Phenomenology and Naturalism

Notes and Discussions PHENOMENOLOGY AND NATURALISM Philosophical schools often engage in warfare, but they also tend to converge; the mark of the contemporary scene is the intense dialogue of warfare and convergence between the philosophical schools. Witness, e.g., the efforts that have been made at conciliation between analytic philosophy and phenomenology, or existentialism and Marxism, however shaky and feeble these may be. Professor Marvin Farber has been attempting in a series of important books to bring together naturalism (the native American and also materialistic brand) and phenomenology. This development is of considerable historical significance, especially in view of Husserl's frontal attack in the earlier part of this century upon naturalism as a form of psychologism, and of Farber's central role in the phenomenological movement. Farber is clearly the key figure in phenomenology in the United States, for he more than anyone else is responsible for bringing it to these shores and for seeing that it received a fair hearing. Farber doubts much that goes under the name of phenomenology, particularly of recent existential and phenomenological psychology. He recognizes not only the genuine contributions of Husserl but also his serious limitations. Phenomenology is incomplete by itself, says Farber, for it may become subjectivistic and irresponsible, and it may serve as a mask for obscurantism. It needs to be completed by being related to naturalistic and objective foundations. Farber attempts to marry naturalism and phenomenology in an earlier work, Naturalism and Subiectivism (1959); the marriage is consummated in his two most recent works, Phenomenology and Existence and The Aims o] Phenomenology. This union must not be construed as a reluctant effort to accommodate features here and there of phenomenology with naturalism; rather, it is a fundamental and wholesale revision of phenomenology and its incorporation into naturalism. The Aims of Phenomenology is an introduction to and a critical review of the history of phenomenology and of recent developments. Phenomenology and Existence is the more significant of Farber's two works, for in it he states his own mature convictions . Yet, in reading Farber one question that continually arises is whether Farber is still a phenomenologist, and in what sense? Farber's basic premise is naturalistic: science is fundamental to our understanding , and any philosophy that is unrelated to the sciences is subjective and speculative . Farber has no use for non-naturalistic transcendental entities or anything which claims to be outside of nature or independent of its causal grounds, and he is critical of many of the tendencies in phenomenology that lead in this direction. His main thrust is thus to put a phenomenological philosophy back into nature. Although it is true that Husserl conceived of philosophy as a rigorous science, This is a review article of Marvin Farber's Phenomenology and Existence: Toward a Philosophy Within Nature (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1967, $2.45) and The Aims o] Phenomenology: The Motives, Methods, and Impact of Husserl's Thought ('New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1966, $2.25). [74] NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS 75 Farber is fearful that phenomenology, particularly in the later Husserl, tends toward a form of anti-scientific subjectivism. Husserl considered naturalism and the "natural attitude" to be "naive" and "dogmatic"; he wished to "suspend" all judgments of existence and validity by means of a phenomenological reduction. This reduction utilized a "pure," "radical," and "transcendental" reflection which focused on the experiences themselves without any metaphysical commitments. Husserl restricted philosophical inquiry to the reflective description of experience in order to uncover essential meanings and structures. But Farber maintains in criticism that phenomenology has as a result developed "the most conspicuous form of pure subjectivism" in the twentieth century and became in the later Husserl "the historical successor of philosophical idealism." The real difficulty, according to Farber, is the mistaken attempt to disengage the thinker and his experience from the world of nature and the social setting. Thus the "pure subjectivity" of phenomenology, which is at most an abstract methodological device, cannot be converted, as it is in Husserl, into a metaphysics of idealism. Farber insists that although phenomenology is useful, within clearly circumscribed limits, as a methodological instrument, it cannot be used to defend a non-naturalistic and non-materialistic metaphysics. Indeed...