Facticity and Transcendentalism: Husserl and the Problem of the “Geisteswissenschaften”

Abstract

In my paper, I want to reflect on the validity of Husserl’s claim to have renewed the idea of transcendental philosophy, by identifying a new transcendental “Arbeitsfeld”: constitution of reality by absolute, intentional consciousness. I will do this on the basis of his project to found the “Geisteswissenschaften”. In anti-naturalist vein, Husserl argued convincingly for the necessity of the human sciences on the basis of a regional ontology of the human lifeworld, which demands a proper approach, founded on a specific so-called personalistic attitude. Furthermore, a “geisteswissenschaftliche” psychology must uncover the constitution of culture by fundamental intentional processes, which are embedded in a social and historical context. I will present this analysis in the first part. In the second part, I will argue that this mundane “Geisteswissenschaft” is problematical for Husserl’s transcendental project, which basically claims that the “geistige Welt” is a correlate of transcendental consciousness. If it is possible to study the constitution of human reality in the natural attitude by studying the intentional activity of the human person in phenomenological psychology, which applies a non-transcendental phenomenological reduction, what extra knowledge can transcendental phenomenology impart? Husserl continued to struggle with this question, which is essentially the problem of the psychological version of the reduction, and which is highlighted by his remarks that there is no intrinsic difference between phenomenological psychology and transcendental phenomenology, with respect to the analysis of constitutive intentionality. The reason is that transcendental consciousness necessarily objectifies itself as factual human person, in order to perform its transcendental function.