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3 MODERN SCHOOLS
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In the 20th century, Phenomenology is
mainly used as the name for a philosophical movement the primary objective of
which is the direct investigation and description of phenomena
as consciously experienced, without theories
about their causal explanation and as free as possible from unexamined
preconceptions and presuppositions. The word itself is much older, going back at
least to the 18th century, when the Swiss-German mathematician and philosopher Johann
Heinrich Lambert applied it to that part of his theory
of knowledge that distinguishes truth from illusion and error. In the
19th century the word became associated chiefly with the Phänomenologie
des Geistes (1807; Phenomenology
of Mind, 2nd ed., 1931), by G.W.F. Hegel,
who traced the development of the human spirit from mere sense experience to
"absolute knowledge." The so-called Phenomenological movement did not
get under way, however, until early in the 20th century. But even this new
Phenomenology includes so many varieties that a comprehensive characterization
of the subject requires their consideration. (see also metaphysics) |
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In view of the spectrum of
Phenomenologies that have issued directly or indirectly from the original work
of the Austrian-born German philosopher Edmund Husserl,
it is not easy to find a common denominator for such a movement beyond its
common source. But similar situations occur in other philosophical as well as
non-philosophical movements. |
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Although, as seen from Husserl's last
perspective, all departures from his own views could only appear as heresies, a
more generous assessment will show that all those who consider themselves
Phenomenologists subscribe, for instance, to his watchword, Zu
den Sachen selbst ("To the things themselves"), by which they
meant the taking of a fresh approach to concretely experienced phenomena, an
approach, as free as possible from conceptual presuppositions, and the attempt
to describe them as faithfully as possible. Moreover, most adherents to
Phenomenology hold that it is possible to obtain insights into the essential
structures and the essential relationships of these phenomena on the basis of a
careful study of concrete examples supplied by experience or imagination and by
a systematic variation of these examples in imagination. Some Phenomenologists
also stress the need for studying the ways in which the phenomena appear in
men's object-directed ("intentional") consciousness. (see also essence, intentionality) |
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Beyond this merely static aspect of
appearance, some also want to investigate its genetic aspect, exploring, for
instance, how the phenomenon intended--for example, a book--shapes
("constitutes") itself in the typical unfolding of experience. Husserl
himself believed that such studies require a previous suspension of belief in
the reality of these phenomena, whereas others consider it not indispensable but
helpful. Finally, in existential Phenomenology, the meanings of certain
phenomena (such as anxiety) are explored by a special interpretive
("hermeneutic") Phenomenology, the methodology of which needs further
clarification. (see also epoche) |
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It may also be helpful to bring out the
distinctive essence of Phenomenology by confronting it with some of its
philosophical neighbours. In contrast to Positivism
and to traditional Empiricism, from which
Husserl's teacher at Vienna, Franz Brentano, had started out and with which
Phenomenology shares an unconditional respect for the positive data of
experience ("We are the true positivists," Husserl claimed in his Ideen
zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie
[1913; "Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological
Philosophy"]), Phenomenology does not restrict these data to the range of
sense experience but admits on equal terms such non-sensory
("categorial") data as relations and values, as long as they present
themselves intuitively. Consequently, Phenomenology does not reject universals;
and, in addition to analytic a priori statements, whose predicates are logically
contained in the subjects and the truth of which is independent of experience (e.g.,
"All material bodies have extension"), and the synthetic a
posteriori statements, whose subjects do not logically imply the predicate and
the truth of which is dependent on experience (e.g.,
"My shirt is red"), it recognizes knowledge of the synthetic
a priori, a proposition whose subject does not logically imply the
predicate but one in which the truth is independent of experience (e.g.,
"Every colour is extended"), based on insight into essential
relationships within the empirically given. (see also intuition,
analytic proposition , a
priori knowledge, synthetic proposition) |
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In contrast to phenomenalism,
a position in the theory of knowledge (epistemology) with which it is often
confused, Phenomenology--which is not primarily an epistemological
theory--accepts neither the rigid division between appearance and reality nor
the narrower view that phenomena are all that there is (sensations or permanent
possibilities of sensations). These are questions on which Phenomenology as such
keeps an open mind--pointing out, however, that phenomenalism overlooks the
complexities of the intentional structure of men's consciousness of the
phenomena. |
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In contrast to a Rationalism
that stresses conceptual reasoning at the expense of experience, Phenomenology
insists on the intuitive foundation and verification of concepts and especially
of all a priori claims; in this sense it is a philosophy from "below,"
not from "above." |
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In contrast to an Analytic
philosophy that substitutes simplified constructions for the immediately
given in all of its complexity and applies "Ockham's razor,"
Phenomenology resists all transforming reinterpretations of the given, analyzing
it for what it is in itself and on its own terms. |
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Phenomenology shares with Linguistic
Analysis a respect for the distinctions between the phenomena reflected in the
shades of meaning of ordinary language as a possible starting point for
phenomenological analyses. Phenomenologists, however, do not think that the
study of ordinary language is a sufficient basis
for studying the phenomena, because ordinary language cannot and need not
completely reveal the complexity of phenomena. |
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In contrast to an Existential philosophy
that believes that human existence is unfit for phenomenological analysis and
description, because it tries to objectify the unobjectifiable, Phenomenology
holds that it can and must deal with these phenomena, however cautiously, as
well as other intricate phenomena outside the human existence. (see also Existentialism) |
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(H.Sp.) |
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Phenomenology was not founded; it grew.
Its fountainhead was Edmund Husserl, who held professorships at Göttingen
and Freiburg im Breisgau and who wrote Die
Idee der Phänomenologie (The Idea
of Phenomenology, 1964) in 1906. Yet, even for Husserl, the conception of
Phenomenology as a new method destined to supply a new foundation for both
philosophy and science developed only gradually and kept changing to the very
end of his career. Trained as a mathematician, Husserl was attracted to
philosophy by Franz Brentano, whose descriptive psychology
seemed to offer a solid basis for a scientific philosophy. The concept of
intentionality, the directedness of the consciousness toward an object, which is
a basic concept in Phenomenology, was already present in Brentano's Psychologie
vom empirischen Standpunkte (1874): "And thus we can define
psychic phenomena by saying that they are those phenomena which, precisely as
intentional, contain an object in themselves." Brentano dissociated himself
here from Sir William Hamilton, known for his
philosophy of the "unconditioned," who had attributed the character of
intentionality to the realms of thought and desire only, to the exclusion of
that of feeling. (see also science,
philosophy of) |
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The point of departure of Husserl's
investigation is to be found in the treatise Der Begriff der Zahl (1887; "The Concept of Number"),
which was later expanded into Philosophie
der Arithmetik: Psychologische und logische Untersuchungen (1891). Numbers
are not found ready-made in nature but result from a mental achievement. Here
Husserl was preoccupied with the question of how something like the constitution
of numbers ever comes about. This treatise is important to Husserl's later
development for two reasons: first, because it contains the first traces of the
concepts "reflection," "constitution,"
"description," and the "founding constitution of meaning,"
concepts that later played a predominant role in Husserl's philosophy; and
second, because it reflected two events--(1) a criticism of his book by Gottlob
Frege, a seminal thinker in logic, who
had charged him with confusing logical and psychological considerations, and (2)
Husserl's discovery of the Wissenschaftslehre
(1837; Logic and Scientific Methods, 1971)
by Bernard Bolzano, a Bohemian mathematician,
theologian, and social moralist, and his view concerning "truths in
themselves"--which led Husserl to an analysis and critical discussion of psychologism,
the view that psychology could be used as a foundation for pure logic, which he
clearly felt to be no longer possible. |
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In the first volume of Logische Untersuchungen (1900-01; Logical
Investigations, 1970), entitled Prolegomena,
Husserl began with a criticism of psychologism. And yet he continued by
conducting a careful investigation of the psychic acts in and through which
logical structures are given; these investigations, too, could give the
impression of being descriptive psychological investigations, though they were
not conceived of in this way by the author. For the issue at stake was the
discovery of the essential structure of these acts. Here Brentano's concept of
intentionality received a richer and more refined signification. Husserl
distinguished between perceptual and categorical intuition and stated that the
latter's theme lies in logical relationships. The real concern of Phenomenology
was clearly formulated for the first time in his Logos
article, "Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft" (1910-11; Philosophy as Rigorous Science, 1965). In this work Husserl wrestled
with two unacceptable views: naturalism and
historicism. |
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Naturalism attempts to apply the methods
of the natural sciences to all other domains of knowledge, including the realm
of consciousness. Reason becomes naturalized. Although an attempt is then made
to find a foundation for the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften)
by means of experimental psychology, it proves to be impossible, because in so
doing one is unable to grasp precisely what is at stake in knowledge as found in
the natural sciences. |
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What a philosopher must examine is the
relationship between consciousness and Being;
and in doing so, he must realize that from the standpoint of epistemology, Being
is accessible to him only as a correlate of conscious acts. He must thus pay
careful attention to what occurs in these acts. This can be done only by a
science that tries to understand the very essence of consciousness; and this is
the task that Phenomenology has set for itself. Because clarification of the
various types of objects must follow from the basic modes of consciousness,
Husserl's thought remained close to psychology. In contradistinction to what is
the case in psychology, however, in Phenomenology, consciousness is thematized
in a very special and definite way, viz., just insofar as consciousness is the
locus in which every manner of constituting and founding meaning must take
place. In man's intuition, conscious occurrences must be given immediately in
order to avoid introducing at the same time certain interpretations. The nature
of such processes as perception, representation, imagination, judgment, and
feeling must be grasped in immediate self-givenness. The call "To the
things themselves" is not a demand for realism, because the things at stake
are the acts of consciousness and the objective entities that get constituted in
them: these things form the realm of what Husserl calls the phenomena. |
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Thus, the objects of Phenomenology are
"absolute data grasped in pure, immanent intuition," and its goal is
to discover the essential structures of the acts (noesis) and the objective entities that correspond to them (noema). |
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On the other hand, Phenomenology must
also be distinguished from historicism, a
philosophy that stresses the immersion of all thinkers within a particular
historical setting. Husserl objected to historicism because it implies
relativism. He gave credit to Wilhelm Dilthey,
author of "Entwürfe zur Kritik der historischen Vernunft"
("Outlines for the Critique of Historical Reason," in Gesammelte
Schriften, 12 vol. [1914-36], vol. 5, 6), for having developed a
typification of world views, but he doubted and even rejected the skepticism
that flows necessarily from the relativity of the various types. History is
concerned with facts, whereas Phenomenology deals with the knowledge of
essences. To Husserl, Dilthey's doctrine of world views was incapable of
achieving the rigour required by genuine science. Contrary to all of the
practical tendencies found in world views, Husserl demanded that philosophy be
founded as a rigorous science. Its task implies that nothing be accepted as
given beforehand but that the philosopher should try to find the way back to the
real beginnings. This is tantamount to saying, however, that he must try to find
the way to the foundations of meaning that are found in consciousness. Just as
for Immanuel Kant the empirical has merely relative validity and never an
absolute, or apodictic, validity, so for Husserl, too, what is to be searched
for is a scientific knowledge of essences in contradistinction to a scientific
knowledge of facts. (see also history, philosophy of) |
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The basic method of all Phenomenological
investigation, as Husserl developed it himself--and on which he worked
throughout his entire lifetime--is the "reduction": the existence of
the world must be put between brackets, not because the philospher should doubt
it but merely because this existing world is not the very theme of
Phenomenology; its theme is rather the manner in which knowledge of the world
comes about. The first step of the reduction consists in the phenomenological
reduction, through which all that is given is changed into a phenomenon in the
sense of that which is known in and by consciousness; for this kind of
knowing--which is to be taken in a very broad sense as including every mode of
consciousness, such as intuition, recollection, imagination, and judgment--is
here all-important. There are several reasons why Husserl gave a privileged
position to intuition: among them is the fact that intuition is that act in
which a person grasps something immediately in its bodily presence and also that
it is a primordially given act upon which all of the rest is to be founded.
Furthermore, Husserl's stress on intuition must be understood as a refutation of
any merely speculative approach to philosophy. (see also bracketing) |
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This reduction
reverses--"re-flects"--man's direction of sight from a straightforward
orientation toward objects to an orientation toward consciousness. |
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The second step is to be found in the eidetic
reduction. To get hold of consciousness is not sufficient; on the
contrary, the various acts of consciousness must be made accessible in such a
way that their essences--their universal and unchangeable structures--can be
grasped. In the eidetic reduction one must forego everything that is factual and
merely occurs in this way or that. A means of grasping the essence is the Wesensschau,
the intuition of essences and essential structures. This is not a mysterious
kind of intuition. Rather, one forms a multiplicity of variations of what is
given, and while maintaining the multiplicity, one focusses attention on what
remains unchanged in the multiplicity; i.e.,
the essence is that identical something that continuously maintains itself
during the process of variation. Husserl, therefore, called it the invariant. |
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To this point, the discussion of
reduction has remained within the realm of psychology, albeit a new--namely, a
phenomenological--psychology. The second step must now be completed by a third,
the transcendental reduction. It consists in a reversion to the achievements of
that consciousness that Husserl, following Kant, called transcendental
consciousness, although he conceived of it in his own way. The most fundamental
event occurring in this consciousness is the creation of time awareness through
the acts of protention (future) and retention (past), which is something like a
self-constitution. To do phenomenology was for Husserl tantamount to returning
to the transcendental ego as the ground for the
foundation and constitution (or making) of all meaning
(German Sinn). Only when a person has
reached this ground can he achieve the insight that makes his comportment
transparent in its entirety and makes him understand how meaning comes about,
how meaning is based upon meaning like strata in a process of sedimentation.
(see also transcendental
idealism) |
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Husserl worked on the clarification of
the transcendental reduction until the very end of his life. It was precisely
the further development of the transcendental reduction that led to a division
of the Phenomenological movement and to the formation of a school that refused
to become involved in this kind of system of problems (see below Phenomenology
of essences ). |
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In an effort to express what it is to
which this method gives access, Husserl wrote: |
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In all pure psychic experiences (in
perceiving something, judging about something, willing something, enjoying
something, hoping for something, etc.) there is found inherently a
being-directed-toward . . . . Experiences are intentional. This
being-directed-toward is not just joined to the experience by way of a mere
addition, and occasionally as an accidental reaction, as if experiences could be
what they are without the intentional relation. With the intentionality of the
experiences there announces itself, rather, the essential structure of the
purely psychical. |
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The phenomenological investigator must
examine the different forms of intentionality in a reflective attitude because
it is precisely in and through the corresponding intentionality that each domain
of objects becomes accessible to him. Husserl took as his point of departure
mathematical entities and later examined logical structures, in order finally to
achieve the insight that each being must be grasped in its correlation to
consciousness, because each datum becomes accessible to a person only insofar as
it has meaning for him. From this position, regional ontologies, or realms of
being, develop: for instance, those dealing with the region of
"nature," the region of "the psychic," or the region of
"the spirit." Moreover, Husserl distinguished formal ontologies--such
as the region of the logical--from material ontologies. |
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In order to be able to investigate a
regional ontology, it is first necessary to discover and examine the founding
act by which realities in this realm are constituted. For Husserl, constitution
does not mean the creation or fabrication of a thing or object by a subject; it
means the founding constitution of its meaning. There is meaning only for
consciousness. All founding constitution of meaning is made possible by
transcendental consciousness. Speaking of this transcendental motif, Husserl
wrote: |
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It is the motif of questioning back to
the last source of all achievements of knowledge, of reflection in which the
knower reflects on himself and his knowing life, in which all the scientific
constructs which have validity for him, occur teleologically, and as permanent
acquisitions are kept and become freely available to him. |
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In the realm of such transcendental
problems, it is necessary to examine how all of the categories in and through
which one understands mundane beings or purely formal entities originate from
specific modes of consciousness. In Husserl's view, the temporalization must be
conceived as a kind of primordial constitution of transcendental consciousness
itself. |
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Understood in this way, Phenomenology
does not place itself outside the sciences but, rather, attempts to make
understandable what takes place in the various sciences and, thus, to thematize
the unquestioned presuppositions of the sciences. |
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In his last publication, Die
Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie:
Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie (1936; The
Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, 1970), Husserl
arrived at the life-world--the world as shaped
within the immediate experience of each man--by questioning back to the
foundations that the sciences presuppose. In Die Krisis he analyzed the grounds that had led to the European
crisis of culture and philosophy, which found its immediate expression in the
contrast between the great successes of the sciences of nature and the failure
of the sciences of man. In the modern era, scientific knowledge had become
fragmented into an objectivistic-physicalist and a transcendental knowledge.
Until recently this split could not be overcome. It led, rather, to the attempt
to develop the sciences of man in accordance with the procedures used in the
exact sciences of nature (naturalism)--an attempt doomed to failure. In
opposition to this attempt, Husserl wished to show that in the new approach one
must reflect on the activities of the scientists. |
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As the immediately given world, this
merely subjective world, was forgotten in the scientific thematization, the
accomplishing subject, too, was forgotten and the scientist himself was not
thematized. |
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Husserl demonstrated this point by using
the example of Galileo and his mathematization of our world. The truth
characteristic of the life-world is by no means an inferior form of truth when
compared to the exact, scientific truth but is, rather, always a truth already
presupposed in all scientific research. That is why Husserl claimed that an
ontology of the life-world must be developed--i.e., a systematic analysis of the constitutive achievements the
result of which is the life-world, a life-world that, in turn, is the foundation
of all scientific constitutions of meaning. The stimulating change that occurred
here consists in the fact that truth is no longer measured after the criterion
of an exact determination. For what is decisive is not the exactness but,
rather, the part played by the founding act. |
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It is in this connection that, rather
abruptly, historicity, too, became relevant for Husserl. He began to reflect
upon the emergence of philosophy among the Greeks and on its significance as a
new mode of scientific knowledge oriented toward infinity; and he interpreted
the philosophy of René Descartes, often called the father of modern
philosophy, as the point at which the split into the two research
directions--physicalist objectivism and transcendental subjectivism--came about.
Phenomenology must overcome this split, he held, and thus help mankind to live
according to the demands of reason. In view of the fact that reason is the
typical characteristic of man, mankind must find itself again through
Phenomenology. (see also science,
philosophy of) |
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A different type of Phenomenology, the
Phenomenology of essences, developed from a tangential continuation of that of
the Logische Untersuchungen. Its
supporters were Husserl's students in Göttingen and a group of young
philosophers in Munich, originally students of Theodor
Lipps, a Munich psychologist and philosopher--students who had turned
away from Lipp's psychologism and discovered powerful support in Husserl. The
Phenomenological movement, which then began to take shape, found its most
tangible expression in the publication of the Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung (1913-30),
a Phenomenological yearbook with Husserl as its main editor, the preface of
which defined Phenomenology in terms of a return to intuition (Anschauung)
and to the essential insights (Wesenseinsichten)
derived from it as the ultimate foundation of all philosophy. |
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The 11 volumes of the Jahrbuch contained, in addition to Husserl's own works, the most
important fruits of the movement in its broader application. Of the co-editors,
Alexander Pfänder contributed chiefly to the development of
phenomenological psychology and pure logic but developed also the outlines of a
complete Phenomenological philosophy. Moritz Geiger applied the new approach
particularly to aesthetics and Adolf Reinach to the philosophy of law. The most
original and dynamic of Husserl's early associates, however, was Max
Scheler, who had joined the Munich group and who did his major
Phenomenological work on problems of value and obligation. A Polish philosopher,
Roman Ingarden, did major work in structural
ontology and analyzed the structures of various works of art in its light;
Hedwig Conrad-Martius, a cosmic Realist at the University of Munich, worked
intensively in the ontology of nature; and others made comparable contributions
in other fields of philosophy. None of these early Phenomenologists, however,
followed Husserl's road to transcendental Idealism; and some tried to develop a
Phenomenology along the lines of Realism. |
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Martin Heidegger,
one of Germany's foremost philosophers at the middle of the 20th century, was
inspired to philosophy through Brentano's work Von
der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles (1862; "On the
Multifarious Meaning of Being According to Aristotle"). While he was still
studying theology, from 1910 to 1911, Heidegger encountered Husserl's Logische
Untersuchungen. From then on he pursued the course of Phenomenology with the
greatest interest, and from 1916 he belonged to the narrow circle of students
and followers of the movement. The typical character of the Phenomenological
intuition was at that time the focus of Husserl's seminar exercises. To be sure,
there appeared very early a difference between Husserl and Heidegger. Discussing
and absorbing the works of the important philosophers in the history of
metaphysics was, for Heidegger, an indispensable task, whereas Husserl
repeatedly stressed the significance of a radically new beginning and--with few
exceptions (among them Descartes, Locke, Hume, and Kant)--wished to bracket the
history of philosophy. |
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Heidegger's basic work, Sein
und Zeit (1927; Being and Time,
1962), which was dedicated to Husserl, strongly acknowledged that its author
was indebted to Phenomenology. In it, Phenomenology was understood as a
methodological concept--a concept that was conceived by Heidegger in an original
way and resulted from his questioning back to the meanings of the Greek concepts
of phainomenon and logos.
Phainomenon is "that which shows itself from itself," but together
with the concept of logos, it means
"to let that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in
which it shows itself from itself." This conception of Phenomenology, which
relied more on Aristotle than on Husserl, constituted a change that was later to
lead to an estrangement between Husserl and Heidegger. For in Sein
und Zeit there is no longer a phenomenological reduction, a transcendental
ego, or an intuition of essences in Husserl's sense. Heidegger's new beginning
was, at the same time, a resumption of the basic question of philosophy: that
concerning the meaning (Sinn) of
Being. His manner of questioning can be defined as hermeneutical in that it
proceeds from the interpretation of man's situation. What he thematized is,
thus, the explanation of what is already understood. |
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At the heart of Sein und Zeit lies Heidegger's analysis of the one (the man) who
asks the question--who is capable of asking the question--concerning Being, who
precisely through this capability occupies a privileged position in regard to
all other beings, viz., that of Dasein
(literally, "being there"). By conceiving of Dasein
as being-in-the-world, Heidegger made the ancient problem concerning the
relationship between subject and object superfluous. The basic structures of Dasein
are primordial moodness (Befindlichkeit),
understanding (Verstehen), and logos (Rede).
These structures are, in turn, founded in the temporalization of Dasein,
from which future, having-been (past), and present originate. The two basic
possibilities of man's existing (from the Latin ex and sistere, "standing
out from") are those in which Dasein either
comes to its self (called authenticity) or loses itself (called inauthenticity);
Dasein is inauthentic, for example,
when it lets the possibilities of the choice for its own "ek-sisting"
be given to it by others instead of deciding for itself. Heidegger's concept of
care (Sorge, cura) has nothing to do
with distress (Bekümmernis) but
includes the unity of the articulated moments of man's being-in-the-world. (see
also authentic
existence) |
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The hermeneutic character of Heidegger's
thought manifested itself also in his interpretation of poetry, in which he
discovered a congenial spirit in Friedrich Hölderlin,
one of Germany's greater poets, of whose poetry he inaugurated a completely new
interpretation; but it manifested itself equally well in his interpretation of
metaphysics, which Heidegger tried to envision as an occurrence determined by
the forgottenness of Being, an occurrence in the centre of which man finds
himself and of which the clearest manifestation is to be found in
"technicity," the attempt of modern man to dominate the earth by
controlling beings that are considered as objects. |
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The concept of transcendental
consciousness, which was central for Husserl, is not found in Heidegger--which
clearly shows how Heidegger, in Sein und
Zeit, had already dissociated himself from Husserl's Phenomenology. |
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Eugen Fink, for several years Husserl's
collaborator, whose essay "Die phänomenologische Philosophie Edmund
Husserls in der gegenwärtigen Kritik" (1933) led to a radicalization
of Husserl's philosophical, transcendental Idealism, later turned in another
direction, one that approached Heidegger's position and divorced itself at the
same time from that of Husserl. |
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Ludwig Landgrebe, who was Husserl's
personal assistant for many years, published in 1938 Erfahrung und Urteil ("Experience and Judgment"), the
first of Husserl's posthumous works devoted to the genealogy of logic. Among
German-language scholars, Landgrebe remained closest to Husserl's original views
and has developed them consistently in several works. |
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Following upon the work of Husserl,
Phenomenology spread into a worldwide movement. |
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One of the first French authors to
become familiar with Husserl's philosophy was Emmanuel
Lévinas, a pluralistic Personalist, who combined ideas from
Husserl and Heidegger in a very personal way. Similarly, Jean-Paul
Sartre, the leading Existentialist of France, took his point of departure
from the philosophies of Husserl and Heidegger. His first works, L'Imagination
(1936; Imagination: A Psychological
Critique, 1962) and L'Imaginaire:
Psychologie phénoménologique de l'imagination (1940; The Psychology of Imagination, 1950), remain completely within the
context of Husserl's analyses of consciousness. Sartre explains the distinction
between perceptual and imaginative consciousness with the help of Husserl's
concept of intentionality, and he frequently employs the method of ideation (Wesensschau). |
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In L'Être
et le néant (1943; Being and Nothingness, 1956), an essay on Phenomenological ontology,
it is obvious that Sartre borrowed from Heidegger. Some passages from
Heidegger's Was
ist Metaphysik? (1929; What Is
Metaphysics?, 1949), in fact, are copied literally. The meaning of
nothingness, which Heidegger in this lecture made the theme of his
investigations, became for Sartre the guiding question. Sartre departs from
Heidegger's analytic of Dasein and
introduces the position of consciousness (which Heidegger had overcome). |
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The distinction between being-in-itself
(en-soi) and being-for-itself (pour-soi)
pervades the entire investigation. The in-itself is the opaque, matter-like
substance that remains the same, whereas the for-itself is consciousness
permeated by nothingness. The influence of the Idealist G.W.F. Hegel becomes
apparent when the author tries to interpret everything in a dialectical
way; i.e., through a tension of
opposites. The dialectic of men's being-with-one-another is central: thus,
seeing and being-seen correspond to dominating and being-dominated. The basic
characteristic of being-for-itself is bad faith (mauvaise foi), which cannot be overcome because facticity
(being-already) and transcendence (being-able-to-be) cannot be combined. |
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The Phenomenological character of
Sartre's analyses of consciousness consists in the way in which he elucidates
certain modes of behaviour: love, hatred, sadism, masochism, and indifference.
Although Sartre sees and describes these forms of behaviour strikingly and
precisely, he limits himself to those modes that fit his philosophical
interpretation. The significance of psychology, recognized by Husserl, emerges
again in Sartre and leads to a demand for an Existential psychoanalysis. |
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Sartre's definition of man
as a being of possibilities that finds or loses itself in the choice that it
makes in regard to itself refers to Heidegger's definition of Dasein
as a being that has to materialize itself. For Sartre, freedom is the basic
characteristic of man; thus Sartre belongs to the tradition of the great French
moralist philosophers. |
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In his later works, as in his Critique
de la raison dialectique (1960; Search
for a Method, 1963), Sartre turned to Marxism, though he developed a method
of understanding that was influenced by hermeneutics. Here the choice made by
the individual is limited by social and psychological conditions. Sartre's
outstanding two-volume interpretation of Flaubert, L'Idiot de la famille; Gustave Flaubert de 1821-1857
(1971), is an example of this new method of understanding and
interpretation, which combines Marxist elements with interpretations of a highly
personal nature taken from depth psychology. |
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Maurice Merleau-Ponty
(died 1961), who, together with Sartre and his associate Simone de Beauvoir, a
writer and novelist, was an important representative of French Existentialism,
was at the same time the most important French Phenomenologist. His works, La
Structure du comportement (1942; Structure
of Behaviour, 1963) and Phénoménologie
de la perception (1945; Phenomenology
of Perception, 1962), were the most original further developments and
applications of Phenomenology to come from France. Merleau-Ponty gave a new
interpretation of the meaning of the human body from the viewpoint of
Phenomenology and, connected with this, of man's perception of space, the
natural world, temporality, and freedom. |
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Starting from Husserl's later
phenomenology of the life-world, Merleau-Ponty anchored the phenomena of
perception in the phenomenology of the lived body (the body as it is experienced
and experiences), in which the perceiving subject is incarnated as the mediating
link to the phenomenal world. Such a phenomenology of human "presence"
in the world was also to offer an alternative to the rigid dichotomy between
Idealism and Realism, in which consciousness and world could be reciprocally
related. Phenomenology thus became a way of showing the essential involvement of
human existence in the world, starting with everyday perception. |
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Although it is true that Merleau-Ponty
was originally close to Husserl in his thought, he later developed noticeably in
the direction of Heidegger, a change that became particularly manifest in L'Oeil
et l'esprit (1964; "Eye and Mind," in The
Primacy of Perception, 1964). |
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Paul Ricoeur,
a student of the volitional experience, whose translation of Husserl's Ideen
zu einer reinen Phänomenologie brought Husserl closer to the younger
French generation, writes in a Phenomenological vein but with the intention of
further developing Husserl's conception of Phenomenology. Ricoeur's two-volume Philosophie
de la volonté (1950-60; "Philosophy of the Will") also
deals with the problems involved in the theological concept of guilt. |
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Suzanne Bachelard, who in 1957
translated Husserl's Formale und
transzendentale Logik: Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft, has
pointed to the significance of Husserl for modern logic; and Jacques
Derrida, an original French thinker on the limits of thought and
language, has combined Phenomenology and Structuralism in his interpretation of
literature. |
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After World War II, interest in
Phenomenology sprang up again in its own homeland. The influence of Ludwig
Landgrebe in Cologne has been particularly felt, as have the activities of the
Husserl Archives in Cologne, with editions by Walter Biemel, who also published Philosophische
Analysen zur Kunst der Gegenwart (1968; "Philosophical Analyses of
Contemporary Art") and essays on the relationships between Husserl and
Heidegger. The circle around Gerhard Funke in Mainz, author of Phänomenologie--Metaphysik
oder Methode? (1966), has also had a positive influence. |
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In Belgium, at the Catholic
University of Louvain, are located the entire posthumous works of
Husserl, as well as his personal library. Thanks to the initiative of H.L. Van
Breda, founder of the Husserl Archives, several scholars worked intensively on
the manuscripts for several decades. By 1972, 12 volumes of collected works had
been published. Van Breda was also the director of the Phaenomenologica series--totalling 42 volumes by 1972--in which the
most important publications in the field of Phenomenology (taken in a very broad
sense) have been published. Thus, mainly through Van Breda's efforts, Louvain
has become the most important centre for Phenomenology. Van Breda also organized
international colloquia on Phenomenology. The influence of Alphonse de Waelhens,
a Belgian philosopher of fresh experience and author of Phénoménologie
et vérité (1953) and Existence
et signification (1958), also bears mentioning. |
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In The Netherlands, Stephan Strasser,
oriented particularly toward phenomenological psychology, has been especially
influential. And in Italy, the Phenomenology circle has centred around Enzo
Paci. The Husserl scholar Jan Patocka, a prominent expert in Phenomenology as
well as in the metaphysical tradition, was influential in Czechoslovakia; in
Poland, Roman Ingarden represented the cause of Phenomenology; and there have
also been important representatives in such countries as Portugal, England,
South America, Japan, and India. |
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Phenomenology in the United States has
lived a rather marginal existence for quite some time, notwithstanding the
meritorious journal of Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research founded by Husserl's student Marvin Farber, who is
also the author of The Foundation of
Phenomenology (1943). More recently, however, a noticeable change has taken
place, chiefly because of the work of two scholars at the New School for Social
Research in New York, Alfred Schütz, an Austrian-born sociologist and
student of human cognition (died 1959), and Aron Gurwitsch, a Lithuanian-born
philosopher. Schütz came early to Phenomenology, developing a social
science on a phenomenological basis. Gurwitsch, author of Théorie du champ de la conscience (1957; The Field of Consciousness, 1964), came to Phenomenology through his
study of the Gestalt psychologists Adhemar Gelb and Kurt Goldstein. While in
Paris, Gurwitsch influenced Merleau-Ponty. The essays on Phenomenology published
by Gurwitsch in the United States are among the best. His comprehensive
knowledge ranges from mathematics, via the natural sciences, to psychology and
metaphysics. The work The Phenomenological
Movement (2nd ed., 1965), by Herbert Spiegelberg, an Alsatian-American
Phenomenologist, is the movement's first encompassing historical presentation. |
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Of greater significance is the role of
Phenomenology outside of philosophy proper in stimulating or reinforcing
phenomenological tendencies in such fields as mathematics and the biological
sciences. Much stronger was its impact on psychology, in which Franz Brentano
and the German Carl Stumpf had prepared the ground and in which the U.S.
psychologist William James, the Würzburg school, and the Gestalt
psychologists had worked along parallel lines. But Phenomenology has probably
made its strongest contribution in the field of psychopathology, in which the
German Karl Jaspers, a foremost contemporary
Existentialist, stressed the importance of phenomenological exploration of a
patient's subjective experience. Jaspers was followed by the Swiss Ludwig
Binswanger and several others. The Phenomenological strand is also very
pronounced in American Existential psychiatry
and has affected sociology, history, and the study of religion. (see also Existentialism,
psychology) |
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At the turn of the fourth quarter of the
20th century, it remained to be seen whether Phenomenology could make solid
contributions to philosophical knowledge. To this end, it needed to develop
rigorous standards, which had not always been observed by some of its most
brilliant practitioners, such as Max Scheler, and which were likely to be
violated in a philosophy the ultimate appeal of which had to be made to
intuitive verification. With this proviso, Phenomenology may well be qualified
not only to become a bridge for better international communication in philosophy
but also to shed new light on philosophical problems old and new, to reclaim for
philosophy parts of man's quotidian world that have been abandoned by science as
too private and too subjective, and, finally, to give access to layers of man's
experience unprobed in everyday living, thus providing deeper foundations for
both science and life. (W.Bi.) |
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