Husserl’s Way to Authentic Being

This quote appears only in the German edition and reads: “Die Qualen der Unklarheit, des hin- und herschwankenden Zweifels habe ich ausreichend genossen. Ich muß zu einer inneren Festigkeit hin kommen.”

See, for instance, Pierre Thévenaz’s What is Phenomenology? (1962), where he tells us of Husserl’s dissatisfaction with Logical Investigations and the psychological torment that this caused him after its publication. During this time, Husserl, writes Thévenaz, goes “through his gravest crisis of internal doubt and incertitude” (p. 39). One could ask, however, what writer does not go through a period of doubt and incertitude after finishing and presenting a work? In fact, in a letter to Dorion Cairns, written in 1930 and published in Phaenomenologica 4, Husserl (1960) seems to suggest that the process of writing Logical Investigations was somewhat therapeutic. Husserl’s letter to Cairns states: “I too had a hard time in my youth, suffered from long spells of depression, down to the complete loss of all self-confidence, and even made the attempt to consult a neurologist, though not exactly with the success you had. This was largely the result of my philosophical failure, which, as I recognized very late, was a failure of contemporary philosophy. Thus I lived from despair to despair, from rally to rally.… And after all, in the fourteen years of my time as Privatdozent in Halle there was a new beginning, the Logische Untersuchungen, which then gave me support and hope. By writing them I have cured myself” (p. 293). As the 1905 entry shows, however, the so called cure was only temporary and Husserl would have to once again work through it. I thank the anonymous referee for brining this to my attention.

The Sixth Cartesian Meditation is Fink’s attempt, under Husserl’s supervision, to correct and further explain Husserl’s theory of transcendental phenomenology and the phenomenological reduction. In it, Fink questions the “being of the transcendent,” and the very possibility of phenomenology given the conceptual resources available; thus it is a “phenomenology of phenomenology.” Most importantly, it is a defense of Husserl’s phenomenology in light of Martin Heidegger’s emerging philosophy and the long shadow it cast on German thought. For this reason, Fink, at times, seems to Heideggerize Husserl to some extent. For a valuable commentary on this text, see the introduction by Ronald Bruzina.

It’s worth pointing out, however, that we do not “leave” our immediate experience. It is rather a reflective move, a change of perspective, away from a naïve absorption in unreflective thinking. As Thévenaz (1962) says, “One cannot even speak of a ‘return to lived experience’ via the reduction, because, in fact, we have never left it” (p. 52).

Van Breda makes eight “notes” regarding “reduction and authenticity” in this short but valuable essay. Because the essay is so brief, for the sake of clarity, I will refer to the note number. Thus, for the above quote, I will place “note 1” after the cited text.

This is also the case with Descartes. Descartes begins by noting his “inauthenticity,” and through meditation attempts to reveal what he is justified in holding true. For Descartes, “to know myself…more truly” seems to be a necessary condition for living the right kind of life (1993, p. 23).

I can imagine someone, for example, who might one day actually, and successfully, enter a “teletransporter,” get beamed over to Mars but physically remain on Earth while someone physically and psychologically identical to him or her roams the deserts of Mars. The elation to the philosopher-physicist who accomplishes this, I imagine, would be overwhelming. This is David Parfit’s thought experiment in Reasons and Persons (1984, Part 3).

On this, see Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1992), especially Section 2 of Chapter 2; and, see for example, Fredrick Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings (1999).

I say “relevant” since Husserl always suspected that Heidegger might be continuing the projects and themes laid out in his (Husserl’s) own phenomenology. In a letter to Alexander Pfänder (1931), Husserl writes: “Of course, as Being and Time appeared in 1927, I was alienated by the new style of language and thought. At first I trusted his post-publication clarification: he is one who advances my research. I derived the impression of an exceptional, though not clarified intellectual energy, and honestly took to pains to penetrate [sic] and accept it. In the face of theories whose access was so difficult for my type of thinking, I did not want to come to grips with the fact that in them methods of my phenomenological research and its scientific rigor in general are abandoned. Somehow the blame rests with me and Heidegger only so far as he leaped much too quickly into problems of a higher stage. He himself steadily denied that he is abandoning my transcendental phenomenology and directed me to his future second volume [of Being and Time]” (Welton 2000, pp. 122–123).

As Iain Thomson (2005) argues, authenticity does require an “existential reduction” of its own in which, radically individualized in the total collapse of my world, the “running-out into death” that reveal me to myself in my “ownmost being-able” (eigentliche Seinkönnen) as nothing but a world-hungry “mineness” (Jemeinnigkeit), a projecting without any projects, I discover that this aspect of myself is “stronger than death” and so am able to “choose to choose,” to be authentically reborn, repossessing myself and so genuinely leading my own life (pp. 439–467).

Henry Pietersma puts the matter in less poignant terms: “a subject who is utterly committed to rationality should reflect on his epistemic situation and submit it to critical scrutiny. He should ask himself whether the situation really has the character of perception which his cognitive claim implied. Has his cognitive intention been completely filled or does the object intended have components which are in some way referred to but not given?…Either you must be able to suggest further meaningful explorations or I have the right to be sure” (Elliston and McCormick 1977, pp. 42–43).

Bewuβtein is, of course, translated as “consciousness.” In some places, Fred Kersten translates it as “confidence” (Husserl 1998, §96). It makes sense, since when one is conscious of X, one is also confident that X is what is being thought about. Although the terms are not prima facie interchangeable, it does not seem too much of a violation to interchange them in the present context.

My emphasis; Pierre Keller (1999), for instance, makes the following claim: “Any justification of our beliefs also depends on the context in which we find ourselves. There is no way to provide a justification of our beliefs that transcends all context whatsoever, as traditional philosophers such as Descartes and Husserl think, who seek to identify beliefs that have a certainty that is completely independent of any particular context of justification” (157; my emphasis).

I am grateful to Professors Iain Thomson and Richard Tieszen, who guided my thinking through the initial phases of this paper. I would also like to thank the two anonymous referees for Human Studies for their valuable comments and suggestions.