Belief and its neutralization : Husserl's system of phenomenology in Ideas I

352 Pages·2002·1.678 MB·English

by  Brainard, Marcus, Husserl, Edmund

Belief and its Neutralization
SUNY series, in Contemporary Continental Philosophy
Dennis J. Schmidt, editor
Belief and
its Neutralization
(cid:1)
Husserl’s System of Phenomenology
inIdeas I
Marcus Brainard
State University of New York Press
Cover image: “Husserl’s last manuscript page.” From Hans Rainer Sepp, ed., Edmund Husserl und
die phänomenologische Bewegung (Freiburg/Munich: Alber, 1988), p. 412. Permission to reproduce
it was granted by the Husserl Archive in Leuven, Belgium.
p. vii. Albrecht Dürer, “Knight, Death, and the Devil” (1513). From the Konrad Liebmann-
Stiftung in the Stiftung Niedersachen at the Kulturgeschichtliches Museum Osnabrück.
p. viii. Rembrandt, “Jacob Wrestling with the Angel” (ca. 1659/60). From the Staatliche Museen
zu Berlin Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Gemäldegallerie.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brainard, Marcus.
Belief and its neutralization : Husserl’s system of phenomenology in Ideas I /
Marcus Brainard.
p. cm. —(SUNY series in contemporary continental philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and indexes.
ISBN 0–7914–5219–0 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0–7914–5220–4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Husserl, Edmund, 1859–1938. Allgemeine Einfèhrung in die reine Phènomenologie.
2. Phenomenology. I. Title. II. Series.
B3279.H93 A3333 2002
142’.7—dc21
2001049416
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my parents
“. . . nihil esse perniciosius quam quicquid
ibi est accipi ad litteram, id est ad verbum,
nihil autum salubrius quam spiritu revelari.”
(“. . . nothing is more pernicious than that
whatever is there be taken by the letter,
that is, literally, but nothing is more salubri-
ous than that it be revealed through the
spirit.”)
— Augustine, De utilitate credendi

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Contents
Preface xiii
I. Introduction: The Task of Thinking 1
1. The Idea of Phenomenology 5
1.1The Crisis, its Source and Dimensions 6
1.2 Natural Order and Critique 8
1.3 System and Norms 11
1.4 Ethos, Ought, Teleology 14
2. The System of Husserlian Phenomenology: Ideas I 21
2.1 Polarities 24
2.2 The Order of Critique 26
2.3 The Whole and its Parts 27
II. Phenomenological Propaedeutics 33
1. Logical Considerations: Matter of Fact and Essence 37
1.1 The Realm of the Natural 38
1.2 Individual and Essence, Possibility and Necessity 40
1.3 Factual and Eidetic Sciences 45
2. Between Scylla and Charybdis: The Principle of All Principles 48
2.1 Phenomenology and Philosophy 48
2.2 Empiricism, Naturalism, Skepticism 50
2.3 Idealism 53
2.4 The Blindness of Theory 53
2.5 The First Principle 54
2.6 Dogmatism 56
3. The Epoché and the Phenomenological Reductions 57
3.1 The Attitudes of Consciousness 59
3.2 The General Thesis 60
3.3 The Instrumentalization of Cartesian Doubt 62
3.4 The Attitudinal Leap 65
3.5 The Family of Reductions 68
3.6 The Primacy of the Universal Epoché 74
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ix