Abstract
The concept of attitude is the product of a debate on psychologism during the first years of the twentieth century: the theory that all philosophical issues are in essence a matter of the human psyche and its power of decision making. Attitude appears to be pivotal in phenomenology and a central philosophical theme in the case of meaning. The intellectual climate of the concept is researched in this chapter; its roots appear in German literature of the eighteenth century, and attitude became a key-component of Edmund Husserl’s ideas. Originally a differentiation between a naïve- and a non-naïve attitude, the concept became decisive in understanding language layers, which were producing either naïve-natural or non-naïve-natural levels of linguistic articulation essential for meaning. This determined the method and content of Husserl’s phenomenology and Peirce’s pragmatism as well as his theory of signs. The two have in this chapter an extended conversation via Skype, which uniquely clarifies differences and common ideas on the foundations of meaning. The law student will in the last section learn the relevance of these ideas for law and legal discourse, in which attitude changes should be trained.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
See Peter Ghosh: Max Weber and “The Protestant Ethic”, Oxford 2014, and: Duncan Kelly ; “Not a Donkey” in: Times Literary Supplement, Feb. 13, 2015, p. 3f.
- 3.
See a most recent version of this issue in: Martin Staude: Meaning in Communication , Cognition, and Reality, Imprint Academic 2013, p. 231 ff: “Communicative vs. psychic activation”.
- 4.
- 5.
Jan M. Broekman: “The Emancipation of Meaning: Sign, Meaning, Norm” in: Positivität, Normativität und Institutionalität des Rechts. Festschrift für Werner Krawietz zum 80. Geburtstag. (Aarnio c.s., Eds), Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2013, p. 375 ff.
- 6.
They lead to the First Volume of the famous Logische Untersuchungen [Logical Investigations] published from 1900 on and called Prolegomena zur Reinen Logik [Prolegomena to a Pure Logic].
- 7.
Edmund Husserl: Logische Untersuchungen. Prolegomena zur reinen Logik, [Logical Investigations. Prolegomena for a Pure Logic] 2nd Ed., Halle 1913. p. V.
- 8.
F. Heinemann: “Schicksal und Aufgabe der Philosophie im Zwanzigsten Jahrhundert” [Fate and Task of Philosophy in the 20th Century] in: Die Philosophie im XX. Jahrhundert [Philosophy in the XX. Century], Stuttgart 1959 (1963 2nd Ed.), p. 270, He did so while deepening the abyss between German and British philosophy: “phenomenology as such, in the form Husserl designed and defined, has failed … but thanks to its lack of clarity, it was fruitful and offered new perspectives in Europe.” See also p. 280f.
- 9.
Edmund Husserl: Vorlesungen über Bedeutungslehre, Sommersemester 1908. (U. Panzer, Ed.) [Lectures on Theory of Meaning, Summer Semester 1908] Husserliana Bd. XXVI, M. Nijhoff, Dordrecht 1987.
- 10.
André Lalande: Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie, 6th Ed. Paris 1951, p. 856.
- 11.
See remarks on Wundt in the lemma “Psychology” by R.S.Peters & C.A.Mack in: Paul Edwards (Ed.): The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 7, New York 1967, p. 26.
- 12.
See F. Stjernfeldt : Natural Propositions. The Actuality of Peirce’s Doctrine of Dicisigns . Docent Press, Boston 2014, p. 16: “A well-worn myth in the history of philosophy tells us that it was Frege’s scathing review of Husserl’s first book Philosophie der Arithmetik (1890) which prompted Husserl to a volte-face”. See Chapter 2.2, pp. 16–24.
- 13.
An appropriate interpretation of immanence occurs only at a phenomenological level, so that the idea of a “transcendental immanence” emerges here. For the specialist we add: intentional sense-images can unfold that phenomenological way in immanence.
- 14.
E. Husserl:Vorlesungen über Bedeutungslehre, Sommersemester 1908. (U. Panzer, Ed.) [Lectures on Theory of Meaning, Summer Semester 1908] Op. Cit., p. 5.
- 15.
See F. Stjernfelt: Diagrammatology. An Investigation on the Borderlines of Phenomenology, Ontology, and Semiotics. Springer 2007, p. 144: “The missed encounter between the two seems to have a background in both of them misunderstanding the other’s account of logic. Peirce emphatically saw logic as an ideal, normative science—Husserl likewise saw it as an ideal science, but emphatically not as a normative science”.
- 16.
The Editor of the 1908 Vorlesungen, Ursula Panzer, refers in her Introduction of the Lectures to the intellectual climate in Göttingen and München, which focused in those days on the manifold problems of Meaning. She also refers to a PhD publication on that subject: F.G.Schmücker : Die Phänomenologie als Methode der Wesenserkenntnis unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Auffassung der Münchner-Göttinger Phänomenologenschule, [Phenomenology as a Method to Acquire Knowledge about Essence in the Particular Views of the School of Phenomenologists in Munich and Gottingen] München 1956.
- 17.
Husserl, Vorlesung 1908, p. 38.
- 18.
E. Husserl: Erste Pilosophie—Erster Teil: Kritische Ideengeschichte. M. Nijhoff, Den Haag 1956, R. Boehm (Ed.), pp. 236, 244 f, 247/248. It is remarkable how Husserl’s considerations in view of an insight in the subject-structures emerging from factual towards transcendental experiences, was inspired by Kant’s view on the “Ich-Spaltung” [the partition of the I] and his description of identity and difference in the human Ego as explained in the Kritik der Reinen Vernunft, [Critique of pure Reason], B 492. Kant suggested what Husserl followed: to contemplate the discord of the Ego/Reason with itself. (Kr.d.r.V., A VI) For a deeper insight in the relations between Husserl and Kant, see Jan M. Broekman: Phänomenologie und Egologie, Den Haag, M. Nijhoff, Series Phaenomenologica Bd 12, 1963, Ch. 3 & 5.
- 19.
A hitherto unwritten study on Edmund Husserl and Martin Buber would not be limited to comparisons between principles of phenomenology and dialogue . The concepts of ‘Einstellung’ and ‘Haltung’, both translated as ‘attitude’, are of greater philosophical importance. Buber begins his famous 1923 “Ich and Du” [I and Thou] with the statement that the world of any human being is characterized by a discordant or even a contradictory attitude because of the foundational words (or rather the word-pairs ‘I-Thou’ and ‘I-It’) that can be spoken: “Die Welt ist dem Menschen zwiefältig nach seiner zwiefältigen Haltung”. Attitude is the key concept here, like in Husserl’s phenomenology.
- 20.
“Ontology” recent: Bruno Latour : An Inquiry into Modes of Existence, Harvard UP 2013.
- 21.
Edmund Husserl’s daughter Mrs. Elisabeth F.C. Rosenberg-Husserl mentioned this biographical topic in a conversation with this author in Göttingen (Germany) in 1958. See F. von Schiller: “Über naïve und sentimentalische Dichtung”. Its essays were separately published in DIE HOREN 1795 & 1796. They formed a completed essay published in 1800 in the same German Journal established by F. Schiller. The Journal was named after three Greek Goddesses: Eunomia, Dike and Irene—now issuing its 253rd volume.
- 22.
Orhan Pamuk: The Naïve and the Sentimental Novelist, Harvard UP, 2010, p. 13; Peter Szondi: “Das Naïve ist das Sentimentalische. Zur Begriffsdialektik in Schillers Abhandlung” [The Naïve is the Sentimental. On the Conceptual Dialectics of Schillers Essay] in: Lektüren und Lektionen. [Readings and Lectures] in: Schriften II [Writings II], Suhrkamp 1978, p. 59f.
- 23.
F. von Schiller: Sämtliche Werke [Complete Works] Cotta, Stuttgart 1879, Vol. XII, p. 148 f.
- 24.
Hans Reiss : The Writer’s Task from Nietzsche to Brecht, McMillan, London 1978, p.100f.
- 25.
On Peirce and Schiller, see: Jeffrey Bernouw : “Aesthetic for Schiller and Peirce, A Neglected Origin of Pragmatism” in: Journal of the History of Ideas Vol. 49, No 4. 1988, pp. 607–632 UPenn Press. Bernouw states: it is reasonable to conclude that the influence of Schiller was active at the end as well as at the inception of Peirce’s philosophical development, spanning more than 50 years of his life. In his correspondence with Lady Welby in 1908 he refers her to Schiller’s Aesthetic Letters, “the first book of philosophy I ever read,” saying “it made so much impression upon me as to have thoroughly soaked my notion of ‘play,’ to this day.” Firstness includes the intuition/invention of being confronted with an Einstellungsänderung. That is a novum in English philosophy, neglected in the UK and the US. There is new light on the importance of a comparison between Husserl and Peirce: their proximity is here, (in the confrontation with the First, or the naive-natural), and it is a confrontation that seems overwhelming.
- 26.
Edmund Husserl: Erste Philosophie (1923/24) Erster Teil: Kritische Ideengeschichte. R. Boehm (Ed.), Op. Cit.
- 27.
E. Husserl: Erste Philosophie—Op. Cit., 1956, p. 236, 239.
- 28.
Op. Cit.: p. 260.
- 29.
Op. Cit.,: p. 262.
- 30.
See: I. Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason], B 58, B 156, B 153. See also the structure of Kantian concepts such as: ‘Selbstaffektion’ [Self-affection] or ‘Achtung’ [respect].
- 31.
See the many and rich explanations on the “I” in: Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Phillosophie [Ideas on a pure Phenomenology and a phenomenological Philosophy], Op. Cit., pp. 236–281.
- 32.
Any misunderstanding or misjudgment of that relation leads to philosophical inaccuracies, as was the case with the German “Psychologismus”.
- 33.
Emmanuel Levinas: “La technique phénoménologique” in: HUSSERL: Cahiers de Royaumont; No. 111, Paris 1959, p. 96 f.
- 34.
That idea is remarkably parallel to Ch. S. Peirce, for whom attitude change functioned also at the basis of his philosophy.
- 35.
H.L. van Breda : ”La Technique Phénomenologique, Discussion“, in: Husserl: Cahiers de Royaumont, Op. Cit., p. 113.
- 36.
Edmund Husserl: Erste Philosophie. Zweiter Teil: Theorie der phänomenologischen Reduktion. [First Philosophy, Vol. II: Theory of the phenomenological Reduction], R. Boehm (Ed.), Op. Cit., 1959, p. 429, 431, 435.
- 37.
Op. Cit.: p. 436.
- 38.
Op. Cit.: p. 436.
- 39.
Edmund Husserl: Logische Untersuchungen, Band I: Prolegomena zu einer reinen Logik [Logical Investigations, Vol. I: Prolegomena for a pure Logic], Op. Cit., Halle 1900, p. vii, p. 175 f.
- 40.
Edmund Husserl: Formale und transzendentale Logik—Versuch einer Kritik der Logischen Vernunft (FTL) [Formal and Transcendental Logic—a Critique of Logical Reason] Halle 1929, Op. Cit., p. 239.
- 41.
Edmund Husserl: FTL, Op. Cit.: p. 241 f.
- 42.
Edmund Husserl: Die Krisis der Europäischen Wissenschaften und die Transzendentale Phänomenologie , Op. Cit., p. 214.
- 43.
Husserl has, in particular in the 1950s of the twentieth century, been criticized because the transcendental attitude would isolate from reality; his philosophy would be of a lonely transcendental self, according to F. Heinemann in his Existenzphilosophie: lebendig oder tot? [Existentialism : alive or dead?] Stuttgart 1954, p. 53. See also: Th W. Adorno : Zur Metakritik der Erkenntnistheorie [A Metacritique of the Theory of Knowledge] Stuttgart 1956, p. 159: “The drowning phenomenology tries to save itself through tearing oneself by one’s hair from the morass of the despised existence …”.
- 44.
Edmund Husserl: FTL, Op. Cit.: p. 244 f.
- 45.
See Jan M. Broekman: Phänomenologie und Egologie, Op. Cit., p. 63.
- 46.
See for a more general consideration of the “map”-concept, and consider here also the Peircean “diagram”: A.M. MacEachren: How Maps Work. Representation, Visualization, and Design, New York/London 2004, in particular Part II: How Maps are Imbued with Meaning, p. 213 f.
- 47.
Ch. S. Peirce: CP, 8. 329.
- 48.
Jan M. Broekman: Firstness and Phenomenology—Peirce and Husserl on Attitude Change” in: Anne Wagner & Jan M. Broekman (Eds): Prospects of Legal Semiotics, Springer 2010, p. 49.
- 49.
See E. Husserl: Vorlesungen 1908, Op. Cit. p. 38; Also: F. Stjernfelt: Diagrammatology. Op. Cit., p. 148 ff.
- 50.
A Peircean link with the Logische Untersuchungen and a deeper insight in the commonness of Husserl and Peirce is the basis of a more general comparison, which has hitherto only been developed in the 2007 and 2014 works of Frederik Stjernfelt.
- 51.
Charles S. Hardwick (Ed.): Semiotic and Significs. The Correspondence between Charles S. Peirce and Victoria Lady Welby. Indiana UP 1977, p. 24. See also Peirce: CP 1, 141–353.
- 52.
Edmund Husserl: Die Idee der Phänomenologie. [The idea of Phenomenoloogy] Op. Cit., 1950. p. ix f.
- 53.
Jan M. Broekman: “Artificiality and Naturalness—The Tyche Deity” in: Jan M. Broekman & Larry Catà Backer : Lawyers Making Meaning, Springer 2013, p. 217 ff.
- 54.
Kelly A. Parker : The Continuity of Peirce’s Thought, Vanderbilt UP 1998, p. 75 f.
- 55.
Stjernfelt, Diagrammatology, Op. Cit., p. 144 f.
- 56.
It might be of interest that Husserl’s 1929 Formale und tranzendentale Logik seems to be a prelude to this continuous reading that follows; it is a reading that gradually clarifies the unfolding of his transcendental phenomenology. The latter shows a pluralizing notion of and a methodological distancing from the naïve-natural Einstellung/attitude.
- 57.
- 58.
See F. Stjernfelt: Natural Propositions, Op. Cit., 2014.
- 59.
Not unlike in Dutch, where a correct translation of the German “Einstellung” would be: “instelling”, an expression translated by the Dutch-English dictionary as “attitude”.
- 60.
See Jan M. Broekman: “Lacan, The Mirror and the ‘I’ “ in: Jan M. Broekman & Larry Catà Backer : Signs in Law—A Source Book, Op. Cit.: Ch. 16.
- 61.
- 62.
S. Petrilli: The Self as a Sign, Op. Cit., 2013, p. 259. See also the Ogden and Richards quotation on p. 260 of Petrilli’s publication: “Throughout all our life we are treating things as signs…and very little of it escapes some degree of interpretation”.
- 63.
Vincent M. Colapietro : Peirce’s Approach to the Self. A Semiotic Perspective on Human Subjectivity. SUNY NY 1989, p. 42, 68. See p. 104 and the argument: “the human mind in its actual operations … is an embodied form, and, as such, the mind belongs to the same genus … as the word”.
- 64.
J. Derrida: Marges de la Philosophie. Paris 1972, Ch 1 p. 9 f: La Différance.
- 65.
B. L. Whorf: ‘Science and Linguistics’, in: Technology Review 42(6) (1940): 229–31.
- 66.
Ch. S. Peirce: “On Phenomenology” in: The Essential Peirce, Vol. II (1893–1913). Indiana UP, 1998, p. 147f.
- 67.
Edmund Husserl: Die Krisis der Europäischen Wissenschaften und die Transzendentale Phänomenologie [The Crisis of the European Sciences and the transcendental Phenomenology] Op. Cit., 1954, p. 139.
- 68.
See Jan M. Broekman: “Firstness and Phenomenology” in: Prospects of Legal Semiotics, Op. Cit., 2010, p. 44f.
- 69.
“Accountability” has been made a key issue in legal semiotics by the Dutch lawyer, politician and scholar J. I. de Haan in his 1916, dissertation in Amsterdam. See Jan M. Broekman & Larry Catà Backer: Signs in Law—A Source Book, Op. Cit.: 2015, p. 73f.
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Broekman, J.M. (2016). Attitude. In: Meaning, Narrativity, and the Real. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28175-9_2
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