Abstract
One of the questions raised by the conference’s topic, in particular the relationship between the self and the other, a matter much discussed since Merleau-Ponty’s death, is the question of husserlian phenomenology’s cartesianism. Some believe that despite his reservations towards cartesianism, Husserl never disavowed his commitment to the Cartesian program of a first philosophy.1 In his postscript to Ideas I, he defines phenomenology as
die universale und im radikalen Sinne “strenge” Wissenschaft. Als das ist sie Wissenschaft aus letzter Begründung, oder, was gleich gilt, aus letzter Sebstverantwortung, in der also keine prädikative oder vorprädikative Selbstverständlichkeit als unbefragter Erkenntnisboden fungiert (Hua V, 139).
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Notes
The references to Husserl are to Husserliana, and to the following translations: Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology [CM], translated by D. Cairns (The Hague, 1977); Ideas Pertaining to a pure Phenomenology and to a phenomenological Philosophy, Book II, Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution [Id.], translated by R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989); Formal and Transcendental Logic [FTL], translated by D. Cairns, (the Hague, 1969); Logical Investigations (2 vols.) [LI], translated by J.N. Findlay (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977); Experience and Judgment: Investigations to a Genealogy of Logic, translated by J.S. Churchill and K. Ameriks (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973).
See Hua 1, 43, 48 and Hua VIII, 4.
K. Mulligan and B. Smith, “A Husserlian Theory of Indexicality,” Grazer Philosophische Studien, 28 (1986), 134;
cf. K. Schuhmann, “Husserl’s Theories of Indexicals,” F.M. Kirkland et al. (eds): Phenomenology — East and West (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993), 111–127.
A. Gurwitsch, “Outlines of a Theory of ‘Essentially Occasional Expressions,’” Readings on Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations, ed. J. N. Mohanty, (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1977), 112–127;
D.W. Smith and R. Mclntyre, Husserl and Intentionality (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1982).
More recently, D. W. Smith used B. Russell’s concept of acquaintance and argued that consciousness, understood in that sense, could be construed as indexical: “Acquaintance is thus an awareness of something in one’s immediate presence, something in the immediate context of one’s experience, in contextual relation to oneself or one’s experience. In this sense, let us say, acquaintance is indexical awareness.” Cf. D.W. Smith, The Circle of Acquaintance: Perception, Consciousness, and Empathy (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989), 24.
Schuhmann 1993, 123. Schuhmann’s skepticism is shared, for example, by Philipse. Cf. H. Philipse, “The Problem of Occasional Expressions in Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 13 (1982), 182.
As Husserl explains: “Strike out the essentially occasional expressions from one’s language, try to describe any subjective experience in unambiguous, objectively fixed fashion: such an attempt is always plainly vain.” (322)
This first indication occurs in the foreword to the second edition of the LI. Speaking of the first investigation, Husserl wrote: “The manner in which it deals with empirical meanings” (to which, however, in stictness, all empirical predications belong) is a tour de force—the enforced consequence of the imperfect conception of the essence of “truth-in-itself in the Prolegomena.” (48)
M. Sommer, “Husserls göttinger Lebenswelt”, Introduction to E. Husserl: Die Konstitution der geistigen Welt (Hamburg: Meiner, 1984), xiv.
R. Bernet argued that Husserl gave up the Logical Investigations’ concept of truth in two steps: first in 1908 for empirical meaning and around 1920 for abstract meaning. Cf. R. Bernet, “Bedeutung und intentionales Bewußtsein. Husserls Begriff des Bedeutungsphänomens,” Phänomenologische Forschungen 8 (1979), 50 ff.
In a note to the second edition of the fourth LI, he restricted considerably the scope of his morphology: “In the first Edition I spoke of “pure grammar,” a name concieved and expressly devise to be analogous to Kant’s “pure science of nature.” Since it cannot, however, be said that pure formal semantic theory comprehends the entire a priori of general grammar—there is, e.g., a peculiar a priori governing relations of mutual understanding among minded persons, relations very important for grammar—talk of pure logical grammar is to be preferred.” (527)
I have in mind here this passage of Experience and Judgment. “That association can become a general theme of phenomenological description and not merely one of objective psychology is due to the fact that the phenomenon of indication [Anzeige] is something which can be exhibited from the point of view of phenomenology, (this insight, worked out as early as the Logical Investigations, already constitutes there the nucleus of genetic phenomenology).... Association comes into question in this context exclusively as the purely immanent connection of “this recalls that” “one calls attention to the other”.”(74–75).
As we shall see, it is one and the same concept since “motivation,” or its correlate, is understood as “because” (certain things could or must exist because other things are given). Husserl further agreed with A. Meinong in LI to dissociate motivation from causation. (273)
Gurwitsch 1950, 124.
I will not enter here into the question of self-identity in order to concentrate on otherness and motivation. See J. Hart’s careful analysis of the self in relation to indexicals and his discussion with Castaneda in the third chapter of his book The person and the common Life (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992), 155–172.
See also D. W. Smith, “Mind and Guise: Castaneda’s Philosophy of Mind in the World order,” Hector-Neri Castaneda, ed. J. E. Tomberlin, (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1986), 167–187, for a comparison of Castaneda’s concept of “guise” with Husserl’s “noema.”
CM, 120.
The notion “reason to act” also plays a crucial role in contemporary debates in the theory of action. In fact, Husserl’s approach in Ideas II is very similar to neo-wittgensteinians like G. von Wright and E. Anscombe but also to D. Davidson. It would be interesting to evaluate the contribution of a phenomenology of action to those debates. On that question, see M. Merleau-Ponty, La structure du comportement (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1942/1990)
D. W. Smith, “Consciousness in Action,” Synthese 90 (1992), 119–143.
For exemple, in the following passage of Ideen IL “In allen diesen Beispielen tritt das Weil der Motivation auf. (...) Ich als Subjekt der “Handlungsprämissen” fasse mich nicht induktiv-real als Ursache des Ich als Subjektes des “Handlungsschlusses”, mit anderen Worten, ich, der ich mich auf Grund der und der Motive entschließe, fasse weder den Entschluß als naturale Wirkung der Motive oder Motiverlebnisse, noch mich selbst als Subjekt des Entschlusses, bewirkt durch das Ich als Subjekt der Motivierenden Erlebnisse. (...) Wenn ich durch Einfühlung diese Lage im Anderen festzustellen vermag, sage ich: “ich verstehe, warum der Andere sich so entchlossen, warum er dieses Urteil gefällt hat” (worauf hin). — Alle diese “Kausalitäten” sind voll anschaulich herauszustellen, da sie eben Motivationen sind.”(Hua IV, 230)
In Krisis (§9), Husserl gives some insights for developing something like a “Verweisungssystem.” Such a system has been worked out by E. Tugendhat in his Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die sprachanalytische Philosophie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976). On that question, see also J. Hart 1992, 165 ff.
FTL, 199.
CM, 16.
By those terminological remarks, one can appreciate what we can call the undoubtability maxim which becomes for a phenomenology that defines itself as first philosophy the principle of apodicticity: “Selbstgebung soll für uns Maß, und ihr absolutes Optimum das letzte Maß sein, an dem wir alle Urteile, alle unsere Seinsmeinungen bewähren. Im Grunde liegt das im Sinn alle wissenschaftlichen Tuns, wir bringen es uns nur zum Bewußtsein und machen daraus ein erstes Prinzip bewußt zwecktätiger Methode.” (Hua VIE, 33). That does not mean that evidence only belong to the sphere of jugdment since, according to the general division of philosophy into the theoretical, the axiological and the practical, evidence also occurs in the domain of sentiment and will. Not only does evidence exceeds the domain of judgment, but we will see that predicative evidence only represent a derived mode of givenness.
On the dissociation of apodictic and adequate evidence, see CM §5, EU §4 and FTL §59.
In his Lectures on First Philosophy, Husserl decribes this new way to phenomenology as “eine Phänomenologie der phänomenologischen Reduktion” (Hua VIII, 164).
I would like to thank P. Poirier and P. Buckley for their technical help with the English version of this paper. I would also like to thank R. Cobb-Stevens and J. Hart for the discusions we had on an earlier version of this paper. Finally, the Conseil de Recherche en Sciences Humaines du Canada made this research possible.
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Fisette, D. (1998). The Horizon of the Self: Husserl on Indexicals. In: Zahavi, D. (eds) Self-Awareness, Temporality, and Alterity. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 34. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9078-5_7
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