Abstract
In this paper I criticize Claude Romano’s recent characterization of Husserl’s phenomenology as a form of Cartesianism. Contra Romano, Husserl is not committed to the view that since individual things in the world are dubitable, then the world as a whole is dubitable. On the contrary, for Husserl doubt is a merely transitional phenomenon which can only characterize a temporary span of experience. Similarly, illusion is not a mode of experience in its own right but a retrospective way of characterizing a span of experience. Therefore, Husserl cannot be plausibly characterized as either a disjunctivist or a conjunctivist. The common premise of both theories – namely, that perception and illusion are two classes of conscious acts standing on equal footing – is phenomenologically unsound. I propose to call Husserl’s theory a hermeneutical theory of perception, i.e., one that interprets perception as a temporal and self-correcting process. In the last part of the paper I argue that Husserl’s positive appraisal of Cartesian doubt is only pedagogical in nature. Husserl does not take Cartesian doubt to be practicable, but the attempt to doubt universally has the positive effect of revealing transcendental subjectivity as the subject matter of phenomenology.
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Notes
In his masterful intellectual biography of Descartes, Stephen Gaukroger suggests that Descartes' specifically epistemic deployment of doubt represents an original theoretical innovation. According to Gaukroger, there is nothing similar in the skeptical tradition that precedes Descartes (1995, pp. 311–312.) On this basis, Romano's characterization of Cartesian doubt as "generalized Pyrrhonian doubt" is misleading (Romano 2012, p. 426). The Pyrrhonian method is based on setting up different individual appearances against one another. On the contrary, Descartes’ doubt does not counterpose individual appearances but rather calls into question the epistemic validity of sensory perception as such.
Commenting on Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations and on his inability to recognize the polarity ego-God characterizing Descartes’s approach, Ricoeur states: “However, to fail to recognize this structure of Cartesianism is to produce a philosophy other than Descartes’s and not to radicalize Cartesianism” (Ricoeur 1967, pp. 83–84).
In a seminal paper on the difference between Cartesian doubt and Husserlian epoché Löwit points out effectively where the fundamental difference between the two thinkers lies: “For Descartes the existence of the world is uncertain. The attitude that responds to this situation is, indeed, doubt. For Husserl the existence of the world is not uncertain, but rather incomprehensible. The attitude that responds to this situation cannot be doubt, because doubting that the worlds exists is still a way to presuppose that I know what ‘existing’ means here. In asking myself: ‘does the world exist?’ I do not perceive as a problem the sense of this existence” (Löwit 1957, p. 405). All translation from sources other than English in this paper are my own.
In the Introduction to his wide-ranging study of Husserl’s relation to Descartes MacDonald writes: “[…] it is often precisely Husserl’s divergence from Descartes’ position which generates his most profound insights” (MacDonald 2000, p. 4).
My gratitude to Thiemo Breyer for urging that I name my own view on Husserl’s theory of perception.
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Acknowledgments
I presented an earlier version of this paper in German at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg on June, 27th 2013 for the invited lecture series Colloquium Phaenomenologicum with the title Husserl ohne Descartes? I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Hans-Helmuth Gander for the invitation and all the participants for their insightful remarks. I am much indebted to Evan Clarke for the English translation of the original text, which served as a basis for all subsequent versions of the paper. My gratitude goes to Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl, Andrea Cimino, Steven Crowell, and an anonymous referee for their helpful comments and remarks, which greatly improved the paper. A generous research grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung allowed me to do most of the work of rewriting and expanding on the initial version. Any obscurities or mistakes in the present article are entirely my responsibility.
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Staiti, A. On Husserl’s Alleged Cartesianism and Conjunctivism: A Critical Reply to Claude Romano. Husserl Stud 31, 123–141 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-014-9164-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-014-9164-y