Why Husserl’s Universal Empiricism is a Moderate Rationalism

Husserl claims that his phenomenological–epistemological system amounts to a “universal” form of empiricism. The present paper shows that this universal moment of Husserl’s empiricism is why his empiricism qualifies as a rationalism. What is empiricist about Husserl’s phenomenological–epistemological system is that he takes experiences to be an autonomous source of immediate justification. On top of that, Husserl takes experiences to be the ultimate source of justification. For Husserl, every justified belief ultimately depends epistemically on the subject’s experiences. These are paradigms of empiricist claims and thus Husserl seems to subscribe to empiricism. However, what is universal about Husserl’s “empiricism” is that he does not limit the concept of (justification-conferring) experiences to sensory experiences or sensory experiences plus introspective intuitions but broadens the concept of experience such that also a priori intuitions are included. Husserl insists that logical, mathematical, and phenomenological intuitions such as?~?(p ∧ ?~?p), 2?+?2?=?4, and “Experiences necessarily bear the mark of intentionality” provide non-inferential justification analogous to how sensory experiences can non-inferentially justify beliefs such as “There is a table in front of me.” Importantly, Husserl makes clear that such a priori intuitions are not about our concepts but about reality. This is why Husserl’s universal empiricism is a rationalism. Husserl differs from traditional rationalism as he allows that a priori intuitions can be fallible and empirically underminable. This distinguishes Husserl’s rationalism from Descartes’ and makes him a proponent of moderate rationalism as currently championed by Laurence BonJour.     

Why is Law a Normative Discipline? on Hans Kelsen’s ‘Normology’

What does it mean to claim of law that it is a normative discipline? Can the answer be so simple that one need merely refer to law’s normative object of study and the conclusions that the legal participant must allegedly draw from this? What, in any case, is a ‘normative discipline’? The essay attempts to address these questions by analysing Hans Kelsen’s ‘normological’ theory of law through his work on sovereignty and especially by focusing on the normative character of Kelsen’s epistemological claims regarding law. A theoretical critique of Kelsen is offered through Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological account of logic as a normative discipline.     

Concerning Paul Edwards' “Heidegger on Death”: A Criticism

For Husserl, noetics is the most fundamental science and the centrepiece of a phenomenological epistemology. Since in his major works Husserl does not develop noetics systematically but uses its main ideas and achievements often in apparent isolation without clarifying their systematic unity, the significance of noetics is often overlooked. Although Husserl has repeatedly stressed the importance of a phenomenological epistemology, what the concrete theses of such an undertaking are supposed to be often remains obscure. We shall see that the best way to clarify this is by providing a detailed account of Husserl’s noetics as it is developed in Husserl’s lecture courses “Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge” (1906/07) and “Logic and General Theory of Science” (1917/18). This is the main aim of the present paper. We will shed light on the significance, systematic unity, and concrete theses of noetics. Furthermore, I shall show in what way the main theses of noetics are present in Husserl’s other works, even if the term noetics does not even occur. Finally, we will see that some basic ideas of Husserl’s noetics play an important role in current analytic epistemology and we will indicate how a phenomenological epistemology could enrich current debates.     

Pain,pleasure, and the intentionality of emotions as experiences of values: A new phenomenological perspective

The article starts with a brief overview of the kinds of approaches that have been attempted for the presentation of Phenomenology’s view on the emotions. I then pass to Husserl’s unsatisfactory efforts to disclose the intentionality of emotions and their intentional correlation with values. Next, I outline the idea of a new, “normalized phenomenological” approach of emotions and values. Pleasure and pain, then, are first explored as affective feelings (reell lived-experiences). In the cases examined, it is shown that, primordially, pleasure and pain are recordings for our bodily and spiritual states resulting from our confrontation with beings and situations in the world. Delight and distress are, subsequently, approached as the first full-fledged emotive acts that animate or intentionally interpret pleasure and pain in specific ways. The elementary values of agreeableness and disagreeableness appear correspondingly to the latter in relation to the very pleasure or pain and to what has caused them. In other words, agreeable and disagreeable show how what we confront in the world weighs for us, what value it has for the embodied intentional consciousness, for its state and functioning as well as for its existentio-praxial possibilities in the lifeworld.     

Crossing the Finite Provinces of Meaning. Experience and Metaphor

Schutz’s references to literature and arts in his theoretical works are manifold. But literature and theory are both a certain kind of a finite province of meaning, that means they are not easily accessible from the paramount reality of everyday life. Now there is another kind of referring to literature: metaphorizing it. Using it, as may be said with Lakoff and Johnson, to understand and to experience one kind of thing in terms of another. Literally metapherein means “to carry over”. Metaphorizing in this view is then a specific kind of border-crossing between different provinces of meaning. That poses two questions: 1. What means finiteness of those provinces of meaning, what kind of border crossings are possible? What is the ground for metaphorizing meaning? 2. Could this concept used for founding a theory of the constitution of the societal and of society, that overcomes the dichotomy of structure/agency? These questions will be answered with one example in view: Schutz’ report to Kaufmann of his first visit of Husserl describing his experience as feeling like Wilhelm Meister at the Society of the Tower. In a first step this metaphor is presented together with some crumbs of metaphor theory. In a second step these crumbs will be connected to Husserl’s concept of experience. After developing a short overview over Schutz’ “finite provinces of meaning,” the relation of experience, metaphors to the intersubjectivity of these provinces in their dependence from writing and printing is discussed.     

Heterophenomenology and phenomenological skepticism

This paper is an attempt to clarify and assess Dennett’s opinion about the relevance of the phenomenological tradition to contemporary cognitive science, focussing on the very idea of a phenomenological investigation. Dennett can be credited with four major claims on this topic: (1) Two kinds of phenomenological investigations must be carefully distinguished: autophenomenology and heterophenomenology; (2) autophenomenology is wrong, because it fails to overcome what might be called the problem of phenomenological scepticism; (3) the phenomenological tradition mainly derived from Husserl is based on an autophenomenological conception of phenomenology, and, consequently, can be of no help to contemporary cognitive science; (4) however, heterophenomenology is indispensable for obtaining an adequate theory of consciousness. In response to Dennett’s analysis, the paper develops two main counterclaims: (1) Although the traditional conception of phenomenology does indeed fit Dennett’s notion of autophenomenology, his sceptical arguments fail to rule out at least the possibility of a modified version of this traditional conception, such as the one defended in Roy et al. (Naturalizing Phenomenology, 1999); (2) the distinction between autophenomenology and heterophenomenology is at any rate misconceived, because, upon closer analysis, heterophenomenology proves to include the essential characteristics of autophenomenology.     

To the Nothingnesses Themselves: Husserl’s Influence on Sartre’s Notion of Nothingness

In this article I argue that Sartre’s notions of nothingness and “negatity” are not, as he presents it, primarily reactions to Hegel and Heidegger. Instead, they are a reaction to an ongoing struggle with Husserl’s notion of intentionality and related notions. I do this by comparing the criticism aimed at Husserl in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness to that presented in his earlier work, The Imagination, where he discusses Husserl more elaborately. Furthermore, I compare his criticism to Husserl’s own criticism of the “doctrine of immanent objects”, in order to show that Sartre’s notion of nothingness is a continuation of Husserl’s criticism, and that he turns Husserl’s own arguments against himself.     

从“幻相的逻辑”到“现象学的逻辑”——探讨胡塞尔对辩证法的处理方式

本文研究胡塞尔的现象学与辩证法的关系。尽管胡塞尔没有把辩证法作为一个专题来研究,但从他谈到过辩证法的那些段落中,我们仍能从中发现胡塞尔对辩证法的基本态度和处理辩证法问题的基本思路。胡塞尔对辩证法的理解受到康德很大影响,但他采取不同的方式处理康德在《纯粹理性批判》中作为一个专题来讨论的所谓先验逻辑中的"辩证幻相"问题。胡塞尔批评康德的先验逻辑缺乏对逻辑概念和知性范畴的起源的论述。胡塞尔的现象学则追问它们的发生过程,描述它们在生活世界中的起源和分析主体际的意向的意识活动对它们的构成作用,这实际上是为辩证法奠定一个现象学的基础。     

Pragmatic,Existentialist and Phenomenological Interpretations of Marxism

In his book, Hermeneutics and Reflection (2013), Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann outlines what he sees as the fundamental differences between Edmund Husserl’s “theoretical” phenomenology and Martin Heidegger’s “a-theoretical” phenomenology, which he frames in terms of the distinction between “reflective observation” and “hermeneutic understanding”. In this paper, I will clarify the sense of these terms in order to elucidate some of the crucial similarities and differences between Husserl and Heidegger. Against von Herrmann’s characterization of the Husserlian project, I argue that we should not consider these differences in terms of “reflection”, since this runs the risk of misconstruing Husserlian phenomenology with the philosophical tradition he was striving against. Taken together, by way of a close reading of von Herrmann, the following discussion will serve as a brief sketch of the early Heidegger’s turn away from Husserlian phenomenology and toward his own hermeneutic phenomenology.     

Husserl’s Intercultural Implication of Ethical Renewal and Theoretical Rationality: A Reappraisal from an East Asian Perspective

In the Kaizo articles, written between 1922 and 1924, Husserl touched on the intercultural relationship between “the European” and “the non-European.” Husserl addressed Japan as he dealt with ethical and cultural renewal in his Kaizo articles. Husserl wished to spread the European spiritual gestalt, which he comprehended as a universal theoretical rationality to remote cultures. At that time, Husserl imagined China as unfamiliar and remote. He even used China as a typical example of alienworld when he dealt with the problem of cultural difference. This paper reappraises Husserl’s thesis by exploring Eurocentrism as a factor that might impede the willingness for non-Western or non-European cultures to accept the idea of European spiritual gestalt. This paper suggests that the non-Western or non-European cultures should take delight in learning from Europe and carry out what Husserl had in mind about the meaning of “renewal.”     

Wittgenstein and the Phenomenological Movement: Reply to Monk

Abstract

Monk’s ‘The Temptations of Phenomenology’ examines what the term ‘Phänomenologie’ meant for Wittgenstein. Contesting various other scholars, Monk claims that Wittgenstein’s relation to ‘Phänomenologie’ began and ended during 1929. Monk only partially touches on the question of Wittgenstein’s relation to the phenomenological movement during this time. Though Monk does not mention this, 1929 was also the year in which Ryle and Carnap turned their critical attention toward Heidegger. Wittgenstein also expressed his sympathy for Heidegger in 1929. Furthermore, though in 1929 Wittgenstein agrees with the early Husserl on relating logic and science to phenomenology, it is not clear that they mean the same thing by either logic or phenomenology, or that they agree on what the relation between the two should be.     

Heretical Hindsight: Patočka’s Phenomenology as Questioning Philosophy

I argue that Jan Pato?ka’s phenomenology can be understood as a kind of questioning philosophy that preserves the work and thought of Edmund Husserl by holding it in hindsight. Following Martin Heidegger’s lead to take up Husserl’s phenomenological questions more than Husserl’s answers, Pato?ka further develops Heidegger’s strategy with the addition of heresy: the philosophical process of distinguishing traditional questions from their answers in such a way as to preserve both, the original wonder sourced in questioning as well as the specific answers that compose tradition. As excellent answers can tend to eclipse the powerful dynamism of original questions, heretical philosophy is revealed to be Pato?ka’s way to take up, modify, and enact Husserl’s motto “to the [questions] themselves!” In this way, Pato?ka’s further develops phenomenology while at the same time throwing a thinker back onto phenomenology’s central questions.     

Husserl and the Penetrability of the Transcendental and Mundane Spheres

There is a two-fold problem the phenomenologist must face: the first has to do with thinking like a phenomenologist given that one is always already steeped in the mundane sphere; the second has to do with the phenomenologist entering into dialogue with those scientists, psychologists, sociologists and other laypersons who still remain in the mundane sphere. I address the first problem by giving an Husserlian-inspired account of the movement from the mundane to the transcendental, and show that there are decent prospects for getting life-world folks to start thinking like phenomenologists. I address the second problem by showing that Husserl has himself caught in a dilemma: either the reduction takes place and no communication is possible between phenomenologist and non-phenomenologist, or the reduction does not take place and the phenomenological method remains a psychological makeshift, supposedly accessible to Husserl and his esoteric followers.