There are, then, numerous forms of distortion. But surely the least evident (and most decisive) is that located not in the historian’s pen but in the heads of those who read the historian and accept or reject that description in accordance with how it fits their particular beliefs and interests—or the beliefs and interests of a group, a people, or an entire culture—in a certain historical moment. This type of personal or collective “censorship” is not open for discussion since it is taken as reality itself, and it is only when events finally clash with what is believed to be “reality” that the prejudices held until that moment are finally swept away.

Of course, when we speak of “beliefs” we are referring to the sorts of pre-predicative formulations of which Husserl spoke, and that appear as much in daily life as in science. Therefore, it is of little importance whether a belief has mythical or scientific roots, since in any case it involves prepredicates that have been formed previous to any rational judgment. 

In: Historiological Discussions, Silo

Chapter 1: The Past as Viewed from the Present 1.1 The Distortion of Mediated History

No one can fail to notice the difference between simply being occupied with a field of facts and transforming that field into a science. As Husserl comments in discussion with Dilthey, it is not a question of doubting the truth of a fact, but of knowing whether one can be justified in raising it to a universality of principle.

The major problem surrounding historiology is that as long as the nature of time and historicity are not understood, the concept of process appears artificially grafted onto its explanations, rather than the explanations deriving from the concept. That is why we must insist that a rigorous approach be taken with this problem. But time and again philosophy has had to abandon its attempts to develop such an explanation—for example, in the case of its endeavor to be a positive science, as in Comte; a science of logic, as in Hegel; a critique of language, as in Wittgenstein; or a science of propositional calculus, as in Russell. Therefore, when phenomenology does in fact appear to fulfill the requirements of a rigorous science, we are led to ask whether there is in it the possibility of giving a foundation to historiology. Before this can happen, however, we must deal with a few difficulties.

Centering on our theme, we ask: Is Husserl’s inadequate response regarding historicity due simply to the incomplete development of this particular point, or is it that phenomenology itself is incapable of becoming a science of intersubjectivity, of worldliness—that is, of the temporal facts external to subjectivity? (25)

(25) In a note to the Spanish edition of Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, M. Presas makes the following observations: “The Fifth Meditation responds to the objection of transcendental solipsism and can be considered—following the opinion of Ricoeur—as the equivalent of, and substitute for, Descartes’s ontology introduced in the Third Meditation by means of the idea of the infinite and by the recognition of being in the very presence of this idea. While Descartes relied on God in order to transcend the cogito, Husserl transcended the ego by means of the alter ego. Hence, just as Descartes had searched for the superior foundation of objectivity in divine truth, Husserl sought it in a philosophy of intersubjectivity.” Cf. Etude sur les Meditations Cartésiennes de Husserl, P. Ricoeur, Revue Philosophique de Louvain (53, 1954, p. 77).

It is with the motive of introducing the reduction that Husserl proposes the problem of intersubjectivity in this way. Five years later, in the lectures entitled Grundprobleme der Phanomenologie (given in Gottingen during the winter semester of 1910–11), Husserl extended the reduction to the reduction of intersubjectivity. On various occasions he referred to these lectures (published in volume XIII of Husserliana), above all in his Formal and Transcendental Logic. There he gives a short exposition of the investigations, which will later appear in the Cartesian Meditations; but he points out that there are many and difficult special investigations to make explicit, which he hopes to publish in the next year. However, as is well known, Husserl did not publish the investigations on specific topics referring to intersubjectivity. Meditaciones Cartesianas, E. Husserl (Madrid: Ediciones Paulinas, 1979, p. 150n).

Tr.1 Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, E. Husserl, transl. D. Cairns (The Hague, Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1982, section 44, p. 99).

[…]

In Cartesian Meditations Husserl says:

If perchance it could be shown that everything constituted as part of my peculiar ownness, including then the reduced “world,” belonged to the concrete essence of the constituting subject as an inseparable internal determination, then, in the Ego’s self-explication, his peculiarly own world would be found as “inside” and, on the other hand, when running through that world straightforwardly, the Ego would find himself as a member among its “externalities” and would distinguish between himself and “the external world.”Tr.1

This invalidates in great measure what he established in Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and a Phenomenological Philosophy, inasmuch as the constitution of the “I” as “I and the surrounding world” belongs to the field of the natural attitude.

What we find is a great distance between the thesis of 1913 (Ideas) and that of 1929 (Fifth Cartesian Meditation). The latter is what brings us closer to the concept of “opening,” of being-open-to-the-world as what is essential to the I. Here we find the connecting thread that will allow other thinkers to find being-there, without involving an isolated phenomenological “I” that could not constitute itself except in its existence or, as Dilthey would say, “in its life.”

Here let us make a short digression, before again returning to Husserl. 

[…]

 So it is only starting from the temporality of the “being-there” that one can comprehend how mundane time is inherent to temporality. And the temporality of the being-there is a structure in which past and future times coexist (but not side by side as aggregates), and the latter exist as projects or, more radically, as “protensions” necessary to intentionality (as Husserl taught). In reality, the primacy of the future explains the being-already-in-the-world as the ontological root of being-there. This is, of course, of enormous consequence, and affects our historiological investigation. Heidegger himself says:

The proposition “Dasein is historical,” is confirmed as a fundamental existential ontological assertion. This assertion is far removed from the mere ontical establishment of the fact that Dasein occurs in a “world-history.” But the historicality of Dasein is the basis for a possible kind of historiological understanding which in turn carries with it the possibility of getting a special grasp of the development of historiology as a science.Tr.4

With this, we find ourselves at the level of the pre-requisites that must necessarily be unveiled in order to justify the emergence of the science of history.

Basically, we have returned from Heidegger28 to Husserl, not with respect to the discussion of whether or not philosophy can be a science but instead with regard to whether an existential analysis based on phenomenology is capable of giving a foundation to the science of historiology. In any case, the charges of solipsism already raised against phenomenology by Heidegger turn out to be inconsistent, and thus the temporal structurality of the being-there confirms, from another perspective, the immense value of Husserl’s theory.

In: Historiological Discussions, Silo,

Chapter 3: History and Temporality, 3.1 Temporality and Process 

Edmund Husserl (1859 - 1938)

Biography

As a young man, Husserl showed little interest in any school subjects except mathematics, which he studied at the universities of Berlin and Leipzig. He received his doctorate in Vienna in 1883 with his work ‘Contributions to the Calculus of Variations’. During 1884, he was a student of the sociologist Franz Brentano, who had a great influence on Husserl's philosophical education. After a slow academic career, Edmund Husserl taught in Göttingen before becoming a professor in Freiburg in 1916, where he remained for life. After a few years of teaching, he was removed from the teaching profession due to the rise of National Socialism.

As a physicist, mathematician and philosopher, his interdisciplinary thinking is reflected in his first work, ‘The Philosophy of Arithmetic’ (1891).

A few years later, his perhaps most significant work, the Logical Investigations (1900-1901), was published. In this work, Husserl defines consciousness as a series of actions that he calls ‘experiences’. He does not attempt to explain what phenomenology is, but rather points to a new idea of philosophical science as such. In this phase, he is considered the founder of the philosophical approach known as ‘phenomenology’.

Husserl's research changed over time. In his later work, Ideas for a Transcendental Phenomenology, he deals with epistemology, which he understands as a critique of theoretical reason or a critique of natural knowledge. In this work, he seeks to establish the correct relationship between knowledge, the meaning of knowledge and the object of knowledge. We emphasise at this point with great simplicity that in this work he discovers another property of consciousness: its potentiality.

Finally, in 1929, Husserl gave a series of lectures at the Sorbonne, which were published as a book entitled "Cartesian Meditations: Introduction to Phenomenology. This book presents the main features of Husserl's ‘mature’ transcendental phenomenology, including transcendental reduction, epoch, static and genetic phenomenology, eidetic reduction and eidetic phenomenology. This work is still the subject of study and debate today for philosophers, psychologists, ethnologists, etc.

Phenomenology: literally ‘science of phenomena’.

Like Descartes, Husserl wanted to return to the first stage of cognition and redesign the scheme used for the perception of knowledge. Husserl advocated a radical change in the conception of dichotomies such as subjective and objective perceptions or direct and indirect cognition. For him, it was not necessary to separate them in this way, since he believed that the objective world of things is available to our consciousness independently of their objective existence.

So, while other sciences based their concepts on the assumption that there are laws that govern and predict phenomena and formed a view of things on this basis, Husserl considered it more important to focus on the experiences of things. Not on how things are in their causal relations, but on how they appear as ‘phenomena’ in consciousness.

Husserl characterised phenomena as the perception of objects or things that present themselves to consciousness as ‘appearances’, in Husserl's words, ‘One must let things reveal themselves in their essential content’ (EH, 1949). Thus, we must discover the phenomena as they appear to us, beyond our previous awareness of them. It is necessary not to question whether the experience is real, and to understand that the perception of things can be illusory. Having discarded our perceptions, including the subjective knowledge and associations we have previously acquired about the objects, we will discover the true essence of the objects.

As a method of investigation, Husserl uses the concept of epoché, which comes from ancient Greek philosophy: ‘epokhé’ = to abolish, but in a broadened sense. Epoché means setting aside one's previous judgments about things; the technique for achieving this is to remove external reality by focusing on sensations as psychic phenomena. Once freed from previous concepts, this technique allows the phenomenon to reveal itself to consciousness as it is in itself. In this way, consciousness takes precedence over physics in the interpretation of life. Phenomenology thus becomes a bridge between philosophy and psychology.

Husserl will say that consciousness is a series of acts or experiences that cannot be conceived as an internal structure of the subject, just waiting to be influenced by objects. Consciousness is a process; it is not a container that contains impressions and sensory perceptions, but each perception (assimilation) that consciousness has of an object already represents an activity of consciousness; consciousness does not perceive real objects, but rather captures (assimilates) objects, even if consciousness pre-constitutes the objects in a passive way.

Husserl would say that ‘intentionality’ is the fundamental characteristic of consciousness and that all conscious acts, such as perception, thinking and will, are intentional acts. He thus uses intentionality to refer to the direction that mental acts or states of mind have towards objects or states. In other words, when he uses the term ‘intentionality’, Husserl is referring to the fact that our thoughts, perceptions and experiences are always about or directed towards something. Husserl argued that this orientation of consciousness towards objects is a fundamental feature of our experience and that it is what allows us to know the world.

In Husserl's phenomenology, intentionality is the basis of all meaning and understanding; it is the act of consciousness that posits or is directed towards an object, giving it meaning and sense. He also asserted that the intentional act must be distinguished from its object, since the act of consciousness is separate from the object of consciousness. Another important aspect is that in transcendental phenomenology, the subject is no longer an anonymous being, but an active subject that constitutes the world and thus has a responsibility to the world and a historical obligation to humanity.

It is interesting to note that in his seventies, Husserl laments that most readers have misunderstood his life's work. However, when he himself undertakes a reformulation of what phenomenology is and what it has achieved, he writes from a standpoint he did not have two decades earlier. Husserl in fact becomes a critic and interpreter of his own work, which he describes with an obstinate metaphor, calling himself ‘an explorer who has opened up a new territory for others to conquer, map and cultivate’.

Major works

• ‘The Logic of Arithmetic’ (1891)

Husserl's early work on the philosophy of mathematics and numbers, in which he examines the psychological foundations of mathematics. A first step towards his later break with the psychologism debate.

• ‘Logical Investigations’ (1900-1901)

This two-volume work is considered the beginning of the phenomenological movement. In it, Husserl criticises psychologism and develops the foundations of his phenomenological method.

• ‘Ideas: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy’ (1913)

In this publication, Husserl presents the concept of ‘pure phenomenology’ and develops central concepts such as epoché and essential vision.

• ‘Lectures on the Phenomenology of Inner Time Consciousness’ (1928)

This collection of lectures, published posthumously, is devoted to the analysis of time consciousness and the structure of inner time experience.

• ‘Formal and Transcendental Logic’ (1929)

A work that deals with the question of the validity and transcendental foundation of logic. Here Husserl deepens the transcendental dimension of his phenomenology.

• ‘Cartesian Meditations - Méditations cartésiennes’ (1931)

Based on lectures that Husserl gave in Paris, this work is an introduction to his transcendental phenomenology and contains his ideas on the intersubjective constitution of consciousness.

• ‘The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology’ (1936)

Husserl's late work, in which he diagnoses the crisis of European science and sees phenomenology as a way to overcome it. Here he develops his ideas about the life world (Lebenswelt).

• ‘Experience and Judgement’ (1939)

Another posthumously published work that continues Husserl's analyses of the genesis of logical and rational thought and examines the foundations of the theory of experience and perception.

Influence of Husserl's phenomenology

Husserl influenced authors in various fields such as existentialism, historicism, hermeneutics, history of science, analytical philosophy and so-called postmodernism; his influence can also be felt in important representatives of contemporary mysticism and religion.

Authors influenced by phenomenology

Emmanuel Lévinas, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricoeur, Jacques Derrida. Ludwig Landgrebe, Gerhard Funke, Van Breda, Alphonse de Waelhens, Stephan Strasser, Enzo Paci, Jan Patocka, Roman Ingarden, Marvin Farber, Alfred Schutz, Adhemar Gelb, Kurt Goldstein, Herbert Spiegelberg,

Disciplines influenced by phenomenology

Mathematics, life sciences, psychology (especially psychopathology), sociology, history, religious studies and now also cognitive science.