Edmund Husserl
EDMUND HUSSERL  Macroknow Library
     


The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy.

Part II: Clarification of the Origin of the Modern Opposition between the Physicalistic Objectivism and Transcendental Subjectivism

"But now we must note something of the highest importance that occurred even as early as Galileo: the surreptitious substitution of the mathematically substructed world of idealities for the only real world, the one that is actually given through perception, that is ever experienced and experienceable -- our every-day life-world. This substitution was promptly passed on to his successors, the physicists of all the succeeding centuries. . ."1a GALILEO

"If he is to be one who thinks for himself [Selbstdenker], an autonomous philosopher with the will to liberate himself from all prejudices, he must have the insight that all the things he takes for granted are prejudices, that all prejudices are obscurities arising out of a sedimentation of tradition . . .
A historical, backward reflection . . . is thus actually the deepest kind of self-reflection aimed at a self-understanding in terms of what we are truly seeking as the historical beings we are."1b

Part III: The Clarification of the Transcendental Problem and the Related Function of Psychology

" . . . [T]he epochē, . . . the radical withholding of [judgment on] all that is pregiven, on all prior validities of what is in the world . . ."1c

"The pregiven world is the horizon which includes all our goals, all our ends, whether fleeting or lasting, in a flowing but constant manner, just as an intentional horizon-consciousness implicitly "encompasses" [everything] in advance."1d

" . . . [P]ure psychology in itself is identical with transcendental philosophy as the science of transcendental subjectivity."1e

"Nature is in itself what it is, and is in itself mathematical . . . everything is decided in advance as pure mathematics and as nature itself. Such is the dominant hypothesis which has guided natural science through the centuries. But for the world as a world which also contains spiritual beings, this "being-in-advance" is an absurdity . . . For the realm of souls there is in principle no such ontology, no science corresponding to the physicalistic-mathematical ideal . . . Phenomenology frees us from the old objectivistic ideal of the scientific system, the theoretical form of mathematical natural science, and frees us accordingly from the idea of an ontology of the soul which could be analogous to physics."1f GALILEO
     
   

Formal and Transcendental Logic.

" . . . [M]en live entirely in a world that has become unintelligible, in which they ask in vain for the wherefore, the sense, which was once so doubtless and accepted by the understanding, as well as by the will."2a NIETZSCHE BAUDRILLARD ZERZAN

Part II. From Formal to Transcendental Logic

"Evidence . . . designates that performance on the part of intentionality which consists in the giving of something-itself [die intentionale Leistung der Selbstgebung]. More precisely, it is the universal pre-eminent form of "intentionality", of "consciousness of something", in which there is consciousness of the intended-to objective affair in the mode itself-seized-upon, itself-seen -- correlatively, in the mode: being with it itself in the manner peculiar to consciousness."2b

"The concept of any intentionality whatever -- any life-process of consciousness-of something or other -- and the concept of evidence, the intentionality that is the giving of something-itself, are essentially correlative."2c

"Every productive doing involves intention and actualization."2d

" . . . [B]efore everything else conceivable, I am. This "I am" is for me, the subject who says it, and says it in the right sense, the primitive intentional basis for my world . . . "I am" is the primitive intentional basis, not only for "the" world, the one I consider real, but also for any "ideal world" that I accept . . ."2e DESCARTES

"An absolute existent is existent in the form, an intentional life -- which, no matter what else it may be intrinsically conscious of, is, at the same time, consciousness of itself. Precisely for that reason . . . it has at all times an essential ability to reflect on itself, on all its structures that stand out for it -- an essential ability to make itself thematic and produce judgments, and evidences, relating to itself. Its essence includes the possibility of "self-examination" -- a self-examination that starts from vague meanings and, by a process of uncovering, goes back to the original self."2f ARISTOTLE

"The whole of phenomenology is nothing more than scientific self-examination on the part of transcendental subjectivity, an examination that at first proceeds straightforwardly and therefore with a certain naïveté of its own, but later becomes critically intent on its own logos . . ."2g ARISTOTLE

""Evidence", or the giving of something-itself, as fulfilment, confirmation, verification, cancellation, falsity, practical failure, and so forth -- all these are structural forms belonging a priori to the unity of a life; and the investigation of this unity, an investigation paying heed to and clarifying them all, is the immense theme of phenomenology."2h
   

* Italics in the original.

1 Edmund Husserl (1859-1938). The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Translated, with an Introduction, by David Carr. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970. (Originally published in German under the title Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie: Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie, edited by Walter Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1954; second printing 1962.)
 Part II: Clarification of the Origin of the Modern Opposition between the Physicalistic Objectivism and Transcendental Subjectivism
a § 9h. The life-world as the forgotten meaning-fundament of natural science, at 48-49.
b § 15. Reflection on the method of our historical manner of investigation, at 72.
c § 18. Descartes's misinterpretation of himself. The psychologistic falsification of the pure ego attained through the epochē, at 79.
Part III: The Clarification of the Transcendental Problem and the Related Function of Psychology.
d § 38. The two possible fundamental ways of making the life-world thematic . . . , at 144.
e § 72. The relation of transcendental psychology to transcendental phenomenology as the proper access to pure self-knowledge. Definitive removal of the objectivistic ideal from the science of the soul, at 258.
f Ibid., at 264-265.

2 Edmund Husserl. Formal and Transcendental Logic. Translated by Dorion Cairns. The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969. English Translation of Formale und transzendentale Logic.
a Introduction, at 5.
Part II. From Formal to Transcendental Logic.
b Chapter 1. § 59. A universal characterization of evidence as the giving of something itself, at 157-158.
c Ibid. § 60. The fundamental laws of intentionality and the universal function of evidence, at 160
d Chapter 2. Initial questions of transcendental-logic: problems concerning fundamental concepts, at 176.
e Chapter 6. § 60. The transcendental problems of intersubjectivity and of the intersubjective world, at 237.
f Chapter 7. § 104. Transcendental phenomenology as self-explication on the part of transcendental subjectivity, at 273.
g Ibid. At 273.
h Ibid. § 107. Delineation of a transcendental theory of evidence as an effective intentional performance, at 289-290.
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