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Philosophizing
In Part 1 of this series of posts, I have presented a review of Gerry and Rhiza’s
Chapter on the Methods of Philosophizing in the book titled Introduction to the
Philosophy of the Human Person. The review, however, focused only on the
section Socratic Method. In this post, I will focus on Husserl’s phenomenology,
that is, the phenomenological method of philosophizing the Husserlian tradition.
Unlike Descartes who systematically doubted the certitude of the world outside of
the self (ego) as his starting point in attaining certainty, Edmund Husserl affirmed
the existence of a world outside of the self. And for Husserl (the forerunner of
modern phenomenology), the thinking I is always conscious of this world. It is for
this reason that Husserl accuses Descartes of failing to properly understand the
nature of “consciousness,” which is always a consciousness of something other
than itself. According to Gerry and Rhiza, this is the starting point of Husserl’s
phenomenological investigation.
The context here is that realism and idealism had reached an impasse toward
the end of the nineteenth century regarding that status of the knower and the
thing known. As is well known, the realists argue for the independence of the
“object” of knowledge, while the idealists argue for the primary of the “subject,”
that is, the knower. It is in view of this impasse that Husserl offered his
phenomenology as a way out. But instead of making a philosophical speculation
of the nature of reality, Husserl argued for the need for philosophy to turn to a
pure description of the “what is,” of the thing as it appears to us. Thus the famous
Husserlian motto: “back to the things themselves.” In Irrational Man: A Study in
Existential Philosophy, William Barrett writes: “For Husserl, phenomenology was
a discipline that attempts to describe what is given to us in experience without
obscuring preconceptions or hypothetical speculations.”
With this note, let me now briefly sketch Husserl’s notion of phenomenology as a
method of philosophizing. Please note that I will not discuss in great detail
Husserl’s model of phenomenology as our concern here is just to know the
nature and dynamics of phenomenology as a method of philosophizing. For a
detailed discussion on the nature and dynamics of Husserl’s model of
phenomenology, see Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “The
Phenomenological Reduction,” http://www.iep.utm.edu/phen-red/#SSH5a.i
In contrast to this natural attitude, Husserl claims that it is possible for people to
adopt a phenomenological attitude, wherein they suspend or “bracket” their
belief and natural attitude, and eventually recognize that it is just a natural
attitude―that the knowledge that they gained from this attitude is not real or true
knowledge. This act of bracketing, which is also called epoche, allows people to
turn their attention on the ongoing activity of their consciousness to which their
experience of reality or things is ultimately constituted.
According to Husserl, the overall act of employing epoche, that is, suspending or
bracketing all preconceived notions and prejudices about a particular
phenomenon under study―and then record, identify, and then put to one
side―in order for us to gain an understanding of the true nature of reality, is
called phenomenological reduction. According to Richard Schmitt, it is called
“phenomenological” because it transforms the world into a phenomenon, and it is
called “reduction” because it leads us back to the source of the meaning and
existence of the experienced world.
The Natural Attitude may say: “Man is a rational animal.” Here, man is simply
perceived as an animal that thinks.
In must be noted that for Husserl, epoche has two fundamental moments,
namely: 1) the reduction to the sphere of immanence and 2) the movement from
fact to essence. The first moment involves a suspension of the natural attitude
and placing in abeyance all beliefs in the transcendental world. It is important to
note that Husserl did not use the term “transcendental” in the mystical sense, for
example, the way it is used in the phrase “transcendent God.” In order for us to
understand Husserl’s use of the word ‘transcendent” or “transcendental,” let us
posit this word vis-à-vis the term “materiality.” In Husserlian phenomenology,
materiality could mean the physical existence of things, such as tables, chairs,
books, trees, cars and the like. On the other hand, transcendental phenomena
are those phenomena that have transcended their materiality, such as feelings,
thoughts, experiences, memories, and the like. It is for this reason that Husserl’s
philosophy is “transcendental” because it is concerned with the conditions of
possibility that make an experience possible. Indeed, thoughts, memories,
experiences and feelings serve as the conditions of possibility that make an
experience possible. The second moment, sometimes called eidetic reduction,
involves a shift to consider things not as realities but as instances of idealities,
that is, as pure possibilities rather than actualities. In this way, objects are no
longer conceived as material things, but as essences―that is, meanings,
categories, ideal types, and laws.
Let’s take, for example, the act of thinking about the definition of a table.
Thinking about the definition of a table involves actual thinking (noises). At the
same time, it involves a referent, that is, a table (noema). At the end of it all, for
Husserl, consciousness is not like a box that contains some perceptions. On the
contrary, consciousness is an active ongoing referential process.