The title of this entry
is unabashedly ironic. First in 1807 was Hegel’s groundbreaking Phänomenologie
des Geistes. Then, a full century later, Edmund Husserl invented phenomenology.
Is this supposed to mean that Husserl somehow transcended Hegel’s own phenomenology,
or were they talking about different things? By asking this trick question, I
am not entering a philosophical discussion about apples and oranges (comparing
these two is by no means a meaningless endeavor, as long as it is properly done,
from the philosophical point of view), but only launching the special entry on
Husserl, who certainly deserves one, as the acknowledged inventor of a
philosophical something.
The philosophical stature of
Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) can be argued about, but it is his invention of the
new philosophical discipline called phenomenology, and notably his last
major work The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology,
left unfinished at the time of his death in 1938, which make him a curious
figure to comment about, and so we shall.
Husserl was a Jewish-born German
philosopher who converted to Lutheranism in 1887, that is, long before it would
become politically expedient. Yet in 1933 he was still dismissed from his
university teaching position because of his Jewish roots.
His philosophy offers a peculiar
combination of totally derivative concepts and his original arrangements of
them, resulting in his creation of a new philosophical discipline, under the
unoriginal title of phenomenology. (As a matter of fact, phenomenology
can be considered a technical term. My Webster’s Dictionary has these
two definitions: [1.] The science dealing with
phenomena as distinct from the science of being [ontology]; [2.] The
branch of a science that classifies and describes its phenomena without any
attempt at explanation.)
(The following
differently-colored note on Husserl’s contribution to the science of philosophy
is derived from general reference sources, and it is presented here merely as
an important element of reader’s edification on the matter at hand.)
Although
previously employed by Hegel, it was Husserl’s adoption of this term (circa
1900) that propelled it into becoming the designation of a philosophical
school. As a philosophical perspective, phenomenology is its method, though the
specific meaning of the term varies according to how it is conceived by a given
philosopher. As envisioned by Husserl, phenomenology is a method of
philosophical inquiry that rejects the rationalist bias dominating Western
thought since Plato, in favor of a method of reflective attentiveness that
discloses the individual’s “lived experience.” Loosely rooted in an
epistemological device, called epoché, rooted in Skepticism, Husserl’s method
entails the suspension of judgment while relying on the intuitive grasp of
knowledge, free of presuppositions and intellectualizing. Sometimes depicted as
the “science of experience,” the phenomenological method is rooted in intentionality
(originally Franz Brentano’s term), which is now Husserl’s theory of
consciousness. Intentionality represents an alternative to the representational
theory of consciousness, which holds that reality cannot be grasped directly,
because it is available only through perceptions of reality, which are
representations of it in the mind. Husserl countered that consciousness is not
“in” the mind, but rather conscious of something other than itself (the
intentional object), whether the object is a substance or a figment of imagination
(i.e. the real processes associated with and underlying the figment).
Hence, the phenomenological method relies on the description of phenomena as
they are given to consciousness, in their immediacy.
And finally the above-mentioned
last work of Husserl, his Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental
Phenomenology is his contemplative answer to the deep crisis facing the
intellectual world in the 1930’s, as a result of the “rise of barbarism.”
Husserl connects it to what he sees as a pervasive misunderstanding of human reason, a misunderstanding that he tries
to correct through his notion of the Lebenswelt, Life-world. The
sciences, he says, can be given meaning only if they are founded on (his)
phenomenology! Whether he is right or wrong is unimportant. At least he was
successful in asking some useful questions, which is all that can be expected
from a good philosopher.
(That last short paragraph would
have been a proper conclusion to this entry, yet I cannot stop myself from
making the following ironic observation. In my by now famous 1963 Webster’s Biographical Dictionary, there
is a supershort article on Husserl, calling him “a German philosopher,” but giving no more details on him
whatsoever. Why is that so? Frankly, my reader, I have no idea as to why! It is
quite obvious that such a glaring neglect of an important philosopher has to
mean something. Perhaps sometime in the future I may find it out…)
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