Oskar Becker on Husserl’s Principle of Transcendental Idealism: Reconstruction and Interpretation

In the following paper we will attempt to analyze and reconstruct Edith Stein’s interpretation of Husserl’s “transcendental idealism,” notably, the reason why, in her opinion, the latter ended up embracing that specific philosophical position. As will soon become apparent, according to Stein, Husserl misunderstands the peculiar ontological structure of individual essences and, in particular, the specific connection with reality that they carry within themselves. Without raising the question of whether Stein’s own understanding of transcendental idealism perfectly corresponds with Husserl’s, we will confine ourselves to discussing, first, the wider context within which she tackles it and, second, the relation between Husserl’s idealism and the formal-ontological issue of how to characterize the internal content of individual essences. No matter what we think of Stein’s critical assessment, her approach has the great and undeniable merit of forcing the “interpreter” to face the problem of the tight connection between the transcendental dimension and the eidetic dimension of Husserl’s thought.

This paper offers an assessment of some of the central aspects of Edith Stein’s conception of intentional acts proposed in Potency and Act. Studies Towards a Philosophy of Being. Her account hinges upon a combination of Thomistic and Husserlian concepts. She borrows from Aquinas two conceptual pairs that are central to his metaphysics and theory of knowledge: the actuality-potency dichotomy; and the distinction between sensible and intelligible species. The distinction and relevant articulation between sensible and intelligible species provide Stein with the basis to present her own conception of intentionality (with special focus on perception): the sensible species is regarded as the correlate of the object’s Gestalt; by contrast, the intelligible species is mobilised to account for what Husserl labels noesis-noema correlation. But Stein’s ambition is also to inscribe her account of the species sensibilis within an overall (critical) interpretation of Husserl’s transcendental idealism. This work was supported by the Czech Science Foundation, financing the project “Intentionality and Person in Medieval Philosophy and Phenomenology” (GAČR 21-08256S).

Shpet’s interpretation of Husserl’s phenomenology has caused puzzlement because of the lack of clarity with which he treats the transcendental turn in Appearance and Sense (1914). I suggest that we find a more comprehensive discussion on the topic in Shpet’s 1917 article, “Wisdom or Reason?” There, Shpet reacts to Husserl’s treatment of a cluster of problems related to the latter’s transition to transcendental idealism. I read “Wisdom or Reason?” not only in relation to Husserl’s Logos article of 1911, but also to his 1907 lecture series “The Idea of Phenomenology.” My analysis of Shpet’s phenomenology reveals that he followed through with the transcendental turn, although his philosophy developed in a direction different from Husserl’s transcendental idealism. Shpet postulates a collective consciousness, in which meaning-constitution takes place, and discovers the “word” as the foundation for any cognition. Shpet’s phenomenology remains ontological, as he considers language or culture as the “form of being” in which human beings live. In “Wisdom or Reason?,” Shpet argues that we can have direct knowledge of this meaningful reality: being is not “represented” but “presented” in a word. A certain compatibility thus exists between Shpet’s phenomenology of cultural reality and Husserl’s search for the absolute validity of knowledge.