Husserl's Concept of Being: From Phenomenology to Metaphysics

Summary

Western philosophy since Kant has been essentially operating within a Kantian anti-metaphysical paradigm. German-language philosophy, and a fortiori Husserl's phenomenology, is no exception to this. Here I argue that despite his putative eschewal of metaphysics in the phenomenological reduction or epoché Husserl deploys an ontological, even fundamental ontological, vocabulary and may be read as a metaphysician malgre lui. To the extent to which this interpretation is viable, one escape route from the critical paradigm would seem to be opened up.

Individual and real being

Husserl alters what he calls the ordinary concept of reality to facilitate a distinction between two kinds of being:

the ordinary concept of reality needs a fundamental limitation according to which a difference between real being and individual being (temporal being simpliciter) must be established (Ideas I, p. xxi)

It is not yet clear what the sense of ‘real’ is ordinarily or in Husserl's amended use but it is clear that the extension of ‘real’ is being restricted. Ordinarily, or pre-phenomenologically, one might be inclined to regard ordinary spatio-temporal particulars as real, perhaps as the paradigm case of reality, but Husserl is inviting us to give up this assumption. The limitation of ‘real’ he is talking about is, then, at least a limitation of scope or extension.