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Husserl's Concept of Being: From Phenomenology to Metaphysics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Stephen Priest
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Extract

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.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 44 , March 1999 , pp. 209 - 222
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1999

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References

1 I argue this in The Critical Paradigm: Modern Philosophy's Kantian Assumptions (forthcoming). There is no philosophical, historical or geographical basis for the still fashionable distinction between ‘analytical’s and ‘ modern continental’ philosophy. If we use ‘analytical philosophy’ as a name for all of Frege's philosophy, Logical Atomism, Logical Positivism and Linguistic Analysis then we should note that each of these movements is German or Austrian in its modern genesis. In brief, analytical philosophy is a sub-species of continental philosophy. Of course this is not to deny the conspicuous stylistic and methodological differences between each of the movements just mentioned and betweeen Phenomenology, Existentialism, Structuralism and Post-structuralism. Nevertheless, all of these movements operate within the set of Kantian assumptions that I am calling ‘the critical paradigm’.

2 All references to Ideas I are to Edmund Husserl Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book trans. Kersten, F. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, (1982).Google Scholar

3 Husserl underestimates the spatial properties of consciousness after the epoché, although his use of metaphors such as ‘s transcendental field ’ suggests a quasi-spatiality. My considered view is that the soul is space: the subjectively orientated space that contains one's experiences. It follows from this picture that the body is in the soul. The soul is not in the body as traditionally conceived. It also follows pace Descartes that the soul is directly acquainted with its own interiority. For more of phenomenology's unacknowledged metaphysical consequences see Priest, StephenMerleau- Ponty (London: Routledge, 1988), chapter XV.Google Scholar

4 For Sartre's use of ‘absolute interiority’ see his The Transcendence of the Ego trans. Williams, Forrest and Kirkpatrick, Robert (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1958)Google Scholar. Sartre thinks consciousness is a ‘non-substantial absolute’ (p.42) which is inconsistent with my view that consciousness is the soul. Sartre's critique of Husserl in The Transcendence of the Ego is pivotal in the transition from ‘pure’ transcendental phenomenology to existential phenomenology. I evaluate the logic of Sartre's arguments against Husserl in The Subject in Question: Sartre's Critique of Husserl in The Transcendence of the Ego (Routledge, London, 1999).Google Scholar