Abstract
The paper submits the phenomenological concept of reflection to the existentialist, hermeneutical, and Neo-Kantian critique. All three traditions found Husserl’s experiment of the annihilation of the world indefensible. The paper identifies this experiment as an early expression of the paradox of subjectivity. The paper offers a piece of eidetic description, which suggests that the paradox of subjectivity is rooted in the paradox of reflection. According to my central thesis, phenomenological reflection is a radicalization of mundane and psychological reflection, which brings to light that the transcendental and the mundane egos are two moments of the egoic structure of experience.
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- 1.
See Hans Wagner, “Kritische Bemerkungen zu Husserls Nachlass,” Philosophische Rundschau I (1953/54): 2. For the English translation, see Hans Wagner, “Critical Observations Concerning Husserl’s Posthumous Writings,” The Phenomenology of Husserl, ed. R.O. Elveton (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970), 204.
- 2.
See the entry on Germany, compiled by Ernst Wolfgang Orth and Thomas M. Seebohm, Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, ed. Lester Embree, et al. (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), 274.
- 3.
Friedrich Kreis’s Phänomenologie und Kritizismus (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1930) and Rudolf Zocher’s Husserl’s Phänomenologie und Schuppes Logik (München: Reinhardt, 1932) were the first published critical discussions of Husserl’s thought in Germany. In 1933, Eugen Fink had responded to this critique in his famous “Die phänomenologische Philosophie Edmund Husserls in der gegenwärtigen Kritik,” Kant Studien XXXVIII (1933). This debate between Zocher and Fink was the last published critical discussion of Husserl in Germany until the end of the war. The last German reviews of Husserl’s work before the war were also published in 1933. Roman Ingarden published a relatively brief review of Formal and Transcendental Logic and Helmut Kuhn published a rather detailed review of the Cartesian Meditations (both appeared in Kant Studien XXXVIII, 1933). Of course, one cannot overlook Ludwig Landgrebe’s edition of Erfahrung und Urteil (Prague: Academia-Verlag, 1938). Yet this highly important contribution to Husserl’s phenomenology, which appeared in print briefly after Husserl’s death, was not published in Germany, and the meager 200 printed copies were available only in Great Britain and the United States, not in Germany. Eugen Fink’s “Das Problem der Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls”(1938) is another noteworthy exception. Yet just as with Landgrebe’s work, this text also did not make any impact on German philosophy at the time of its publication.
- 4.
See in this regard T. Vongehr, “A Short History of the Husserl-Archives,” Geschichte des Husserl-Archivs/History of the Husserl-Archives (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), 111.
- 5.
L. O. Kattsoff, “Husserls Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie, Erstes Buch,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 12 (1951).
- 6.
E.g., “I may surely assume knowledge of the first volume of the Ideas” (Hans Wagner, op. cit., 8); or, “to this day Ideen I has not lost its preeminent role in the phenomenological discussions” (Jan Broekman, op. cit., 20).
- 7.
Hermann Ulrich Asemissen, “Strukturanalytische Probleme der Wahrnehmung in der Phänomenologie Husserl,” Kant-Studien 73 (1957).
- 8.
Klaus Hartmann, Husserls Einfühlungstheorie auf monadologischer Grundlage (Diss.: Bonn 1953).
- 9.
Alois Roth, Edmund Husserls ethische Untersuchungen (The Hague: Martinus Nojhoff, 1960).
- 10.
Klaus Held, Lebendige Gegenwart: Die Frage nach der Seinsweise des transzendentalen Ich bei Edmund Husserl (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966).
- 11.
Ulrich Claesges, Edmund Husserl’s Theorie der Raumkonstitution (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964).
- 12.
Alwin Diemer Edmund Husserl. Versuch einer systematischen Darstellung seiner Phänomenologie (Meisenheim am Glan, 1956).
- 13.
Helmuth Plessner, Husserl in Göttingen (Diss.: Vandehoeck & Ruprecht, 1959).
- 14.
Walter Biemel, “Die entscheidenden Phasen in Husserls Philosophie,” Zeitschrift 13 (1959).
- 15.
Wilhelm Szilasi, Einführung in die Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1959).
- 16.
Wolfgang-Herrmann Müller, Die Philosophie E. Husserls nach den Grundzügen ihrer Entstehung und ihrem systematischen Gehalt (Bonn, 1956).
- 17.
Gerhard Brand, Welt, Ich und Zeit (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1955).
- 18.
Ludwig Landgrebe, Philosophie der Gegenwart, op. cit., and Der Weg der Phänomenologie (Gütersloh: G. Mohn, 1963).
- 19.
Eugen Fink. Welt und Endlichkeit (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1990).
- 20.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Die Phänomenologische Bewegung,” op. cit.
- 21.
Gerhard Funke, Zur transzendentalen Philosophie (Bonn 1957).
- 22.
Iso Kern, Husserl und Kant: Eine Untersuchung über Husserls Verhältnis zu Kant und zum Neukantianismus (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1964).
- 23.
Thomas Seebohm, Die Bedingungen der Möglichkeit der Transzendental-Philosophie (Bonn, 1962).
- 24.
Hans-Ulrich Hoche, Nichtempirische Erkenntnis. Analytische und synthetische Urteile a priori bei Kant und bei Husserl (Meinsheim am Glan, 1964).
- 25.
Theodor Adorno, Zur Metakritik der Erkenntnistheorie. Studien über Husserl und die phänomenologische Antinomien (Stuttgart, 1956).
- 26.
Jürgen Habermas, Erkenntnis und Interesse (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1968).
- 27.
See Jan Broekman, Phänomenologie und Egologie: Faktisches and transzendentales Ego bei Edmund Husserl, (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963), 28–43.
- 28.
On the one hand, in the specifically phenomenological framework, it was not clear how one could still maintain the separation of the transcendental and the mundane domains in light of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology, which increasingly grew to be viewed as a radicalization of Husserl’s phenomenology. On the other hand, in the context of transcendental philosophy, a worry arose that Husserl’s alternative to Kant might lead to a philosophically infeasible position.
- 29.
The first chapter of Jan Broekman’s Phänomenologie und Egologie, significantly titled “Das Verhältnis vom faktischen und transzendentalen ego in der Kritik an Edmund Husserl,” provides an extensive list of different works, where such a critical reaction can be found. We find it in the works written by A. Schutz, H. Wagner, J. König, H. Plessner, H. Assemissen, L. Landgrebe, L. Binswanger, and F. Heinemann. The Kantian and hermeneutical influence is strongly visible not only in such a reaction, but even in Broekman’s own presentation of this reaction, as can already be seen in the title of his work: the operative distinction between the factual and the transcendental, while common in Kantian and hermeneutical literature, is rarely, if ever, found in Husserl’s works. Husserl replaces this distinction with a twofold opposition: factual vs. eidetic and mundane vs. transcendental. So as not to obscure this distinction, in the present context I will speak of the mundane and transcendental ego.
- 30.
F.H. Heinemann, Existenz-philosophie lebendig oder tot?(Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag,1954), p. 53. For the English translation, see F. H. Heinemann, Existentialism and the Modern Predicament (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), 53.
- 31.
Jan Broekman, op. cit., 30.
- 32.
Husserl himself refers to this critique in Hua VI, §43. For a forceful account of this critique, see Iso Kern, “Die drei Wege zur transzendental-phänomenlogischen Reduktion in der Philosophie Edmund Husserls,” Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 24/1.
- 33.
Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, ed. Walter Biemel (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950), 147–48. Hereafter, Hua III. For the English translation, see Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983).
- 34.
Originary experiences, which Husserl calls impressions, cannot be reflective. Something must be first given so that it can be reflected upon. This “something in question” is unreflective experience.
- 35.
Husserl addresses this very problem in the context of his critique of H. J. Watt’s methodological skepticism, which is explicitly directed against empirical psychology, but which Husserl also presumes to be directed against his phenomenology (See Hua III, §79). According to Watt, what is given in reflection is not experience pure and simple, but rather experience-as-given-to-reflection. On such a view, the supposition that reflection can generate knowledge valid for all experience is an ungrounded assumption.
- 36.
See Iso Kern, op. cit., and Sebastian Luft, “Husserl’s Theory of the Phenomenological Reduction: Between Life-World and Cartesianism,” Research in Phenomenology 34/1 (2004): 210.
- 37.
As Husserl has it, while the being of transcendent objects and the world itself is relative to consciousness, consciousness itself nulla ‘re’ indiget ad existendum. On Husserl’s view, it suffices to subtract the objectivating function from lived experiences to render conceivable the non-being of the world; yet such a subtraction would nonetheless leave consciousness itself intact.
- 38.
This paradox can also be found in Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie—a lecture course Husserl delivered in 1910–1911 (See Hua XIII, 174). For the English translation, see Edmund Husserl, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. I. Farin and J. Hart (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006). In many regards, Ideen I is based on these lectures. For another illustration of this paradox, see also Erste Philosophie II (Hua VIII, 71). Husserl’s best-known exposition of this paradox can be found in The Crisis (Hua VI), §53.
- 39.
Also sprach Zarathustra, in Friedrich Nietzsche, Gesammelte Werke (Gondrom Verlag, 2005), 696. For the English translation, see Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. by Graham Parkes (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005).
- 40.
See Jean-Paul Sartre, L’Imagination (Paris: Alcan, 1936); Imagination: A Psychological Critique, trans. F. William (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1962) and especially L’Imaginaire: psychologie phénoménologique de l’imagination; The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination, trans. J. Webber (London: Routledge, 2006).
- 41.
In the present context, I have left pre-reflective self-consciousness aside, since at any rate, it does not offer a thematic conception of the ego. For an account of the relation between self-consciousness and reflection, see Hermann Asemissen, “Egologische Reflexion,” Kant-Studien 50 (1958/59).
- 42.
No other answer is possible, since if one offered an anonymous origin of these syntheses, a new question would emerge: how is the ego conscious of this anonymous origin, and so ad infinitum.
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Geniusas, S. (2013). The Post-War Reception of Ideen I and Reflection. In: Embree, L., Nenon, T. (eds) Husserl’s Ideen. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 66. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5213-9_24
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