Precis: Husserl, Ideas, pp.51-104 [Dr. Davis]

Précis of Edmund Husserl, Ideas, pp. 51-104
Dr. Duane H. Davis
August 27, 2008

Context:
This section is preceded by an Introduction and Part One. In the Introduction [pp.xvii-xxiii], Husserl explains his vision for the three volumes of Ideas, and for phenomenology in general. He contrasts psychology, which is a “science of matters of fact” with phenomenology, which he describes as a “science of essences.” [p.xx] Both psychology and phenomenology deal with accounts of consciousness, but there are many differences in these approaches. Husserl was preoccupied with articulating these differences his entire career. In short, psychology, for Husserl, was limited—a “regional” account that has its own orientations and assumptions which allow it to function. Husserl passionately explains that phenomenology, instead, will be a radically new kind of science that entails a radically new way of understanding the world. That is, he thought that phenomenology allows us to cultivate a new attitude or standpoint from which we see things—developing a completely new state of consciousness.
Part One has two chapters: Matter of Fact and Essence; and Naturalistic Misinterpretation. In the first chapter, Husserl wants to distinguish matters of fact from essences as the objects of knowledge that distinguish regional sciences from phenomenology (the science of sciences), respectively. Yet he also stresses that matters of fact and essences are inseparable. The point is to maintain a privileged perspective upon the world that understands it essentially without pretending that essences are other things. The difference is really in the seeing of things—the attitude we approach things with. This chapter is a “logic” that prepares us for the task of phenomenology by providing “a radical classification of the sciences.”
The second chapter, Naturalistic Misinterpretation, must be seen in light of the perceived threats of positivism, naturalism and empiricism as philosophical dogmas. Naturalism obviates the development of phenomenology as an eidetic science, since it denies the possibility of ideas, essences, and cognition. Though Husserl acknowledges the value of skepticism raised by empiricist naturalism against idealistic metaphysical presuppositions, he rejects naturalism for its own biases and theoretical presuppositions—which it fails to recognize itself. At the heart of the matter is a fundamental misunderstanding of experience on the part of naturalism. Naturalism mistakes actuality for experience, properly conceived. And though naturalism fails to recognize this, their notion of experience involves mediation, whereas there is a more fundamental eidetic “seeing” that is immediate intuition of the essence of a phenomenon. We must substitute intuition for what passes for experience in naturalism. This leads Husserl to pronounce “the principle of all principles”: everything offered in intuition must be accepted simply as what it is within the limits of its presentation—the essence of a phenomenon. [p.44] Empiricism and Idealism each obscure these intuitions due to their theoretical standpoints. Phenomenology seeks to disabuse us of the sophistical allure of idealism or naturalism—each of which proceed dogmatically without acknowledging its own dogmatism.
Part Two: The Considerations Fundamental to Phenomenology
Chapter One, The Positing Which Belongs to the Natural Attitude and its Exclusion
This chapter describes the general positing characteristic of the natural attitude of consciousness, demonstrates that it is possible to alter this state of consciousness, and describes the phenomenological epochē as the specific alteration of consciousness appropriate for phenomenology.

§27 Husserl describes the pure description of spatial and temporal presence of the world [with value] to the natural attitude of consciousness.

§28 The relation of the natural attitude (always present) to whatever world my cogito is engaged within is a parallelism rather than a horizon. [but cf. p.52 in the previous section: “an obscurely intended to horizon of indeterminate actuality”]

§29 Others are ego-subjects “like me” (analogues); but I am also “understanding with” others as I posit “in common with them” the factually existing world in which we belong.

§30 N.B.: IàWeàI Husserl adopts the first person singular to offer the pure description of the natural attitude, then adopts the second person plural to do the phenomenological analysis of the natural attitude. The pure description of the natural attitude lacks the ability to unify a world.
We do not need to attend exhaustively to every aspect of the natural attitude through pure description to move beyond it. It is sufficient to note some universal structures of the natural attitude—especially through the “full clarity” of “pure description” in the natural attitude. The main structure Husserl discloses is the “general positing” (“there-ness”) of the world even when I doubt.
Sciences in the natural attitude seek a more reliable understanding of the world (always present) than that of naïve experience. [cf. Hegel’s transcendence from sense-certainty in his Phenomenology of Spirit]

§31 Husserl offers an argument for the possibility of radically altering the natural attitude. The presence, or general positing, of the factual world in the natural attitude is not a particular act of consciousness. It is the total unity of the world, but only an inadequate unity as being simply “there” whenever I direct my consciousness to some particular act. Now Husserl wants us to move from a tacit positing to an explicit positing of another sort entirely. Consider Cartesian doubt as an example of a certain annulment of the general positing. But Husserl says we should not negate consciousness, but transform it. [cf. Hegel’s “determinate negation” in his dialectical logic] We can transform or alter consciousness by suspending the general positing of the natural attitude. [cf. horribly written paragraph on p.59] It is important to note that Husserl insists that his epochē is different from Cartesian doubt. Instead of annulling the positing of the world, Husserl says we should suspend it—put it out of action, disable it, bracket it, etc. The epochē is a suspension of the general positing of the natural attitude. Every such positing of an object is to be suspended.

§32 Like ancient skepticism [from which Husserl borrows the term epochē], we are to cultivate an indifference to the factual existence of the world—but we neither tacitly affirm it [natural attitude] nor deny it outright [skepticism]. Indeed, terminology notwithstanding, Husserl’s position seems at times to have characteristics of Stoicism. [cf. note p.61: “I take from it the force that, up to now, gave me the world of experience as my basis.” We can make use of this suspension of the positing via modifications of consciousness.
Husserl insists that phenomenology’s modification of the natural attitude of consciousness is distinct from adopting idealism’s view from “on high,” and also distinct from positivism’s immanence within experience. [cf. Kant’s critique of dogmatic early modern philosophy in his Critique of Pure Reason, and Merleau-Ponty’s critique of these two positions in The Visible and the Invisible]

Chapter Two: Consciousness and Natural Actuality

Having indicated how it is possible to suspend the general positing of the natural attitude through the phenomenological epochē, Husserl now wants to delineate the structure of the transformed consciousness, as well as the nature of the knowledge it seeks. He begins to reap the amazing benefits of this insight. Chapters Two and Three begin this task in a preliminary way. Phenomenology offers a new model of consciousness that seeks to offer pure eidetic accounts of essences. This can only be described if the nature of the essences with respect to consciousness, as well as the relation of transcendent objects with respect to consciousness, are articulated. In short, Husserl advocates a transcendental consciousness which will contain the truth of transcendent objects. We will highlight some insights from the first sections of this chapter. They will be developed more fully in the fourth chapter, where we can discuss them more carefully in terms of the phenomenological reduction.

§33 Husserl asks the seemingly disturbing question, “what can remain if we suspend the general positing of the natural attitude?” What is the phenomenological residue? Husserl begins with a discussion of the Ego, the consciousness, and the mental processes of the natural attitude. Thinking continues as I suspend the natural attitude’s general positing, but who is thinking? This essential consciousness is not the Cartesian cogito, but “any consciousness whatsoever”—a pure transcendental consciousness.

§34 The final paragraph of this section is remarkable. Note the affinity with James’ model of consciousness as a stream. Husserl wrongly believed that they were allies. [cf. Herbert Spiegelberg’s anecdote about James’ dismissal of Husserl’s work. Cf. also contemporary secondary research about commonalities in their work—esp. Sandra Rosenthal & Patrick Bourgeois.] Every thought in the natural attitude belongs to a stream of thoughts which has its own ownness that can be an object of reflection. This is roughly what Descartes did. Now we can seized upon a pure ownness intuitively “by excluding everything which does not lie in the cogitatio with respect to what the cogitatio is in itself” as well as “the unity of that consciousness.” [p.69]

§35 Husserl give a concrete example to elucidate these structures of consciousness from the experience of the natural attitude. [cf. Edward Casey’s brilliant work on the glance in his The World at a Glance, and compare it with Husserl’s discussion here of “a halo of background-intuitions.” Merleau-Ponty, the true inspiration of Casey’s phenomenology, has much more to say about all of this in his dialogue with Gestalt psychology. Cf. Merleau-Ponty’s The Structure of Behavior.] The main thing Husserl wants us to take from this very complicated discussion is the activities of consciousness exceed the specific acts of consciousness we focus upon. The unity of all of these acts is what he is after, which he thinks can only be disclosed by disabusing ourselves of the natural attitude of consciousness.

§36 Husserl continues the same discussion, but along the way introduces the theme he will develop later in detail in §84: the intentionality of consciousness. All consciousness is consciousness of something. [cf. p.73] That is, consciousness intends something—the object as meant. Consciousness is used in a much broader sense than ever before—including its object. This also leads naturally to the discussion of noesis and noema, which, alas, we cannot include in our readings [§87-127]. Husserl considers the consciousness of a variety of objects and qualities in the following sections

§37 There is an interesting discussion of the distinction of the intentional object of consciousness and that which consciousness “heeds” or “seizes-upon.” [Cf. p.75] The point of all of this is to exclude perception of all sorts as the basis of intentional consciousness. It will be interesting to return tot his when we look at Merleau-Ponty’s The Primacy of Perception. Husserl cannot allow perception to ground our understanding if he wants to achieve his goal of apodicticity.

§38-41 Husserl considers how one can discuss the objectivity of an external object—what the status of the transcendent is with respect to intentional consciousness. The italicized paragraph on p.87 is expands in great detail in Volume Two of Ideas in the discussion of passive synthesis. It is interesting that Merleau-Ponty was greatly influenced by that [at that time] unpublished manuscript, as well as the manuscript of the Crisis.

For the rest of the chapter, Husserl, as any good idealist, is engaged in a defensive discussion of how he is not an idealist, how the fact that phenomenology deals with appearances does not mean that it denies the transcendent nature of physical objects, etc. [Cf. Kant’s refutation(s) of idealism.] But the point in its most general sense here is that phenomenology wants to account for materiality via inwardness—perhaps the inherited legacy of Stoic thought.