Abstract
One of the the later Husserl’s most fruitful themes is the life-world (Lebenswelt) understood as the prepredicative and prejudicative substratum on which the whole process of idealization is made possible.1 By submitting the empirical sciences and their objective world to phenomenological epoché there appears before us a previous field to which these sciences and their world should be related.2 By means of this epoché, the life-world is drawn out of its anonymity and found to be the only real world — the lived world, experienced in and able to be experienced by perception — that had been concealed by the procedure of the sciences even though they had to presuppose it if they sought to have any validity. The life-world is then discovered as the living and worldly horizon (Welthorizon) of all possible experience3 — being (because of this) something more than the simple sum of the diverse experiences that must have it as a frame. As this horizon, this lived world precedes all reflection and must be understood as that which gives meaning to all other possible experiential horizons that take place within it.
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Notes
See Husserliana, Edmund Husserl, Krisis, Band VI, §34 (b), pp. 128 and 129.
Ibid., §§35 and 36, p. 138 and following, particularly, §36, p. 143.
Ibid., §36, p. 141.
Ibid., §38, p. 149.
Krisis op. cit., §9 (a), p. 22.
Ibid., §49, pp 170 and 171. One can read there: “All steps and stratums (in which syntheses that link one subject to another in an intentional way are entwined) form a universal unity of synthesis by means of which the objective world is produced with a concrete vitality — the world as given and as well as it is given (being given as previous to all possible praxis).” As it will be seen, our attitude claims the constituent role of praxis and due to this, it also demands its insertion into the field of the previous. This does not mean to assert that Husserl does not give importance to the theme of praxis. Moreover, such books as Don Ihde’s Technics and Praxis. A Philosophy of Technology (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Co., Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 24 and Synthese Library, Vol. 130, 1979) are grounded, in a certain way, on the arguments of the Krisis.
Krisis op. cit., §53, p. 183.
Ibid., §54 (b), pp. 188 and 190 and §55, p. 190.
See M. Merleau-Ponty, Signes (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), p. 202.
See M. Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945).
See Phénoménologie de la perception, Avant-propos, p. xiii, where intentionality is characterized as operative (fungierende Intentionalität).
Phénoménologie de la perception, Avant-propos, p. vii and pp. 398ff.
See J. L. Arce, Hombre, conocimiento y sociedad, (Barcelona: PPU, 1988), pp. 138–160. Our treatment of praxis agrees with the one present in this work. For a concise and introductory characterization of praxis as gnoseoanthropological foundation see particularly pp. 143–147.
See J. Habermas, Erkenntnis und Interesse, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1968) pp. 71
See J. Habermas, Erkenntnis und Interesse, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1968) pp. 72.
See Phénoménologie de la perception,, Avant-propos, p. 492.
See Krisis op. cit., §53, p. 124.
See, for instance, Krisis, Beilage m, pages 381ff.
See A. Schütz and T. Luckmann Strukturen der Lebenswelt (Frankfurt: 1979), p. 29
See A. Schütz and T. Luckmann Strukturen der Lebenswelt (Frankfurt: 1979), p. 133.
See, J. Habermas, Erkenntnis und Interesse, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1968) pp. 259
See, J. Habermas, Erkenntnis und Interesse, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1968) pp. 260.
See Krisis, op. cit., §9, pp 20#-60.
See J. Habermas, Theorie des kommunicativen Handels, Band II (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1981), pp. 204, 205, 208—211. Habermas asserts there that the structural components of the life-world are not reducible to a mere cultural store of knowledge. Society and personality must be also understood to be structural parts of the world together with culture. This assertion, set forth by Habermas as a correction to the phenomenological concept of Lebenswelt, is right. But one can think that it could be possible to find the presence of these elements (implicitly at least) in the phenomenological treatment of the world.
See J. Habermas, Erkenntnis und Interesse, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1968) p. 261.
J. Habermas, Erkenntnis und Interesse, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1968) , Erkentnnis und Interesse, p. 350.
See Edmund Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen, Husserliana, Band I, §15, p. 73, where Husserl asserts that the passing from the natural to the theoretical and disinterested attitude implies a scission in the ego (Ichspaltung). The gravity of this assertion is something evident: the disinterested spectator is not a real ego. But Husserl tends to moderate its strength in the same paragraph (p. 75): “It is something clear that it can be said that I am also the transcendental ego at every moment inasmuch as I am the ego of the natural attitude — but that I only know about that on exercising the phenomenological reduction.” In spite of this, the undiminishable ego that appears in §54 of the Krisis is that “ideal” ego for which the false scission between theory and praxis is the background.
See Krisis, Band VI, §7, pp. 15 and 16. Husserl defines there the philosopher with such terms and in relation to the télos inherent in humanity. Philosophical reflection is demanded by this télos, and its aim is the fulfillment of télos itself: the authentic being of humanity, an authentic life. Thus, one can not speak of disinterested philosophizing nor of a philosophical non-historicity from the moment that Husserl refers to the need to clear the present situation up and exercise retrospective historical and critical reflection.
See Krisis, op. cit., Beilage XXVIII, p. 508. Husserl says there: “The dream of philosophy understood as science (as rigorous and apodictically rigorous science) has come to its end.” In this respect, see also F. Montero, Retorno a la fenomenología (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1987), pp. 37–51, where this author shows how the introduction of the historical factor into phenomenology brings Husserl to deal with a concrete world and to consider that epoché must be finally understood as a means of philosophizing without prejudgements but not as a means of exercising non-historical philosophizing.
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Riera, J.L. (1991). World, Praxis, and Reason. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) Husserl’s Legacy in Phenomenological Philosophies. Analecta Husserliana, vol 36. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3368-5_19
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