Dermot Moran on "Defending the Transcendental Stance - Husserl's Challenge to Naturalism"

okay who sir was a resolute opponent of all forms of psychologism first of all and their naturalism and then he continued to develop an entirely new way thinking about transcendental philosophy primarily by identifying its counterpoint the natural attitude which he discovered around 1906 7 the same time that he moved towards the discover or the recognition of the epic way and the reduction maralell Ponte who is sort of a guiding light for my essay here showed extraordinary genius in his reading of who Cyril by correct the identifying trends in the later writings which at that time whose own published works did not attest to for instance merleau-ponty sites who Cyril as considering high degrees in incite as primarily an exploration of the life world merleau-ponty wrote in the preface to the phenomenology perception the whole of Zion and Zayed springs from an indication given by Husserl and amounts to no more than an explicit account of the natural topography or the leobens felt which was hurled towards the end of his life identified as the central theme of phenomenology indeed in his mature works from 1910 11 onwards through to the crisis who Searle is concerned with elucidating the natural concept of the world a concept he found in Richard Alvin areas and from around 1917 he adopts the term the eben svelt a term also found in our Heidegger's early freiburg lectures from around 1919 onwards so it is true that who Searle does focus on the life world in his later works and he also does think of the heidegger's being in time as a primarily exploration of the life world on the other hand the life world is itself for Hosur a transcendental concept under-covered through transcendental methodology so what are the relations between hosters and Heidegger's conceptions of the life world does indeed Heidegger have an account of the leobens veldt and how does who sir has announced ontology of the life world in the crisis depart from high degrees reflections or that the ontology in being in time which was Earl always denounced as anthropology so in this lecture I want to look examine the complex intertwining between the natural and the transcendental attitudes which are for who Searle the central entrance point to the concept of the transcendental and to phenomenology whose discovery of the natural attitude and here I am inspired by several essays by Sebastian left on this topic rightly counts among his great discoveries her cell also sees the transcendental attitude as a breakthrough attitude and moreover it is an attitude which is grounded in some kind of recognition of the natural attitude so really a lot of what we're talking about is going to be the real nature of the relationship between the transcendental and the natural attitude when who Searle got around to reading heidegger's being in time he diagnosed it as an anthropology and in his 1931 phenomenology and anthropology lecture which is primarily aimed at Heidegger he writes some view this that is being in time as a necessary reform of the original constitutive phenomenology one for the very first time that would supposedly permit phenomenology to attain the status of genuine philosophy all of this constitutes a complete reversal of phenomenology is fundamental standpoint original phenomenology which is matured into transcendental phenomenology denies to any science of human being whatever its form a share Alain the foundations for philosophy and opposes all such foundation laying as mere anthropology zhim nowadays however the exact opposite is supposed to hold whose so he's talking about Heidegger phenomenological philosophy is supposed now to be constructed on the basis of human design and of quote for who Cyril Heidegger's existential analysis of design in its everydayness is actually a descent into anthropology ISM where is the truly transcendental in Heidegger hussar asks despite his many references to was inquiry as a transcendental one and his invocation of notions such as the grunt Fair fastened as designs Heidegger gives no account at all of how he arrives at his standpoint how he arrives at his transcendental stance so in many respects his hermeneutical descriptions of design end up being a kind of naturalism in a sort of loose julienne way something that put people like Rorty and Dreyfus have identified in Heidegger so also loser is the first one really to see Heidegger as a kind of pragmatic naturalist in in parallel manner or in opposite manner I suppose Heidegger himself never explicitly discusses the natural attitude and indeed when he distinguishes between the natural attitude and the theoretical attitude as who served us Heidegger goes on to embed the natural that theoretical attitude inside some kind of two hand enzyme Heidegger writes in being in time holding back from the use of equipment is so far from sheer theory that the kind of unzipped or circumspection which tyrese and considers remains wholly in the grip of the ready to hand equipment with which one is concerned practical dealings have their own kind of tarrying and just as praxis has its own kind of size so theoretical research is not without a praxis of its own so Heidegger is emphasizing that there is no if you like purely theoretical stamp dissing taint disengaged speck tacked spectator viewpoint which was her of course wants to protect now Heidegger announced that in being in time that the clarification the meaning of being is the fundamental task of all ontology that is not as he says blind and perverted from its own aim who sir writes in his marginal comments to his copy of this book this would be a reproduction of my doctrine if clarified meant constitutionally phenomenologically clarified later he writes in another marginal note Heidegger transposes or changes the constitutive phenomenological clarification of all regions of entities and universals of the total region of the world into the anthropological the whole problematic is shifted over corresponding to the ego transcendentally go there is design in that way everything becomes ponderously unclear and philosophy loses its value unquote so Husserl's is fragra if you like who starts question of being is different from Heidegger's for hotel it is the ultimate self accomplice ultimate sense accomplishment of subjectivity and correlated objectivity in all possible forms so this is hustlers question of being worse Heidegger sees it of course as the radical questioning of the meaning of the being of beings as we know so Heidegger is being in time contains scant references to Hosur as we know an abandoned completely all hosts are central terms consciousness intentionality empathy epic a reduction no ASIS no Aimie transcendental ego natural attitude and so on so high degrees very very few references to Husserl are just sort of by the way he for example mentions intentionality but wants to replace it with the transcendence of design similarly he thinks the concept of eine few long has to be grounded in mid-scene he even thinks that the concept of ease and chaough has to be grounded in something different he writes even the phenomenological intuition of essences is grounded in existential understanding so for Heidegger did who sir get anything right in his tribute on Husserl's 70th birthday Heidegger praises her cell primarily for being a teacher who raised questions and practiced a kind of release meant Gillison height okay Heidegger states that he wasn't just adding a philosopher wasn't just adding a philosophy among other philosophies nevertheless he says is it not rather first and foremost your research for tional that created a new space for philosophical inquiry a space with new claims different evaluations and a fresh regard for the hidden powers of the great tradition of Western philosophy yes precisely that the decisive element of your work has not been this or that answer to this or that question but rather the breakthrough door Schlag into a new dimension of philosophizing who Searle and Heidegger boat used this term breakthrough door Schlag door proof to refer to a certain way in which people break out of the everyday understanding of things into a new way of looking at them so that for Husserl the primal establishment or or stiff dome of pure of philosophy took place in ancient Greek through a door Brooke a breakthrough accomplished by as he puts it in the crisis a few eine para precursors on drilling and a few Greek eccentric s-- Heidegger says his breakthrough Heidegger defines his breakthrough or hosters breakthrough as follows this breakthrough Dork Schlag consists in nothing else than radicalizing the way we do philosophy bending it back onto the hidden part of its own historical happening as this is manifest in the inner communion of great thinkers philosophy then is not a doctrine Lehrer nor some simplistic scheme for orienting oneself in the world she came of the veldt orienteer well certainly not an instrument or achievement of design rather is his design itself insofar as it comes to be in its freedom from out of its own ground house design in London so this this in this account we hear a kind of contribution about of who Searles breakthrough which is very very different from how we understand who's earned in the usual sense in this sense Heidegger is making whose her breakthrough the whole history of philosophy in a kind way in which Heidegger himself is doing in the destruction of the history of philosophy so what does Heidegger positively praised in her Cyril in fact and this is ironic I suppose Heidegger credits who Sarah with reviving ontology in the 20th century in several of his lectures prior to being in time he says that who's our renewed ontology against the dominant focus of neo-kantian ISM on epistemology he portrays traditional ontology as purely Objectivist this is the problem he sees he writes in the metaphysical foundations of logic essay the inquiry into subjectivity is not a question for ontology but belongs to the theory of knowledge she stormer neo-kantian ontology is taken as an emphasis on the object after the subject alone has been emphasized hitherto for in this sense ontology is linked to the pessimal logical position of realism ontology must then disregard the subject as much as possible and he goes on to say ontology is taken then first of all not as the science of being but of beings and secondly as a science of objects of nature in the widest sense of the term Heidegger then gives a count of traditional on top this way he wants to replace that with what he calls fundamental ontology which has done through design because ontology he says he says the true ontology has nothing to do with pseudo problems such as the existence of the external world and the independence of things themselves from the knowing subject rather ontology is the science of being so if go into this and being he says includes all possible regions not just as he says material things of nature but also the material of history and artworks so in fact who serves realest tudents in garden conrad Martius eat it's time also took a great interest in hosters contribution to ontology just to give you a few examples Hedwig Konrad marches for example publish an ontology and theory of appearing of the real outer world in 1916 sorry in 1916 years in the our book was earlier book she also published another study rayul ontology in the our book in 1923 Konrad Martius whose work has some interest now to people was a critic of positivism and indeed her ontology adopted an anti positivist version of Ockham slos slogan and her version was anti adnan sun diminuendo seen a necessity entity should not be diminished without so and many consider her discussion of entities and of the real as having a no being and non-being as having influence highly another woman student Gerda Valtor also wrote an essay on the ontology of social community in the our book in 1923 in which he talks about the sort of social ontology of institutions such as families and the state similarly Edith Stein would write a lot on ontology in her later writings and indeed in her memoir on her Jewish childhood she said in that the logical investigations appeared first of all as a radical turning away from Canty and critical idealism and it was in that sense welcomed as a new scholasticism with the turning away towards the things themselves this is and she concludes all the young phenomenologist were therefore realists for these realist ontology oncologists and one here's barry smith as the great proponent of this realist ontology phase of phenomenology who serves a decisive breakthrough to use that phrase was his analysis of formal and material ontology and the logical investigations and his eidetic analyses of different kinds of entities in terms of what geiger and Konrad called Herve a site they're worthless and indeed hoster himself and in his writings earlier writings emphasized the importance of the third logical investigation as the proper entranceway into his thought and lamented its neglect the third investigation sketches a pure theory of holes and parts inaugurating a discipline now known as Mary ology but which he called who Cyril himself called in the second edition of the local show to social and formal ontology with this specific aim of clarifying the formal relations that holds between the parts and meaningful sorry between the parts of meaningful expressions that was the fourth investigation if you like hoster attempted in the third investigation an a priori account of the possible relations between parts and wholes in general the precise forms of part-whole relations in advance of all empirical instances as he puts it and in that he talks about various relations of Japan see wooden ships unsearched indicate that hold between parts and holes thus giving a strict meaning of foundation which has been praised I'm interested you know by formal oncologists today such as Kevin Mulligan Peter Simon's kid fine Barry Smith and others indeed these discussions lead to the kind of discussion of grounding that will now find under the term they're somewhat rubbers of term method metaphysics by David Chalmers kid fine and others but in later writings Husserl regarded his part hole analysis is mary ology like in the experience of like formal and transcendental logic and experience and judgment in a sieve in its somewhat different manner because now he thinks that a ontology this real real ontology this ontology of things that are real not necessarily existent but like ideal entities with all the different kinds of entities there are and there are formal relations that he says is only one-sided clearly who Sarah continued to think of himself doing ontology but now he moves in a transcendental idealist in a tried transcendental idealist direction so in a letter to Georg mish of 1930 he said he had lost interest in formal logic and real ontology because of his breakthrough to the transcendental and especially in founding his theories of transcendental subjectivity and interest objectivity nevertheless the Cartesian meditations for example contains very interesting and much neglected discussions of metaphysics which hydrocele uses as swap over term for ontology in his quasi line it see an intersubjective monad ology does chapter 59 of the fifth Cartesian meditation is entitled ontological explication and it's placed within constitutional transcendental phenomenology as a whole and in this chapter who's our discussants discusses the possibility of an ontology of the real world as he calls it but he says it's it's one-sided and needs to be made intelligible from a transcendental dimension so he says and understandable and necessary consequence is that the task of an error a priori ontology of the real world which is precisely discovery of the a priori belonging to this world's universality is inevitable but on the other hand it is one-sided and not philosophical in the last sense in the final sense such an ant illogical a priori for example of nature of the psychophysical of sociology and of culture does indeed confer on the antic fact on the de factor world in respect to its accidental features a relative intelligibility that of evident necessity of being and so on in virtue of eidetic laws but it does not confer philosophical it asked transcendental intelligibility as the Cartesian meditations and then he continues in chapter 60 of meditations our monitor logical results are metaphysical if it be true that ultimate cognitions of being should be called metaphysical on the other hand he says what we have here is nothing like metaphysics in its customary sense a historically degenerate metaphysics which by no means confirms to the sense with which metaphysics as first philosophy was originally instituted phenomenology is purely intuitive concrete and also apodictic mode of demonstration excludes all metaphysical adventure all speculative excesses he writes them in the end of the cartesian metaphysics meditations phenomenology indeed excludes every naive metaphysics that operates when absurd things in themselves but it does not exclude metaphysics as such so in whole Souris mature conception traditional ontology that is the ontology of the life world if you like of the world of all these different kinds of entities has to be corrected by transcendental phenomenology which as he says takes takes a start point from the essential a priori correlation between subjectivity as such not human subjectivity and objectivity so in one sense who Searle says ontology is possible only true phenomenology claim you'll find also in hiding ontology continues in her Sarah's last work in the crisis especially when he introduces the new concept we've already mentioned the lead-ins veldt and he even speaks of the correlative idea of a Elva life world ontology in the crisis hosur acclaims to have uncovered the life world as a fundamental and novel phenomenon previously invisible to the sciences and to have identified it for the first time as he puts it as a universal problem indeed there is a sorceress as a specific and entirely new science of the life world itself that would for him offer a new basis for grounding both the natural and the cultural or human sciences there never had been before and he claims an investigation into the life world as the subsoil underground for all forms of theoretical truth and in fact in his sections on the crisis he really discusses the life world in his discussion of count he thinks can't-miss understands the life world by thinking about purely in terms of the forms of space-time and causality and so on that one finds in the Natural Sciences the life world for Worcester needs a different kind of investigation that goes beyond the usual scientific treatment of the natural or human world this descriptive science of the life world in its own terms would recognize what he calls the types joopa and levels stupid that belong to the life world over all leading to what he calls ontology der leoben's veldt in crisis section 51 whose our rights the body is familiar to us in the life world our actual bodies kirpan but not bodies in the sense of physics the same is true of causality and of spatio-temporal infinity these categorical features of the life world have the same names but are not concerned so to speak with the theoretical idealizations and hypothetical obstructions of the geometry or the physicists there is a 4:4 who Searle also makes this clear in his later communications with the anthropologist lady Brule he thought that lady Bruns recognition of kind of associations and sort of a finish of causation or various kinds of life world causation as described in the life worlds of primitives in Navy Bruhl were exactly descriptions of the life world that is not accounts of causality in the scientific sense but in terms of how people make connections in their everyday lives now who Searle then goes on to say that a purely formal if you like ontology of the world is not possible he writes in the crisis the idea of an ontology of the world the idea of an object of universal science of the world having behind a universal a priori according to which every possible factor world is a factual world is knowable more a geometrical this idea which led even Leibniz astray is a nonsense for the realm of souls there is in principle a human being there is in principle no such ontology no science corresponding to physics phenomenology freezes he says from the old Objectivist ideal of the scientific system the theoretical form of natural of mathematical natural science and freezes accordingly from the idea of an ontology of the soul which would be analogous to physics so all kinds of ontologies especially the ones the post cartesian ones that are prevalent in the contemporary world as he sees it are one-sided and are purely Objectivist ok let's turn again now back to Heidegger Heidegger criticizes Husserl and indeed all of traditional philosophy since the Greeks for having missed the question of the meaning of being theirs involves I and Heidegger maintains that phenomenology is not just another method in philosophy but rather is the same as the explication of ontology as he puts it explicitly only as phenomenology is ontology possible and he further elaborates in being in time per time phenomenological truth is very task transcendentalists ontology and nology are not too distinct for the Safa co disciplines among others these terms characterize philosophy itself with regard to its object and its way of treating that object philosophy is universal phenomenological ontology and takes us departure from the hermeneutic of design is that last bit that hustler will have a problem so similarly in the basic problems of phenomenology left course of 1927 Heidegger claims phenomenology is the name for the method of ontology that is he has scientific philosophy rightly conceived phenomenology is the concept of a method and then he goes on to say that ontology then has you know a very precise subject it's subject is the being of beings nevertheless it must go through a single being or prominent being and that is design so from that point of view Heidegger interprets the phenomenological reduction of who Searle in a new way or memories I said he doesn't refer to the phenomenological reduction in being in time at all and that point of view then since the phenomenological reduction is that by which we're supposed to get from the natural attitude to the transcendental it's not clear how Heidegger gets to his transcendental account of design but he writes here in one of the very few places he does mention the reduction in the basic problems of phenomenology lectures Heidegger writes for a host Cyril phenomenological reduction is the method of leading back phenomenological vision from the natural attitude of the human being whose life is involved in the world of things in persons back to the transcendental life of consciousness and its noetic no ematic experiences in which cons objects are constituted as correlates of consciousness it's very exact description of what posters try to do but then hide it goes on to say for us for him using the Royal we for us phenomenological reduction means leading phenomenological vision look fuel there's phenomenal August and bleeker's from the apprehension of a being whatever may be the character of that apprehension to the understanding of being as first a indesign's of this being so reduction now means moving from beings to being so it has been given a completely different stand status in in Heidegger and Heidegger then goes on again rarely rarely ever mentions the natural attitude but in the same in his discussion there's only discussion that I can find which was in the nineteen twenty five lectures on the history of time Heidegger is giving a presentation of Hosur review and then he says is this natural attitude perhaps only the semblance of one nor their shine einar einar soultion only a kind of appearance of one this kind of comportment and experience for Halton's on the experience our rooms are is of course rightly called a nine Stello insofar as it must first be derived from natural comportment from the natural way of experience one must insult to speak place one stealth into in ang talent this way of considering things however he says man's natural manner of experiencing by contrast cannot be called an attitude so for Heidegger the natural attitude is only the appearance of an attitude is not properly aesthetic stance at all because it has a much deeper ground this is actually very close to the claim that merleau-ponty makes about the relation between the natural and the transcendental attitude in his a famous essay on Oh Cyril the philosopher and the shadow interestingly in both their accounts of this deeper than attitude attitude Heidegger merleau-ponty taped her orientation from who Sarah's ideas to manuscript which was available to them before was published in 1952 posthumously and in his 1925 lecture course Heidegger shows explicitly that he is aware of hosters discussions of the natural and personalistic attitudes in ideas too he has read ideas too closely even reproducing who saw his own example of seeing a cat as a pre given object in the world in Heidegger rejects the view commenting on some passages of Husserl that in the natural attitude human beings regard each other zuo logically as animals this he says misses the point of human comportment and treats human beings as merely present at hand for handin entities in the world whereas being human is essentially characterized by its fair halton Heidegger sites whose are saying that the personalistic attitude envelops the naturalistic attitude but immediately goes on to criticize ho Searles description of the person mystic attitude as involving what who Searle calls inspects Yasui a kind of Cartesian self-consciousness Heidegger writes about who Searle the personalistic attitude and experience is characterized as inspects Yasui as an inner inspection of itself as the ego of intentionality as the ego subject taken as a subject of culture taught Sione's and there which is again the theme of being in time Heidegger thinks we'll Cyril has fallen back into Cartesian subjectivism instead of approaching the being of the person in a new way so Heidegger as we know from being in time rejects the various forms of personalism that he finds in Shaler and others which was often seen as corrective of naturalism because they don't go deep enough in thinking of the very peculiar nature of human being in the world and as we know Heidegger was never comfortable with her stars retention of the metaphysically loaded concept of the subject subjective or of consciousness and he maintains of course that his concept of design of existence is a sort of remedy to that so he does say though in the vom vase and his goodness si if one chooses Heidegger says if one chooses the title subject for that being that we are in our own selves in each case and that we understand as design then we may say that the transcendence designates the essence of the subject that it is the fundamental structure of subjectivity so I think Heidegger here accurately pinpoints a problem in the text of ho Searles ideas to where Heydrich when who Searle says just briefly Hosur says gives an account of the natural attitude which really for the first time appears in print in ideas one immediately to be suspended but in ideas two he gives a more detailed account of the natural attitude but says that it is for human beings first and foremost what he calls the personalistic attitude as he says we see each other as human beings with whom we shake hands in greeting with whom we address us as fellow human beings as members of clubs and societies and Families and so on so this personalistic attitude is primary we first recognize each other as persons in a social world in a personalistic world from that is if you like abstracted out a kind of natural attitude and what Hydra will call in their ideas to the naturalistic attitude so let me return to a discussion of this because I think Heidegger has accurately pinpointed problems in hosters account of the natural attitude who stirs transcendental turn as we saw was inaugurated both by his discovery of the reduction and by his read Israeli related discovery of the natural attitude who so has a broad range of terms for the natural attitude Deena to Lika Angelo calling it variously the pre-scientific the extra scientific attitude the natural theoretical attitude the natural naive attitude and then has which has as its correlate variously the world developed the natural surrounding world minor natural eco belt the interest subject of natural environment these Frazer from ideas one the world in which I find myself the pre found world of orga van de Velde the pre given world of life experience he says these are the empirical attitude the attitude of experience and indeed many other formulations so who Cyril sees the natural attitude primarily as what he calls ina dogma - sure Angelo it is an it is the attitude of natural life which is life as he says interesting Laban is a life of interest or interest so what there are many issues that are not clear and hosters discussion of the natural attitude and again I reference the various very excellent discussions of Sebastian left but one is the relationship of natural attitude to naturalism already in his 1906 seven lectures on logic and epistemology hussar refers to naturalism as the original sin of philosophy as the same this is putting this wonderful language as the sin against the Holy Spirit of philosophy but in his middle writings including philosophy is a rigorous science 1910-11 and ideas - he presents naturalism as an inevitable consequence of a certain region of the natural attitude into what he calls the naturalistic attitude so there's the natural attitude which is sort of everyday life attitude but when it rigidify as it becomes the naturalistic attitude and who Searle always recognized as he says in the philosophy as a rigorous science it's not easy for us to overcome the primeval habit of living and thinking in the naturalistic attitude and thus of naturalistically falsifying the psychical naturalism is he says prior to all theory but it can lead to natural the natural attitude is prior to all theory but it can lead to naturalism because it is seduced by the spirit of unquestioning naive acceptance of the world leading to a verdict nickel reification of the world and its philosophical absolute ization very absolute evil it is noteworthy here and elsewhere that hotel goes from talking somewhat by slip of the tongue of the natural attitude into the naturalistic attitude so that there is a sense in which for Husserl the natural attitude if left alone will become the naturalistic attitude the that is the natural attitude of course despite its indispensability for everyday life is if you like blind to itself it is one sided and closed it is an attitude but it fails to recognize itself as an attitude so naive realism we just think things are there we don't know that that's a specific orientation of subjectivity to think things are there before us thus and so and so on so to live in the natural attitude means not to recognize it as such so it is an attitude that has lived in ignorance of itself hence it is right for philosophical transformation and according to WHO szura spends most of his time not describing the natural attitude but breaking describing the shift in perspective or breakthrough that to be done in order to bring the natural attitude into light so the whole point of philosophy from the time of the ancient Greeks is to make us realize that this is not the only way of looking at things so Husserl writes in his Amsterdam lectures of 1928 the transcendental focus which is set up through a trance a radically consistent unconscious transcendental reduction signifies nothing less than the altering of the whole form of life Maven's form previously practiced not only by the particular eye or we but historically by humanity as whole as a whole so it is an absolute all embracing and radical shift of natural living along with life the there's naturally hindi in leoben's and he 929 Levens and of one's natural living in a pre given world a change in the mode of experiencing of thinking of every other kind of activity the radical under undergirding hunter bindle of this sort of life and work and attitude of all life on the foundation of transcendental experience must be now considered in its absolute a deenis from everything which we are usually accustomed and this is very hard to understand hence the meaning the meaning of a purely transcendental science so you know who serves view is that this radical oom Carol or overturning of the natural attitude is the function of philosophy but not only that in breaking with the up with the relative solidity of the natural attitude who Sarah thinks will make saddest breakthrough to a new attitude the transcendental attitude which has to be given what he calls absolute priority posture has a lot to say about the nature of this einstellung Indra in various places and for him he writes in the ideas to a change of attitude means nothing else but a thematic transition you go going from one direction of apprehension to another to which correspond correlative Lee different objectivity so that's the point we are dealing here with radical changes of such a kind with transactions transitions to apprehensions are fundamentally different phenomena logic types so who sell things there are different attitudes and to different attitudes their corresponding different objectivity 'he's the natural attitude relates to the world of extant things the ding felt as he sometimes recalls it and it is also in this of course it's also the world of human beings and tools and all the rest of it but as Heidegger recognizes his own critique of what Searle Heidegger writes for who Cyril the fundamental stardom is still the naturally real upon which the psychic is built and upon the psychic the spiritual of the culture who Searle however claims that the reduction frees us from the sense restrictions of the natural added attitude the zenith shrank oh there's not sure there are naturally can Angelo and of every nature not relative attitude and he writes in ideas to what is educational in the phenomenal reduction however is this it henceforth makes us sensitive to grasping other attitudes whose rank is equal to that of the natural attitude and which therefore just like the latter constitute only relative and restricted correlates of being in sense who Sarah makes clear then that only transcendental phenomenology allows us to investigate attitudes as such and the correlated objectivity is constituted by them quote through the relation of the ontological distinctions of the constituted objects to the courage of essential manifesting heightened mixes of the corresponding constituted being so hoster has this idea that the very much what we find in the French philosopher may assume that there's essential correlationism between the stands of subjectivity and the kind of objectivity that is thereby disclosed but one has to look at how these are relative to one another and understand ultimately that the natural attitude is grounded he thinks on the transcendental attitude and not the other way around Heidegger as we've seen says that hoster has mischaracterized the human everyday mode of existence as an attitude remember Heidegger says he didn't think the natural attitude is really an attitude it's deeper than any attitude is the way of existing it is a kind of comportment that has not yet come attitudinal eyes so to speak but for who Searle attitudes are stances that can be freely taken to an open horizon of entities there are many different attitudes and Hosur among in his writings mentions the mathematical attitude the psychological attitude the esthetic attitude and these attitudes can interpenetrate or also cancel or conflict with one another furthermore hoster thinks that while the reduction freezes from the sense restrictions of the natural attitude and of every relative attitude it makes us realize that there is a new way of thinking about things if you like that is neither the purely a a natural nor the theoretical body is what who sir wants to call the transcendental merleau-ponty in the same essay that i refer to the philosopher and his shadow also grasps this point when he says that the hosters transcendental reduction does not bring us does not lead us from the objective to the subjective but installs us in a third dimension as merleau-ponty causal this is certainly an interpretation that goes beyond whose her own so far as worcester doesn't speak of a third dimension but he is right in thinking that there is an inevitable intramural Aponte's right in thinking that who Searle has an inevitable intertwining between the natural the transcendental attitudes merleau-ponty captures this very well when he says that the natural attitude seesaws in phenomenology it is the natural attitude by reiterating its own procedure that seesaws in phenomenology the transcendental attitude is in its own way natural merleau-ponty says quoting hosters ideas - in gaveston's in zerrin at yulik are beneath naturalist furthermore merleau-ponty is insistent on the reason that Hazara distinguishes between the theoretical attitude which is built on the natural attitude so called objective attitude for Searle is really a form of purification of the natural but it doesn't break with it so who's Cyril for sorry Merlin Ponte writes in this essay and I think this is correct there is indeed an eye which makes itself indifferent a pure nor in order to grasp all things without remainder to spread all things out before itself and to objectify them this eye is the purely theoretical attitude which seeks to render visible the relations which can provide knowledge of being as it comes to be is quoting Oh sir but it is just this eye which is not the Philosopher's Justice attitude which is not philosophy you know Lister when then merleau-ponty goes on to say that hosters view of the transcendental brakes with both the natural attitude and the theoretical attitude furthermore as our Ponty recognizes to use his language the natural attitude is not at issue of juda Kotori and propositional acts as it becomes in people that the kind of stances you find in Dennard but is rather as so Cyril puts on a vest paces prior to all theses it consists of what was our calls or globba an or doxa a fundamental kind of conviction about the world that is hard to break certainly who Sarah sees the natural attitude is permeated by this general thesis and absolutely unshakable even apodictic belief in the world in Hosur Liana 15 for example who Searle says ich bin apodictic on apodictic in belt Globen i'm apodictic and apodictic in my belief in the world furthermore he speaks of the natural attitude as having a kind of primordial ergy and primacy which consists of a functioning in anonymous passivity thus you know and end with this now because I don't want I want to leave more time for the discussion whose Cyril understands that the actual functioning of the natural attitude is so if you like all-pervasive it is not really the functioning of if you like an active ego in the sense of a theorizing or positing ego but of what he calls anonymous functioning activity so I think here again taking my clue from merleau-ponty that who Cyril is correct to sort of merleau-ponty is correct to identify anonymous functioning subjectivity as one of the great discoveries of the later who Cyril so let me just give you some quotes about that here for example this was early in his 1928 Amsterdam lectures talking about the breakthrough of the transcendental attitude he writes the transcendental problem arises from a general turning around of the natural attitude in which the whole of daily life flows along in which also the positive sciences continued to operate in this attitude the real world terial event is pre given to us on the basis of ongoing experience as self evidently existing always present to be learned about world to be explored through erratically on the basis of the onward movement of experience so he goes on everything that exists for us is explorable in this way the constant present and accepted world before us with all its real and any real determination serves as the universal theme of all our practical and theoretical interests and in the final analysis it is also the theme of positive science and for who Cyril mathematics is one of these positive science however hotel talks about the sort of expulsion from the Garden of Eden as it were in which we break through through a universal bracketing into a new attitude and he writes we have been driven out expelled from the naivete of natural living along the hymn leoben's we have become aware of the peculiar spout or cleavage as we may call it which runs through all our life namely that between anonymous functioning subjectivity which is continuously constituting objectivity for us and the always by virtue of this functioning of anonymous subjectivity pre-given objectivity namely the world so in his 90 and then just give you another quote and perhaps we can finish with this and have a discussion similarly in his 1924 can't lecture is lent his lecture to the Kant gesellschaft in Frankfort hotel was invited to explain phenomenology and he tried to set it in the country and I think the context but he writes the radicalism of the transcendental attitude demands therefore the firm resolve to bring consciousness consciousness in its own essentialness exclusively to intuitive self comprehension and theoretical cognition and thereby consciousness in its full concretion in which it is subjectivity existing purely for itself i'm contained in itself according to each and everything that is included in us in its really imminent and intentional moments synthesized centering that is exhibit able in and from the intrusively and theoretically inseparable from its own essence this radicalism demands he says the resolve to see to it that we radically exclude every accompanied meaning of what is not consciousness and of anything that is interwoven with it be it natural scientific psychological or philosophical in terms of these convictions so I'll come to my conclusion I have some more remarks here about what this all functioning subjectivity is but also a really believes contrary to current that the transcendent if you like just to summarize this Kant thinks that the transcendental ego is a formal condition for the possibility of all experience who Cyril thinks that there is a breakthrough form two transcendental life and there is something called transcendental experience that can be explored he thought Descartes was that therefore the discoverer of transcendental phenomenology of philosophy because Descartes is the first to break through to the to the ego cogito but unfortunately like Moses who saw the promised land but didn't enter it was Descartes fell back into the naturalism of thinking of the ego as a substance and didn't explore the realm the infinite realm of constituting transcendental subjectivity and intersubjectivity which was Errol as the new Moses is the first to see ok I can give you more more that's thank you okay so we have quite a bit of time I start with Jojo Horacio David etcetera etcetera Jojo thanks for that very rich scholarly talk Dermot I have two questions I want to make a first general I think oftentimes there's too much emphasis on the philosophical I'm not talking about the personal or the professional or the biographical or the political differences between Heidegger and clozaril so I'm focused on the philosophical so the first is that I think you mentioned that Heidegger you don't you didn't quite see how he was a transcendental philosopher or or something like so just some quick remarks I think it's not that hard actually to see how he's a trans little philosopher or how that is supposed to work I'm gonna make this brief so he gives one of the very rare definitions if you like of being it's a functional one which is that being is that which determines entities scientists as as entities or which lets were enables entities to be what and how they are its way in the beginning of Zion sight and then but he doesn't bring that up but then more generally if you think about the status of these existing cially and these existential x' they all have transcendental status and you can put this in who's early in terms they're all necessary background and abling dimensions or horizons in which entities you know to be sure in the life in the life well as Heidegger's sees it is make sense so and they're revealed through hermeneutics phenomenology and then just finally you know time is supposed to be the necessary condition of possibility of our understanding be so I think there's textual evidence but also philosophical are Myint arguments there that show how he is engaged in a sort of personal philosophy you know with certain qualifications that it's you know not too difficult to work out but so there's that comment the second is again I'm on my fourth time that I think there's also a commonality in both personal Honaker regarding both the significance of the natural attitude but also a deep criticism of naturalism it's interesting that you mentioned that you know crystal can sees Heidegger as a sort of Dewey and naturalist that's interesting because then that engages went directly with the topic of the the the confidence I wonder whether you can stand on that a bit more thank you thank you first of all it's not me but who sir who thinks that Heidegger doesn't have a way of explaining how he arrives at his transcendental viewpoint I think it's clear to me that Heidegger is a transcendental philosopher in being in time he says so various times he uses the language of the as I said the groom for facile and as designs and you know the fundamental Constitution of human existence in terms of a priori conditions for possibility he uses all of that transcendental framework but later Heidegger recognizes that he found that too limiting you know when you get to the latter on humanism and so on he says that he found it impossible to complete the task of being in time because the language of transcendental philosophy was too restrictive so but but what when who sir already paying in time he thought this is anthropology he uses this phrase all the time he thinks that what Heidegger's doing is making the same mistake than your conscience did which was to who Cyril criticized the neo-kantian in the logical investigations for understanding things like the law of the excluded middle as conditions that limited human knowledge rather than belonging to the essence of meaningfulness as such soho cyril is really with the original account in talking about their campus uber helped rather than human and so you know Heidegger whose self or Heidegger was for Heidegger for who Cyril it's very hard to keep these names apart Heidegger for who Sarah was had fallen into the trap of anthropology zoom and which is a form of naturalism because he was now trying to make the meaning of being linked to human being to human existence and that's why I began with some quotes that said that Heidegger you know that who sir was really trying to avoid this kind of anthropology is 'm but you know I have to acknowledge and this is sort of where the the thing gets more complicated that who Cyril sees naturalism is almost an inevitable byproduct of the natural attitudes though so it's just sort of unavoidable you know it's it's it's it's what to put it in Heidegger's terms its fallenness you know it's just they weren't we're just caught up in everyday existence where time runs a certain way and things appear as they do and this very low we can do about in Heidegger the breakthrough comes to angst but who Cyril when he gets to those pages he's wondering why pick angst as your a breakthrough way of doing things you know he's in other words Heidegger hasn't given the methodology this is a sort of ontology zation of a psychological experience for Hosur so that's that point the second one which I'll be very short on is the Dewey and naturalism you see the are the paper this is very long this is a shorter part of a longer discussion you should probably end up as a book but Hubert Dreyfus coming through maralell Ponte reads Heidegger as being you know all about anonymous coping you know expert coping which in ways which have been taken up by marco cramped and richard rorty and others that high degrees of pragmatist there are some connections between Heidegger fragmented but a lot of the things here would make sense the idea that even theoretical knowledge is some kind of practice you know it's it's bound to human interests and human practices so that's that's the Heidegger iam position and what I was doing is saying that that that is that's why Hotel thinks Heidegger hasn't left the natural attitude right that if those are things Sciences take place in the natural attitude right there's in a broad sense we are driven by interests and we are understandings a certain way Heidegger who sir thinks it's a really rare and hard thing to do to break with that you know and to live a life of self conscious awareness the life of the rational agent we heard about yesterday that's independent of interest and you know that's the difference is of course for most sort of difference I suppose from your version of Kant all consciousness is necessarily as an eidetic law embodied so there is no not disembodied consciousness as such so I'm usually interested in narratives of the history of philosophy so I was very interested to see you reference who Searles phrase a complete reversal of principles as taking place here right in that 1931 lecture and I was wondering what is the connection between that reversal of principles and his subsequent very brief narrative of the story of philosophy which is supposed to show how those principles took place so you start with the the old pre-socratic philosophers just taking the world as it is as natural and you know coming up with these Sciences to understand the world in its appearance right there's no doubt in the appearance of the world that it's gonna be truth tracking and then with the developed of Heraclitus and Plato right we move away towards we correct cognition of the subject of these truths but these truths are not in the world because that would be misleading so there's somewhere else right but only with Descartes we see that the certainty is found in the subject but okay so that's who shows narrative but it feels like that if a complete reversal of principles has taken place with Heidegger's development I don't think Heidegger fits into that narrative the picture so sure it's a at the first level yes it starts off with this naive realism but instead of going the Platonic route Heidegger would go with the Aristotelian route right so he's not going to say that there is these sort of transcendental ideas of the real but there universals right and we read those off from the actual things so in that way maybe whose role is sort of biasing his narrow narrative of the who's of the history of philosophy to involve the Platonic sort of split fork in the road and not pursue the Aristotelian split in the fork of the road which would lead lead to like the new contents and other people who don't really want to posit these things just a couple of remarks on that I mean first of all I mean we all know who Sarah was a mathematician as he says himself he's self-taught in philosophy we didn't know much about the history of philosophy he read a great deal actually from kassir and and Windell band and histories of philosophy like that his own ears to philosophy is a kind of history of philosophy it's not that different from a neo-kantian one the kind of description you gave is right the breakthrough to solve self-aware subjectivity except that there's a stronger emphasis I think in Oh Cyril on the moment of scepticism you know scepticism makes you realise relativism and skepticism for him made you realize that my view of the world is maybe not shared by you and therefore we have views of the world rather than the world itself that's the breakthrough and he thinks that only some cultures I forgot that he thinks right for various reasons but you know but when you get it there's no going back you know Huxley says in the doors of perception once you break through it's always there you know and but and it's old and it is all that language of breakthrough that's I sort of was charting the second thing though is that you were saying about the narrative or the history of philosophy it is interesting that what Cyril especially when he went to Freiburg wanted to place himself in that narrative of the history of philosophy and so I suppose with you know he'd 10 years of constant contact with Heidegger and the two of them are you know rewriting the history of philosophy they both have heidegger's the only one who uses the word destructs you own you know for the history of philosophy but I mean who started thinks he's doing the same thing really you know for the first time setting it on a on a firm footing you know very Conte and language you know it's all these Sciences they all make great break a great progress but they don't understand what they're doing and only philosophy can tell them what they're doing Thank You Sebastian since we're on the topic I you know just to add that for us all the history of philosophy is one between constant system builders and the Destroyers right so that's the narrative it's sort of dialectical for the New York audiences problem you see the history of problems and they progress somehow and then who so finally you know the Hydra of skepticism he says in first philosophy and he's the first one to stab tough the Hydra right and then philosophy could come forth as a science and used that language gives vision shaft but of Clayton car in the country and language of the prolegomena my point was rather different one the the the connection that you sort of sort of a piece of the narrative that I think you missed in your part in your very nice talk between naturalism natural attitude and how we get to naturalism and I think that part was missing I think is important part of who saw story so who saw things so natural attitude is the everyday way of life which is basically personalistic but part of that part of the natural tendency of the natural attitude is the idea that things just exist out there right and and so so the naturalistic attitude is if you will just a a an exploitation or an absolute a ssin of that other idea that the world exists mined independently yeah that's naturalism so so in other words how do we get so this dude I think at one point you asked but didn't answer how do we get from natural attitude to the naturalistic attitude is that the naturalistic attitude of the modern sciences is just an extrapolation of a natural tendency of life to think that things exist out there independently of us and that's naturalism so in other words just like just in the same way in which the crisis of modern Sciences is a necessary development of modernity the naturalism of the Natural Sciences of Natural Science of modernity is also just a natural tendency that must be shored up so phenomenology can tell us why this story this absolu tastes absolute ization of the natural is natural tendency but can be shored up when we see the correlational story that transgender phenomenology provides yeah no I think that's right I mean I could go into it further there's not enough time thank you very much for that reference to the Hydra of first philosophy that's really interesting the the transition from the natural attitude to naturalism as I was saying kind of inevitable and you put it very correctly that modern science builds on on that naive belief in the world you know which a lot of people compared to vacant steins idea of a kind of initial trust in the world you know that is prior to all skeptical system that that builds on it and then from there we get the idea of things with fixed properties and so on and then you get the sort of Galilean story of that some properties really are there and others aren't and then you get the things in themselves and all so all of that is a kind of natural progression for hoster oh that's correct I and I think the the one thing that I would say that it kind of connects it up with Heidegger is that Heidegger does exactly the same thing he says how am I going to understand design essay you know so transcendental in choirs the nature of human subjectivity but let's start by human beings in their everyday contexts in their ordinary average middle nough sand Dirk Schmidt Lee kite and all of these things but then you have the notion of that as another way of looking at things but that's the author entik way from as opposed to the you know authentic and you know and it's the same buddy but it has it has kind of much more are immoral or even though host hierarchies bracketing the moral claim that has a kind of more moral notion that there's a really true way of living things a genuine way as opposed to a non genuine when we're lost in greater and these things like that but it's similar it's a kind of it's this is the natural I think it's also important to distinguish between the naturalistic attitude and naturalism these are not the same thing the naturalistic attitude no no no the naturalistic attitude is a very important and necessary attitude that you need to take in order to to do natural science and to do ontology of nature remember the first part of ideas to is conducted starting from the naturalistic attitude not the natural naturalism is the naturalistic attitude gone wild so to speak so the naturalistic attitude who becomes unaware of itself and is legitimately you know it becomes a kind of Vulcan song so but that I think is important the naturalistic attitude does not have a pejorative ring in whose early its naturalism really as this kind of you know the naturalistic actually becoming an all-encompassing worldview rights to record saying you know I'm in agreement with you and the new contingent against the naturalism of our times mmm-hmm naturalism is the enemy for us and in fact I mean this is something I've written about in other papers I think oser was right he diagnosed I mean people growth he put correctly predicted that naturalism would be the driving force of 20 media this question I would remind well would like to remind about theoretical attitude in the crisis which is introduced as a way of overcoming subjective life world's to be more intersubjective so the kind of attitude where you try to make judgments that are valid for everyone not only within your home world and that's that's a completely it's definitely not pejorative sense of theoretical natural theoretical attitude that he refers to there but my question was more about it's a question of clarification because I might be have some different views from yours and it's it's about what exactly is the transcendental attitude breakthrough from and to what extent is the natural attitude left behind or the natural well then with the world found in the natural attitude to what extent that is left behind because a times I got a sense that it's completely left behind whereas for who sell the transcendental investigation many times aims at studying what is going on in the natural attitude as I understood Sebastien to to be talking about here so that would be the question and and if you are very much disagreeing with me I would want to ask how you read the reductions from Sciences to transcendental attitude because that would be the really important well you know just a short answer on this because I am the hotel doesn't really do himself justice in that there are times there's a lot of his sort of missionary zeal that he sort of talks about you know living in new transcendental life as if we would kind of leave behind the natural law and what I was saying there is that I think merleau-ponty is more correct in that essay the philosopher in the shadow in saying that the transcendental and the natural attitudes are always intertwined I mean you know you could say that I think it's Sokolowski uses this phrase that the natural attitude is the bay operating system you know everything is it's the base platform you you that's the one that your consciousness is always running in that attitude so and as we heard yesterday if you're doing mathematics you know if a mathematician thinking of the square root of -1 is thinking in the in natural attitude terms of it as a real entity in some reform and so that's always there so who Cyril I think thinks though that that there are ontological aspects of this that are unknown from within that and therefore they need to be made visible free by an alteration of stance but you can't maintain like Heidegger you Heidegger also thinks that you know authenticity is grounded on in authenticity and also things that transcendental attitude is grounded on the natural attitude this is what is the paradox that he's talking about in in in crisis that we are both in the world and for the world you know but there are times that it's very hard to keep those that those two stories separately and you know running on their own tracks and Hollis aryl often makes it sound even the Cartesian meditations that transcendental subjectivity is its own world you know with where everything is purified and clarified and intentional you know it's a bit like as I was saying this life with the rational agent we were listening to yesterday where everything is just moving on rational reasons and all the rest of the stuff is kind of bracketed and put to one side and that's probably just a wrong reading of Coursera but the problem is that you are left with the the two with the two sidedness of the hawser lien project you know determined in terms of the theoretical attitude by the way is often there's a version of that at the transcendental element which is the attitude of the spectator towards one's own existence then the ego splitting that it has takes place okay we have room for one last question then nearly right thank you yes thank you for your very interesting talk I took the opportunity to make two very small questions I'm very interested on the notion of Laban well yesterday we told about that passage of the crisis in which also seems to remark the idea of a unique word so the finding availed if I'm not wrong well I'm interested in the relation between the idea of Layton's felt and the idea of natira is there any well should we consider them has two different dimension or should we consider the idea of nature as for example ours more region in the larger notion of labels veiled so are we speaking about about two different dimension or just two different aspects or two differ anything no it's if you start from you can start that say that was certain Heidegger both in this regard are kind of holus that we live in first of all a world in which things are relevant to us for various reasons so Heidegger gives a very nice example a gardener sees plants and weeds now there's no biological notion of a weed a weed is a life world concept you know they're all plants in one form or another so it's the same instrument you know or you know I'd the other example that I would give is the International Space Station originally had didn't have food they had nutrition you know you got little plastic canisters of things but now they have Russian night and Italian night because the life world is the world of food in its full complexity right it's not just the realm of nutrition so you know what hotel is saying is that studies like science of physics and biology and chemistry and so on are platforms built upon the life world but they abstract from it and you know look at formal relations between aspects of it which they are very helpful for clarifying but it's not that there's two worlds you know but what he's saying when he says in ladies just to lady Brule you know Kant thought that Khan's mistake was to think that the framework of Natural Sciences was see the framework of human subjectivity there is a framework of human subjectivity these exist in C Allah if you like to put it in heidecker's term but there you know causation for human beings isn't the same as causation in natural science if there is causation in the Natural Sciences we heard yesterday very briefly yeah second the second part of the question was and was related with the previous question merleau-ponty x' idea of niche monopolies is often considered a philosopher that tries to reconnect the accept sciences and phenomenology or the transcendental stance shouldn't we affirm however that merleau-ponty is notion of nature is quite far from the positive idea of nature and that it's much more Clos much closer to the notion of Laban svelt yeah then from no no I mean that's true I mean well if you especially read the later merleau-ponty lectures on nature the ones he gave at the college to false he is really struggling with kind of you might say kind of environmentalist sensitivity towards organic nature and towards human beings as living in a biosphere these kinds of terms like biosphere you know might be equivalent to hosters notion of Laytonsville if they included all the cultural works and so on you know well-serviced notion of labels well by the way gardener is wrong gardener says that hussar invented the term labels that it was it was around in biology of the time and used by quite a number of different people ook school and others it's a kind of notion of a human biosphere which is the primary you know intersubjective communal hole in which we live we need air and water and all of these things so you know things have meanings within the life world which are not can't just be substituted for this is where the people like church land are entirely wrong you cannot just substitute the scientific account for the life world experience you know if you say I'm tired and if and you want to give that in some such-and-such percentage of my blood sugar or or you know the one that Church time gives is that instead of saying you see a rainbow you should say you see it refraction of light at 45-degree angle in blah blah you know and I just it's not the same thing that's the point right but the concept of how they're related is very very difficult and this is the account of the building of the theoretical on the natural attitude okay let us thank our speaker once again [Applause]

Channel: APS Vita Activa

Views: 388

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: università di parma, transcendentalism, philosophy, filosofia, filosofiaunipr

Id: e20Vjbt1jP8

Length: 75min 57sec (4557 seconds)

Published: Mon May 28 2018