J. S. Beck and Husserl: The New Episteme in the Kantian Tradition

j. s. Beck and Husserl: The New Episteme in the Kantian Tradition* INGRID M. WALLNER ONE OF THE ENDURINGDISTINCTIONSin the history of philosophy is the division of knowledge claims into the spheres of doxa and episteme. Ever since the pre-Socratics, the term 'doxa' has been used to denote subjective opinion or belief, particularly that founded on sense perception. Ranging anywhere from deceptive appearance to commonly held belief, doxa has traditionally been considered to include only relative, unreliable knowledge. In contrast, the term 'episteme' has been reserved for "genuine" or scientific knowledge, understood as something distinct from mere sense perception or belief based only on experience. The domain of the epistemethus ranks as a higherlevel cognitive order which alone is capable of providing genuine knowledge and truth. Doxa and episteme have generally been considered different not merely in completeness, precision, and reliability, but in kind; in fact, they have usually been regarded as opposites. The rationalists, for example, treat the two types of knowledge as mutually exclusive and as corresponding to an equally radical appearance-reality distinction. Modern science sets up a similar opposition, contrasting common sense experience with scientific knowledge. This time-honored dichotomy, however, has undergone a thoroughgoing transformation in this century in the work of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938). At first, Husserl actually shared the traditional view of the distinction, but after what has recently been described as a truly "exciting" development in his * References to frequentlycited sourcesare givenin the text. A fistof the abbreviations used is found at the end of the paper. [195] 196 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY thought, ~ his position changed radically, to the point of virtually "reversing" itself: Once he came to equate the area of the doxa with pre-predicative experience and as his conception of the life-world (Lebenswelt) evolved accordingly , he could no longer go along with the traditional view.~ "This Lebenswelt is none other than the world of the mere doxa, which has traditionally been treated so disdainfully" (H-6 465, Beilage XVIII). Husserl's equation, by the time of his Experience and Judgment, 3 of the doxa with pre-predicative experience has to be qualified and seen in the context of his overall treatment of the Lebenswelt: From an initially occasional and restricted use of the term 'Lebenswelt' interchangeably with "natural world" and "natural" or "simple" world of experience, this concept gradually developed in Husserl to cover a more specialized, technical reference to a primordial world of intuition or 'pure' experience--the original life-world of prepredicative , pre-theoretical experience underlying the idealizations of the exact sciences (Cf. EU 38-45, EJ 41-46). Increasingly, Husserl discusses the Lebenswelt also in terms of the concrete historical world with all its cultural formations, including the objective sciences considered as one of "many types of praxis" (H-6 113, Cr/s/s 111, 129-30). It is my view that in this development, Husserl never exchanges one or more notions of the Lebenswelt for another to arrive at the definitive phenomenological concept of it. Rather, his discussions proceed from different perspectives and at different levels, as he moves gradually away from a consideration of the natural world view to that of the philosophical perspective , with corresponding changes in the degree of reflectivity and various shifts of emphasis as to the act-object components involved. As Husserl tells us, at the philosophical level, the complex and multi-layered subject matter ' Walter Biemel, "Zur Bedeutung von Doxa und Episteme im Umkreis der Krisis-Thematik ," in Elisabeth Stroeker, ed., Lebenswelt und Wissenschafl in der Philosophie Edmund Husserls (Frankfurt/M.: KIostermann, 1979), 12. Ibid., 18. Experience and Judgment incorporates Husserl's Analysen zur passiven Synthesis along with elements of his Formal and Transcendental Logic and the Crisis, in addition to being based on discussions with Husserl and on late manuscripts 0929-34). This work may therefore be considered to contain a synthesis of Husserrs mature position on the Lebenswelt.(Ludwig Landgrebe , Preface to Erfahrung und Urteil, VII-IX; Margot Fleischer, Introduction to Analysen zur Passiven Synthesis, H-XI, XXIn.) Cf. also Walter Biemel, "Dieentscheidenden Phasen der Entfaltung yon Husserls Philosophie," in Zeitschriftfiir philosophischeForschung 13 (1959), No. ~: 213: "It seems to me that...