Abstract
The problem of others poses formidable difficulties in Husserlian phenomenology.1 How can the ego, which constitutes the object in any possible sense within its own transcendental self-consciousness, really posit the autonomy of the other, which is both transcendent and constitutive? How can the thesis that every objectivity requires justification (Rechtfertigung) in an originary and specific sense-giving (Sinngebung), a thesis that Husserl consistently affirms,2 be reconciled with the nonconstituted character of others I can know and love, with their freedom? The doctrine of transcendental intersubjectivity clearly does not suffice to overcome this apparent contradiction.
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Notes
The following works by Husserl will be mentioned: Logical Investigations (translated by J. N. Findlay), Humanities Press, New York, 1970; Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (translated by W. R. Boyce Gibson), Humanities Press, New York, 1931, cited hereafter as Ideas; Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie,Vol. II, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1952, cited hereafter as Ideen II, Formal and Transcendental Logic (translated by Dorion Cairns), Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1969; Experience and Judgment (translated by James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks), Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Ill., 1973; The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendantal Phenomenology (translated by David Carr), Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Ill., 1970. Page number contained between parentheses in the text refer to Logical Investigations and more specifically to passages in the Fifth Investigation: “On Intentional Experiences and their ‘Contents: ”
Ideas,pp.84, 92, 392; Logical Investigations,pp.235, 238; Formal and Transcendental Logic,pp. 163–65, 235.
The phrase ‘practical act’ will be used throughout this paper to mean the intentional act of the practical ego, desiring, fearing, hoping — i.e., willing in general — and not transitive (effective) practical action.
See André de Murait, The Idea of Phenomenology, Husserlian Exemplarism (translated by Garry L. Breckon), Northwestern University Press, 1974, Evanston, 53.
See The Idea of Phenomenology, Husserlian Exemplarism,pp. 217n4, 268–69, and the passages in Husserl cited there.
See André de Murait, “Kant, le dernier occamien,” “Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale (1975); special issue commemorating the 250th anniversary of Kant’s birth.
The proportion of intellect to that which is does not explicitly appear in Aristotle, although it is dispersed throughout his work and is implied in numerous passages (e.g., Metaphysics,IV, 2; Physics, I, 1). It becomes explicit in Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I,q. 85, a. 3 and in his commentary on Aristotle’s Phy sic s„ I, 1; in Cajetan’s commentary on De ente et essentia,Turin, 1934, q. 1; in John of Saint Thomas, Cursus philosophicus, Phil. nat.,Marietti, Turin, 1949, I, q. 1, a. 3. The same is true of the proportion of will to the good in communi: Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, I, 1; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I,q. 2, a. 1, ad 1; q. 6; I—II, q. 1 sq.; John of Saint Thomas, Cursus philosophicus, Phil. nat., I,q. 13.
See for example Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I—II,q. 9 and 10.
This is a consequence of the Ockhamite hypothesis de potentia absoluta dei,the hypothesis of a separation between subjective act and object. See “Kant, le dernier occamien”.
See the Aristotelian treatment of the subject, especially in John of Saint Thomas, Cursus philosophicus, Phil. nat., I,q. 13, a. 1, 270b sq.
Suarez, Disputationes metaphysicae,Vivès, Paris, 1866; Olms Reprint, 1965, Vol. I, disp. XXIII, sec. 8, no. 10, p.880.
Medina, In Summ. theol., I—II, q. 1, a. 1.
Obviously we do not have to do here with first and second intentions in the Aristotelian Scholastic sense. The Husserlian first and second intention must be taken in the sense of a superimposition of intentional qualities.
See “Kant, le dernier occamien,” n. 25. The reader will recall that even Heidegger began by “scotizing,” that his habilitation thesis deals with the modi significandi in Duns Scotus. Moreover, Heidegger’s evolution took a course similar to that of his teacher Husserl, passing from a certain Scotist manner of thinking to a quasi-Hegelian phenomenology. See the conclusion of the present study.
The following observations are based on two studies by the present author concerning Duns Scotus: “Signification et portée de la pensée de Jean Duns Scot, Introduction, traduction et commentaires à la distinction 12 de l’Opus Oxoniense, II,” Studia philosophica (1969), pp. 113–49; and “Pluralité des formes et unité de l’être Introduction, traduction et commentaires de deux textes de Jean Duns Scot, Commentaire sur les Sentences, livre 4, distinction 11, question 3, et livre 2, distinction 16, question unique,” Studiaphilosophica (1974), pp. 25–60. These studies are devoted to showing the role played by the formal distinction a parte rei in the case of the division of substantial being into matter and form, in the case of the form of corporeity and in the case of the division of the soul and its potencies.
In Descartes the judgment and the practical act have the same intentional structure. See the fourth Meditation; see also the letter to Gibieuf dated January 19, 1642, in Oeuvres de Descartes,edited by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery; Vol. III, Leopold Cerf, Paris, 1899, pp. 472–80, esp. p. 479.
The same is true in the physical domain and in the case of animate nature. Aristotelianism regards the human soul, for example, as formally spiritual and virtually the form of a body, the higher form eminently assuming the lower form and exercising its virtue. The soul is therefore the one unique form of the human composite. This is in contrast to the human soul in Scotism, which is the completive form of the human composite, i.e., of the hierarchy of lower forms, which are distinct in themselves and hence multiple in reality. What is existentially one in Aristotelianism, what is virtually distinct in reality and actually multiple for reasoned reason after the abstractive operation, is existentially multiple for the Scotist; it is formally distinct a parte rei,poor to the abstractive operation. This means that the Scotist intellect is no longer abstractive but “intuitive,” almost in the Platonic sense in which even the concept is an intuition. The Aristotelian intellect, on the contrary, is abstractive at the level of the concept and of reasoning and intuitive in the judgement, which virtually assumes the “virtue” of predication and which is therefore materially predicative and formally adherent to what is real. After these observations we can perhaps better understand the significance of the doctrine of Logical Investigations concerning the judgment: the judgment is formally reduced to predication, i.e., to an act founded on the primitive conceptual act of presentation (pp. 554–55, 581). The unity of the predicative act in Husserl runs up against the same difficulties as the practical act — that is to say, difficulties analogous to those encountered by the unity of matter and form in Duns Scotus.
The doctrine of the transcendental relation is found in Aristotle, Physics, I,1948b. It is worked out at considerable length by the Aristotelian Scholastic tradition; see John of Saint Thomas, Cursus philosophicus, Ars logica, II,q. 17, a. 2, p. 578b sq. This doctrine makes it possible to understand why in Aristotelianism matter is not a notion that is intelligible by itself, but only with respect to or by analogy with form (Physics, I,1970b).
The causes are mutually causes of one another, like matter and form — and, although in a different sense, efficient cause and final cause. See Aristotle, Metaphysics,V, 2, 1013b9.
The end is the formal cause of the will in the sense of an objective cause. Aristotle already showed this in De Anima, II, 4, where the object is a kind of formal cause. Consequently it does not exercise a transitive causal influence on the vital potency of knowledge or appetite. Causing in the manner of an objective or terminative cause, i.e., as an extrinsic formal cause, it exercises an influence by way of sensibility, intelligibility or appetibility — in short, by way of intentionality (except of course in the case of nourishment, the object that is first for us). See John of Saint Thomas, Cursus philosophicus, Ars logica, II, q. 21, a. 4, p. 673b sq. It is significant that Husserl is concerned to show that the object of consciousness does not exercise a “real” causality with respect to the act, but “is only in question as… intentional” (p. 572). He thereby excludes the only causality he recognizes, efficient causality, but nevertheless implies a certain intentional “determination” on the part of the object; how could he do otherwise? That is, he accepts what the Aristotelian Scholastics call an objective formal causality. To see the extent to which Thomists are misled by this way of seeing things, it suffices to read Bernard Lonergan, Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas, edited by D. B. Burrell, University of Notre Dame Press, ( Notre Dame, Ind., 1967 ). For this American author, the intentional in Thomas Aquinas has nothing to do with causality.
Similarly the intentional form (species impressa) is co-principle of the act of cognition; like a seed actuating the potency of knowledge, it “impregnates” knowledge so that this potency can conceive the object, i.e., know it in a species that is pronounced internally, a species expressa,the verbum of the intellect.
See “Kant, le dernier occamien” and André de Murait, “Epoché—Malin Génie—Théologie de la toute-puissance divine, Le concept objectif sans objet, Recherche d’une structure de pensée,” Studia philosophica (1966), pp. 159–91.
Sentences, Prologue,q. 1, folio a 2 R, Lyons edition, 1496, Gregg Reprint, 1962.
Ibid., folio a 4 GG.
Ibid., folio a 4 HH. This doctrine, laden with consequences in both the practical and the critical domain (consider the theme of odium Dei, the theme of justice by extrinsic imputation, Luther’s pecca fortiter sed crede fortius), is developed by numerous more or less Ockhamite writers at the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth: Petrus Aureoli, John of Mirecourt, Nicholas of Autrecourt, Robert Holkot. See André de Murait. This doctrine, laden with consequences in both the practical and the critical domain (consider the theme of odium Dei, the theme of justice by extrinsic imputation, Luther’s pecca fortiter sed crede fortius), is developed by numerous more or less Ockhamite writers at the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth: Petrus Aureoli, John of Mirecourt, Nicholas of Autrecourt, Robert Holkot. See André de Murait, “La connaissance intuitive du néant et l’évidence du ‘je pense’, le rôle de l’argument de potentia absoluta dei dans la theórie occamienne de la connaissance”, Studia philosophica (1976), pp. 107–165.
Ideas,p. 232: “The old ontological doctrine, that the knowledge of ‘possibilities’ must precede that of actualities, is, in my opinion, insofar as it is rightly understood and properly utilized, a really great truth.”
See The Idea of Phenomenology, Husserlian Exemplarism, § § 8, 9, 22. This “ideal” or “mathematical” Platonism is precisely the “realism” of writers such as Petrus Aureoli and Gregory of Rimini, who acknowledge the esse objectivum of the known as such. (Insofar as Ockham finally rejects this esse objectivum and regards it as fictum,he is the first of the “psychologists” Husserl so vigorously combats.) The fourteenth-century terminists’ doctrine of esse objectivum is evidently identical with Husserl’s doctrine of the vermeinte Gegenständlichkeit als solche. On the latter, see The Idea of Phenomenology, Husserlian Exemplarism,pp. 172–73 and the passages in Husserl cited there.
See The Idea of Phenomenology, Husserlian Exemplarism.
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De Muralt, A. (1977). The ‘Founded Act’ and the Apperception of Others. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) The Self and the Other. Analecta Husserliana, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3463-9_12
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