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THE PRACTICE OF SUBJECT TRANSFORMATION AND THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL WORKING PROJECT OF PHILOSOPHY (BASED ON HUSSERL’S MANUSCRIPT “SOCRATES-BUDDHA”)

Abstract
The article examines Husserl’s conception of Buddhism, which was largely determined by the reading of the “Majjhima-nikaya” in Karl Eugen Neumann’s translation. It is a general and dotted image in which no distinctions were made regarding the eras, traditions and schools of Buddhist philosophy: an image that an interested European reader might form after reading the 152 sutras of the “Collection of Middle Instructions” of the Pali Canon. Nevertheless, it seems a productive task to interpret this image in order to better explain Husserl’s conception of phenomenology about itself, regardless of the naivety of the image under discussion from the point of view of Buddhology. This article puts forward the following theses for discussion: Husserl understood Buddhist thought as a “conjugate detail (Gegenstück)” that complements the phenomenological science of transcendental subjectivity by contrast. Specifically, he interpreted Buddhism as a path to the transcendental position not from the critique of science, but from practice—as a suspension of the mythical picture of the world and the “practical general thesis” of the natural attitude. Although Buddhist thought according to Husserl, like phenomenology, is aimed at “revealing the transcendental position,” it nevertheless does not establish a science (in the radicalized Husserlian sense). In fact, Husserl uses this rough outline (characterizing Buddhism as “transcendentalism without science”) to emphasize the dynamics of his own phenomenological “working project of philosophy (Arbeitsphilosophie).” The “Collection of Middle Instructions” of the Pali Canon serves as an occasion for Husserl to thematize the specific combination of seriousness and playfulness that characterizes his phenomenology as “carefree care”; this helps Husserl to express the driving force of phenomenological labor (“work fervor” (Arbeitsfieber)).

Keywords
Edmund Husserl, phenomenology, Buddhism, Pali Canon, Socrates, Buddha.

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