Husserl's World and Ours

Husserl's World and Ours DAVID CARR IN TIlE 195OS Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote an essay called "Le Philosophe et son ombre. ''~ It was devoted to Husserl, and the title was well chosen for paying homage to a philosopher who so often spoke of the Abschattungen (shadings, profiles) through which perceived things present themselves to us. Shadows, of course, have a long and noble metaphorical history in philosophy ; one might be put in mind of Plato's shadows which, unreal though they are, resemble and can lead us to the real entities which cast them. Merleau-Ponty had something else in mind, however: he linked the shadows cast by objects to the spaces between objects, and both in turn to what Heidegger called das Ungedachtein a thinker's work. Shadows, spaces, reflections , like the silences and pauses in and around segments of discourse, are not themselves objects or sentences. But they are openings and occasions for perceptions and thoughts which would not have been possible without them. Everyone knows, of course, that Husserl is a giant of our century who indeed casts a long shadow. Shadows also change their length and direction as the day wears on. Merleau-Ponty, in this and other writings of the same period, was contributing to the second great wave of Husserlian influence in twentieth-century European philosophy, the one which began after World War II and was so greatly facilitated by the Husserlianaeditions. ("Le Philosophe et son ombre" was primarily a meditation on Ideen, vol. 2, which had been published in 1952.) In the first phase, Husserl had inspired various schools of close disciples in Germany, but the greatest fruits of his thought were the original and brilliant works of Scheler and, especially, Heidegger. Neither is a Husserlian or even a phenomenologist in Husserrs sense, yet neither can be imagined or properly understood without Husserl. So too, the second phase saw a torrent of scholarship and commentary, ranging from the important mediating work of great teachers and interpre- ' The English translation, "The Philosopher and His Shadow," appeared in Maurice Merleau -Ponty Signs, trans. Richard C. McCleary (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 159--81. [151] 152 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY ters (Spiegelberg, Landgrebe, Gurwitsch, and others) to the most dreary and pedestrian academic exercises. But again Husserl's spirit was better served by those less concerned with the letter: Sartre, Merleau-Ponty himself, and Paul Ricoeur (though the last also has an honored place among the great teachers and interpreters). Another wave of influence at this time, alike in not being wedded to texts and orthodoxy, was that felt in the social sciences (especially sociology, thanks to Schutz) and literary theory and criticism. It was at this point, too (and I am thinking now of the 196os) that phenomenology , both inside and outside academic philosophical circles, crossed the Atlantic and established itself in North America, no longer as a "school" or even a "movement," as Spiegelberg called it, but now more soberly and sedately as a "tradition." As such it challenged the Anglo-American mainstream , sometimes appearing so broad as to include almost everything but Analytic Philosophy, sometimes identified more with (early) Heidegger, sometimes more with Merleau-Ponty than with Husserl. Nevertheless, Husserl somehow presided over this tradition, at the very least as the figure who, in the manner of a mythical divinity, founded it and gave it its name. Only recently has the term "phenomenological" given way to the more neutral term "continental," since many feel that in the last fifteen years, the most vital and interesting work coming from Europe has its sources outside phenomenology and is in many cases directed against it. How can we properly characterize Husserl's influence on subsequent twentieth-century thought, first on the continent and then in North America ? Is there a basic concept or cluster of concepts which has been decisive for Husserl's successors? Certainly we can identify concepts that are central to his own thought that have not been decisive: his neo-Cartesianism, for example, conceived as a quest for certainty founded on an "absolute" subject ; his apriorism and intuitionism; his idealism, often hard to distinguish from a metaphysical subjectivism ~ la Berkeley...