On the Problem of the World in Husserl's Phenomenology

Abstract

Already in his Logical Investigations Husserl is opposing consciousness and the world and raising the question of an objective, “true” existence of the world beyond phenomenological research. This opposition becomes increasingly radical in Husserl's subsequent works, especially in his early and mature periods. For Husserl, phenomenology is not simply about “bracketing” any conditions concerning the existence or nonexistence of the world; it is also designed to carry out a kind of “deworlding” of consciousness, which allows for revealing it not as a thing or a part of the world, but as a nonobjective condition for any real existence. The critical question from which the author proceeds is the extent to which the opposition of consciousness and the world understood in the above way could be retained in situations where the main topic of phenomenology becomes the primordial relatedness of consciousness and the world (as determined by late Husserl in his concept of “life-world”) (Lebenswelt) or of the world and human existence (described by Heidegger as “being-in-the-world”) (In-der-Welt-sein). Thus the author examines the problem of the phenomenological relevance of understanding the world as the object of possible consciousness and as a collection of things. Relying on concepts introduced by Husserl and Heidegger the author demonstrates an inseparable relationship between two seemingly conflicting trains of thought in phenomenology: the “deworlding” of consciousness or human existence (understood as the impossibility of reducing them to worldly things) and the revelation of possessing the world as their essential feature, on which basis phenomenology attempts to overcome the classic notion of the objective world in itself.