Phenomenology

Shore’s own judgments and connections

Despite his dull bourgeois domesticity, Husserl is the avant-garde's alter ego: he attacks the same problem, groundlessness, from the opposite flank, sharing their maximalism and the earlier modernists' radical subjectivity.

Put simply Shore: despite his dull, respectable home life, Husserl is the avant-garde's opposite twin. He fought their fear that nothing is solid underfoot from the other side, sharing their all-or-nothing ambition and the early modernists' focus on the inner self.

Kant's willingness to set aside the thing-in-itself as unreachable amounts to fatalism, a kind of surrender; the real thing can be reached, with absolute truth and full clarity.

Put simply Husserl: Kant set aside things as they really are, apart from our minds, as out of reach. That is fatalism, a kind of surrender. The real thing can be reached, with absolute truth and full clarity.

The phenomenological reduction jolts us from the natural attitude, where the world's existence is taken for granted, into reflection on consciousness; the reality question is bracketed, suspended rather than doubted.

Put simply Husserl: normally we just assume the world exists, his "natural attitude". The "phenomenological reduction" jolts us out of that into examining our own experience. We set aside, or "bracket", whether things are real, without doubting it.

Strip away the contingent particulars distinguishing empirical egos and a transcendental ego remains: the deepest, most essential I, yet universal and identical in everyone, as H2O underlies all water.

Put simply Husserl: strip away everything that makes each actual person different, and a "transcendental ego" is left: the deepest core of the self, yet the same in everyone. To use the lecture's analogy, it is like H2O in all water.

In the text In the Fifth Cartesian Meditation (§56), Husserl describes other egos as "monads, existing for themselves precisely as I exist for myself", a plurality he calls transcendental intersubjectivity.

Intentionality is the structure of consciousness: always reaching for its object, like a magnet on a string. Neither subject nor object comes first; their relation does, bridged by intentionality.

Put simply Husserl: consciousness is always reaching out toward some object, like a magnet on a string in Shore's image. He calls this "intentionality." Neither mind nor thing comes first; the link between them does, and that link is the bridge.

Europe slid into barbarism because people stopped believing in reason and in the possibility of absolute truth; convince them that such truth is reachable and the world could be saved.

Put simply Husserl: Europe fell into barbarism because people lost faith in reason and in the possibility of absolute truth. Convince them such truth can be reached, and the world could be saved.

The fatal step toward Stalinist art, Groys argues, was not imposed communist ideology but the avant-garde's own move from representing the world to transforming it, which licensed unprecedented social engineering.

Put simply Groys: the fatal step toward Stalinist art was not communist ideas forced on artists. It was the avant-garde's own shift from showing the world to remaking it, which opened the way to reshaping society on an unprecedented scale.

Despite his dull bourgeois domesticity, Husserl is the avant-garde's alter ego: he attacks the same problem, groundlessness, from the opposite flank, sharing their maximalism and the earlier modernists' radical subjectivity.

Put simply Shore: despite his dull, respectable home life, Husserl is the avant-garde's opposite twin. He fought their fear that nothing is solid underfoot from the other side, sharing their all-or-nothing ambition and the early modernists' focus on the inner self.

Modern philosophy's basic trouble is that it has no ground to stand on. The remedy is Descartes' experiment: discard everything you think you know and ask what survives as certain.

Put simply Husserl: modern philosophy's basic problem is that it has nothing solid to build on. The fix is Descartes' experiment: throw out everything you think you know and ask what you can still be certain of.

Husserl's revolt is the trickiest to grasp, largely because he stays so near what he rejects (positivism, psychologism, even Kant): in some sense, Freud's narcissism of minor differences.

Put simply Shore: Husserl's revolt is hardest to grasp because he stays so close to what he rejects, even Kant. In a sense it is Freud's "narcissism of minor differences": the smaller the gap, the more people obsess over it.

Treating consciousness the way natural science treats its objects almost inevitably turns it into a material thing, and that reification, as the 1910 manifesto argues, leads straight into absurdity.

Put simply Husserl, in his 1910 manifesto: studying the mind the way science studies objects almost always turns it into a material thing. Treating consciousness as a thing, he says, leads straight to absurdity.

Science's pursuit of pure objectivity, which expels everything subjective for the object's glory, struck the young Levinas as "a leap into nothingness"; phenomenology's appeal was that it reversed this attitude.

Put simply Levinas, as a young man: science's drive for pure objectivity, which throws out everything personal for the sake of the object, felt like "a leap into nothingness." Phenomenology appealed because it reversed that attitude.

The charge that Enlightenment rationality leaves people emotionally and existentially starved recurs throughout modern thought; positivism's leap into pure objectivity simply provoked it again, this time answered with radical subjectivity.

Put simply Shore: the complaint that Enlightenment reason leaves people cold and starved of meaning keeps returning. Positivism's leap to pure objectivity, trusting only observed facts, revived it, and this time the answer was to put inner experience first.

Freud and Husserl are two sides of one coin: assimilated Habsburg Jews born three years apart, both Brentano's students and anti-positivist theorists of radical subjectivity, yet with opposite selves.

Put simply Shore: Freud and Husserl are two sides of one coin. Both were assimilated Habsburg Jews born three years apart, both studied with Brentano, both rebelled against fact-only science by putting the inner self first. Yet their selves are opposites.

Psychologism, the view that logic, truth and evidence are only empirical facts about how minds happen to operate, is unsatisfactory too; it must be rejected along with positivism.

Put simply Husserl also rejects "psychologism", the idea that logic and truth are only facts about how our minds happen to work. It must go, along with positivism, the view that only observed facts count.

Phenomenology sets out to escape solipsism, the picture of a mind sealed inside itself with only its own contents for certainty; consciousness can reach its objects and claim objective truth.

Put simply Husserl's phenomenology tries to escape "solipsism," the picture of a mind shut inside itself, sure of nothing but its own thoughts. He holds that consciousness can reach real objects and claim objective truth.

Husserl's trouble, Witkacy wrote to Ingarden, is that he lacks a body: in Shore's retelling, just eyes, glasses and a beard floating in space, never present in the real world as a person.

Kant's willingness to set aside the thing-in-itself as unreachable amounts to fatalism, a kind of surrender; the real thing can be reached, with absolute truth and full clarity.

Put simply Husserl: Kant set aside things as they really are, apart from our minds, as out of reach. That is fatalism, a kind of surrender. The real thing can be reached, with absolute truth and full clarity.

The phenomenological reduction jolts us from the natural attitude, where the world's existence is taken for granted, into reflection on consciousness; the reality question is bracketed, suspended rather than doubted.

Put simply Husserl: normally we just assume the world exists, his "natural attitude". The "phenomenological reduction" jolts us out of that into examining our own experience. We set aside, or "bracket", whether things are real, without doubting it.

Phenomenology, both in Husserl's conception and largely in its later development, is more method than theory: an account of how we ought to go about understanding the world.

Put simply Husserl's phenomenology, and mostly what grew from it, is less a set of claims than a method: an account of how we ought to go about understanding the world.

Phenomenology has two starting points: the world, the single all-encompassing horizon where objects appear, and the I, a worldly thing unlike any other because the world is given to it.

Put simply Husserl starts from two things. The world: one single, all-embracing backdrop against which every object appears. And the I: a thing in the world, but unlike any other, because it is the one to whom the world appears.

Strip away the contingent particulars distinguishing empirical egos and a transcendental ego remains: the deepest, most essential I, yet universal and identical in everyone, as H2O underlies all water.

Put simply Husserl: strip away everything that makes each actual person different, and a "transcendental ego" is left: the deepest core of the self, yet the same in everyone. To use the lecture's analogy, it is like H2O in all water.

In the text In the Fifth Cartesian Meditation (§56), Husserl describes other egos as "monads, existing for themselves precisely as I exist for myself", a plurality he calls transcendental intersubjectivity.

Intentionality is the structure of consciousness: always reaching for its object, like a magnet on a string. Neither subject nor object comes first; their relation does, bridged by intentionality.

Put simply Husserl: consciousness is always reaching out toward some object, like a magnet on a string in Shore's image. He calls this "intentionality." Neither mind nor thing comes first; the link between them does, and that link is the bridge.

Where Kant left the thing-in-itself beyond reach, Husserl substitutes "the things themselves": the real things are simply objects as they show up to us, given in experience.

Put simply Kant said we can never reach things as they are in themselves. Husserl replies with "the things themselves": the real things just are objects as they show up in our experience.

Where Freud locates the essential self in what is most hidden, the transcendental ego is pure light: nothing in it stays concealed, and knowing is a matter of clear seeing.

Put simply Freud thinks the most important part of the self is what is most hidden. Husserl's pure self is the opposite: nothing in it stays hidden, and knowing means seeing clearly.

Bracketing reached into Husserl's own life: weeks after the First World War killed his younger son, he wrote to a friend that the war was now bracketed.

Put simply Husserl's habit of "bracketing," setting a question aside, reached into his own life. Weeks after his younger son was killed in the First World War, he wrote to a friend that the war was now bracketed.

Europe slid into barbarism because people stopped believing in reason and in the possibility of absolute truth; convince them that such truth is reachable and the world could be saved.

Put simply Husserl: Europe fell into barbarism because people lost faith in reason and in the possibility of absolute truth. Convince them such truth can be reached, and the world could be saved.

Husserl, still a teenage student in Leipzig, meets the slightly older Masaryk; a lifelong friendship follows.

Husserl's younger son is killed fighting for Germany; weeks later Husserl declares the war bracketed and returns to work.

Critique of Pure Reason Kritik der reinen Vernunft

Husserl born in Prossnitz (Prostějov), Moravia, in the Habsburg Empire.

Husserl and his wife, both Habsburg Jews, convert to Protestantism (he in 1886, she in 1887 shortly before their wedding).

Logical Investigations Logische Untersuchungen

The Idea of Phenomenology Die Idee der Phänomenologie

Philosophy as a Rigorous Science Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft

Husserl publishes his manifesto "Philosophy as a Rigorous Science".

Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology, Book I (Ideas I) Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Erstes Buch

Introduction to Transcendental Phenomenology (the Paris lectures) Pariser Vorträge

Mayakovsky takes his own life; telegram reaches the Briks in Berlin.

Cartesian Meditations Méditations cartésiennes

With the Nazis in power, Husserl, classed as non-Aryan, is suspended from the university in April 1933 and progressively shut out (teaching license withdrawn 1936), becoming a non-person.

The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie