Article/Publication Details
Views: 5653

TRANSCENDENTAL EXPERIENCE AS A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT

Abstract
In my article I would like to discuss a topic concerning the idea of mental experience as an experiment in the transcendental philosophy. One of the main problems of the humanities is that one can see a big difference between two branches of knowledge: human sciences and «exact» sciences. The main difference consists in the fact that the experimental data of the exact sciences can be verified by other researchers, but mental data in the mind of one researcher in humanities cannot be repeated in the mind of another. It allows for the skeptics to say that human sciences and especially philosophy cannot be real sciences. In opposition to this, the contemporary German philosopher Lambert Wiesing asserts that in the field of transcendental philosophy we do have something similar to experience in experimental sciences. It is called the «eidetic variation» (eidetische Variation). Three principles of the method are of great value. They are: self-reflection, phantasy, and self-clarification. In my article I am going firstly to clarify the principles of «eidetic variation» in Husserl's phenomenology, and secondly to relate this to the methods found in German transcendental Idealism. I see three interpretations of the term «eidetic variation»: as a synonym of the transcendental reduction, as establishing the eidos of a thing and the transcendental ego itself, and as something that can be held in a phantasy. The same method is used in German idealism (by Fichte for example). The main outcome of my paper should be, that if we accept an «eidetic variation» as a transcendental method, we can explain, or at least have an opportunity to build the abstract category and understand such abstract items as beauty as well as other general philosophical notions.

Key words
Phenomenology of Husserl, German Idealism, Fichte, eidetic variation, transcendental ego, transcendental reduction.

References

• Fichte, J. G. (1967). Erste Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.
• Husserl, E. (1968). Phänomenologische Psychologie. Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1925 (Hua IX). Den Haag: Nijhoff.
• Husserl, E. (1973). Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge (Hua I). Den Haag: Nijhoff.
• Husserl, E. (1974). Formale und transzendentale Logik. Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft. Mit ergänzenden Texten (Hua XVII). Den Haag: Nijhoff.
• Wiesing, L. (2012). Phänomenologische und experimentelle Ästhetik. In J. Früchtl, & M. Moog-Grünewald (Eds.), Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.

Article/Publication Details
Views: 6494

HUSSERL'S CRITICISM OF KANT'S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM:
A CLARIFICATION OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL IDEALISM

Abstract
This study focuses on the essential difference between Kant's and Husserl's transcendental Idealism. In fact, Husserl describes in the «Cartesian Meditations» his own ontological thesis as a «transcendental idealism», in which all sorts of entities have to be constituted by an activity of the transcendental subjectivity, so that we have to regard pure consciousness as the ontological origin of all entities in the world. But this study is interested in the two opposite significations of the kantian copernican inversion. On the one hand, the copernican inversion has the same sense as the phenomenological reduction, which implies that Husserl can't agree with Kant's presupposition of absolute things in themselves; on the second hand, it involves a relativistic and anthropologistic orientation, so that the aprioristic structures of given objects are founded on the universal structures of finite subjectivity, on pure forms and faculties of human consciousness. At the opposite, Husserl enounces a methodological prescription for any phenomenological elucidation: it is not allowed to presuppose in phenomenology any given faculty or given nature of transcendental subjectivity. This prescription has important consequences on which this study focuses. First the ontological difference between intuitus originarius and intuitus derivatus, infinite and finite type of intuition, doesn't have any validity: the difference between factual and rational truths only depends on the essence of the truth itself, and doesn't have its foundation on the ontological difference between creative and receptive sort of intuition. Secondly, this first thesis admits an immediate application on the level of subjective constitution of objects: the modality in which an object appears to the subjectivity doesn't depend on the universal structure of finite subject, but is exclusively founded on the essence of the object itself, so that it is impossible to consider the aprioristic constitutive structure as a merely subjective structure. Thirdly, in this transcendental phenomenology everything has to be constituted by subjectivity: the aprioristic character of the pure forms of sensibility is not founded on the structure of finite subjectivity, but rather on the essential connection between sensual material and form; so that it is not allowed to presuppose any facticity of time and space; the pure forms of sensibility have to be constituted by a special type of synthesis that we have to elucidate in opposition to other types of higher levels. The profound signification of Husserl's anticopernican inversion is that the field of transcendental phenomenology consists of the essential form of an eidos ego, which is «more objective than any objectivity», as Levinas said; and that transcendental phenomenology is completely dominated by the principium reddendae rationis.

Key words
Copernican inversion, constitution, intuition, Kant, phenomenology, subjectivity, transcendental idealism.

References

• Benoist, J. (2005). Les limites de l'intentionnalité. Paris: Vrin.
• Cohen, H. (1918). Kants Theorie der Erfahrung. Berlin.
• Heidegger, M. (1988). Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (1929). Frankfurt a. Main: V. Klostermann.
• Husserl, E. (1956). Erste Philosophie (1923/4). Erste Teil (Hua VII). Den Haag: Nijhoff.
• Husserl, E. (1959). Erste Philosophie (1923/4). Zweiter Teil (Hua VIII). Den Haag: Nijhoff.
• Husserl, E. (1973a). Ding und Raum (1907) (Hua XVI). Den Haag: Nijhoff.
• Husserl, E. (1973b). Cartesianische Meditationen (1950) (Hua I). Den Haag: Nijhoff.
• Husserl, E. (1974). Formale und transzendentale Logik (1929) (Hua XVII). Den Haag: Nijhoff.
• Husserl, E. (1976). Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie (1935–36) (Hua VI). Den Haag: Nijhoff.
• Husserl, E. (1977). Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie (1913) (Hua III/1). Den Haag: Nijhoff.
• Husserl, E. (1984a). Logische Untersuchungen (1901) (III. Unters.) (Hua XIX/1). Den Haag: Nijhoff.
• Husserl, E. (1984b). Logische Untersuchungen (1901) (VI. Unters.) (Hua XIX/2). Den Haag: Nijhoff.
• Husserl, E. (1994a). Brief an Arnold Metzger 4. IX. 1919. In Briefwechsel (IV). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
• Husserl, E. (1994b). Brief an Pannwitz vom 14. IV. 1937. In Briefwechsel (VII). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
• Husserl, E. (1999). Erfahrung und Urteil: Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik (1954). Hamburg: Meiner.
• Husserl, E. (2002). Natur und Geist. Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1919 (Hua Materialien Vol. IV). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
• Kant, I. (1781–1787). Kritik der reinen Vernunft (A–B). Riga: Hartknoch.
• Leibniz, F. W. (1974). Monadologie (1714). Paris: Delagrave.
• Levinas, E. (1982). En découvrant l'existence avec Husserl et Heidegger. Paris: Vrin.

Article/Publication Details
Views: 5555

ABOUT SYSTEMATIC HERITAGE OF THE CLASSICAL GERMAN PHILOSOPHY IN TRANSCENDENTAL PHENOMENOLOGY
(WITH EMPHASIS ON CONCEPT OF REALITY)

Abstract
In this paper, I focus on the link between Husserl and Classical German Philosophy on the concept of reality. The aim of my study is this: explore the phenomenological concept of reality and strengthen the phenomenological standpoint within the contemporary discussion about «realism». After trying to outline a general characterization of «reality», I extract the core question of Kant's approach of this perspective, namely: how is it possible to legitimate the possibility of reality thanks to a priori forms of understanding? The phenomenological answer is prepared by developing the very essence of Fichte's and Schelling's discussion on transcendental idealism, on the one hand, and a response to Meillassoux's critique of «correlationism», on the other. The heart of my demonstration consists then in the attempt to show that the transcendental constitution of reality — that entails a «new ontology» (Levinas), characterized both by the «constitution of consciousness» and the «foundation of being» — leans on Husserl's conception of truth, and especially on the link between the determination of reality and the apprehension of truth. Furthermore, it brings into play a mediation in which the real determinations of the constituted being have themselves an effect on this transcendental constitution; and it implies that the legitimation of this mediation is based on a transcendental («reflexible») reduplication that makes the possibilisation itself possible. Thus, the concept of reality contains a legitimation of necessity that recurs both to Schelling and to Fichte (whose influences on Husserl's phenomenology are obviously systematical rather than historical).

Key words
Reality, transcendentalism, truth, ontology, mediation, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Husserl.

References

• Benoist, J. (2014). Elemente einer realistischen Philosophie. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
• Ferraris, M. (2013). Realismo positive. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier.
• Gabriel, M. (2015). Fields of Sense: A New Realist Ontology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• Garcia, T. (2011). Forme et objet. Paris: PUF.
• Harman, G. (2002). Tool-Being. Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects. Chicago: Open Court.
• Holt, E. B. (1912). The New Realism: Cooperative Studies in Philosophy. New York: HardPress Publishing.
• Husserl, E. (1973). Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter Teil: 1929–1935 (Hua XV). Den Haag: Nijhoff.
• Husserl, E. (2006). Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934) (Hua Materialien Vol. VIII). Dordrecht: Springer.
• Lacan, J. (2011). Le Séminaire. Livre XIX. Paris: Seuil.
• Latour, B. (2012). Enquête sur les modes d'existence. Paris: La Découverte.
• Levinas, E. (2001). En découvrant l'existence avec Husserl et Heidegger. Paris: Vrin.
• Malabou, C. (2014). Avant demain. Épigenèse et rationalité. Paris: PUF.
• Meillassoux, Q. (2008). Nach der Endlichkeit. Berlin: Diaphanes.
• Schelling, F. W. J. (2000). System des transzendentalen Idealismus. Hamburg: F. Meiner.
• Schnell, A. (2007). Husserl et les fondements de la phénoménologie constructive. Grenoble: J. Millon.
• Schnell, A. (2010a). En deçà du sujet. Du temps dans la philosophie transcendantale allemande. Paris: PUF.
• Schnell, A. (2010b). En face de l'extériorité. Levinas et la question de la subjectivité. Paris: Vrin.
• Schnell, A. (2015). La déhiscence du sens. Paris: Hermann.
• Schnell, A. (2016). Wirklichkeitsbilder. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
• Schopenhauer, A. (1977). Preisschrift Über die Grundlage der Moral. München; Wien: Carl Hanser.

Article/Publication Details
Views: 3823

INTRODUCTORY WORD