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“Metaphysische Ergebnisse”: Phenomenology and Metaphysics in Edmund Husserl’s Cartesianische Meditationen (§60). Attempt at Commentary

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Abstract

The main goal of the present paper is to offer a preliminary study of the relations between phenomenology and metaphysics in Husserl. After a brief presentation of what Husserl means by the term “metaphysics”, the rest of our research will consist of a detailed commentary on §60 of the Cartesian Meditations (Metaphysische Ergebnisse unserer Auslegung der Fremderfahrung). Our aim is to explain in what sense, according to Husserl, the “outcomes” of the phenomenological constitution of monadological intersubjectivity entail the solution to a traditional metaphysical problem, i.e., that of the existence of just one real world. The present investigation does not pretend to be more than an introduction. Besides shedding some light on a specific text, it will pave the way for a future inquiry into the relations between phenomenology and metaphysics in Husserl.

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Notes

  1. The present paper should be regarded as part of a larger project on “self-variation”, notably the way in which Husserl resorts to that method in the Cartesian Meditations. A first, and introductory paper on such a topic (“Selbstvariation. A Problem of Method in Husserl’s Phenomenology”) was presented during a workshop on Imagination and Modalities in Phenomenology (Husserl Archive, KU Leuven) in November 2016. We hope we will be able to publish that essay soon.

  2. One of the reasons for our reticence is that the discussions often seem to conflate two problems: the question of how to assess (1) Husserl’s understanding of “metaphysics”, hence the relation between transcendental phenomenology and metaphysics in his sense of the term (e.g.: Is Husserl’s thesis that phenomenology leads to metaphysics justified based on his principles and methods?); and (2) the question as to whether Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology, i.e., his constitutive idealism, is itself a form of metaphysics (in a non-Husserlian sense of the term), therefore something to be dismissed altogether (e.g.: Does phenomenology, and its descriptive method, necessarily lead to transcendental idealism the way in which Husserl himself understands it?).

  3. “In der zweiten Stufe ergibt sich die Gesamtheit der ‘echten’, d.i. der in rationaler Methode ‘erklärenden’ Tatsachenwissenschaften. In allen ihren rechtfertigenden Begründungen auf die Erste Philosophie, auf das apriorische System möglicher rationaler Methode überhaupt zurückgezogen, schöpfen sie aus ihrer beständigen Anwendung eine durchgängige Rationalität, eben die jener spezifischen ‘Erklärung’, die jeden methodischen Schritt aus apriorischen Prinzipien (also jederzeit in der Einsicht apodiktischer Notwendigkeit) als endgültig gerechtfertigt auszuweisen vermag. Zugleich gewinnen diese Wissenschaften—immer ideal gesprochen—aus der erkannten systematischen Einheit der obersten apriorischen Prinzipien selbst die Einheit eines rationalen Systems, sie sind Disziplinen der einen ‘Zweiten Philosophie’, deren Korrelat und Gebiet die Einheit der faktischen Wirklichkeit ist” (Hua VII, pp. 14, 234). Were we to clarify Husserl’s overall terminology and perspective, notably the relation between “first” and “second” philosophy, the following could be asserted. First philosophy is described by Husserl as a “universal methodology”, i.e., as a “science of the totality of a priori principles of every possible knowledge, and of the totality of all a priori truths included in it, and deducible from it”. “First philosophy” is not simply phenomenology as an “eidetic science” of transcendentally purified phenomena: “first philosophy” is phenomenology in its foundational role vis-à-vis the totality of “eidetic sciences”, or “authentic philosophies” (to speak the language of Ideen I). Second philosophy, as Husserl urges in his lectures, is the totality of echten empirical sciences, i.e., the totality of empirical sciences as they are grounded on their corresponding a priori sciences. Not phenomenology alone, but phenomenology as a “first philosophy”, yields the Vorbedingungen, or prolegomena “to any future metaphysics”, die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können (Hua III/1, p. 8).

  4. Now, without directly disputing this reading, let us point out that we completely disagree with this assessment’s sharp distinction between two “concepts” of metaphysics. Indeed, we firmly believe that a thorough reading of Husserl’s texts would show that there is no such a thing as a Doppelbegriff; rather, such a purported semantic plurality of the idea of metaphysics is the expression of the different aspects of “reason”: “theoretical”, “evaluative”, and “practical” (Hua VI, pp. 6–7; Hua VII, p. 6). While what is considered the more scientific notion of metaphysics corresponds to the theoretical aspect of reason, what Husserl calls the “religious” and “ethical” problems (on which the Cartesian Meditations focus) express evaluative and practical reason respectively. See the remarks by Schuhmann 2005, pp. 63–68; Rizo-Patrón de Lerner 2012, pp. 102–104, 165–166, 235–238; Trizio 2016, pp. 200–201.

  5. As Husserl explicitly contends in the erste Fassung of the Cartesian Meditations: “Phänomenologische Auslegung ist also nichts dergleichen wie ‘metaphysische Konstruktion’ und nicht, weder offen noch versteckt, ein Theoretisieren mit übernommenen Voraussetzungen oder Hilfsgedanken aus der historischen metaphysischen Tradition. Sie steht zu all dem in schärfstem Gegensatz durch ihr Verfahren im Rahmen reiner ‘Intuition’ oder vielmehr der reinen Sinnauslegung durch erfüllende Selbstgebung” (Hua XV, p. 20).

  6. “Dogmatisch ist die gesamte Wissenschaft und Metaphysik des Altertums, dogmatisch ist auch die auf die neuzeitliche Naturwissenschaft bezogene, etwa gar auf sie gegründete Metaphysik, wenn sie vom Geiste reiner Erkenntniskritik nicht berührt ist, wie das von dem größten Teil der von Naturforschern betriebenen Naturphilosophien unserer Zeit gilt” (Hua-Mat IX, p. 372).

  7. “Nur durch transzendentale Erkenntniskritik, durch Anwendung der in der reinen Erkenntnistheorie […] gewonnenen Erkenntnis der Wesenskorrelation zwischen Erkenntnis und Erkenntnisgegenständlichkeit, ist aufgrund jener also nur relativ befriedigenden Wissenschaften eine absolute Erkenntnis erreichbar. Wir werden also in Form dieser Anwendung, dieser zu leistenden Kritik der objektiven Erkenntnis, auf neue, über das Niveau der strengen und doch dogmatischen Wissenschaften hinausreichende Forschungen hingewiesen; diese müssen sich dann, wie wir uns überzeugen werden, mit all den Forschungen innig vereinigen, die von alters her ‘metaphysisch’ heißen. Ist die transzendentale Erkenntnistheorie danach die philosophische Grundwissenschaft, so leitet ihre Synthesis mit den objektiven Wissenschaften und mit der metaphysischen Problematik älteren Stils zu einer neuen philosophischen Wissenschaft, auf diejenige, der das höchste Erkenntnisinteresse, das der absoluten Erkenntnis, offenbar gilt, und diese werden wir als Metaphysik bezeichnen”.

  8. If Husserl himself speaks of Irrationalität here, it is to emphasize that these problems do not fall under the domain of eidetic sciences—which, as sciences of possibility, are the one and only source of Rationalität and which presuppose, as an irrational fact they cannot explain, the rationality itself of the world they investigate: for example, the fact that there is a teleology immanent to it, or that the hyletic fields are structured in such a way to give rise to a coherent and unitary experience, and so on. See Hua XV, pp. 378–386 (and the remarks by Bernet, Kern, Marbach 1989, Chapter IX).

  9. See again our footnotes 3 and 5 to §2.

  10. Without getting into an explicit analysis, let us simply point out that this position would correspond, for example, to what David Lewis argued in his famous On the Plurality of Worlds: “I advocate a thesis of plurality of worlds, or modal realism, which holds that our world is but one world among many. There are countless other worlds. […] They are isolated: there are no spatiotemporal relations at all between things that belong to different worlds. Nor does anything that happens at one world cause anything to happen at another” (Lewis 1986, pp. 1–5).

  11. We can confine ourselves to the following observations, which are crucial in order to understand the argument relying on the notion of synthesis that we will present in III. In order to grasp how Husserl characterizes the monad, which he introduces in §33, we first need to see how he accounts for the ego in general (regardless of any differentiation), and then according to the three different levels of constitution (identical pole; person; monad). Let us ask ourselves: How does Husserl present das ego überhaupt? As he points out at the end of §30: “It is then an essential property of the ego to constantly have systems of intentionality, namely, harmonious ones […]. Each object that is ever meant, thought of, evaluated, or dealt with, but also that is phantasized or to be phantasized, presents itself as the correlate of a system and is only as such a correlate” (Hua I, p. 100). The passage is providing us with both Husserl’s account of the “ego” and of the “object” in general (for “the transcendental ego […] is what it is solely in relation to intentional objectualities”):

    Ego in general

    (Constant systems of intentionality)

    Object in general

    (The correlate of a system of intentionality)

    Let us see now how such a formal account is present in the three levels of constitution.

    • The first level is that of the ego as an empty pole, and the system of intentionality mentioned above is the system of “syntheses” characterizing the cogitationes, and thereby determining the “identity” of both the cogitatum and the ego: “Since we were busied up to now with the intentional relation of consciousness to object, cogito to cogitatum, only that synthesis stood out for us that ‘polarizes’ the multiplicities of actual and possible consciousness toward identical objects […] as synthetic unities. Now we have a second polarization, a second kind of synthesis, which embraces all the particular multiplicities of cogitationes collectively and in its own manner, namely as belonging to the identical Ego”.

    • The second level is that of the “person”, whose character is determined by the laws of so-called “transcendental genesis” (Hua I, p. 100). The constant system of intentionality is the system of passive syntheses that make possible the phenomena of Veränderung, Durchstreichung, or Bewährung of the ego’s own convictions, thus its personal character: “Although convictions are, in general, only relatively abiding and have their modes of alteration […], the Ego shows, in such alterations, an abiding style with a unity of identity throughout all of them: a ‘personal character’” (Hua I, p. 101).

    • The third level is the “monad”. In addition to being a person, with its habitualities and specific character, the monad characterizes the ego in its “full concreteness” as including “a surrounding world, which is continually existing-for-me” (Hua I, p. 102). The “system of intentionality” is not simply characterized as the many cogitationes determining the identity of two empty poles, nor as the web of passive syntheses making up the person; it is a system entailing a synthetic activity by means of which “the object becomes constituted in the explicit sense-form as something identical with its many properties”.

    The distinctive aspect of the Husserlian conception of the monad (which is crucial in order to really understand both the “monadological outcomes” listed above and the argument of §60) does not lie in its having a psyche or a body (both being features of the “person” as such), but in the specific system of intentionality characterizing its self-constitution and as referring to the individual ego’s Um-Welt as an identical and synthetic correlate of that system. As we will see below (III), it is the idea of a plurality of systems of syntheses—notably, of “verifying” syntheses—which will enable Husserl to provide a definitive answer to the metaphysical question at stake.

  12. Bancalari (2010, p. 234), evocatively speaks of “world-shattering” (frantumazione di mondi) to characterize the scenario that Husserl wants to avoid.

  13. “But this [the existence of the one ‘nature’] does not exclude, either a priori or de facto, the truth that human beings, belonging to one and the same world, live in a more or less separated cultural community, and accordingly constitute different cultural Umwelten, as concrete life-worlds in which the relatively or absolutely separate communities live their passive and active lives. Each human being understands first of all, in relation to a core and as having its unrevealed horizon, their concrete Umwelt, i.e., their culture; and they do so precisely as human beings belonging to the community that historically shapes it” (Hua I, p. 160).

  14. Here is how Blumenfeld 1973, pp. 163–164, sums up the theory: “The theory expressed above appears to consist of six closely related theses: (1) that every possible thing has an internal impetus to exist; (2) that this impetus is exactly proportionate to its degree of perfection; (3) that the possibles vie with one another for existence by combining forces with as many other essences as they are mutually compatible with; (4) that there is a unique series of compossible essences which has the greatest overall perfection and hence the greatest total thrust; (5) that the inevitable result of the struggle is that the maximally perfect series (i.e., the best possible world) realizes itself; (6) that unless possible things contained such an impetus and behaved as described, no actual world would exist at all”.

  15. This being the claim that section III (“Contre ceux qui croyent que Dieu auroit pû mieux faire”) of the Discourse of Metaphysics explicitly rejects (Leibniz 1995, p. 37).

  16. Let us elaborate on this letter and explain why we are quoting it here. In Arnauld’s view, if the idea of a “plurality of the same individual” that could have been made actual by God seems to be a reasonable one (though “difficult” to grasp) when applied to “Adam” (=there is a plurality of “possible Adams” in God’s mind, and only one of them was given actuality), it shows all its obscurity as soon as we consider “ourselves”. In this case, Arnauld urges, it becomes apparent that I cannot think of “another” myself just as a “possible”, or alternative me that could have been created. That is, every “modification” of myself (to use Husserl’s words) produces a singular nature “completely distinguished from every other existent”, and thus entails a different sequence of the universe (as Leibniz would say), or represents a different pole of a different oriented constitution of a different community of monads (Husserl). Though Arnauld seems to misunderstand Leibniz’s idea of “determined nature” from the outset, the analogy between him and Husserl consists in what we referred to as the “von unten aus” approach: from “myself” as an actual substance to the system of possibles, rather than from the possibles in God’s mind to the actual ones.

  17. The French translation uses détruite to translate aufgehoben (Husserl 2008, p. 226): “chacune d’elles est détruite par chaque autre et par le moi que je suis réellement”; while the Spanish version uses abolida: “cada una de las cuales, sin embargo, es abolida por cada una de las demás y por el ego que soy realmente” (Husserl 1996, p. 209).

  18. “It is implicit in the sense of any successful apperception of others that their own world, as their appearance-systems, must be experienced forthwith as the same as the world belonging to my appearance-systems; and this involves an identity of the appearance-systems” (Hua I, p. 154). See also the important §47 of the Krisis, where Husserl develops an analysis of what he refers to as the Vergemeinschaftung der Erfahrung: “Thus in general the world exists not only for isolated human beings but for the human community; this is due to the fact that even what is simply perceived becomes communal [Vergemeinschaftung des Wahrnemungsmäßigen]” (Hua VI, p. 166ff.). The point to be emphasized is that the “metaphysical” problem under scrutiny can be assessed only within the framework of an already constituted transcendental inter-monadic-subjectivity, namely, only by means of both a multiplicity of “systems” of transcendental syntheses (see footnote 12) and “the more pregnant concept of constitution”.

  19. Though it may be tempting to characterize such a distinction (between wirklich seiend and nicht-seiend) as a “modal” one, it is better to stick to Husserl’s more “general” use of the adjective “ontological” (“ontologically equal”). In fact, when it comes to the problem of “modalities”, two level need to be kept separated: on the one hand, Husserl clearly distinguishes all the different “modalities”: Sein, Möglich-Sein, Wahrscheinlich-Sein, Zweifelhaft-Sein, and Nicht-Sein (Hua I, p. 93); on the other hand, Husserl contends, “All these differences moreover are bifurcated, on account of a difference that extends throughout the whole sphere of consciousness, and correlatively, throughout all modalities of being [Seinsmodalitäten]: namely, the difference between Wirklichkeit and phantasy” (Hua I, pp. 93–94). As is evident from the text, since the difference between Wirklichkeit and Phantasie “modifies” all the “modalities” or modes of being (Sein, Möglich-Sein, Wahrscheinlich-Sein, Zweifelhaft-Sein, Nicht-Sein), it is not itself to be considered a “modal” distinction. It seems to us that when Husserl urges that “There cannot be any Ver-Gemeinschaftung between what is ontologically unequal”, he is dismissing two things at once: the possibility of a Ver-Gemeinschaftung between (1) what is wirklich (regardless of the specific “mode of being”) and what is only phantasiemäßig; (2) but also—within the domain itself of Wirklichkeit—between what is seiend (as a result of “verifying syntheses”) and what is nicht-seiend (as a correlate of “nullifying syntheses”). We are very grateful to the anonymous referee for raising the problem.

  20. This is what Leibniz, against Spinoza, calls “moral necessity” (see again B’’).

  21. Pradelle speaks of a “purification phénoménologique” (Pradelle 2007, §1); or, as Perreau puts it: “il [Husserl] entend réélaborer phénoménologiquement ce que Leibniz avait conçu en terme de métaphysique” (Perreau 2013, p. 72).

  22. It is important to emphasize, once again, that the metaphysical question as to the existence of one real world, to which §60 is dedicated, is not per se a metaphysical problem in the Husserlian sense of the term: It is a problem of traditional metaphysics that “only” phenomenology can tackle and resolve once and for all. This is why Husserl himself speaks of metaphysische Ergebnisse unserer Auslegung der Fremderfahrung. Nevertheless, in order for what Husserl labels “metaphysics” to be possible, it is vital to show that there is only one real world: for metaphysics is about it. In other words: Here we stand at the threshold of metaphysics in the Husserlian sense of the term. To make a series of other significant examples, let us take §5 of the Prolegomena, where Husserl lists a battery of problems, whose investigation, he urges, belongs to the “domain of metaphysics”: “that an external world exists; that it is spread out in space and time; its space being, as regards its mathematical character, three-dimensional and Euclidean, and its time a one-dimensional rectilinear movement; that all process is subject to the causal principle” (Hua XVIII, p. 26–27). As is evident, those are problems and questions that surely belong to traditional metaphysics, yet not to what Husserl will call metaphysics (in a new sense): they are all problems that fall within the framework of what he will label “constitutive investigations”. In other words: just like the topic of §60, those listed in the Prolegomena are examples of issues belonging to traditional metaphysics, which nevertheless only transcendental phenomenology can address in a non-speculative way.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to H. Jacobs for her suggestions; to C. Majolino and E. Trizio for our never-ending conversations on Husserl on this topic; to V. De Palma for his careful reading of this paper and his observations (which I could follow only partially); to S. Bancalari for his important remarks; to D. Pradelle for sending me his very rich and detailed text on Husserl and Leibniz. I would like to dedicate this essay to the memory of Edoardo Ferrario (former professor at the University of Rome), who first taught me phenomenology.

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De Santis, D. “Metaphysische Ergebnisse”: Phenomenology and Metaphysics in Edmund Husserl’s Cartesianische Meditationen (§60). Attempt at Commentary. Husserl Stud 34, 63–83 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-017-9217-0

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