Husserl's Constitutive Phenomenology

Its Problem and Promise

Bob Sandmeyer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781135852894
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

If Edmund Husserl's true philosophy lay in his unpublished research manuscripts, as he argues, then it is in these – rather than the "introductions" and fragmentary studies he published during his lifetime – that we may possibly find a systematic of his philosophy. This work constitutes a study of the full range of Husserl's writings with the special task of uncovering there the systematic presentation or presentations of the transcendental phenomenological problematic. Sandmeyer's study contains an overview of Husserl's total set of writings, a translation of Husserl correspondence with Georg Misch, a translation of a draft outline of the "system of phenomenological philosophy" produced by Husserl in collaboration with his assistant, Eugen Fink, and it also closely traces the influence of Wilhelm Dilthey on Husserl's philosophy.

1
A Question of Focus

The ideal of the philosopher—to work out systematically a completed logic, ethics, and metaphysics which he could justify to himself and others for all time on the basis of an absolutely compelling insight—is an ideal the author has had to renounce early on and to this day.

—Husserl. Epilogue to Ideas I (in Hua V, 159f).

Confronting Husserl’s philosophy presents a serious interpretive problem as one is struck not merely with the question of how to enter into his philosophy but also with the more penetrating question of where to locate the proper expression of his philosophy. The obvious answer to this latter question points to his published writings, as these would represent its authorized conception.¹ In Husserl’s case, unfortunately, this obvious answer is misleading. Even Husserl conceded that his published writings represent only partial and introductory studies and inadequate expressions of the total transcendental phenomenological problematic. Nowhere in these works does he adequately articulate the full range of problems which his philosophy opened up, and in none does he present a complete and systematic conception of his philosophy. It would seem, then, that one must look to Husserl’s unpublished writings for such a conception. Happily, a very many of these writings are now available in the various critical collections of Husserl’s manuscripts,² and these indeed contain ample useful materials in this regard.

Yet this is not to say that his published writings entirely lack any discussion of the full extension of the phenomenological problematic. Husserl concludes his Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, erstes Buch of 1913 (hereafter Ideas I)³ with just such a discussion. But this sketch, explicated in paragraph 153, offers by his own admission only a fragmentary articulation of the full transcendental problematic.⁴ Even so, even if Husserl’s published writings contain only inadequate discussions of the systematic articulation of transcendental phenomenological philosophy, these would still represent explicit public statements by Husserl regarding the full scope of problems opened up by phenomenology. Before one looks to his unpublished writings for a systematic representation of the full field of phenomenological problems, which we will examine later in this study, it would be prudent, therefore, to begin here with these. So we will turn first to the explication of phenomenological problems in paragraph 153 of Ideas I, but given that this remains but a fragment, we will do so with some caution. We intend to use Husserl’s explicit published statements of the total problem field of phenomenological inquiry as an initial guide for further investigations into his unpublished writings. Our later investigations will aim, therefore, to unearth materials within Husserl’s literary estate—unpublished during his lifetime—that provide a more comprehensive expression of the “systematic” of Husserl’s phenomenological philosophy.

In this chapter, we shall examine two things. First, we shall provide an account of Husserl’s fragmentary sketch of the theoretically rational problem-field opened up by phenomenology in paragraph 153 while also laying forth the broader context of the Ideas project which underlies this discussion at the end of the first book. Our aim in this work as a whole is an understanding of the complete “system of phenomenological philosophy.” Paraphrasing Husserl’s words in paragraph 153 of Ideas I, we could say our aim is an articulated understanding of the full extension of transcendental problems. Yet, as we have already suggested, this overall aim cannot be achieved without a foray into the mass of materials Husserl never published and, indeed, may never have intended to publish. Our second task in this chapter, therefore, will be to articulate the structure of Husserl’s literary estate and the composition of the sorts of materials we intend to consult therein. Since much of our analyses in later chapters will center on these sorts of materials, it will be necessary to obtain some clarity as to the kinds of manuscripts with which we must deal in order to achieve the overall ends of this investigation.

THE IDEAS PROJECT

Ideas I represents the first of Husserl’s four introductions to a pure phenomenology.⁵ From his earliest days Husserl spoke of phenomenology as descriptive science, indeed at first classifying it as a “descriptive psychology”⁶—although he eventually rejected this expression because of the confusions it produced.

Its descriptions do not concern the experiences or classes of experiences of empirical persons. It knows nothing and presumes nothing of persons, myself and others, of my own and the experiences of another. It poses no questions of such, attempts no determinations and makes no hypotheses. Phenomenological description looks to what is given in the strictest sense, looks at experience thus as it is, in itself.⁷

Yet even though Husserl rejected his own earlier characterization of phenomenology as a “descriptive psychology,” he seems nevertheless to retain even in the Ideas the view that “phenomenological analyses obtain the character of descriptive-psychological analyses; they function then as the supporting basis for the theoretical explanation of psychology and the natural science of psychic appearances [geistigen Erscheinungen].”⁸ By phenomenology, then, Husserl means the investigation and description of essential structures of that which gives itself in experience, that is, in consciousness. But, again, this assertion must be tempered with the acknowledgment that its descriptions concern nothing empirical, nothing worldly and so nothing individual.

As long as it is pure and above all makes no use of the existential positing of nature, pure phenomenology as science can only be an inquiry into essence and by no means an inquiry into existence <Daseinsforschung>. Every “self-observation” and every judgment based on such “experience” lies beyond its scope. The individual in its immanence can be posited and at best subsumed under the rigorous eidetic concepts that arise from eidetic analyses only as a This-here!—this onward flowing perception, memory, etc. For while the individual is not essence, it does “have” an essence that can be asserted of it holding evidently. But to fixit [objective-intersubjectively] as an individual, giving to it a place in a “world” of individuated being <individuellen Daseins>, such a mere subsumption obviously cannot be attained. For phenomenology, the singular is eternally the

.⁹

I can and Husserl suggests the phenomenologist does take as her example her own experiencing, but this “I” do so only to highlight descriptively the essential features of that sort of experiencing. For instance, on my desk at present stands before me a coffee cup. It is a squat, white cup one uses for cappuccino rather than the longer, broader cups used for standard American coffee. We can also examine this perceptual experience imaginatively to flesh out the manners by which an object is grasped, attended to and thematized perceptually in the ways a sensate objectivity quite generally appears to consciousness.

Before continuing, though, we must pause to note that phenomenological reflection, the reflection upon the act of sense perceiving, for instance, has a unique dual character. As Husserl indicates above, phenomenological reflection is no mere “self-observation” but rather a methodological analysis of the sense-bestowing acts in a consciousness attending to some sensate subject matter. Hence, according to our example, the focal point of our phenomenological reflection proceeds upon the analysis of synthetically linked appearings of an objectivity in consciousness, i.e., the coffee cup on my desk of which I am aware, with the aim to establish an eidetic description of the manners by which said consciousness holds that objectivity as such in its grasp. The phenomenon in question is thus the act and its object, and the method of phenomenology is a reduction to this correlative standing of consciousness intending some objectivity. For this reason, Husserl was apt to say that the method of phenomenology is essentially the method of phenomenological reductions. However, since we will more fully introduce the notion of phenomenological reduction later in this chapter, our present examination remains preliminary here, lacking the methodological precision we can gain only later.

For the moment, though, let us continue our examination in a simple, or as Husserl might say, naive investigation of the quasi-perceptual experience at issue. (We say “quasi-perceptual” since we engage ourselves imaginatively in this exercise). As we reflect and examine an experience like this, that is to say, the current perception of some nearby object, certain essential features of the perception come into relief. Although my gaze is at present by and large unalteringly directed to the cup, my gaze can remain fixed on something and yet may vary with a simple movement of the head or body. The X at which my attention is directed nevertheless appears before me as a sort of enduring identity amidst and through changing aspects. Furthermore, the object, i.e., the perceptual object, never presents itself entirely all at once—to speak in the active voice—though the object stands there before me as a whole entity. The cup faces me, so to speak. And though the back of the cup does not appear, it nevertheless is somehow there along with that which appears to me. In fact, looking around to the obscured side of the object brings about a new perspective of it, indeed an expected view which was meant all along in the experience of the earlier imperfect perception of the cup. Where before the intuition of the back of the cup remained an empty but generally indeterminate expectation of what I would see if I were to look, now as I actually turn to look at the back my expectation is fulfilled in the new perspective. This is not to say, of course, that I had a clear expectation of what I would see. This is especially true if I had not actually looked at that other side of the cup. I may not be sure exactly what the back of the cup look likes, but I expect it to have features I had experienced earlier and, at least, features in common with the perceived front face.¹⁰ As my indeterminate expectations are fulfilled when I turn the back side to face me, I can note that the object endures before me amidst and, indeed, because of the varying appearances. The imperfection of perceptual experience in itself does not diminish the experience of an object as something, as, in this case, a coffee cup. Rather, the very imperfection of sense perception colors my experience of the given X and is the essential condition that makes possible a harmonious string of appearings which, themselves, form a particular sense or meaning for me of the given object as such and such. In other words, if I were to look to the back side and not see the expected continuing curvature of the other face, for instance, but rather something altogether unexpected, I would see this X is indeed different from what I took it earlier to be. The sense of X as I held it earlier in my perceptual consciousness now changes to X as something else in its sense. Naturally, I do not disavow my previous experience of the X as meant earlier, i.e., as a cup. Precisely the opposite is the case. The object now stands before me as an “X which I believed was a cup but now see is not.” The phenomenological investigation of perceptual conscious is the analysis and description of just this dynamic, enduring character of this sort of experiencing—that is to say, the ongoing act of attentive perceiving, on the one hand, and the object, on the other, as this X there before me in the transition of its appearings and retaining the sense of an identical X enduring in my view even as it is now grasped as different from what I had earlier taken it to be.

We need not continue with this example to note something striking and essential to perceptual experience as such. In consciousness of this sort, objects appear to me, and they appear to me imperfectly. That is to say, the object of experience manifests itself in a synthesis of appearings accruing in a temporal structuring in which the sense of it as such is instituted. Consciousness thus has a fundamentally temporal character.

Consciousness, that is to say more specifically, my consciousness is at once consciousness of that which appears to me. Our example has been that of a sensory perception of something, and we have been analyzing perceptual consciousness as a paradigm example. Under this aspect, we can see that phenomenology, then, is the analytical investigation and description of the essential character of this dative/genitive on-going sense structuring occurring in an enduring unity of experience. Husserl famously called for a return to the things, themselves—zu den Sachen selbst zurückgehen. The central theme of phenomenology, die Sachen selbst, is precisely this dynamic on-going sense-determining consciousness. The aim of phenomenology is, thus, an eidetic description of this wondrous dual structuring nexus. And so, broadly stated, it seeks to lay out in its investigations—at least as art...

Table of contents

• Studies in Philosophy
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 A Question of Focus
• 2 A Unitary Impulse
• 3 The Development of Constitutive Phenomenology
• 4 The System of Phenomenological Philosophy
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1 Husserl’s Publishing History
• Appendix 2 The Husserl−Misch Correspondence
• Appendix 3 Draft Arrangements for Edmund Husserl’s Time Investigations1
• Appendix 4 The Systems of Phenomenological Philosophy
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index