Abstract
Husserl’s most comprehensive efforts to overcome relativism are in the end inseparable from the larger project of establishing phenomenology as a foundational discipline. The starting-point of this project is the conviction, in the tradition of Descartes and Brentano, that intuition is the ultimate source of all knowledge and certainty.1 Initially Husserl’s aim is to make clear the basis in intuition of knowledge in the specific fields of arithmetic (Philosophy of Arithmetic) and logic (Logical Investigations). This more limited project leads to the elaboration of a general intuitionist epistemology and Evidenz-theory of truth; that is, to a systematization of the initial guiding conviction that intuition is the ground of all knowledge. At this early stage (i.e., through the first edition of the Logical Investigations), Husserl uncritically combines his intuitionism with a realist, Cartesian-style ontology inherited from Brentano. However, as the inconsistencies of this combination become clear, the definitive outlines of the project take shape. The guiding aim becomes twofold: to establish a discipline which will found the sciences while itself fulfilling the demand for Evidenz (truth) to the highest degree; and in so doing to perfect the overcoming of the Cartesian conception of truth and reality.
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Notes
The absolute priority and irreducibility of intuition is and remains the ‘principle of all principles’ of the Husserlian enterprise, as he explicitly states in Ideas I: “every originally presentative intuition is a justificatory source of knowledge, everything that is given to us originally in intuition … is simply to be taken as it presents itself…” (“Daß jede originär gebende Anschauung eine Rechtsquelle der Erkenntnis sei, daß alles was sich uns in der ‘Intuition’ originär… darbietet, einfach hinzunehmen sei, als was es sich gibt…”), Hua III 51/52 (Id/§ 24). In this and subsequent references to the Husserliana edition of Ideas I, the page number before the slash gives the location of the passage in the Schuhmann edition; the page number after the slash, the location in the Biemel edition. Quotations follow the text of the Schuhmann edition.
Descartes does not affirm the view that the mind can be in immediate relation only to ideas and never to external things as consistently and unambiguously as, for example, does Locke. However, even if Descartes himself might have resisted this view, it does seem to be the logical consequence of his theory of perception and the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. For Descartes maintains that external things possess primary qualities only, and that secondary qualities exist solely as ideas in the mind. But all perceptions ‘of’ external things include the perception of secondary qualities, which are ideas only. Therefore according to Descartes’ own account, perceptions of external things must be perceptions of ideas. For Descartes’ account of the primary/secondary quality distinction, see René Descartes, Principia philosophiez, in Oeuvres de Descartes, vol. VIII/I, edited by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery (Paris: Vrin, 1973), 22–23, 33-34, 42, 46, 318-323 (Part I, Articles 48, 68-70; Part Two, Articles 4, 11; Part IV, Articles 191-8); Régulée ad directionem ingenii, in Oeuvres de Descartes, vol. X, edited by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery (Paris: Vrin, 1974), 412-19 (Rule 12); Dioptrique, in Oeuvres de Descartes, vol. VI, edited by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery (Paris: Vrin, 1973), 84-6 (Discourse One). For the causal theory of perception, see Dioptrique, 130-47 (Discourse Six); Principia, 315-6 (Part IV, Article 189); and Passions de lâme, in Oeuvres de Descartes, vol. XI, edited by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery (Paris: Vrin, 1974), 336-7, 346, 354-5 (Articles 12, 23, and 34). For an unambiguous statement of Locke’s representationalism, see John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, edited by Peter Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), 525 (Book IV, Chapter I, § 1).
See A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, in The Works of George Berkeley, vol. II, edited by A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop (London and New York: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1945), §§ 20, 26, 33; and Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A 30/B 45, A 250, B 289-290.
This empiricist justification of knowledge is generally the one proposed by Locke, not for knowledge of the mere existence of external material reality (which he holds to be certain), but for any specification of its properties. See Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 378-9 (Book II, Chapter XXXI, § 6) for the claim that any theory listing the primary qualities is nothing but a presumption, a best possible explanation of observed phenomena; and 537 (Book IV, Chapter II, § 14) for the argument that, unlike a specification of the primary qualities, the knowledge of the mere existence of external objects is past doubting.
For Berkeley’s phenomenalist interpretation of natural laws, see Principles of Human Knowledge, §§ 30, 58, 62, 64. For the claim that the phenomenal content of our ideas can give no evidence whatsoever that their cause is not God alone, see § 53. A similar argument was common in the Middle Ages, as an elaboration of the omnipotence of God. For example, Ockham holds that God could produce all the subjective experiences we normally attribute to the external world, although we would not have any grounds for judging the difference. However, unlike Berkeley, Ockham is not prepared to assert that God does indeed do this. See Ockham’s Theory of Terms: Part I of the Summa Logicœ, translated by Michael Loux, (Notre Dame, Ind. and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974), 182.
Principles of Human Knowledge, § 19. See especially the passage, “for though we give the materialists their external bodies, they by their own confession are never the nearer knowing how our ideas are produced: since they own themselves unable to comprehend in what manner body can act upon spirit, or how it is possible it should imprint any idea in the mind. Hence it is evident the production of ideas or sensations in our minds, can be no reason why we should suppose matter or corporeal substances, since that is acknowledged to remain equally inexplicable with, or without that supposition.” For Locke’s own admission that the posited causality is completely incomprehensible, see Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 545 (Book IV, Chapter III, § 13).
See Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A 391–4 (the general argument), as well as A 144/B 183 (the critical interpretation of causality).
Principia philosophiœ, 325–9 (Part IV, Articles 203-6). Similarly, in Part III, Article 43, Descartes argues that if we are to be justified in claiming that the hypothesized causes of planetary motion are ontologically true, it must be possible to deduce all phenomena from them, including local motions on earth. But Descartes grounds this inference from explanatory/predictive power to the nature of reality once again by appealing to God’s justice: it is impossible that causes from which one can deduce all phenomena could be false, because God would not be so perverse (ibid., 99).
Indeed, this seems to be the position of McCullagh, who thinks the mere possibility that our judgments are true in the traditional correspondence sense is sufficient to justify maintaining this concept, even if this rules out all possibility of rational justification: “The relativist may consistently hold that his beliefs about the world are true in a correspondence sense, while also insisting that they are culture-determined constructions. The claim that the world really is as we believe it to be is not one which the relativist is debarred by his doctrine from making, no matter what difficulty he would have justifying it” (McCullagh, 329). For Berkeley’s argument against this very reduced version of Cartesian objectivism (i.e., which holds only that an external reality may exist, even if it is unknowable), see Principles of Human Knowledge, § 67.
For an earlier discussion of this combination, see Chapter One, section two, pp. 20 ff. above.
Principles of Human Knowledge, §§ 19, 53, 61. Berkeley’s logic here is simply that of Ockham’s razor, only applied more radically than by Ockham himself: whereas Ockham uses it to eliminate sensible and intelligible species, Berkeley employs it to eliminate the entire extra-mental world.
Hua XVIII 124–5 (P A/B 117-8).
See, for example, Hua VI 116–8 (K § 30).
Thus here is the possible reason for the tendency of Kantianism to become relativism, a tendency already mentioned by us in Chapter One (p. 24, n. 6): Kant’s confusion about the proper method for establishing the a priori structures of experience, which in turn allows him to root them in the subjective faculties, and in general to accept the Lockean conception of the mind as ‘forming’ the material provided it by the senses.
Hua XVIII 183–4 (P A 180-2). (It should be noted that here and throughout this discussion, reference is to the first edition of the Logical Investigations. This is because the second edition contains a number of non-trivial revisions of the relevant passages, reflecting Husserl’s attempt to reformulate his conception from the more purely phenomenological perspective attained by the time of Ideas. However, the language of the second edition is easily misinterpreted unless a general understanding of this phenomenological perspective has already been attained.)
Ibid., 193-4 (P A 190-1). (“Das Erlebnis der Zusammenstimmung zwischen der Meinung und dem gegenwärtigen Erlebten, das sie meint, zwischen dem erlebten Sinn der Aussage und dem erlebten Sachverhalt ist die Evidenz, und die Idee dieser Zusammenstimmung ist die Wahrheit.”) Here Husserl defines truth as the idea of the agreement between intention and perception. In other places, truth is variously conceived as the agreement itself, the correlate of the possibility of this agreement, and so on. These finer distinctions may be overlooked for the purposes of the present discussion. The ambiguities are resolved in the Sixth Investigation, where Husserl sets forth four distinct senses of truth. For a treatment of these, see page 79.
See Marvin Färber, The Foundation of Phenomenology: Edmund Husserl and the Quest for a Rigorous Science of Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1943), reprint, (Albany: State University of New York Press: 1968); Elisabeth Ströker, “Husserls Evidenzprinzip. Sinn und Grenzen einer methodischen Norm der Phänomenologie als Wissenschaft,” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 32.1 (1978): 1-30; reprinted in Phänomenologische Studien (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann Verlag, 1987); and Dallas Willard, Logic and the Objectivity of Knowledge: A Study in Husserl’s Early Philosophy (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1984). For an early statement in the Philosophy of Arithmetic of the distinction between authentic and unauthentic (symbolic) representation, see Hua XII 193. A parallel analysis of the method for bringing the principle of non-contradiction to Evidenz is presented by Husserl in the Logical Investigations, Hua XIXI1 342-5 (LU A 318-9/B 334-6). Here he holds that we take any concrete instance of a logical contradiction (e.g., ‘a square is round’), and then ‘formalize’ it: we vary the example freely in imagination, trying to bring any instance whatsoever of a contradiction to intuition. This allows us to’ see’ the in-principle impossibility of doing so.
Similarly, as we have seen in Chapter One, Husserl holds that the self-evident truth of the principle of non-contradiction follows from the very meanings of ‘truth’, ‘judgment’, etc., and could not be (self-evidently) true for some beings and (selfevidently) false for others. See chapter one, p. 11 above and Hua XVIII 144 (P AIB 139).
HuaXIX/1 234–5 (LU A 228-9/B 231-3).
Ibid., 255-8 (LU A 245-7/B 251-4).
Given the eventual need for Husserl to justify the universal intersubjectivity of truth, and hence the universal accessibility of at least some meaning formations, this is not a trivial reservation, as will be discussed further in what follows. However, in the context of the Prolegomena the non-relativity of Evidenz can only be taken in the weaker sense of the impossibility of contradictory Evidenz, and not in the sense of the certainty of universal intelligibility and consensus.
See David Michael Levin, Reason and Evidence in Husserl’s Phenomenology (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 209 ff. See also Alwin Diemer, “Die Phänomenologie und die Idee der Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft,” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 13 (1959), 254 and passim. Diemer argues, similarly to Levin, that the unities of meaning which Husserl terms ‘essences’ are not eternal and invariant, and therefore eidetic analysis of them cannot give rise to universally and atemporally valid truths.
Levin, 210.
Hua XIX/1 51–3 (LU AIB 46-7). Husserl employs the terminology ‘Bedeutung’ and ‘gegenständlicher Beziehung’ for what in this passage I, following Frege, have termed ‘meaning’ (Sinn) and ‘reference’ (Bedeutung).
Hua XVIII 187 (P A 184). (“Da evidentermaßen die allgemeine Äquivalenz besteht zwischen den Sätzen, ‘A ist wahr’ und ‘es ist möglich, daß irgend jemand mit Evidenz urteilt, es sei A’.”) Günther Patzig mounts an elaborate argument to show that the correlation established in the Prolegomena commits Husserl to an esse is percipi form of idealism, and hence to a relativism of the most extreme and subjectivist sort. According to Patzig, the relation between Evidenz and truth is analogous to that between a ray of light and the image it projects upon a screen: the ray of light and the image are not identical, but the image exists when and only when the light-ray is present. Thus truth exists only insofar as it is experienced in a self-evident act of judgment. See Günther Patzig, “Kritische Bemerkungen zu Husserls Thesen über das Verhältnis Zwischen Wahrheit und Evidenz,” Neue Hefte für Philosophie 1 (1971), 21. Unfortunately, despite its intricate argumentation, the Patzig interpretation has no basis whatsoever in the text.
The psychological limitations of humans in relation to Evidenz, and the implications of these limitations for mathematics in particular, were long of interest to Husserl. Schuhmann reports that at Husserl’s doctoral examination in 1887, Husserl defended the thesis that we are able to count only up to the number three — in the genuine (i.e., intuitive) sense of counting. See Karl Schuhmann, Husserl-Chronik. Denk-und Lebensweg Edmund Husserls, Husserliana Dokumente, vol. 1 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1977), 22. Further, both Färber and Willard have noted that one of the central projects of the Philosophy of Arithmetic is to establish with what justification we hold results in arithmetic to be true, despite the fact that we arrive at them almost wholly symbolically and mechanically, rather than intuitively. Indeed, Willard goes so far as to assert that “it is not a great or pointless exaggeration to say that the analysis of symbolic representation and knowing is the main problem for investigation throughout Husserl’s career” (Willard, 89). See also Farber, 43ff.
Hua XVIII 188 (P A 185). (“Was psychologisch unmöglich ist, kann ideal gesprochen sehr wohl sein. Die Auflösung des verallgemeinerten ‘Problems der 3 Körper, sagen wir das ‘Problem der n Körper’, mag jede menschliche Erkenntnisfähigkeit überschreiten. Aber das Problem hat eine Auflösung, und so ist eine darauf bezügliche Evidenz möglich. Es gibt dekadische Zahlen mit Trillionenstellen, und es gibt auf sie bezügliche Wahrheiten. Aber niemand kannn solche Zahlen wirklich vorstellen und die auf sie bezüglichen Additionen, Multiplikationen usw. wirklich ausführen. Die Evidenz ist hier psychologisch unmöglich, und doch ist sie, ideal zu reden, ganz gewiß ein mögliches psychisches Erlebnis.”)
Hua XII 218–9.
Hua XVIII 188 (P A 185).
Hua III 175/191, n.1 (Id I § 79). (“Die Idee Gott ist ein notwendiger Grenzbegriff in erkenntnistheoretischen Erwägungen, bzw. ein unentbehrlicher Index für die Konstruktion gewisser Grenzbegriffe, deren auch der philosophierende Atheist nicht entraten könnte.”)
As will be discussed further in what follows and as emphasized by Kern, in Ideas I Husserl accords the role of determining the nature and limits of an ideal consciousness to free variation. See Iso Kern, Husserl und Kant (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964) 133-4 and passim. Thus these limits are established not so much by the cognitive faculties as by the a priori structures of the objects themselves, and in the end everything is rooted by Husserl in meanings and not in faculties. The emphasis placed here on the similarity between an ideal consciousness and our own is also largely in agreement with Kern, who writes: “The divine intellect set up by Husserl in contrast to [Kant’s] intellectus archetypus is nothing other than an idealized human totality of knowledge, freed from all factual inadequacies. Thus this is a matter of ‘God’ as ‘epistemic limit concept’, which really is nothing other than the ‘limit concept’ of man. A difference of essence between this ‘divine’ knowledge and factual human knowledge therefore does not exist.” (“Der göttliche Intellekt, den Husserl dem intellectus archetypus [Kants] entgegenstellt, ist nichts anderes als eine idealisierte, von allen faktischen Unzulänglichkeiten befreite menschliche Erkenntnis. Es handelt sich um ‘Gott’ als ‘erkenntnistheoretischen Grenzbegriff’, der in Wirklichkeit nichts anderes ist als der ‘Grenzbegriff’ des Menschen. Eine Wesensverschiedenheit zwischen dieser ‘göttlichen’ Erkenntnis und der faktisch menschlichen liegt also nicht vor”), Kem, 128. However, Kern’s view is somewhat too anthropomorphic to be genuinely Husserlian. It would be more in keeping with Husserl to hold that the limit concept is an idealization of the actual subject (where what this is remains to be determined purely phenomenologically), than that it is an idealization of a human being. For this latter version once again relativizes truth to a specific set of faculties or a particular, higher theory: a theory which establishes the nature of the human.
Hua III 326–9/346-8 (Id I § 141).
Hua XVIII 12 (P B XIII).
Hua XIX/2 566 (LU A 504/B 32). (“Wir erleben es, wie in der Anschauung dasselbe Gegenständliche intuitiv vergegenwärtigt ist, welches im symbolischen Akte ‘bloß gedacht’ war, und daß es gerade als das so und so Bestimmte anschaulich wird, als was es zunächst bloß gedacht [bloß bedeutet] war.”)
Hua XIX/2 597–8 (LU A 537/B 65). (“In der Erfüllung erleben wir gleichsam ein das ist es selbst. Dieses selbst ist freilich nicht im strengen Sinn zu nehmen…Immerhin deutet uns die relative Rede vom ‘mehr oder minder direkt’ und von’ selbst’ die Hauptsache einigermaßen an: daß die Erfüllungs-synthesis eine Ungleichwertigkeit der verknüpften Glieder zeigt, derart, daß der erfüllende Akt einen Vorzug herbeibringt, welcher der bloßen Intention mangelt, nämlich daß er ihr die Fülle des’ selbst’ erteilt, sie mindestens direkter an die Sache selbst heranführt.”)
Hua XIX/2 647 (LU A 589-1/B 117-8). (“So weist die Erwägung der möglichen Erfüllungsverhältnisse auf ein abschließendes Ziel der Erfüllungssteigerung hin, in dem die volle und gesamte Intention ihre Erfüllung… hat.… Repräsentierender und repräsentierter Inhalt sind hier identisch eines. Und wo sich eine Vorstellungsintention durch diese ideal vollkommene Wahrnehmung letzte Erfüllung verschafft hat, da hat sich die echte adæquatio rei et intellectus hergestellt: das Gegenständliche ist genau als das,als welches es intendiert ist, wirklich ‘gegenwärtig’ oder ‘gegeben’; keine Partialintention ist mehr impliziert, die ihrer Erfüllung ermangelte.”) Of course, as will be discussed in what follows, no perception or series of perceptions could provide a genuinely adequate fulfillment of a building.
Ibid., 651-3 (LU A 594-5/B 122-4).
This account shows that the common objection that a phenomenological conception of truth cannot distinguish between genuine and illusory perception is completely unfounded. In one typical statement of this objection, Patzig argues that if a person sits in a train at rest, sees another train move out of the station, but experiences that his train is moving, then according to Husserl’s view, for this person his own train really is moving, since he sees that it is moving. (See Patzig, 28.) However, the Patzig example, as all others of its kind, ignores the overall coherence of experience required for Evidenz in the case of physical reality. If the person’s train were really moving on the phenomenological account, then upon continuing to look out the window, the person would see the landscape rushing by. Since he sees only the train station at rest, with the other train gone, the initial phenomenon (‘my train is moving’) breaks up, and is replaced by a new one (‘my train is at rest, the other train was moving’). Thus it is not the case that, phenomenologically considered, the person’s train is really moving simply because it is perceived to be moving in a single, isolated moment.
Principles of Human Knowledge, § 30
Ibid., § 36. Indeed, here Berkeley goes so far as to say that orderliness and distinctness are what reality means.
Husserl’s elucidation of the concept of truth in terms of the experience of the agreement between intention and perception is therefore in keeping with the early conception of the phenomenological project: to trace fundamental but abstract mathematical and logical concepts to elemental intuitive experiences, and to make these experiences as explicit and ‘evident’ as possible. A particularly clear statement of this project is contained in manuscript F I 26 of 1902/3: “Thus there arises the task of investigating the ‘origin of knowledge’. That now means to obtain the most evident clarity for the fundamental concepts, on the one hand, and the psychological concepts corresponding to them, on the other, and this by going back to the intuitive experiences from which we derive them by abstraction. Thus what is meant by ‘concept’,‘proposition’,‘object’,’ state of affairs’, ‘truth’, ‘falsehood’, ‘ground’ ‘consequence’ and so forth?And what are the intuitive experiences which we indicate by the vague terms, ‘perception’, ‘memory’, ‘representation’, ‘judgment’, ‘inference’,’ self-evidence’, ‘absurdity’, and so on, experiences in which logical forms are given to us? … It is true that I understand what the word ‘proposition’ means very well: I possess more than the mere empty word, I can even give examples of propositions, such as the Pythagorean theorem. But for all that I do not get beyond merely symbolic understanding. I get beyond this only when I carry out some proposition in an authentic positing attitude, in a fully intuitive act of judgment, and when I attend to the moment in this concrete experience in which the symbolic attains its identifying verification. Only then have I answered the question of what I genuinely understand or intend by a proposition, and where it actually and authentically presents itself. The situation is precisely the same as in the case of a simple sensible concept such as red. Here I grasp the meaning of red when I attend to the moment of redness in an intuition and say to myself, ‘that is it, redness is the universal of which this moment is an example.’ What holds good of the logical idea of a proposition holds good for the other logical ideas and the accompanying questions…” (“So erwächst die Aufgabe den ‘Ursprung der Erkenntnis’ zu erforschen, das heißt jetzt, den fundamentalen Begriffen auf der einen Seite und den ihnen entsprechenden psychologischen Begriffen auf der anderen Seite durch Rückgang auf die Erlebnisse, denen wir sie abstrahierend entnehmen, evidentste Klarheit zu verschaffen. Was heißt also Begriff, Satz, Gegenstand, Sachverhalt, Wahrheit, Falschheit, Grund, Folge usw., und was für Erlebnisse sind es, die wir unter den vagen Titeln Wahrnehmung, Erinnerung, Vorstellung, Urteil, Schluß, Evidenz, Absurdität usw. ausdrücken, Erlebnisse, in denen uns eben logische Formen gegeben sind? … Ich verstehe zwar ganz wohl, was das Wort Satz meint, ich habe nicht den bloßen Wortschall; ich kann sogar Exempel angeben, wie den Pythagorischen Lehrsatz u.dgl. Aber mit all dem komme ich über das bloß symbolische Verstehen nicht hinaus. Erst wenn ich irgendeinen Satz in eigentlicher Setzung, im voll anschaulichen Urteilen vollziehe, und erst wenn ich auf dasjenige Moment in diesem konkreten Erlebnis achte, in welchem der symbolische seine identifizierend Bestätigung findet, erst dann habe ich die Frage beantwortet, was verstehe ich oder meine ich eigentlich unter einem Satz, wo läßt es sich wirklich und eigentlich aufzeigen. Es verhält sich dann damit genau so, wie ich bei einem einfachen sinnlichen Begriff, wie rot, den Sinn realisiere, wenn ich in einer Anschauung das Moment Röte erfasse und mir sage, das ist es, Röte ist das Allgemeine zu diesem Moment als Exempel. Was von der logischen Idee Satz gilt, gilt von den sonstigen logischen Ideen und den zugehörigen Fragen…”), manuscript page 73a, typescript pages 154-5.
Principles of Human Knowledge, §§ 33, 38, 39.
Berkeley attempts to demonstrate that esse is percipi by arguing that we cannot conceive of a phenomenal reality without having an idea of it, therefore such a reality cannot exist without the mind — or in Berkeley’s terms, existence cannot be separated from perception in thought. (Ibid., §§ 5, 23.) Yet clearly, here the conclusion does not follow from the premise unless ‘exist’ is simply equated with ‘be conceived’, which would be begging the question. The truth of the Berkeleyan argument is that existence as we conceive (intend) it in ordinary intentional acts does indeed contain a reference to perception, that is, perception is implicated in the very meaning of ‘existence’. But contra Berkeley, the intentional implication contained in an existential positing is not of present perception but of possible perception.
John Stuart Mill, An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1889), 227ff. With explicit reference to Kant, Mill correlates (physical) reality with possibilities of perception: “The conception I form of the world existing at any moment, comprises, along with the sensations I am feeling, a countless variety of possibilities of sensation.… My present sensations are generally of little importance, and are moreover fugitive: the possibilities, to the contrary, are permanent, which is the character that mainly distinguishes our idea of Matter from our notion of sensation” (228-9). And again: “Matter, then, may be defined, a Permanent Possibility of Sensation” (233).
Hua XIX/2 599 (LU A 639/B 67). (“Denn die allseitige Darstellung vollzieht sich in solch einer synthetischen Mannigfaltigkeit nicht, wie es das Ideal der Adäquation fordert, in einem Schlage, als reine Selbstdarstellung und ohne Zusatz von Analogi-sierung und Symbolisierung, sondern stückweise und immerfort durch solche Zusätze getrübt.”)
Hua XVIII 188 (P A 185) and Hua III 91-2/100-1 (Id I § 44).
Hua XVIII 188 (P A 185). (“Die Äquivalenz [der] Begriffe [individuelles Sein und Wahrnehmungsmöglichkeit] ist, wofern nur unter Wahrnehmung die adäquate verstanden wird, unbestreitbar. Es ist danach eine Wahrnehmung möglich, welche in EINEM Schauen die ganze Welt, die überschwengliche Unendlichkeit von Körpern mit allen ihren Teilen, Molekülen, Atomen und nach allen Verhältnissen und Bestimmtheiten wahrnimmt. Natürlich ist diese ideale Möglichkeit keine reale, die für irgendein empirisches Subjekt angenommen werden könnte.”) It should again be emphasized that this passage is from the first edition. Understandably, it appears in the second edition in a substantially modified form. See p. 88.
Hua III 89/98 (Id I § 43). (“Gott, das Subjekt absolut vollkommener Erkenntnis und somit auch aller möglichen adäquaten Wahrnehmung, besitze natürlich die uns endlichen Wesen versagten vom Dinge an sich selbst.”) As in the Prolegomena passage, the position outlined in this passage actually combines two points: 1) God perceives entire objects, without Abschattungen; and 2) the objects perceived by God are very different from ordinary objects of sensible perception, and perhaps are similar to the entities described by physics. For the purposes of this discussion, we can restrict our attention to Husserl’s critique of the first point. The critique of the second is treated in my paper, “Phenomenology and Scientific Realism: Husserl’s Critique of Galileo,” The Review of Metaphysics 44.1 (September, 1990), 67-94.
Hua III 91 and 92/100 and 101 (Id I § 44). (“Zur Dingwahrnehmung gehört ferner, und auch das ist eine Wesensnotwendigkeit, eine gewisse Inadäquatheit. Ein Ding kann prinzipiell nur ‘einseitig’ gegeben sein, und das sagt nicht nur unvollständig, nur unvollkommen in einem beliebigen Sinne, sondern eben das, was die Darstellung durch Abschattung vorschreibt.… Kein Gott kann daran etwas ändern, so wenig wie daran, daß 1+2=3 ist, oder daran, daß irgendeine sonstige Wesenswahrheit besteht.”)
Tugendhat, 158-60.
This discussion may suggest that the truth of eidetic principles is therefore merely relative to ‘our’ own meaning formations. This objection has already been addressed in a preliminary way in section two (see pp. 70 ff). Its final resolution depends upon other elements of the Husserlian analysis, including the theory of the transcendental ego. For a further treatment, see Chapter 4, pp. 129 ff.
Hua III 331/351 (Id I §143). (“Als ‘Idee’ [im Kantischen Sinn] ist gleichwohl die vollkommene Gegebenheit vorgezeichnet — als ein… a priori bestimmtes Kontinuum von Erscheinungen.… Dieses Kontinuum bestimmt sich näher als allseitig unendliches, in allen seinen Phasen aus Erscheinungen desselben bestimmbaren X bestehend, derart … daß jede beliebige Linie desselben in der stetigen Durchlaufen einen einstimmigen Erscheinungszusammenhang ergibt … in welchem das eine und selbe immerfort gegebene X sich kontinuierlich-einstimmig ‘näher’ und niemals ‘anders’ bestimmt.”)
Hua XVIII 188 (P B 185). (“Es ist danach eine Wahrnehmung möglich, welche in einem Schauen die ganze Welt, die überschwengliche Unendlichkeit von Körpern wahrnimmt. Natürlich ist diese ideale Möglichkeit keine reale, die für irgendein empirisches Subjekt angenommen werden könnte, zumal solches Schauen ein unendliches Kontinuum des Schauens wäre: einheitlich gedacht eine Kantische Idee.”)
Hua III 329/349 (Id I § 142). (“Prinzipiell entspricht [im Apriori der unbedingten Wesens allgemeinheit] jedem ‘wahrhaft seienden’ Gegenstand die Idee eines möglichen Bewußtseins, in welchem der Gegenstand selbst originär und dabei vollkommen adäquat erfaßbar ist. Umgekehrt, wenn diese Möglichkeit gewährleistet ist, ist eo ipso der Gegenstand wahrhaft seiend.”)
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Soffer, G. (1991). The Phenomenological Elucidation of Truth: Between Skepticism and Relativism. In: Husserl and the Question of Relativism. Phaenomenologica, vol 122. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3178-0_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3178-0_3
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