Abstract
This chapter examines the criticism of Husserl’s Ideen articulated by the Neo-Kantians Rickert and Natorp. Both lament that Husserl’s method of eidetic seeing is an intuitionistic shortcut that does not justify the knowledge it claims to provide. Natorp also raises doubts about the appropriateness of the eidetic method and phenomenological reflection for the investigation of subjectivity. Its answer this criticism distinguishing between intuition of an essence and knowledge of that essence and by insisting on the necessity of an eidetic investigation of consciousness, and concludes with a discussion of phenomenology’s claim to be the foundational science for philosophy.
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Notes
- 1.
E. Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie (Hua III/1), (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), 106; Trans. F. Kersten, Ideen Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998), 129. (Hereafter I will quote exclusively from the English translation in the following way: Ideen I, page number.)
- 2.
For a short but illuminating characterization of the two schools and their differences see M. Friedman, A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger (Chicago: Open Court, 2000), 25–37.
- 3.
See K. Schuhmann, Die Dialektik der Phänomenologie II: Reine Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Philosophie. Historisch-analytische Monographie über Husserls ‘Ideen I’ (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), 3.
- 4.
K. Schuhmann, ed., Edmund Husserl: Briefwechsel (Springer, 1994), V 171.
- 5.
H. Rickert, Die Philosophie des Lebens: Darstellung und Kritik der philosophischen Modeströ-mungen unserer Zeit (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1920), 50.
- 6.
H. Rickert, Die Philosophie des Lebens, 28 f.
- 7.
See E. Husserl, Philosophy as a Rigorous Science, in E. Husserl, Shorter Works (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 173.
- 8.
Ideen I, 9.
- 9.
Ideen I, 41.
- 10.
Ideen I, 8.
- 11.
In a recent paper, Helmut Holzey offers a convincing sketch of the Neo-Kantian critique of the concept of intuition: H. Holzey, “Neo-Kantianism and Phenomenology: The Problem of Intuition,” Neokantianism in Contemporary Philosophy, eds. R. A. Makkreel and S. Luft (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 25–40. However, in spite of the rather broad formulation in the title, he considers exclusively Natorp’s thought and ignores Rickert’s contribution on this issue. It seems to me, however, that Rickert’s critique of phenomenological intuition is actually much more reflected and sophisticated than Natorp’s.
- 12.
H. Rickert, “Kennen und Erkennen. Kritische Bemerkungen zum theoretischen Intuitionismus,” Kant Studien 39 (1934): 139–55.
- 13.
Ibid., 149.
- 14.
Ibid.
- 15.
Ibid., 150.
- 16.
I am obviously referring to empirical intuition and not to the pure intuition of space and time in Kant’s transcendental aesthetics, a doctrine that both Husserl and the Neo-Kantians rejected as utterly untenable for reasons that need not occupy us here.
- 17.
H. Rickert, “Die Methode der Philosophie und das Unmittelbare,” Philosophische Aufsätze (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 128.
- 18.
Ibid., 136.
- 19.
Ibid., 140.
- 20.
See ibid., 139.
- 21.
Ibid., 117. The one just offered is but a sketch of Rickert’s epistemology. For a thoughtful presentation of the latter see A. Zijderverld, Rickert’s Relevance: The Ontological Nature and Epistemological Function of Values (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 85–137.
- 22.
P. Natorp, “Husserls ‘Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie,’” Husserl, ed. H. Noack (Darmstadt: WBG, 1973), 40.
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
Ibid., 41.
- 25.
Ibid., 42.
- 26.
Ibid., 43.
- 27.
Karl-Heinz Lembeck points out correctly that Natorp’s intention in his review can be viewed as the attempt to give a new interpretation to Husserl’s concept of intuition based on a ‘dynamic’ understanding of Plato’s theory of Ideen (Karl-Heinz Lembeck, “Begründungsphilosophische Perspektiven: Husserl und Natorp über Anschauung,” Phänomenologische Forschungen (2003): 97–108.)
- 28.
Ibid., 44.
- 29.
This is not the place to expand further on Natorp’s idiosyncratic reading of Plato. See P. Natorp, Plato’s Theory of Ideen: An Introduction to Idealism (Sankt Augustin: Academia, 2004).
- 30.
The distinction between Wesensschau and Wesenserkenntnis has been recently addressed and framed in terms of an intuition of essence “before” and “after” an eidetic judgment has been issued in C. Majolino, “La Partition du réel: Remarques sur l’eidos, la phantasia, l’effondrement du monde et l’être absolu de la conscience,,” Philosophy, Phenomenology, Sciences—Essays in Commemoration of Edmund Husserl, eds. C. Ierna, H. Jacobs, and F. Mattens (Dordrecht: Springer 2010), 573–660. Here, 593. Whereas the intuition of essence before an eidetic judgment simply consists in the possibility of viewing an individual as an example of its class (this tone is also a tone) through a corresponding shift of attitude, the transition to a pure eidos and thereby the intuitive vision of an essence as fulfilling intuitively an eidetic judgment requires a specific method of disengagement of reality and phantasy-variation. I cannot expand further on this point here but I wish to refer to Majolino’s excellent work for an extended and convincing treatment.
- 31.
Edmund Husserl, Ms. A VI 16/ 25a, edited by U. Melle, published in Issues in Husserl’s Ideen II, eds. T. Nenon and L. Embree (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer, 1996), 2.
- 32.
Whether or not there really are such things—i.e., a causal laws formulable in mathematical terms that regulate the transition from a state belonging to a certain psychic class and to a state of a different class—is a complex question with no obvious answer, in spite of all recent enthusiasm for so-called reductive theories of mentality.
- 33.
Interestingly, this position comes close to that of another Neo-Kantian philosopher: Rickert’s student Emil Lask. In his insightful reflections on Lask’s philosophy, Steven Galt Crowell writes: “Thus the problems of knowledge appears as the problem of choosing (or discovering) the proper category for given material … . Error, on this view, consists in predicating of some material a category in which it does not stand,” Husserl, Heidegger and the Space of Meaning: Paths toward Transcendental Phenomenology (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2001), 63–64. However, Husserl is less exclusive than Lask. Extra-essential knowledge, although not in accord with an underlying vision of essence (in Lask’s language: category), is not to be deemed erroneous outright. It is regrettable that Lask passed away before having the opportunity to read Husserl’s Ideen which, I believe, would have offered precious insights to carry forward his own philosophical project had he been able to develop it further.
- 34.
On the contrary, I think, that the idea of experiential boundaries imposed on concept-formation if this latter is to attain essential knowledge represents the really crucial novelty that stems from Husserl’s eidetics.
- 35.
For a brief but illuminating characterization of the Neo-Kantian idea of justification in transcendental philosophy and its difference from Husserl’s phenomenology, see Steven Galt Crowell, Husserl, Heidegger and the Space of Meaning, 173–74.
- 36.
Ideen I, 10.
- 37.
Ibid., 33.
- 38.
Ibid., 44. Neither Plato nor Natorp would be willing to accept false geometrical thinking as a case in which a vision of essence is nonetheless operative. For Husserl, on the contrary, this would be a case of vision of essence followed by an unsuccessful attempt to gain knowledge of the corresponding geometrical essence.
- 39.
E. Husserl, Vorlesungen über Bedeutungslehre: Sommersemester 1908 (Hua XXVI) (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986), 108.
- 40.
It should be remarked that the procedure of eidetic variation is not explicitly present in the Ideen and is introduced by Husserl only later, especially in his lectures of transcendental logic in the 1920s. However it has been convincingly shown that the method of eidetic variation is nothing but a refinement of the procedure employed by Husserl from the start in his phenomenological analyses (See D. Lohmar, “Die phänomenologische Methode der Wesensschau und ihre Präzisierung als eidetische Variation,” Phänomenologische Forschungen (2005): 65–91.)
- 41.
In this sense, as Nicolas De Warren aptly emphasizes, “an ‘intuition of essence’ requires a complex form of activity and passivity.” Nicolas De Warren, “On Husserl’s Essentialism,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 14/2 (2006): 262.
- 42.
Ideen I, 167. Translation modified.
- 43.
Ideen I, 65.
- 44.
See Paul Natorp, “Husserls ‘Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie,’” Husserl, ed. H. Noack (WBG: Darmstadt 1973), 49.
- 45.
Ibid., 50.
- 46.
Ibid.
- 47.
Ibid., 53.
- 48.
This is what he called “reconstructive method.” For a full-fledged account of Natorp’s reconstructive method, see Sebastian Luft, “Reconstruction and Reduction: Natorp and Husserl on Method and the Question of Subjectivity,” Neokantianism in Contemporary Philosophy, eds. R. A. Makkreel and S. Luft (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 59–91.
- 49.
The first to underscore this influence was Iso Kern in his monumental work, Husserl und Kant: Eine Untersuchung über Husserls Verhältnis zu Kant und zum Neukantianismus (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), 366 f. Recently Natorp’s influence on Husserl has been the object of renewed attention: Donn Welton, The Systematicity of Husserl’s Transcendental Philosophy, The New Husserl: A Critical Reader, ed. D. Welton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2003), 255–88; Sebastian Luft, “Natorp, Husserl und das Problem der Kontinuität von Leben, Wissenschaft und Philosophie,” Phänomenologische Forschungen (2006): 99–134.
- 50.
This is the substance of Husserl’s response to Natorp’s critical review of Ideen and in a letter to the Neo-Kantian philosopher he writes: “I overcame the stage of static Platonism already more than one decade ago” (letter to Natorp, 29/06/1918, Briefwechsel V, 135 f. Quoted in Sebastian Luft, “Natorp, Husserl und das Problem der Kontinuität von Leben, Wissenschaft und Philosophie,” 106, n.18.)
- 51.
Interestingly, in spite of all emphasis on the dynamic nature of consciousness, Natorp does not have a theory of time-consciousness. I cannot expand here on Husserl’s investigations of time-consciousness and its import in genetic phenomenology. An illuminating study of these issues is offered by Nicolas De Warren, Husserl and the Promise of Time: Subjectivity in Transcendental Phenomenology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
- 52.
E. Husserl, Die Lebenswelt. Auslegungen der vorgegebenen Welt und ihrer Konstitution. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1916–1937), ed. Rochus Sowa (Hua, 39) (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008), 11. My italics.
- 53.
Sebastian Luft seems to downplay this important point when he writes: “Obviously, with a modification of phenomenology’s theme, the characterizing trait of eidetic science undergoes a transformation too. Accordingly, an eidetic science of transcendental subjectivity deals with ‘laws of genesis,’ such as the laws of motivation and association.” (Sebastian Luft, “Natorp, Husserl und das Problem der Kontinuität von Leben, Wissenschaft und Philosophie,” 124–125.) The allegation that static phenomenology deals with essences, whereas genetic phenomenology deals with eidetic laws is misleading for two interconnected reasons: (1) the concept of eidetic law is not peculiar to genetic phenomenology. Rather every essence—also ‘static’ essences such as the essence of a tone or the essence of perception—can be converted into eidetic laws of the form “for every conceivable x: if x is an F then x is a G” (Rochus Sowa, “Husserls Idee einer nicht-empirischen Wissenschaft von der Lebenswelt,” Husserl Studies 26 (2010): 59), for example, “if x is a tone then x is an entity with an intensity and a pitch.” (2) The “laws of genesis” too qua eidetic laws can be in turn converted into “static essences,” or better, re-articulated in terms of a vision of essence, such as “to the essence of time-consciousness belongs the threefold structure retention/primary impression/protention.” (The law-like formulation would be: “if x is a time-consciousness then x is an entity the structure of which is retention/primary impression/protention.”)
- 54.
To learn about Husserl’s work on the diagrams see the instructive paper: James Dodd, “Reading Husserl’s Time-Diagrams from 1917/18,” Husserl Studies 21 (2005): 111–37.
- 55.
Ideen I, XVII.
- 56.
See Paul Natorp, “Husserls ‘Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie,’” Husserl, ed. H. Noack (WBG: Darmstadt 1973), 50.
- 57.
See Ideen I, 95–96. It is appropriate to recall that ‘phenomenon’ for Husserl amounts to ‘lived-experience,’ i.e., perception, recollection, expectation and so forth.
- 58.
H. Rickert, Die Methode der Philosophie und das Unmittelbare, 115.
- 59.
Ibid., 116.
- 60.
See Ideen I, §37.
- 61.
On this point and on Husserl’s indebtedness to Pfänder, see M. Ubiali, “Die Willensakte und der Umfang der Motivation: Eine Gegenüberstellung von Pfänder und Husserl,” Geist–Person–Gemeinschaft: Freiburger Beiträge zur Aktualität Husserls, eds. P. Merz, A. Staiti, and F. Steffen (Würzburg: Ergon, 2010), 241–67.
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Staiti, A. (2013). The Ideen and Neo-Kantianism. 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_5
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