A Phenomenological Approach To Historical Knowledge Author(s) - Larry Shiner 2504325

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A Phenomenological Approach to Historical Knowledge

Author(s): Larry Shiner
Source: History and Theory, Vol. 8, No. 2 (1969), pp. 260-274
Published by: Wiley for Wesleyan University
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A PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH TO
HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE
LARRY SHINER
The achievements of history are there for all to see, yet the basis of these
achievements remains in doubt. Some continue to suspect that history is
merely an assemblage of facts and opinions lacking the theoretical structure
necessary to a genuine science. Others attempt to contort the actual practices
of historians into a logical form resembling that of some model science such
as physics. Even those who have been more sensitive to the actualities of historical method have often concentrated on analyzing the peculiarity of historical explanation in relation to explanation in natural science. If one adds
to these recent conflicts the still resonating claims of relativism and idealism,
it is apparent that as far as the foundations of the discipline of history are
concerned we still have a long way to go. What is the contribution of phenomenology in this situation? On the one hand, it offers an approach which,
unlike the positivistic or "unity of science" viewpoints, can do justice to the
actual practices of historians while at the same time offering a rigorous analysis of the foundations of historical knowledge. On the other hand, it has the
advantage over linguistic analysis of being oriented directly to the problem of
the nature of historical reality and its relation to historical method.
Before we can indicate the path of a phenomenological approach to the
problem of historical knowledge, we must say what phenomenology is. In
the last seventy years phenomenology has become many things. In addition
to its influence on philosophers so varied in outlook as Max Scheler, Maurice
Merleau-Ponty, and John Wild, it has shaped theoretical reflection in various
disciplines such as sociology (Schutz), psychiatry (Binswanger), and religion
(Van der Leeuw). Unfortunately, the tendency to refer to almost any descriptive treatment of a subject as "phenomenology" has diluted the meaning of
the term. Often works which refer to themselves as phenomenological are
lacking in any methodological stringency or are simply inspired by a rejection
of naturalism.1 Given such a state of affairs it is incumbent on anyone pro1. This criticism, regrettably, also applies to historian John H. Nota's recent book
Phenomenology and History (Chicago, 1967).
261
posing a phenomenological approach to a discipline to state in what sense he

understands phenemenology. It seems to me that an approach which legitimately calls itself phenomenological should bear some recognizable relation
to the central theses of the philosophical movement inaugurated by Edmund
Husserl, even if it departs from H-usserl's own formulations. In the present
essay I shall first interpret, revise, and apply several concepts of Husserlian
origin. Then I shall illustrate the perspective they can offer the historian who
is seeking help for his reflections on the foundation and scope of the discipline
of history. To those who are familiar with phenomenological literature, my
debt to Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricoeur, and Alfred Schutz for this interpretation and revision will be evident.2
Phenomenology is not a doctrine but the name for a way of approaching philosophical problems. As is well known, its emphasis is on the description of
phenomena, "the things themselves" as they appear. By putting in suspension
theoretical assumptions about the existence and nature of the world, the
phenomenologist seeks to reveal structures which are so much taken for
granted that we normally overlook them. In a phenomenological approach the
sciences will be described in terms of the basic "attitude" of which they
are tributary rather than in terms of a collection of existing objects or a particular type of explanatory procedure.3 This attitude or orientation is what
opens up the field of the science in question. The attitude is logically prior
to all particular investigations, although it may never be explicitly thematized
by the scientist. The historian, for example, can only begin to look for the
"facts" because he already has an understanding of what factuality in the
realm of history means. Thus "attitude" as used here does not refer to an
individual's affective state of mind so much as to the fundamental orientation
of perception and thought ingredient in a given approach to reality. What I
notice and explore at a political rally, for example, will depend on whether
my attitude is informed by ordinary curiosity, by the questions and categories
of sociology, or by the interests and assumptions of psychoanalysis. The "attitude" of a science acts as a kind of filter which both selects and focuses
the phenomena before us. There are no such things as bare data or bare facts;
2. It will also be evident that I do not necessarily follow Husserl's "transcendental
idealism" as the ultimate justification for an eidetic ontology. As H. G. Gadamer has
pointed out, a descriptive phenomenology operates on a different level from the
transcendentalphenomenology intended to justify it. H. G. Gadamer, "Die phinomenologische Bewegung," Philosophische Rundschau 11 (1963), 17-18.
3. Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phdnoinenologie und Phanomenologischen
Philosophie, Zweites Buch (The Hague, 1952), 1-6. Hereafter cited as Ideen, II.
262
LARRY SHINER
the phenomena become data or facts of a certain kind through the particular
attitude from which we view them. For phenomenology the basis on which
we may discern the implicit attitude which defines the field of a science is the
phenomenological reduction which permits an analysis of the essential structures of the "life-world." Thus the three basic operative concepts of a phenomenological analysis of the conceptualization implicit in historical research
and writing are the life-world, the phenomenological reduction, and essential
analysis.
Prior to discussing these three concepts a word must be said about "intentionality," a notion so pervasive and fundamental in phenomenological
writings that it informs all the others. From the beginning one must make an
effort to avoid limiting the term "intention" to the psychological sense which
inevitably comes to mind, as in the phrase "I intend to do it." In phenomenology to intend something is to aim at it or to have it in "view" and thus
to be engaged with it. This posture of aiming or engagement is the fundamental human posture as far as knowledge is concerned. Thus phenomenologists would agree with the idea that the environing world is not in the
mind as an image, nor is the mind something in the body. Intentionality means
that the human person as a whole is a kind of opening onto the world through
which the world takes the form it must have for human beings. This is what
phenomenologists mean when they say that all consciousness is consciousness
of something. There is no bare subject in itself standing before a world of objects. Conversely, there is no bare world of objects in themselves awaiting an
Adam to come along and name them. Insofar as we know the world at all,
we are always already linked to it and the world is always already the world
as it appears for us. Man constitutes his world in the sense that his perceptual
and reflective possibilities are the condition of possibility for the world's appearing as it does. But man does not construct the world. Rather, the world
reveals its inherent structures to the maieutic grasp of human consciousness.
Keeping in mind the basic meaning of intentionality as the interplay of consciousness and the world, let us turn to the three concepts I have indicated
as the main instruments of a phenomenological approach to historical knowledge: (1) life-world, (2) reduction, (3) essential analysis.
(1) If we are to grasp the bearing of the concept of life-world (Lebenswelt),
we must consider that it was developed by Husserl in opposition to the "idealization" of the world in natural science. He was thinking in particular of
our habit of regarding the world which normally appears to us as merely subjective, and the quality-less forces and functions of natural science as the
objective basis on which the perceived world is built. In actuality, Husserl
argued, it is quite as much the other way around. The world as it is objectified
in natural science is an abstraction based on the life-world. As Merleau-Ponty
has put it:
263
The entire universe of science is constructedon top of the lived-world and if we

want to think rigorously about science itself, appreciatingits exact meaning and
range, we must first awaken that experience of the world of which it is the secondary expression. . . . To return to the things themselves, is to return to this
world before knowledge, of which knowledge always speaks, and in regard to
which every scientific determinationis abstract, significativeand dependent-as
geographyis in relationto a countrysidewhere we have first learned what a forest
is, or a prairie or a river.4
But does this mean that the life-world is simply the world of everyday life?
Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that it is the world as we actually experience it
apart from any explicitly theoretical attitude. No, in the sense that the phenomenologist is not interested in the aesthetic, moral, and sensuous concreteness of life for its own sake. Since the life-world is a realm of primary evidence, the important thing is to show how this evidence is the pre-reflective
basis of all reflection and analysis.5 The life-world in this sense does not appear to one who is immersed in the concerns of everyday existence any more
than it appears to the chemist when he is immersed in his particular version
of the theoretical attitude. The life-world appears as the life-world only when
one executes a phenomenological reduction.0
(2) Husserl's most famous description of the reduction actually presented
only one dimension of it -the
suspension of "belief" in the world, as such
belief is assumed both in everyday experience and in the sciences. By this he
meant to reject the naive realism of what he called the "natural attitude." Of
course, Husserl and other phenomenologists are in no sense denying the existence of the world; they are merely trying to bracket out all our assumptions
and theories so that we can begin to see the world simply as it appears. Just
as in "reducing" a set of numbers to a common denominator we do not change
the numbers but seek to reveal a property hidden to a cursory view, so in
"reducing" the natural standpoint we do not change anything about the world
but reveal its hidden relation to consciousness. As Paul Ricoeur has pointed
out, the difficulty with the terms "bracketing" or "epoche," which are so often
used to describe the reduction, is that they make it appear to be a negative
movement, whereas it is actually a positive transformation of attitude. The
reduction is the insight that up until now we have been "lost" in the world,
4. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenologie de la perception (Paris, 1945), iii.
5. Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europdischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phdnomenologie (The Hague, 1962), 130-132. Hereafter cited as Krisis.
6. It is important to maintain the connection of the concept of life-world with those
of the reduction and idealization. Otherwise it can become a mere synonym for everyday life or an unspecified subjectivity or immediacy. Neither Husserl nor MerleauPonty believed we could have an immediate knowledge of the life-world. The life-world
and reflective idealization always stand in dialectical relation.
7. See Ricoeur's note to Husserl's text in the French translation of Ideen I. Edmund
Husserl, Idees directrices pour une phenome'nologie (Paris, 1950), 99.
264
LARRY SHINER
that is, in everyday pursuits, in crypto-metaphysical credences, and in various

theoretical attitudes. But this does not mean that we first come to realize that
we have been living in a mixture of attitudes and beliefs and then execute another movement; the realization that they are in fact attitudes and beliefs is
itself the reduction.8 Let us suppose any perception, say, of some pine trees
outside my window. In my ordinary attitude they are accepted as existing
there just as I see them. If I "reduce" this seeing, I do not deny the actually
existing pine trees but suspend my belief in their existence along with all the
theories I may have about either trees or perception. What is left is the concrete phenomenon "pine trees as they appear to me." The advantage of this
move will become immediately apparent if we consider phenomena about the
nature of whose existence or function, if any, we may be in doubt, like the
state, facts, fidelity, God. The reduction allows us to examine exactly what
sort of phenomenon we are aiming at before we start making investigations
or drawing conclusions about modes of existence or operation and the like.
The moment we make the reduction, the world with all its structures comes
into view as phenomenon. The reduction opens up an immense field for
analysis. It is not another world parallel to the world of everyday life or to
the world as it appears in the natural science attitude, but the same world as
it appears when these attitudes are suspended. This is the life-world, the world
as it is intentionally present to us prior to all analysis and judgment.
(3) But how can we give an account of the structures of the various dimensions of the life-world? How can we have a reflective analysis of what is prereflective? It is obvious that in speaking of an analysis of the life-world (in
which we are always already immersed) we are talking of a direction for inquiry and not of an existing object which might be mastered by a special
technique. As Rene Scherer remarks, to see and to describe what is seen is
the only way to present what is foundational for thought.9 Phenomenological
analysis, however, is not just any description, but the description of "essence,"
of what is invariant in any given perception. Since the mere mention of the
term "essence" is enough to rouse feelings of horror in some, it should be
pointed out immediately that the essences phenomenologists are talking about
are not "real" in the sense of belonging to some duplicate world; they are
idealities belonging to the interplay of consciousness and the world. As outlined by Husserl, the actual method of discovering essential structures is a
process of imaginative variation upon the phenomena, that is, upon the "reduced" object-as-it-appears. He believed that in order to see what is invariant
8. Edmund Husserl, Ideas, General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (New York,
1962), 140. Hereafter cited as Ideas, I. See also Paul Ricoeur's introduction to the
French translation of Ideen I, op. cit., xxviii.
9. Rene Scherer, La Phenomenologie des "Recherches Logiques" de Husserl (Paris,
1967), 347.
265
about a phenomenon we need not enumerate all the empirical possibilitieseven a single example may suffice. We imaginatively vary the aspects of the
case at hand until we arrive at a point where the phenomenon has ceased to
be the same. Suppose, for example, that I want to arrive at the essential
structures of voluntary action as they present themselves in ordinary experience. In considering various dimensions of willing, my attention falls on the
phenomenon of choice. I try to imagine several acts which could legitimately
be considered willing and in each case attempt to omit the element of choice.
At the same time I also try to imagine choice as the sole element in willing.
I discover that I can do neither without making an action unrecognizable as
willing. I "see" that choice is an essential element in willing and that willing
cannot be limited to choice. Naturally, there are other aspects to willing as
ordinarily experienced and, of course, it is possible to have a psychological
analysis of willing which proceeds on the assumption of naturalistic causality,
and the like. But even a behavioristic analysis can easily end in confusion and
misleading claims if it has not clarified the essential meaning of its concepts.
It is evident from the example I have given, however, that any essential structure uncovered by imaginative variation will be "inexact" by nature since it
is a descriptive form; nevertheless, it will be "rigorous" since it is arrived at
methodically.10 To seek an "essence" is to seek an intelligible structure in
experience without resorting to the theoretical constructs of an established
logic or science which themselves rest on fundamental but seldom explicit
insights concerning the meaning of basic terms.-"
In Husserl's late essay "The Question of the Origin of Geometry as an
Intentional-Historical Problem," the concepts of life-world, reduction, and
essence are integrated into a new vision of the task and method of reflection
on the nature of the sciences.12 Husserl describes a kind of reflection which
does not trace the factual connections of external history but seeks to arrive
at the originary vision which forms the essence of a tradition. The creative
insight which gave birth to a science can be passed on only if it is given some
form of permanent expression. Naturally, the full-blown cultural object is
not present at the beginning but exists only in its primordial "definition." It
is up to succeeding generations to receive and further develop the field of
activity which has thus been launched on its career. Husserl called the original
linguistic expression and the subsequent additions "sedimentations," the
successively integrated layers which build up to form a living tradition.13This
sedimentation means that the originary vision which opened up the field can
10. Husserl, Ideas, I, 176-194.
11. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Les Sciences de l'homme et la phenomenologie (Paris,
1960), 12-14.
12. This essay appears as Beilage III in the Krisis, 365-386.
13. Ibid., 371-372.
266
LARRY SHINER
be ignored by succeeding generations who passively and uncritically accept

and further develop the tradition. On the other hand, it is always possible to
penetrate the accumulations and lay bare the originary act.14 If we do undertake such a "reactivation" we may proceed with the confidence that the same
evidence or insight as was seen by the "originator" may be recovered, since
geometry and the other sciences are idealizations of experience. In the case of
geometry, for example, what we are seeking is the original idealization
whereby a pre-theoretical experience of space became thematized in such a
way as to open up the infinite field of geometry as such and of whatever type.
Husserl was aware that this program of reactivation could be extended to
any aspect of culture to the extent that all cultural meanings are ideal. Accordingly, he defined historical reality as "the living movement of the togetherness
and interpenetration of the formation and sedimentation of meaning."''5And
when the process of reactivation is pursued in relation to the discipline of
history, it leads to the uncovering of the originary emergence of historical
consciousness. Accordingly, every historical investigation as the reconstruction
of the past on a factual basis remains opaque to its own meaning as a discipline so long as it does not uncover the sense in which it idealizes the pretheoretical historicity of man. To pursue such an exploration systematically
will bring to light the structural a priori of the field of historical research.'6
There is a striking difference of emphasis between this project of reactivating the original idealizations of the life-world implicit in a science and the
earlier proposal of essential analysis. In his early writings Husserl developed
a program for the analysis of "regions" of objects whose essential structures
were to be explicated as the framework within which the factual investigations
of the science in question are carried out.'7 This concept of regional ontologies
gives the appearance of leaving to the actual sciences the role of merely
filling in a priori structures. As Merleau-Ponty has pointed out, this is exactly
the way Sartre executed his early attempts at an eidetic psychology.'8 In a late
manuscript Husserl grants that actual historical research can go on satisfactorily without a prior analysis of the structures of the historical field, but un14. Ibid., 376.
15. Ibid. 380.
16. Ibid. As revealed in various manuscripts of this period, Husserl's own efforts to
uncover the fundamental historicity of the life-world are a sketch of several levels of
historicity which are both simultaneous possibilities of life and successive steps in the
development of humanity. A rationalistic teleology jostles uncomfortably with a more
empirical structuralanalysis. As will become apparent, my own notion of a phenomenological recovery of the idealizations implicit in historical science is a consciously
dialectical movement between historicity and its idealizations in historical science. See
manuscripts AV 24, pp. 12-15, KIII 3, p. 80, and Krisis, Beilage XXVI, 502.
17. Husserl, Ideas 1, 59-72, 379-383.
18. Merleau-Ponty,Les Sciences de l'homme et la phenomenologie, 18-33.
267
fortunately the technique of free variation also implies that the reverse is the
case, that one can analyze the structures of the historical field with little reference to historical practice.'9 The idea of reactivation implies a more complex
technique of essential analysis. For reactivation must cut through a series of
intermediary levels before it arrives at its goal and even then it does not come
upon a single a priori but the dialectical relation of idealization and the lifeworld. The free variation of a few arbitrarily selected examples cannot suffice
for this process, especially in a case like the discipline of history where what
counts or does not count as an example of history is in dispute. The conclusion
which seems to impose itself is that Husserl's own program in his later years
implies that the discovery of essence cannot afford to disdain the manifold of
experience but must make use of judiciously selected empirical cases.
In speaking of judiciously selected cases I have in mind the use of a wide
variety of types of the phenomenon in question. Some phenomenologists would
see such a suggestion as a simple betrayal of phenomenology, arguing that
we can only distinguish types of history, for example, if we already have
implicitly in mind what history is.20 In actuality, it seems to me, the situation
is the other way around. We always begin with the life-world wherein all
essential structures are implicit and yet are already overlaid with theoretical
distinctions which have been sedimented. As Alfred Schutz asks: "Is it possible, by means of free variations in phantasy, to grasp the eidos of a concrete
species or genus, unless these variations are limited by the frame of the type
in terms of which we have experienced, in the natural attitude, the object from
which the process of ideation starts as a familiar one, as such and such an
object within the life-world?"'2'In taking account of the "types" of historical
reflection which present themselves we are making use of distinctions which
are only partially defined and in some cases only vaguely sensed. We have
categories like those of chronicle or historical novel, those of "species" of
history (political, military, cultural, local) or the auxiliary categories of biography and genealogy, and the special cases of myth, saga, and Heilsgeschichte.
A phenomenological analysis of the differentiae of historical science would
not begin by giving preference to any one of these but would accept all as a
guide to the discovery of essence. The essential structures which emerge from
such an analysis will be the rendering explicit of the unifying principles which
connect the types vaguely given in our everyday experience. The process of
19. Manuscript AIV 8, p. 64.
20. See Jacques Derrida's criticism of Merleau-Ponty on this issue in Derrida's introduction to the French translation of Husserl's "Origin of Geometry." Edmund Husserl,
L'Origine de la geometric (Paris, 1962), 115-123.
21. Schutz, Collected Papers III, 115. In his later writings Husserl himself reflected
on the concept of type as an intermediary between the Lebenswelt and pure essences.
Cf. Krisis, 176 ff. and the passages cited by Schutz. But as Schutz points out, Husserl
still regarded essence as the non-contingent result of free variation. Ibid., 114.
268
LARRY
SHINER
clarification of the unifying principles brings us a "new" understanding on the

basis of which we can reject some of the types which were provisionally
accepted as the starting point of reflection.
Thus an essential analysis is not simply the description of the way consciousness grasps a certain structure of the world but is at the same time the
way in which this structure grasps consciousness. Or we may simply speak
of the interpenetration of man and the world. As Merleau-Ponty put it, what
is fundamental in our situation is the interlacing of self-others-world. Through
our bodies we are both subject and object of the world and just as our bodies
are not mere assemblages of parts but structures which are open onto the
world and let it appear as a world, so the "things" of the world form within
and among themselves and with us a single "architecture" by comparison
with which the distinction of fact and essence appears as purely secondary.22
Thinking by means of essential structures is indispensable, but it is equally indispensable to keep alive the contact of structure and the family resemblances
from which it is worked up.
II
What is the programfor a phenomenologicalanalysis of the discipline of

history which emerges from the preceding discussion?The basic task of a
phenomenologicalapproachto historicalknowledgewould be to bringto clarity the essentialpre-conceptualization
ingredientin the practice of historical
researchwhich permitsthe life-worlditself to appearas history.But in order
to accomplishthis there must be at the same time a descriptionof the lifeworld itself relative to the range of interestsof historicalscience. The term
which has come to be employedin phenomenologicalliteraturefor the lifeworld as it appearsunder these aspects is "historicity."The descriptionof
historicitywill be a clarificationof the fundamentalstructuresimplicit in our
ordinaryexperienceof historicalreality.Naturallythe structuresof historical
experienceshave been influencedby historicalscience itself since the time of
Herodotusand Thucydidesand even prior to that by the Biblical saga, royal
chronicles, mythical representationsof historical figures, and the like.
Nevertheless,between participants'historicity and the constructionof that
historicityby the historianthere are certainnecessarydifferenceswhich can
serve as a point of referencefor revealingthe preconceptualizationsof the
historicalfield. A phenomenologicalapproachto the problem of historical
knowledge,therefore,will be the convergenceof a two-fold analysisaimed at
reactivatingthe fundamentalidealizationsof the life-world operative in all
22. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible et l'invisible (Paris, 1964), 152-154.
269
activity essential to the discipline of history. It will be the meeting of a

movement"fromabove,"the analysisof the essentialstructuresof the historical attitude;and a movement "from below," the analysis of the essential
structuresof the historical dimensionof the life-world which are idealized
in the historicalattitude.The two analyseswill be possible only when conducted together. There can be no question of producing "pure" essences
which are definitive expressions of either the implicit conceptualizations
which constitutethe historicalfield or of the structuresof the life-worldwhich
constitutethe historicityof human existence. There can only be a constant
dialecticalmovementin which each aspectprogressivelyilluminatesthe other.
In ordernot to leave the statementof this programat a completelygeneral
level I shall brieflyoutline three examplesof such an analysis.Naturally,an
adequatetreatmentof the topics chosenwould requirenot only a development
in greater detail but also an effort to show their interconnectionwith one
anotherand with other essentialstructures.
We may begin with the familiarobservationthat all historyis selective and
that if we triedto recountthe past completely,it would take more time to tell
than it took to happen.These two observationsindicate an essentialstructure
of historicityon the one hand and an essentialstructureof the idealizationof
historicityon the other. Implicit in the first is the insight that the past is in
principleinexhaustiblymultifariousand that it continuesto develop during
the very moment when we are in the process of graspingit. Implicit in the
second is the recognitionthat historicalwritingis not merely a randomlisting
of selected data even if all the data came from an arbitrarilylimited time
sequence.Theremust be a unit if thereis to be historicalnarrativeor analysis,
whetherthe unit is arrivedat in termsof a type of institution(nation, class)
or a type of activity (art, politics) or paradigmaticevents (reformation,
revolution). These particularidealizationsare not arbitraryconstructionsbut
grow out of latent structuresof the life-worldwhich are purifiedinto ideal
types. Withoutthese typicalunits historicalinvestigationwould be impossible.
A second essential idealizationimplicit in historicalscience emerges into
view when we consider that a fundamentalstructureof historicityis the in
principle unknowableand oncoming characterof the future. Despite their
best effortsto anticipatethe futureand masterthe present,the participantsin
history always view it from a relativelylimited standpoint.The historian,by
contrast, can in principle stand at a multitudeof viewpoints and not only
know what most of the participantsin an event were doing and planningat a
certainpoint but can know the actual future of that point. Like the novelist
who takes the viewpointof omniscience,he knows what is going on simultaneously at a dozen places and how the "plot" will turn out. Naturally the
historiandoes not know the "end"of historyor even the outcomein his own
270
LARRY
SHINER
near future, but the writer of the most contemporaryhistory is nevertheless

in advanceof those who participatedin the action he describes.Of course,
what we have said so far is true of anyone who deals with the past. The historiannot only can in principleachieve a pan-perspectivalposition but must
achieve as comprehensivea knowledgeof the relevant materialas possible.
He may have a dramaticflair and withholdcertainelementsof his knowledge
or include excerptsfrom diariesor journalisticaccountsfor effect. But if he
is an historian,it is essentialthat he achieve a pan-perspectivalposition and
attemptto see his data "together."
A third kind of idealizationis the distinctionof fact and meaningor fact
and interpretation.An essential characteristicof historicityis precisely the
absenceof such a distinction.We are so accustomedto thinkingin these terms
that a vocabularyfor expressingthe interlacementof thingsprior to this distinction is hard to come by. However, if we pay attentionto our ordinary
experienceas it presentsitself we do not find any "barefacts" at all; rather,
everythingis situated, every perception is a perception of somethingin a
horizonpregnantwith "meanings."23
The arrangementof furniturein a room
I enter for the first time, along with the personal and social context which
leads me into the room, immediatelycommunicatesthe "senseof place." The
sense of place is not a mere subjectiveadditionto an "objective"milieu; the
objective milieu and the "subjective"meaning are both derivativesof the
sense of place. The transportationstrike is my aching feet, the striker'ssense
added
of power,the businessman'sfrustration;these are not "interpretations"
to the "fact"that the buses and subwaysare not running.
Of necessity, however, the historian abstractsa certain "core" from the
complexityand concretenessof an event. This core is composed of conventionally "neutral"designations,and certain measurements- calendar time,
geographicallocation, economicand demographicstatistics.These "facts"are
then played off againstwhat now becomesthe variousparticipants'"interpretation"of the "meanings"of the event. The process of abstractionprovides
the historianwith a point of referencefor comparingviewpointsand proposing
functionalconnectionsor interpretationsof his own. If he lacked these reference points, he would be reducedto a purely descriptiveevocation.Thus he
does not seek an "objective"measureof the extent of a social crisis because
statisticstell us what "reallyhappened,"but because they provide one pivot
from which the street demonstrations,the call for a popular front, and the
interventionof the army can be understood.The fact-interpretation
polarity
is a necessarydevice in looseningthe threadsof the fabricof history.
But are not these descriptionsof essential structuresso general that they
23. Ibid., 172 ff.
271
tell us nothing new? Is phenomenologicalanalysis merely a way of transforming banalitiesinto generalities?Two remarksare in order here. First,
phenomenologicalanalysis does not intend to create new meanings but to
bringinto relief meaningswhich are alreadythere. As for the extremelygeneral level of its discoveries,the importantquestionis not whethera phenomenological analysis can solve particularhistoricalproblems, but whether it
can illuminatesome of the difficultiesabout the nature and status of the
disciplineof history as such.24For example,by seeing that units are a necessary condition for historicalresearchand that they arise as idealizationsof
historicity,we gain a context for the problem of the constructionof units
themselves.The practicinghistorian'ssense that the units he employs are
not pure constructionsbut are imposedon him by historicalrealityis correct,
since historicityis not pure fluiditybut rife with form. In recent years many
unit concepts, such as those of social class, secularization,and Renaissance,
have been subjectedto severe criticismand some scholarshave suggesteda
moratoriumon their use. But if units are both a necessaryconditionof historical researchand an idealizationof types alreadylatent in experience,the
only way to get rid of a bad unit concept is to clarify it or replace it with a
new one.
The recognitionof the necessity of pan-perspectivismcan do justice to a
certain line of relativist argumentwhile avoiding the relativist conclusion.
Relativistssometimescontendthat historicalscience distortshistoricalreality
and that only a presentationof the way things happenedfor the participants
is a faithful representationof what happened. What actually happened is
always"whatactuallyhappenedfor someone"and not what appearsto a panperspectivalobserverhoveringlike a Greek deity above the field of battle.
Moreover,it is argued,what happenedfor the participantswas a fluid interminglingof all sorts of factorswhich were not singledout in termsof clearly
definedunits. But to call these idealizationsa "distortion"makes sense only
as a counterto a supposedclaim that historicalscience reproduceshistorical
reality or that it gives us what "really happened."The phenomenological
approachnot only makes no such claim for historicalscience but shows that
such a claim is impossible,since the natureof historicalscience is precisely
to "distort"historicalrealityin the sense of structuringit in accordwith units,
pan-perspectivism,facts, and so forth. No doubt there are ways of more
directlyevoking past historicalreality which are not so abstractiveor "dis24. The limitation of Fritz Kaufmann's essay on phenomenology and historical
science was to move directly into the question of the usefulness of the intuition of
essence for the practicing historian. This makes phenomenology one technique among
others competing for the historian's attention. Fritz Kaufmann, 'The Phenomenological
Approach to History," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research II (1941), 159-172.
272
LARRY
SHINER
torting"- poetry, drama, political rhetoric, preaching, ritual. These can

bringthe concreteperspectivesto life in all their temporalvibrancy.But one
cannot claim that they are necessarilylower or higher on the scale of truth
than historicalscience;they are simplydifferentin aim and criterion.
A phenomenologicalunderstandingof the fact-meaning,fact-interpretation
schema enables us to do justice also to the relativistassault on the idea of
"barefacts"withoutresortto an idealistidentificationof historyand thought,
or recourseto the Nietzschean"thereare no facts, there are only interpretations." Nor do we have to accept Becker's conclusionthat "the event itself,
the facts, do not impose any meaning.It is the historianwho speaks, who
imposes a meaning."25Becker'sinstinctin rejectingthe common notion that
history is a collection of atomic facts was correct, but his famous essay is
conceptuallyhobbled because he did not see that the real problemwas the
fact-meaningdichotomyitself. By breakingthe grip of this polarity without
reducingit to an arbitraryoperation,a phenomenologicalapproachconverts
it from a problemwhich the historiancannot solve to a tool which he may
use.
In generalwe may say that the phenomenologicalapproachshows that the
theoryof historygets into troublewhen it forgetsthat the basic attitudewhich
opens up the field of historyis an idealizationof the life-world.When this is
forgottenthere is the dangerthat certain structuresof the historicalattitude
will be turnedinto absolutes.The historicalunit, for example,may come to
be treatedas thoughit were an actualforce, or pan-perspectivism
as thoughit
gave us an intrinsically"superior"view of historical reality. An opposite
danger which can result from overlookingthe roots of historicalscience in
historicityis the resort to a purely operationalinterpretationof historical
idealizations.The apparentmetaphysicalhumilityof assertingthat all scientific conceptsare arbitrarymodels to be judgedby their capacityfor verification actuallymakes absolutesof arbitrarychoices;for the verificationis to be
arrivedat by recourseto "facts"or "laws"which are themselvesoperational
constructs.As Merleau-Pontyput it, "we must ask why the tool functions
here, fails there, in short that this fluid science understanditself, that it see
itself as a constructionon the foundationof a bruteworld or existentand not
claimfor blind operationsthe constitutivevalue which the 'conceptsof nature'
can have in an idealistphilosophy."26The idealizationsemployedare indeed
operational,but they mustneverbe uprootedfrom the soil of historicity.Thus
a phenomenologicalapproachnot only puts the historianon guardagainstthe
25. Carl L. Becker, "What are Historical Facts?" in Hans Meyerhoff, ed., The
Philosophy of History in our Time (Garden City, N.Y., 1959), 131.
26. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "L'Oeil et l'esprit,"Les Temps Moderizes (1961), 194.
273
arbitrary use of concepts but also points him toward the historical dimension
of the life-world as the legitimate touchstone for a revision of the structures
of the historical attitude.
This general contribution of the phenomenological approach can help us
resolve an issue frequently posed in the current debate over historical explanation, namely, whether we should accept the actual practice of historians as
the norm for reflection on the theory of the discipline of history, or whether
we should determine historical practice on the basis of a general ideal of
science. The alternative is false. To accept without criticism the conventions
of historical practice as it now stands is to condemn history to theoretical
sterility. But to ignore the roots of history in historicity and impose the forms
of a "model" science from without is to succumb to an equally sterile dogmatism. We cannot ignore the practice of historians or the actual history of historical research, but we must probe beneath the most basic assumptions of
this practice in order to uncover the fundamental idealizations of the lifeworld. In the process we will be inevitably led to pose the question "why this
form of idealization and not some other?" And as we come to a clearer grasp
of the dialectical relation of traditional idealizations and the historicity of the
life-world, we shall be led to seek corrections of present idealizations or entirely new forms in order to render more adequately the services we expect
from history. The circularity of this process is not vicious but is given with
the historical contingency of language itself. There is no absolute beginning.
Any beginning which claims to be absolute is merely arbitrary. This is as true
of an approach to the foundations of the discipline of history which begins
with a pure constituting consciousness apart from reference to the pre-given
typicalities of the life-world, as it is of an approach which projects the implicit
logic of a particular science as the ideal for all.
Since my aim has been to define the program of a phenomenological approach to the problem of historical science I have not been able to offer either
a detailed exposition of particular points or to place history in the context of
an articulated general theory of science.27 For the moment it is enough if it
has been shown that phenomenology can offer a new angle of vision to the
critical philosophy of history. The most important task of the critical philosophy of history today is to gain the perspectives which can give the discipline
of history a foundation appropriate to its own aims and accomplishments. I
believe that the phenomenological approach outlined above can play a major
role in the achievement of this task, since it is an approach which does not
27. For the "human sciences" in general an important attempt has been made in
this direction by Stephen Strasser. See his Phenornenology and the Human Sciences
(Pittsburgh, 1963).
274
LARRY SHINER
prescribe to the historian what he ought to do or what historical reality must

be like, but rather describes the dialectical relation of the structures implicit
in the historical attitude and those implicit in the historical dimension of the
life-world. Yet this description for all its modesty also serves a critical function since it can help the historian to become aware of the roots of his implicit
pre-conceptualizations in the soil of historicity.
Cornell College

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A Phenomenological Approach to Historical Knowledge

posing a phenomenological approach to a discipline to state in what sense he

The entire universe of science is constructedon top of the lived-world and if we

that is, in everyday pursuits, in crypto-metaphysical credences, and in various

be ignored by succeeding generations who passively and uncritically accept

clarification of the unifying principles brings us a "new" understanding on the

What is the programfor a phenomenologicalanalysis of the discipline of

activity essential to the discipline of history. It will be the meeting of a

near future, but the writer of the most contemporaryhistory is nevertheless

torting"- poetry, drama, political rhetoric, preaching, ritual. These can

prescribe to the historian what he ought to do or what historical reality must

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