{"id":679,"date":"2024-07-03T19:05:29","date_gmt":"2024-07-03T16:05:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/artemiada\/eng\/?p=679"},"modified":"2025-11-20T19:45:00","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T16:45:00","slug":"edmund-husserl-phenomenology-philosophy-of-arithmetic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/artemiada\/eng\/2024\/07\/03\/edmund-husserl-phenomenology-philosophy-of-arithmetic\/","title":{"rendered":"Edmund Husserl. Phenomenology. Philosophy of arithmetic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Edmund Husserl<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0was born in 1859 in Prossnitz (Moravia). During his studies \u2013 from 1876 at the University of Leipzig, from 1878 in Berlin, from 1881 in Vienna \u2013 he was primarily interested in mathematics, physics and astronomy. Among his university mentors were the famous mathematicians Leopold Kronecker and Karl Weierstrass. In 1882, Husserl defended his dissertation on “Some Problems in the Theory of the Calculus of Variations”. After receiving his degree, he worked for some time as Weierstrass’s private assistant.<\/span><\/p>\n

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K. Weierstrass is a representative of critical mathematics, which is characterized by the desire for clear definitions of concepts and logical rigor of proofs. According to Weierstrass, a rigorous exposition of differential and integral calculus should begin with an explanation of the concept of number. This idea formed the basis of Husserl’s habilitation work “On the Concept of Number. Psychological Analysis” (1887).<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1882, in Vienna, under the influence of his friend Thomas Masaryk, Husserl made a thorough study of the New Testament, which resulted in a profound change in his thinking: he exchanged mathematics for philosophy in order, as he confessed 40 years later, \u201cto find the way to God and the righteous life through a kind of strict philosophical science.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1885\u201386, Husserl attended the philosophical lectures of Franz Brentano in Vienna. Brentano\u2019s work Psychology from an Empirical Point of View (1874) attracted Husserl by its skillful use of the method of reducing all philosophical concepts to their original sources in contemplation. Brentano used this method to disentangle and clarify the problem of consciousness. In his work Philosophy of Arithmetic: Psychological and Logical Investigations (1891), Husserl used this method to substantiate the concept of number in simple contemplations as mental acts.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1900 and 1901, two volumes of Logical Investigations were published. Volume 1 of Logical Investigations caused a great stir. Young philosophers united to study and develop the ideas expressed in this work. The history of the phenomenological movement began. Gradually, a real philosophical school was formed around Husserl.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1901, Husserl received a professorship in G\u00f6ttingen. During his G\u00f6ttingen years, Husserl published his second major work, Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy (1913), which brought him worldwide fame.<\/span><\/p>\n

After 1907, a circle of enthusiasts and researchers inspired by the Logical Investigations formed around Husserl, under the grandiose name of the Philosophical G\u00f6ttingen Society (Hans Lipps, Alexander Koyre, Roman Ingarden, Helmut Plessner, Arnold Zweig, and others). Here, a philosophical school was formed, close in spirit to Plato’s Academy: philosophy was taught not so much theoretically as practically; the teacher demonstrated his method in action and “trained” the students in its application. Here, as in the Academy, philosophy was not “taught” but “infected” with it – as in principle in any scientific school. Here, a special, intense intellectual atmosphere was created in which thought was sharpened and vision was clarified (the disadvantage was that, leaving this atmosphere, people often lost this clarity).<\/span><\/p>\n

From 1916 until his retirement in 1928, Husserl taught in Freiburg. Here, Heidegger was his collaborator. Heidegger helped prepare for publication Husserl’s lectures on the phenomenology of the inner consciousness of time (1928), which Edith Stein, Husserl’s long-time collaborator, compiled into a single text from lecture and research manuscripts. After his retirement (1928), Husserl continued to search for forms for a clearer exposition of his phenomenological method, for which he himself had to achieve a deeper understanding of it. In a matter of months, he wrote Formal and Transcendental Logic (1929). Soon after, Husserl gave lectures at the Sorbonne in Paris. Both lectures were published in French in 1931, and in German only in 1950 under the title Cartesian Meditations. His last work, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, was also published in German only in 1954. The basic ideas of this book were expressed by Husserl in the paper “Philosophy in the Crisis of European Humanity”, read in 1935 at a meeting of the Vienna Cultural Union, and in the paper “The Crisis of European Sciences and Psychology”, read in the same year 1935 at the University of Prague. After 1935, Husserl was deprived of the right to teach by the Nazi authorities because of his Jewish origin and, it must be added, because of the incompatibility of phenomenology with the Nazi ideology of “blood and soil”. Husserl was persecuted as one of those intellectuals who proclaimed the importance of true knowledge for all people, and therefore also for “non-humans”, whether blacks or Jews. Husserl was, from the Nazi point of view, the \u201csterile spirit without blood and race,\u201d the \u201ccrippled intellectuals\u201d whose spirituality is a \u201csickly luxuriance\u201d that has no connection with its \u201cfrail corporeality,\u201d full of hatred for \u201cgenuine spirituality, one with the soil.\u201d The Reich Ministry for Science, Pedagogy, and Public Education forced Husserl to leave the philosophical organization founded by Arthur Liebert in Belgrade. In 1937, he was denied permission to participate in the 9th International Congress of Philosophy in Paris. Only his closest friends continued to maintain relations with Husserl until his death in 1938.<\/span><\/p>\n

Husserl’s philosophical legacy comprises approximately 40,000 handwritten pages (most of them shorthand notes). The fact that they have survived is due to the Belgian Franciscan priest Herman Leo van Breda: shortly after Husserl’s death, saving the manuscripts from destruction by the National Socialists, he secretly took them out of the country. Van Breda initiated the founding of the Husserl Archive at the University of Louvain (Belgium). Husserl’s collected works (Husserliana) continue to be published to this day (volume XXXVI was published in 2003), providing ever new material for a better understanding of the phenomenological method and Husserl’s intentions for its application.<\/span><\/p>\n

“The Philosophy of Arithmetic.”<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0In his first book, Husserl sets the task of philosophically substantiating mathematics by means of reduction – reducing all mathematical operations to simple contemplations. Here one can trace a kinship with E. Mach’s method of “reducing concepts to contemplations,” but with the fundamental difference that Husserl reduces arithmetical concepts to intellectual contemplations, which were long ago rejected in post-Hegelian philosophy as a metaphysical prejudice. We see directly, – Husserl believes, – how two apples are “similar” to two houses and how they differ from three apples – therefore, we are able to contemplate numbers as such. True, this applies only to small numbers – the concepts of large numbers are connected with the experiences of small ones through counting operations carried out according to the laws of economy of thought.<\/span><\/p>\n

By proposing his version of the foundation of mathematics, Husserl entered into the old dispute about the foundations of mathematics between transcendentalists and empiricists, which began in the late 1830s in England. The transcendentalists defended the view that the axioms of geometry are not deducible from experience, but are derived from the transcendental foundations of all possible knowledge. The empiricists, on the other hand, tried to deduce the principles of geometry and mathematics in general from experience (using the method of induction). The opponents of transcendentalism, for example, asked: why are we so sure that straight lines, which we cannot imagine intersecting twice, cannot in fact intersect so? The transcendentalists, referring to Kant, claimed that this is our \u201cspatial intuition\u201d, which is not deducible from experience, but is its premise and determines the basic spatial properties of everything that is comprehended in experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

The significance of this dispute for philosophy was significant, since it was directly connected with the problem of the transcendental foundations of our knowledge: mathematics was the science in which it was most difficult to question the \u201ctranscendental\u201d nature of its principles, therefore \u201ctranscendentalists\u201d made every effort to protect this science from attempts to equate it with empirical knowledge. This dispute continued, sometimes dying down, sometimes flaring up again, until the end of the 19th century and was of great importance for the philosophical development of E. Husserl.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although the position of Husserl’s Philosophy of Arithmetic in this dispute was perceived as an attempt to provide a psychological justification for the principles of mathematics, nevertheless, at its core, Husserl’s position coincided with transcendentalism, quietly introducing intellectual contemplation as the “experiential basis” of mathematical concepts.<\/span><\/p>\n

The theoretical “struggle for the transcendental” also had an important moral aspect. It consisted of defending the values \u200b\u200bof traditional, so-called “universal” morality in the face of the destructive criticism of positivism, voluntarism and left-wing radicalism. After Hegel, it became commonplace that, just as there is no ahistorical truth and, accordingly, no presuppositionless knowledge, so there is no universal ethics, but rather a variety of ethics (in the plural), historically, socially and naturally conditioned. On the other hand, the concept of “God” could no longer, as before, be the basis of a single system of morality. Under these conditions, the supporters of universal “eternal” morality had no choice but to turn to transcendental timeless principles of knowledge and try to base moral principles on them. In addition, the “transcendental subject” acted as the only “eternal” (timeless) principle in man: for the intellectuals of the 19th century, The Christian concept of the soul was no longer acceptable as being heavily mythologized, but without an eternal beginning in man it would be pointless to talk about eternal moral values.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Logical Investigations”.<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0The main subject of the first volume of “Logical Investigations” is a critique of psychologism in logic. “Psychologism” is one of the positions in the dispute that unfolded at the end of the 19th century about the nature of logical laws and the relationship between logic and psychology. This problem goes back to Kant. Kant believed that there are two types of logic: formal – the science of the forms and laws of correct thinking, which acquire real meaning only in conjunction with the objects of thought, and transcendental – the science of universal and necessary forms of thinking in general, i.e., about categories that have timeless significance. Transcendental logic, according to Kant, is independent of any of its applications and therefore cannot be verified or refuted by experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Psychologists” (John Stuart Mill, Siegwart, Wundt, Schuppe, and others) rejected transcendental logic, and understood formal logic as a purely technical (applied) doctrine of thinking. Their reasoning was seemingly impeccable: mental phenomena are the subject of psychology; thinking is a type of mental phenomena; therefore, thinking is the subject of psychology. Since the task of science is to study the laws of phenomena included in their subject, the task of psychology should be to study the laws of thinking. Accordingly, the laws of logic are psychological laws by nature, and logic itself should become a section of psychology.<\/span><\/p>\n

The main arguments of the opponents of psychologism were based on two key concepts:<\/span><\/p>\n

1) “pure obligation”; the laws of thinking relate to “pure thought” and speak about how one should think in general, from the point of view of Truth, regardless of any goal or interest; psychologists, relying on the experience of “scientific revolutions”, claimed that there is no “eternal truth” and “pure thought”. Any obligation is hypothetical: if you want to achieve such and such a result, do (think) so and so;<\/span><\/p>\n

2) “absolute obviousness”; the laws of logic, unlike the laws of psychology, are comprehended with absolute obviousness. But this obviousness itself, the psychologists objected, is nothing more than a psychological feeling of certainty (hasn’t it been “obvious” for centuries that the Sun revolves around the Earth, and that a body that is not pushed stops?)<\/span><\/p>\n

Husserl, who in his philosophy of arithmetic himself spoke from positions outwardly close to psychologism, in his Logical Investigations enters the dispute on the side of the transcendentalists. His arguments, briefly, are as follows:<\/span><\/p>\n

1) logic is the only science that sets its own laws; the concepts and laws of logic do not presuppose the concepts and laws of psychology and are not derived from them; \u201cIn logic\u2026 the ideal connections that constitute its theoretical unity are subject as individual cases to the laws that it establishes\u201d (1: 300).<\/span><\/p>\n

2) psychology is not only the science of thinking, but is itself thinking and, therefore, must obey the laws of logic, which must be assumed to be true and not deduced from experience;<\/span><\/p>\n

3) the “arithmometer” argument: the mechanism of the arithmometer is constructed and operates according to the laws of mechanics, but this does not prevent it from also being an expression of the laws of arithmetic. No matter how much we disassemble the arithmometer, we will not find either numbers or arithmetic laws. The sphere of the psyche and the sphere of pure thought are related in a similar way in man: one can endlessly explore the psychic “mechanism” of thinking and not find “pure thought” anywhere – which does not prevent this mechanism in its action from expressing the eternal truths of pure thinking, “truth as such”.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the second volume of the Logical Investigations, Husserl lays the foundations of the phenomenological method. Phenomenology is exclusively a method, not a system; epistemology, not ontology. The goal of this method is the \u201cdiscernment of essence.\u201d A \u201cphenomenon,\u201d as Husserl understands it, is not an occurrence behind which there is still some \u201cessence\u201d (thing-in-itself). There is no essence \u201cbeyond\u201d phenomena. A phenomenon is an essence \u201cas it reveals itself.\u201d Essence coincides with a pure phenomenon, i.e., a phenomenon purified from any senseless interpretation. The main condition for comprehending pure phenomena and, accordingly, the main requirement of the phenomenological method is presuppositionlessness. This requirement means that phenomenology should not introduce its own premises (hypotheses, axioms), therefore the starting point for applying the phenomenological method can only be the \u201cunpurified\u201d phenomenon of the \u201cnatural attitude.\u201d Continuing the critique of experience begun by the “second positivism”, Husserl calls for purifying experience not only from metaphysical additions, but in general from all sorts of unthoughtful presuppositions (“prejudices” in the broadest sense of the word). The main premise that must be eliminated is the uncritical assumption of things outside of consciousness (“things in themselves”). This assumption is the defining property of the “natural attitude” – the state of consciousness in which a person finds himself before the beginning of critical understanding of his experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

Phenomenology was conceived by Husserl as a model of “strict science”, which only dispassionately states facts, but does not interpret them. This is precisely the meaning of Husserl’s slogan “To the things themselves!” But initially and above all, any fact is a fact of consciousness, not a “thing in itself”, but a meaning posited by consciousness. Even the “reality” of things is only one of the meanings that we invest in them; a thing in itself has no meaning (existence). The very essence of consciousness is the “investment” of meaning in intentional acts: “to be consciousness” means “to give meaning”. Therefore, the movement “to the things themselves” leads not from concepts to sensations, but from derivative and secondary meanings to original, pre-given meanings.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Logical Investigations were not understood as the author had hoped. The descriptive phenomenology declared here was perceived as a preparatory stage of empirical psychology. This is not surprising, given that Husserl himself did not immediately understand the full significance of the phenomenological program. In Ideas Towards a Pure Phenomenology he writes: \u201c\u2026 pure phenomenology\u2026 the very phenomenology to which the first breakthrough occurred in the Logical Investigations and the meaning of which was revealed to me more and more deeply and richly in the works of the decade that has passed since then \u2013 this is not psychology\u201d (2: 20).<\/span><\/p>\n

In the Logical Investigations the phenomenological method is generally descriptive: the purification of phenomena is accomplished through critical self-observation. In mature phenomenology, as it appears in Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology, Husserl develops a new method for the same purpose: the method of phenomenological reduction and intentional analysis.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mature Phenomenology.<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0The task of identifying the \u201coriginal meanings\u201d posed in the \u201cLogical Investigations\u201d is further developed in the \u201cIdeas for a Pure Phenomenology\u201d and other works of the mature period. Now the semantic content of consciousness is subjected to consistent criticism, i.e. purification: the original meanings are purified from derivatives and a new task is set – to identify the source of all meanings and to trace all the content of consciousness to it (reduction), in order to then trace the mechanism of the positing of all meanings from this source (constitution). The implementation of this program would make it possible to substantiate the content of consciousness and give man a firm point of support in himself in the face of an external world that is losing its meaning (and even \u201ccounter-meaning\u201d).<\/span><\/p>\n

Stages of phenomenological reduction.<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0According to Husserl, the method of reduction should have several stages. If we bring to a common denominator the various versions of the presentation of the method of reduction, which are present in the works of the philosopher, we can speak of three stages.<\/span><\/p>\n

1. Epoche. For the followers of the skeptic Pyrrho, the term “epoche” meant “suspension from judgment,” here – suspension from attributing being to external objects. Being must be “bracketed.” “To bracket being” means, without denying it, simply to abstract from it and reason as if the world were only the content of my consciousness. This will allow the phenomenologist, according to Husserl’s plan, to free himself from any practical interest and take the position of a disinterested observer.<\/span><\/p>\n

What do we come to as a result of the epoch? Nothing changes in the content of our consciousness, only our attitude to this content changes. The theoretical attitude is not directly connected with the practical: an astronomer proceeds from the theoretical attitude only in his scientific studies, but, walking on the earth, he, like all people, must rely on the fact that the earth under his feet is at rest.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our entire experience now appears as the content of consciousness, i.e., all objects of our experience are considered not as \u201cthings in themselves,\u201d but as meanings for the subject; there are no \u201cmeanings in themselves\u201d that would not be meanings for some consciousness. \u201c\u2026We must in no way allow ourselves to be misled by arguments about the fact that a thing is transcendental to consciousness or that it is \u201cbeing in itself\u201d\u201d (2: 4-5).<\/span><\/p>\n

Phenomenological research thus moves from questions of being to meaning. The \u201creality\u201d of things of the natural attitude becomes distant and does not affect the consciousness of the phenomenologist. \u201cBetween consciousness and reality there truly yawns a chasm of meaning\u201d (2:11).<\/span><\/p>\n

2. Transcendental reduction. Here we consider the entire life of consciousness as a whole, when each intentional act enters into synthesis with all previous content of consciousness (\u201cuniversal synthesis\u201d). With such consideration it becomes possible to \u201cbracket\u201d not only the existence of the external world, but also myself as an empirical subject.<\/span><\/p>\n

Consciousness must now be regarded as absolute consciousness \u2013 a closed, self-sufficient sphere, devoid of any relation to anything \u201coutside consciousness\u201d: \u201cConsciousness, if considered in its purity, must be recognized as a closed interconnection of being, namely, an interconnection of absolute being, such that nothing can penetrate and from within which nothing can escape\u201d (2: 11). When the consciousness of the researcher has been freed from the constraints of practical interests and the prejudices imposed by them, then a wide field for research opens up \u2013 the field of \u201ctranscendental experience\u201d, reflection, in which the subject deals exclusively with the facts of consciousness.<\/span><\/p>\n

The subject of transcendental experience can only be a transcendental subject – it is revealed as a result of all phenomenological work, as the general semantic center of the entire life of consciousness. According to Husserl, such a center must necessarily be thought of as the “I-pole” of “I-acts”.<\/span><\/p>\n

Intentionality,<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0the characteristic property of experiences of \u201cbeing consciousness of something,\u201d according to Husserl, is the essence of transcendental subjectivity. Here consciousness appears no longer simply as intentional, i.e., directed toward an object, relating itself to the object, but as unfolding in intentional acts in which it actively posits the meaning (i.e., the content) of its object. The intentional act, according to Husserl, is the universal form of life of consciousness.<\/span><\/p>\n

Further, phenomenology develops as an intentional analysis – an analysis of the principles and structure of the meaning-making activity of consciousness. The main concepts of intentional analysis are noesis, noema, horizon.<\/span><\/p>\n

Noesis<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0is the real mode of the givenness of an object in the act of perception, also designated by Husserl by the term reell<\/span>
\n[46]<\/span><\/sup><\/a>\u00a0. Reell are the \u201cfacts of perception\u201d in which the subject and object, matter and form of thought have not yet been isolated by reflection and merge in the \u201cHeraclitean flow\u201d of the mental life of consciousness. The noetic layer of the life of consciousness is, in principle, accessible to direct observation, and its laws, or rather empirical regularities, must be studied by empirical psychology. Phenomenology (or \u201cphenomenological psychology\u201d) takes the \u201creal\u201d only as material for intentional analysis, revealing in it ideal objective meanings (noemas).<\/span><\/p>\n

Noema<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0is the intentional correlate of acts of consciousness, their ideal \u201cobjective pole,\u201d cogitatum (thought). Any act of consciousness is directed toward \u201csomething,\u201d but this something first receives the meaning of an \u201cobject\u201d thanks to the act of consciousness\u2014consequently, this \u201cobjectivity\u201d is not real, but ideal.<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, we look at a house from one side. According to Aristotle, one could say that all perceptions of a house (from different sides, from the inside, etc.) are connected together by the objective form (essence) of the house, grasped in its concept. But for Husserl, the essence \u201cbeyond\u201d the phenomenon is already unthinkable, since it would be a \u201cthing in itself\u201d. Hence the question: what then connects together all acts of perception of the house (D1, D2, Dn), into a holistic image of the \u201chouse\u201d? It is no longer possible to say \u201cthe integrity of the house in itself\u201d, because \u201cthe house in itself\u201d is thinkable only for the \u201cnatural attitude\u201d, but not for the phenomenological one. To say \u201cpractical interest\u201d is closer to the truth, but it is far from always possible to explain the integrity of our contemplations by practical interest. Thus, looking at the starry sky, a person naturally divides the stars into groups of constellations, although he is not connected with them by any practical interest. Kant called this ability to arbitrarily connect the material of sensations “the productive power of imagination”, but, according to Husserl, the work of imagination necessarily presupposes some ideal (only conceivable, not perceived) center. Husserl calls such a center a noema.<\/span><\/p>\n

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In psychic life, two perceptions of the same house, considered in their psychophysical givenness, have nothing in common: they differ either in space\u2014in the angle of view\u2014or in time\u2014in the state of consciousness. \u201cTwo phenomena, which, through synthesis, appear to me as phenomena of the same thing, are really (reell) separated, and as really (reell) separated, have no common data; they have (only) highly similar and comparable moments.\u201d Everything that unites these acts of consciousness and thereby imparts integrity to consciousness is the ideal (imaginary, conceivable) center to which consciousness always places itself in relation. This is the core of the noema\u2014the entelechy, which ensures the fundamental unity of the transcendental Ego as a meaningful, goal-setting principle. Consequently, consciousness only acquires integrity in the positing of an object, i.e., is teleological in nature.<\/span><\/p>\n

Horizon.<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0Consciousness in its constitution of an object is fundamentally horizontal: the object of consciousness always appears as a certain actualized horizon, but always against the background of a potential horizon. In the presence of one act of consciousness D1 (see Fig.), the integrity of consciousness and its object are set potentially (hypothetically) as the horizon C of possible (imaginable) acts of perception of one and the same object (noema) by one and the same consciousness. If the horizon, for example, of visual perception is a set of points accessible to contemplation from a given center, then the phenomenological horizon is a set of points of view on a given object, possible for a given consciousness. Moreover, this is a set of not only observation points in space, but also in time and in other dimensions of the \u201cintentional life\u201d of consciousness.<\/span><\/p>\n

The possibilities whose circle is outlined by the horizon are the real essence. “The potentiality of life is as important as its actuality, and this potentiality is not some empty possibility.” Or, in other words, “you are what you can become.” Perhaps the best way to express Husserl’s thought is in the terms of Nicholas of Kuzan: possibility is expanded reality, and reality is condensed, concentrated possibility.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the science of consciousness and for philosophy in general, the discovery of the horizon of consciousness is of great importance, which has not yet been fully revealed. Many problems – the infinity and finitude of the world, the immortality of the soul, freedom – can receive a new solution in the light of this discovery.<\/span><\/p>\n

Constituting.<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0The active nature of intentionality lies in the actualization of potential possibilities, the development of new horizons. Consciousness at this stage of reduction is no longer considered as an indifferent form of empirical content, but as actively positing (constituting, constructing) its object. What is constituted exists before this act as an indefinite possibility entering the horizon of consciousness. Constituting fills this possibility with a certain meaning – thereby creating the object as an object of perception (at the same time, new horizons of possible perceptions are developed).<\/span><\/p>\n

At this stage of reduction, the main problem is the problem of intersubjectivity and the relation of the transcendental subject to its \u201cempirical self.\u201d A consistent line of reasoning led Husserl to the conclusion that transcendental phenomenology is solipsism (of course, purely theoretical, not practical): since I always discover transcendental subjectivity in myself, I can (with scientific rigor) comprehend the transcendental I only as my own. \u201cI can directly and immediately experience my own life of consciousness in its selfhood (als es selbst), but not someone else\u2019s\u2014someone else\u2019s sensation, perception, thinking, feeling, seeing.\u201d Only by analogy with myself can I conclude that the other is the same transcendental Ego as myself. Husserl was aware that this state of the problem of intersubjectivity was unsatisfactory, and he hoped that a more developed phenomenology would be able to provide an exhaustive solution to it. But it turned out that this problem could not be resolved by an intentional analysis of \u201cempathy.\u201d The desire to escape from extreme solipsism, even if only transcendental, was one of the motives that led Husserl to a new interpretation of phenomenology in his later works.<\/span><\/p>\n

What was called above \u201cepoch\u00e9\u201d and \u201ctranscendental reduction\u201d Husserl sometimes<\/span>
\n[47]<\/span><\/sup><\/a>\u00a0designates with the general name \u201cphenomenological reduction\u201d and supplements it with eidetic reduction, which in this case constitutes the third stage of the phenomenological method of reduction.<\/span><\/p>\n

3. Eidetic reduction. Until now, phenomenology has remained within the limits of experience, although it has been considered differently than usual – as transcendental experience. But this is not yet a science. Science establishes the universal and necessary principles on which experience is based – the laws or invariants of experience. Phenomenology as a universal science of the principles of all experience begins with eidetic reduction.<\/span><\/p>\n

The eidetic reduction is a concentration of attention no longer on pure consciousness itself, but on its a priori structures (the \u201cphenomenological a priori\u201d). \u201cThe method of attaining the pure a priori is a completely sober method, known to all and applied in all sciences, \u2026 consisting in attaining pure universals in apodictic insight, without any assumption of facts, \u2026 universals that apodictically prescribe to these latter a norm of thinkability as possible facts. Once manifested, such pure universals, although they arose outside the strictly logical method, are pure self-understandables, in relation to which the emergence of an obvious absurdity always proves the impossibility of thinking otherwise. Such in the sphere of nature is the understanding that any intuitively conceived thing as a pure possibility, or, as we say, thinkable thing, has basic spatio-temporal causal properties such as res extensa<\/span>
\n[48]<\/span><\/sup><\/a>\u00a0, spatial and temporal form, spatio-temporal position, etc.\u201d (6:76).<\/span><\/p>\n

To identify the \u201cinvariants of transcendental experience,\u201d Husserl proposes the method of eidetic variation. \u201cEidetic variation seeks out essential structures, abstracting from the accidents and individual characteristics of the actual acts of thinking. Since the identified essential patterns cover the general structures of not only these acts of thinking, but also other permissible acts of thinking related to the same subject, they can lay claim to unconditional universality. Any particular case is an instance of this universality\u201d (12: 44).<\/span><\/p>\n

The method of eidetic reduction was developed by Husserl much less than the descriptive-phenomenological method. At this level of reduction and, accordingly, the application of the phenomenological method, the main problem is the relationship between the “sciences of facts” and the “eidetic sciences” (sciences of ideal entities). Theoretically, according to Husserl, each science of facts – physics, chemistry, biology, sociology – must necessarily rely on its corresponding eidetic science. He saw an ideal example in the relationship between physics, which, in his opinion, reduces all objects to spatial forms, and geometry, the “pure eidetic doctrine of space.” The breakthrough in the physics of the New Age was caused, according to him, by the fact that physics began to widely apply the geometric method. According to Husserl’s plan, all reality was to be divided into “regions” (being, space, time, life, society), each of which should be studied by its own eidetic science. But attempts to create new “sciences of entities” based on this method cannot be called completely successful. Phenomenology remained the general method of “eidetic sciences”.<\/span><\/p>\n

Late Phenomenology.<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0After the First World War, attitudes toward science changed dramatically in Germany, as in the rest of Europe. If before the war the positive sciences, which had so revolutionarily changed the conditions of human life, had determined the worldview of the educated classes, then after the war science lost this trust. Firstly, because the technical achievements that had inspired such enthusiasm in the 19th century turned into an unprecedentedly deadly force (like a genie, carelessly released from the bottle, turning against its liberator). Secondly, in the conditions of the collapse of the old way of life and old values, science withdrew and was unable to show man the meaning of life and a point of support in a rapidly changing world. “The revolution in the public assessment [of science] became especially inevitable after the war and, as we know, gave rise to a downright hostile attitude among the younger generation. This science, we are told, can in no way help us in our vital needs. It basically excludes precisely those questions that are of vital importance to man: questions about the meaning and meaninglessness of all human existence\u201d (8: 20).<\/span><\/p>\n

In the 1920s and 1930s in Germany, against the backdrop of growing nationalism and strengthening fascism, most thinking people felt \u201cabandoned\u201d and devastated, and their lives were meaningless. This crisis led to many turning to the \u201cdark waters of the irrational\u201d in search of the meaning of life \u2013 to religious, philosophical, and poetic mysticism. Including Heidegger, on whom Husserl had placed great hopes.<\/span><\/p>\n

In all this, Husserl saw symptoms of the crisis process of the disintegration of European rationality. \u201cThe true, the only significant battles of our time are the battles between humanity that has already been broken and humanity that still rests on solid ground and is fighting for it or for the acquisition of new ground\u201d (8: 31). \u201cDisintegrated humanity\u201d is humanity that has lost faith in the one Truth for all, and accordingly, in the \u201cpure\u201d ideals of Good, Beauty, justice, and has sunk into \u201cskepticism\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cScepticism\u201d manifests itself most painfully in the understanding of history. \u201c\u2026History can teach only one thing \u2013 that all forms of the spiritual world, all life connections, ideals and norms that have ever formed the basis of man, arise and disappear again, like rolling waves\u2026 that reason will again and again turn into nonsense, and good deeds into torment? Can we reconcile ourselves to this, can we live in this world, where historical achievement is nothing other than an uninterrupted alternation of vain impulses and bitter disappointments?\u201d (8:21). The crisis, the \u201cdisease\u201d of European humanity is a crisis of the European spirit, of that fundamental cognitive attitude that forms the basis of the spiritual kinship of all peoples who, regardless of their geographical location, can be attributed to \u201cEurope\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

In his advanced years, Husserl had to set himself a large-scale task: to outline the foundations and main features of a scientific philosophy of history, naturally, on the basis of the phenomenological method.<\/span><\/p>\n

Husserl’s task here is twofold: first, to give a clear definition of the “spirit of Europe” as a type of rationality, or a certain cognitive attitude; this attitude, Husserl is convinced, has a timeless, enduring significance, and must be preserved in all the vicissitudes of the spiritual and material life of Europe. Second, it is necessary to find the sources of the “disease” of European rationality – that moment in history when the initially pure attitude was distorted, which led to such a crisis in our “last times”.<\/span><\/p>\n

Husserl considers the defining feature of the spiritual uniqueness of Europe to be the desire to build life according to infinite tasks (ideas of reason). \u201cThe spiritual telos<\/span>
\n[49]<\/span><\/sup><\/a>\u00a0of European humanity, in which the special telos of each nation and each individual is contained, lies in infinity; it is an infinite idea, toward which, in secret, so to speak, all spiritual development is directed\u201d (7: 104).<\/span><\/p>\n

This feeling and this aspiration are realized in the theoretical (\u201ccontemplative\u201d, from theoria \u2014 \u201ccontemplation\u201d) attitude, which first arose in ancient Greek philosophy and science. \u201cScience\u2026 is nothing other than the idea of \u200b\u200bthe infinity of tasks, constantly exhausting the finite and preserving its eternal significance.\u201d It is science and \u201cscientific philosophy\u201d, Philosophia Perennis, the unified knowledge of the universe, that form the basis of all the originality inherent in European rationality. In the East, even if endless tasks were set (liberation, merging with the Absolute), the idea was never completely separated from matter, the theoretical attitude from the practical: knowledge and activity were always two sides of the same process of improvement.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus, Husserl sees the uniqueness of European rationality in the emergence of a pure theoretical attitude. The general designation of non-European attitudes as \u201cnatural\u201d suggests that it is precisely the phenomenological attitude that represents European rationality in its purest form.<\/span><\/p>\n

Where do the origins of the crisis lie? The “crisis of Europe,” according to Husserl, is the result of a deviation from this image of rationality. This deviation<\/span><\/p>\n

Husserl defines both “naturalism” and “objectivism” and the “technicism” that follows from them in the science of the New Age. Husserl attributes the beginning of the crisis to the scientific activity of Galileo, who, according to him, carried out “the substitution of the only real, truly given in perception, cognized and cognizable in experience world – our everyday life world – with the world of ideal entities, which is substantiated mathematically. This substitution was subsequently inherited by descendants, physicists of all subsequent centuries” (8: 74). The amazing successes of mathematical natural science in the New Age led to the fact that scientists, and after them the majority of educated Europeans, forgot that a mathematical model is only a model, and it cannot replace living nature, as we perceive it in pre-scientific experience. Natural reality has been replaced by the virtual reality of mathematical models, but the incalculable, non-mathematizable remainder of reality takes revenge on man – with wars, diseases, depression, devastation. Inextricably linked to this substitution is the idea of \u200b\u200bnature only as an object for scientific knowledge and technical transformation (“objectivism”). Firstly, it is forgotten that nature exists before scientific knowledge, as a “life world” in which scientists live, develop and work, and secondly, the very subjectivity of the scientist is not taken into account at all when analyzing scientific knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n

The recipe for a way out of the crisis proposed by Husserl seems contradictory: on the one hand, \u201conly when the spirit from its naive outward orientation returns to itself and remains with itself can it be satisfied\u201d \u2013 this seems to be the apotheosis of subjectivism; here Husserl defends the \u201cautonomy\u201d of pure consciousness from everything natural and the possibility of \u201cpresuppositionless\u201d knowledge from within itself; on the other hand, the introduction of the \u201clife world\u201d points to the fundamental presuppositionality of all knowledge and the inclusion of pure consciousness in the inseparable connection of natural phenomena. The contradiction, however, is only apparent: firstly, presuppositionlessness means only the requirement not to introduce one\u2019s own presuppositions of knowledge in the form of axioms or hypotheses, but this means revealing the real presuppositions of scientific knowledge. Husserl calls the world of the finite, the prescientific \u201clife world\u201d of the scientist, the \u201cfund of presuppositions\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

With his criticism of objectivism and the introduction of the concept of the life-world, Husserl seeks to save the main positive grain of European rationality – the feeling of infinity and the desire to solve infinite problems. Husserl was repeatedly accused of inconsistency, including by his supporters. Thus, the slogan he put forward in Logical Investigations “Back to things!” was perceived as a call from the abstract constructs of philosophy to the things of “natural experience” in their concreteness. Therefore, when in Ideas … Husserl came forward with a highly abstract doctrine of objective synthesis, when “things” were dissolved as ideal aspects of acts of thinking, this seemed inconsistent to many. On the other hand, in The Crisis of European Sciences Husserl calls for relying on the pre-scientific perception of the world, which in the works of the period of “mature phenomenology” he criticized as a “natural attitude”, from which we must push off in order to arrive at a phenomenological attitude.<\/span><\/p>\n

The element of inconsistency is hard to deny, but it concerns rather Husserl’s interpretation of his own point of view. When speaking of Husserl’s phenomenology, one must distinguish between the basic course of his thought, which for Husserl was, in accordance with the principle of his phenomenological method, a form of “transcendental experience”, a constantly honed art of “insight into the essence”, and, on the other hand, the conclusions and interpretations that Husserl himself gave or to which he pushed his followers. Husserl’s basic course of thought is quite consistent throughout his entire work, from the “Philosophy of Arithmetic” to<\/span><\/p>\n

“The crisis of European humanity.” Thus, the slogan “To the things themselves!” from the very beginning meant not a call to “things” in their sensory concreteness, but a demand to cleanse contemplation of any uncritical assumption, and contemplation not sensory, but intellectual. Husserl deliberately does not emphasize this difference, as if tacitly identifying sensory and intellectual contemplation, or, more precisely, even reducing sensory contemplation to intellectual. It was precisely the tacitness of this identification that caused the misunderstanding of the “Logical Investigations” and the reproaches of psychologism.<\/span><\/p>\n

The return to the “natural attitude” in Husserl’s last works also does not contradict the basic course of his thought: the world of the “natural attitude”, although it was subjected to criticism in earlier works, was not rejected, and was relied upon as the starting point of phenomenological research. But if in mature phenomenology this attitude served to push off from it, now it serves to rely on it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The general guiding idea in Husserl’s phenomenology at all its stages is to find a path to a single true philosophy as a strict and universal science – Philosophia Perennis, a living and human science that responds to the demands of not only reason, but also feeling and conscience.<\/span><\/p>\n

Literature<\/span><\/strong><\/h5>\n

1. Husserl E.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0Logical investigations. Vol. 1 \/\/ Husserl E. Philosophy as a rigorous science. Novocherkassk, 1994.<\/span><\/p>\n

2. Husserl E.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy. Moscow, 1994.<\/span><\/p>\n

3. Husserl E.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0Phenomenology. Article in the Encyclopedia Britannica \/\/ Logos. M., 1991. No. 1.<\/span><\/p>\n

4. Husserl E.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0Cartesian Reflections. St. Petersburg, 1998.<\/span><\/p>\n

5. Husserl E.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0Parisian reports \/\/ Logos. M., 1991. No. 2.<\/span><\/p>\n

6. Husserl E.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0Amsterdam lectures \/\/ Logos. M., 1992. No. 3.<\/span><\/p>\n

7. Husserl E.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0The crisis of European humanity and philosophy \/\/ Questions of Philosophy. Moscow, 1986. No. 3.<\/span><\/p>\n

8. Husserl E.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. St. Petersburg, 2004.<\/span><\/p>\n

9. Gaidenko P. P.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0Scientific rationality and philosophical reason in the interpretation of Edmund Husserl \/\/ Questions of Philosophy. M., 1992. No. 7.<\/span><\/p>\n

10.<\/span>
\nMolchanov V. I.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0Time and Consciousness. Critique of Phenomenological Philosophy. Moscow, 1988.<\/span><\/p>\n

11. Molchanov V. I.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0Paradigms of consciousness and structure of experience. \/\/ Logos. Moscow, 1992. No. 3.<\/span><\/p>\n

12. Prechtl Peter.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology. Tomsk, 1999. 13. Husserliana. Edmund Husserl, Gesammelte Werke. Bd. I-XXXVI.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Edmund Husserl\u00a0was born in 1859 in Prossnitz (Moravia). During his studies \u2013 from 1876 at the University of Leipzig, from 1878 in Berlin, from 1881 in Vienna \u2013 he was primarily interested in mathematics, physics and astronomy. Among his university mentors were the famous mathematicians Leopold Kronecker and Karl Weierstrass. In 1882, Husserl defended his dissertation on “Some Problems in the Theory of the Calculus of Variations”. After receiving his degree, he worked for some time as…<\/p>\n

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