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First Philosophy: Lectures 1923/24 and Related Texts from the Manuscripts (1920-1925)
This volume presents, for the first time in English, Husserl’s seminal 1923/24 lecture course First Philosophy ( Erste Philosophie ) together with a selection of material from the famous research manuscripts of the same time period. The lecture course is divided into two systematic, yet interrelated parts (“Critical History of Ideas” and “Theory of the Phenomenological Reduction”). It has long been recognized by scholars as among the most important of the many lecture courses he taught in his career. Indeed it was deemed as crucially important by Husserl himself, who composed it with a view toward eventual publication. It is unsurprising, then, that First Philosophy is the only lecture course that is consistently counted among his major works. In addition to furnishing valuable insights into Husserl’s understanding of the history of philosophy, First Philosophy is his most sustained treatment of the phenomenological reduction, the central concept of his philosophical methodology. The selection of supplemental texts expands on the topics treated in the lectures, but also add other themes from Husserl’s vast oeuvre. The manuscript material is especially worthwhile, because in it, Husserl offers candid self-criticisms of his publicly enunciated words, and also makes forays into areas of his philosophy that he was loath to publicize, lest his words be misunderstood. As Husserl’s position as a key contributor to contemporary thought has, with the passage of time, become increasingly clear, the demand for access to his writings in English has steadily grown. This translation strives to meet this demand by providing English-speaking readers access to this central Husserlian text. It will be of interest to scholars of Husserl’s work, non-specialists, and students of phenomenology.
- GenresNonfictionPhilosophy
640 pages, Hardcover
Published January 16, 2019
12 people want to read
About the author
Edmund Husserl
520 books543 followersEdmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (Dr. phil. hab., University of Halle-Wittenberg, 1887; Ph.D., Mathematics, University of Vienna, 1883) was a philosopher who is deemed the founder of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, believing that experience is the source of all knowledge, while at the same time he elaborated critiques of psychologism and historicism.
Born into a Moravian Jewish family, he was baptized as a Lutheran in 1887. Husserl studied mathematics under Karl Weierstrass, completing a Ph.D. under Leo Königsberger, and studied philosophy under Franz Brentano and Carl Stumpf. Husserl taught philosophy, as a Privatdozent at Halle from 1887, then as professor, first at Göttingen from 1901, then at Freiburg im Breisgau from 1916 until his 1928 retirement.
Born into a Moravian Jewish family, he was baptized as a Lutheran in 1887. Husserl studied mathematics under Karl Weierstrass, completing a Ph.D. under Leo Königsberger, and studied philosophy under Franz Brentano and Carl Stumpf. Husserl taught philosophy, as a Privatdozent at Halle from 1887, then as professor, first at Göttingen from 1901, then at Freiburg im Breisgau from 1916 until his 1928 retirement.
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May 16, 2023
Alright here, I'd just like to express a few anxieties about the final part of the book (about intersubjectivity). Whatis it that does the indicating when the psyche of another (supposed) transcendental ego is indicated to me? For we ruled out physical bodies of the transcendental frame. At this point however, I could reintroduce the body through the back door by saying that I myself, who am a transcendental ego, have a body, but this actually brings up a bundle of questions, such as: how is the mineness of this body constituted? If its being mine is accounted for in (its) being constituted differently, then how am I supposed to use that as an analogy in the constitution of other people's bodies? Well, here Husserl says that precisely because these latter bodies are just that (i.e. "other" bodies), they are indeed constituted differently, but this proves too much: because there is nothing here telling us that they are not (going to be) constituted so differently that actually, there will be no room for analogy anymore (i.e. they will just be constitued the way any other random object is constituted). Long story short, the space in-between personal subjectivity ('mineness') and alien objectivity (objects), which is that median region of stuff that is both not me and yet not radically alien (what we call: another subject, not (to be thought of as just) another version of me (thinking of it as such being made unnecessary precisely by allowing for such median space)), is just nowhere to be found. And who is this "I", who (both!) "has" a body, and "is" a transcendental ego? (Vicious regresses looming overhead.) This just becomes a variation on the age-old Mind-Body Problem.
Even assuming this is no biggie, I'm still wondering how the indicating business works. Because as a subject, I have to take something as indicating (a trace, or a sign of) the inner life of another subject, and just what that something is, well, Husserl doesn't say. It can't be the usual thing: matter, hylè, because the hylè, though potential for noesis, is not ready-made for intentional acts (otherwise we would just embrace empiricism, and conceive of perception as receptivity, which Husserl is (rightly) adamant it absolutely is not): it has to be organized through (noetic) acts of the consciousness, but the obvious problem in this particular case is I'm trying to get in touch with another consciousness (that's kind of the whole point), and to make the phenomenon of another consciousness the doing of mine is kind of getting us off to a bad start, you see. But where does Husserl sketch another way for us to bestow stuff with meaning? I just don't know.
The more appealing approach, to me at least, would be if Husserl allowed for the possibility of us watching the activation of the hylè from the inside (that would count as indication of some inner life, or (alien) consciousness): to meet the other would be to watch noesis in action, animating matter (and we'd feel free to call it a human being, a person, a male or female body, a face, a smile and so on). Now, the problem with that is still that there is no obvious sense in which we are still allowed to speak of noesis in this sense, since all the noeses we can make sense of are the ones we perform ourselves.
Ultimately, much of this comes down to a problem of referentiality of self-reference (an Anscombe story), methinks.
Of course, any Husserlian will tell me the other is also a body, and so a thing, but are we trying to constitute transcendental otherness, or what? Is it even essential (in the eidetic sense) that transcendental subjectivity gets a body? And how is it the same X that both “is” and “has” (=isn’t) a (actually: the same) body? It’s kind of a motte and Bailey argument: we start off to boldly constitute another transcendental subjectivity, and when the going gets tough, we go: Hath not the transcendental ego hands?
On the meta level, they will say: precisely because this is so winding and contorted, it is a good theory of alterity, because after all, our relationships with others are also that: not knowledge, but dealing with each brand of particularly weird fuck they are. I dissent. I also think alterity imposes itself in brutal, traumatic ways; I have to embrace Levinas on this.
It’s weird because in the First Logical Investigation, Husserl says that the expressions of the face are exactly that, expressions, and not indications (of some inner life), which is fine, as long as you don’t expect to get anywhere outside the bounds of transcendental solipsism (which Husserl either thought was great, or didn’t give a toss about at the time), but now, dude’s adamant that phenomenology is nothing like solipsism, and so, all of a sudden, we start indicating our inner lives. How do we go about doing that? Could I not wonder how I can indicate this or that, and get it wrong? Could I not not indicate anything at all, or would I actually indicate that too (a neutral face, indicating total boredom eg)? I like the account of the Investigations much more; to me, the expression business deals with this problem very effectively. Once we try to found inter subjectivity on the basis of that, we’re in trouble.
Even assuming this is no biggie, I'm still wondering how the indicating business works. Because as a subject, I have to take something as indicating (a trace, or a sign of) the inner life of another subject, and just what that something is, well, Husserl doesn't say. It can't be the usual thing: matter, hylè, because the hylè, though potential for noesis, is not ready-made for intentional acts (otherwise we would just embrace empiricism, and conceive of perception as receptivity, which Husserl is (rightly) adamant it absolutely is not): it has to be organized through (noetic) acts of the consciousness, but the obvious problem in this particular case is I'm trying to get in touch with another consciousness (that's kind of the whole point), and to make the phenomenon of another consciousness the doing of mine is kind of getting us off to a bad start, you see. But where does Husserl sketch another way for us to bestow stuff with meaning? I just don't know.
The more appealing approach, to me at least, would be if Husserl allowed for the possibility of us watching the activation of the hylè from the inside (that would count as indication of some inner life, or (alien) consciousness): to meet the other would be to watch noesis in action, animating matter (and we'd feel free to call it a human being, a person, a male or female body, a face, a smile and so on). Now, the problem with that is still that there is no obvious sense in which we are still allowed to speak of noesis in this sense, since all the noeses we can make sense of are the ones we perform ourselves.
Ultimately, much of this comes down to a problem of referentiality of self-reference (an Anscombe story), methinks.
Of course, any Husserlian will tell me the other is also a body, and so a thing, but are we trying to constitute transcendental otherness, or what? Is it even essential (in the eidetic sense) that transcendental subjectivity gets a body? And how is it the same X that both “is” and “has” (=isn’t) a (actually: the same) body? It’s kind of a motte and Bailey argument: we start off to boldly constitute another transcendental subjectivity, and when the going gets tough, we go: Hath not the transcendental ego hands?
On the meta level, they will say: precisely because this is so winding and contorted, it is a good theory of alterity, because after all, our relationships with others are also that: not knowledge, but dealing with each brand of particularly weird fuck they are. I dissent. I also think alterity imposes itself in brutal, traumatic ways; I have to embrace Levinas on this.
It’s weird because in the First Logical Investigation, Husserl says that the expressions of the face are exactly that, expressions, and not indications (of some inner life), which is fine, as long as you don’t expect to get anywhere outside the bounds of transcendental solipsism (which Husserl either thought was great, or didn’t give a toss about at the time), but now, dude’s adamant that phenomenology is nothing like solipsism, and so, all of a sudden, we start indicating our inner lives. How do we go about doing that? Could I not wonder how I can indicate this or that, and get it wrong? Could I not not indicate anything at all, or would I actually indicate that too (a neutral face, indicating total boredom eg)? I like the account of the Investigations much more; to me, the expression business deals with this problem very effectively. Once we try to found inter subjectivity on the basis of that, we’re in trouble.
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April 23, 2023There are many useful passages on phantasy consciousness for those interested in Husserlian aesthetics, and also the concept of horizon is here very well explained.
These are lectures from 1924/25, intended somehow a continuation of course on introduction to philosophy but really, I can’t imagine courses like these today. The first part is short overview on history of philosophy, focusing selectively on Plato, Descartes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume, with exegesis that’s quite objectionable and shamelessly suited to Husserl’s purposes – basically, he reads these philosophers as unwittingly preparing space for his own transcendental philosophy. The second part is on phenomenological reduction itself, spending much time with “position of philosopher” who’s doing almost existential decision to become the philosopher and investigate the truth. The curious initial call to arms contrasts with the technical issues that follow as second part progresses, and one can glance from Husserl’s occasional apologies for being “difficult” that maybe the initially impressed students were growing more horrified about what they signed up to.
For a Husserlian, though, what’s missing here is as intriguing as what’s here. And what’s missing is, so to say, any reflection on “material conditions”. The historical overview is solely presented as a history of ideas. The phenomenological arises as necessary answer to centuries of thinking about stuff. But why? Husserl raises the crucial question of motive for phenomenology/philosophy, and promises to answer it, and then breaks the promise. At the beginning of centuries of thinking about stuff, according to Husserl, Socrates makes the decision to philosophically seek the truth in response to relativism of Sophists, and such decision is simultaneously an ethical decision against relativism that’s not only purely epistemological, but also an ethical issue, too. It’s kind of a founding myth, and something like that is apparently at play in Husserl’s own decision, too, but it’s not really articulated.
Ultimately, philosophy is what philosophers do, and thus one needs to find a way to ask what makes philosophers possible and necessary – if there’s anything that makes them necessary. That doesn’t mean that philosophers should only be seen as reflection of “particular socio-historical context” and so on, but methodologically limiting oneself to investigation of free-floating thoughts will only get one so far.
These are lectures from 1924/25, intended somehow a continuation of course on introduction to philosophy but really, I can’t imagine courses like these today. The first part is short overview on history of philosophy, focusing selectively on Plato, Descartes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume, with exegesis that’s quite objectionable and shamelessly suited to Husserl’s purposes – basically, he reads these philosophers as unwittingly preparing space for his own transcendental philosophy. The second part is on phenomenological reduction itself, spending much time with “position of philosopher” who’s doing almost existential decision to become the philosopher and investigate the truth. The curious initial call to arms contrasts with the technical issues that follow as second part progresses, and one can glance from Husserl’s occasional apologies for being “difficult” that maybe the initially impressed students were growing more horrified about what they signed up to.
For a Husserlian, though, what’s missing here is as intriguing as what’s here. And what’s missing is, so to say, any reflection on “material conditions”. The historical overview is solely presented as a history of ideas. The phenomenological arises as necessary answer to centuries of thinking about stuff. But why? Husserl raises the crucial question of motive for phenomenology/philosophy, and promises to answer it, and then breaks the promise. At the beginning of centuries of thinking about stuff, according to Husserl, Socrates makes the decision to philosophically seek the truth in response to relativism of Sophists, and such decision is simultaneously an ethical decision against relativism that’s not only purely epistemological, but also an ethical issue, too. It’s kind of a founding myth, and something like that is apparently at play in Husserl’s own decision, too, but it’s not really articulated.
Ultimately, philosophy is what philosophers do, and thus one needs to find a way to ask what makes philosophers possible and necessary – if there’s anything that makes them necessary. That doesn’t mean that philosophers should only be seen as reflection of “particular socio-historical context” and so on, but methodologically limiting oneself to investigation of free-floating thoughts will only get one so far.
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