" Notre époque ne veut croire qu'à des "réalités". Or sa réalité la plus puissante est la science, voilà pourquoi c'est de la science philosophique dont notre époque a le plus grand besoin (...) et le plus grand progrès que puisse accomplir notre époque sera de reconnaître que l'intuition philosophique bien comprise est l'appréhension phénoménologique des essences. " Ce texte, écrit en 1911, constitue bien le manifeste par quoi s'ouvre la philosophie du XXè siècle. Husserl cherche à dépasser l'opposition (...) toujours actuelle entre positivisme et historicisme, en exigeant que la philosophie s'établisse à partir d'un nouveau commencement, plus radical que tous ceux qu'elle n'a jamais pu entreprendre, et qu'elle vise une rigueur qui l'affranchisse enfin des modèles hérités des sciences de la nature. Quelle qu'ait été l'histoire de la phénoménologie Husserlienne, l'exigence exprimée dans ce manifeste ne concerne pas seulement un courant de pensée particulier ; elle est consubstantielle à la réflexion philosophique elle-même. (shrink)

The common thought that Husserl was committed to a Platonist ontology of essences, and to a mysterious epistemology that holds that we can ‘intuit’ these essences, has contributed substantially to his work being dismissed and marginalized in analytic philosophy. This paper aims to show that it is misguided to dismiss Husserl on these grounds. First, the author aims to explicate Husserl’s views about essences and how we can know them, in ways that make clear that he is (...) not committed to a traditional Platonism, or a mystical epistemology. Second, the author argues that Husserl’s approach was an important source for Carnap in “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology”, where Carnap tried to overcome the empiricists’ qualms about referring to abstracta. Finally, the author will argue that Husserl’s approach can be reconstructed in contemporary analytic terms by appeal to the idea of pleonastic transformations. By seeing both Husserl’s views and their influences on later analytic work more clearly, the hope is to build bridges and make clear that the approach is of lasting value and interest. (shrink)

Phenomenology can be roughly described as the theory of the pure essences of phenomena. Yet the meaning of essence and of concepts traditionally tied to it are far from settled. This is especially true given the impact modern science has had on established philosophical views and the need for revisiting certain core notions of philosophy. In this paper I intend to review Husserl’s view on thingness-essence and his conception of the essence of individuals, based mainly in his writings from (...) the time of Logical Investigations, Ideas, and later of Experience and Judgment. Taking account of the work of Lothar Eley in Die Krise des Apriori, among others, I will inquire into the ways in which phenomenology may undermine the view of essences as non-factual, as well as undermine their ontological priority. Doing so may help to shape a conception of material or formal individual essences and generally of essences as concrete objects of experience in virtue of well-defined epistemic ones. (shrink)

L’une des tâches de la phénoménologie transcendantale, que Husserl lui-même définit comme une science éidétique des phénomènes transcendentalement réduits, est de découvrir des lois a priori matérielles d’un type spécial : des lois éidétiques descriptives établies sur la base de concepts descriptifs purs. Cet article s’attache d’abord à préciser la notion husserlienne d’essence au le sens large, définie comme une fonction d’état-de-choses (Sachverhaltsfunktion) ; une telle fonction noématique est le corrélat « objectif » de cette fonction propositionnelle que nous (...) appelons « concept » et qui est une partie de la proposition, c’est-à-dire de la visée-d’état-de-choses (Sachverhaltsmeinung) par laquelle on projette un état-de-choses. En revanche, par essences au sens étroit ou strict on entend ces essences pures que Husserl appelle « Eide ». Le concept d’essence pure propre à l’éidétique descriptive phénoménologique est ainsi clarifié par une explication de la notion husserlienne de « concept descriptif pure », dans le but de montrer comment ces concepts, qui sont des pures concepts de types, se distinguent des concept descriptifs impures, et notamment des concepts dénotant des genres naturels. Fondées exclusivement sur des concepts descriptifs purs, les lois éidétiques descriptives (Wesensgesetze) possèdent des conditions de vérités particulières et nécessitent de modalités d’examen tout autant spécifiques. La place propre à la méthode appelée « variation éidétique » est justement celle de examiner, falsifier ou justifier des lois éidétiques descriptives présumées. A partir de cas exemplaires d’états-de-choses familiers confirmant les lois présumées, la variation libre, qui opère dans la pure imagination, a pour tâche de construire des contre-exemples possibles dont le but est de falsifier la loi éidétique présumée. La propriété d’être falsifiable par des contre-exemples construits dans la pure imagination permet de distinguer les lois empiriques des lois éidétiques descriptives de l’éidétique husserlienne. La possibilité de falsifier par des contre-exemples fictionnels ou factuels montre que la phénoménologie transcendantale est une entreprise scientifique ouverte à l’examen intersubjectif, et cela justement en raison de son caractère éidétique. (shrink)

A comparative study to determine the significance of essence in the doctrine of three philosophers. By his method of reduction husserl disclosed his version of essence and used it to establish phenomenology as a rigorous science and to see phenomena solely as phenomena. Whitehead identified essence with his "eternal objects" and this identification protected his "actual occasions" from the limitations of empiricism. By means of essence seen exclusively as appearance and relations, Santayana supports his ingenious thesis that nothing given (...) exists. Conclusion: essence is a cardinal element in the philosophy of all three men. (shrink)

Husserl's proposed method for knowing the essences of universals, which he calls “free variation,” has been widely criticized for involving viciously circular reasoning. In this paper, I review existing attempts to resolve this problem, and I argue that they all fail. I then show that extant accounts are all guilty of a common mistake: they assume that circularity is inevitable as long as the exercise of free variation presupposes the ability to identify the universal whose essence is in question, (...) that is, the ability to recognize entities as instances of it. I reject this assumption: I argue on both Husserlian and independent philosophical grounds that knowledge of a universal's essence is not required for identifying it, but only for re‐identifying it at every possible world in which it is instantiated. I then defend a reading on which free variation's purpose is to move its practitioner from non‐essentialistic knowledge of a universal's identity (its actual instantiation‐pattern) to essentialistic knowledge of its transworld identity (its instantiation‐pattern in every possible world in which it is present). And I show that such a transformation is a non‐circular progression from non‐modal to modal knowledge. (shrink)

Phenomenology has been defined by Husserl as “theory of the essences of pure phenomena,” yet the ontological status of essences in Husserlian phenomenology is far from a settled issue. The late Husserlian emphasis on genetic constitution and the historicity of the lifeworld is not immediately reconcilablewith the ‘unchangeable’ nature that is prima facie attributed to essences. However, the problem of the nature of ideality cannot be dropped from phenomenological accounts without jeopardizing the phenomenological enterprise as such. Through an immanent (...) analysis of Husserl’s meditation on essences a positive account of their ontological status is provided. Essences are interpreted as ontological thresholds, primordially rooted in our motivated confrontation with sensuous transcendence. Essences appear as emergent ontological features, which are not reducible to their particular realizations and which exhibit a fundamental continuity between consciousness and being. They manifest themselves as prospectively a priori (a precondition for further experiences), but retrospectively a posteriori (they are founded in experience). Finally, essences manifest the ‘co-essential’ nature of consciousness and sensuous transcendence: they are the way in which we are motivated and constitutively bound to articulate being, which in turn is apt to be thus articulated. (shrink)

Husserl’s philosophy of mathematics, his metatheory, and his transcendental phenomenology have a sophisticated and systematic interrelation that remains relevant for questions of ontology today. It is well established that Husserl anticipated many aspects of model theory. I focus on this aspect of Husserl’s philosophy in order to argue that Thomasson’s recent pleonastic reconstruction of Husserl’s approach to essences is incompatible with Husserl’s philosophy as a whole. According to the pleonastic approach, Husserl can appeal to (...) essences in the absence of a positive metaphysical account of their nature. I show, using central results from recent model theory, that the pleonastic approach undermines Husserl’s approach to formalization and categoricity, an effect that will ripple out from Husserl’s philosophy of mathematics into Husserl’s metatheory and transcendental phenomenology. The result is that Husserl cannot appeal to formal essences without metaphysical commitments. However, the very observations Thomasson makes about the nature of eidetic intuition in Husserl lead to a general strategy for responding to the problem. The article thus illustrates that the pleonastic and the model-theoretic routes for making Husserl relevant to present-day ontology are competing approaches, but I conclude that Husserl scholars seeking to set Husserl’s present-day relevance into sharp relief could do worse than to emphasize the model-theoretic nature of Husserl’s enterprise. (shrink)

Even the most cursory reader of Husserl’s writings must be struck by the frequent references to essences (“Wesen”, “Essenzen”), Ideas (“Idee”), kinds, natures, types and species and to necessities, possibilities, impossi- bilities, necessary possibilities, essential necessities and essential laws. What does Husserl have in mind in talking of essences and modalities? What did he take the relation between essentiality and modality to be? In the absence of answers to these questions it is not clear that a reader of (...) Husserl can be said to understand him. (shrink)

In a series of conversations recorded towards the end of his life, Husserl is quoted as saying, "Yes, I do honor Thomas ..." and "... certainly I admit Thomas was a very great, a colossal phenomenon."1 With this, however, is the assertion that one "must go beyond Thomas."2 What is this going beyond Thomas? The purpose of this essay is to explore this in terms of the distinction between existence and essence we considered in our first chapter when we (...) inquired into the ontological status of the ideas. Our claim is that on this point at least, Husserl is in agreement with Thomas Aquinas. The demand that we go "beyond" him does not concern this distinction. It rather amounts to an implicit call to bring Thomas’ epistemology--in particular, his view of consciousness--up to the level achieved by his metaphysical insights. (shrink)

이 연구는 후설의 본질 개념이 전통적 본질 이론들과 구분되는 고유한 특성을 지니고 있는지 검토한다. 우선 전통적인 유명론과 실재론의 보편 논쟁에서 후설은 명시적으로 유명론에 반대하는 입장을 취하고 있지만, 그렇다고 후설의 본질 이론이 곧바로 실재론으로 이해될 수는 없다. 후설 자신이 본질의 외부적 현존을 가정하는 플라톤적 실재론에 대해서 형이상학적 실체화라고 비판하기 때문이다. 후설은 실재성이 시간성을 지닌 것과 동일한 외연을 지닌다고 주장하면서, 이념적 대상은 초시간적 대상이기 때문에 애초에 실재성의 문제가 적용되지 않는다고 파악한다. 후설은 우리가 대상과 실재에 대해 날카롭게 구분한다면, 이념적인 대상들을 대상으로서 직관할 수 (...) 있다는 주장에 잘못된 것이 없다고 주장한다. 후설의 본질 개념의 고유한 특징을 보여주는 개념이 형상적 독특 개념이다. 형상적 독특은 가장 낮은 단계의 본질이면서 동시에 개별자에서 우리가 직관하는 본질이다. 형상적 독특은 우리가 개별적 대상에서 인식하는 본질의 범위를 제한해서 그것을 본질로 인식하게 하는 필수 조건이다. 따라서 형상적 독특이 없다면, 우리는 개별적 대상에서 특정한 본질을 파악할 수 없다. 우리는 개별적 사실로부터 인도된 자유 변경의 과정을 통해 순수 본질을 획득하고, 이러한 순수 본질은 다시 우리의 개별적 직관에서의 본질, 즉 형상적 독특을 인식 가능하게 하는 필수 조건이 된다. (shrink)

This chapter examines Edmund Husserl’s notion of idea in the Kantian sense with the aim of clarifying the distinction between ideas and essences. In particular, the chapter focuses on the occurrences of the notion of idea in the Kantian sense in Ideas I, identifies its core features, and explains why the notion of idea should not to be conflated with the phenomenologically relevant notion of essence. The chapter then points to doubts about the givenness of ideas in the Kantian (...) sense and argues that, once the notions of essence and of idea are disentangled, those doubts have no bearing on whether essences merit a place within phenomenology. (shrink)

Je prends ici comme prétexte la parution aux éditions Nijhoff des Leçons professées par E. Husserl durant le semestre d'été 1908 à Göttingen sur sa doctrine de la signification, Vorlesungen ueber Bedeutungslehre Sommersemester 1908 (1987), afin de faire le point sur les changements qui interviennent durant cette période concernant sa conception de la signification. L'importance du contenu de ces Leçons a déjà été signalée par quelques phénoménologues dont G. Küng (1973), R. Bernet (1979). D. W. Smith et R. McIntyre (...) (1982) et par Husserl (1968) lui-même dans une lettre à R. Ingarden. Il semble que ces Leçons marquent ce qu'on pourrait appeler un «tournant frégéen» dans la conception husserlienne de la signification et qu'elles préparent le sol sur lequel s'édifie la théorie de l'intentionalité des Idées directrices. (shrink)

Early in Aristotle's terminology, and ever since, "essence" has been conceived as having two meanings, namely "universality" and "individuality". According to the tradition of thought that has dominated throughout the history of Western philosophy, "essence" unequivocally refers to "universality". As a matter of fact, however, "universality" cannot cover Aristotle's definition and formulation of "essence": Essence is what makes a thing "happen to be this thing." "Individuality" should be the deep meaning of "essence". By means of an analysis of some relevant (...) Western thoughts and a review of cultural realities, it can be concluded that the difference between the attitudes toward things of the natural sciences and the humane sciences mainly lies in the fact that the former focus on the pursuit of universal regularity, whereas the latter go after the value and significance of human life. The movement from natural things to cultural things is a process in which essence shifts from universality to individuality. It is the author's contention that what should be stressed in the fields of human culture and society is the construction of an ideal society that is "harmonious yet not identical", on the basis of respecting and developing individual peculiarity and otherness. /// "本质" 最早在亚里士多德的用语中包含有两重含义: 是指 "普遍的东 西" ("共相")，一是指 "个体的东西" ("这个")。在西方哲学史上民期占统治 地位的思想片面地认为: "本质" 就是指 "普遍的东西"。但实际上"普遍的东 西" 并不能涵盖亚里士多德对 "本质" 的界定和表述t 本质是使一事物 "恰恰地是 这个事物"的东西。"本质" 的深层含义应是 "个体性"。通过对西方一些相关思 想观点的分析和文化现实的考察，可以得出结论z 自然科学与人文科学对待事物的 态度的区别在于z 前者重普遍性规律的追求，后者重个体性的人生价值意义的追求。 从自然物到文化物是一个由以普遍性为本质到以个体性为本质的转化过程。在人文 社会领域应该强调的是z 在尊重和发扬个人的独特性和差异性的基础上，建立 "和而 不同"的理想社会。. (shrink)

Edmund Husserl often characterizes essences and eidetic laws in normative terms. Many of his statements to this effect are however highly puzzling as they appear at odds with Husserl’s general understanding of normativity. In this paper I focus on this puzzle and I argue that we can reconcile most of the apparent tensions between these two dimensions of Husserl’s philosophical thought. In the first part of the paper, drawing on the contemporary literature on kinds of norms, I (...) focus on Husserl’s work on the varieties of normativity. I submit that, on his view, essences and eidetic laws are never intrinsically normative, and that not all essences and not all corresponding eidetic laws can function as norms for their instances. Crucially, however, I argue that, according to Husserl, essences and eidetic laws can function as norms for a range of the subject’s acts. In the second part of the paper I further examine this thesis, thus explaining in what sense Husserl thinks that essences and eidetic laws can have this function. I show that formal eidetic laws can engender deontic and evaluative norms for correct or rational judgments, evaluations, desires, and acts of the will. I also contend that material essences and material eidetic laws also have a normative function for judgments. I conclude that this shows how Husserl’s view makes room for norms that are not context-dependent or subjectively grounded. (shrink)

Over a period of several decades spanning the origin of the Vienna Circle, Schlick repeatedly attacked Husserl''s phenomenological method for its reliance on the ability to intuitively grasp or see essences. Aside from its significance for phenomenologists, the attack illuminates significant and little-explored tensions in the history of analytic philosophy as well. For after coming under the influence of Wittgenstein, Schlick proposed to replace Husserl''s account of the epistemology of propositions describing the overall structure of experience with his (...) own account based on the structure of language rather than on the intuition of essences. I discuss both philosophers'' accounts of the epistemology of propositions describing the structure of experience. For both philosophers, this epistemology was closely related to the general epistemology of logic; nevertheless, neither philosopher had a completely coherent account of it. Comparison of the two approaches shows that perennial and severe theoretical obstacles stand in the way of giving an epistemology of the structure of experience, a central requirement for both philosophers'' theories. Consideration of these obstacles sheds a new light on the reasons for the historically decisive split between the continental and the analytic traditions, as well as on the subsequent development of the analytic tradition away from the structural description of experience. (shrink)

Husserl on the Ego and its Eidos (Cartesian Meditations, IV) ALFREDO FERRARIN THE THEORY OF the intentionality of consciousness is essential for Husserl's philosophy, and in particular for his mature theory of the ego. But it runs into serious difficulties when it has to account for consciousness's transcendental constitution of its own reflective experience and its relation to immanent time. This intricate knot, the inseparability of time and constitution, is most visibly displayed in Husserl's writings from the (...) 192os up to the notion of the eidos ego in the fourth Cartesian Meditation. In this paper I want to dwell on the most problematic aspects of this theory. After a few preliminary remarks about the intentionality of consciousness (sec- tion 1), I try to place the theory of the substrate of habitualities in the context of Husserl's evolution on the issue of the reflection of the ego on itself (section ~). I briefly follow the threads of Husserl's shifting position from the Logical Investi- gat/ons and Ideas I to Ideas II, the Cartesian Meditations and the Cr/s/s. I indicate Husserl's works are quoted with the following abbreviations: CM = Cartesiani.~he Meditationen, Husserliana Bd. I, hrsg. v. S. Strasser (Den Haag, 195o); Carte- s/an M~, trans. D. Cairns (Dordrecht, 196o ) SW = Husserl, Shorter Works, ed. P. McCormick and F. Elliston (Notre Dame, 198a) IZ = Zur Phttnomenologie des inneren Zeilheun~tseim (z 893-z 917), Husserliana Bd. X, hrsg. v. R. Boehm (Den Haag, 1966 ) Ideen I = ldeen zu einer reinen Ph~nomenologie und ph~nomenologischen Philosophic, Husserliana Bd. III, hrsg. v. W. Biemel (Den Haag, t95o); Ideas I, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague, Boston, Lancaster, s983) ldeen// = ld., Hussefliana Bd. IV, hrsg. v. M. Biemel (Den Haag, 1952); Ideas I1, trans. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer (Dordrecht, Boston, London, x 989) FTL = Forma/e und transzendenta~ Log/k, Husserliana Bd. XVII, hrsg. v. P. Janssen (Den Haag, t974) Kr/sh = Kr/s/s der europ~/schen W/ssen~haften, Husserliana Bd. VI, hrsg. v. W. Biemel (Den Haag, 1954) I wish to express my gratitude to Pierre Kerszberg and Alessandra Fussi for their helpful com- ments on an earlier draft of the paper, and to Graham Harman for checking the final version of my English text. [645] 646 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 32:4 OCTOBER 1994 some historical antecedents, in particular Aristotle, of Husserl's theory of abid- ing properties which, as far as I can see, have not been pointed out before. Husserl's Entwicklungsgeschichte on the topic of the pure ego has already been the object of important scholarly works, of which Kern's 1964 Husserl und Kant seems to me the best example. But what the secondary literature does not do is develop thematically the ambiguities of Husserl's definitions of consciousness and temporality in a unitary and comprehensive way. While I follow the lead of Berger, Broekman, Kern, Marbach,' and others, I find that their work does not sufficiently stress the difficulties at the core ofintentionality and reflective time- consciousness. Therefore, although section 2 is a necessary presupposition for drawing some critical conclusions in the final two sections, it does not exhaust my theme. After clarifying the peculiarity of the notions of essence, intuition, tran- scendental and apriori, as well as their irl:educibility to a Kantian meaning, I turn to the "de facto transcendental ego" resulting from eidetic variation (section 3) in order to introduce an examination of temporality. The difficul- ties in the twofold requirement, namely, that consciousness be the identical subject of its Erlebnisse and be synthetically unified in time, concern the unity, primacy, and mutual relation of time and consciousness in the constitution of our experience. They have been heady pointed out by Ricoeur in his commen- tary on the Cartesian Meditations. But what I want to argue in section 4, going beyond Ricoeur's text, is that the tension between temporally constituted and constitutive consciousness in the ego's reflection on its own retentions and protensions does not simply make the question of time ambiguous, but has crucial and problematic bearings on the very definition of consciousness as intentionality. In this respect... -/- . (shrink)

Early in Aristotle’s terminology, and ever since, “essence” has been conceived as having two meanings, namely “universality” and “individuality”. According to the tradition of thought that has dominated throughout the history of Western philosophy, “essence” unequivocally refers to “universality”. As a matter of fact, however, “universality” cannot cover Aristotle’s definition and formulation of “essence”: Essence is what makes a thing “happen to be this thing.” “Individuality” should be the deep meaning of “essence”. By means of an analysis of some relevant (...) Western thoughts and a review of cultural realities, it can be concluded that the difference between the attitudes toward things of the natural sciences and the humane sciences mainly lies in the fact that the former focus on the pursuit of universal regularity, whereas the latter go after the value and significance of human life. The movement from natural things to cultural things is a process in which essence shifts from universality to individuality. It is the author’s contention that what should be stressed in the fields of human culture and society is the construction of an ideal society that is “harmonious yet not identical”, on the basis of respecting and developing individual peculiarity and otherness. (shrink)

" L'essence du christianisme a frappé d'un " coup de tonnerre " philosophique le monde des intellectuels révolutionnaires " jeunes-hégéliens " allemands : " Nous fûmes tous feuerbachiens " (Engels). L'intervention de Feuerbach marque un tournant décisif dans la formation de la pensée de Marx. Marx a " épousé " la pensée de Feuerbach pendant des années. Il a dû passer par Feuerbach pour devenir Marx. Il est devenu Marx en se séparant de Feuerbach. L'essence du christianisme n'a rien perdu (...) de sa force révélatrice. Les philosophes seront frappés de découvrir dans ce livre des problèmes, des principes, de formules et des catégories philosophiques qui sont au cœur même de la pensée contemporaine. L'essence du christianisme a été le miroir et la solution provisoire de la crise des philosophes jeunes-hégéliens dans les années 1841-1845. On constatera avec quelle étonnante profondeur Feuerbach annone et devance, à un titre ou un autre, par contraste ou parenté, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Husserl, certains thèmes de Heidegger, Barth et la théologie récente, etc. L'essence du christianisme est, aujourd'hui encore, un ouvrage scandaleux. Car il porte sur la religion chrétienne et divise les hommes. Il oblige à se prononcer sur ce qui est sans doute la question cruciale de la philosophie contemporaine : religieuse, OU pour une philosophie consciemment et rigoureusement antireligieuse. ". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 97 supposed by actual idealism is above all moral and involves what Gentile describes as an aspect of divinity or infinity,as well as a concrete, historical aspect. The following chapter treats of the philosophy of "actual" idealism and compares the views of Kant and Gentile on relations between moral conscience and freedom. According to Yalentini, Gentile's idealism is essentially an ethical view. This chapter concludes with noting (...) that Gentile 's solution to the problem of historical knowledge differs profoundly from that of Hegel and Croce. For "reason" is not, for Gentile, a particular interpretation of historical process, but is rather the "reason" of consciousness in activity. In Chapter In, Valentini discusses Gentile's views on art and religion. The section on art concludes with a comparison between Gentile on feeling and Kant on the transcendental unity of apperception. Whereas art is supposed to be one abstract moment of spirit, religion is the other abstract moment. Valentini suggests that Gentile and Feuerbach hold similar religious views on the attributes of divinity, which are nothing other than the loftiest qualities which man feels to possess in his essence. The history of religion is then the history of the progressive humanization of God. Gentile's religion represents a sort of modem Catholicism in that it understands revelation as a fact of conscience, church as a historical institution, dogma as having a negative character and God as a member of the dialogue between God and man. Moreover, Gentile's Catholicism has a national character; it is the religion of the Italian people. Chapter Iv treats of the relations between individual and state. For, according to Gentile, an individual is inconceivableapart from the social relations which lie within him. Here Valentini distinguishes in detail the differences and similarities between the views of Hegel and Gentile on the relations between state and individual. The differences between the views of these two philosophers are due to the differences between their methods. The method of Hegel is empirical and historical, and examines the state (which remains historical) from an external point of view. According to an idealistic method, however, thought is not to be the spectator of a process, but in every instance, an actor, and philosophizing does not result from an analysis of historical reality, but from the negation of this reality in the name of an ideal, which philosophy is to draw from it (reality). The Appendix includes a critical evaluation of the theory of the dialectic. Here Valentini hopes to distinguish between the imaginary and the real or historical applications of the dialectic. He begins his evaluation by asking: Does the doctrine of the dialectic, like the philosophy of idealism, possess negative connotations, which cannot be separated from it? Valentini suggests that in order to answer this question, we must determine the extent to which the dialectical scheme is constitutive of every concept or truth in general. For this is the way in which Hegel intended that the dialectic be understood and evaluated. Some views in Hegel's philosophy of nature are then criticized according to empirical criteria. In conclusion, Valentini attempts to answer both "internal" and "external" criticisms of Marx's view of the dialectic, and shows that there are problems involved in its application, which still have to be resolved. Mv~ M. MILBURN 9 ~an Jos~ ~ate College Husserl und Kant: eine Untersuchung ~ber Husserls Verh~iltni~ zu Kant und zum Neubantianismus. By Iso Kern. (The Hague : Martinus Nijhoff, 1964.Pp. xxiii q- 448.) This is a very important book. In fact, it is indispensable for a study of Husserl and is, at the same time, almost as valuable for a study of Kant, for it deals with the kind of searching questions that must be asked when one deals with transcendental idealism in any one of its forms. But two reasons in particular, make this book significant. One is the fact that Iso Kern was able to make extensive use of hitherto unpublished materials (manuscripts, lecture notes, letters, etc.), available only in the Husserl Archives and here quoted for the first time--and 98 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY quoted in great numbers. The other is Kern's philosophical competence... (shrink)

This article accomplishes two goals. First, the paper clarifies Edmund Husserl’s investigation of the historical inception of the number system from his early works, Philosophy of Arithmetic and, “On the Logic of Signs (Semiotic)”. The article explores Husserl’s analysis of five historical developmental stages, which culminated in our ancestor’s ability to employ and enumerate with number signs. Second, the article reveals how Husserl’s conclusions about the history of the number system from his early works opens up a (...) fusion point with his investigations from his mature texts, The Crisis of the European Sciences and “The Origin of Geometry”. On the one hand, the essay shows that Husserl’s methodology was similar, as he sought in both his early and late writings to uncover the essence of the history of the formal sciences and was not executing mere intellectual history. On the other hand, the article discloses that Husserl’s insights from both time periods are strikingly analogous. Already in his early texts, Husserl saw that the sciences emerged from pre-theoretical experiences of the world and that the sciences are the result of a historical process, which involves the psychic activities of past individuals and the maintaining of discoveries over time by intersubjective communities. I conclude by showing how, in light of the analysis of this paper, we can rethink the evolution of Husserl’s philosophy. (shrink)

This paper reviews the concept of ‘essence’ in Edmund Husserl and Thomas Aquinas as found presented by Edith Stein in her Festschrift article, ‘Husserl’s Phenomenology and the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas: Attempt at a Comparison,’ in the Jahrbuch für Philosophie und Phänomenologische Forschung (1929, 370). The aim of the paper is to perform an analysis of Stein’s understanding of the principal similarities and differences in the understandings of essence found in the writings of Husserl and Aquinas, (...) and primarily in terms of the immediacy of the intuition or cognition of essences. I begin by a basic analysis of this commonality and difference with a focus on the interweaving of the following themes: essence and existence; essence and sensual knowledge; essence and its objective ground; essence as intuited, as actively acquired and as passively received; insight into essence, immediate and mediate knowledge. Despite certain misunderstanding arising between the phenomenological movement and the scholastic tradition in this sphere, Stein recognises a number of points of agreement, namely, 1) the beginnings of all knowledge in sense experience, 2) the intellectual ‘work’ (erarbeiten) that is required to achieve a clear vision of essences, and 3) the finally passive nature of the act of understanding. I critically analyse each of these enumerated points of agreement towards clarifying how Stein conceives of the possibility of using the phenomenological method for achieving an understanding of essences coherent with a Thomistic metaphysical worldview, and how she parses and explains the further disagreements over the question of the mediacy or immediacy of human knowledge of essences of different kinds. (shrink)

Ce livre est une psychanalyse essentielle et rigoureuse de la philosophie. L'histoire de la philosophie s'y annonce comme étant l'incarnation diversifiée de trois essences fondamentales de la pensée de l'être ou de trois ontologies. Ces ontologies sont aussi les trois moments de la vie renonciatrice de la pensée. La pensée aspire à l'absolu et relativise cette aspiration tout en s'accomplissant dans cette même relativisation.0Le tome 1 montre que ces trois ontologies se déploient dans chacune des trois grandes pensées que sont (...) la philosophie de Platon, celle de Descartes et celle de Kant. Le tome 2 montre que ces trois ontologies se déploient à travers trois triades philosophiques, Héraclite, Aristote et Spinoza, Plotin, Leibniz et Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger et Bergson. Ce second tome montre ainsi que tout se passe comme si un seul génie s'incarnait et ressurgissait à chaque fois à travers trois pensées philosophiques différentes.0Tel est le mystère de la vie rationnelle de la pensée. (shrink)

Understanding phenomenology as a philosophical approach in which human-world relationships are analysed, as well as the constitution of subjectivity and objectivity within these relationships, this paper addresses some issues related to the transcendental dimension in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. An attempt is also made to re-address some issues related to phenomenology and its transcendental dimension as understood by adherents of hermeneutical phenomenology such as Paul Ricoeur. In essence, the focus of the paper is on exploring the following issues: (...) what is this transcendental turn in Husserl’s philosophy? Is this an ‘unfortunate turn’ toward a neo-Kantian brand of transcendental idealism? What is the significance of this transcendental dimension in Husserl’s phenomenology? Is there any distinctive phenomenological programme that, despite their differences, is common to both Husserl and Heidegger? This line of questioning proceeds from the observations made by Paul Ricoeur that, “with the development of his ‘hermeneutics of facticity’, Heidegger rejected Husserl’s neo-Kantian brand of transcendental phenomenology in favour of a de-transcendental and historicized way of doing philosophy, that Heidegger understood the subject to be ‘factic’, in contrast to Husserl’s pure ego as the source of the world constitution”(Hahn, 1995). Ultimately, however, the thrust of this exploration is towards understanding the transcendental way of doing philosophy and the so-called historicized way of philosophizing as two distinct ways to reach one common goal, the transcendental dimension of meaning. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 7, Edition 1 May 2007. (shrink)

Edmund Husserl believed that he had a method in phenomenology, which could be systematically applied. The essence of the method concerned the so-called “bracketing” of the objects outside of our consciousness. Husserl elaborated his idea through the conception of reductions, which he divided into eidetic,transcendental and phenomenological ones. The conception has recently been carefully analyzed by Dagfinn Føllesdal, an outstanding analytical thinker. But he had do admit that Husserl was not consistent in applying his method. Definitely, the (...) core of Husserl’s phenomenology can be studied using the analytic method. However, this does not mean that we can speak about applying a method in the case of Husserl himself. We get somewhat closer to a clearly defined method when we apply the priority argument of Merleau-Ponty for making the method of a phenomenological thinker intelligible. This helps us to clarify that what is being bracketed in phenomenology is the idea of the world embraced by traditional philosophical theory. What we are left with after the reduction is a reformedunderstanding. (shrink)

Husserl came over to philosophy from mathematics and he devoted many years to the formulation of a firm foundation for Philosophy that could even secure the status of "science" for it. But unlike some of his contemporaries (like Frege and Russell), he did not seek salvation for philosophy in the mathematical method. He argued philosophy (like any other field of study) should pay attention to uninterpreted basic experience and this would lead the way to understanding the essence of things. (...) Essence, then, would become conscious and this process was addressed by him as “phenomenological reduction.”. (shrink)

THE GOAL OF THIS PAPER IS TO DEFEND SCIENTIFIC REALISM (OF\nTHE SORT PROPOSED BY WILFRID SELLARS) AGAINST THE ATTACK ON\nIT IMPLICIT IN HUSSERL'S "CRISIS". IN PARTICULAR, I DISCUSS\nTHREE ANTI-REALIST HUSSERLIAN THESES: (1) THAT THE METHOD\nOF SCIENCE IS IN ESSENCE ONE OF THE IDEALIZATION; (2) THAT\nALL SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTS CAN BE TRACED BACK TO OUR\nLIFE-WORLD EXPERIENCE; (3) THAT ANY SCIENTIFIC DESCRIPTION\nOF THE WORLD NECESSARILY OMITS MAJOR DIMENSIONS OF OUR\nLIFE-WORLD EXPERIENCES. I ARGUE THAT EACH OF THESE THESES\nIS INCONSISTENT WITH A CORRECT UNDERSTANDING (...) OF SCIENTIFIC\nMETHODOLOGY. I FURTHER ARGUE THAT THESE THESES DERIVE ONLY\nFROM HUSSERL'S FAULTY EXPLICATION OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD;\nTHERE IS NOTHING IN HUSSERL'S BASIC EPISTEMOLOGICAL\nPOSITION THAT IS INCONSISTENT WITH (A PROPERLY CONSTRUED)\nSCIENTIFIC REALISM. (shrink)

Edmund Husserl has argued that we can intuit essences and, moreover, that it is possible to formulate a method for intuiting essences. Husserl calls this method 'ideation'. In this paper I bring a fresh perspective to bear on these claims by illustrating them in connection with some examples from modern pure geometry. I follow Husserl in describing geometric essences as invariants through different types of free variations and I then link this to the mapping out of geometric (...) invariants in modern mathematics. This view leads naturally to different types of spatial ontologies and it can be used to shed light on Husserl's general claim that there are different ontologies in the eidetic sciences that can be systematically related to one another. The paper is rounded out with a consideration of the role of ideation in the origins of modern geometry, and with a brief discussion of the use of ideation outside of pure geometry. (shrink)

THERE are two conflicting motives in Husserlian phenomenology, one of which leads, in my view, to a more genuinely transcendental philosophy. According to one of its original programs, phenomenology was to be a descriptive science of essences and essential structures of various regions of phenomena and also of the empty region of object in general. The concern with meanings, as contradistinguished from essences, is equally original; it pervades the Prolegomena and the first three of the logical investigations and, of course, (...) the first volume of the Ideas. But the specifically phenomenological enterprise of clarification of meanings—and this is the second of the two motives-slowly moves to the forefront, for a while overshadowed by the essentialism of the beginning, but later on freed from it and reasserting its primacy as the philosophical activity par excellence. The concern with essences affiliates phenomenology to the classical rationalistic tradition, while the concern with meanings brings it closer to the empiricistic tradition. If in the former enterprise phenomenology appears to be an essentialism of Aristotelian sort, in the latter, Hume remains its acknowledged precursor. One of my contentions, which I will try to substantiate in the following pages, is that the peculiarly Husserlian sort of transcendental phenomenology develops out of the second concern rather than from the first. This rather broad claim needs to be qualified in various ways, which I will be doing as we proceed. For the present, I may perhaps add this much: there is a conception of transcendental subjectivity which can be reached only through an eidetic phenomenology of essences: on such a theory, transcendental subjectivity is the essence of empirical consciousness, transcendental ego is the essence of the empirical ego. But this is not exactly Husserl’s conception of ‘transcendental'. The transcendental according to Husserl is not the essence of the empirical, but the domain in which the meanings constituting the empirical have their origin. However, I should add that these two points of view are intertwined, in Husserl’s thought, in such a strange manner that my efforts to separate them may seem futile. They influence each other: there are, as a matter of fact, two conceptions of essence in Husserl, one of which is, in my view, closer than the other one to the specifically Husserlian conception of transcendental subjectivity. So also in the theory of meaning, the early essentialism did cast its shadow, but as soon as it is freed from essentialism it lays the foundation of a more truly phenomenological transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

This book presents a systematic discussion of the development of Husserl’s concept of the a priori from his early and through his later writings. The chapters contained herein analyze the different phases and aspects of Husserl’s phenomenology of the a priori in light of his twofold notion of reason, construed as both ontological and transcendental. Starting from the assessment of the introduction of the notion of a priori knowledge in the context of the Logical Investigations, this text uniquely (...) explores its development during the Göttingen years. It is at this time during his work on The Crisis of European Sciences, that Husserl comes to see the a priori as a criterion to interpret the history of philosophy, notably, modern philosophy. This book sheds light upon such concepts as: essence and eidos; ideation, eidetic attitude and eidetic reduction; as well as formal and material, innate and contingent a priori. The author argues that the a priori becomes for Husserl the expression of an ontological form of rationality, i.e., the rationality immanent to being. This book appeals to students and researchers working on Husserl and phenomenology. (shrink)

Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenological philosophy, developed the concept of the so-called pure transcendental consciousness. The author of the article asks whether the concept of consciousness understood this way can constitute a model for AI consciousness. It should be remembered that transcendental consciousness is the result of the use of the phenomenological method, the essence of which is referring to experience (“back to things themselves”). Therefore, one can legitimately ask whether the consciousness that AI can achieve can possess (...) the characteristics attributed by Husserl to pure transcendental consciousness. The answer to such questions seems to be negative because AI, as created by humans, can only operate in the field of phenomena. Human intelligence, however, is capable of operating at the ontological level. In the face of difficulties in understanding the phenomenon of consciousness on a scientific basis, the question arises about the possibility of using the phenomenological concept of consciousness developed by Husserl as a starting point in analyzes aimed at answering the question about AI consciousness (The aim of the article is not to discuss in detail the contemporary state of research on consciousness. Therefore, many results currently achieved mainly in the field of neuroscience are omitted. It is just about indicating the possible application of Husserl’s transcendental concept of consciousness in research on AI consciousness). (shrink)

This paper discusses the relation between the later Husserl and the later Heidegger regarding their criticisms of modern science and technology. It is suggested that the overlap between both accounts is more significant than is standardly acknowledged. The paper first explores Heidegger’s ideas about the ‘essences’ of science and technology, how they allegedly determine the contemporary worldview, conceal our relation to being, and how Heidegger warrants his critical attitude toward this. It then discusses Husserl’s philosophical–historical assessment of the (...) ‘idea’ of modern science, which Husserl believed resulted in the decapitation of philosophical questioning. Although key differences in method, aims, and their proposed solution to the dominance of the technological-scientific worldview should not be overlooked, the paper suggests that core aspects of Heidegger’s analyses can be traced back to Husserl. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink: Beginnings and Ends in Phenomenology, 1928–1938Nicolas de WarrenRonald Bruzina. Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink: Beginnings and Ends in Phenomenology, 1928–1938. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Pp. xxvii + 627. Cloth, $45.00.Edmund Husserl defined a new field and method of philosophical research that required the employment of students in the pursuit of a rigorous and elusive science called transcendental phenomenology. (...) Husserl's most famous student, Heidegger, quickly proved a disappointment to the phenomenological cause, and it is in the shadow of Heidegger's waywardness that Eugen Fink, known primarily as the author of spirited defenses of Husserl's thinking, developed a close intellectual relationship with Husserl as his assistant from 1928 until 1938. Fink's collaboration with Husserl and his metaphysical recasting of phenomenology are the principal themes of Bruzina's scrupulously researched study, largely based on Fink's unpublished writings.A first chapter presents a narrative of Fink's significant influence on Husserl's thinking and writing. In chapter two, "Orientation I: Phenomenology Beyond the Preliminary," Bruzina details how Fink further developed Husserl's phenomenology in a systematic and self-critical direction. Whereas Husserl cautiously argued that the noetic-noematic schema "runs through all levels of constitution," including the seemingly intractable level of absolute time-consciousness, Fink—under the influence of Heidegger—rejects the universality of the "apriori-correlation" and its attending "philosophy of reflection." Working out the "being of transcendental subjectivity" and its distinctive temporality is, for Fink, the "remaining task of phenomenology." Bruzina pursues the confrontation between Husserl and Heidegger in Fink's thinking in chapter three, "Orientation II: Whose Phenomenology?" According to Fink, Husserl remains "blind to transcendence," yet Heidegger remains blind to "constitution" (132). What emerges from this chapter, however, is the significance of Hegel as Fink recasts the difference between Husserl and Heidegger into a difference between a philosophy of reflection and a philosophy of Being. Against this backdrop, Bruzina signals Fink's proposal to re-think the concept of origin in a speculative register of the "meontic," that is, as "non-being."Before launching directly into Fink's "meontic" recasting of metaphysics, Bruzina presents three thematically defined chapters. In chapter four, "Fundamental Thematics I: The World," Bruzina discusses Fink's sublimation of Husserl's "natural attitude" into the concept of "world-captivation" and his charge that Husserl presupposes the horizon of the world as a whole. Chapter five, "Fundamental Thematics II: Time," examines Fink's writings on time-consciousness. A first set of writings speaks to the task of rendering Husserl's "Bernau Manuscripts" into a publishable form; a second set reflects Fink's intention to complete his own larger work on "Time and Temporalization." Both projects were abandoned, the later manuscript destroyed by Fink himself. Fink emphasizes the "special character of retention-protention intentionality as depresencing (Entgegenwärtigung), providing therein the basic consideration for addressing the question of finiteness in the stream of consciousness" (261). This insight allows Fink to propose a critique of Husserl's "presentialism" and his own thesis that "the Absolute is origin" in both a temporal and non-temporal sense, as the "excess/superabundance (Überschwang) of depresencing," further characterized the Plotinian idea of "emanation" (273). "Life" and "Spirit" are the final set of fundamental themes discussed by Bruzina in chapter six. For Fink, the essence of life is conceived as the "play of being," which he understands with a Nietzschean emphasis on "creation" (333). The "self-realization" of life in its creative self-performance delivers a "meontic" definition of the absolute; subjectivity is displaced (entstellt) in its self-performance such that it remains incomplete, a "metaphysical gap in the cosmos" (341).In chapter seven, we arrive at the "critical-systematic core" of Fink's "meontic" speculations. Here, much of Fink's pronouncements are a heady mixture of Heidegger and Plotinus. Bruzina admits that Fink "freely draws" from the traditions of Neo-Platonism and Gnosticism; yet a quick attempt to distance Fink from his sources remains unconvincing. The "radical difference between the One of ultimate origin and all else" (448) that Bruzina takes as the exceptional focus of Fink's thinking is also of metaphysical concern in... (shrink)

In Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen, contradiction is characterized as sense, that is to say it’s an expression, and not a nonsensical formulation. This fact is shown by Husserl’s characterization of noetic sense, which can be entirely found within the intentional essence of the act: this means that comprehensibility is what is required for a formulation to be noetically sensical, even if it’s somehow morphologically ‘incomplete’ or if it doesn’t admit any possible fulfilment.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 97 supposed by actual idealism is above all moral and involves what Gentile describes as an aspect of divinity or infinity,as well as a concrete, historical aspect. The following chapter treats of the philosophy of "actual" idealism and compares the views of Kant and Gentile on relations between moral conscience and freedom. According to Yalentini, Gentile's idealism is essentially an ethical view. This chapter concludes with noting (...) that Gentile 's solution to the problem of historical knowledge differs profoundly from that of Hegel and Croce. For "reason" is not, for Gentile, a particular interpretation of historical process, but is rather the "reason" of consciousness in activity. In Chapter In, Valentini discusses Gentile's views on art and religion. The section on art concludes with a comparison between Gentile on feeling and Kant on the transcendental unity of apperception. Whereas art is supposed to be one abstract moment of spirit, religion is the other abstract moment. Valentini suggests that Gentile and Feuerbach hold similar religious views on the attributes of divinity, which are nothing other than the loftiest qualities which man feels to possess in his essence. The history of religion is then the history of the progressive humanization of God. Gentile's religion represents a sort of modem Catholicism in that it understands revelation as a fact of conscience, church as a historical institution, dogma as having a negative character and God as a member of the dialogue between God and man. Moreover, Gentile's Catholicism has a national character; it is the religion of the Italian people. Chapter Iv treats of the relations between individual and state. For, according to Gentile, an individual is inconceivableapart from the social relations which lie within him. Here Valentini distinguishes in detail the differences and similarities between the views of Hegel and Gentile on the relations between state and individual. The differences between the views of these two philosophers are due to the differences between their methods. The method of Hegel is empirical and historical, and examines the state (which remains historical) from an external point of view. According to an idealistic method, however, thought is not to be the spectator of a process, but in every instance, an actor, and philosophizing does not result from an analysis of historical reality, but from the negation of this reality in the name of an ideal, which philosophy is to draw from it (reality). The Appendix includes a critical evaluation of the theory of the dialectic. Here Valentini hopes to distinguish between the imaginary and the real or historical applications of the dialectic. He begins his evaluation by asking: Does the doctrine of the dialectic, like the philosophy of idealism, possess negative connotations, which cannot be separated from it? Valentini suggests that in order to answer this question, we must determine the extent to which the dialectical scheme is constitutive of every concept or truth in general. For this is the way in which Hegel intended that the dialectic be understood and evaluated. Some views in Hegel's philosophy of nature are then criticized according to empirical criteria. In conclusion, Valentini attempts to answer both "internal" and "external" criticisms of Marx's view of the dialectic, and shows that there are problems involved in its application, which still have to be resolved. Mv~ M. MILBURN 9 ~an Jos~ ~ate College Husserl und Kant: eine Untersuchung ~ber Husserls Verh~iltni~ zu Kant und zum Neubantianismus. By Iso Kern. (The Hague : Martinus Nijhoff, 1964.Pp. xxiii q- 448.) This is a very important book. In fact, it is indispensable for a study of Husserl and is, at the same time, almost as valuable for a study of Kant, for it deals with the kind of searching questions that must be asked when one deals with transcendental idealism in any one of its forms. But two reasons in particular, make this book significant. One is the fact that Iso Kern was able to make extensive use of hitherto unpublished materials (manuscripts, lecture notes, letters, etc.), available only in the Husserl Archives and here quoted for the first time--and 98 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY quoted in great numbers. The other is Kern's philosophical competence... (shrink)

The concept of habit enfolds an enormous richness and diversity of meanings. According to Husserl, habit, along with association, memory, and so on, belongs to the very essence of the psychic.1 Husserl even speaks of an overall genetic “phenomenology of habitualities”. In this paper, as an initial attempt to explicate the complexity of phenomenological treatments of habit, want to trace Husserl’s conception of habit as it emerged in his mature genetic phenomenology, in order to highlight his enormous (...) and neglected original contribution in this area. I shall show that Husserl was by no means limited to a Cartesian intellectualist explication of habitual action (as commentators such as Bourdieu and Dreyfus have claimed), but attempted to characterize its complexity across the range of human individual, sub-personal, personal, social and collective experience. Habit, as we shall see, for Husserl, is intimately involved in the constitution of meaningfulness (Husserl’s Sinnhaftigkeit) and forms of sense (Sinnesgestalten) at all levels, from the level of perceptual experience, through the formation of the ego, to the development of society, history and tradition, indeed to our whole sense of the harmonious course of worldly life and to the genetic constitution of worldhood as such. Habituality, furthermore, is a key structural principle in the genetic constitution of the transcendental ego itself, as it unfolds as a concrete living and acting person in an intersubjective, cultural and historical world. (shrink)