From: "Anthony Crifasi" <crifasi-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: devastating page on Husserl?
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2003 00:01:29 +0000


Malcolm Riddoch wrote:

>     Look, it's not as difficult as everyone is making this by going
>     into all these historical and personal issues between Heidegger
>     and > Husserl.
>
>Yes, it is much simpler than that, especially if you reduce Husserl's
>phenomenology down to an objective scientific approach as you do.
>
>     3. How does Husserl say that we must approach the phenomena in
>     order to explicate them? Precisely in the detached mode of science
>     and NOT insofar as we are absorbed and interested in them.
>
>Husserl starts with a critique of objective science in order to be
>more 'scientific' (or rather 'pre-scientific')... but 'Wissenschaft'
>has a different more broader meaning than our anglo 'science'. You are
>doing him a great disservice by completely ignoring his critique of
>science and the Cartesian notion of subjectivity that begins with the
>Prolegomena of the Logical Investigations,

Malcolm, if Husserl thought that the Logical Investigations were sufficient, 
why in the world did he then write the Ideas and the Cartesian Meditations 
and the Crisis and...., in ALL of which there is a new insistance on the 
scientific rigor of phenomenology? And why does Husserl, after the Logical 
Investigations, repeatedly refer to the reduction as a seminal discovery 
which finally guaranteed phenomenology as science? Obviously he himself 
thought that he was supplying a foundation for phenomenology which was 
lacking or not sufficiently established before. To therefore characterize 
the foundation of Husserlian phenomenology primarily on the basis of the 
Logical Investigations obviously goes against Husserl's own intention, as 
evidenced by what he himself did after the Logical Investigations. This does 
not mean that he rejected what he wrote in the Logical Investigations. I 
simply means that he subsequently supplied an essential foundation for it 
which finally guaranteed its scientific rigor.

>     4. What precisely does Husserl say assures this rigorously
>     scientific phenomenological attitude? The  phenomenological
>     reduction.
>
>Is this the phenomenological reduction or the transcendental? Does
>this relate to his analysis of lived everyday experience, or the
>temporal foundations of everyday and natural scientific experience, or
>are you relying yet again on your reductive subjectivist reading of
>Ideas 1 and the Cartesian Meditations?

Malcolm, do you or do you not deny that he explicitly says (and in other 
works also besides those) that the reduction is precisely what guarantees 
phenomenology as a rigorous science, because everyday absorbed experience is 
infected with the naive assurance of the being of the world? And if you do 
not deny that he explicitly says this, then why do you repeatedly criticize 
my reading as "reductive" and "subjectivist," when the above is all I mean?

>From my perspective of the
>early Husserl of 1901 and through his dealings with Heidegger up to
>1928, a rigorously scientific phenomenological attitude deals with the
>things themselves as they are encountered, the fundamental context of
>this encounter is everyday lived experience from which we abstract our
>natural orientation towards things as objects.

How in the world can Husserl's rigorously scientific phenomenological 
attitude be characterized as dealing with any encounter with things 
themselves when it is precisely the being of things themselves which is 
suspended by the reduction? And don't come back with the usual straw man, 
"Oh it's not as if the being of things is denied...," because the neutrality 
of the reduced phenomena with respect to world-existence results in a 
treatment of them ONLY insofar as they are constituted in and for 
consciousness, not insofar as they reflect anything about things in 
themselves existing independently. And forget the next straw man, "Oh it's 
not as if consciousness is some Cartesian subject-substance," because the 
phenomena are still NOT treated as indicating anything whatsoever about 
things in themselves existing independently. So it is still simply inaccrate 
to characterize his rigorously scientific phenomenological attitude as 
dealing with an encounter with things themselves. Even Husserl's analysis of 
objectivity is in terms of interSUBJECTIVITY, not in terms of objective 
existence independent of consciousness. And even his analysis of 
INTERsubjectivity is in terms of apperception by one, not in terms of 
coordination between many existing subjects. His phenomenology fails 
precisely to get back to the things themselves.

>The natural scientist
>derives objectivity from their own everyday understanding without
>knowing how that understanding is already temporally/intentionally
>structured.

And what is the VERY FIRST step that Husserl says is necessary to get beyond 
our own "everyday understanding" to the rigorously phenomenological one? The 
reduction.

>     5. What does Heidegger repeatedly criticizes about Husserl's
>     philosophy in the letter that Rene posted? The phenomenological
>     reduction and the emphasis Husserl places on the scientific
>     approach to the phenomena. Go back to step 1.
>
>Or go back to Husserl perhaps, and at least allow the possibility of
>an interpretation of his phenomenology that does not simply follow
>Heidegger's own implied yet never carried through subjectivist
>critique.

Did Heidegger ever explicitly say that the reason he criticized the 
reduction was that it cuts phenomenology off from things themselves? As far 
as I know, no he didn't ever explicitly say this. Is this very hard to 
figure out, given (1) his insistance that beings are first encountered in a 
non-scientific mode (i.e., readiness) which is completely alien to 
epistemological doubts such as the dream argument, and (2) Husserl's expicit 
use of the dream argument to subject both theoretical AND practical lived 
experience to epistemological doubts concerning the being of the world? No, 
it isn't hard to figure out.

>But then again Being and Time is perhaps Heidegger's greatest
>testimonial to his master, because its general aims and methodology,
>its insistence on going back to the things themselves, the reliance on
>the notion of 'categorial intuition' in his interpretation of being,
>the practical critique of theoretical understanding and above all, the
>complete indebtedness to Husserl's dynamic non-subjectivist account of
>originary temporality, all of these were already thoroughly Husserlian
>problems.

Non subjectivist account of originary temporality? You mean the account 
which Husserl later generally called transcendental idealism? What in 
Husserl's "non-subjectivist" account of originary temporality has anything 
whatsoever to do with beings themselves... the beings themselves whose very 
existence are already suspended from the very start? Yes yes, not denied, 
but still suspended, therefore limiting his analysis to what is constituted 
in and for consciousness, not beings themselves. Yes yes, not a Cartesian 
conscious subject, but still not a treatment of the phenomena as indicating 
anything about beings themselves. Yes yes, there's "objectivity," but in 
terms of intersubjectivity. Yes yes, it's INTERsubjectivity, but only in 
terms of apperception by one. "Non subjectivist"?

Anthony Crifasi

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