Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology: nature, spririt, and life , written by Andrea Staiti (2014) (original) (raw)
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Review of Andrea Staiti, Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology: Nature, Spirit and Life
Universa. Recensioni di filosofia, 2016
This book comprises both an inquiry into the history of German philosophy in the early 20th century and a critical exposition of Husserl’s transcendental thinking. The investigation follows the method of Konstellationsforschung which, instead of privileging individual authors, describes “spaces of thinking”. Indeed, far from being an isolated thinker, Husserl developed his own thought in constant dialogue and theoretical exchange with the contemporary German philosophy – in particular, with the Southwestern Neo-kantian School (Windelband, Rickert, Lask) and so-called Lebensphilosophie (Simmel, Dilthey). The book offers a historical understanding of Husserl’s phenomenology as a critical (and original) answer to the main issue arising from this context, i.e. the problematic distinction between the natural sciences and Geisteswissenschaften. In this view, the stratified richness of the sphere of Geist and its intertwinement with the sphere of Leben constitute the points of departure of Husserl’s transcendental philosophy, which reveals itself as being rooted in a “Kantian liberation narrative” (p.222).
Husserl's late claim of that transcendental logic is self-founded stands in a puzzling relation with the facticity of nature. This relation concerns issues such as the traceableness of a " living present " in the immanence of living consciousness. The article considers this matter through a specific perspective, gained by reference to the project of a transcendental foundation of the science of nature. This project requires the problematic possibility of a formal determination of facticity. One could characterize the phenomenological finding of a " living present " as Husserl's attempt to resolve the discrepancy between fact and form in a " living being " which consists of both actual materiality and transcendental ideality. This conciliatory solution remains questionable, given the impossibility to provide an a priori foundation of this synthetic moment through the self-reflexive movement of transcendental logic. However, the systematic project of transcendental phenomenology as such entails the question concerning the a priori foundation of our ordinary knowledge of facts. It seems, then, to require a solution of this sort. The problem of grounding the scientific knowledge of natural facts dates back at least to Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. So does the need for the definition of an empirical moment of this grounding. A discussion of Kant's Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft presents an aporetic facet of the way in which transcendental philosophy responds to this need. An analogous impasse occurs in Husserl's mature work. The concept of " living present " holds a central role in defining Husserl's stance towards this stalemate. The analysis of this role aims to clarify both Husserl's specific position in the broader context of transcendental philosophy, and an aspect of the transcendental foundation of the science of nature. I conclude that this foundation must encompass a factual, non-formalizable element: a material residue, required in order to complete its reflexive movement.
Introduction. Metodo. Thematic Issue on "Naturalism and Subjectivity"
Over the last decades, naturalism has progressively become one of the leading positions in the philosophical debate. In analogy with the linguistic turn, the contemporary trend in philosophy has even been characterized as a turn from anti-naturalism to naturalism. 1 This is particularly true for Anglo-American philosophy, where naturalistic theories have been proposed in such different domains as the theory of knowledge, the theory of mind, and the ethical discourse. Yet, it is particularly with respect to the theory of mind and consciousness studies that the debate on naturalism has met phenomenology. Since the seminal studies published in Naturalizing Phenomenology, 2 different attempts have been made to "naturalize" the phenomenological analyses of consciousness and subjectivity, and different ideas regarding what such a naturalization would amount to have been proposed. Both the critical and the more sympathetic reactions to the project of naturalizing phenomenology reveal that a thorough confrontation with the problems raised by naturalism in its different forms represents relevant challenges for phenomenology. Such challenges concern, for instance, the proper understanding of the mind-body relationship, the status of idealities, and the meaning of the transcendental. On the other hand, however, subscribing to the idea of the irreducibility of the first-person perspective, phenomenology itself represents a challenge to the naturalizing projects. This is particularly true if one endorses the Husserlian understanding of phenomenology as transcendental philosophy.
Questions of Genesis as Questions of Validity: Husserl's New Approach to an Old Kantian Problem
It is a well-acknowledged fact that Husserl’s phenomenology can be adequately characterized as transcendental philosophy. Nevertheless, whether Husserl’s phenomenology and notion of the transcendental can be conceived as continuous with Kant’s critical philosophy and own transcendental program is a far more complicated issue. Since Iso Kern’s monumental work (Kern 1964), many have attempted to explain to what extent Husserl follows Kant and where exactly he has found the limits of critical philosophy In order to cut through some of the brambles in this monumental discussion, one might adopt a more modest and focused strategy by attempting to show that we cannot prima facie exclude the possibility of understanding the phenomenological use of ‘transcendental’ in its legitimate Kantian sense. To compare their uses of this term would require examining the various places where Husserl’s and Kant’s paths seem to diverge. In this paper, I will look at one such divergence, namely, Husserl’s later insistence (proper to his genetic phenomenological writings from at least 1917 onwards) on including in the field of phenomenological inquiry allegedly causal, pre-personal, cognitive mechanisms: e.g. instincts, drives, stimuli (Reize), passive associations, and the like. The inquiry into such themes seems to indicate a decided abandonment of Kantian transcendentalism and an endorsement of some hybrid form of a priori analysis and naturalistic inquiry. This evaluation of Husserl’s genetic phenomenology seems prima facie valid. However, my main contention in this paper will be that Husserl’s genetic analysis—at least in part—can be understood as a way of defending a transcendental perspective in the strong sense and overcoming some of the flaws Husserl found in Kant’s critical philosophy. I will claim that Husserl’s appeal to mechanisms is transcendentally motivated: if transcendental philosophy is the inquiry into the conditions of possibility of cognition in terms of the justification of the validity of our claims to knowledge, analyzing the mechanisms involved and their transcendental role contributes to understanding what rational grounding is and how rational norms can inform our cognitive processes. This is a question that troubled Husserl ever since the Prolegomena to Pure Logic and that led him to contend one of Kant’s central methodological distinctions, the one between questions of genesis and questions of validity.
Recent years have witnessed a revival of interest in transcendental philosophy, sparked by debates surrounding the question of the (im)possibility of naturalizing phenomenology. However, it is often the case that these debates fail to appreciate the alterations that the notion of " the transcendental " has undergone since Kant first introduced his system of transcendental idealism. The paper intends to critically examine some of these changes, arguing that Husserl's " transcendental turn " , although significantly altering Kant's original conception, remained faithful to the project of transcendentalism and wrought in its wake important resources for Merleau-Ponty's subsequent elaborations. The central part of the paper takes us through three conceptions — from Kant's " transcendentalism of faculties " , through Husserl's " transcendentalism of pure consciousness " , to Merleau-Ponty's " transcendentalism of the flesh " — arguing that they constitute a coherent transcendentalist " thought style ". In the final section , we claim that these progressive alterations in the meaning of the transcendental project can shed light on the debate about the (im)possibility of naturalizing phenomenology. We do this by providing a notion of the transcendental that makes room for the " truth of naturalism " , while simultaneously insisting on the necessity of a reverse (and supplementary) movement, namely that of phenomenalizing (" transcendentalizing ") nature.
2020
In this chapter we first propose an analysis of the Husserlian critique of the Kantian doctrine of the faculties (and of their transcendental division into sensibilityand understanding in the first Critique)and of the premises of a "transcendental psychologism" such as they are found in Kant,b ut in terms of the genesis of this doctrine in the empirical division of the faculties in the Anthropology,relying on critiques proposed by Foucault and D. Pradelle. By underscoring the radical differences between Kant and Husserl, we critique the notionaccording to which Husserlian phenomenologyisaKantian-inspired "philosophyofthe subject." We then propose an analysis of this critique in terms of amereological readingo fH usserl'su nderstanding of the ap riori in such aw ay as to examine and radicalize that de-anthropologization of the ap riori that is carried out or made possible by Husserl. Our hypothesis is that this overcomingofthe Kantian model, which is boggedd own by naturalistic and empiricist metaphysical presuppositions, requires both an overcomingo fc lassical hylomorphism in favor of the mereology of immanence and the transition to an a-subjective phenomenologyr equired in turn by an extension of this interpretative model to Husserl's "transcendental turn."