Chapter 11. Phenomenology and existentialism

11.1. The phenomenology of E. Husserl

At the beginning of the 20th century (after that that the European philosophy development had gone mainly in two directions: positivism and irrationalism) the question of the pure rationalism arose again. It was the question of the rationalism as it had been meant by Descartes, Spinoza and earlier by Parmenides, Plato and other thinkers. The problem was put anew by E. Husserl, the German philosopher, who saw the cause of the most global problems of his time in the oblivion of the rationalism ideals in the European culture. The solving of those problems, said Husserl, is impossible without restoring the rationalism ideals. An attempt to do it was his phenomenology, the teaching of consciousness phenomena.

The outset of any rationalism is the point that truth is obviousness. Husserl also embarked on from this point. Further the question what can be considered obvious arises. The obvious is that we cannot get out beyond our consciousness (look also the chapter dedicated to epistemology). It follows from here that the rational philosophy proceeding from the obviousness can rely only on consciousness itself, i.e. it can be only a science of the consciousness phenomena or phenomenology. The outer empiric data are too changeable and not subdued to the rational control. Therefore, they ought to be put aside or, as Husserl said, be confined into bracket. The truth is something obvious that can’t be thought other.

Here we again come back to Descartes’ problem of what can’t be doubted (thought other), the problem considered in Descartes’ “Meditations on Method”. A complicated knowledge which isn’t obvious, according to Descartes, should be disintegrated into constituents which would be clearly obvious to say whether they are true or false. The same takes place in Husserl’s phenomenology. It’s necessary to find out obvious constituents compounding consciousness phenomena or, saying in the Husserl’s own words, to uncover the so-called eidoses or the entities existing by themselves and depending on no empirical basis. Examples of eidoses are geometric formness, logic and mathematics concepts etc. Eidoses are entities reducible to no other ones. Among them the eidos of transcendent ego is especially worth of mentioning. The transcendent ego differs from the psycophysic one. The latter is determined as a sum of person’s characteristic features and memories. It changes during individual life and can be imagined another than it is (that’s why it isn’t an eidos). The same is impossible for the transcendent ego which also cannot be defined through something else. It’s like a center of coordinates system in which our personal world (phenomena of our personal consciousness) is placed. We can imagine ourselves something another than we are but we cannot imagine how it is when we don’t exist in principle (when our consciousness as such doesn’t exist). Thus Husserl has come to the transcendental solipsism (we can’t get out beyond the coordinates system of our transcendent ego) which ought not to be confused with the psychophysical or empirical solipsism. The latter can be easily refuted. Really, if we recognize someone a personality (a psychophysical ego) similar to us (to our own psychophysical ego), that means we get out beyond our psychic preferences and egoism. The attitude to other as to similar or equal to oneself (that is the attitude of me to you) is the outset of ethics. But in spite of all this we can’t put ourselves in skin of others and feel exactly what he feels in reality.

Eidoses constitute consciousness phenomena which in their turn form the consciousness horizon. We live in a flux of our consciousness phenomena, the flux determined by our consciousness horizon. The latter includes all we know and can perceive and realize now, all including our and others’ empirical egos [1, p. 220 – 221].

Date: 2014-12-21; view: 909