Phenomenology and the Problem of History: A Study of Husserl's Transcendental Philosophy

1. Phenomenology as Transcendental Philosophy

1 / Phenomenology as Transcendental Philosophy THE FOREGOING PREFACE necessarily describes only briefly the project of this study and the broad framework which is meant to justify its undertaking. Even those interested enough to read on may have been puzzled or annoyed by the sort of oversimplifications which are hard to avoid in such a preliminary sketch. One point seems especially vulnerable to the charge of oversimplification : the term "transcendental philosophy," it might be objected, was used much too loosely. The concept may be a historically meaningful one, but what is questionable is the identification of Husserl with the "transcendental tradition." Husserl may well have seen his phenomenology as belonging to what he considered that tradition to be, continually using the borrowed term "transcendental," but this, needless to say, does not make it so. It is difficult to reconcile Husserl's often grandiose claims for his phenomenology with the quasi-skeptical purposes for which Kant designed his transcendental philosophy, not to mention the even more limited and modest aims associated with the NeoKantians and more recent Anglo-Saxon revivals of the notion. There are, of course, similarities in detail, but these are not enough to justify using Husserl, or one aspect of Husserl's work, as exemplary in a broad confrontation between "transcendental philosophy" and "history-oriented philosophy." Does Husserl's phenomenology, prior to the emergence of historical concerns in the Crisis, really belong to anything that can legitimately be called the "transcendental tradition"? This question concerns the presuppositions and over-all sense 4 / PHENOMENOLOGY AND HISTORY of our inquiry into Husserl's philosophy of history, and the present chapter is devoted to answering it. We shall attempt to show that Husserl can indeed be seen as a representative, and an important one, of the transcendental tradition. Husserl's phenomenology will be presented "as" transcendental philosophy, i.e., stressing its affinities with what historically goes by that name. Our aim is not to compare Husserl with every philosopher who has ever adopted the term "transcendental," but rather to offer an account of his philosophy in light of certain recognizable conceptions, first articulated by Kant, which can be said to constitute the enduring core of the transcendental tradition.1 Our picture of phenomenology here will concentrate on the mature period, prior to that of the Crisis, in which Husserl used the term "transcendental" to describe his philosophy. The examination of Husserl's phenomenology from the perspective of the transcendental motif does not merely present us with an aspect or possible view which links it to a historically familiar notion. Rather, it reveals the very essence of phenomenology in its mature form. A concentration, furthermore, on Husserl 's conception of the transcendental makes it possible to avoid certain common misconceptions about his thought, particularly those concerning the problem of idealism. Husserl says that he borrows the term "transcendental philosophy " from Kant,2 but he often provides his readers with an account of its derivation which apparently differs from that offered by the originator of the term and suggests that the whole similarity might rest on a mere coincidence or a misunderstanding . Kant first speaks, in the Critique of Pure Reason, of transcendental knowledge as dealing "not so much with objects as with the mode of our knowledge of objects, insofar as this mode of knowledge is to be possible a priori. . . ." 3 Transcendental philosophy is the systematized knowledge of the elements that make up or make possible our way of knowing objects a priori, and the term "transcendental" is also used by Kant to describe I. Iso Kern has a different purpose in Husserl und Kant (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964). His aim is to present Husserl's view and interpretation of Kant and Neo-Kantianism (p. viii)-Kern's book has been very helpful to us, however. 2. Husserliana VII, p. 230. 3. Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan, 1963), B 25 (references are to original pagination). Phenomenology as Transcendental Philosophy / 5 those elements themselves. This sense of the adjective is used by Kant in a passage which more clearly indicates how he arrived at the term: "the word 'transcendental' . . . does not signify something passing beyond all experience [Erfahrung], but something that indeed precedes it [Le., is] a priori, but whose purpose is nothing more than to make experiential knowledge possible." 4 That which goes "beyond all experience" Kant terms "transcendent" (Le., transcending...