Husserl on First Philosophy

my topic is postal on First Philosophy missus philosophical influence has gone through high and low periods for over a century but since his initial engagement with Fraga in the 1890s he has continuously been a player on the cultural scene there were times when he was overshadowed by some other figure or movement he was somewhat eclipsed by Heidegger in the late 1920s in the 1930s and by post-modernism in the last part of the 20th century but each of these periods was followed by a substantial resurgence and even now interest in his work is showing up in places where it had not been visible in the past we can apply to his philosophical work the motto of the city of Paris Fluke taut neck emerging tour it is tossed about but it never sinks and I think we all agree that hustles phenomenology is now safely ensconced in the cultural firmament far from the turbulence of our sublunar world where authors devour or clamber over one another in the struggle for survival well sauce philosophy did not just have its day in the Sun it is joined these celestial bodies it has become something like a separate intelligence a presence and a power beyond the vicissitudes of change in my talk I'm going to have four parts and I begin now the first which is crucial and the perennial issues of philosophy I would like to offer a specific explanation for the continuing attraction and influence of hustles thought it's not just that he provides a number of valuable and attractive analyses such as his descriptions of category ality perceiving temporality memory corporeality and logic more fundamentally and more comprehensively the reason his work and yours is that it restores philosophy itself also clarifies what it means to enter into the fullest life he clarifies first philosophy protei philosophy uh as a theoretic venture and he used the name esta philosophy for a course he gave in the winter semester of 1923-24 pasa recovers philosophy he opens or revives a prospect that is always threatened by obscurity and always needs to be refreshed as Thomas proofer an American philosopher who was a colleague of mine as Thomas proto writes quote philosophy is perennial but it is also ephemeral it is continually being blurred and destroyed and transformed into something not itself and so if we wish to philosophize we are continually faced with the task of rediscovering and restoring philosophy end quote whistle shows how philosophy is a distinct form of thinking and he shows how it differs from other forms in particular those of the various sciences and worldviews he does this in his discussion of the transcendental reduction in which he examines how we take up a stance that is different from all the partial and practical attitudes that we have in the epoch a and reduction we stand back and look at the whole of things including our own being as part of the whole in his many efforts to define his transcendental phenomenology also has in effect then reconnecting with classical philosophy which in its Aristotelian formulation theorizes being as being as it looks to the whole of things Russell's treatment of the transcendental reduction and his description of the phenomenological attitude justify all his particular analyses he's able to show how and why these analyses are not just empirical or psychological but philosophical and he also shows that isn't that analyses are epideictic through his work can see why philosophy not only can be apodictic but why it must be such misil explicitly defines the philosophical life which is the life dedicated to truth in its unrestricted and most comprehensive farm to more vividly define hustles achievement let us consider for a moment the development of ancient philosophy the philosophical figures we study in the history of ancient thought are not a random collection there's a unified progression through the pre-socratics Socrates Plato Aristotle the Stoics and the neo-platonists they all develop philosophy as a way of knowing and as a way of life dedicated to knowing they all recognize the being the intelligibility and the good of things these thinkers do not all say exactly the same thing each of them brings out aspects that others may have neglected but any even as they bring out something original they usually let something else slide into obscurity gains are are accompanied by losses this is the grand narrative of classical philosophy over against this narrative however we can also discern counter philosophical pressures ways of thinking that counteract philosophy and question it's very possibility and these counter philosophical positions are not just Greek and Roman but perennial they are as enduring as philosophy itself two of the most prominent non philosophies of the ancient world are reductive atomism founded the original democraty anatomist and in the Epicureans and on the other hand sophistry and historicism found in the original surface the atomists were a kind of scientific substitute for philosophy while the Sophists represented a historic historic cyst are relativistic alternative philosophy always has to define and defend itself against these two opposing forces the struggle to do so is endemic to the human condition because there is such a thing philosophy there also are counterfeits that are played off against it things that only look like are claimed to be philosophy now who soul offers the possibility in our day and age of a return to first philosophy in Aristotle first philosophy is defined as the theorizing of being as being it is also called metaphysics even though it's not it was not given that name by Aristotle himself the book in which Aristotle carries out this first philosophy was entitled meta meta takasaka by its editors they called it a study of issues that are beyond the physical things going beyond the physical things is often thought to be an effort to deal with separate non material substances but it does not just mean only that in fact the study of separate entities comprises only a small part of Aristotle's metaphysics his first philosophy spends most of its time examining things like predication truth and falsity contradiction substance and accidents definition form and substrate and the potential and the actual metaphysics theorizes truth it is that a aureate a Soloff a us it's called that in in the second book of the metaphysics and the human attainment of truth is an achievement that goes beyond any physical process philosophy goes beyond physics because logic truth contradiction and predication for example and the grasp of definitions are not among the motions that occur in simply material entities they are beyond the physicals meta tahu see car they belong to being as being and not to being as material or mobile and so when Aristotle turns to the examination of being as being he also turns to the study of intellect as intellect or mind as mind this is so what hustle does we could define his phenomenology as the study of intellect as intellect mind as mind or reason as reason perhaps it would be most appropriate to call it the study of truth as truth in order to venture on this out on this study postural needs to differentiate his inquiry from something less ultimate just as Aristotle did but Hustle does not distinguish his first philosophy from the study of physical things in his day and age he needs especially to distinguish it from psychology so a book containing hustles first philosophy could appropriately have been entitled Tom meta top Tsukiko or the meta psychics and just to round out the set of comparisons we might also observe that Plato two moves into a first philosophy by contrasting it against the less ultimate science science and in his case it is mathematics Plato's first philosophy could appropriately have been called something like Tom meta Tom matemáticas or the meta mathematics now I would like to add yet another way in which Hustle moves beyond a lower science in order to move on to first philosophy he himself does not highlight this approach but I think it's present in his writing so that it deserves attention it could be considered a distinct way to the transcendentally go along with what ESO Karen has called the Cartesian ontological and psychological ways to reduction whistle goes beyond the world given to the natural attitude he looks at the way we are in our involvement with things and he looks at the world in its human involvement but he also goes beyond cycle and he also goes beyond psychology but he also goes beyond what we could call the apophatic domain the realm of meaning and propositions which franco's the realm of sense of in in doing this muscle moves beyond logic as an apathetic science which studies the structures of this domain of meaning in formal and transcendental logic he distinguishes the aquaponic domain and its formal logic from the transcendental subject and its transcendental larger muscles first philosophy consequently could be called the science of Tom nettle logical or Tom Matata upon tika his science presupposes and examines the kind of truth we achieve in our experience of things in the truth of correctness and in the questions raised by formal logic I believe that it's important to distinguish phenomenology from the kind of science that reflects simply on this apathetic domain on the domain of meanings if philosophy is not adequately defined by saying well it clarifies meanings you that's one stage but it has to do more we have access to the apophatic domain through I would call it what I would call propositional reflection which is radically different from transcendental philosophical reflection the philosophical examination of truth is different from the logical analysis of meaning Russell examines consciousness and psychological reality insofar as it enters into the activities of intellect or news he studies consciousness and psychological things insofar as they enter into truth just as Plato and Aristotle consider the natural material world as inherently mobile and pervaded by change so Hussle thinks of the psychological world as in perpetual motion he sometimes calls consciousness a her equity and stream and he says that the world is the world we live in an experience is given to us standing in German de ávila kite it's a beautiful phrase and these are poetic phrases you find in the sir lien corpus that are quite attractive even in his own private manuscripts he refined them every so often standing instrument area by leek height you by leak I'd being so contingent and incidental at the present moment it's always flowing and yet it's always flowing so there's a kind of stability of form even in this incessant motion now Aristotle transcends the word world of matter and motion by discovering substance while hustle discovers the identity of things and identity confirmed and targeted by categorical intentionality which is an activity of intellect pasol also deals with the to classical counter philosophical positions that I mentioned earlier materialist animism and sophistry he differentiates his philosophy from the worldly science of mathematical physics and he also differentiates it from the psychologists and men historicism that were given an even more powerful form in our time by Nietzsche even though official did not explicitly respond to his work Hustle achieves this definition of the special status of philosophy especially in his analysis of the transcendental reduction in which he opens the dimension or the space in which philosophical language and discourse find their place we can interpret his turn to the subject not as an innovation but as a return in a modern vocabulary to the perennial philosophical issue this achievement is not going back in time but a movement to what is always there as a human possibility of philosophical possibility that concludes the first part of my talk to try to show how this show rejoins classical philosophy in turning us to the philosophical life and more than just entering yet but explaining what it means explaining through these rather complicated arguments of the reduction in the fok of what it means to adopt a philosophical perspective on things few philosophers have done that as extensively as coastal did my second section is to include some quotations from a philosopher one might not commonly associate with host role the title of the second section is some remarks from Leo Strauss I will use some quotations from the writings of Leo Strauss to confirm my interpretation of Hasan Strauss is recognized as a major figure in the revival of classical political philosophy in the twentieth century there is practically no treatment of political philosophy in Xhosa but Strauss still acknowledged the importance of his work in a letter to Erich vogelin dated May 9th 1934 Strauss writes hustle has seen with incomparable clarity that the restoration of philosophy or science presupposes the restoration of the Platonic Aristotelian level of questioning unquote Stroud speaks not about any particular question but about a level of questioning a perspective I would rather call it a dimension of inquiry but the difference between the two spatial metaphors is irrelevant the main point is that a particular kind of thinking is called for that it differs from standard and partial thinking and that muscle is vividly aware of its distinctness the kind of questioning introduced by Hustle will be of considerable significance for political philosophy as well Strauss continues quote who sells Eagle Eagle og study of the ego can be understood not only as an answer to the Platonic Aristotelian it can be under let me start again hotels ecology can be understood only as an answer to the Platonic Aristotelian question regarding Neuse intellect in another letter written a few months later Strauss repeats this observation concerning news and mentions quote the enormous difficulties of understanding our STARTTLS de anima 3/5 which is of course the passage on the agent intellect muscle the said Strauss tusk connects hustles work more specifically with the issue of the active or agent intellect in the Aristotelian tradition in another place in an essay entitled philosophy as a rigorous science and political philosophy Strauss mentions the neo-kantian ism of the Marburg school which interested him during his student years and he said that hustle once told him the Marburg school begins with the roof while I begin with the foundation now these remarks of Strauss can help us discuss how coastal revives the classical question of human knowing the classical question of intellect or news it's true that hustle says he wants to begin with the deepest foundations of consciousness that he wishes to start with the foundation and not with the roof but it seems to me that all his analyses already have the dimension of intellect in view even when he analyzes pre predicates of experience for example he thinks of it as a foundation for categorical and predicates of activity his phenomenology is never a study of sheer sensibility but of sensibility pervaded by and leading to reason and intelligence in fact it's hard to examine how anyone could analyze sheer Sensibility there would be nothing there to think about nothing to grip and if we consider some of the major themes and hustles work we will find that they each articulate some way in which intellect realizes itself within human consciousness pursue is concerned with what Thomas proffer again I'd quote him has called by the very nice phrase the Anthropology of news somehow mind intellect is anthropological and that is obviously a serious problem how can that happen and it's a perennial ancient problem I would like to examine three instances of this present of intellect in our experience as they are explored by postal so these are quick three quick sketches where intellect in its human realization are it is analyzed by whistle now first of all consider the ideality of meaning the fact that when we say something and then repeat it later and have someone else repeated remember it and so on it's always the same thing host role often uses the Pythagorean theorem it's always the same theorem so when we he insists that when a proposition or judgment or any other categorical entity mathematical one returns in our awareness it always recurs is exactly the same despite our different the difference in its location in our personal history it also returns us the same when it's possessed by different minds if a proposition did not occur as ideally the same it would not it could not serve as a premise in an argument it could not be contradicted or confirmed by others could not be questioned or doubted without such ideality there would be no proofs or theorems no rhetoric or dialectics and no laws for political life furthermore this ideology of a proposition occurs even across the differences between states of vagueness and distinctness when we only vaguely grasp a proposition if we had achieve a judgment vaguely and then bring it to distinctness we actually carry it out which we do when we effectively carry it out after we have only passively and consume confusedly received it one of the same judgment is there to be identified in both modes such ideology is the work of intellect even vagueness and confusion is a state of intellectual activity and then secondly another example of the role of intellect in in human beings consider the act of remembering of recollection human remembering is described by hostile is the recollection carried out by a rash agent when we remember something we that we experienced in the past we displace ourselves into that past situation and we recall not only the thing that we remember but also ourselves as experiencing it we have a more or less explicit awareness of our own past selves this can also be problematic in that things that happened to us in the past keep coming back we can't get rid of them we have a more or less explicit awareness of our own past selves we thereby become more present to ourselves and our identity is enhanced our own personal identity comes into play in memory and this kind of identification is the work of an intellect that has become involved in imagination and in other forms of internal sensibility this is part of the Anthropology of news without the use of words a mind would not be real it's an intellectual self that can possess itself in this remembered way as well as the kind of displacements that occur the front sets for sensing young in fantasy and in anticipation of our own future selves as intellectual beings we can live in the present and also in the past and future as well as in imaginary worlds and we transcend our present moment so ideality of meaning secondly human recollection and my third example might be more controversial consider the form of inner time consciousness that's sort of the extreme of hotels explorations this is the deepest layer of consciousness it's deeper than perception reflection memory and imagination and hustle arrived sighted by contrasting it with remembering this is the kind of the constant form of even behind our perceptions in and behind our memories it's what allows something to be experienced as temple as extending in time and of course one of hustles great contributions is to have shown that this is not a static atomic thing but that it's distended with pretension retention and that that form is always the same with a marvelous combination of stability and flow so such inner timing at this is the deepest layer of consciousness and hustle arrives at it by contrasting it with remembering with recollection such inner timing takes place in the living present this elementary flow as well as the form that orders this flow this this there is a form there but what kind of form how different from forms of tables or of trees is beneath everything it's beneath the ego itself it is pre ego logical anonymous he sometimes calls it our pre personal and we might be tempted to think that it is common to all conscious creatures we might want to think that this kind of early form of temporalities even in animals and that it's merely the lowest deepest level of sensibility but I would suggest that it should not be read this way I would suggest that inner timing is the awareness differentiation and flowing that is proper to the intellect in time just as human remembering is the intellect embodied in imagination so inner temporality is is the intellect as simply embodied in matter and motion my remarks are somewhat speculative I not aware of texts of postural where he says whether or not this level of awareness is common to animal sent two men but since inner time consciousness is played off against human remembering and understood in relation to it I would like to think that it is the elementary form of mind and not just the elementary form of sensibility it's the space in which the most basic distinctions are made where identity and difference rest and motion and presence and absence first come to light it's the simplest form of uttering and gathering the more complicated versions of these forms such as those found in science rhetoric and dialectics find their origin here inner time consciousness is the root for categorical activity so that's my third example ideality of meaning remember recollection and inner time consciousness as ways in which hustle talks about the anthropology of news I've briefly discussed three foster lien themes the idea and I have claimed that they are all instances of his analysis of intellect as intellect still other topics could be listed and interpreted this way and it shows how rich muscles analyses are for example our ability to see things as pictures our build the most sign is achieved by intellect and not by sensibility to be able to identify something as an image of something else in whistles terms to see a build object as depicting a build Suchet is and to see the image as conveying not just a reminder of that depicted object but as presenting it under a certain angle and with a certain sled to see it with a certain meaning all this is the work of intellect and not just sensibility intellect is not only that which predicates and makes propositions and logic its its operates in all these different ways this pictorial intentionality can well be elaborated in contrast with the kind of intentionality at work in the use of words words and pictures really have to be understood in contrast with one another you can't really understand what how words function without asking how pictures function also hustles analysis of corporeality explores the way intellect or reason works in regard to the body in which is it it is found to hold sway walton is his word within our own bodies as contrasted with the way we are involved with other mythical material things that are outside our bodies again intellect embodied still another intellectual capacity that hustle has explored lies in our ability to count and to calculate with numbers to carry out the special kind of syntax that occurs in mathematics and in measurement it seems to me that it would be very useful to compare the category allottee that occurs in counting and measurement with the category ality that occurs in predication in what sense does an enumeration articulate parts within a whole and in what sense is it an assertion and a form of daxing belief there's a kind of duck saw in mathematical equations you can summarize this question I think in a very interesting way an issue to be explored how does n equation differ from a sentence it's a very if you want to talk about how math and philosophy and human knowing are related it's good to target something very concrete like that how is an equation different from a sentence and just to mention one more activity of intellect consider the distinction that muscle makes right at the beginning of logical investigations the distinction between a stroke and an Tiger between expression and indication this is an extremely basic distinction that works very deeply in human thinking it's illuminating to think of the shifts between the two modes of intending associated with these two kinds of signs an owl stroke being a word especially and then on Tyga being a flag or a mark of some sort it would also be valuable to play off these two forms of presence against pictures and images we take all these intentionality zin their relation with one another and we understand what it is to be a human being consider for example a picture that serves not really to depict its object but merely to remind us of it such as the silhouette of a famous person and print it on a coin it's not really a picture of that person it's more a reminder but it's not a word either as footstool observes in his treatment of innum images sometimes a very small picture might serve more as a reminder and hence as an on Seiken and not as an image all these forms can then be interwove and with names and thereby lifted into and mixed with categorical thinking or linguistic syntax tracing these filigrees of signification and parts and wholes is an exercise in metaphysics as well as in the theory of knowledge it describes the identity of things and shows how such identity is displayed it's not epistemology in a pejorative sense it's not an attempt to prove that we really do know things but it's rather a contemplative theoretic activity that resembles what is done in Aristotle's categories and metaphysics as well as in works like Plato's cratylus theaetetus and Sophists it deals with truth and and with a being of things with how they exist and how they are presented and it enters into first philosophy into a form of thinking beyond which no further kinds of questions can philosophically be honest I have another quotation from Leo Strauss that can help us clarify what Russell's work accomplishes it comes from another one of his letters to Eric vogelin this time in 1943 in May vogelin had objected to what he called the ego logical and epistemological focus of hustles work and he observed that muscles thought seemed somewhat of a holistic to him and Strauss replied quote I think it's impossible to call hustles you're a virus ever elliptical there is no ego of fundamental significance in Aveiro ease so we know according to a better ways we as human beings do not carry out intellectual activities according to him and his reading of Aristotle thinking is done by a separate intellect which transcends us we provide the imagination in the phantasms which our bodily forms of consciousness but the separate mind does the thinking in and for us the thinking that takes place in us is not really our own we don't own it this remark of Strauss is very perceptive it indicates that muscle does recognize an ego as an agent of intellectual activity he calls it the transcendental ego muscles concept of ego is sometimes misunderstood it's taken to be a kind of detached or at least detachable entity an ego pole something pure and simple and beyond time and space a kind of philosophical construct detached from history but nothing could be further from the truth and muscle the ego is presented and analyzed with great subtlety and the many obscurities and special forms of absence that pervade it are acknowledged for muscle the ego shows up most vividly as the agent behind categorical activities it accomplishes judgements and measurements and reflects on its own categorical actions it also recognizes itself as the same in and remembered anticipated and imagined situations in fact I would say that in the displacements that occur within inner time the ego is not just the present ego that remembers projects and imagines nor the past ego that is remembered projected or imagined rather it's the identity constituted between these two modes in other words when hustle says in memory we recall our past selves then one might be tempted to say well the past self is my real self or say no it's my present self that's the real self but really it's the identity between the two that is the self we are our past and and it's it's there for us this is structurally extremely performed in in hostel and then of course there is the pre ecological level of inner time consciousness out of which the ego comes to stand and at the other extreme there's philosophical reflection in which the ego enhances itself even beyond the structures of categorical thinking and within which it takes possession of its own being and of the world as that which is presented to us in differentiating all these dimensions Russell tries to bring to presence what we are as responsible agents of truth so that concludes my second section some passages from Leo Strauss to try to explore a bit how Hustle does recover the understanding of mind and being and the third part of my paper now is on hustle and the other sciences besides philosophy Hustle does not just postulate our positive the ego he does not fabricate it philosophically it's not a hypothetical construct he simply describes what we express are referred to when we say i but he does more than just repeat our ordinary recognition of ourselves as agents of thinking we are involved in reasoning and thinking before we engage in philosophy we argue with one another we make claims we try to agree with or differ with other people we are there already as users of language and what phenomenology does is to clarify and describe what it is for us to be that way it brings out what we are as agents of truth and it does start by describing structures and activities that are difficult to see and that call for subtle distinctions and it's quite existential because what are we deep down beyond being involved in truth as persons even as transcendental eco could these distinctions about ourselves as involved in truth could these distinctions be accomplished by any other science could they be made by physics biology psychology sociology or history I would reply in the negative and I would sharpen my argument by saying that no partial science like any of those I have mentioned can ever even account for its own status as a science it cannot account for its own nature as a claim to truth every partial science fell short of doing so for example to give a biological explanation of biology would be to explain the science of biology in biological terms it would explain the science as a process like those that occur in the cells and organs of a living thing psychology and sociology might seem to be able to do more since they seem to deal with consciousness and thinking more directly but they too cannot establish themselves as claims to truth only as the way we do and say things as a matter of empirical or historical fact the psychologists or sociologists cannot establish himself as presenting claims than others ought to assent to if they want to recognize the way things are he cannot provide a clarification of what it is to be a science and he cannot clarify what we are as agents of truth nor can he clarify the world and the things in it as amenable to thinking he cannot examine being as being for example if we try to clarify the principle of non-contradiction psychologically or sociologically it would lose its force as he constituent in the truth of things it would lose its normative character it would be explained just as a habit of mind or a way that some people happen to use language it would cease to govern the way things are and the way they are set to be even cognitive science cannot do what First Philosophy does cognitive science is the combination of neuroscience computer science and logic that some people take to be a contemporary substitute for philosophy its major task is to correlate human cognitive activities with the activities of the brain and nervous system it has valuable in interesting research projects but in principle and conceptually it cannot deal with being as such nor with truth and manifestation as such nor with all the activities associated with truth such as quotation the making of definite of distinctions picturing and the like nor can it deal with the ego who says I and who is the responsible agent involved in such activities I think we can say of cognitive science what Leo Strauss to call him again what Leo Strauss says about naturalism quote naturalism is completely blind to the riddles inherent in the givenness of nature it is constitutionally incapable of a radical critique of experience as such and quote only first philosophy can deal with such things and it is the same first philosophy now as it was before and continues through the ages whether the study of being as being which is classical not metaphysics or the study of intellect as intellect which is phenomenology consider for example a phenomenological claim about picturing a picture contains not something merely similar to its object you can't say that a picture of General Eisenhower is a figure I like to use in my examples sort of neutral beyond any political debate at this point in life and if you have a picture of eisenhower it's if that picture is not really similar to eisenhower it depicts him himself it makes that the thing picture pictorially present in its individuality a picture of Napoleon take another general does not resemble Napoleon but makes him pictorially present himself industry expect the picture is different from the name Napoleon which does not render him figuratively present even though it does designate him and thus makes him present to the mind in another way we could then work out more fully the presentational logic of pictures their presentational properties we could contrast them with those of names and signs and compare them with perception and when we do this we look at all these forms of intentionality but also with the identity of things that can be presented in all these different ways we study intellect as intellect and also being as being we aren't analyzed the knower and the date of manifestation it's important to add that in making such statements we deal not just with consciousness and intentionality but also with the issue of truth we deal with truth as achieved by us as well as the truth of things in their manifestation and presence and absence one that can be done in many different ways this is a theory a face a taste all they pay us it is quite in keeping with hostels description of phenomenology to say that we described what it is to be truthful and that we are and what we are as agents of such truthfulness or manifestation and the owners of science and knowledge to describe phenomenology in this way is to bring out an aspect of ontological value or goodness a sense of what Plato was getting at when he said that we understand the forms against the background of the good I think if you take the term truth as the issue you have a value built in right into the terminology and we should not take limit our understanding of truth to the civil cases of the correctness of proposition or to the way we perceive things there is truth in picturing a truth in remembering a truth in counting and measuring in a truth and music drama and dance there are also forms of truthfulness with successes and failures in moral exchanges and in political life identifications of and all these things in complex and inter woven ways in all of them there are blends of presence and absence and forms of truth and falsity there is distinctness emerging out of vagueness and obscurity there is for example the truth in pictures in one sense whether we can ask whether a picture is accurate whether it corresponds with what it depicts that would be like the truth of correctness of a picture but we can also ask whether the picture whether what we can also ask whether it is truly present as a picture or whether it's unsuccessful as such whether it's obscure inept and or infantile does the picture truly apprehend anything is there a simple apprehension in the picture even apart from a correspondence if it doesn't have pre hend anything it's not really a picture in the case of music that the dimensions of correctness is is less obvious but there still is the question of whether the composition is clumsy bland or boring perhaps to such a degree that it becomes noise and not music any longer whistle gives us a stance from which we can contemplate our theorize such things and is it's his great contribution not only to have given us descriptions of various forms of truth but also an analysis of of the stance from which we analyze it he differentiates this transcendental attitude from our original standard way of dealing with things in truth and falsity I would claim that when we operate within the stance that hustle has so carefully described our most elementary procedure is to make basic distinctions among these forms of intending and presentation in fact he used that phrase early in his logical investigations the very first section of the 6th ed of the first investigation is entitled evasively hunt ishida the essential distinctions in first philosophy we work out fundamental distinctions and also the end gage and dialectical refutation as Aristotle does when he establishes the inevitability of the principle of non-contradiction in metaphysics for showing that his antagonist cannot help but use the very principle he wishes to deny Aristotle shows that if you are going to say anything if you're going to engage in even the most elementary exercise of truthfulness if you are even to signify something let alone assert it you must accept the validity of non contradiction and even in doing this you make a distinction between this and that so contradiction and distinctions are interwoven now one my final paragraph in this third point and then my last section will be rather brief my final point right now is to speak about epideictic personal claims that his remarks are apodictic that we see that they couldn't be otherwise it's kind of a necessity to them his claim is that they're his the statements he makes in philosophy to the extent that they succeed are apodictic there's something self-evident about them and they're not derived from any more basic truths nor are they attained by empirical investigation but rather by working out the way things have to be first philosophy is and was and always will be epideictic precisely because it tries to present the truth about truthfulness this source of self referentiality gives it a character that is different from other investigations it doesn't mean that its declarations are dogmatic or arbitrary they are not tyrannical they need to be stated and argued and there can be unsuccessful they can be vague and questions must be asked about them but the kind of truth they achieve is distinctive it doesn't appeal to simple intuitions but it appeals to distinctions and to the differentiation for example between perceiving and remembering picturing and naming measurement and treated predication and so forth by working these off against the other we bring all of them to light and we do so through discursive speech Socrates and the Platonic dialogues argues with other speakers and hustle also despite the apparent solitariness of his manner of writing still speaks to his students to us and even to himself but even here we intrude through the archival material on his soliloquies so with that I conclude my third section now I have a fourth brief section to conclude in which I want to speak about the modern subject and whistles relation to the modern subject and there's subtitle modern subject political and epistemological political and epistemological there are some problems in pistols argumentation some things we wish might have wished that he had done differently and we all have our own favorite examples to my mind some of the most questionable retain relate to his extreme focus on the solitary subject I think for instance that is reduction to the eigen Heights fair of the sphere of onus is problematic he seems to assume that we could still have categorical intentionality within that domain but how could that be possible how can we imagine ourselves even predicating things if other minds are not part of what we are examining I also think the Cartesian way to reduction is a misleading way of escorting the reader into the phenomenological attitude and of course missile himself later in his career acknowledged as such the isolation of the single ego in his industry as well as the apparent disqualification of the world as given to us distract the reader from which what is really important in this procedure namely the shift of focus from things to the correlation between things and the datums to whom they are given what is important is the transcendental turn or the turn into first philosophy not the arguments that lead into it and especially not the Cartesian arguments now such problems in hustles thought are made more understandable and perhaps more excusable if we consider the way that modern philosophy as a whole has centered on the subject an essential element of the philosophy of the last 500 years has been a radical turn to the subject in fact it would be better to call it a construction of the subject not the turn toward it and it has been the construction of the subject in two different forms in modernity the political subject and the epistemological subject the political subject was first invented by Machiavelli who calls it the prince and it was theoretically articulated by Thomas Hobbes who calls it the sovereign the political subject is the modern state as opposed to the ancient polis the political subject is not something we find but something we construct by philosophical thinking the epistemological subject of course is the Cartesian car detai modern thinking is not the establishment of just one of these subjects but of the subject in these two farms which must be distinguished but never separated from one another to use the words of another American philosopher a friend and colleague of mine Francis Slade both the political subject and the epistemological subject quote are inventions of thought ideal constructions effected by thought unquote concerning the political subject Slade says quote the state is not visible to the eyes it does not exist outside of thought and therefore it does not exist until it is thought but being thought and being a thought it possesses brilliant clarity an idea that can be conceived very clearly distinctly endquote and then in another passage as slate says quote the sovereign is a thought only in thought can something like a sovereign make an appearance and be seen sovereign in Hobson sense and quote these attributes of the political subject also belong to the epistemological subject the cogito is not visible to the eyes and it does not exist outside of thinking or until it is thought once thought it possesses brilliant clarity and distinctness and only in thinking can something like the cogito make an appearance the political subject is the expression of what slate calls decontextualized rule a pattern of ruling that needs no context no reference to any context decontextualized rule and the epistemological subject is the expression of disembodied thinking or the disembodied intellect in both cases we find ourselves not discovering things but inventing them in sheer freedom and autonomy it's important to keep in mind both these forms of the subject the political and the epistemological the epistemological taken just by itself might seem to be a little more than an absurd conundrum that interests nobody but philosophers but if it's taken as the Gagen schnook the counterpart to the political subject its ominous significance for our cultural and political life becomes much more visible this modern sense of the subject was the background for Russell's thought if muscle was to turn to first philosophy he had to do so within the setting given him by his day and age he had to think through the turn to the subject he has nothing directly to say about the political subject but he does have a lot to say about the epistemological subject his philosophy is I claim an attempt to embody and Munn denies the cogito to put mind back into the world to introduce receptivity and corporeality as well as absence and obscurity all of which serve to change the Cartesian coach ito the disembodied intellect into someone who says I and speaks with others in human conversation about things whistles transcendental ego is someone who is visible in the natural and public order and not just in thought I think this is brought out because when he first starts defining things and and making points about intentionality he makes those distinctions in regard to the use of words but the distinction between expressions and indications and that's not a constructed Cartesian ego it's a user of language muscle gives us resources by which we can unlink modern philosophy insofar as it rejects classical philosophy what he does with the epistemological subject can have an impact on the political subject as well to conclude I wish to call to mind hustles honesty and generosity as a thinker his writings bear witness to his relentless effort to clarify the issues he addresses it's not just his ideas that come through in his writing his personality comes through in them as well he was willing to correct what he had said before ready to subject any and all of his positions to new scrutiny he wanted most of all to get it right and to let things speak for themselves he's influenced philosophy for over a hundred years there have been very prominent beneficiaries of his thought Heidegger gadamer Edith Stein lavina's Merrill Aponte's Sartre and there are countless scholars and philosophers like ourselves who have been very deeply shaped by his writings intellectual achievement is a highly personal thing and we need to be grateful to those who have shared their gifts with us but if whistles thinking was to exercise such an influence on others it had to find its place in the layman's felt there needed to be something tangible that would serve as the vehicle for his thought his greatest impact has always been through his writings even from the beginning of his career with the philosophy of arithmetic and the debate with Fraga and his logical investigations and as it turned out historically after hostel's death the material embodiment of his thought found its place in the world in and through the hostile archives we can hardly remember her salt without thinking of the archives dedicated to him for this reason let us take a moment during this commemoration of hosts all to mention the person and work of father Hermann Leo Van Breda OFM and to recall what he did to keep hustles philosophy present as a resource for all of us I recall a conference many years ago during which Walter been--all spoke about Van Breda shortly after Van Breda died in 1974 d Milland i remember him saying this in an agitated way said extolled what he called van burritos wouldn't get high ona energy I can still see him I can recollect it saying that with panache energetic Van Breda was and he was also courageous and astute he saved hostels manuscripts institutionalized of muscle archives here at lurvin fund financial support for the archives and their publications he was generous in sharing the archives with other universities he knew that in intellectual matters to give something away is to enrich oneself Van Breda understood the importance of hustles work and his understanding was not only theoretic it had a wonderfully practical side our conference commemorates the life and work of Edmund who saw but by his very location it recalled it also recalls the qualities of Herman Leo Van Breda as well as those have succeeded him in the leadership of the archives Samuel I Celine Rudolph Burnett and Ulrich Mellon who have faithfully continued the work of this Center in the spirit of both justo and Van Breda all of these achievement all of these achievements and all of these people have left us a rich legacy of philosophical life and I thank you for your attention

Channel: Philosophy Overdose

Views: 12,111

Rating: 4.8727274 out of 5

Keywords: Philosophy, Husserl, Phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, Continental Philosophy, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Experience, History of Philosophy, Descartes, Cartesian, First Philosophy, Transcendental Reduction, Transcendental Phenomenology, Being

Id: mfxOMVz2-jQ

Length: 60min 7sec (3607 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 23 2016