Abstract
A phenomenology of the historical world, if successful, could provide us with a descriptive account of our historical world that does not pre-decide how the world should be organized on the political, economic, or cultural level. Yet in order for such a phenomenology to be successful, a plausible perspective on history is needed that is not limited to a mere succession of contingencies, but that allows exploring their connections. Teleology is what emerges from the description of these connections. According to both Hegel and Husserl, teleology is justified because history is (at least partly) shaped by human beings who act on reasons – but who can also be mistaken or manipulated. The thesis of the current article is that Husserl’s phenomenology radicalizes Hegel’s in such a way that a plausible account of history as teleology emerges, yet in such a way that history does not need to have one goal set from the beginning. Moreover, Husserl’s phenomenology allows for a plurality of historical worlds; it does not need to settle on an account of progress, and it allows to explore crises. Finally, on the issue of critique, a Husserlian response would be that understanding the crisis in its origins and different historical manifestations is a necessary first step to addressing it.
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Notes
- 1.
To give just one example which is chosen here because of its close connection to our current theme, let me quote Ernst Tugendhat: “The possibility of a self-responsible, critical relation to the state is not allowed for by Hegel; instead, we learn: the existent laws carry absolute authority; the community determines what the individual is supposed to do; the individual conscience has to disappear, and reflection is replaced by trust – this is what Hegel means by the sublation of morality into Sittlichkeit” (Tugendhat 1979, 349).
- 2.
Hereafter, the page number of the English translation follows the corresponding page number of the German edition.
- 3.
See Hegel (1807, 491/589): “Conversely, to each abstract moment of Science corresponds a shape of manifest Spirit as such [eine Gestalt des erscheinenden Geistes überhaupt].”
- 4.
See also Hegel (1830b, § 577): “(…) and this movement is just as much the activity of knowing in which the eternal idea in and for itself engages, creates, and enjoys itself as absolute Spirit.”
- 5.
However, he asks rhetorical questions like this one: “Is philosophy perhaps merely a primary example of the universal truth that the deepest and truest history is the one which takes place in the common history of external, motivational contexts, as a history of ideas in the sense which has to first be clarified with respect to philosophy?” (Husserl 1992, 418).
- 6.
Janssen (1970, 114). Janssen first explains with respect to Hegel’s concept of history: “In this way, historical teleology lets the future become inessential because the present, as preserving completion of the past, contains the essence of the future such that nothing ‘essentially new’ can come from it.” And a corresponding footnote explains: “This feature also holds for the historical teleology in Hegel as well as in Husserl. In Husserl, this is less obvious since he considers the future as an infinite horizon for phenomenological research and development. But this future horizon is defined by the conditions of transcendental phenomenology which determine in advance that only something which conforms to it can occur.”
- 7.
See Bernet (1983, 30 f.): “The analysis of time as epistemologically oriented expands further the primacy of the now-present as naturally assumed. However, it employs the unnatural reduction of the passed present to the present remembering [Vergegenwärtigung] and the future present to the current expectation [Entgegenwärtigung] of the future. It thus denies the forgotten past and the unexpected, surprising future.”
- 8.
Manuscript E III 4, Teleologie, 3a: “The life of the animal as life in the concrete present with its small component of future. The human life as life into a wide future of life, as life in care which turns into universal care for the entire future of life” [Das Leben des Tieres als Leben in der konkreten Gegenwart, mit ihrem kleinen Bestand von Zukunft. Das Menschenleben als Leben in eine weite Lebenszukunft hinein, als Leben in der Vorsorge, die zur universalen Sorge für die ganze Lebenszukunft wird]. I would like to thank the Husserl Archives for permission to cite from this manuscript.
- 9.
Manuscript E III 4, 10a: Schicksals- und Todesstruktur der Welt.
- 10.
- 11.
See also Ladrière (1960, 187).
- 12.
Drawing on Kant’s third critique, Klaus Held suggests the appropriate German term “ansinnen” to describe this conveying (Held 2000, 12).
- 13.
See also Bernet’s convincing article in Bernet (1998), in which he shows the strengths of Husserl’s interpretation in comparison to Levinas’s: “Sticking to the First Interpretation and its conception of an analogous apprehension of the Other, one would then have to say that there must be a strangeness in myself the understanding of which guides me in my apprehension (or appresentation) of the Other’s strangeness. Several texts of Husserl seem to be willing to go as far as this” (Bernet 1998, 97).
- 14.
- 15.
In addition to the Crisis and supplementary manuscripts, Husserl provides indications for such a project in a manuscript entitled The Anthropological World (Husserl 1992).
- 16.
Husserl suggests a closer examination of the lifeworld’s ground-function in the Crisis (Husserl 1954, 158), but he conducts it elsewhere, see Husserl (1941, 2002). Already the titles of these manuscripts indicate that the earth-ground is taken here to constitute the spatiality of the lifeworld. In order to investigate the nature of the earth-ground, Husserl revisits his reflections on the lived-body (Leib). Just like the lived-body presents a zero point in relation to which rest and motion acquire their meaning, the earth-ground exhibits this function on the larger scale. Cf. Steinbock 1995, Chapter 7.
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Staehler, T. (2019). How is a Phenomenology of Historical Worlds Possible?. In: Ferrarin, A., Moran, D., Magrì, E., Manca, D. (eds) Hegel and Phenomenology. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 102. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17546-7_2
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