Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology

by Paul Ricœur, Edward G. Ballard, Lester E. Embree

Paul Ricoeur was one of the foremost interpreters and translators of Edmund Husserl's philosophy. These nine essays present Ricoeur's interpretation of the most important of Husserl's writings, with emphasis on his philosophy of consciousness rather than his work in logic. In Ricoeur's philosophy, phenomenology and existentialism came of age and these essays provide an introduction to the Husserlian elements which most heavily influenced his own philosophical position.

Genres: Philosophy

238 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005) is widely recognized as one of the most distinguished philosophers of the twentieth century. In the course of his long career he wrote on a broad range of issues. His books include a multi-volume project on the philosophy of the will: Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary (1950, Eng. tr. 1966), Fallible Man (1960, Eng. tr. 1967), and The Symbolism of Evil (1960, Eng. tr. 1970); a major study of Freud: Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (1965, Eng. tr. 1970); The Rule of Metaphor (1975, Eng. tr. 1977); Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (1976); the three-volume Time and Narrative (1983-85, Eng. tr. 1984–88); Lectures on Ideology and Utopia (1986); the published version of his Gifford lectures: Oneself as Another (1990, Eng. tr. 1992); Memory, History, Forgetting (2000, Eng. tr. 2004); and The Course of Recognition (2004, Eng. tr. 2005). In addition to his books, Ricoeur published more than 500 essays, many of which appear in collections in English: History and Truth (1955, Eng. tr. 1965); Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology (1967); The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics (1969, Eng. tr. 1974); Political and Social Essays (1974); Essays on Biblical Interpretation (1980); Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences (1981); From Text to Action (1986, Eng. tr. 1991); Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination (1995); The Just (1995, Eng. tr. 2000); On Translation (2004, Eng. tr. 2004); and Reflections on the Just (2001, Eng. tr. 2007).

The major theme that unites his writings is that of a philosophical anthropology. This anthropology, which Ricoeur came to call an anthropology of the “capable human being,” aims to give an account of the fundamental capabilities and vulnerabilities that human beings display in the activities that make up their lives. Though the accent is always on the possibility of understanding the self as an agent responsible for its actions, Ricoeur consistently rejects any claim that the self is immediately transparent to itself or fully master of itself. Self-knowledge only comes through our relation to the world and our life with and among others in that world.

In the course of developing his anthropology, Ricoeur made a major methodological shift. His writings prior to 1960 were in the tradition of existential phenomenology. But during the 1960s Ricoeur concluded that properly to study human reality he had to combine phenomenological description with hermeneutic interpretation. For this hermeneutic phenomenology, whatever is intelligible is accessible to us in and through language and all deployments of language call for interpretation. Accordingly, “there is no self-understanding that is not mediated by signs, symbols, and texts; in the final analysis self-understanding coincides with the interpretation given to these mediating terms” (Oneself as Another, 15, translation corrected). This hermeneutic or linguistic turn did not require him to disavow the basic results of his earlier investigations. It did, however, lead him not only to revisit them but also to see more clearly their implications.

Reviews

[Kira · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ricoeur is a great philosopher, even if I don't agree with him always. Apparently he wrote a lot of this while a prisoner of war, I believe. It's a decent and profound if somewhat scattered introduction to the later Husserl-- the transition from the Logical Investigations to transcendental Idealism doesn't get much talk here. Interesting as a document, along with Sartre's M-P's, and Levinas's early writings, of what some of the first French readers of Husserl thought was most interesting in his work. Of course, the answer is different for each: Sartre=intentionality and the pre-personal transcendental field; M-P=operative intentionality and the constitution of the lived body; Levinas=given and not given (otherness).

[Ahmet Bakir Sbaai]

يستكشف بول ريكور تطور فينومينولوجيا هوسرل كمشروع فلسفي يسعى إلى الكشف عن معنى الوجود. يشرح ريكور تطور أفكار هوسرل من كتابه "التحقيقات المنطقية" (1900-1901)، مرورا بكتابه "الأفكار الأولى" (1913)، وصولا إلى التأملات الديكارتية (1932)، و"أزمة العلوم الأوروبية" (1936)، مقدما نقدا تأويليا لمنهج هوسرل، مشيرا إلى حدوده وإمكانياته وتأثيره. وهو ما سأركز عليه في هذه المراجعة.
- كانط وهوسرل: مقارنة نقدية
يلاحظ ريكور أن هوسرل يتجاوز كانط في تركيزه على الظواهر الملموسة، بينما يحتفظ كانط بحس الحدود. كانط، في "نقد العقل الخالص"، يرى أن المعرفة مشروطة ببنى الذهن (مثل الفضاء والزمان)، لكنه يحافظ على "الشيء في ذاته" كحد للمعرفة. هوسرل، باختزاله العالم إلى الوعي، يبدو أكثر راديكالية، لكنه يفقد هذا الحس بالحدود.
- الفينومينولوجيا الوجودية
في الفصل الثامن، ناقش ريكور تأثير هوسرل على الفينومينولوجيا الوجودية، خاصة عند سارتر وميرلو-بونتي. يطور سارتر، في "الوجود والعدم"، فينومينولوجيا الوعي باعتباره حرية، لكنه يتجاوز هوسرل بالتركيز على "القلق" والصراع مع الآخر. فيما يركز ميرلو-بونتي، في "فينومينولوجيا الإدراك"، على الجسد كمركز التجربة، معتبرا أن الإدراك ليس مجرد فعل وعي، بل هو انفتاح على العالم. ويلاحظ ريكور، على سبيل الاستنتاج، أن الفينومينولوجيا الوجودية، بتركيزها على الجسد، الآخر، والتاريخ، تستكمل مشروع هوسرل بطريقة أكثر إنسانية.
- فينومينولوجيا الإرادة
وفي الفصل الأخير من الكتاب، يقترح ريكور فينومينولوجيا الإرادة كامتداد لفكر هوسرل. باعتبار الإرادة ليست مجرد فعل واع، بل هي متشابكة مع الجسد والعاطفة: الإرادة "مشروع وجودي".
يجادل ريكور أنه على الرغم من قوة فينومينولوجيا هوسرل، فإنها تواجه حدودا؛ فقد تؤدي المثالية المتعالية إلى الانفرادية، لأنها تركز على الأنا المتعالي على حساب الآخر. ثانيا، يهمل تركيز هوسرل على الوعي أحيانا الطابع التاريخي والاجتماعي للوجود. وفي نهاية الكتاب يقترح ريكور أن الفينومينولوجيا يجب أن تتجاوز هوسرل بالانفتاح على التاريخ، الأخلاق، والآخر.

[Stewart Lindstrom]

Pretty helpful. I only read about half of the essays, just focusing on the aspects of Husserlian phenomenology that interested me, but I may return to it in the future.

[Matico · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ricoeur on Husserl has his advantages and disadvantages. Despite the elegant contemporary design on the cover, the book was originally published in 1950. Ricoeur seems to have been a bit of an earnest existentialist. Witness the cryptic last sentence of chapter 1:
"Owing to this impressive mutation beginning from primarily logical preoccupations, phenomenology was prepared for the astonishing encounter with existential meditation coming from horizons quite foreign to Husserl- the tireless worker so temperate and so honest."
In any event, much of his analysis of the relationship between Husserl and Kant, and explanation of the neo-Kantian critique of Husserl, is quite interesting.