Husserlian Analysis Research Articles

Earth and Sky: An Analysis of Husserl's 1934 Manuscript on "The Spatiality of Nature"

Earth and Sky: An Analysis of Husserl's 1934 Manuscript on "The Spatiality of Nature"

THE CRISIS AS A BANK RUPTCY OF TRUST: THE FIDUCIARY ATTITUDE, HUMAN NATURE AND ETHICAL SCIENCE

Edmund Husserl's Crisis of the European Sciences prompts the search for an alternative to the development of nihilistic social systems which arise out of this situation. The breadth of the crisis problem manifesting itself in all realms of culture, including not only the natural sciences, but even art and music is first outlined, followed by a general definition which includes those found in Georg Simmel, Max Weber and Florian Znaniecki. Husserl's phenomenological and first depth analyses of the crisis, theoretically and historically tracing it back to its mathematical-natural scientific origins, are briefly considered until they break off around the problem of intersubjectivity, which he first discovered around the turn of the century. Bertrand Russell and Rudolf Carnap are then seen to attempt to dissolve this problem into a logical mystical intersubjectivity so as to maintain that there was never really a scientific crisis of the sciences and never one calling for such a notion. Finally, the works of Alfred Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch, as an extension of the original Husserlian intuition with their consideration of intersubjectivity now as `a mundane problem of the natural attitude' of the everyday social group, are taken up as a guide in this search for the non-nihilistic ( aliquid). Through an independent description of a `fiduciary attitude' (i.e. a trustful and not necessarily practical attitude), new light is thrown on the crisis as essentially a `bankruptcy of trust', and a brief attempt is then made to describe our most profound and foundational fiduciary engagement in that primordial `something' which is seen to be in the end a very ` human nature'. Upon this basis, and more specifically upon a fiduciary familiar milieu of social nature, I must simply have faith carrying hopes and fears in the world. This is the basis for a trustfully grounded science in everyday life. It may be developed by `well-informed actors' into a modern higher reflection involving a supreme respect for the unknown in the other and in nature, so as to give rise to an ethical science guided by faith in the future advancement of our one single international world.

What Is Still Valuable in Husserl's Analyses of Inner Time-consciousness

What Is Still Valuable in Husserl's Analyses of Inner Time-consciousness

Husserl's fifth meditation

Although there is a great deal of literature on Husserl's attempt, in the fifth meditation, to come to grips with the problem ofintersubjectivity,insufficient attention has been paid to the arguments therein. It seems that some commentators became so preoccupied with the particulars of Husserl's analysis that they overlooked the ostensible justification for some of the key positions. This paper is an effort to provide that needed attention in the form of a careful and critical assessment of Husserl's arguments in the fifth meditation. Since I have written about the problem of intersubjectivity elsewhere, 1 this paper will be about Husserl's solution exclusively. But a summary of my conclusions concerning the problem is necessary before discussing Husserl's solution. I argued that the problem of intersubjectivity is not identical with the problem of other minds, since Husserl does not attempt to prove the existence of anything in the fifth meditation. Rather, Husserl wants to clarify the sense of 'other subjects' by carefully describing and analyzing the paradigm case of those conditions under which we believe the expression has application - that is, when we believe we perceive someone else. But much more is involved, as a number of passages in Formal and Transcendental Logic and Cartesian Meditations show, for Husserl tries to clarify the sense and status of phenomenology itself by addressing the problem of intersubjectivity. 2 Husserl aims for a set of what he calls objectively valid results, a number of results that can be refined by and withstand intersubjective criticism. Any truths that comprise phenomenology must be truths that could be recognized as such by other rational subjects if there are such subjects. Whatever justification there is for phenomenological positions must be recognizable as such by other rational subjects if there are others. The possibility of communication fits into this pattern as well. The antecedent, 'if there are others', is important because the phenomenological reduction requires neutrality as to whether there are (or are not) others. The adjective 'rational' is significant, too, as only those possible subjects that can do things associated with rationality (such as recognize relevant evidence) are relevant to clarification of the sense and status of phenomen

The Givenness of Self and Others in Husserl's Transcendental Phenomenology

AbstractHusserl's explication of "self" and "others" occurs within his founding science of pure possibilities or "bracketed" consciousness and experience. His analysis of self and others seeks, in part, to demonstrate that "personal" or "self-experience" is not the only possibility of immanent consciousness but that "other persons" are also given as possibilities. The possibility of others, though in a form of givenness different from that of self, provides a basis for inter-subjectivity. Thus, Husserl's phenomenological analysis can, if it does avoid solipsism and subjective idealism in general, establish inter-subjectivity as coextensive with subjectivity within the deepest possibilities of experience. Husserl's discussion of how the other as an external person or alien ego occurs as a given after all beliefs in an independently existing world are suspended (bracketed) shares some interesting parallels with psychological concepts and also suggests foundational possibilities for research on how the other is constituted as a separate "person" within our consciousness.

Transcendentalism and history: the problem of the history of philosophy and the sciences in the later philosophy of Husserl

This paper is an analysis of Husserl's theory of the nature of the sciences and of philosophy in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Husserl's position is shown to be structured around a central contradiction between his objective (a rational, non-subjectivist history of the sciences) and the problematic of transcendental empiricism in which that objective is to be realised. The effect of this contradiction is a discourse structured by a series of ‘discrepancies’ between its elements and a denegatory play on words which glosses over the discrepancies. Three major discrepancies appear in Husserl's discussion of: (1) the meaning of the pure geometry taken for granted by Galileo; (2) Galileo's mathematisation of the world; (3) the birth of scientific physics and its effect in the transformation of philosophy. Husserl's radical suppression of objectivism culminates in a speculative philosophy of history in which philosophy itself is represented as the self-conscious reflection of...

Phänomenologische Philosophie Oder Phänomenologische Psychologie?

AbstractThe first question raised in this article concerns the central points of Husserl's phenomenological psychology. They consist essentially of the following: (1) a re-questioning (going back) of the types of objects encountered to their mode of being experienced, and (2) an emphasis on the non-empirical (eidetic) character of this type of psychology. A criticism then follows that Husserl's analyses are too general; they are more ontologically than psychologically interesting. It is further criticized that Husserl's phenomenological psychology is primarily oriented toward the problems of gnosology and not so much at the problems of the everyday behavior of man. Nevertheless, the critique of Husserl affirms that phenomenological psychology is important for theoretical psychology insofar as Husserl very clearly develops the principles of concept-formation of psychology as a science. If phenomenological psychology is to be concrete and applicable to psychology, one must ask which are the concrete types of objects from which one has to go back to consciousness. These types of objects have been identified as work-tasks. This conception of phenomenological psychology accords with its eidetical character since the individual mode of performance of a work-task is in general largely irrelevant. To prove this conception from another viewpoint, the analysis of some French phenomenologists were scrutinized. First of all, it was shown how Politzer, one of the first French phenomenolo