Abstract
The phenomenological cognition of the a priori at issue in the method of “seeing essences” (Wesenserschauung) has as its methodological prerequisite the initial securing of access to non-particular meaning formations and, essentially connected with this, access to an experiential domain that transcends atomistic sensations. The problematic underlying the necessity of securing such accesses is the modern empirical formulation of the epistemological problem of “abstraction.” Hume’s critique of Locke’s claim that abstract (i.e., non-particular) ideas exist in the mind separate from the particular ideas to which they both refer and from which they emerge, comprises the focus of Husserl’s meditations on the separability of formal meaning from concrete particulars as well as his meditations on the process of abstraction underlying generalization and formalization per se.
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References
Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations,2 vols., trans. J.N. Findlay (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1982), vol. I, p. 388, Hua XIX/I, p. 172.
Ibid., vol. I, p. 427, Hua XIX/I, p. 219.
Ibid., vol. I, p. 387, Hua XIX/I, p. 171.
Ibid., vol. I, p. 405, Hua XIX/I, p. 192.
Ibid., Hua XIX/I, pp. 192–93.
Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book,trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), p. 28 (translation slightly altered), Hua III, 1, p. 33
Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations,op, cit., vol. I, p. 393, Hua XIX/I, p. 178.
Ibid., vol. II, p. 443, p. 238.
See Richard Cobb-Stevens, who, following Jacques Taminiaux’s analysis of the relation between simple perception and categorial intuition that is at issue here, writes: “... Husserl strongly implies that there is a reciprocal founding-founded relationship between simple perception and categorial intuition.... [Hence] [e]verything points to the conclusion, therefore, that [for Husserl] categorial intuition of the formal surplus expressed by descriptive terms [i.e., categories] is a condition for the,perception of particular objects and their features.” Richard Cobb-Stevens, Being and Categorial Intuition,“ Review of Metaphysics 44 (1990): 54.
Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations,op. cit., vol. II, p. 478, Hua XIX/I, p. 286.
Edmund Husserl, Experience and Judgment, trans. J.S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 249, Erfahrung und Urteil, ( Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1985 ), pp. 297–98.
In reference to Hume, Husserl writes: ’’He quite fails to mention, and does not see with operative lucidity, that in subjective lived-experience universality itself is manifest....“ Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations,op. cit., vol. I, p. 404 (translation altered), Hua XIX/I, p. 191.
The individual exemplars manifesting the empirical quality that, with their comparison, is presented as similar, are incapable of grounding the similarity in question. This is the case since such a grounding would be tantamount to what for Husserl is an impossibility, i.e., the manifestation of a “real” basis for the relation at issue in the similarity. Hence, it is the material category itself, which is manifest with the shift of attention from the individual exemplars manifesting the similar empirical quality, that functions to yield the “unity” of the similarity that is at issue in the `being similar“ of these individual exemplars.
Edmund Husserl, Experience and Judgment,op. cit., p. 328, Erfahrung and Urteil,op. cit., p. 394.
Edmund Husserl, Phenomenological Psycholo y, trans. John Scanlon (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), p. 52, Hua IX, p. 70 translation slightly altered). Husserl also refers to “feeling” as that which indicates non-particular (general) meaning in the instance of the individual cases in which a general name is understood. See Logical Investigations,op. cit., vol. I, p. 404, Hua XIX/I, p.191.
Edmund 1usserl, Phenomenological Psychology,op. cit., p. 53, Hua IX, p. 71.
Edmund Husserl, Experience and Judgment,op. cit., p. 341, Erfahrung und Urteil, op. cit., p. 411.
To my knowledge, Husserl nowhere provides a detailed account of the imaginative transformation of the initial, empirically intuited exemplar, into an “original image.” Indeed, his writings appear to simply assert that this is possible, and, on the basis of this assertion, to unfold the implications of such a transformation for the phenomenological method of “seeing of essences.” There is, however, in my view a detailed account of precisely this transformation in the tradition. I have in mind here the figure of Socrates’ account of vórlamç (noesis) in Book VI of the Republic. Exploration of a connection between the problematic addressed there by Plato’s Socrates and the problematic at issue here for Husserl would involve: (1) making a case for a homology between the Socratic hypotheses and the Husserlian empirical style, and showing how something like the dianoetic transformation of the former into intelligible images is likewise at issue in the latter’s transformation into imaginary exemplars, and (2) showing how this Socratic formulation of the problematic is the “originary event” whose Sinn is sedimented in Husserl’s formulation of the function of ‘imaginative variation“ for his method of ”seeing essences.“ Such an exploration is beyond the scope of the present inquiry.
Edmund Husserl, Experience and Judgment,op. cit., p. 341 (translation slightly altered), Erfahrung und Urteil, op. cit., p. 411.
Ibid. (translation slightly altered.)
Edmund Husserl, Experience and Judgment,op. cit., p. 360, Erfahrung und Urteil,opp cit., p. 437.
Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations,op. cit., vol. II, p. 448, Hua XIX/I, p. 245.
Edmund Husserl, Experience and Judgment,op. cit., pp. 335, 337, Erfahrung und Urteil,op. cit., pp. 403–4, 406.
Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book,op. cit., p. 29, Hua III, 1, p. 35.
Edmund Husserl, Experience and Judgment, op. cit., pp. 327, 337, Erfahrung und Urteil, op. cit., pp. 393, 406.
Husserl’s answer to this question, judging by his last great work, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology,trans. David Carr (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970) would be of course an unequivocal “yes.”
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Hopkins, B.C. (1997). Phenomenological Cognition of the A Priori: Husserl’s Method of “Seeing Essences” (Wesenserschauung). In: Hopkins, B.C. (eds) Husserl in Contemporary Context. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 26. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1804-2_8
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