Critical Remarks on the Formal-Ontological Sources of the Husserlian Idealism

Abstract

Finally, let us consider the formal and material ontological arguments which may lead to the idealist solution. This is, I remind you, the thesis about the transcendence of real objects, particularly perceived objects, in relation to cognitive acts in which they are given, and, secondly, the assertion about the fundamental material difference between spatial (material-physical) things and conscious experiences and, at last, the application of these two propositions to the problem of the existential connection which is to hold between pure consciousness and real objects, a connection which appears in two different cases: a) the relation between consciousness and “body” (Leib) of the experiencing subject, b) the relation between the perceived object and perception. These two cases state that when they occur, the pure consciousness becomes somehow an element of the real world (as we, men, belong to this world). Apparent objections to this are the above-mentioned ontological propositions and one further formal-ontological proposition expressly held by Husserl, namely, that only what remains in relation to something else, emanating from its essence, can create a uniform whole of one object along with this other “object.”