Precis of Edmund Husserl’s The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (p. 121-189)

Precis of Edmund Husserl’s The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (p. 121-189)
Michael Culbreth
September 10th, 2008

Context:

In The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Edmund Husserl is still continuing his quest to a pure phenomenology that places our immediate experience at the base of any future science. In Part I, he lays out his idea of the crisis that faces Europe. Although Husserl lends praise to science’s recent accomplishments, he takes aim at the positivist slant of “objective” science, which reduces all human experience back to objective facts that determine the validity of our experiences for us.
In Part I, we see Husserl modifying his path to phenomenology, by using a historical reflection to illustrate how this crisis came to befall European culture. The crisis has it’s roots as far back as the Renaissance, although thinkers then used the ancients as the mold which they wished to recreate themselves in. We inherited from the ancients a philosophy that encompassed all modes of science and knowing. This philosophy, handed down through the years to us, is concerned with problems of reason, and becomes the positivism that plagues Husserl, and ultimately, all of us.
However, this positivistic philosophy could only find success in the positivist realm. It could tell us facts, but had little to offer us in the area of questions of being. Stepping back for a moment, however, we would amiss not to heed the words of translator David Carr. Carr asks, how do we approach history through phenomenology? It seems contradictory, for us to take history as handed down to us from others, instead of referring back to it’s pre-giveness to know of it. Husserl’s use of history in Crisis is a thorny topic that is not fully reconciled with the fundamental approach of the phenomenological method.
Carr further warns about the difficulty of translating a text into a foreign language, and recounts some of the difficulties he encountered working on Crisis. First of all, Husserl died before he could complete Crisis. He was planning additional chapters which were never fully produced. Part III was never fully completed. When Husserl departed, Part III was essentially an unfinished typescript littered with his corrections (in longhand and shorthand), and even corrections by Eugen Fink, Husserl’s research assistant at the time. So what we’ve managed to piece together as Part III reads differently, as the hurried nature in which Husserl wrote it and edited it has left segments of it logically and grammatically incomprehensible. So, Carr was forced to interpret what Husserl was trying to say, and translate it into English accordingly.
So in Part I Husserl lays out the task at hand, based on examples in history. Part II gets more specific. Here Husserl discusses the mathematization of nature. This happens, historically, when nature is able to be described most accurately by math. Husserl faults Galileo for this, as beginning with him the validity of a thing or experience is placed in it’s geometrical structure. And since this, the validity of our experience is predetermined for us by facts and numbers, not by us or our perspective. This is the crisis of which Husserl speaks, the crisis that disregards our subjectivity in favor of an objective that doesn't account for our individual experience.

Part III: The Clarification of the Transcendental Problem and the Related Function of Psychology

A. The Way Into Phenomenological Transcendental Philosophy by Inquiring back from the Pregiven Life-World

The first few sections of this chapter address Immanuel Kant in detail. Husserl establishes that Kant's theories all have "an unquestioned ground of presuppositions which which codetermine the meaning of his questions (Crisis, 104)". Husserl also attacks Kant's notion of the transcendental-subjective, which, by the way Kant defines it, is unable to make itself intuitive to us. For Kant, the transcendental-subjective can "never be transformed into a formation of meaning which is direct and procures self-evidence (Crisis, 115)". Even though Kant's philosophy takes into account our perception, it doesn't grant it the same status as Husserl. Husserl rejects Kant, and seeks to validate self-evidence and intuition.

33. Science presupposes the intuitive, surrounding world. All scientific inquiry rests on the foundation of this world. Somewhere in history though, an idea of “objective truth” was formulated and given a higher value than natural, straightforward existence. This creates the idea of a universal science which aims to envelop the sum of all knowledge. Husserl proposes that we inquire back to the pre-given world, as it is the ultimate grounds of all validity. However, special precautions must be undertaken before a rigorous investigation of the pre-given world is attempted. Objective science is excluded, because all it does it reference back to the life-world. Also, when scientists are performing 'objective science', they still rely on the pre-given life-world for their lab equipment (for example), which they don't have to prove exists through objective science, they just accept it as it manifests at them. So in this regard the life-world can be only a partial subject in the sphere of the object and theoretical sciences. The life-world is not just a point of interest for those looking for a self-evident foundation for the sciences; it's a point of interest for all, as we all live in the life-world.

34. a. The pre-given world (the life-world) is always there for us through experience. In pre-scientific life, knowledge is gained on the basis of experience and induction. Scientific knowledge seeks to create a universal truth applicable to everyone, but that idea of the objective sciences is merely handed down to us, and not obtained through experience. There has never been a study of how the life-world functions as a basis for all experience, and the study of it requires a special methodology. We can’t start with the “objective” handed down science of the modern era, but instead with our subjective intuition about how things appear to us.

34. b. The “objective” sciences which use the giveness of the life-world as a foundation for all of their goals take it for granted. In other words, while scientists seek objective truths, there are ‘subjective-relative’ experiences which ground them while they work. Husserl uses the example of Einstein relying on data verified by other scientists. These scientists' existence, that Einstein experiences, presuppose the objective undertaking of Einstein's work. To the objective scientist, most of this world's existence has not been theoretically verified yet, so it is subjective-relative to them, yet their experiments to find 'truth' and 'objectivity' and founded on this subjective-relative world. The subjective relative world is always functioning for the scientist, as "the source of self-evidence, the source of verification (Crisis, 126)".

34. c. Questions of the relative-subjective realm are usually regulated to psychology. But in this case, psychology is an avatar of the objective realm, as it aims to be an objective science of the subjective realm.

34. d. The spectre of objectivity looms so large, that all science now implies an objective approach. Objective, scientific truth is generally thought of in advance of nature and the natural world. The objective world is a theoretical-logical substruction, vs. the subjective life-world which is directly experiencable. “The life-world is a realm of original self-evidences (Crisis, 127)”. What is experienced as being self-evident is considered to be ‘the thing itself’, whether in immediate presence, memory, or other mode of intuition. Every mode of intuition is, in fact, a manifesting of the thing itself. However, ‘the-thing-itself’ lies in the mode of induction itself though, the way it is made self-evident, and substructions only have truth by being related back to these self-evidences. To properly study the life-world we must recognize the validity of these self-evidences. Also, it must be shown how objective-logical self-evidences have their grounding in "the ultimately accomplishing life, the life in which the self-evident giveness of the life-world forever has, has attained, and attains anew its prescientific meaning (Crisis, 128)". So all objective-logical accomplishments lead back to life-world. He then critiques various other philosophies of science, first empiricism, whose results are all based on the experience of an objective nature,

34. e. Science is rooted in the life-world. As such, objective science can always reference back to the pre-given world. The ideas of objective science exist in the life-world not as things like stones or trees, but rather as “representations-in-themselves” or “propositions in themselves”. The concreteness of the life-world, consequently, extends beyond the world of things. However, scientists can come to conclusions, and make theories based on their experiences that are grounded in life-world. But these ideas belong to the unity of the life-world, as the life-world encompasses them in it's universality, while, simultaneously, is the foundation of these ideas and their objective truth world. The life-world is the foundation of and the encompasser of. So how are we to reconcile the life-world with the existence of the objective-truth world? This throws the project into doubt, and we cannot use any handed down idea or theory to figure out the best way to solve the problem.

34. f. A new scientific approach is required to study the life-world. Husserl suggests that if we were only making contrasts, than objective science could suffice. He then posits two types of truths: practical situational truths, and scientific truths. The situational truths are subjective, and scientific truths just point back to the situational truths. This is clearly another way for him to talk about the objective/life-world split. The life-world encompasses, "both directly and in the manner of horizons (Crisis, 133)", all the multiplicities of validity. We begin to find the method for studying the life-world through reflection. Husserl posits the problem facing phenomenology another way: "the relation between objective-scientific thinking and intuition (Crisis, 134)".

35. Husserl employs an epoche to overcome objective science, which serves to suspend all theoretical interests, in order to directly interact with the life-world. The objective sciences still exist however, as do our other life interests, it’s just that they have ‘their proper time’. We jump through our various different vocational interests, and focus on them, and the life-world is one of our vocational interests when we direct our attention to it. Of course, life-world as a vocation is not equal to any other vocation, as it is beyond any other mere theoretical interest, and aims to see the basis for how the world makes itself known to us, and, as Husserl suggests, could trigger a personal/existential transformation of great magnitude. He also states that sometimes we are in the life-world vocation, and sometimes it works, and sometimes we visit upon other vocations, but our directedness at other vocations never implies that the life-world has vanished, nor the results of our inquiry invalid. The vocation may change, but our subjective interests can remain in tact, so if we jump from phenomenologist-life-world vocation to cobbler vocation we don't loose the previously mentioned transformation.

36. The life-world is the spatiotemporal world in which we interact with/perceive things. Everything we experience, things, for example, or even other people for that matter, are subjective and relative. In practical matters we arrive at a consensus with others as to what something might be, but only when finding said consensus meets our purposes. However, individuals of starkly different cultural orientations are more likely to perceive things in very different ways… So Husserl posits that we should set up as goal of truth which is unconditionally valid, i.e. what makes objects in the life-world identifiable to us, regardless of culture or creed. The life-world has a general structure, which encompasses everything that is relative, although the general structure itself is not relative. Physicists have projects in the life-world, and their conclusions and theories are the straightforward results. Every objective a priori must reference back to an a priori of the life world; this creates validity. Husserl suggests a division of the universal life-world a priori and the universal "objective" a priori, in order to gauge how the ontic validity of objective a priori is determined, i.e. what makes math ‘real’, or, within the scope of Husserl’s project, how math makes itself known to us.

37. Husserl proposes we take a reflection in order to discern the possible ways in which the pre-given world can become thematic for us. In doing so, we find the world is always pre-given to us as subjects. “To live is always to live-in-certainty-of-the-world (Crisis, 142)”. There is a difference between how we are conscious of the world and how we are conscious of objects in the world. All objects have varying modes by which they are considered valid, and all of these objects and these modes presuppose the world. They all mean the world exists, because they are able to be perceived by us, regardless of their individual mode by which they give themselves to us.

38. There exist two different methods in which we are ‘awake’ to the world and to the objects in it. The first one is the life in which we are straight-forwardly living towards objects as they are presented to us. Here, the horizon contains all of our goals, and we past through it in a ‘synthetic coherence’. None of our goals can extend beyond the reach of this world, as all perceptions lead us to another, and another. Everything seems to make itself known to us in a fairly obvious and comprehensible manner.
Conversely, the other mode of living entails a life where things make themselves given to us in ways we are not always directly aware of. This leads to a shift in focus, from merely what makes itself known to us, but how it makes itself known to us. This brings the universally valid world into being for us, as we are no longer focused on things as set and in-themselves, but on their various alterations and modes of validity as they become known to us as they appear in the world-horizon. When these validities that appear on the horizon overlap with each other, they give us new knowledge, by either verifying existences or refuting them. This is what Husserl refers to as the ‘universal accomplishing life’, where the world comes to us constantly pre-given. Also, the overlapping validities form a ‘synthetic totality’. This synthetic totality represents the life-world’s ontic structure, as our world is a connected series of experiences, that lead to others, and others, and pull us over the horizon by the pre-given.
This second method by which we are awake in the world forces us to look at the how of things. Husserl wants to focus on things that not actually are, but moreso on the manner of giveness of things, and how these manners can change. We shall focus exclusively on the subjective, as it is only through the subjective that the world exists straightforwardly for us. We need to create a method to investigate the how of the pregiveness of the world, that explains how it serves as the basis for all of our experiences. Now, we should only be concerned with the world and it’s pregiveness, and any knowledge derived from the “objective” sciences serves as mere historical facts, and can in no way be looked at a premise for what we do. The only sort of objective investigation still to be employed is that of history, but historians still base their foundings on the foundation of the life-world.

39. As we interact with the validity of world, we are not allowed to study it. A new epoche is required, so we can fully step out of the natural attitude and observe it’s pre-giveness.

40. We create the transcendental epoche. This is necessary, as we are always directed towards something in the life-world, whether it be objects or retentions. As we interact with their validities, their individual validities imply a horizon of infinite (inactive) validities. Even if these inactive validities do not become the center of our attention, they still affect the direction of our attention, and shape the giveness of things to us, and could potentially awaken as active validities. The horizon of life-world has a horizontal character, as every validity extends into other validities.
If we try to abstain from validity, in order to step back and observe the natural character of the life-world, we are only creating a new mode of validity, and are rebound in the life-world. A method is required which puts out of play the pregiveness of the world, which always finds us chained to validities extending into validities which shape our perception in ways we can’t always perceive. And this is what the transcendental epoche is intended to do, as it cuts off the flow of infinitely connected validities which synthesize into ontic meaning for us, enabling us to step above the pre-giveness of the life-world, and observe.

41. When we perform the transcendental epoche, we become aware of the correlation between world and world consciousness. World consciousness is the subjectivity which interacts with the validities of the life-world, and always has the life-world as the subject of it’s focus. After we perform the transcendental epoche, we find ourselves situated above this world consciousness, as the nature of this epoche prohibits us from asking questions which are bound up in the world, rather, the world is now appearing before us as a phenomenon.

42. The observations about the world following the epoche must be from an ‘experiencing gaze’, which witnesses the world as phenemenom. This presents difficulties however, as we no longer move along the path of the world, but rather outside of it, thanks to the transcendental epoche. Also, the infinite possibilities for experience in the world becomes the infinite possibilities for ‘transcendental experience’, following the epoche. Husserl again reiterates that we refine our approach to the new science.

43. Husserl comments on his path to the transcendental epoche, as described in Ideas, as it leaves the transcendental ego void of content. This leaves the transcendental unsure what has been gained by the epoche, or how it was carried out. Husserl notes this shortcoming, and our new transcendental epoche should have a way around this problem. In the epoche laid out in Crisis, we (somehow) immediately understand to start our investigation with the pre-given world, after it has been performed. We understand this because the pre-giveness of the world is all we have left, after the epoche has been performed.

44. We focus ourselves on the life-world and it’s relativity, and how it reveals itself to us in straightforward living, and also the ways we are uncertain of it’s validity. We are not concerned with what the things of the world actually are, or what the world actually is. Our main focus is to grapple with the ‘Heraclitean Flux’ of the life-world, taking everything we perceive as existent, and inquire into how things appear to us.

45. “…Our aim shall be, not to examine the world’s being and being-such, but to consider whatever has been valid and continues to be valid for us as being and being-such in respect to how it is subjectively valid… (Crisis, 157)”. When we experience anything, we are often times experiencing it several ways, by touching, tasting, etc. All senses are the same, they only differ in modes of ‘sensible exhibition’. Even when we are seeing something though, every seeing is not the same. Over a session of seeing, I can see a thing from one side, and then another side, and these different seeings merge into an ontic certainty of the dimensions of the thing, even though we are not directly seeing all the sides of the thing at once. All of our perceptions unify into ‘the thing’, as it’s meaning continues to develop through the acquisition of further validities.

46. The world we are in is a spatiotemporal world, and perception only concerns the present. However, this present implies an endless past behind it, and a future ahead of it. We access the past and future as ‘retentions’ and ‘protentions’, as they create a continuity through which objects are constituted to us.

47. Kinesthesis (defined as the ability to feel movements or actions of the body) illuminates an interesting point. Naturally, when I move my leg, I am aware of both the fact that I am moving my leg, and the fact that my leg is moving. The body is two-sided, in this regard. The internal kinesthesis always precedes the external physical kinesthesis.
Another interesting point. If I believe that I am witnessing a certain thing, I open myself to the validities connected with I think I am seeing. There is a ‘if-then’ relationship at play her, where something (in this case, our perception) begets something else (in this case, validities). Objects must exhibit themselves to us in a certain systematic order; in this respect, they are indicated in advance. Husserl gives the example of a mannequin, mistaken for a man. When we witness the mannequin from afar, we expect man, and leave ourselves vulnerable to all the retentions and whatnot associated with what we think is going on. When we realize that it’s actually a mannequin, we are forced to make a correction, and alter our “expectation-horizon of the multiplicities anticipated as normal (Crisis, 162)”. Every thing that presents itself to us has an intentional background, filled with all possible events flowing harmoniously behind.
The perception of a thing is always perception of the thing within a perceptual field. And the thing has two horizons, internal and external. The external horizon is the other things that the thing in question co-exists with. The internal horizon is the all the possible ways we could perceive a thing by itself. The external horizon is not the world, but the world manifests in it, with all the possible perceptions we could have of this sector of the world.
The world “always flows on in the unity of my perceptual conscious life (Crisis, 163)”. The flow of multiplicities which constitute our consciousness of things does not always happen though, as we stop occasionally, to correct ourselves, and adjust our expectation-horizon.
Husserl then moves on to talk about intersubjectivity. We all encounter each other along the always flowing world-perceiving, and we can interact with the lives of others, as the giveness of anything perceivable is communalized. As we interact with others in this world, we may even be forced to perform correction to adjust our validities, as contact with other humans can be like the interaction between different experiences of the same thing within the individual’s life. And these different experiences flow together to form a unity that we all have access to. We are all linked to the same experienced things, we just see different sides or aspects of it, and all these perspectives flow into a knowable unity through the community. There is still the issue of manners of appearance, as we usually experience things as “originally one’s own”, but through the intersubjective community experience, we are able to experience things by “empathizing” them from others. In the intersubjective community experience, the ‘thing itself’ is never really seen, as we all grasp it differently, and the thing really becomes a unity of all the various perceptions directed at it, always in motion as it constitutes all of our shifting validities.

48. Everything that we can perceive is an index of it’s systematic multiplicities, all of it’s actual and possible modes of giveness, each mode a different way of perceiving the entity. Everything has it’s own modes of validity, it’s own manners of synthesis, and everything exists in correlation with its own individual manners of giveness. Everything also has it’s own manners of intention, which in turn accounts for “the manners of subjective variation of these modes in syntheses of individual-subjective and intersubjective harmony and discrepancy (Crisis, 166)”. Husserl states that this confusing web of correlations can’t easily lead to any clear cut factuality, but instead to over-arching generalities that could constitute a system of a priori truths.

49. Our experience constitutes a massive intersubjectivity, embodying ‘what is’, syntheses, and manners of giveness. The manners by which the unifying multiplicities appear are unities of multiplicities themselves, which reside deeper than the manners and constitute them, leading us to what Husserl calls ‘an obscure horizon’. Husserl uses the term “intersubjective constitution of the world”, which encompasses the total system of manners of giveness and the modes of validity for all egos. If we were to discover the constitution in it’s entirety, the world as we perceived it would become comprehensible to us as “a structure of meaning formed out of elementary intentionalities (Crisis, 168)”. Intentionalities themselves are simply meaning-formation working in tandem with one another, leading to a new meaning through their syntheses. Also, meaning is always determind by it’s modes of validity, and it’s relation ego-subjects that can influence validity. Intentionality is the only way for us make anything intelligible. And so, our inquiry takes us back to the intentional origins and unities, which, according to Husserl, will leave no worthwhile question unanswered.
Our perception is bound in the present. The temporal mode of this world points to it’s two horizons: past and future. However, the past still has manners of giveness by which it can present itself to us now. Intentional synthesis is what synthesizes our continuity, allows us to direct ourselves to the past through recollection and the access of retentions.
Husserls deems pure subjectivity to be intentionality in it’s pure form, and also proclaims the through intentionality ontic meaning is formed. As such, any truth or ‘grounds’ that we come to in our inquiry will only point to more grounds. This isn’t because we couldn’t ever grasp the world though, instead Husserl suggests that were we to ever fully comprehend the depths of meaning-formation and whatnot, the meaning uncovered would risk becoming a totality, much like the ‘objective’ reason Husserl blames for the crisis in the first place.

50. Husserl mentions the object-pole, and uses it to further illustrate how an object displays different manners of giveness. Assigning a pole structure to the object enables it to put off different manner of giveness, possibly even at the same time. Like the earlier mentioned idea of how an object is an index of all it’s manners of giveness. But it seems like Husserl is suggesting that all manners of giveness for an object can be found in it’s object pole.
The ego is “the performer of all validities (Crisis, 171)”. Husserl then employs the concept of the ego-pole, to display how we can spontaneously hold something in our mind, while correcting illusions, deciding things, etc. The ego-pole is likely useful in constituting temporality, as it could observe the preserve while sifting through retentions and protentions. Even though Husserl anoints the ego-pole as the performer of all validities, he still thinks the subjective life-world should be studied first and foremost. Subjectivity is an “ego functioning constitutively—only within intersubjectivity (Crisis, 172)”. The intersubjective world-life is something of an intentional index, for all the multiplicities of appearance, unified through an intersubjective synthesis.



51. Here, Husserl shows how looking at the life-world through the lens of the pre-epoche “objective” sciences would inevitably misconstrue it. Now Husserl isn’t interested in what really or really doesn’t exist, and he even states that ontology’s a priori differs greatly from phenomenology’s. But if we perform an ontology after the epoche, we are able to look at the essential structures of the life-world as they are pre-given to us, in a slightly different perspective than the phenomenologist’s. Then, you’re not looking at life-world as it presents itself to you in direct experience, but instead, looking to see what’s real and what isn’t.

52. A mode of reflection is needed to understand all presuppositions, and how theories take their meaning from them. The epoche removed us from all aspects of the world-life, and all interests pertaining to it. The natural world-life is only one particular mode of overarching ‘transcendental life’ which encompasses and constitutes our being and the world we are beings in. However, when transcendental subjectivity is existing in the mode of the natural life, it is oblivious to the horizons that present things to us, and can never be aware of them.
The epoche seems to turn us away from the natural world-life. This is not true, Husserl asserts. The philosopher in the epoche still lives through the natural life in a way, although it radically reshapes knowledge and it’s ontic meaning. In the natural world-life, all goals and purposes are terminated within the world-horizon “termini”, which objectively validates all that can proven in the natural life. There is no inquiry outside of this mode from within it. In the epoche however, the philosopher is not looking for a horizon that validates what is, but moreso how: how do things make themselves known to us?
The philosopher in the epoche (or phenomenologist) is free to carry out any sort of praxis, but not to it’s logical outcome for his own gain, as it’s outcome does not terminate his quest, for these outcomes are all subject of his investigation of the world.
The ‘Heraclitean Flux’ produced by the synthesis of the infinite multiplicities in the manners of pregiveness is also problematic. How do we describe this world in it’s ‘individual facticity’? That isn’t a problem to Husserl though, as we should not try and place the subjective sphere in an objective context. There can be no analogue in empirical “objective” science to the subjective experience of the life-world. That’s not to say that it is in no way possible to grasp the transcendental/subjective, as Husserl feels that an eidetic method can get at the life-world.

53. How can humans and their subjectivity, as components of the life-world, constitute the life-world as an ‘intentional formation’, one which is formed by the universal intersubjectivity of humans and their connections? Humans are only partial aspects of this whole life-world that they are constituting. The subjective world grows to encompass the objective world, apparently.
Husserl is aware of paradoxes that his philosophy weaves. Human beings appear to subjects for the consciousness of the world, while at the same time existing as objects in it. To really investigate this problem, Husserl, in predictable fashion, asserts that there is no way to proceed by going on the theories of others, instead, we must begin without any underlying ground. We reflect, and constantly re-immerse ourselves in the paradoxes that confuse us, as they appear to us as incomprehensible phenomenon.

54. a. How can we be both human beings and “phenomena” in the perspective of others?

54. b. There are various different modes of “I”. We can somehow, individually, constitute a transcendental intersubjectivty, and add ourselves to it as a member alongside other “I”’s. We are already in the business of constructing different “I”’s, as we gather retentions of past “I”’s in our accumulation of perspectives that craft unity. The original “I” always belongs to the present though. Hence, “I” can also constitute itself as the other, which can be validated as “phenomena” in the perspectives of others.

55. When we perform the transcendental epoche, we are reduced to the absolute ego. It is not pre-supposed but valid, for the ego can verify itself. Now we must investigate the ego. The concrete-world ego has to somehow meet it’s transcendental ego, and analyze it. Husserl closes with a brief summary of his mission statement, by affirming that he isn’t trying to secure objectivity, but understand it.



Works Cited
1. Edmund Husserl, Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Translated by David Carr. Northwestern University Press, 1970. ISBN-13: 978-0810104587.


Works Consulted
1. Joseph J. Kockelmans. A First Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology. Duquesne University Press, 1967.

2. Matheson Russell. Husserl: A Guide for the Perplexed. Continuum, 2006.