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[勞思光] [許國宏] [呂健吉] [郭朝順] [黃冠閔] [伍至學] [龔維正] [陳振崑] [冀劍制] |
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黃冠閔之哲學教學網
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Edmund Husserl, THE CRISIS OF EUROPEAN SCIENCES and the transcendental phenomenolgy Translated by David Carr, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1970 [Original in German : Die Krisis der europäschen
Wissenschaft und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, ed. Walter
Biemel, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff] [102] PART I I I The Clarification of the
Transcendental Problem and the Related Function of Psychology)1 1. The appendix to
the German edition contains a manuscript entitled "Foreword to the
Continuation of the Crisis," which begins with the following paragraph : "Herewith
appears, unfortunately very much delayed, the continuation of this work
which was begun in the first volume of Philosophia
with two introductory sections. Insurmountable inhibitions, the
effects of my faltering health, forced me to neglect drafts which were long
since ready. With this there arose a pause which is dangerous for the
understanding of the teleological-historical way attempted here to the
conception of the idea and method of transcendental phenomenology. The
resulting situation has become somewhat similar to that which would arise if the
presentation of a great musical work were to break off with the conclusion of
the overture, and indeed in such a way that the actual work (the opera itself)
to which it points the way, and which it has created a vital readiness to
understand, was then to be performed sometime later without repetition of the
overture" (Krisis, p. 435). The
rest of this "Foreword" (some II pages) reveals that it was destined
for a revision of Part III which was never made. It gives reasons for
postponing the further critique of Kant promised at the end of Part II in favor
of a nonhistorical exposition, presumably that of the life-world; whereas the
extant version of Part III does deal with Kant at the beginning. It is for this
reason that I have not included a full translation of this text. Some
interesting passages are quoted in the Translator's Introduction, pp. xxviii f.
(See also p. xviii, note 5. ) [103] A. THE WAY INTO PHENOMENOLOGICAL TRANSCENDENTAL
PHILOSOPHY BY INQUIRING BACK FROM THE PREGIVEN LIFE-WORLD § 28. Kant's
unexpressed "presupposition": the surrounding world of life, taken for
granted as valid. KANT IS CERTAIN that
his philosophy will bring the dominant rationalism to its downfall by exhibiting
the inadequacy of its foundations. He rightly reproaches rationalism for
neglecting questions which should have been its fundamental questions; that is,
it had never penetrated to the subjective structure of our world-consciousness
prior to and within scientific knowledge and thus had never asked how the
world, which appears straightforwardly to us men, and to us as scientists, comes
to be knowable a priori-how, that is, the exact science of nature is possible,
the science for which, after all, pure mathematics, together with a further
pure a priori, is the instrument of all knowledge which is objective, [i.e.,]
unconditionally valid for everyone who is rational (who thinks logically). But Kant, for his part, has no idea that in his
philosophizing he stands on unquestioned presuppositions and that the undoubtedly
great discoveries in his theories are there only in concealment; that is, they
are not there as finished results, just as the theories themselves are not
finished theories, i.e., do not have a definitive scientific form. What he
offers demands new work and, above all, critical analysis. An example of a great
discovery -- a merely preliminary discovery-is the "understanding" [104] which
has, in respect to nature, two functions1 : understanding
interpreting itself, in explicit self-reflection, as normative laws, and, on the
other hand, understanding ruling in concealment, i.e., ruling as
constitutive of the always already developed and always further developing
meaning-configuration "intuitively given surrounding world." This
discovery could never be actually grounded or even be fully comprehensible in
the manner of the Kantian theory, i.e., as a result of his merely regressive
method. In the "transcendental deduction" of the first edition of the Critique of Pure
Reason Kant makes an approach to a direct grounding, one which
descends to the original sources, only to break off again almost at once without
arriving at the genuine problems of foundation which are to be opened up from
this supposedly psychological side. We shall begin our considerations by showing that
Kant's inquiries in the critique of reason have an unquestioned ground of
presuppositions which codetermine the meaning of his questions. Sciences to
whose truths and methods Kant attributes actual validity become a problem, and
with them the spheres of being [Seinssphären] themselves
to which these sciences refer. They become a problem in virtue of certain
questions which take knowing subjectivity, too, into account, questions which
find their answer in theories about transcendentally forming subjectivity,
about the transcendental achievements of sensibility, of the understanding,
etc., and, on the highest level, theories about functions of the "I"
of "transcendental apperception." What had become an enigma, the
achievement of mathematical natural science and of pure mathematics (in our
broadened sense) as its logical method, was supposed to have been made
comprehensible through these theories; but the theories also led to a
revolutionary reinterpretation of the actual ontic meaning of nature as the
world of possible experience and possible knowledge and thus correlatively to
the reinterpretation of the actual truth-meaning of the sciences concerned. Naturally, from the very start in the Kantian
manner of posing questions, the everyday surrounding world of life is presupposed
as existing-the surrounding world in which all of us (even I who am now
philosophizing) consciously have our existence; here are also the sciences,
as cultural facts in this world, with their scientists and theories. In this
world we are objects among objects in the sense of the life-world, namely, as
being 1.
Reading ". . . ist der hinsichtlich der Natur doppelt fungierende
Verstand. . . ." [105] here
and there, in the plain certainty of experience, before anything that is
established scientifically, whether in physiology, psychology, or sociology. On
the other hand, we are subjects for this world, namely, as the ego-subjects
experiencing it, contemplating it, valuing it, related to it purposefully;
for us this surrounding world has only the ontic meaning given to it by our
experiencings, our thoughts, our valuations, etc.; and it has the modes of
validity (certainty of being, possibility, perhaps illusion, etc.) which
we, as the subjects of validity, at the same time bring about or else possess
from earlier on as habitual acquisitions and bear within us as validities
of such and such a content which we can reactualize at will. To be sure, all
this undergoes manifold alterations, whereas "the" world, as existing
in a unified way, persists throughout, being corrected only in its content. Clearly the content-alteration of the perceived
object, being change or motion perceived as belonging to the object itself, is
distinguished with self-evidence from the alteration of its manners of appearing
(e.g., the perspectives, the near and far appearances) through which something
objective of this type exhibits itself as being itself present. We see this
in the change of [our] attitude. [If we are] directed straightforwardly toward
the object and what belongs to it, [our] gaze passes through the appearances
toward what continuously appears through their continuous unification: the
object, with the ontic validity of the mode "itself present." In the
reflective attitude, [by contrast,] we have not a one but a manifold. Now the
sequence of the appearances themselves is thematic, rather than what
appears in them. Perception is the primal mode of intuition [Anschauung]; it
exhibits with primial originality, that is, in the mode of self-presence.
In addition, there are other modes of intuition which in themselves consciously
have the character of [giving us] modifications of this "itself
there" as themselves present. These are presentifications, modifications of
presentations2;
they make us conscious of the modalities of time, e.g., not that which is-itselfthere
but that which was-itself-there or that which is in the future, that
which will-be-itself-there. Presentifying intuitions
"recapitulate" -- in certain modifications belonging to them -- all
the manifolds of appearance through which what is objective exhibits itself
perceptively. Recollecting intuition, for example, 2.
Vergegenwärtigungen, i.e., modifications of Gegenwärtigungen.
The
former are explicit acts of rendering consciously present that which is not
"itself present," as in the case of recollection or imagination. [106] shows
the object as having-been-itself-there, recapitulating the perspectivization and
other manners of appearing, though in recollective modifications. I am now
conscious of this perspectivization as one which has been, a sequence of
subjective "exhibitions of," having-been in my earlier ontic
validities. Here
we can now clarify the very limited justification for speaking of a sense-world,
a world of sense-intuition, a sensible world of appearances. In all the
verifications of the life of our natural interests, which remain purely in the
life-world, the return to "sensibly" experiencing intuition plays a
prominent role. For everything that exhibits itself in the life-world as a
concrete thing obviously has a bodily character, even if it is not a mere body,
as, for example, an animal or a cultural object, i.e., even if it also has
psychic or otherwise spiritual properties. If we pay attention now purely to the
bodily aspect of the things, this obviously exhibits itself perceptively only in
seeing, in touching, in hearing, etc., i.e., in visual, tactual, acoustical, and
other such aspects. Obviously and inevitably participating in this is our living
body, which is never absent from the perceptual field, and specifically its
corresponding "organs of perception" (eyes, hands, ears, etc.). In
consciousness they play a constant role here; specifically they function in
seeing, hearing, etc., together with the ego's motility belonging to them, i.e.,
what is called kinesthesis. All kinestheses, each being an "I
move," "I do," [etc.] are bound together in a comprehensive unity
-- in which kinesthetic holding-still is [also] a mode of the "I do."
Clearly the aspect-exhibitions of whatever body is appearing in perception,
and the kinestheses, are not processes [simply running] alongside each other;
rather, they work together in such a way that the aspects have the ontic meaning
of, or the validity of, aspects of the body only through the fact that they are
those aspects continually required by the kinestheses -- by the
kinesthetic-sensual total situation in each of its working variations of
the total kinesthesis by setting in motion this or that particular kinesthesis
-- and that they correspondingly fulfill the requirement. Thus
sensibility, the ego's active functioning of the living body or the bodily
organs, belongs in a fundamental, essential way to all experience of bodies. It
proceeds in consciousness not as a mere series of body-appearances, as if these
in themselves, through themselves alone and their coalescences, were appearance
of bodies; rather, they are such in consciousness only in combination with the
kinesthetically functioning living body [Leiblichkeit],
the ego functioning here in a peculiar sort of 107 activity
and habituality. In a quite unique way the living body is constantly in the
perceptual field quite immediately, with a completely unique ontic meaning,
precisely the meaning indicated by the word "organ" (here used in its
most primitive sense), [namely, as] that through which I exist in a completely
unique way and quite immediately as the ego of affection and actions, [as that]
in which I hold sway 3 quite immediately,
kinesthetically -- articulated into particular organs through which I hold
sway, or potentially hold sway, in particular kinestheses corresponding to
them. And this "holding-sway," here exhibited as functioning in all
perception of bodies -- the familiar, total system of kinestheses available
to consciousness -- is actualized in the particular kinesthetic situation [and]
is perpetually bound to a [general] situation in which bodies appear, i.e., that
of the field of perception. To the variety of appearances through which a body
is perceivable as this one-and-the-same body correspond, in their own way, the
kinestheses which belong to this body; as these kinestheses are allowed to run
their course, the corresponding required appearances must show up in order
to be appearances of this body at all, i.e., in order to be appearances which
exhibit in themselves this body with its properties. Thus,
purely in terms of perception, physical body and living body [Körper
and Leib] 4 are essentially
different; living body, that is, [understood] as the only one which is actually
given [to me as such] in perception: my own living body. How the consciousness
originates through which my living body nevertheless acquires the ontic validity
of one physical body among others, and how, on the other hand, certain physical
bodies in my perceptual field come to count as living bodies, living bodies of
"alien" ego-subjects-these are now necessary questions. In
our reflections we confined ourselves to the perceiving consciousness of things,
to one's own perceiving of them, to my perceptual field. Here my own living body
alone, and never an alien living body, can be perceived as living; the latter is
perceived 3.
walten. "Holding
sway" is somewhat awkward in English, but it seems to best approximate
Husserl's use of this archaic term. The latter is often used in religious
language (Gottes Walten) to signify God's rule and power over the world and his
intervention in its affairs. The English "wield" is related to it but
is transitive. Husserl uses the term primarily in connection with the living
body (unlike Heidegger, who resurrected it for a different purpose), meaning
one's "wielding" of the body and its organs so as to have some control
of one's surroundings. 4.
See § g, note 15. [108] only
as a physical body. In my perceptual field I find myself holding sway as ego
through my organs and generally through everything belonging to me as an ego in
my ego-acts and faculties. However, though the objects of the life-world, if
they are to show their very own being, necessarily show themselves as physical
bodies, this does not mean that they show themselves only in this way; and
[similarly] we, though we are related through the living body to all objects
which exist for us, are not related to them solely as a living body. Thus if it
is a question of objects in the perceptual field, we are perceptually also in
the field5 ; and the same is true, in modification, of every
intuitive field, and even of every nonintuitive one, since we are obviously
capable of "representing" to ourselves everything which is nonintuitively
before us (though we are sometimes temporally limited in this). [Being related]
"through the living body" clearly does not mean merely [being related]
"as a physical body"; rather, the expression refers to the
kinesthetic, to functioning as an ego in this peculiar way, primarily through
seeing, hearing, etc.; and of course other modes of the ego belong to this (for
example, lifting, carrying, pushing, and the like). But being an ego through the
living body [die leibliche Ichlichkeit] is of
course not the only way of being an ego, and none of its ways can be severed
from the others; throughout all their transformations they form a unity. Thus we
are concretely in the field of perception, etc., and in the field of
consciousness, however broadly we may conceive this, through our living
body, but not only in this way, as full ego-subjects, each of us as the
full-fledged "I-the-man." Thus in whatever way we may be conscious
of the world as universal horizon, as coherent universe of existing objects, we,
each "I-the-man" and all of us together, belong to the world as living
with one another in the world; and the world is our world, valid for our
consciousness as existing precisely through this "living together."
We, as living in wakeful world-consciousness, are constantly active on the basis
of our passive having of the world; it is from there, by objects pregiven in
consciousness, that we are affected; it is to this or that object that we pay
attention, according to our interests; with them we deal actively in different
ways; through our acts they are "thematic" objects. As an example
I give the observant explication of the properties of something which appears
perceptively, or our activity of combining, relating, actively identifying and
distinguishing, 5.
I.e.,
as a physical body (Körper). [109] or our active evaluation, our projection of
plans, our active realization of the planned means and ends. As
subjects of acts (ego-subjects) we are directed toward thematic objects in modes
of primary and secondary, and perhaps also peripheral, directedness. In
this preoccupation with the objects the acts themselves are not thematic. But we
are capable of coming back and reflecting on ourselves and our current activity:
it now becomes thematic and objective through a new act, the vitally functioning
one, which itself is now unthematic. The consciousness of the world, then, is in
constant motion; we are conscious of the world always in terms of some objectcontent
or other, in the alteration of the different ways of being conscious (intuitive,
nonintuitive, determined, undetermined, etc.) and also in the alteration of
affection and action, in such a way that there is always a total sphere of
affection and such that the affecting objects are now thematic, now unthematic;
here we also find ourselves, we who always and inevitably belong to the
affective sphere, always functioning as subjects of acts but only occasionally
being thematically objective as the object of preoccupation with ourselves. Obviously
this is true not only for me, the individual ego; rather we, in living together,
have the world pregiven in this "together," as the world valid as
existing for us and to which we, together, belong, the world as world for all,
pregiven with this ontic meaning. Constantly functioning in wakeful life, we
also function together, in the manifold ways of considering, together, objects
pregiven to us in common, thinking together, valuing, planning, acting together.
Here we find also that particular thematic alteration in which the
we-subjectivity, somehow constantly functioning, becomes a thematic object,
whereby the acts through which it functions also become thematic, though always
with a residuum which remains unthematic-remains, so to speak, anonymous-namely,
the reflections which are functioning in connection with this theme.* * Naturally all activity,
and thus also this reflecting activity, gives rise to its habitual acquisitions.
In observing, we attain habitual knowledge, acquaintance with the object which
exists for us in terms of its previously unknown characteristics-and the same is
true of self-knowledge through self-observation. In the evaluation of ourselves
and the plans and actions related to ourselves and our fellows, we likewise
attain self-values and ends concerning ourselves [which become] our habitually
persisting validities. But all knowledge in general, all value-validities and
ends in general, are, as having been [110] acquired through our activity, at the
same time persisting properties of ourselves as ego-subjects, as persons, and
can be found in the reflective attitude as making up our own being. [110]
Considering ourselves in particular as the
scientists that we here factually find ourselves to be, what corresponds to our
particular manner of being as scientists is our present function ing in the
manner of scientific thinking, putting questions and answering them
theoretically in relation to nature or the world of the spirit; and [the latter
are] at first nothing other than the one or the other aspect of the life-world
which, in advance, is already valid, which we experience or are otherwise
conscious of either prescientifically or scientifically. Cofunctioning here are
the other scientists who, united with us in a community of theory, acquire and
have the same truths or, in the communalization of accomplishing acts, are
united with us in a critical transaction aimed at critical agreement. On the
other hand, we can be for others, and they for us, mere objects; rather than
being together in the unity of immediate, driving, common theoretical
interest, we can get to know one another observingly, taking note of others'
acts of thought, acts of experiencing, and possibly other acts as objective
facts, but "disinterestedly," without joining in performing these
acts, without critically assenting to them or taking exception to them. Naturally,
all these things are the most obvious of the obvious. Must one speak about
them, and with so much ado? In life certainly not. But not as a philosopher
either? Is this not the opening-up of a realm, indeed an infinite realm, of
always ready and available but never questioned ontic validities? Are they not constant
presuppositions of scientific and, at the highest level,
philosophical thinking? Not, however, that it would or could ever be a matter of
utilizing these ontic validities in their objective truth. It belongs to what is taken for granted, prior to
all scientific thought and all philosophical questioning, that the world is-always
is in advance-and that every correction of an opinion, whether an experiential
or other opinion, presupposes the already existing world, namely, as a
horizon of what in the given case is indubitably valid as existing, and
presupposes within this horizon something familiar and doubtlessly certain with
which that which is perhaps canceled out as invalid came into conflict.
Objective science, too, asks questions only on the ground of this world's
existing in advance through prescientific life. Like all praxis, objective
science presupposes the being of this world, but [111] it
sets itself the task of transposing knowledge which is imperfect and
prescientific in respect of scope and constancy into perfect knowledge-in accord
with an idea of a correlative which is, to be sure, infinitely distant, i.e., of
a world which in itself is fixed and determined and of truths which are idealiter scientific
("truths-in-themselves") and which predicatively interpret this
world. To realize this in a systematic process, in stages of perfection, through
a method which makes possible a constant advance: this is the task. For
the human being in his surrounding world there are many types of praxis, and
among them is this peculiar and historically late one, theoretical praxis. It
has its own profes sional methods; it is the art of theories, of discovering and
securing truths with a certain new ideal sense which is foreign to prescientific
life, the sense of a certain "final validity," "universal
validity." Here we have again offered an
example of exhibiting what is "obvious," but this time in order to
make clear that in respect to all these manifold validities-in-advance, i.e.,
"presuppositions" of the philosopher, there arise questions of being
in a new and immediately highly enigmatic dimension. These questions, too,
concern the obviously existing, ever intuitively pregiven world; but they are
not questions belonging to that professional praxis and tšcnh
(techne)
which is called objective science, not questions belonging to that art of
grounding and broadening the realm of objectively scientific truths about this
surrounding world; rather, they are questions of how the object, the
prescientifically and then the scientifically true object, stands in relation to
all the subjective elements which everywhere have a voice in what is taken for
granted in advance. § 29.
The life-world can be disclosed as a realm of subjective phenomena which
have remained "anonymous." WHEN
WE PROCEED, philosophizing with Kant, not by starting from his
beginning and moving forward in his paths but by inquiring back into what was
thus taken for granted (that of which Kantian thinking, like everyone's
thinking, makes use as [112] unquestioned
and available), when we become conscious of it as "presuppositions"
and accord these their own universal and theoretical interest, there opens
up to us, to our growing astonishment, an infinity of ever new phenomena
belonging to a new dimension, coming to light only through consistent
penetration into the meaning- and validity-implications of what was thus taken
for granted -- an infinity, because continued penetration shows that every
phenomenon attained through this unfolding of meaning, given at first in the
life-world as obviously existing, itself contains meaning- and
validity-implications whose exposition leads again to new phenomena, and so
on. These are purely subjective phenomena throughout, but not merely facts
involving psychological processes of sense-data; rather, they are mental
[geistige]
processes which, as such, exercise with essential
necessity the function of constituting forms of meaning [Sinnesgestalten].
But they constitute them in each case out of mental
"material" which [itself] proves in turn, with essential necessity, to
be mental form, i.e., to be constituted; just as any newly developed form [of
meaning] is destined to become material, namely, to function in the
constitution of [some new] form. No
objective science, no psychology -- which, after all, sought to become the
universal science of the subjective -- and no philosophy has ever made thematic
and thereby actually discovered this realm of the subjective-not even the
Kantian philosophy, which sought, after all, to go back to the subjective
conditions of the possibility of an objectively experienceable and knowable
world. It is a realm of something subjective which is completely closed off
within itself, existing in its own way, functioning in all experiencing,
all thinking, all life, thus everywhere inseparably involved; yet it has never
been held in view, never been grasped and understood. Does
philosophy fulfill the sense of its primal establishment as the universal and
ultimately grounding science if it leaves this realm to its
"anonymity"? Can it do this, can any science do this which seeks to be
a branch of philosophy, i.e., which would tolerate no presuppositions, no basic
sphere of beings beneath itself of which no one knows, which no one interrogates
scientifically, which no one has mastered in a knowing way? I called the
sciences in general branches of philosophy, whereas it is such a common
conviction that the objective, the positive, sciences stand on their own, are
self-sufficient in virtue of their supposedly fully grounding and thus
exemplary method. But in the end is not the teleological unifying meaning
running through all [113] attempted
systems in the whole history of philosophy that of achieving a breakthrough for
the insight that science is only possible at all as universal philosophy, the
latter being, in all the sciences, yet a single science, possible only as the
totality of all knowledge? And did this not imply that they all repose upon one
single ground [Grund],
one to be investigated scientifically in advance of all
the others? And can this ground be, I may add, any other than precisely that of
the anonymous subjectivity we mentioned? But one could and can realize this only
when one finally and quite seriously inquires into that which is taken
for granted, which is presupposed by all thinking, all
activity of life with all its ends and accomplishments, and when one, by consistently
interrogating the ontic and validity-meaning of these ends and accomplishments,
becomes aware of the inviolable unity of the complex of meaning and validity
running through all mental accomplishments. This applies first of all to all the
mental accomplishments which we human beings carry out in the world, as
individual, personal, or cultural accomplishments. Before all such
accomplishments there has always already been a universal accomplishment,
presupposed by all human praxis and all prescientific and scientific life. The
latter have the spiritual acquisitions of this universal accomplishment as
their constant substratum, and all their own acquisitions are destined to
flow into it. We shall come to understand that the world which constantly exists
for us through the flowing alteration of manners of givenness is a
universal mental acquisition, having developed as such and at the same time
continuing to develop as the unity of a mental configuration, as a
meaning-construct [Sinngebilde]--
as the construct of a universal, ultimately functioning 1
subjectivity. It belongs essentially to this worldconstituting
accomplishment that subjectivity objectifies itself as human subjectivity, as an
element of the world. All objective consideration of the world is consideration
of the "exterior" and grasps only "externals," objective
entities [Objektivitäten].
The radical consideration of the world is the
systematic and purely internal consideration of the subjectivity which
"expresses" [or "externalizes"]2
itself in the exterior. It is like the unity
of a living organism, which one can certainly consider and dissect from the
outside but which one can understand only if one goes back to its hidden roots
and systematically pursues the life 1.
letztfungierende, i.e., functioning at the ultimate or deepest level. 2. der sich selbst im Aussen "äussernden"
Subjektivität. [114]
which, in all its accomplishments, is in them and
strives upward from them, shaping from within. But is this not simply a metaphor?
Is it not in the end our human being, and the life of consciousness belonging to
it, with its most profound world-problematics, which is the place where all
problems of living inner being and external exhibition are to be decided? § 30. The
lack of an intuitive exhibiting method as the reason for Kant's mythical
constructions. THERE IS SOME COMPLAINT about
the obscurities of the Kantian philosophy, about the incomprehensibility of the
evidences of his regressive method, his transcendental-subjective
"faculties," "functions," "formations," about the
difficulty of understanding what transcendental subjectivity actually is,
how its function, its accomplishment, comes about, how this is to make all
objective science understandable. And in fact Kant does get involved in his own
sort of mythical talk, whose literal meaning points to something subjective, but
a mode of the subjective which we are in principle unable to make intuitive to
ourselves, whether through factual examples or through genuine analogy. If we
try to do it with the intuitively negotiable meaning to which the words refer,
we find ourselves in the psychological sphere of the human person, the soul. But
then we remember the Kantian doctrine of inner sense, according to which
everything that can be exhibited in the self-evidence of inner experience has
already been formed by a transcendental function, that of temporalization [Zeitigung].
But how are we supposed to arrive at a clear meaning
for concepts of something transcendentally subjective, out of which the
scientifically true world constitutes itself as objective
"appearance," if we cannot give to "inner perception" some
meaning other than the psychological one -- if it is not a truly apodictic
meaning which ultimately furnishes the experiential ground (a ground like that
of the Cartesian ego cogito),
[available
to us] through a type of experience which is not Kantian scientific experience
and does not have the certainty of objective being in the sense of science, as
in physics, but is a truly apodictic certainty, that of a universal ground which
finally can be exhibited as the apodictically necessary and ultimate [115] ground
of all scientific objectivity and makes the latter understandable? This is
where the source of all ultimate concepts of knowledge must lie; here is
the source of essential, general insights through which any objective world can
become scientifically understandable and through which an absolutely
self-supporting philosophy can achieve systematic development. Perhaps a deeper critique could show that Kant,
though he attacks empiricism, still remains dependent upon this very empiricism
in his conception of the soul and the range of tasks of a psychology, that what
counts for him as the soul is the soul which is made part of nature and
conceived of as a component of the psychophysical human being within the time of
nature, within space-time. Hence the transcendentally subjective could certainly
not be [identical with] the psychic. But is truly apodictic inner
perception (self-perception reduced to the truly apodictic) to be identified
with the self-perception of this naturalized soul, with its [supposed]
self-evidence of the "writing tablet" and its data and even of its
faculties as the powers ascribed to it in the manner of natural powers? Because
he understands inner perception in this empiricist, psychological sense and
because, warned by Hume's skepticism, he fears every recourse to the
psychological as an absurd perversion of the genuine problem of the
understanding, Kant gets involved in his mythical concept-formation. He
forbids his readers to transpose the results of his regressive procedure into
intuitive concepts, forbids every attempt to carry out a progressive
construction which begins with original and purely self-evident intuitions and
proceeds through truly self-evident individual steps. His transcendental
concepts are thus unclear in a quite peculiar way, such that for reasons of
principle they can never be transposed into clarity, can never be transformed
into a formation of meaning which is direct and procures self-evidence. The
clarity of all [these] concepts and problems posed would have been quite
different if Kant, instead of being a child of his time, completely bound by its
naturalistic psychology (as pat terned after natural science and as its
parallel), had tackled in a truly radical way the problem of a priori knowledge
and its methodical function in rational objective knowledge. This would have
required a fundamentally and essentially different regressive method from
that of Kant, which rests on those unquestioned assumptions: not a
mythically, constructively inferring [schliessende] method,
but a thoroughly intuitively disclosing [erschliessende]
method, intuitive in its point of departure and in [116] everything it discloses -- even though the concept of intuitiveness may have to undergo a considerable expansion in comparison to the Kantian one, and indeed even though intuition, here, may lose its usual sense altogether through a new attitude, taking on only the general sense of original self-exhibition, but precisely only within the new sphere of being. Thus one must quite systematically
inquire back into those things taken for granted which, not only for Kant but
for all philosophers, all scientists, make up an unspoken ground [Grund]
of their cognitive accomplishments, hidden in
respect to its deeper mediating functions. Further, there must be a systematic
disclosure of the intentionality which vitally holds sway and is sedimented in
this ground -- in other words, there must be a genuine, i.e., an
"intentional analysis" of mental being in its absolute ultimate
peculiarity and of that which has come to be in and through the mind, an
analysis which does not permit the reigning psychology to substitute for it a
realistic [reale] analysis
of a naturalistically conceived soul, [which would be] alien to the essence of
the mental. §
31. Kant and the
inadequacy of the psychology of his day. The opaqueness of the distinction
between transcendental subjectivity and soul. IN ORDER TO MAKE palpably
understandable what is concretely meant here and in this way to illuminate the
situation which was peculiarly opaque to that whole historical epoch, we *
Yet this [fault] does not lie in [a psychological] beginning. [In fact,] the
first thing Kant [should have done, if he] had taken the everyday world as the
world of human consciousness, was to pass through psychology-but a psychology
which allowed the subjective experiences of world-consciousness actually to come
to expression as they showed themselves experientially. This would have been possible
if Descartes's seminal hints about cogitata qua cogitata had been brought to
germination as intentional psychology instead of being overlooked by the
dominant Lockean philosophy. [This note derives from a stenographic marginal
comment, and Biemel's version of the first two sentences makes little sense. I
have given what I hope is an understandable interpretation.-TRANS.] [117] shall initiate a reflection which admittedly
belongs to a very late fulfillment of the sense of the historical process. The pregiven point of departure for all the
enigmas of knowledge was that of the development of a modern philosophy in
accord with its own peculiar rationalistic ideal of science (systematically
expanding itself into its special sciences). This thrust in the development of
sometimes clearly successful, sometimes hopefully attempted special
sciences was suddenly checked. In the construction of one of these sciences,
psychology, enigmas emerged which put all of philosophy in question. Naturally, the psychology of Locke -- with the
natural science of a Newton before it as a model -- found particularly
interesting subjects for study in the merely subjective aspects of the
appearances (which had been maligned since Galileo) and likewise generally
in everything coming from the subjective side that interfered with rationality:
the lack of clarity in concepts, the vagueness of judgmental thinking, the
faculties of the understanding and of reason in all their forms. It was, of
course, a matter of the human being's faculties for psychic accomplishments --
precisely those accomplishments which were supposed to procure genuine science
and with it a genuine practical life of reason. Thus, questions of the essence
and the objective validity of purely rational knowledge, of logical and
mathematical knowledge, and the peculiar nature of natural-scientific and metaphysical
knowledge belong in this sphere. Looked at in this general way, was this not
actually required? Without doubt it was right and a good thing that Locke
understood the sciences as psychic accomplishments (though he also directed his
gaze too much at what occurs in the individual soul) and everywhere posed
questions of origin. After all, accomplishments can be understood only in terms
of the activity that accomplishes them. To be sure, in Locke this was done with
a superficiality, an unmethodical confusion, and indeed even a naturalism that
resulted precisely in Humean fictionalism. Thus, obviously, Kant could not simply go back
and take up the psychology of Locke. But was it for this reason correct to drop
the general idea of the Lockean -- the psychological-epistemological --
approach? Was not every question inspired by Hume first and quite correctly to
be taken as a psychological question? If rational science becomes a problem, if
the claim of the purely a priori sciences to have unconditional objective validity,
and thus to be the possible and necessary method for rational [118] sciences of fact, becomes a problem, it should first be
taken into consideration (as we emphasized above) that science in general is a
human accomplishment, an accomplishment of human beings who find themselves in
the world, the world of general experience, [and that it is] one among other
types of practical accomplishments which is aimed at spiritual structures of a
certain sort called theoretical. Like all praxis, this one is related, in a
sense which is its own and of which the practitioner of it is conscious, to the
pregiven world of experience and at the same time takes its ordered place within
this world. Thus enigmas about how a spiritual accomplishment comes to pass
can be clarified, one will say, only through psychological demonstrations,
and they remain thus within the pregiven world. If Kant, on the other hand, in
the questions he posed and in his regressive method, also naturally makes
use of the pregiven world but at the same time constructs a transcendental
subjectivity through whose concealed transcendental functions, with unswerving
necessity, the world of experience is formed, he runs into the difficulty that a
particular quality of the human soul (which itself belongs to the world and is
thus presupposed with it) is supposed to accomplish and to have already
accomplished a formative process which shapes this whole world. But as soon as
we distinguish this transcendental subjectivity from the soul, we get involved
in something incomprehensibly mythical. §
32. The
possibility of a hidden truth in Kant's transcendental philosophy: the problem
of a "new dimension." The antagonism between the "life of the
plane" and the "life of depth." WERE THE BANTIAN THEORY nevertheless
to contain some truth, a truth to be made actually accessible to insight --
which is indeed the case -- it would be possible only through the fact that
the transcendental functions which are supposed to explain the above-mentioned
enigmas concerning objectively valid knowledge belong to a dimension of the
living spirit that had to remain hidden, because of very natural inhibitions,
from humanity and even from the scientists of the ages -- whereas this [119] dimension
can be made accessible to scientific understanding, through a method of
disclosure appropriate to it, as a realm of experiential and theoretical
self-evidence. The fact that this dimension remained hidden through the
ages, the fact that, even after it made itself felt, it never aroused a habitual
and consistent theoretical interest, can (and will) be explained by displaying
a peculiar antagonism between the entry into this dimension and the
preoccupations involved in all the interests which make up the naturally normal
human world-life. Since this is to be a matter of
spiritual functions which exercise their accomplishments in all experiencing and
thinking, indeed in each and every preoccupation of the human world-life,
functions through which the world of experience, as the constant horizon of
existing things, values, practical plans, works, etc., has meaning and validity
for us, it would certainly be understandable that all objective sciences would
lack precisely the knowledge of what is most fundamental, namely, the knowledge
of what could procure meaning and validity for the theoretical constructs
of objective knowledge and [which] thus first gives them the dignity of a
knowledge which is ultimately grounded. This
schema for a possible clarification of the problem of objective science reminds
us of Helmholtz' well-known image of the plane-beings, who have no idea of the
dimension of depth, in which their plane-world is a mere projection. Everything
of which men- - the scientists and all the others -- can become conscious
in their natural world-life (experiencing, knowing, practically planning,
acting) as a field of external objects -- as ends, means, processes of action,
and final results related to these objects -- and on the other hand, also, in
self-reflection, as the spiritual life which functions thereby -- all this
remains on the "plane," which is, though unnoticed, nevertheless only
a plane within an infinitely richer dimension of depth. But this [image] is
universally valid whether it concerns a life which is merely practical in the
usual sense or a theoretical life, [i.e.,] scientific experiencing, thinking,
planning, acting, or scientific experiential data, ideas, goals of
thinking, premises, true results. This
explanatory schema, of course, leaves several pressing questions open. How could
the development of the positive sciences purely upon the "plane"
appear for so long in the form of a superabundant success? Why was it so late
before, in the need for complete transparency in its methodical accomplishments,
the difficulties, indeed incomprehensibilities, announced themselves, [120
] such
that not even the most painstaking construction of logical technique could
improve the situation? Why did the later attempts at an "intuitionistic"
deepening, which in fact touched upon the higher dimension, and all efforts to
clarify the situation in this way not lead to unanimously accepted, truly
compelling scientific results? It is not the case that this is a matter of
merely turning our gaze toward a sphere which up to now has simply not been
noticed but which is accessible without further effort to theoretical experience
and experiential knowledge. Everything experienceable in this way is the object
and domain of possible positive knowledge; it lies on the "plane," in
the world of actual and possible experience, experience in the natural sense of
the word. We shall soon understand what extraordinary difficulties -- grounded
in the essence of the matters involved -- greeted the methodical efforts
actually to approach the depth-sphere, to approach first of all the
possibility of its pure grasp of itself in the manner of experiencing proper to
it; and it will become clear thereby how great the antagonism is between the
"patent" life of the plane and the "latent" life of depth.
Of course the power of historical prejudices also plays a constant role here,
especially of those which, coming from the origin of the modern positive
sciences, dominate us all. It is of the very essence of such prejudices, drilled
into the souls even of children, that they are concealed in their immediate
effects. The abstract general will to be without prejudice changes nothing about
them. Nevertheless,
these are the slightest difficulties compared to those which have their ground
in the essence of the new dimension and its relation to the old familiar
field of life. Nowhere else is the distance so great from unclearly arising
needs to goaldetermined plans, from vague questionings to first working
problems -- through which actual working science first begins. Nowhere else is
it so frequent that the explorer is met by logical ghosts emerging out of the
dark, formed in the old familiar and effective conceptual patterns, as
paradoxical antinomies, logical absurdities. Thus nowhere is the temptation so
great to slide into logical aporetics and disputation, priding oneself on one's
scientific discipline, while the actual substratum of the work, the
phenomena themselves, is forever lost from view. All
this will be confirmed as I now leave the reference to Kant behind and
attempt to show, to those willing to understand, one of the paths I have
actually taken; as a path actually taken, it offers itself as one that can at
any time be taken again. Indeed, it is a path which at every step allows just
this self-evidence to be [121] renewed and tested as apodictic, i.e., the
self-evidence of a path capable of being taken repeatedly at will and capable of
being followed further at will in repeatedly verifiable experiences and
cognitions. § 33.
The problem of the "life-world" as a partial problem within the
general problem of objective science. BRIEFLY REMINDING OURSELVES of
our earlier discussions, let us recall the fact we have emphasized, namely,
that science is a human spiritual accomplishment which presupposes as its point
of departure, both historically and for each new student, the intuitive
surrounding world of life, pregiven as existing for all in common. Furthermore,
it is an accomplishment which, in being practiced and carried forward,
continues to presuppose this surrounding world as it is given in its particularity
to the scientist. For example, for the physicist it is the world in which he
sees his measuring instruments, hears timebeats, estimates visible
magnitudes, etc.-the world in which, furthermore, he knows himself to be
included with all his activity and all his theoretical ideas. When
science poses and answers questions, these are from the start, and hence from
then on, questions resting upon the ground of, and addressed to, the elements of
this pregiven world in which science and every other life-praxis is engaged. In
this life-praxis, knowledge, as prescientific knowledge, plays a constant
role, together with its goals, which are in general satisfactorily achieved
in the sense which is intended and in each case usually in order to make
practical life possible. But a new civilization (philosophical, scientific
civilization), rising up in Greece, saw fit to recast the idea of
"knowledge" and "truth" in natural existence and to ascribe
to the newly formed idea of "objective truth" a higher dignity, that
of a norm for all knowledge. In relation to this, finally, arises the idea
of a universal science encompassing all possible knowledge in its infinity, the
bold guiding idea of the modern period. If we have made this clear to ourselves,
then obviously an explicit elucidation of the objective validity and of the
whole task of science requires that [122] we
first inquire back into the pregiven world. It is pregiven to us all quite
naturally, as persons within the horizon of our fellow men, i.e., in every
actual connection with others, as "the" world common to us all. Thus
it is, as we have explained in detail, the constant ground of validity, an ever
available source of what is taken for granted, to which we, whether as practical
men or as scientists, lay claim as a matter of course. Now if this pregiven world is to become a subject
of investigation in its own right, so that we can arrive, of course, at
scientifically defensible assertions, this requires special care in preparatory
reflections. It is not easy to achieve clarity about what kind of peculiar
scientific and hence universal tasks are to be posed under the title
"life-world" and about whether something philosophically
significant will arise here. Even the first attempt to understand the peculiar
ontic sense of the life-world, which can be taken now as a narrower, now as a
broader one, causes difficulties. The manner in which we here come
to the life-world as a subject for scientific investigation makes this subject
appear an ancillary and partial one within the full subject of objective science
in general. The latter has become generally, that is, in all its particular
forms (the particular positive sciences), incomprehensible as regards the
possibility of its objective accomplishment. If science becomes a problem
in this way, then we must withdraw from the operation of it and take up a
standpoint above it, surveying in generality its theories and results in the
systematic context of predicative thoughts and statements, and on the other side
we must also survey the life of acts practiced by working scientists, working
with one another -- their setting of goals, their termination in a given goal,
and the terminating self-evidence. And what also comes under consideration here
is precisely the scientists' repeated recourse, in different general manners, to
the life-world with its ever available intuited data; to this we can immediately
add the scientists' statements, in each case simply adapted to this world,
statements made purely descriptively in the same prescientific manner of
judging which is proper to the "occasional" 1 statements of
practical, everyday life. Thus the problem of the life-world, or rather of the
manner in which it functions and must function for scientists, is only a 1. okkasionelle. A term
from the second of the Logische Untersuchungen,
§
26 (1913 ed., Vol. II, p. 81)
: an expression is "essentially
subjective and occasional" if its actual meaning depends "on the
occasion [Gelegenheit], the person
speaking, and his situation." [123] partial subject within the above-designated whole
of objective science (namely, in the service of its full grounding). It is clear, however, that prior
to the general question of its function for a self-evident grounding of the
objective sciences there is good reason to ask about the life-world's own and
constant ontic meaning for the human beings who live in it. These human beings
do not always have scientific interests, and even scientists are not always
involved in scientific work; also, as history teaches us, there was not always
in the world a civilization that lived habitually with long-established
scientific interests. The life-world was always there for mankind before science,
then, just as it continues its manner of being in the epoch of science. Thus one
can put forward by itself the problem of the manner of being of the life-world;
one can place oneself completely upon the ground of this straightforwardly
intuited world, putting out of play all objective-scientific opinions and cognitions,
in order to consider generally what kind of "scientific" tasks, i.e.,
tasks to be resolved with universal validity, arise in respect to this world's
own manner of being. Might this not yield a vast theme for study? Is it not the
case that, in the end, through what first appears as a special subject in the
theory of science, that "third dimension" is opening up, immediately
destined in advance to engulf the whole subject matter of objective science
(as well as all other subject matters on the "plane")? At first this
must appear peculiar and unbelievable. Many paradoxes will arise; yet they
will be resolved. What imposes itself here and must be considered before
everything else is the correct comprehension of the essence of the life-world
and the method of a "scientific" treatment appropriate to it, from
which "objective" scientific treatment, however, is excluded. § 34. Exposition
of the problem of a science of the life-world. a.
The difference between objective science and science in general. Is
not the life-world as such what we know best, what is always taken for granted
in all human life, always familiar to us 124
in
its typology through experience? Are not all its horizons of the unknown simply
horizons of what is just incompletely known, i.e., known in advance in respect
of its most general typology? For prescientific life, of course, this type of
acquaintance suffices, as does its manner of converting the unknown into
the known, gaining "occasional" knowledge on the basis of experience
(verifying itself internally and thereby excluding illusion) and induction. This
suffices for everyday praxis. If, now, something more can be and is to be
accomplished, if a "scientific" knowledge is supposed to come about,
what can be meant other than what objective science has in view and does anyway?
Is scientific knowledge as such not "objective" knowledge, aimed at a
knowledge substratum which is valid for everyone with unconditioned
generality? And yet, paradoxically, we uphold our assertion and require
that one not let the handed-down concept of objective science be substituted,
because of the century-old tradition in which we have all been raised, for
the concept of science in general. The' title "life-world"
makes possible and demands perhaps various different, though essentially
interrelated, scientific undertakings; and perhaps it is part of genuine
and full scientific discipline that we must treat these all together, though
following their essential order of founding, rather than treating, say, just the
one, the objective-logical one (this particular accomplishment within the
life-world) by itself, leaving the others completely out of scientific
consideration. There has never been a scientific inquiry into the way in which
the life-world constantly functions as subsoil, into how its manifold prelogical
validities act as grounds for the logical ones, for theoretical truths.' And
perhaps the scientific discipline which this life-world as such, in its
universality, requires is a peculiar one, one which is precisely not objective
and logical but which, as the ultimately grounding one, is not inferior but
superior in value. But how is this completely different sort of scientific
discipline, for which the objective sort has always been substituted up to
now, to be realized? The idea of objective truth is predetermined in its whole
meaning by the contrast with the idea of the truth in pre- and extrascientific
life. This latter truth has its ultimate and deepest source of verification in
experience which is "pure" in the sense 1.
This whole paragraph is crossed out in the MS. 2. This sentence was added by Fink. It
does not seem to fit in, and it breaks the continuity between the preceding and
following sentences. [125] designated above, in all its modes of perception,
memory, etc. These words, however, must be understood actually as prescientific
life understands them; thus one must not inject into them, from current
objective science, any psychophysical, psychological interpretation. And
above all -- to dispose of an important point right away -- one must not go
straight back to the supposedly immediately given "sense-data,"
as if they
were immediately characteristic of the purely intuitive
data of the life-world. What is actually first is the "merely
subjective-relative" intuition of prescientific world-life. For us, to be
sure, this "merely" has, as an old inheritance, the disdainful
coloring of the doxa. In prescientific life itself, of course, it has
nothing of this; there it is a realm of good verification and, based on this, of
well-verified predicative cognitions and of truths which are just as secure as
is necessary for the practical projects of life that determine their sense. The
disdain with which everything "merely subjective and relative" is
treated by those scientists who pursue the modern ideal of objectivity changes
nothing of its own manner of being, just as it does not change the fact that the
scientist himself must be satisfied with this realm whenever he has recourse, as
he unavoidably must have recourse, to it. b.
The use of subjective-relative experiences for
the objective sciences, and the science o f them. The sciences build upon the life-world as taken
for granted in that they make use of whatever in it happens to be necessary for
their particular ends. But to use the life-world in this way is not to know it
scientifically in its own manner of being. For example, Einstein uses the
Michelson experiments and the corroboration of them by other researchers,
with apparatus copied from Michelson's, with everything required in the way of
scales of measurement, coincidences established, etc. There is no doubt that
everything that enters in here -- the persons, the apparatus, the room in the
institute, etc.-- can itself become a subject of investigation in the usual
sense of objective inquiry, that of the positive sciences. But Einstein could
make no use whatever of a theoretical psychological-psychophysical construction
of the objective being of Mr. Michelson; rather, he made use of the human being
who was accessible to him, as to everyone else in the prescientific world, as an
object of straightforward experience, [126] the human being whose existence, with this vitality, in
these activities and creations within the common life-world, is always the
presupposition for all of Einstein's objective-scientific lines of inquiry,
projects, and accomplishments pertaining to Michelson's experiments. It is, of
course, the one world of experience, common to all, that Einstein and every
other researcher knows he is in as a human being, even throughout all his
activity of research. [But] precisely this world and everything that happens
in it, used as needed for scientific and other ends, bears, on the other hand,
for every natural scientist in his thematic orientation toward its
"objective truth," the stamp "merely subjective and
relative." The contrast to this determines, as we said, the sense of the
"objective" task. This "subjective-relative" is supposed
to be "overcome"; one can and should correlate with it a hypothetical
being-in-itself, a substrate for logical-mathematical
"truths-in-themselves" that one can approximate through ever newer and
better hypothetical approaches, always justifying them through experiential
verification. This is the one side. But while the natural scientist is thus
interested in the objective and is involved in his activity, the
subjective-relative is on the other hand still functioning for him, not as
something irrelevant that must be passed through but as that which ultimately
grounds the theoretical-logical ontic validity for all objective verification,
i.e., as the source of self-evidence, the source of verification. The visible
measuring scales, scale-markings, etc., are used as actually existing
things, not as illusions; thus that which actually exists in the life-world, as
something valid, is a premise. c.
Is the subjective-relative an object for psychology? Now
the question of the manner of being of this subjective sphere, or the question
of the science which is to deal with it in its own universe of being, is
normally disposed of by the natural scientist by referring to psychology. But
again one must not allow the intrusion of what exists in the sense of objective
science when it is a question of what exists in the life-world. For what has
always gone under the name of psychology, at any rate since the founding of
modern objectivism regarding knowledge of the world, naturally has the meaning
of an "objective" science of the subjective, no matter which of the
attempted historical psychologies we may choose. Now in our subsequent
reflections the problem of making possible an objective psychology will [127] have to become the object of more detailed discussions.
But first we must grasp clearly the contrast between objectivity and the
subjectivity of the life-world as a contrast which determines the fundamental
sense of objective-scientific discipline itself, and we must secure this
contrast against the great temptations to misconstrue it. d.
The life-world as universe of what is intuitable in principle; the
"objective-true" world as in principle nonintuitable
"logical" substruction. Whatever
may be the chances for realizing, or the capacity for realizing, the idea of
objective science in respect to the mental world (i.e., not only in respect to
nature), this idea of objectivity dominates the whole universitas
of the positive sciences in the modern period, and in
the general usage it dominates the meaning of the word "science."
This already involves a naturalism insofar as this concept is taken from
Galilean natural science, such that the scientifically "true," the
objective, world is always thought of in advance as nature, in an expanded
sense of the word. The contrast between the subjectivity of the life-world
and the "objective," the "true" world, lies in the fact that
the latter is a theoretical-logical substruction, the substruction of something
that is in principle not perceivable, in principle not experienceable in its own
proper being, whereas the subjective, in the life-world, is distinguished in all
respects precisely by its being actually experienceable.* The
life-world is a realm of original self-evidences3. That
which is self-evidently given is, in perception, experienced as *
In life the verification of being, terminating in experience, yields a full
conviction. Even when it is inductive, the inductive anticipation is of a
possible experienceability which is ultimately decisive. Inductions can be
verified by other inductions, working together. Because of their
anticipations of experienceability, and because every direct perception itself
includes inductive moments (anticipation of the sides of the object which are
not yet experienced), everything is contained in the broader concept of
"experience" or "induction." [Cf. p. 51, above]. 3. Husserl's use of Evidenz does not permit of its always being translated in the same way. But when
used in its most special or technical sense, as it is here,
"self-evidence" is better than simply "evidence." As can be
seen from the context here, it means "self-givenness";
whereas the English word "evidence" usually has a very different
meaning, that of something testifying to the existence of something else (e.g.,
evidence in a trial). 128
"the
thing itself,"4 in immediate presence, or, in memory, remembered
as the thing itself; and every other manner of intuition is a presentification
of the thing itself. Every mediate cognition belonging in this sphere -- broadly
speaking, every manner of induction -- has the sense of an induction of
something intuitable, something possibly perceivable as the thing itself or rememberable
as having-been-perceived, etc. All conceivable verification leads back to
these modes of self-evidence because the "thing itself" (in the
particular mode) lies in these intutitions themselves as that which is actually,
intersubjectively experienceable and verifiable and is not a substruction
of thought; whereas such a substruction, insofar as it makes a claim to truth,
can have actual truth only by being related back to such self-evidences. It is of course itself a highly important task,
for the scientific opening-up of the life-world, to bring to recognition the
primal validity of these self-evidences and indeed their higher dignity in the
grounding of knowledge compared to that of the objectivelogical
self-evidences. One must fully clarify, i.e., bring to ultimate
self-evidence, how all the self-evidence of objective-logical accomplishments,
through which objective theory (thus mathematical and natural-scientific
theory) is grounded in respect of form and content, has its hidden sources of
grounding in the ultimately accomplishing life, the life in which the
self-evident givenness of the life-world forever has, has attained, and attains
anew its prescientific ontic meaning. From objective-logical selfevidence
(mathematical "insight," natural-scientific, positive-scientific
"insight," as it is being accomplished by the inquiring and grounding
mathematician, etc.), the path leads back, here, to the primal self-evidence in
which the life-world is ever pregiven. One
may at first find strange and even questionable what has been simply asserted
here, but the general features of the contrast among levels of
self-evidence are unmistakable. The empir icist talk of natural scientists
often, if not for the most part, gives the impression that the natural sciences
are based on the 4. "es selbst." The use of the word "thing" in this expression is not out of
place as long as Husserl is talking about perception. But in another context
that which is "itself" given might not be a "thing"; it
could be an ideal state of affairs, for example in mathematical or logical
intuition. [129] experience
of objective nature. But it is not in this sense true that these sciences are
experiential sciences, that they follow experience in principle, that they all
begin with experiences, that all their inductions must finally be verified
through experiences; rather, this is true only in that other sense whereby
experience [yields] a self-evidence taking place purely in the life-world and as
such is the source of self-evidence for what is objectively established in the
sciences, the latter never themselves being experiences of the objective. The
objective is precisely never experienceable as itself; and scientists
themselves, by the way, consider it in this way whenever they interpret it as
something metaphysically transcendent, in contrast to their confusing empiricist
talk. The experienceability of something objective is no different from that of
an infinitely distant geometrical construct and in general no different from
that of all infinite “ideas”, including, for example, the infinity of the
number series. Naturally, “rendering ideas intuitive” in the manner of
mathematical or natural-scientific "models" is hardly intuition of the
objective itself but rather a matter of life-world intuitions which are suited
to make easier the conception of the objective ideals in question. Many [such]
conceptual intermediaries are often involved, [especially since] the conception
itself does not always occur so immediately, cannot always be made so
self-evident in its way, as is the case in conceiving of geometrical straight
lines on the basis of the life-world self-evidence of straight table-edges and
the like. As can be seen, a great deal of
effort is involved here in order to secure even the presuppositions for a proper
inquiry, i.e., in order first to free ourselves from the constant
misconstructions which mislead us all because of the scholastic dominance of
objective-scientific ways of thinking. e. The objective sciences as
subjective constructs -- those of a particular praxis, namely, the
theoretical-logical, which itself belongs to the full concreteness of the
life-world. If
the contrast [under discussion] has been purified, we must now do justice to the
essential interrelatedness [of the elements contrasted] : objective theory in
its logical sense (taken universally: science as the totality of predicative
theory, of the system [130] of statements meant "logically" as
"propositions in themselves," "truths in themselves," and in
this sense logically joined) is rooted, grounded in the life-world, in the
original self-evidences belonging to it. Thanks to this rootedness objective
science has a constant reference of meaning to the world in which we always
live, even as scientists and also in the total community of scientists -- a
reference, that is, to the general life-world. But at the same time, as an
accomplishment of scientific5 persons, as individuals and as
joined in the community of scientific activity, objective science itself belongs
to the life-world. Its theories, the logical constructs, are of course not
things in the life-world like stones, houses, or trees. They are logical wholes
and logical parts made up of ultimate logical elements. To speak with Bolzano,
they are "representations-in-themselves" ["Vorstellungen
an sich"] "propositions
in themselves," inferences and proofs "in themselves," ideal
unities of signification whose logical ideality is determined by their telos,
"truth in itself." But this or any other ideality does not change
in the least the fact that these are human formations, essentially related to
human actualities and potentialities, and thus belong to this concrete unity of
the life-world, whose concreteness thus extends farther than that of
“things”. Exactly the same thing is true, correlative to this, of scientific
activities -- those of experiencing, those of arriving at logical
formations "on the basis of" experience -- activities through which
these formations appear in original form and original modes of variation in the
individual scientists and in the community of scientists: the original status of
the proposition or demonstration dealt with by all. But here we enter an uncomfortable situation. If
we have made our contrast with all necessary care, then we have two different
things: life-world and objective-scientific world, though of course [they are]
related to each other. The knowledge of the objective-scientific world is
"grounded" in the self-evidence of the life-world. The latter is
pregiven to the scientific worker, or the working community, as ground; yet, as
they build upon this, what is built is something new, something different. If we
cease being immersed in our scientific thinking, we become aware that we
scientists are, after all, human beings and as such are among the components of
the life-world which always exists for us, ever pregiven; and thus all of
science is pulled, along with us, into the 5. The text reads
"prescientific persons," which must be a mistake. [131] -- merely “subjective-relative” -- life-world. And what becomes of the objective world itself? What happens to the hypothesis of being-in-itself, related first to the "things" of the life-world, the "objects," the "real" bodies, real animals, plants, and also human beings within the "space-time" of the life-world -- all these concepts being understood, now, not from the point of view of the objective sciences but as they are in prescientific life? Is it not the case that this
hypothesis, which in spite of the ideality of scientific theories has direct
validity for the scientific subjects (the scientists as human beings), is but one
among
the many
practical hypotheses and projects which make up the life of human beings in this
life-world-which is at all times consciously pregiven to them as available?
Do not all goals, whether they are "practical" in some other,
extrascientific sense or are practical under the title of "theory,"
belong eo ipso
to the unity of the life-world, if only we take the latter in its complete and
full concreteness? On the other hand, we have seen also that the
propositions, the theories, the whole edifice of doctrine in the objective sciences
are structures attained through certain activities of scientists bound
together in their collaborative work-or, to speak more exactly, attained through
a continued building-up of activities, the later of which always presuppose
the results of the earlier. And we see further that all these theoretical
results have the character of validities for the life-world, adding themselves
as such to its own composition and belonging to it even before that as a horizon
of possible accomplishments for developing science. The concrete life-world,
then, is the grounding soil [der
griindende Boden] of the
"scientifically true" world and at the same time encompasses it in its
own universal concreteness. How is this to be understood? How are we to do
justice systematically-that is, with appropriate scientific discipline-to
the allencompassing, so paradoxically demanding, manner of being of the
life-world? We
are posing questions whose clarifying answers are by no means obvious. The
contrast and the inseparable union [we have been exploring] draw us into a
reflection which entangles us in more and more troublesome difficulties. The
paradoxical interrelationships of the "objectively true world"
and the "life-world" make enigmatic the manner of being of both. Thus
[the idea of a] true world in any sense, and within it our own being, becomes an
enigma in respect to the sense of this being. In our attempts to attain clarity
we shall suddenly become aware, in the face of [132] emerging
paradoxes, that all of our philosophizing up to now has been without a ground.
How can we now truly become philosophers? We cannot escape the force of this motivation. It
is impossible for us to evade the issue here through a preoccupation with
aporia and argumentation nourished by Kant or Hegel, Aristotle or Thomas. f . The problem of the life-world not as a partial
problem but rather as a universal problem for philosophy. Of course, it is a new sort of scientific
discipline that is required for the solution of the enigmas which now disquiet
us: it is not mathematical, nor logical at all in the historical sense; it
cannot already have before it, as an available norm, a finished mathematics,
logic, or logistic, since these are themselves objective sciences in the
sense which is presently problematical and, as included in the problem, cannot
be presuppositions used as premises. At first, as long as one only makes
contrasts, is only concerned with oppositions, it could appear that nothing more
than or different from objective science is needed, just as everyday
practical life undertakes its rational reflections, both particular and
general, without needing a science for them. It just is this way, a fact
familiar to all, unthinkingly accepted rather than being formulated as a
fundamental fact and thought through as a subject for thinking in its own right
-- namely, that there are two sorts of truth: on the one side, everyday
practical situational truths, relative, to be sure, but, as we have already
emphasized, exactly what praxis, in its particular projects, seeks and needs; on
the other side there are scientific truths, and their grounding leads back
precisely to the situational truths, but in such a way that scientific method
does not suffer thereby in respect to its own meaning, since it wants to use and
must use precisely these truths. Thus it could appear -- if one allows oneself to
be carried along by the thoughtless naïveté of life even in the
transition from the extralogical to the logical, to the objective-scientific
praxis of thinking -- that a separate investigation under the title
"life-world" is an intellectualistic enterprise born of a mania,
peculiar to modern life, to theorize everything. But,
on the other hand, it has at least become apparent that we cannot let the [133] matter
end with this naïveté,
that paradoxical enigmas announce themselves here: merely subjective
relativity is supposedly overcome by objective-logical theory, yet the
latter belongs, as the theoretical praxis of human beings, to the merely subjective
and relative and at the same time must have its premises, its sources of
self-evidence, in the subjective and relative. From here on this much is
certain: that all problems of truth and of being, all methods, hypotheses, and
results conceivable for these problems-whether for worlds of experience or for
metaphysical higher worlds-can attain their ultimate clarity, their evident
sense or the evidence of their nonsense, only through this supposed
intellectualistic hypertrophy. This will then include, certainly, all
ultimate questions of legitimate sense and of nonsense in the busy routine of
the "resurrected metaphysics" that has become so vocal and so
bewitching of late. Through this last series of considerations the
magnitude, the universal and independent significance, of the problem of the
life-world has become intelligible to us in an anticipatory insight. In
comparison with this the problem of the "objectively true" world or
that of objective-logical science-no matter how pressing it may repeatedly
become, and properly so-appears now as a problem of secondary and more
specialized interest. Though the peculiar accomplishment of our modern objective
science may still not be understood, nothing changes the fact that it is a
validity for the life-world, arising out of particular activities, and that it
belongs itself to the concreteness of the life-world. Thus in any case, for the
sake of clarifying this and all other acquisitions of human activity, the
concrete life-world must first be taken into consideration; and it must be
considered in terms of the truly concrete universality whereby it embraces, both
directly and in the manner of
horizons, all the built-up levels of validity acquired by men for the world of
their common life and whereby it has the totality of these levels related in the
end to a world-nucleus to be distilled by abstraction, namely, the world of
straightforward intersubjective experiences. To be sure, we do not yet know how
the life-world is to become an independent, totally self-sufficient subject of
investigation, how it is supposed to make possible scientific statements --
which as such, after all, must have their own "objectivity," even if
it is in a manner different from that of our sciences, i.e., a necessary
validity to be appropriated purely methodically, which we and everyone can
verify precisely through this method. We are absolute beginners, here, and have
nothing in the way of a logic designed to provide [134] norms;
we can do nothing but reflect, engross ourselves in the still not unfolded sense
of our task, and thus secure, with the utmost care, freedom from prejudice,
keeping our undertaking free of alien interferences (and we have already made
several important contributions to this) ; and this, as in the case of every new
undertaking, must supply us with our method. The clarification of the sense
of the task is, indeed, the self-evidence of the goal qua goal; and to this
self-evidence belongs essentially the self-evidence of the possible
"ways" to it. The intricacy and difficulty of the preliminary
reflections which are still before us will justify themselves, not only because
of the magnitude of the goal, but also because of the essential strangeness and
precariousness of the ideas which will necessarily become involved. Thus what appeared to be merely a
problem of the fundamental basis of the objective sciences or a partial
problem within the universal problem of objective science has indeed (just as we
announced in advance that it would) proven to be the genuine and most universal
problem. It can also be put this way: the problem first appears as the question
of the relation between objective-scientific thinking and intuition; it
concerns, on the one hand, then, logical thinking as the thinking of logical
thoughts, e.g., the physicist's thinking of physical theory, or purely
mathematical thinking, in which mathematics has its place as a system of
doctrine, as a theory. And, on the other hand, we have intuiting and the
intuited, in the life-world prior to theory. Here arises the ineradicable
illusion of a pure thinking which, unconcerned in its purity about intuition,
already has its self-evident truth, even truth about the world -- the illusion
which makes the sense and the possibility, the "scope," of objective
science questionable. Here one concentrates on the separateness of
intuiting and thinking and generally interprets the nature of the "theory
of knowledge" as theory of science, carried out in respect to two
correlative sides6 (whereby science is always understood
in terms of the only concept of science available, that of objective
science). But as soon as the empty and vague notion of intuition -- instead of
being something negligible and insignificant compared to the supremely
significant logical sphere in which one supposedly already has genuine truth --
has become the problem of the life-world, as soon as the magnitude and
difficulty of this investigation take on enormous proportions as one seriously
penetrates it, there occurs the great transformation 6.
I.e., the subjective and the objective. [135] of
the "theory of knowledge" and the theory of science whereby, in the
end, science as a problem and as an accomplishment loses its
self-sufficiency and becomes a mere partial problem. What we have said also naturally
applies to logic, as the a priori theory of norms for everything
"logical" -- in the overarching sense of what is logical,
according to which logic is a logic of strict objectivity, of objective-logical
truths. No one ever thinks about the predications and truths which precede
science, about the `logic" which provides norms within this sphere of
relativity, or about the possibility, even in the case of these logical structures
conforming purely descriptively to the life-world, of inquiring into the
system of principles that give them their norms a priori. As a matter of course,
traditional objective logic is substituted as the a priori norm even for
this subjective-relative sphere of truth. §
35. Analysis
of the transcendental epoche. First step: The epoche of objective science. BECAUSE OF THE PECULIAR nature
of the task which has arisen for us, the method of access to the new science's
field of work-which must be attained before the working problems of the science
are given-is articulated into a multiplicity of steps, each of which has, in a
new way, the character of an epoche, a withholding of natural, naive validities
and in general of validities already in effect. The first necessary epoche,
i.e., the first methodical step, has already come into view through the preliminary
reflections hitherto carried out. But an explicit, universal formulation is
needed. Clearly required before everything else is the epoche in respect to all
objective sciences. This means not merely an abstraction from them, such as an
imaginary transformation, in thought, of present human existence, such that
no science appeared in the picture. What is meant is rather an epoche of all
participation in the cognitions of the objective sciences, an epoche of any
critical position-taking which is interested in their truth or falsity,
even any position on their guiding idea of an objective knowledge of the world.
In short, we carry out an epoche in regard to all objective theoretical
interests, all aims and activities belonging to us as objective scientists or
even simply as [ordinary] people desirous of [this kind of] knowledge. [136]
Within
this epoche, however, neither the sciences nor the scientists have disappeared
for us who practice the epoche. They continue to be what they were before, in
any case: facts in the unified
context of the pregiven life-world; except that, because of the epoche, we do
not function as sharing these interests, as coworkers, etc. We establish in
ourselves just one particular habitual direction of interest, with a certain
vocational attitude, to which there belongs a particular "vocational
time."1 We find the same thing here as elsewhere: when we
actualize one of our habitual interests and are thus involved in our vocational
activity (in the accomplishment of our work), we assume a posture of epoche
toward our other life-interests, even though these still exist and are still
ours. Everything has "its proper time," and in shifting [activities]
we say something like: "Now it is time to go to the meeting, to the
election," and the like. In
a special sense, of course, we call science, art, military service, etc., our
"vocation," but as normal human beings we are constantly (in a
broadened sense) involved in many "vocations" (interested attitudes)
at the same time: we are at once fathers, citizens, etc. Every such vocation has
its time of actualizing activities. Accordingly, this newly established
vocational interest, whose universal subject matter is called the
"life-world," finds its place among the other life-interests or
vocations and it has "its proper time" within the one personal time,
the form of the various exercised vocational times. Of
course, to equate the new science in this way with all "bourgeois" [bürgerliche]
vocations, or even with the objective sciences, is a
sort of trivialization, a disregard for the greatest value-distinction there can
be between sciences. Understood in this way, it was so happily criticized by the
modern irrationalistic philosophers. This way of looking at it makes it
appear as if, once again, a new, purely theoretical interest, a new
"science" with a new vocational technique, is to be established,
carried on either as an intellectualistic game with very ideal pretensions or as
a higher-level intellectual technique in the service of the positive sciences,
useful for them, while they themselves, in turn, have their only real value in
their usefulness for life. One is powerless against the misrepresentations of
hurried readers and listeners who in the end hear only what they want to hear;
but in any case they are part of the indifferent mass audience of the 1.
Berufszeit, colloq., "working hours."
But I have translated it literally as "vocational time" in order to
preserve the notion of Beruf,a “calling”. [137] philosopher.
The few, for whom one [really] speaks, will know how to restrain such a
suspicion, especially after what we have said in earlier lectures. They will at
least wait to see where our path leads them. There are good reasons for my
stressing so sharply the vocational character of even the "phenomenologist's"
attitude. One of the first things to be described about the epoche in question
is that it is a habitual epoche of accomplishment, one with periods of time in
which it results in work, while other times are devoted to other interests of
work or play; furthermore, and most important, the suspension of its
accomplishment in no way changes the interest which continues and remains valid
within personal subjectivity -- i.e., its habitual directedness toward goals
which persist as its validities-and it is for this very reason that it can be
actualized again and again, at different times, in this identical sense. This by
no means implies, however, that the life-world epoche -- to which further
significant moments belong, as we shall show -- means no more for human
existence, practically and "existentially," than the vocational epoche
of the cobbler, or that it is basically a matter of indifference whether one is
a cobbler or a phenomenologist, or, also, whether one is a phenomenologist
or a positive scientist. Perhaps it will even become manifest that the total
phenomenological attitude and the epoche belonging to it are destined in essence
to effect, at first, a complete personal transformation, comparable in the
beginning to a religious conversion, which then, however, over and above this,
bears within itself the significance of the greatest existential
transformation which is assigned as a task to mankind as such. §36 How can the life-world, after the
epoche of the objective sciences, become the subject matter of a science? The
distinction in principle between the objective-logical a priori and the a priori
of the life-world. IF
OUR INTEREST is exclusively in the "life-world," we must
ask: Has the life-world, through the epoche in respect to [138] objective
science, already been laid open as a universal scientific subject matter? * Do
we already have thereby, the subject matter for statements that are
generally valid scientifically, statements about facts that are to be
established scientifically? How do we have the life-world as a universal field,
fixed in advance, of such establishable facts? It is the spatiotemporal world of
things as we experience them in our pre- and extrascientific life and as we know
them to be experienceable beyond what is [actually] experienced. We have a
world-horizon as a horizon of possible thing-experience [Dingerfahrung].
Things: that is, stones, animals, plants, even
human beings and human products; but everything here is subjective and
relative, even though normally, in our experience and in the social group united
with us in the community of life, we arrive at "secure" facts; within
a certain range this occurs of its own accord, that is, undisturbed by any
noticeable disagreement; sometimes, on the other hand, when it * First let us recall that what we call science is,
within the constantly valid world, as life-world, a particular type of
purposeful activities and purposeful accomplishments like all human vocations in
the usual sense of the word; to this sphere also belong those practical
intentions of a higher level which do not involve types of vocation or
goal-oriented interrelations and accomplishments at all, the more or less
isolated, incidental, more or less fleeting interests. All these are, from the
human point of view, peculiarities of human life and of human habitualities, and
they all he within the universal framework of the life-world into which all
accomplishments flow and to which all human beings and all accomplishing
activities and capacities always belong. Of course, the new theoretical interest
in the universal life-world itself, in its own manner of being, requires
a certain epoche in regard to all these interests, i.e., in regard to the
pursuit of our ends, in regard to all the criticism, always belonging to the
purposeful life, of the means and the goals or ends themselves, e.g.,
whether we should factually persist in them, whether certain paths should be
taken as general directives, etc. Living toward our ends, which are valid for us
habitually, we do, of course, live in the horizon of the lifeworld, no
matter which ends are "having their turn"; everything that happens and
develops here exists in the life-world and in the manner of the life-world; but
being oriented toward what exists within the life-world is not the same as
focusing on the [life-world] as the universal horizon, not the same as
making thematic the end in view as a being within this horizon, the newly
thematic life-world. Thus the first thing we must do is refrain from the pursuit
of all scientific and other interests. But the epoche alone is not enough: even
all setting of ends, all projecting, presupposes something worldly; the wherewith, i.e., the life-world, is given
prior to all ends. [This last sentence is only a rough guess at the sense of
this somewhat garbled stenographic note. --TRANs.] [139] is
of practical importance, it occurs in a purposive knowing process, i.e., with
the goal of [finding] a truth which is secure for our purposes. But when we are
thrown into an alien social sphere, that of the Negroes in the Congo, Chinese
peasants, etc., we discover that their truths, the facts that for them are
fixed, generally verified or verifiable, are by no means the same as ours. But
if we set up the goal of a truth about the objects which is unconditionally
valid for all subjects, beginning with that on which normal Europeans, normal
Hindus, Chinese, etc., agree in spite of all relativity -- beginning, that is,
with what makes objects of the life-world, common to all, identifiable for
them and for us (even though conceptions of them may differ), such as spatial
shape, motion, sense-quality, and the like-then we are on the way to objective
science. When we set up this objectivity as a goal (the goal of a "truth in
itself") we make a set of hypotheses through which the pure life-world is
surpassed. We have precluded this [type
of] "surpassing" through the first epoche (that which concerns the
objective sciences), and now we have the embarrassment of wondering what else
can be undertaken scientifically, as something that can be established once and
for all and for everyone. But this embarrassment disappears as soon as we
consider that the life-world does have, in all its relative features, a general
structure. This general structure, to which everything that
exists relatively is bound, is not itself relative. We can attend to it in its
generality and, with sufficient care, fix it once and for all in a way equally
accessible to all. As life-world the world has, even prior to science, the
"same" structures that the objective sciences presuppose in their
substruction of a world which exists "in itself" and is determined
through "truths in themselves" (this substruction being taken for
granted due to the tradition of centuries); these are the same structures that
they presuppose as a priori structures and systematically unfold in a priori sciences,
sciences of the logos, the
universal methodical norms by which any knowledge of the world existing "in
itself, objectively" must be bound. Prescientifically, the world is already
a spatiotemporal world; to be sure, in regard to this spatiotemporality
there is no question of ideal mathematical points, of "pure" straight
lines or planes, no question at all of mathematically infinitesimal continuity
or of the "exactness" belonging to the sense of the geometrical a
priori. The bodies familiar to us in the life-world are actual bodies, but not
bodies in the sense of physics. The same thing is true of causality and of
spatiotemporal [140] infinity.
[These] categorical features of the life-world have the same names but are not
concerned, so to speak, with the theoretical idealizations and the hypothetical
substructions of the geometrician and the physicist. As we already know, physicists,
who are men like other men, who know themselves as living in the life-world, the
world of their human interests, have, under the title of physics, a particular
sort of questions and (in a broader sense) practical projects directed toward
the things of the life-world, and their "theories" are the practical
results. just as other projects, practical interests, and their realizations belong
to the life-world, presuppose it as ground, and enrich it with their activity,
so it is with science, too, as a human project and praxis. And this includes, as
we have said, everything objectively a priori, with its necessary reference back
to a corresponding a priori of the life-world. This reference-back is one of a
founding of validity [Geltungsfundierung].
A certain idealizing accomplishment
is what brings about the higher-level meaning-formation and ontic validity
of the mathematical and every other objective a priori on the basis of the
life-world a priori. Thus the latter ought first to become a subject of
scientific investigation in its peculiarity and purity, and then one ought to
set the systematic task of understanding how, on this basis and in what manners
of new meaning-formation, the objective a priori comes about as a mediated
theoretical accomplishment. What is needed, then, would be a systematic division
of the universal structures -- universal life-world a priori and universal
"objective" a priori -- and then also a division among the
universal inquiries according to the way in which the "objective" a
priori is grounded in the "subjective-relative" a priori of the
life-world or how, for example, mathematical self-evidence has its source of
meaning and source of legitimacy in the self-evidence of the life-world. This consideration has a particular interest for
us even though we have already detached our problem of a science of the
life-world from the problem of objective science in that we, caught up through
our schooling in the traditional objectivistic metaphysics, at first have no
means of access whatever to the idea of a universal a priori belonging purely to
the life-world. What we need first is a separation in principle of the latter
from the objective a priori which is [always] immediately substituted for it. It
is this very separation that is effected by the first epoche of all objective
sciences, if we understand it also as the epoche of all objective a priori
sciences and make it complete through the [141] considerations we have just carried out. The latter provide us, in addition, with the fundamental insight that the universal a priori of the objective-logical level -- that of the mathematical sciences and all others which are a priori in the usual sense -- is grounded in a universal a priori which is in itself prior, precisely that of the pure life-world. Only through recourse to this a priori, to be unfolded in an a priori science of its own, can our a priori sciences, the objective-logical ones, achieve a truly radical, a seriously scientific, grounding, which under the circumstances they absolutely require. Here we can also say: The supposedly completely
self-sufficient logic which modern mathematical logicians [Logistiker]
think they are able to develop, even
calling it a truly scientific philosophy, namely, as the universal, a priori,
fundamental science for all objective sciences, is nothing but nalvete. Its
self-evidence lacks scientific grounding in the universal life-world a
priori, which it always presupposes in the form of things taken for granted,
which are never scientifically, universally formulated, never put in the
general form proper to a science of essence. Only when this radical, fundamental
science exists can such a logic itself become a science. Before this it hangs in
mid-air, without support, and is, as it has been up to now, so very naive that
it is not even aware of the task which attaches to every objective logic, every
a priori science in the usual sense, namely, that of discovering how this logic
itself is to be grounded, hence no longer "logically" but by being
traced back to the universal prelogical a priori through which everything logical,
the total edifice of objective theory in all its methodological forms,
demonstrates its legitimate sense and from which, then, all logic itself must
receive its norms. Yet
this insight surpasses the interest in the life-world which governs us now; for
this, as we have said, all that counts is the distinction in principle between
the objective-logical and the life-world a priori; and the purpose of this is
to be able to set in motion a radical reflection upon the great task of a pure
theory of essence of the life-world. |