibson's translation su¤ces. Unfortunately, this is not a common usage in English, so this translation does not help us garner the point of the passage. Cairns suggests ``giving,'' ``presentive'' (i.e., presenting), or ``bestowing.'' He o¡ers ``presentive'' for this passage (Cairns, 56), but ``giving'' is the better translation for a contemporary audience. It may seem as though Husserl's use of originally given intuition as a source of legitimation of knowledge will face the same di¤culties as Husserl's view in the Logical Investigations. There are similarities and points of overlap, but there are also some signi¢cant di¡erences in the two views. For instance, in Ideas Husserl said that such intuition is a source of legitimation, not the source of knowledge. Additionally, as we will see, in Ideas, Husserl o¡ered a way to deal with those instances in which we cannot have adequate access. Harry P. Reeder, ``Husserl's Apodictic Evidence,'' Southwest Philosophical Studies (Spring 1990), 70^88. The distinction between these two sorts of apodicticity is more forcefully present in the Cartesian Meditations and the working out of details about the movement from the one sort of apodicticity to the other will be o¡ered in chapter 3 (which will focus on the Cartesian Meditations). At present, I will o¡er the distinction and then show how it would work within the framework of Ideas. Jose¨ Huertas-Jourda, ``On the Two Foundations of Knowledge According to Husserl,'' in Essays in Memory of Aron Gurwitsch: 1983, ed. Lester Embree (Washington: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology: University Press of America, 1984), 195^211. The ¢rst distinction is the correlation between (a) eidetic truth and (b) state of a¡airs, a state of a¡airs that is eidetic and remains permanent whether it is judged or not. The second correlation is between (a) eidetic act of judging, expressed by judgments or propositions, and (b) what is judged as such, which is the eidetic state of a¡airs as meant, whether that state of a¡airs exists or not. The distinction Husserl was making here is between the judged and the truth: the judged as such is only an eidetic state of a¡airs in a derived or modi¢ed sense compared to the eidetic truth which has the character of generality. See Paul Ricoeur's A Key to Edmund Husserl's Ideas I, trans. Bond Harris & Jacquieline Bouchard Spurlock, ed. Pol Vandevelde (Milwaukee [WI]: Marquette University Press, 1996), 69. Hua III 19: The issue of predication in this passage is more apparent here than in the Boyce Gibson translation. My statements here are based on the German text in consultation with Dorian Cairns' Guide for Translating Husserl. Cf., Bernet (``Perception as a Teleological Process,'' 126) or Haney, cited above (note 28). See also, the Cartesian Meditations 12 (this passage will be treated in chapter 3). Elisabeth StrÎker, Husserl's Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. Lee Hardy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 82. Gail So¡er, in Husserl and the Question of Relativism (Dordrecht, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991), is another who has suggested that for Husserl, in

118

37.

38.

39. 40.

41.

42.

43.

Notes to pp. 30^36 Ideas at least, apodicticity and adequacy ``always go hand in hand'' (121). So¡er is not suggesting that they go hand in hand in the sense that apodicticity brings with it the idea of adequacy. Her suggestion is more literal than that: if one has apodictic evidence, one has adequacy. Levin, for example, in Reason and Evidence in Husserl's Phenomenology, which is still probably the most comprehensive and careful treatment of evidence in Husserl's published works, tends to equate apodicticity and adequacy and both with selfevidence (i.e., transparency). It is on this point that I disagree with Levin: his identi¢cation of apodicticity with transparency or self-evidence. See, for example, the passage quoted earlier about evidence (which can now be seen to be about de facto apodictic evidence): ``[De facto apodictic] evidence, in fact, is not some sort of conscious indicator a¤xed to a judgment . . . calling to us like a mystical voice from a better world: Here is the Truth!'' (Ideas 400). In ½21, Husserl made is clear that he was criticizing such a view by suggesting that the feeling of self-evidence, ``which like a mystical Index veri lends to the judgment a feeling-colouring,'' is just a theoretically invented feeling which is possible only if one has not learned to analyze consciousness (Ideas 87). Cf., Levin, 75. Reeder, 77. The brevity, yet adequacy of this outline of Husserl's phenomenology of reason is greatly indebted to Barry Smith & David Woodru¡ Smith's introduction to the Cambridge Companion to Husserl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 33. That predication is involved in judgment and in truth claims was asserted by Husserl in ½6 (see discussion above). That such language and predication presuppose other subjects follows from the view Husserl argued for in the Logical Investigations (½7) that expressions are framed ``to ful¢ll a communicative function'' and consequently that the speaker/writer necessarily ``desires to share with his auditors.'' Arion L. Kelkel has argued that, for Husserl, ``communication is an eminent function of human language'' and that communication entails other subjects (``Language in Husserl,'' trans. Lester Embree, in Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, ed. Lester Embree, et al (The Hague: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), 402¡. The way in which the perception of another's bodily behavior can lead to the apperception of the Other will be discussed in chapter 3 which focuses on the Cartesian Meditations. It is in there, not in Ideas, that Husserl most thoroughly treated this topic. Dan Zahavi, ``Phenomenology and the Problem(s) of Intersubjectivity,'' in The Reach of Re£ection: Issues for Phenomenology's Second Century, eds. Steven Crowell, Lester Embree, Samuel J. Julian (Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, 2001), 271. Zahavi summarizes this point on pages 271^72 and concludes: ``As a consequence, already prior to my concrete encounter with another subject, intersubjectivity is present as co-subjectivity.''

Notes to pp. 36^39

44.

45.

46.

47.

48.

49.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

119

Jean Paul Sartre also summed up the intrinsic intersubjectivity of experience as he began a discussion of the Cartesian Meditations and Formal and Transcendental Logic. The elements of his summary can also found in Ideas (Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel E. Barnes [New York: Philosophical Library, 1956], 233). I am indebted to David Vessey for pointing this out in a presentation (``Time and the Other: Otherwise than Levinas'') given at the Marquette University Seminar on Phenomenology and Hermeneutics, November 2001. My account of what Husserl wrote in the Lectures of 1910^11 is informed by, and thus indebted to, Vessey's presentation. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution, trans. Richard Rojcewicz & Andre¨ Schuwer (Dordrecht, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989), 417n.1. At least as far as works Husserl actually published go. Husserl did write quite a bit about empathy, intersubjectivity, and related issues in the posthumously published Intersubjectivity Volumes (Hua XIII, XIV, XV). I have come close to making the claim in this chapter that even in Ideas it is through empathy with Others (through education, socialization, upbringing, reading, etc.) that I can see a particular group of hyletic data as a house, for exampleödespite the fact that most of what is presented in Ideas is presented as if I can know things and see houses in isolation and the role of other subjects is primarily to con¢rm that knowledge and move it toward adequacy. This claim will be further explored in chapter 5. They are included in Hua XIII: Zur PhÌnomenologie der IntersubjektivitÌt. Text aus dem nachlaÞ. Erster Teil. 1905^1920, ed. Iso Kern (The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1973) as text 6, pp. 111^235, entitled ``Aus den Vorlesungen Grundprobleme der PhÌnomenologie Wintersemester 1910/11.'' Hua XIII 113. The distinction being made here is between lived body (Leib) and the body as a physical thing (KÎrper). This is the distinction underlying Husserl's claim in Ideas ½53 that the ego must be associated with a part of the physical realm in order to have a world, yet it cannot be a part of that realm if it is to constitute the world and its objects. The distinction will be made more carefully in the Cartesian Meditations and it will be explored more fully by some of Husserl's successors. Hua XIII 114. Hua XIII 115. Husserl revisited this theme of the lived-body as center point in both the Cartesian Meditations and in The Crisis of European Sciences. This account is given in ½4 of the lectures, Hua XIII 115^16. It is from these pages that the quotations and references in the rest of this paragraph come. This account of the lived body and empathy informs the assertions in Ideas about an intersubjective world and empathy as object-giving in a non-primordial way. This second level of apperception is called appresentation; I will discuss it in chapter 3 as I focus on the Cartesian Meditations and o¡er a more thorough account of empathy.

120

Notes to pp. 40^42

Chapter 3 1. Andrew Marvell, ``The De¢nition of Love'' (lines 27^28) in The New Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250^1950, chosen and ed. Helen Gardner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 333. 2. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signs, trans. with an introduction by Richard C. McCleary (Evanston [IL]: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 169. 3. Husserl prepared this preface to the English edition of Ideas two years after the lectures on which the Cartesian Meditations was basedöand the same year that the French version of the Meditations appeared in print. He had been working at the time on the revisions for a German edition. Since he was working on the texts concurrently, we ought to take seriously his own evaluation of the situation and his claim that the Cartesian Meditations ¢lls a gap left in Ideas. 4. Dan Zahavi, ``Husserl's Intersubjective Transformation of Transcendental Philosophy,'' Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 27 (Oct. 1996), 231. See also, David Carr, ``The Fifth Meditation and Husserl's Cartesianism'' in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 34 (1973^74), 14^35. 5. Kathleen Haney, ``The Necessity of Intersubjectivity,'' in The Horizons of Continental Philosophy: Essays on Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, ed. Hugh J. Silverman, et al (Dordrecht, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988): How, then, are objects constituted by transcendental consciousness as ``objective'' (i.e., as not exclusively its private objects)? A transcendental subjectivity constitutes an object as real and independent when it constitutes an object as the possible immanent experience of another person (57). 6. Peter Hutcheson, ``Husserl's Problem of Intersubjectivity,'' Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 2 (1980), o¡ers a critique of some of these early interpreters, especially Sartre and Schutz, for misunderstanding Husserl's phenomenology of intersubjectivity as an attempt to refute solipsism. 7. See, e.g., Haney, ``The Necessity of Intersubjectivity,'' 33. 8. See, e.g., Ideas ½24, CM ½24, C 356. See also David Bell, Husserl (London, New York: Routledge, 1990), 201. This is in accord with the claim by Bernet that Husserl's concern is always with the validity of things as they are given or constituted in experience. It is one of the few things about which there seems to be agreement among the commentators. 9. See also, ½24, entitled ``Evidence as itself-givenness and the modi¢cations of evidence'': ``In the broadest sense, evidence denotes a universal primal phenomenon of intentional life, namely . . . the quite preeminent mode of consciousness that consists in the self-appearance, the self-exhibiting, the self-giving, of an a¡air, and a¡aircomplex (or state of a¡airs), a universality, a value, or other objectivity, in the ¢nal mode: `itself there,' `immediately intuited,' `given originaliter' . . . . being with it itself.'' This statement is reminiscent of the ``Principle of all Principles'' in Ideas.

Notes to pp. 43^49

121

10. George He¡ernan, ``Miscellaneous Lucubrations on Husserl's Answer to the Question `was die Evidenz sei': A Contribution to the Phenomenology of Evidence on the Occasion of the Publication of Husserliana Volume XXX,'' Husserl Studies, 15 [1998], 50. 11. The discussion regarding evidence in the opening pages of the Cartesian Meditations is, then, a re-articulation of what Husserl held in Ideas: the goal is certainty; the means of attaining any degree of certainty is evidential experience; all such experience yields some degree of certainty but the ideal is absolute perfection which is adequate evidence; the more practical sort of perfection (motivated by the ideal of adequacy) is apodicticity; apodicticity is certainty which, on critical re£ection, also includes the inability to imagine otherwise (given the current dataöhowever, the possibility of it coming to be imagined otherwise remains open, if further data make that suggestion). In fact, much of the ¢rst four Meditations re-articulates and further explores the core transcendental ideal project of Ideas. 12. Haney, The Necessity of Intersubjectivity, 33. The current section of this chapter is informed by this essay of Haney's as well as by chapter 3 of her book, Intersubjectivity Revisited (Athens [OH]: Ohio University Press, 1994), which has many points in common with the essay. 13. The Necessity of Intersubjectivity, 37. On page 57, Haney puts it in a way that is in accord with the discussion in chapter 2: How, then, are objects constituted by transcendental consciousness as ``objective'' (i.e., as not exclusively its private objects)? A transcendental subjectivity constitutes an object as real and independent when it constitutes an object as the possible immanent experience of another person. 14. Paul Ricoeur, Husserl: An Analysis of His phenomenology, trans. Edward G. Ballard & Lester E. Embree (Evanston [IL]: Northwestern University Press, 1967), 116. 15. Husserl was doing more here than warning us not to jump to conclusions. What Husserl did here, as Elliston argues, was o¡er, as his ¢rst response to the problem of solipsism, a critique ``against the standpoint from which it is launched: transcendental realism'' (Frederick A. Elliston, ``Husserl's Phenomenology of Empathy,'' in Husserl: Expositions and Appraisals, ed. Frederick A. Elliston & Peter McCormick [Notre Dame (IN): University of Notre Dame Press, 1977], 214). The rest of this paragraph follows Elliston very closely. 16. Elliston, 214^15. 17. Remember, Husserl did not deny or disprove the existence of Others or of objects outside of consciousness when he argued for and performed the phenomenological epoche¨. What he did was refuse to naively assume them to exist in any way other than their existence for the transcendental ego. Thus, there was no need for him to prove the existence of the world, we experience it and now it is our job, according to Husserl, to describe the experience and explain how that experience is possible. 18. Earlier in the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl immersed himself in scienti¢c activity in order to elicit its sense; he approached this new and ``special'' problem of other

122

19.

20.

21.

22. 23.

Notes to pp. 49^53 subjects in a similar manner: he immersed himself into his everyday experiences of others in order to describe the meaning of what presents itself. David Bell, for instance, has serious objections to this new reduction. Not only does he see it as unhelpful and as essentially a statement that ``if you do not wish to beg the question, ignore everything that would beg the question'' (Husserl, 217), but he goes on to call this reduction ``a sham.'' Edward Ballard (``Husserl's Philosophy of Intersubjectivity in Relation to his Rational Ideas,'' Tulane Studies in Philosophy, 11 [1962], 3^38) and Alfred Schutz (Collected Papers III: Studies in Phenomenological Philosophy [The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1966]) also have trouble seeing this as a second reduction. Schutz calls the phrase second reduction ``not a very happy choice of words.'' John Sallis rejects the possibility of this reduction on the grounds that all consciousness is intersubjective (see, e.g., ``On the Limitation of Transcendental Re£ection, or is Intersubjectivity Transcendental?'' Monist, 55 [1971], 320: ``the other is always already implicated even at the most primordial levels of constitutive activity . . . it is impossible to delineate a coherent sphere of ownness as constitutive origin of intersubjectivity''). Sallis' objection seems to make sense, after-the-fact, but if the meditator is operating from a standpoint of ignorance of even her own character, it seems the reduction is possible. It is just that even the sense Other involved in the genesis of the ego is bracketed. Then, once the possibility of experience of the Other is established, and it has been discovered that the transcendental ego is always already intersubjective in nature, the sphere of ownness is revealed as untenable. If one cannot establish the possibility of the sense of the Other, then the notion of an ego which is intersubjective in nature is senseless. Suzanne Cunningham, in Language and the Phenomenological Reductions of Edmund Husserl (The Hague, Boston: Nijho¡, 1976), has argued in this manner, not about the reduction to the sphere of ownness per se, but about the phenomenological, the transcendental and the eidetic reductions of Husserl. She has argued that a language-using consciousness, like Husserl's, ``cannot e¡ectively divorce itself form its social context and is unable, therefore, to perform the radical phenomenological reductions,'' including the reduction to the sphere of ownness. Since the re£ective consciousness in the sphere of ownness is language-using, Cunningham would argue, the Others which language-use presupposes cannot be successfully bracketed and the reduction, in the way Husserl described it, is not possible. Gaston Berger, The Cogito in Husserl's Philosophy, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin, with introduction by James M. Edie (Evanston [IL]: Northwestern University Press, 1972), 88. Berger also reminds us, concerning this last point, that ``My ego . . . can be a world-experiencing ego only by being in communion with others like himself '' (CM 139). Berger, 88^89. As we saw in chapter 2, Husserl asserted this much in Ideas (see Ideas ½53). This dependence on the body suggests that, not only was Husserl no solipsist, as the following pages will show, he was no true intellectualist either, despite having been charged as such.

Notes to pp. 54^58

123

24. CM 103^105. Cf., Elliston, 220. 25. It is interesting to note, as Elliston points out, that the progression to the noematic in the discussion of the sphere of ownness ``parallels the movement of Husserl's Fourth Meditation and marks the expanded and full concept of the self '' (Elliston, 220). In the Fourth Meditation, Husserl identi¢ed in ½31 the self as the empty pole of identity for lived experiences. Every mental act or experience is associated with (performed by or occurs within) one stream of experience. The unity of this stream of experience refers back to a single self to which they all belong. This self (this empty pole of identity) is what Husserl uncovered in ½31. ½32 expanded this notion of the self to include a substrate of habitualities: the self is no longer ``empty'' but has contentöit persists in holding certain values, beliefs, or desires, for instance. Then, in ½33, this second notion of the self is enlarged even further to become a self in the full senseöwhich includes its world of objects and is called ``the monad.'' This progression is signi¢cant. If the self is merely an empty pole of identity or even a pole of identity which persists in having certain beliefs and values, then Husserl's doctrine of constitution looks to be absurd because it looks as though subjectivity is reaching out, through its mental life, to create its objects magically out of nothing. If, however, the self is a monad, complete with objects, there is no magic act. 26. As Husserl put it: ``If it [the other Ego or its subjective processes] were [immediately given in my experience], if what belongs to the other's own essence were directly accessible, it would be merely a moment of my own essence, and ultimately he himself and I myself would be the same'' (CM 109). 27. Because Husserl sometimes used the words interchangeably, so do some of his commentators. Unless commenting on a speci¢c line of a text in which the use is otherwise, I will consistently use ``appresentation'' to be the special case of apperception of an Other. In all other cases, I will use ``apperception.'' I will di¡erentiate between the cases because I can perceive other pro¢les of a thingöby looking at the other side, for exampleöbut I cannot do this with the subjectivity of others without mediation by something like our physical bodies. 28. Haney reminds us that such an inference would not be possible in the sphere of ownness and that ``to claim that the pre-worldly ego performs constitutive acts of analytical inference is an instance of the anachronistic fallacy of predicating on lower levels of consciousness the constitutive achievements possible only on higher levels'' (The Necessity of Intersubjectivity, 37). Also see Intersubjectivity Revisited, 71f. 29. This ``given beforehand'' or ``already-given'' is something not emphasized in Ideas but it does seem to be a necessary condition for Husserl's conception of apperception. This is the source of my concern in chapter 2 that perhaps one cannot apperceive or have noematic complexes in total isolation. 30. This is not to say that the expectations accompanying my appresentation of an Other cannot be ful¢lled (i.e., that there cannot be, what was called in Ideas,

124

Notes to pp. 58^62

noematic ful¢llment of Others). They can be ful¢lled or explodedöbased on the actions and behaviors of the Other, not solely on the further action I takeöbut that will not be clear until the ``mechanism'' of appresentation, pairing, has been outlined. 31. The passage is as follows: On the other hand, experiencing someone else cannot be a matter of just this kind of appresentation [of physical things of external experience], which already plays a role in the constitution of primordial Nature: Appresentation of this sort involves the possibility of veri¢cation by a corresponding ful¢lling presentation (the back becomes the front); whereas, in the case of that appresentation which would lead over into the other original sphere, such veri¢cation must be excluded a priori. How can appresentation of another original sphere, and thereby the sense ``someone else,'' be motivated in my original sphere and, in fact, motivated as experienceöas the word ``appresentation'' (making intended as co-present) already indicates? (CM 109). 32. It should be noted that by motivation or motivates Husserl meant something like ``causality in the transcendental sphere.'' Cf., CM 75: ``it is better to avoid here the expression causality, which is laden with prejudices (deriving from naturalism), and to speak of motivation in the transcendental sphere.'' 33. This is a point missed on many commentators. Most write of a single moment of pairing in the movement from ownness to Other. There have been a couple of commentators who have noticed that there are two acts of pairing involved in the appresentation of an Other. James Mensch (Intersubjectivity and Transcendental Idealism [Albany (NY): State University of New York Press, 1988), and Kathleen Haney (Intersubjectivity Revisited, and ``The Necessity of Intersubjectivity''), for example, both write of the importance of two occurrences of pairing in the movement from ownness to Other. But even they have failed to distinguish the two di¡erent sorts of pairing involved or to remain consistent with regard to the two acts of pairing they identify. 34. This is not entirely unlike Hume's constant conjunction in which the two things always appear in contiguity and in a particular temporal relation (the one always precedes the other). They have been conjoined in this way every time they've been experienced, and this constant conjunction is what motivates the idea of the one being the cause of the other. The cause and the e¡ect are so conjoined that the idea of the one brings with it the idea of the other. See Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, book I, part III (especially section IX). Cf., Hua XV, 496 (a text from late 1932). 35. Williams, ``Intersubjectivity: A Brief Guide,'' in Husserl's Phenomenology: A Textbook, ed. J.N. Mohanty & William R. McKenna (Pittsburgh: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology and University Press of America, 1989), 329. 36. This is not entirely di¡erent from Husserl's notion of external horizonöa notion which will be discussed in chapter 4. 37. Husserl echoed, in the Cartesian Meditations, something he held in 1910/11öthat the body is always inseparably associated with the ego such that the lived body must

Notes to pp. 62^64

125

belong to an ego (e.g., Hua XIII 115) and that the ego ``¢nds itself as having an organic lived body'' (Hua XIII 113). 38. Haney puts this point as follows: In its original, primal experience, the ego is no kind of thing or object among other objects in the world. Recognition of the members of the pair as separate individuals is the constitutive product . . . which cannot be present in initial pairing acts which establish such meanings. In the ¢rst instances, the originary ego is not known to itself as any kind of thing; it cannot reify itself until it has engaged in pairing and reaped its constitutive fruits (Intersubjectivity Revisited, 54). 39. Several commentators use the concept of ratio and analogy to explain how pairing helps motivate the appresentation of the Other. On the one hand, this is both helpful and understandable (for Husserl sometimes called the process ``analogizing apperception''). On the other hand, one needs to take care to keep in mind that Husserl did not have any sort of process of reasoning (either inductive or deductive) or an argument from analogy in mind. Hence, he would be resistant to the sort of description which put the discussion in the form of an argument from analogy. He wrote that ``it is not as though the body over there . . . remained separate from the animate bodily organism of the other Ego, as if that body were something like a signal for its analogue . . .'' (CM 122). Their summaries go something like this (see, e.g., Mensch, Intersubjectivity and Transcendental Idealism, 30; Haney, Intersubjectivity Revisited, 53; or Williams, Intersubjectivity: A Brief Guide, 333^34): If A:B::C:D and we look at ourselves in the sphere of ownness and our perception of the body and behavior of the Other, we can take A to be the meditator's body (KÎrper) and B is the meditator's ego. The meditator perceives the body of the Other (C) and the similarity in appearance and behavior of A and C. The missing term, D, is then easily ¢lled in with the other part of an animate organism pair, the Other's ego. Thus, we have My Body : My Ego :: Other's Body : x The term that completes the proportion or analogy is clearly the Other's Ego. In addition to running the risk of implying a step-by-step process, rather than a simultaneous passive synthesis, this sort of reading is problematic because there is some confusion about what is paired with whatöthe ego of the Other with my ego? or the other body with my body? or the other animate organism with my animate organism? Each is suggested by Husserl, and the proportion/analogy summary accounts rather nicely for the animate organism-animate organism pair, but it does not easily account for the other pairings intimated by Husserl. My reading in terms of a pair of pairingsöeach still a passive synthesisöcan better cope with all the claims Husserl made about pairing. 40. The as if I were there is not supposed to get us to the subjectivity the Other in the sense that is gains us access to the thoughts and experiences of the other subject.

126

Notes to pp. 64^65

According to Husserl (CM 117^18): ``The body that is a member of my primordial world (the body subsequently of the other ego) is for me a body in the mode There. Its manner of appearance does not become paired in a direct association with the manner of appearance actually belonging at the time to my animate organism (in the mode Here); rather . . . it brings to mind the way my body would look `if I were there.' '' This phrase, ``as if I were there,'' has proven to be problematic in the eyes of some commentators. Klaus Held, for example, in ``Das Problem der IntersubjektivitÌt und die Idee einer phÌnomenologischen Transzendentalphilosophie,'' in Perspektiven transzendental-phÌnomenologischer Forschung, ed. U. Claesges & K. Held (The Hague: Nijho¡, 1972), 34¡, sees this locution as pointing to the heart of the failure of Husserl's analogical transfer to reach the Other. In his discussion of pairing, Held describes the transferring of the meaning ``lived body'' to a second body and thereby gaining consciousness of a position other than mine, ``as if I were there.'' Held insightfully points to an ambiguity in the phrase ``as if I were there'' and suggests that neither reading can take the investigator to the Other. The phrase either suggests an act of phantasy (I imagine my lived body there, as if I walked over there and saw the world from that point of view), or it suggests a memory (I was once there and now I remember what it is like to be there). In the ¢rst case, what is reached is not any actuality, and in the second case, what is reached is real, but it is still me and not the Other. This appears as a problem, on the view held by Held, and many others, because the movement from self to Other has been read as a pairing between the inanimate bodies and an analogical transfer of the sense ``me'' from my body to the other body which needs the engine of either imagination or memory to move it. On my reading, the sense is not transferred from one subject to the other subject, it is mutually reawakened. Then, once the possibility of the Other has been established, I can imagine how things would be as if I were there. In this way my experience of the Other shifts the center of the world from me and my sphere of ownness to somewhere between us and o¡ers some stability to my grasp on transcendent reality. 41. See, e.g., the previously cited passage from CM 112: ``what is appresented . . . can never attain actual presence, never become an object of perception proper.'' Or CM 109 where Husserl suggested that if the Other were directly accessible to the meditator, it would not be an Other (see note 26 above). Since the Other is appresented she can never attain actual presence and thus is truly transcendent. 42. See, for example, David Carr's The Fifth Meditation and Husserl's Cartesianism: ``it is by being given to him [the Other] that anything else is objective for me.'' Cf., Dan Zahavi, Husserl's Intersubjective Transformation of Transcendental Philosophy, 231. 43. Paul Ricoeur helps to clarify the phrase Objectivating equalization by reminding us of what the individual terms suggest: ``it is an equalization in the sense that reciprocity [the reciprocity involved in pairing] abolishes the privilege of the single ego, and it is an objecti¢cation in the sense that this reciprocity brings it about that there are only Others. I am an Other among Others'' (Husserl, 136).

Notes to pp. 71^73

127

Chapter 4 1.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, ``Ozymandias'' (line 1), in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. II, 5th edn, ed. M.H. Abrams (Boston: W.W. Norton, 1986), 691. 2. Kabir, ``The Past's Lips Are Not Deceased'' (lines 4^5), in Love Poems from God, ed. & trans. Daniel Ladinsky (London, New York: Penguin Compass, 2002), 237. 3 . See, also, Dan Zahavi's Husserl und die transzendentale IntersubjektivitÌt: Eine Antwort auf die sprachpragmatische Kritik (Dordrecht, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996), chapter 4. 4. Care should be taken to avoid reading Husserl as a system-builder in the tradition of Hegel, but it is as if The Crisis and its turn to the life-world was already underlying the Cartesian Meditations, for the turn to the life-world also puts the meditator and the Other on the sort of equal a plane that the Cartesian Meditations suggested but did not truly make possible. 5. George He¡ernan, ``Miscellaneous Lucubrations on Husserl's Answer to the Question `was die Evidenz sei': A Contribution to the Phenomenology of Evidence on the Occasion of the Publication of Husserliana Volume XXX,'' Husserl Studies, 15 (1998), 52. 6. According to David Carr, in his ``Husserl's Problematic Concept of the LifeWorld,'' in Husserl: Expositions and Appraisals, ed. Frederick A. Elliston & Peter McCormick (Notre Dame [IN]: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977), note 2, the concept of the life-world (Lebenswelt) apparently appeared for the ¢rst time in Husserl's texts, in a 1917 supplement to the second volume of Ideas. The term also appeared in the Cartesian Meditations (CM 136). 7. Something akin to the life-world seems to underlie the view o¡ered in the Cartesian Meditationsöas evidenced by the point made in the previous chapter that the Cartesian Meditations require familiarity with Others before appresentation of them can really occur. Dermot Moran, in Introduction to Phenomenology (London, New York: Routledge, 2000), has suggested that the basic notion of the life-world was already found, under the name ``world of experience,'' in Ideas (181). See also, on this point, David Carr's Phenomenology and the Problem of History (Evanston [IL]: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 172: ``the life-world concept was grasped, if only £eetingly, in the early pages of Ideas . . . .'' 8. The translator of The Crisis, David Carr, has taken into account that true evidence, is, for Husserl, self-evidence. The translation is in terms of self-evidence. The German text o¡ers the statement in terms of ``Evidenz.'' See Carr's translator's note, C 127. 9. He¡ernan, 51. 10. See also, C 128: ``. . . From objective-logical self-evidence (mathematical `insight,' natural-scienti¢c, positive-scienti¢c `insight,' as it is being accomplished by the inquiring and grounding mathematician, etc.), the path leads back, here, to the primal self-evidence in which the life-world is ever pregiven.''

128

Notes to pp. 73^79

11. This statement reminds one of the statements regarding self-evidence from the Cartesian Meditations (e.g., CM 57) and from Ideas (e.g., Ideas 92). 12. See, e.g., his discussion of Locke: ``but in principle we cannot obtain actual representations of the things-in-themselves, representations which adequately express the proper essence of these things. We have adequate representations and knowledge only of what it is in our own soul'' (C 86). 13. Carr, ``Husserl's Problematic Concept of the Life-World,'' 203¡. Much of this and the following paragraph closely follows Carr's discussion. 14. ``Husserl's Problematic Concept of the Life-World,'' 204. 15. See, e.g., C 121 where, after being reminded that everythingöindividual physical objects or persons, properties, data, etc.öis dependent on the life-world as an entirety, the reader is reminded of this with particular focus on the scientist: ``science is a human spiritual accomplishment which presupposes as its point of departure . . . the intuitive surrounding world of life, pregiven as existing for all in common. Furthermore, it is an accomplishment which, in being practiced and carried forward, continues to presuppose this surrounding world as it is given in its particularity to the scientist.'' 16. Husserl wrote that ``every perception has . . . a horizon belonging to its object (i.e., whatever is meant in the perception)'' (C 158). By ``horizon'' Husserl did not mean the visual meeting of earth and sky as we might be tempted to think. This horizon belonging to what is meant in the experience is best thought of as a set of tacit allusions (Bell, Husserl [London, New York: Routledge, 1990], 190) or a series of relationships (Mensch, Intersubjectivity and Transcendental Idealism [Albany (NY): State University of New York Press, 1988], 139f) or perhaps a referring network (Heidegger, Being and Time [New York: Harper and Row, 1962], ½½16¡ ). 17. Husserl, 190. 18. Intersubjectivity and Transcendental Idealism, 139^40, 352. 19. This is, by now, old news. The process of perception here described has much in common with the processes described in Ideas (e.g., ½27, see chapter 2 above) and the Cartesian Meditations (e.g., ½½19 and 20, see chapter 3 above). 20. Husserl put it this way: being is transformed into illusion or simply into being doubtful, being merely possible . . . etc. The illusion is undone through ``correction,'' through changing the sense in which the thing had been perceived. . . . For example, one saw a man, but then, upon touching him, had to reinterpret him as a mannequin (exhibiting itself visually as a man) (C 162). 21. The image that is emerging is one of tiers: one tier is objective-scienti¢c, below that is a tier on which empathy (the consciousness of others as Others) is found, below that tier of empathy is the life-world. At each tier, intersubjectivity (and thus Others) is at work, but our awareness of it di¡ers from tier to tier. One should take care, however, not to read this notion of tiers too literally. The image helps to understand how an investigation of the life-world (in The Crisis) discloses the possibility of empathy (in Cartesian Meditations), but it is not really a

Notes to pp. 79^87

22. 23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29. 30.

31. 32.

129

unidirectional-vertical-linear relationship with the life-world supporting everything. For without subjects, the intersubjectivity and external horizons of the lifeworld are not possible. Husserl, Manuscript C17 84b, c. 1931, as quoted by Dan Zahavi (Husserl und die transzendentale IntersubjektivitÌt 45). It appears that the text which has become The Origin of Geometry was intended by Husserl to become part of the main text of The Crisis. The crisis of the sciences is that they have forgotten that they are based on, or mathematizations and abstractions of, the life-world. The Origin of Geometry o¡ers a way to trek back through the idealities involved in mathematics and the sciences and thus remember their origins. Consequently, my approach to The Origin is as if it were a signi¢cant part of The Crisis proper (rather than a less signi¢cant supplement) except that I will continue to refer to it by title. For a brief discussion of this use of ideal, see Suzanne Cunningham, Language and the Phenomenological Reductions of Edmund Husserl (The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1976), 6, 41, 86. Once again, at the risk of making it appear that Husserl wrote The Crisis with reexplicating CM in mind in a way and with a vigor that Husserl did not, we should notice a connection between the two texts. The central question of The Origin of Geometry is really just a speci¢c articulation of a new focus on the problem with which Husserl troubled himself in the Fifth Meditation: the problem of moving beyond the sphere of the individual to the possibility of Objectively valid knowledge. Derrida credits Husserl with being the ¢rst philosopher to recognize that writing is ``the condition of the possibility of ideal objects and therefore of Objectivity'' (Of Grammatolology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak [Baltimore (MD): Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976], 42^43). With the added emphasis on language, this is quite similar to the reciprocal, mutual, cointending of self and Other in the Cartesian Meditations as well as the intertwining of subject and others in the external horizons of intentional activity, rooted in the life-world. Jacob Klein, ``Phenomenology and the History of Science,'' in Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl, ed. Marvin Farber (Cambridge [MA]: Harvard University Press, 1940), 154¡. Sixth Cartesian Meditation, trans. Ronald Bruzina (Bloomington [IN]: Indiana University Press, 1995), ½10, esp. 92. Although I have not yet put it this way, I have been proceeding along the same lines as Quentin Lauer who, in The Triumph of Subjectivity: An Introduction to Transcendental Phenomenology (New York: Fordham University Press, 1958), 158, suggested that ``Husserl . . . remained faithful to his own fundamental intuition, according to which cognition is not objective because it is valid, but rather is valid because objective'' (my emphasis). Cunningham, 72. Cunningham cites Husserl's Formal and Transcendental Logic, 221, on this last point.

130

Notes to pp. 87^91

33. As Derrida summarized meaning must await being ``written in order to inhabit itself, and in order to become . . . what it is, meaning. This is what Husserl teaches us to think in The Origin of Geometry'' (Writing and Di¡erence, trans. Alan Bass [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978], 11). Much of what Derrida had to say in terms of summary of Husserl is quite helpful and he o¡ers it in an original and enlightening manner. However, pushed by his own agenda, Derrida often went too far in his interpretation. For instance, he summarized Husserl's point here as being that written communication is a condition of the possibility of the Objectivity of idealities. This much is a ¢ne summary. Unfortunately, Derrida went so far as to argue that, for Husserl, written communication is the condition of the possibility even of intelligibility (a condition for being intelligible, even for the originator of the concept/ideality), and that Husserl's view is thus impossible. Such a stance is clearly in opposition to Husserl's view that a concept can be intelligible to its ``inventor'' without having been expressed linguistically and then that it can be made intelligible to Others via spoken, rather than written, communication. Not only that, Derrida's step too far £ies in the face of Husserl's claims that intelligibility and meaning can precede written communication (e.g., Ideas ½124 and its distinction between sensuous or perceptual meaning and conceptual or logical meaning which is expressible in languageödiscussed brie£y in chapter 2, note 10). Even in the passage from Derrida quoted in this note, he overstepped Husserl's point by suggesting that without writing there is no meaning. But Husserl clearly maintained that even when an experience is at an intrapersonal and non-shareable level, it rests upon a ``primitive formation of meaning'' (a prepredicative meaning). 34. Edmund Husserl, ``Philosophy as Rigorous Science,'' in Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, trans. Q. Lauer (New York: Harper, 1965), 142. 35. One must be careful, here, not to overstate this. The presentation o¡ered in the later texts is still in the spirit of the earlier texts and transcendental in the sense of ``seeking to uncover and explicatively to analyze the necessary presuppositions of every actual and possible object and process of consciousness, leading ultimately to the grounds for philosophical re£ection itself '' (Richard Zaner, ``On the Sense of Method in Phenomenology,'' in Phenomenology and Philosophical Understanding, ed. Edo Pivcevic [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975], 140). 36. See, for example, Ludwig Landgrebe, Der Weg der PhÌnomenologie (Gutersloh: Gutersloher Verlagshaus, 1963), 204. 37. See, e.g., David Carr, Interpreting Husserl (Dordrecht: Nijho¡, 1987), 100. David Bell closes his book with an argument that the same sort of question can be asked of the possibility of philosophy as a rigorous science (Husserl, 231^32). 38. Although we might push Husserl's texts in this direction, and we should, Husserl didn't emphasize it so he didn't do much to show us that the stance makes sense. Perhaps we can turn to someone else for a little help understanding the concept ``historical a priori'' this way and for an indication that such a stance makes sense. In The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Random

Notes to pp. 91^95

131

House, 1970, Vintage Books edn, 1973), Michel Foucault focused on the historical aspect of the concept of ``the historical a priori '': This a priori is what, in a given period, delimits in the totality of experience a ¢eld of knowledge, de¢nes the mode of being of the objects that appear in that ¢eld, provides man's everyday perception with theoretical powers, and de¢nes the conditions in which he can sustain a discourse about things that is recognized to be true (158). Foucault emphasized the ``historical'' (as shown by the phrase ``in a given period''). Thus the ``historical a priori'' indicates the historically changeable structure which forms the condition of the possibility of our experience in each historical or epistemological period. The moment of aprioricity is retained in the structure that conditions our experiences: such a priori conditions are prior to the formation of experiences. However, they cannot have absolute necessity. Accordingly, we are able to talk about transitions of the a priori. It is not nonsense, then, to suggest that ``the whole historical a priori of a science of living beings is thus overthrown and then renewed'' (274). Both Husserl's and Foucault's approaches have something in common with Wittgenstein's view and his use of the concept ``world-picture'' which forms the substratum of all our inquiring and asserting. The given propositions describing the world-picture can be compared to the historical a priori in Foucault's sense. In On Certainty, ed. G.E.M. Anscombe & G.H. von Write, trans. Denis Paul & G.E.M. Anscombe (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1969), Wittgenstein suggested that these propositions are not only a priori in that they serve as the indubitable basis of experience, they are also historical in virtue of their mutability. Wittgenstein described his ``world picture'': a world-picture is described by a set of propositions ``which have a peculiar logical role in the system of our empirical propositions'' (½136). These propositions, despite having the form of empirical propositions, are indubitable and function as a normative basis of our experiences (½167). These propositions which describe the operant world-picture ``might be part of mythology'' (½95) but they still ``form the foundation of all operating with thoughts (with language)'' (½401). The descriptions by Foucault and Wittgenstein capture what is going on with Husserl's historical life-world that serves as the foundation for all our activity and the external horizon of all intentionality. 39. Richard Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 28.

Chapter 5 1.

Matthew Arnold, ``Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse'' (lines 85^86), in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. II, 5th edn, ed. M.H. Abrams (Boston: W.W. Norton, 1986), 1387.

132

Notes to pp. 96^99

2. Recall that Husserl used two di¡erent words for ``objective'' or ``objectivity.'' For ``objective'' in the sense of being an object for consciousness, Husserl usually used the word GegenstÌndlich. Objectivity of this sort is rendered in English as ``objectivity'' (with a lower-case ``o''). For ``objective'' in the sense of being there for everyone, and not dependent on a particular subject or a particular act of consciousness, Husserl usually used the word objectiv. Objectivity of this sort is rendered as ``Objectivity'' (with a capital ``O''). 3. See Quentin Lauer's discussion of the relationship between Ideas and the Cartesian Meditations in The Triumph of Subjectivity: An Introduction to Transcendental Phenomenology (New York: Fordham University Press, 1958), 132. 4. The Development of Husserl's Thought, trans. Theodore Plantinga (The Hague, Boston: Martinus Nijho¡, 1978), xx. What de Boer and I are describing is a culmination, not an abandonment. The sense that there is a unity in Husserl's work is part of the motivation behind my multiple references in some of the previous chapters to the texts other than the chapter's focus. I don't want to deny the development of Husserl's thought, but I also want to remain cognizant of the continuity and overlap among the texts. 5. Harrison Hall, in ``Realism and Idealism,'' in Husserl's Phenomenology: A Textbook, ed. J.N. Mohanty & William R. McKenna (Pittsburgh: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology and University Press of America, 1989), 430. In chapter 2, I cited David Bell (Husserl, 154) on this point as well. 6. Husserl didn't view the texts this way, probably because the claim that they are so related runs the risk of making Husserl's corpus appear to be more of a philosophical ``system'' (in Hegel's sense) than Husserl would have accepted. In 1933, Husserl wrote a letter to an American doctoral candidate in which he responded to the question ``Do you conceive your system as organically connected with any philosophic predecessors?'' Husserl wrote: May I ask you not to call my philosophy a ``system.'' For it is precisely its objective to make all ``systems'' impossible once and for all. It wants to be rigorous science, which in an in¢nite progression systematically works its way toward its problems, methods and theories. (Herbert Spiegelberg, ``Husserl's Way into Phenomenology for Americans: A Letter and its Sequel,'' in Phenomenology: Continuation and Criticism: Essays in Memory of Dorion Cairns, ed. F. Kersten & R. Zaner [The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1973], 179) What I am stressing is the continuity between the texts and the fact that, in his continual questioning and looking for the way toward the problems, methods, and theories involved in his thought, Husserl came to address questions that were brought to the surface by the earlier texts. 7. Although it is not yet the predominant view among the commentators, some have suggested that the last work o¡ers the underpinnings of the earlier work. They have done so, however, on very di¡erent grounds and by focusing on di¡erent themes and issues than I. That the relationship between the texts can be read, on other fronts, as the same sort of relationship that has emerged via my treatment of

Notes to pp. 99^105

8. 9.

10.

11.

133

empathy and knowledge adds weight to the skeleton of an argument for a general interpretation that this book o¡ers. The Triumph of Subjectivity: An Introduction to Transcendental Phenomenology, 160. For more on the use of particular words in the texts, see the Husserl Database online (http://www.ipc.shizuoka.ac.jp/~jsshama/HUA-home.html). The database indicates that noema and noematic do not appear in The Crisis and that they appear very infrequently in the third volume on intersubjectivity which is comprised of writings from 1929 to 1935 (the database indexes noema once and noematic eight times in Hua XV ). My focus here on two strands is a result of the two roles of Others in relationship to knowledge in Husserl's introductions to phenomenology. Each of the introductions relies on both roles, to some extent. Most of the main issues in Husserl interpretation can be discussed in the same two main ways: individualistically or intersubjectively; statically or genetically. See, for example, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, B25: I entitle transcendental all knowledge which is occupied not so much with objects as with the mode of our knowledge of objects in so far as this mode of knowledge is to be possible a priori. A system of such concepts might be entitled transcendental philosophy.

12. 13.

14.

15.

16. 17. 18.

For a concise treatment of the similarities (and di¡erences) between Husserl and Kant on these two aspects of transcendental philosophy, see Anthony J. Steinbock, Home and Beyond (Evanston [IL]: Northwestern University Press, 1995), 12¡. Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge, 1962), 63. This ego was referred to by Husserl under several di¡erent titles: ``pure ego,'' ``transcendental ego,'' ``disinterested spectator,'' ``transcendental phenomenologist,'' ``non-participant observer.'' At times, he seemed to make careful distinctions between these ``egos,'' but at other times, those distinctions are not at all clear and each works in largely the same way. For a concise treatment of the movement from the Logical Investigations to Ideas, see Rudolf Bernet, ``An Intentionality Without Subject or Object?'' trans. Michael Newman, Man and World, 27 (1994), 231^55, esp. 233^38. For a more fully documented and carefully analyzed treatment, see Eduard Marbach, Das Problem des Ich in der PhÌnemologie Husserls (The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1974). Bernet, Kern & Marbach, An Introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology, with a Foreword by Lester Embree (Evanston [IL]: Northwestern University Press: 1993), 206. This ambiguity is not an isolated case; it runs ``throughout Husserl's works.'' Husserl o¡ered similar characterizations in the other two texts, as well. See, e.g., CM 21, CM 99, C 113. ``An Intentionality Without Subject or Object?'', 236. Natanson summarizes this point nicely: ``by grounding intentional experience in the transcendental ego, Husserl shows how what is otheröfellow men, for exampleöis rooted in what is unique to subjectivity, to ownness.'' And thus it is in transcendental

134

19. 20. 21.

22. 23.

24.

25.

Notes to pp. 105^8 consciousness that community and the life-world are established (Philosopher of In¢nite Tasks [Evanston (IL): Northwestern University Press, 1973], 100^101). See, e.g., C 185^86, quoted above. ``An Intentionality Without Subject or Object?'' 233. On this point, see Don Welton, The Other Husserl: The Horizon of Transcendental Phenomenology (Bloomington [IN]: Indiana University Press, 2000),151 and Hua XV 65. Hua XV 73. Hua XV 73^74. The characterization of the two concepts as ``parallel'' is problematicöfor regardless of which he started with, Husserl came upon the other, so they intersect. Nevertheless, it is clear that Husserl considered both paths to be legitimate. In a letter to Aron Gurwitsch dated October 12, 1952, Schutz brie£y discussed Husserl's ability to defend, in later years, ``controversial theories'' he once presented as being compatible and necessary. Concluding this discussion, Schutz wrote: ``one characteristic of this thinker, the basis for as many merits as defects of his philosophy, is his inexorable `stubbornness' '' (Philosophers in Exile: The Correspondence of Alfred Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch, 1939^1959, trans. J. Claude Evans, ed. Richard Gratho¡ [Bloomingtion (IN): Indiana University Press, 1989], 181). Corlett lists several essays and Steve Fuller's founding of the journal Social Epistemology (all in 1987) and asserts that ``these seem to be the ¢rst instances of direct and speci¢c interest by epistemologists in the element of the social'' (Analyzing Social Knowledge [Lanham (MD): Roman and Little¢eld, 1996], x). Schmitt acknowledges that there was some element of the social in the work of Hume, Bacon and Descartesöbut at the core of this work is still an atomistic epistemic agent. Schmitt goes on to say that the vast bulk of work in social epistemology in the twentieth century has been done since 1970 (Socializing Epistemology: The Social Dimensions of Knowledge [Lanham (MD): Roman and Little¢eld, 1994], 2^3).

Selected Bibliography

Adorno, Theodor W. Against Epistemology: A Metacritique: Studies in Husserl and the Phenomenological Antimonies. Translated by Willis Domingo. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press, 1982. Ballard, Edward G. ``Husserl's Philosophy of Intersubjectivity in Relation to his Rational Ideal.'' Tulane Studies in Philosophy, 11 (1962), 3^38. Bell, David. Husserl. London, New York: Routledge, 1990. Berger, Gaston. The Cogito in Husserl's Philosophy. Translated by Kathleen McLaughlin, with an Introduction by James M. Edie. Evanston (IL): Northwestern University Press, 1993. Bernet, Rudolf. ``An Intentionality Without Subject or Object?'' Translated by Michael Newman. Man and World, 27 (1994), 231^55. öö. ``Husserl,'' trans. Lilian Alweiss & Steven Kupfer. InACompaniontoContinentalPhilosophy, ed. Simon Critchley & William R. Schroeder, 198^207. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. öö. La Vie du suject: Reserches sur l'interpre¨tation de Husserl dans la phe¨nome¨nologie. Paris: PUF, 1994. öö. ``Perception as a Teleological Process of Cognition.'' Analecta Husserliana 9 (1979), 119^32. Bernet, Rudolf, Iso Kern & Eduard Marbach. An Introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology, with a Foreword by Lester Embree. Evanston (IL): Northwestern University Press: 1993. Cairns, Dorian. Guide for Translating Husserl. The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1973. öö. ``Theory of Intentionality in Husserl,'' ed. Lester Embree, Fred Kersten & Richard M. Zaner, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology (May 2001), 116^24. Carr, David. ``The Fifth Meditation and Husserl's Cartesianism.'' Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 34 (1973^74), 14^35. öö. ``Husserl's Problematic Concept of the Life-World.'' In Husserl: Expositions and Appraisals, ed. Frederick A. Elliston & Peter McCormick, 202^12. Notre Dame (IN): University of Notre Dame Press, 1977. öö. Interpreting Husserl: Critical and Comparative Studies. Dordrecht: Nijho¡, 1987. öö. Phenomenology and the Problem of History. Evanston (IL): Northwestern University Press, 1974. Casey, Edward S. ``Imagination and Phenomenological Method.'' In Husserl: Expositions and Appraisals, ed. Frederick A. Elliston & Peter McCormick, 70^82. Notre Dame (IN): University of Notre Dame Press, 1977.

136

Selected Bibliography

Corlett, J. Angelo. Analyzing Social Knowledge. Lanham (MD): Roman and Little¢eld, 1996. Cunningham, Suzanne. Language and the Phenomenological Reductions of Edmund Husserl. The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1976. Dare, Byron, George Welton & William Coe. Concepts of Leisure in Western Thought: A Critical and Historical Analysis. Debuque (IA): Kendal/Hunt, 1987. de Boer, Theodore. The Development of Husserl's Thought. Translated by Theodore Plantinga. The Hague, Boston: Martinus Nijho¡, 1978. Depraz, Natalie. ``Les ¢gures de l'intersubjectivite¨: E¨tudes des Husserliana XIII^XIV^ XV Zur IntersubjectivatitÌt.'' Archives de Philosophie 55 (1992): 479^98. Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore (MD): Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. öö. Writing and Di¡erence. Translated by Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. Drummond, John J. ``The Structure of Intentionality.'' In The New Husserl: A Critical Reader, ed. Donn Welton, 65^92. Bloomington [IN]: Indiana University Press, 2003. Elliston, Frederick A. ``Husserl's Phenomenology of Empathy.'' In Husserl: Expositions and Appraisals, ed. Frederick A. Elliston & Peter McCormick, 213^31. Notre Dame (IN): University of Notre Dame Press, 1977. Farber, Marvin. ``The Ideal of a Presuppositionless Philosophy.'' In Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl, ed. Marvin Farber, 44^64. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1940. Fink, Eugen. ``DiscussionöComments by Eugen Fink on Alfred Schutz's Essay, `The problem of Transcendental Intersubjectivity in Husserl'.'' In Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers III: Studies in Phenomenological Philosophy, ed. Ilse Schutz with an introduction by Aron Gurwitsch, 84^91. The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1966. öö. Sixth Cartesian Meditation: The Idea of a Transcendental Theory of Method. With textual notations by Edmund Husserl. Translated by Ronald Bruzina. Bloomington (IN): Indiana University Press, 1995. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Random House, 1970, Vintage Books, 1973. Frege, Gottlob. Philosophical and Mathematical Correspondence. Edited by Gotfried Gabriel, et al. Translated by Hans Kaal. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Gurwitsch, Aron and Alfred Schutz. Philosophers in Exile: The Correspondence of Alfred Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch, 1939^1959. Edited by Richard Gratho¡. Translated by J. Claude Evans. Bloomington (IN): Indiana University Press, 1989. Hall, Harrison. ``Realism and Idealism.'' In Husserl's Phenomenology: A Textbook, ed. J.N. Mohanty & William R. McKenna, 429^43. Pittsburgh: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology and University Press of America, 1989. Haney, Kathleen. ``Husserl's Critique of Reason.'' Analecta Husserliana 34 (1991), 377^97. öö. Intersubjectivity Revisited. Athens (OH): Ohio University Press, 1994. öö. ``The Necessity of Intersubjectivity.'' In The Horizons of Continental Philosophy: Essays on Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, ed. Hugh J. Silverman, Algis Michunas,

Selected Bibliography

137

Theodore Kisiel, and Alphonso Lingis, 32^61. Dordrecht, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988. He¡ernan, George. ``Miscellaneous Lucubrations on Husserl's Answer to the Question `was die Evidenz sei': A contribution to the Phenomenology of Evidence on the Occasion of the Publication of Husserliana Volume XXX.'' Husserl studies, 15 (1998), 1^75. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson. New York: Harper and Row, 1962. Held, Klaus. ``Das Problem der IntersubjektivitÌt und die Idee einer phÌnomenologischen Transzendentalphilosophie.'' Perspektiven transzendental-phÌnomenologischer Forschung. Hrsg. von U. Claesges und K. Held, 30^60. The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1972. Ho¡man, Gisbert. ``Zur PhÌnomenologie der IntersubjectivatitÌt.'' Zeitschrift FÏr philosophische Forschung, 29 (1975), 138^49. Holm, Cameron. ``Edmund Husserl's Epistemological Approach to Intersubjectivity.'' PhD diss., Duquesne University, 1998. Huertas-Jourda, Jose¨. ``On the Two Foundations of Knowledge According to Husserl.'' In Essays in Memory of Aron Gurwitsch: 1983, ed. Lester Embree, 195^211. Washington: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology: University Press of America, 1984. Hume, David. Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by L.A. Selby-Bigg, 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. Husserl, Edmund. Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology. Translated by Dorion Cairns. Dordrecht, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1950. öö. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Translated, with an Introduction by David Carr. Evanston (IL): Northwestern University Press, 1970. öö. Husserliana I: Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser VortrÌger. Edited by Stephan Strasser. The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1950. öö. Husserliana III: Ideen zu einer reinen PhÌnomenogie und phÌnomenologischen Philosophy. Allgemeine EinfÏhrung in die reine PhÌnomenogie. Edited by Karl Schuhmann. The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1976. öö. Husserliana VI: Die Krisis der EuropÌischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale PhÌnomenogie. Eine Einleitung in die phÌnomenologische Philosophie. Edited by Walter Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1954. öö. Husserliana XIII: Zur PhÌnomenogie der IntersubjectivitÌt. Text aus dem NachlaÞ. Erster Teil. 1905^1920. Edited by Iso Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1973. öö. Husserliana XIV: Zur PhÌnomenogie der IntersubjectivitÌt. Text aus dem NachlaÞ. Zweiter Teil. 1921^1928. Edited by Iso Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1973. öö. Husserliana XV: Zur PhÌnomenogie der IntersubjectivitÌt. Text aus dem NachlaÞ. Dritter Teil. 1929^1935. Edited by Iso Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1973. öö. Ideas: A General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Translated by W.R. Boyce Gibson. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1931. öö. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: Second Book, Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution. Translated by Richard Rojcewicz and Andre¨ Schuwer. Dordrecht, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989.

138

Selected Bibliography

öö. Logical Investigations, volume II. Translated by J.N. Findlay. New York: Humanities Press, 1970. öö. ``Philosophy as Rigorous Science.'' In Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, trans. Q. Lauer, 71^147. New York: Harper, 1965. Husserl Database. http://www.ipc.schizuoka.ac.jp/HUA-home.html Hutcheson, Peter. ``Husserl's Problem of Intersubjectivity.'' Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 2 (May 1980), 144^62. Ingarden, Roman. On the Motives Which Led Husserl to Transcendental Idealism. Translated by Arnor Hannibalsson. The Hague, Boston: Martinus Nijho¡, 1975. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Norman Kemp Smith. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1929. Kelkel, Arion L. ``Language in Husserl.'' Translated by Lester Embree. In Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, ed. Lester Embree, et al, 401^407. The Hague: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997. Kern, Iso. ``The Three Ways to the Transcendental Phenomenological Reduction in the Philosophy of Edmund Husserl.'' In Husserl: Expositions and Appraisals, ed. Frederick A. Elliston & Peter McCormick, 126^49. Notre Dame (IN): University of Notre Dame Press, 1977. Klein, Jacob. ``Phenomenology and the History of Science.'' In Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl, ed. Marvin Farber, 143^63. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1940. Kockelmans, Joseph J. A First Introduction to Husserl's Phenomenology. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1967. Koha¨k, Erazim. Idea and Experience: Edmund Husserl's Project of Phenomenology in Ideas I. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. Landgrebe, Ludwig. Der Weg der PhÌnomenologie. Gutersloh: Gutersloher Verlagshaus, 1963. Lauer, Quentin. The Triumph of Subjectivity: An Introduction to Transcendental Phenomenology. New York: Fordham University Press, 1958. Levin, David Michael. Reason and Evidence in Husserl's Phenomenology. Evanston (IL): Northwestern University Press, 1970. McCormick, Peter. ``Husserl and the Intersubjectivity Materials.'' Research in Phenomenology, 6 (1976), 167^90. Mensch, James. Intersubjectivity and Transcendental Idealism. Albany (NY): State University of New York Press, 1988. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Colin Smith. London: Routledge, 1962. öö. Signs. Translated with an Introduction by Richard C. McCleary. Evanston (IL): Northwestern University Press, 1964. Mohanty, J.N. ``Husserl and Frege: A New Look at their Relationship.'' In Readings on Edmund Husserl's Logical Investigations, ed. J.N. Mohanty, 22^32. The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1977. Moran, Dermot. Introduction to Phenomenology. London, New York: Routledge, 2000.

Selected Bibliography

139

Natanson, Maurice. Edmund Husserl: Philosopher of In¢nite Tasks. Evanston (IL): Northwestern University Press, 1973. Patzig, GÏnther. ``Husserl on Truth and Evidence.'' In Readings on Edmund Husserl's Logical Investigations, ed. J.N. Mohanty, 179^96. The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1977. Pietersma, Henry. ``Truth and the Evident.'' In Husserl's Phenomenology: A Textbook, ed. J.N. Mohanty & William R. McKenna, 213^47. Pittsburgh: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology and University Press of America, 1989. Reeder, Harry P. ``Husserl's Apodictic Evidence.'' Southwest Philosophical Studies (Spring 1990), 70^88. Ricoeur, Paul. A Key to Edmund Husserl's Ideas I. Translated by Bond Harris and Jacquieline Bouchard Spurlock, ed. Pol Vandevelde. Milwaukee (WI): Marquette University Press, 1996. öö. Husserl: An Analysis of his Phenomenology. Translated by Edward G. Ballard & Lester E. Embree. Evanston (IL): Northwestern University Press, 1967. RÎmpp, Georg. Husserl's PhÌnomenologie der IntersubjectivitÌt: Und ihre Bedeutung fÏr eine Theorie intersubjektiver ObjektivitÌt und die Konzeption einer phÌnomenologischen Philosophie. Dordrecht, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992. Rorty, Richard. Objectivity, Relativism and Truth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Sallis, John. ``On the Limitation of Transcendental Re£ection, or is Intersubjectivity Transcendental?'' Monist, 55 (1971), 321^33. Sartre, Jean Paul. Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology. Translated by Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Philosophical Library, 1956. Schmitt, Frederick F., ed. Socializing Epistemology: The Social Dimensions of Knowledge. Lanham (MD): Rowman and Little¢eld, 1994. Schutz, Alfred. Collected Papers III: Studies in Phenomenological Philosophy. Edited by Ilse Schutz with an Introduction by Aron Gurwitsch. The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1966. Schutz, Alfred and Aron Gurwitsch. Philosophers in Exile: The Correspondence of Alfred Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch, 1939^1959. Edited by Richard Gratho¡. Translated by J. Claude Evans. Bloomington (IN): Indiana University Press, 1989. Smith, Barry & David Woodru¡ Smith, eds. Cambridge Companion to Husserl. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. So¡er, Gail. Husserl and the Question of Relativism. Dordrecht, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991. Solomon, Robert. From Rationalism to Existentialism: The Existentialists and their NineteenthCentury Backgrounds. New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1972. öö. ``Husserl's concept of Noema.'' In Husserl: Expositions and Appraisals, ed. Frederick A. Elliston & Peter McCormick, 168^81. Notre Dame (IN): University of Notre Dame Press, 1977. Spiegelberg, Herbert. ``Husserl's Way into Phenomenology for Americans: A Letter and its Sequel.'' In Phenomenology: Continuation and Criticism: Essays in Memory of Dorion Cairns, ed. F. Kersten & R. Zaner, 168^91. The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1973.

140

Selected Bibliography

öö. The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction. The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1960. Steinbock, Anthony J. ``Generativity and Generative Phenomenology.'' Husserl Studies, 12 (1995): 55^79. öö. Home and Beyond: Generative Phenomenology after Husserl. Evanston (IL): Northwestern University Press, 1995. StrÎker, Elisabeth. Husserl's Transcendental Phenomenology. Translated by Lee Hardy. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993. Vessey, David. ``Time and the Other: Otherwise than Levinas,'' presentation given at the Marquette University Seminar on Phenomenology and Hermeneutics, November 2001. Welton, Donn. The Other Husserl: The Horizons of Transcendental Phenomenology. Bloomington (IN): Indiana University Press, 2000. Williams, Forest. ``Intersubjectivity: A Brief Guide.'' In Husserl's Phenomenology: A Textbook, ed. J.N. Mohanty & William R. McKenna, 309^43. Pittsburgh: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology and University Press of America, 1989. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. On Certainty. Edited by G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright. Translated by Denis Paul and G.E.M. Anscombe. New York: Harper Torchbooks (Harper & Row), 1969. Zahavi, Dan. ``Husserl's Intersubjective Transformation of Transcendental Philosophy.'' Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 27 (Oct. 1996), 228^45. öö. Husserl und die transzendentale IntersubjektivitÌt: Eine Antwort auf die sprachpragmatische Kritik. Dordrecht, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996. öö. ``Phenomenology and the Problem(s) of Intersubjectivity.'' In The Reach of Re£ection: Issues for Phenomenology's Second Century, ed. Steven Crowell, Lester Embree & Samuel J. Julian, 265^78. Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, 2001. Zaner, Richard. ``On the Sense of Method in Phenomenology.'' In Phenomenology and Philosophical Understanding, ed. Edo Pivcevic, 125^42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.

Index

adequacy (adequate evidence) 12, 18^9, 25^30, 32^3, 43, 45^6, 64, 66^8, 71, 73^4, 85^6, 95^6, 99, 114n.6, 114n.9, 116n.28, 118n.36, 118n.37, 119n.47, 121n.11, 128n.12 see also evidence Adorno, Theodor W. 18, 114n.8 animate organism 50, 53^5, 58^9, 61^4, 68, 125n.39 apodicticity (apodictic evidence, certainty) 7, 12, 17, 25^33, 41^7, 53, 66^7, 69, 72^4, 86, 88, 96, 99, 103 116n.28, 117n.31, 118n.36, 118n.37, 121n.11 de facto 25, 28^9, 31^2, 44^5, 88, 118n.38 de jure 25, 28^33, 44, 66^7, 69, 88, 99 see also evidence apperception 21^2, 24, 27, 31, 33, 36, 39, 48, 55^62, 64, 67^8, 71, 75^7, 90, 92, 100, 115n.18, 118n.42, 119n.54, 123n.27, 123n.29, 125n.39 appresentation 57^64, 68^9, 86^7, 119n.54, 123n.27, 123^4n.30, 124n.31, 124n.33, 125n.39, 127n.7 Arnold, Matthew 1, 95 Bacon, Francis 134n.25 Ballard, Edward G. 122n.19 Bell, David 76, 111n.12, 113n.4, 114n.14, 120n.8, 122n.19, 128n.16, 130n.37, 132n.5 Berger, Gaston 52, 122n.21 Bernet, Rudolf 8, 104, 105, 110n.2, 112n.19, 113n.4, 114n.6, 114n.8, 116n.27, 116n.28, 117n.35, 120n.8, 133n.14

bracketing 3^7, 22, 45, 53, 67, 110n.4, 122n.19, 122n.20 see also epoche¨; reduction Cairns, Dorian 112n.19, 112n.21, 116n.29, 117n.33 Carr, David 74, 120n.4, 126n.42, 127n.6, 127n.7, 127n.8, 128n.13, 130n.37 Coe, William 3 communication 14^5, 47, 68^70, 72, 80, 83^4, 87^8, 97, 99, 107, 118n.41, 130n.33 see also language; predication consciousness 5^9, 11^2, 14, 17, 19^27, 29, 32, 34^8, 40^2, 45^7, 52, 55, 57, 59^61, 65^7, 69, 71, 73^5, 78^9, 82^4, 86^7, 93^4, 96, 99^100, 104^5, 111n.4, 118n.38, 120n.9, 121n.17, 122n.19, 122n.20, 123n.28, 126n.40, 130n.35, 132n.2 see also transcendental consciousness constitution 5, 15, 35^6, 47, 51^2, 56, 75, 82, 84, 93, 100, 103^4, 111n.14, 116n.28, 123n.25, 124n.31 Corlett, J. Angelo 108, 109n.1, 109n.2, 134n.25 Cunningham, Suzanne 87, 122n.20, 129n.24, 129n.32 Dare, Byron 3 dator intuition 26, 34, 116^17n.29 see also object-giving intuition de Boer, Theodore 98, 111n.14, 132n.4 Depraz, Natalie 112n.26 Derrida, Jacques 129n.26, 130n.33 Descartes, Rene¨ 25, 42, 45, 67, 107, 134n.25 Drummond, John J. 115n.20

142

Index

eidos (eidetic) 4, 6^7, 9, 29, 97, 117n.23, 122n.20 Elliston, Frederick A. 121n.15, 123n.24, 123n.25 empathy 1^2, 4, 9^15, 17, 19, 25^6, 32, 34^9, 40^2, 48, 53, 56, 64^70, 71, 79^80, 82^4, 86^7, 92, 95^101, 105^6, 112n.24, 112n.26, 113n.2, 119n.47, 119n.53, 128n.21, 133n.7 see also experience of Others; Others epoche¨ 3, 5, 7, 22, 45, 47, 50, 66, 104, 106, 110n.4, 121n.17 see also bracketing; reduction evidence 2, 8^10, 12, 17^9, 24^6, 28^34, 38, 41^5, 47, 51, 53, 64, 66, 68^9, 72^4, 81, 83^8, 95^6, 103, 106, 114n.6, 115n.21, 115^16n.22, 116n.28, 118n.36, 118n.37, 118n.38, 121n.11, 127n.7, 127n.8 see also adequacy; apodicticity; self-evidence experience of Others 9^10, 12^4, 27, 32, 40, 47^50, 55^6, 58, 62^4, 69, 71^2, 85, 87, 96^7, 109, 121n.13, 122n.19, 125^6n.40 see also empathy explosion of experience 12, 23^4, 27, 32 of experience of Others 60, 64, 123^4n.30 of full noema or noematic system 23, 31 of perception 21, 23^4 of sense 86 Farber, Marvin 3 Fink, Eugen 16, 85 Foucault, Michel 130^1n.38 ful¢llment 12, 17^9, 21, 23, 27, 31^4, 36, 71, 96, 99^100, 103, 113n.4, 114n.6, 114n.8, 115n.19, 115n.21, 123n.23, 124n.31 noematic 19, 27, 31^2, 34, 71, 77, 99^100, 103, 115n.21, 123^4n.30 perceptual 17^19, 23 full noema (system of noemata) 21^3, 31, 60, 63, 75, 78 see also noematic complex Fuller, Steve 134n.25

Galileo 74, 91 Gibson, W.R. Boyce 37, 115^16n.22, 116^17n.29, 117n.33 grounding 127n.10, 133n.18 intersubjective 47, 51, 67 of judgments 43^4, 67 of the real/Objective world 37, 41 of science 2, 25, 44 Gurwitsch, Aron 134n.24 Hall, Harrison 132n.5 Haney, Kathleen 46, 47, 116n.28, 117n.35, 120n.5, 121n.12, 121n.13, 123n.28, 124n.33, 125n.38, 125n.39 harmony 12^5, 32, 40, 41, 49, 64, 67, 69, 71, 75, 77^9, 84, 87^8, 91^5, 97, 99 see also intersubjective harmony He¡ernan, George 24 Heidegger, Martin 128n.16 Held, Klaus 126n.40 historical a priori 90, 91, 130^1n.38 Ho¡man, Gisbert 113n.26 horizon 15, 42^3, 74^83, 86^7, 91^2, 97, 103, 124n.36, 128n.16, 129n.21, 129n.27, 131n.38 empathy 79, 87 external 76^8, 129n.27, 131n.38 internal 76^7 intersubjective 75, 79, 80, 97, 103 Huertas-Jourda, Jose¨ 28 Hume, David 124n.34, 134n.25 Husserl, Edmund Cartesian Meditations 1^2, 5, 10^5, 33, 37, 39, Chapter 3 passim, 71^4, 79^81, 83, 86^7, 92^4, 96^102, 104^7, 116n.24, 117n.31, 117n.35, 119n.49, 119n.51, 121n.11, 121^2n.18, 124^5n.37, 127n.7, 128n.11, 128n.21, 129n.25, 129n.27 Ideas 1^3, 6, 10^6, Chapter 2 passim, 40^7, 64, 66^7, 69^70, 71^5, 78, 83, 93, 95^102, 105, 110n.3, 111n.9, 114n.9, 114n.12, 116n.24, 117n.30, 117n.31, 117^18n.36, 119n.47, 119n.49, 119n.53, 120n.8, 120n.9, 122n.23, 123n.29, 123^4n.30, 127n.7, 128n.11, 128n.19, 132n.3, 133n.14

Index Logical Investigations 17^19, 21, 24, 98, 113n.3, 113n.4, 114n.6, 114n.8, 117n.30, 118n.41, 133n.14 The Crisis of European Sciences 1^3, 10, 14^5, 33, 69^70, Chapter 4 passim, 97^102, 105^6, 111n.8, 113n.2, 116n.24, 119n.51, 127n.4, 128n.11, 129n.23, 129n.25, 133n.9 The Origin of Geometry 14^15, 80^8, 97, 107, 129n.23, 129n.25, 130n.33 Hutcheson, Peter 120n.6 ideal object(s) (ideality, ideal objectivity) 14, 80^4, 86^9, 91, 95, 97, 103, 129n.24, 129n.26, 130n.33 see also Objectivities immanent perception (experience) 25, 27, 48, 120n.5, 121n.13 Ingarden, Roman 111n.14 intentional object 8, 11^12, 14^15, 18, 21^3, 31, 36, 46, 55, 65, 72, 76^8, 82, 84, 93, 96^100, 102, 104, 115n.18, 115n.20 see also object of/for consciousness intentionality 7^8, 11, 14, 19^20, 27, 36, 46, 49^52, 55^6, 59, 61, 65^6, 74^5, 79, 97, 99, 102, 103, 104, 105, 114n.10, 131n.38 consciousness as intentional 7, 11, 19^21, 78, 96, 99 intentional act (activity) 14, 19, 59, 74, 78, 80, 92, 103^4, 114n.17, 129n.27 intentional correlates 41, 46, 55 intentional life 49, 94, 120n.9 intersubjective community 12, 67, 103 see also intersubjective world; life-world intersubjective experience 36, 41, 47, 67, 93 intersubjective harmony 12^5, 40, 42, 47, 64, 67, 69, 71, 80, 85, 87^8, 91^3, 95, 97, 99 see also harmony intersubjective thing 36, 38, 52, 81 intersubjective world (realm) 13, 33^6, 42, 47, 49, 51, 58, 65^9, 72, 82^3, 96^7, 99^100, 104^5, 107, 119n.53 see also life-world

143

intersubjectivity 10^6, 22, 28, 35^42, 45, 49, 51^2, 58, 66^9, 71^2, 75, 78^83, 85, 87, 91^4, 95^101, 103^8, 109n.3, 112n.24, 112^3n.26, 113n.28, 118^19n.43, 119n.46, 120n.6, 122n.19, 128^9n.21, 133n.10 intuition 18, 26, 29, 59, 63, 85, 116n.28, 116^17n.29 dator (object-giving) 26, 28^9, 31^2, 34, 37, 44, 116n.29, 117n.30 of essences 6 self-evident 29 phenomenological 85, 99 Kabir 71 Kant, Immanuel 67, 75, 103, 104, 107, 114n.9, 133n.11 Kelkel, Arion L. 118n.41 Kern, Iso 110n.2, 112n.19, 112^13n.26, 113n.4, 114n.6, 114n.8, 116n.27, 116n.28 Kockelmans, Joseph J. 116n.26 Koha¨k, Erazim 7, 114n.11, 116n.28 Ko« rper 54, 59, 63, 65, 119n.49, 125n.39 Landgrebe, Ludwig 130n.36 language 12, 14, 28, 33, 47, 53, 80^91, 96, 114n.10, 118n.41, 122n.20, 129n.27, 130n.33, 131n.38 see also communication; predication Lauer, Quentin 99, 129n30, 132n.3 Levin, David Michael 4, 112n.19, 116n.27, 118n.37, 118n.38 life-world (Lebenswelt) 10, 14^5, 33, 72^5, 77, 79^81, 83, 85, 87^94, 97, 99, 100, 101, 103, 105, 127n.4, 127n.6, 127n.7, 127n.10, 128n.15, 128^9n.21, 129n.23, 129n.27, 131n.38, 134n.18 lived body (Lieb) 38, 54, 61^3, 119n.49, 119n.51, 119n.53, 124^5n.37, 126n.40 Locke, John 128n.12 McCormick, Peter 113n.26 Marbach, Eduard 110n.2, 112n.19, 113n.4, 114n.6, 114n.8, 116n.27, 133n.14 Marvell, Andrew 40

144

Index

meaning 4^5, 12, 18, 20, 22^3, 33, 36, 43, 46^7, 53, 56^7, 60^1, 65^6, 68, 74^8, 80^90, 99^100, 102^3, 114n.10, 115n.19, 116n.28, 122n.18, 125n.38, 130n.33 see also sense Mensch, James 76, 111n.14, 116n.27, 124n.33, 125n.39, 128n.16 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 40, 103 Moran, Dermot 110n.2, 111n.8, 114^15n.17, 115n.20, 127n.7 Natanson, Maurice 133^4n.18 natural attitude 4, 5, 46, 52, 110n.4, 111n.12 noema (noematic) 19^24, 27^29, 31^4, 36, 40, 52, 55, 60, 63^4, 71, 75, 78, 96, 99^100, 103, 114n.12, 115n.20, 123n.25, 133n.9 noematic complex 31, 33, 40, 64, 75, 78, 100, 115n.19, 115n.20, 123n.29 see also full noema noematic ful¢llment 19, 27, 31^4, 71, 77, 99^100, 103, 115n.19, 115n.21, 124n.30 see also ful¢llment noesis (noetic) 20, 34, 55 object-giving intuition 26, 28^9, 31^2, 34, 37, 44, 116^17n.29, 117n.30 see also dator intuition object of/for consciousness 8^9, 12, 17, 20, 22, 36, 65, 73, 83^4, 86^7, 96, 132n.2 see also intentional object; objectivity Objective world 35, 48^9, 52, 54, 56, 65^6, 82^3, 93, 107 objective-scienti¢c world 73^4, 79, 128n.21 Objectivities 80, 88, 91, 130n.33 see also ideal objects objectivity objectivity (objective) 8^9, 11^3, 15^8, 20^1, 28, 31, 34^6, 46, 49, 59, 61, 71, 82^3, 93, 96, 100, 109n.3, 120n.5, 121n.13, 126n.42, 127n.10, 132n.2 see also object of/for consciousness

Objectivity (Objective) 9^10, 13, 15^17, 25, 28, 32, 35, 39, 41^2, 46^7, 49, 52, 54, 58, 64^7, 69, 71^2, 80^4, 86^9, 91, 96^8, 100, 105, 115n.21, 129n.26, 132n.2 Objective validity 9^10, 12^3, 15, 17, 25, 31, 40, 45^8, 66, 69^70, 72, 79^80, 83, 87, 98, 100, 105, 109n.3, 129n.25, 132n.2 see also validity Other(s) 1^2, 10^5, 30, 32^4, 36^9, 41^2, 48^50, 52^3, 55^70, 71^2, 75, 77^88, 92, 95^8, 103, 105^8, 113n.28, 118n.41, 118n.42, 121n.17, 122n.19, 122n.20, 123n.27, 123^4n.30, 124n.33, 125n.39, 125^6n.40, 126n.41, 126n.42, 126n.43, 127n.4, 127n.7, 128n.21, 129n.27, 130n.33, 133n.10 see also empathy; experience of Others pairing 14, 39, 48, 53, 56, 58^65, 67, 69, 71, 79, 99, 124n.30, 124n.33, 125n.38, 125n.39, 126n.40, 126n.43 pairing of association 59^60, 62 pairing of similarity 60^2, 64 Patzig, GÏnther 18 phenomenological method 10, 45^6, 69, 71 phenomenological reduction 3^5, 7, 9, 12, 19^21, 36, 41^2, 45^7, 51^3, 64, 66^7, 69, 101, 104, 111n.9, 121n.17, 122n.20 Pietersma, Henry 112n.22 predication 28^9, 31^3, 44, 47, 87^8, 97, 117n.33, 118n.41 pregiven 73^5, 77^9, 91, 93, 127n.10, 128n.15 pre-predicative certainty 44 evidence 32, 44, 87 experience 44, 47, 85, 87 meaning 130n.33 vs. predicative 31, 44, 87 see also de facto apodicticity principle of all principles 26, 31, 44, 116n.29, 120n.9

Index reduction eidetic 4, 6^7 phenomenological 3^5, 7, 9, 12, 19^21, 36, 41^2, 45^7, 51^3, 64, 67, 69, 101, 104, 111n.9, 121n.17, 122n.20 to the sphere of ownness 50^6, 122n.19, 122n.20 transcendental 4^5, 7, 110n.4, 122n.20 Reeder, Harry P. 28, 30 relativism 88^90, 92 cultural 89^90 historical 90, 92 Ricoeur, Paul 6, 47, 117n.33, 126n.43 RÎmpp, Georg 109n.3, 113n.26, 113n.28 Rorty, Richard 92 Sallis, John 122n.19 Sartre, Jean-Paul 119n.43, 120n.6 Schmitt, Frederick F. 108, 109n.2, 134n.25 Schutz, Alfred 20, 107, 120n.6, 122n.19, 134n.24 sedimentation 75, 81^2, 84, 86^91, 97 self-evidence 26, 29, 31^2, 42, 73^4, 83^7, 115^16n.22, 118n.37, 118n.38, 127n.8, 127n.10 see also evidence sense 5, 45, 47, 49, 51^3, 55^7, 59, 61^2, 65, 67, 69, 74^5, 78, 85^6, 121^2n.18, 126n.40 see also meaning Shelley, Percy Bysshe 71 Smith, Barry 118n.40 Smith, David Woodru¡ 118n.40 So¡er, Gail 116n.28, 117^18n.36 Solomon, Robert 115n.20 sphere of ownness 13, 48, 50^6, 58^9, 61^5, 67^9, 71, 79, 98, 107, 122n.19, 122n.20, 123n.25, 123n.28, 125n.39 reduction to 50^6, 122n.19, 122n.20

145

Spiegelberg, Herbert 3, 111n.11 Steinbock, Anthony J. 112n.19, 133n.11 StrÎker, Elisabeth 29, 30, 110n.4, 116n.28, 117n.36 subjective idealism 40, 41 theory of empathy 38, 40, 64, 67^8, 71, 79, 80, 87, 99, 101 see also empathy; experience of Others transcendent object (world or reality) 5, 12, 25^7, 37, 41, 46^7, 55, 65^6, 69, 71, 76, 89, 126n.40 transcendental consciousness 47, 67, 120n.5, 121n.13 ego 5, 7, 16, 33, 40, 42, 47, 72, 93, 101^7, 121n.17, 122n.19, 133n.13, 133^4n.18 intersubjectivity 37, 41, 101, 106 phenomenology 6, 12, 48, 89, 103, 106^7 philosophy 48, 67, 89, 95, 103, 106, 130n.35, 133n.11 realism 48^50, 121n.15 reduction 4^5, 7, 110n.4, 122n.20 subjectivity 34, 44, 46, 88, 106, 120n.5, 121n.13 validity 2, 8^13, 15, 17, 26^8, 40^2, 44, 69, 71, 75, 78^80, 84^6, 88, 90^1, 95^7, 107, 120n.8, 129n.30 see also Objective validity Vessey, David 119n.44 Welton, Donn 115n.18 Welton, George 3 Whitman, Walt 17 Williams, Forest 60, 125n.39 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 131n.38 Zahavi, Dan 36, 41, 109n.3, 110n.4, 113n.26, 113n.28, 118n.43, 126n.42, 127n.3 Zaner, Richard 112n.19, 130.n.35