Abstract
In Cartesian Meditations, Husserl states a first methodological principle of his phenomenology in the following way: “it is apparent that, as a consequence of the fact that I am striving after the presumptive goal of true science, I cannot as a beginner in philosophy make any judgment or accept one which I have not drawn from evidence, from ‘experiences’ in which the respective things and states of affairs are present to me as ‘they themselves.’” This principle of evidence is characterized by Husserl here as a “consistently applicable normative” principle of the phenomenological method (Hua I, 54 / CM, 13f.). Similar formulations can be found frequently in the work done by Husserl during the 1920s, the period in which he struggled with the problem of a final justification of phenomenology in successive new attempts. This principle, however, had from the very beginning more or less implicitly determined Husserl’s work, and from this it gains its significance for the entirety of his philosophy.
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So, for example, Günther Patzig, “Kritische Bemerkungen zur Husserls Thesen über das Verhältnis von Wahrheit und Evidenz,” Neue Hefte für Philosophie, Heft 1 (1971), 12–32. English translation:.
Günther Patzig “Husserl on Truth and Evidence,” in Readings on Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations, ed. Jitendra N. Mohanty (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), 179–96. References are made to both the original German text and the translation. The author relies primarily on certain passages of the Logical Investigations that do not sufficiently reflect the sixth Logical Investigation, which is most important for our purposes here. The fact that with regard to Husserl one cannot speak of a “relation of identity” between truth and evidence or of an attempt “to reduce truth to evidence” (“Kritische Bemerkungen,” 12; “Husserl on Truth,” 179) is obvious not merely in regard to Husserl’s later works, but as early as the sixth Logical Investigation in which Husserl first takes up the question of evidence systematically. Compare also.
Ernst Tugendhat, Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1970), 101.
As early as 1901, Husserl dealt with “series of increases in fulfillment” in a special paragraph of the sixth Logical Investigation and distinguished gradations of fullness regarding richness, completeness, and liveliness (LU II, 2; 83ff. / LI, 734ff.). Compare also Hua III, 156, 309 / ID I 94, 351; Hua XVII, 73, 130, 287, 293 / FTL, 68f., 119f., 281, 287; Hua XI, 431. Patzig’s contention (“Kritische Bemerkungen,” 12; “Husserl on Truth,” 179) that if Husserl contests any view, then this is the view that evidence could be a matter of degree, is, in consideration of the role that the gradation of evidence played for him from the beginning, unintelligible and lacks a textual basis. The fact that “a connection which almost identified evidence with truth” (ibid.) does not permit the gradation of evidence, because a proposition is either true or false, is undeniably true; it has, however, nothing whatsoever to do with Husserl’s concept of evidence. This concept is characterized precisely by the fact that it not only allows increases in the syntheses of fulfillment, but actually demands them. See also. Jitendra N. Mohanty, “Towards a Phenomenology of Self-Evidence,” in his collection of 15 essays The Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy (Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff, 1985), 83–100.
Dagfinn Føllesdal, “Husserl on Evidence and Justification,” in Edmund Husserl and the Phenomenological Tradition. Essays in Phenomenology, ed. Robert Sokolowski (Washington D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 107–129.
Concerning Husserl’s concept of philosophy, compare. Thomas Seebohm, Die Bedingungen der Möglichkeit der Transzendentalphilosophie (Bonn: H. Bouvier Verlag, 1962), especially 39ff. Further.
Ludwig Landgrebe, Der Weg der Phänomenologie. Das Problem einer ursprünglichen Erfahrung (Gütersloh: Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1963) as well as Tugendhat, Der Wahrheitsbegriff, 186ff. and Jitendra N. Mohanty, “Introductory Essay,” in The Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy, XIII-XXXII.
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Ströker, E. (1997). Husserl’s Principle of Evidence: The Significance and Limitations of a Methodological Norm of Phenomenology as a Science. In: The Husserlian Foundations of Science. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 30. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8824-9_3
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