Abstract
The full title of Husserl’s book, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, applies to three projected books of which only one, the first, was published during Husserl’s lifetime and with the subtitle, General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (1912).1 Appended to the First Book was an “Introduction” to all three books which Husserl continued to reprint with the First Book despite his dissatisfaction with the manuscript of the Second and the continued non-existence of the Third Book. Yet the full sense of the fragmented whole of Ideas may be recovered from the “Introduction” in the light of which the title to all three Books may be expressed in these words:2 Ideas Pertaining to a Purely Descriptive, Eidetic, Transcendentally Pure or Transcendental Phenomenology and to a Transcendental Phenomenological Philosophy.
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Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Philosophie. Erstes Buch. Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. Edited by Karl Schumann, 2 vols. Hereinafter abbreviated Ideas, I; page numbers refer to the first edition, printed in the margin, Vol. I. For the literary and conceptual history of Ideas, I, see Karl Schuhmann, Die Dialektik der Phänomenologie, II: Reine Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Philosophie; see also his Die Fundamentalbetrachtung der Phänomenologie, Chapter III and Chapter VI, B.
Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Philosophie. Erstes Buch. Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. Edited by Karl Schumann, 2 vols. Hereinafter abbreviated Ideas, I; page numbers refer to the first edition, printed in the margin, Vol. I. For the literary and conceptual history of Ideas, I, see Karl Schuhmann, Die Dialektik der Phänomenologie, II: Reine Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Philosophie; see also his Die Fundamentalbetrachtung der Phänomenologie, Chapter III and Chapter VI, B. p. 6.
Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Philosophie. Erstes Buch. Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. Edited by Karl Schumann, 2 vols. Hereinafter abbreviated Ideas, I; page numbers refer to the first edition, printed in the margin, Vol. I. For the literary and conceptual history of Ideas, I, see Karl Schuhmann, Die Dialektik der Phänomenologie, II: Reine Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Philosophie; see also his Die Fundamentalbetrachtung der Phänomenologie, Chapter III and Chapter VI, B. p. 8. The translation is mine. The phenomena in question are transcendentally pure in addition to the other meanings of “pure,” above, pp. 9f.
Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Philosophie. Erstes Buch. Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. Edited by Karl Schumann, 2 vols. Hereinafter abbreviated Ideas, I; page numbers refer to the first edition, printed in the margin, Vol. I. For the literary and conceptual history of Ideas, I, see Karl Schuhmann, Die Dialektik der Phänomenologie, II: Reine Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Philosophie; see also his Die Fundamentalbetrachtung der Phänomenologie, Chapter III and Chapter VI, B., section 59, pp. 141f., and p. 6. The translations are mine.
Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Philosophie. Erstes Buch. Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. Edited by Karl Schumann, 2 vols. Hereinafter abbreviated Ideas, I; page numbers refer to the first edition, printed in the margin, Vol. I. For the literary and conceptual history of Ideas, I, see Karl Schuhmann, Die Dialektik der Phänomenologie, II: Reine Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Philosophie; see also his Die Fundamentalbetrachtung der Phänomenologie, Chapter III and Chapter VI, B. The translation is mine.
Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Philosophie. Erstes Buch. Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. Edited by Karl Schumann, 2 vols. Hereinafter abbreviated Ideas, I; page numbers refer to the first edition, printed in the margin, Vol. I. For the literary and conceptual history of Ideas, I, see Karl Schuhmann, Die Dialektik der Phänomenologie, II: Reine Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Philosophie; see also his Die Fundamentalbetrachtung der Phänomenologie, Chapter III and Chapter VI, B. To speak of a “non-genuine” sense of real does not necessarily signify that it is false. See below, sections 7, 8, 91.
Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Philosophie. Erstes Buch. Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. Edited by Karl Schumann, 2 vols. Hereinafter abbreviated Ideas, I; page numbers refer to the first edition, printed in the margin, Vol. I. For the literary and conceptual history of Ideas, I, see Karl Schuhmann, Die Dialektik der Phänomenologie, II: Reine Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Philosophie; see also his Die Fundamentalbetrachtung der Phänomenologie, Chapter III and Chapter VI, B.
Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Philosophie. Erstes Buch. Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. Edited by Karl Schumann, 2 vols. Hereinafter abbreviated Ideas, I; page numbers refer to the first edition, printed in the margin, Vol. I. For the literary and conceptual history of Ideas, I, see Karl Schuhmann, Die Dialektik der Phänomenologie, II: Reine Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Philosophie; see also his Die Fundamentalbetrachtung der Phänomenologie, Chapter III and Chapter VI, B., section 1.
see below, section 10.
“Fact,” of course, in the phenomenological sense; see below, Chapter Five. See also F. Kersten, “The Occasion and Novelty of Husserl’s Phenomenology of Essence,” in Phenomenological Perspectives. Essays in Honor of Herbert Spiegelberg, edited by Philip Bossert, pp. 69ff. Both terminologically and conceptually, Husserl’s thinking has progressed over Logical Investigations, first edition, and “Philosophy as a Strict Science.” But the progress also carries a number of ambiguities and difficult problems; in this connection, see
Dorion Cairns, “A Letter to John Wild about Husserl,” edited by Lester Embree, Research in Phenomenology, V (1975), pp. 159ff.
In this connection, see F. Kersten, “The Constancy Hypothesis in the Social Sciences,” in Life—World and Consciousness. Essays for Aron Gurwitsch, edited by Lester E. Embree, pp. 523–527.
See above, pp. 17f.
See below, Chapter Four, for discussion of time and unity of mental life-processes.
See below, Chapter Two, for further discussion of the limits of the transcendental phenomenological epoché; also see Ideas, I, section 33. For a detailed examination of the genuine sense of “real,” see F. Kersten, “Husserl’s Doctrine of Noesis-Noema,” in Phenomenology. Continuation and Criticism. Essays in Memory of Dorion Cairns, edited by F. Kersten and R. Zaner, pp. 132–138. From what has been said so far, it is clear that while I distinguish “epoché” and “reduction,” I also insist with Husserl that they are strictly correlative terms as is stressed in section 32. For a contrary but prevalent view, with which I strongly disagree.
H. Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement. A Historical Introduction, pp. 708–711;
H. Spiegelberg, “Reflections of The Phenomenological Movement,” The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, XI (No. 3), October, 1980, pp. 279–280, 281–282.
See below, section 12. Husserl also speaks of these steps as “abstractive reductions”—although one must not take the term, “abstraction,” in an empiricistic sense; see Erfahrung und Urteil. Untersuchungen sur Genealogie der Logik, redigiert und herausgegeben von Ludwig Landgrebe, section 12 (English translation by James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks, pp. 51ff.); and Edmund Husserl, “Notizen zur Raumkonstitution,” edited by Alfred Schutz, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, I (1940), p. 28. See below, Chapter Two, for discussion of the phenomenological meaning of “abstraction.”
The paramount advantage of the first alternative is that it establishes a critical control over the formulation of the phenomenological method. It would seem possible, however, without ignoring that vast literature, to achieve the same results by reference to the things themselves; thus the second alternative may be regarded as a beginning; the alternatives are not mutually exclusive, cf. Iso Kern, “The Three Ways to the Transcendental Reduction in the Philosophy of Edmund Husserl,” p. 137, col. b, 144, col. b.
See above, p. 10.
As a consequence, it is not the case that the distinction between transcendental phenomenology and phenomenological psychology is not obvious, as M. Van De Pitte argues, “Introduction to ‘Author’s Preface to the English Edition of Ideas,’” p. 38 col. a, “because the two disciplines are precisely isomorphic.” Husserl insists that they are not and cannot be in the text of Ideas, First Book; see the next note (19), and note 27. 19. Schematically, what Husserl has in mind may be represented in the following way: The hatched line represents Husserl’s view in the “Introduction” to Ideas, and its impossibility; that is, while it is possible to effect the transition from the psychological reduction to fact to the transcendental reduction to fact, it is impossible, as section 33 indicates, to go from the psychological eidetic reduction to the transcendental eidetic reduction; they are not “isomorphic.” The confusion that can only result when they are regarded as isomorphic is (inadvertently) illustrated by J. Claude Piguet, De l’Esthétique à la Métaphysique, pp. 130ff. To hold that the reductions are isomorphic would be to assert that the refrainings in question are equivalent, which is hardly the case.
See F. Kersten, “Introduction to Husserl’s ‘Origin of the Spatiality of Nature,’” p. 216; and below, Chapter Two.
See also Husserl’s later way of expressing this situation in Cartesian Meditations, translated by Dorion Cairns, p. 19: “Meanwhile the world experienced in this reflectively grasped life goes on being for me (in a certain manner) ‘experienced’ as before, and with just the content it has at any particular time… the only difference is that I, as reflecting philosophically, no longer keep in effect… the natural believing in existence involved in experiencing the world….”
See F. Kersten, “Heidegger and Transcendental Phenomenology,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 11 (No. 3, Fall, 1973), pp. 213–215.
Eugen Fink, “Die phänomenologische Philosophie Edmund Husserls in der gegenwärtigen Kritik,” pp. 102f. The translation is mine. (English translation by R.O. Elveton, The Phenomenology of Husserl, pp. 73–147.)
For Husserl’s notion of “syntheses,” see F. Kersten, “Can Sartre Count?”, pp. 349–353; and Holenstein, Part I.
The transcendental ego is, then, not a transcendental phenomenological datum in the sense stated here; see F. Kersten, “Privatgesichter,” in Sozialität/Inter sub jektivität, herausgegeben von Richard Grathoff und Bernhard Waidenfels, pp. 128f.
Edmund Husserl, Ding und Raum. Vorlesungen 1907, herausgegeben von Ulrich Claesges, pp. 309f. the translation is mine.
Heinrich Hofmann, “Untersuchungen uber den Empfindungsbegriff,” Archiv für gesamte Psychologie, XXVI (1913), p. 28. (p. 76 contains an important reference to Husserl’s 1907 lectures cited in the preceding note.)
Oskar Becker, “Beiträge zur phänomenologischen Begründung der Geometrie und ihrer physikalischen Anwendungen,” Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, VI (1923), pp. 446–458. I shall return to this essay in a discussion in the Second Part. For a different interpretation of Husserl’s concept of “oriented constitution,” see Ludwig Landgrebe, Der Weg der Phänomenologie, pp. 149f., 153, 156, 161.
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Kersten, F. (1989). The Transcendental Phenomenological Reductions. In: Phenomenological Method: Theory and Practice. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2265-5_1
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