Hume and Husserl: Towards Radical Subjectivism

156 Pages·1980·3.9 MB·English

by  Richard T. Murphy (auth.)

Hurne and Husserl
PHAENOMENOLOGICA
COLLECTION FONDEE PAR H.L. VAN BREDA ET PUBLIEE
SOUS LE PATRONAGE DES CENTRES D'ARCHIVES - HUSSERL
79
RICHARD T. MURPHY
Hume and Husserl
Comite de redaction de la collection:
President: S. IJsseling (Leuven);
Membres: M. Farber (Buffalo), E. FinIct (Freiburg i. Br.),
L. Landgrebe (Koln), W. Marx (Freiburg i. Br.),
J.N. Mohanty (New York), P. Ricoeur (Paris), E. Stroker (Koln),
J. Taminiaux (Louvain), K.H. VoIkmann-Schluck (Koln);
Secretaire: J. Taminiaux.
RICHARD T. MURPHY
Hume and Husserl
TOWARDS RADICAL SUBJECTIVISM
. .
~
. ·.1
•
1980
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data CE
Murphy, Richard Timothy, 1925-
Hume and Husser!: towards radical subjectivism.
(Phaenomenologica; 79)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Hume, David, 1711-1776 - Knowledge, Theory of.
2. Hussed, Edmund, 1859-1938 - Knowledge, Theory of.
3. Knowledge, Theory of. 4. Subjectivity. 5. Phenomenology.
6. A priorL 7. Constitution (Philosophy).
I. Title. II. Series.
B1499.K7M86 121 79-12185
ISBN 978-90-481-8258-9 ISBN 978-94-017-4392-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-4392-1
Copyright © 1980 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Martinus NijhoffPublishers, The Hague in 1980
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1980
All rights reserved. No part of this publications may be reproduced, stored in a retriev
al system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher,
Springer-Science+Business Media, B. V.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I wish to express my appreciation to my colleague, Professor
Richard Cobb-Stevens, for his contribution to this study.
This book is dedicated to my wife and my mother.
March 1979 RICHARD T. MURPHY
Boston College
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
Notes 8
I. SKEPTICISM AND GENETIC PHENOMENOLOGY 10
1. The Phenomenological Reduction and Solipsism 10
2. Skepticism and Genetic Reduction 15
3. Genetic Phenomenology and the "A Priori" 22
Notes 24
II. THE A PRIORI AND EVIDENCE 29
1. Husserl's Interpretation of the Humean Concept of the "A Priori" 29
2. Evidence and the Formal and Material "A Priori" 34
3. Evidence and Intuition 41
Notes 53
III. FROM STA TIC TO GENETIC ANALYSIS 60
1. In tuition and Constitution 60
2. Husserl's Critique of Hume's Theory of Abstraction 63
3. Towards a Genetic Phenomenology 72
Notes 88
IV. TIME AND SUBJECTIVITY 99
1. Association and Time-Consciousness 99
2. The Primal Constitution of the Experienced World in
Time-Consciousness 105
3. Time-Consciousness and the Auto-Constitution of the Ego 111
4. Primal Flux and Constitution 120
Notes 127
CONCLUSION: PROBLEMATIC SUBJECTIVISM 135
Notes 140
BIBLIOGRAPHY 141
INDEX 145
INTRODUCTION
To become fully aware of the original and radical character of
his transcendental phenomenology Edmund Husserl must be
located within the historical tradition of Western philosophy.
Although he was not a historian of philosophy, Husserl's his
torical reflections convinced him that phenomenology is the
necessary culmination of a centuries-old endeavor and the
solution to the contemporary crisis in European science and
European humanity itself.l This teleological viewpoint re
quires the commentator to consider the tradition of Western
philosophy from Husserl's own perspective.
Husserl maintained that the Cartesian tum to the "Cogito"
represents the crucial breakthrough in the historical advance of
Western thought toward philosophy as rigorous science. Hence
he concentrated almost exclusively on the modem era.2 Much
has been written of Husserl's relationship to Descartes, Kant,
and the neo-Kantians. His connections with Locke, Berkeley,
and Hume have not been examined as closely despite his fre
quent allusions to these British empiricists. Among these
thinkers David Hume gained from Husserl the more extensive
considera tion.
Commentators have pointed out correctly that Husserl
always criticized unsparingly Hume's sheer empiricistic approach
to the problem of cognition. Such an approach, in Husserl's view,
can only result in the "naturalization of consciousness" from
which stem that "psychologism" and "sensualism" which lead
Hume inevitably into the contradictory impasse of solipsism
and skepticism. 3
What had been noted but not explored in depth is Husserl's
extremely favorable attitude towards Hume's thought in cer
tain vital aspects. Having achieved the decisive breakthrough to
transcendental phenomenology and having begun to complete
the "genetic tum" central to his idealism Husserl stressed ever
2 INTRODUCTION
more strongly his affinity to Hume's philosophy. A brief his
torical excursus will document how Husserl drew an ever tighter
connection between his genetic phenomenology and Hume's
psychology .
As early as 1903 Husserl interpreted Hume's skepticism in
regard to synthetic a priori judgments of the Kantian type to
be rooted in the valid insight that what alone is given directly
and immediately is immanent to consciousness so that " ...
if there is an a priori, then it can only be an immanent a
priori."4 Moreover, Husserl sees behind Hume's misleading
terms "impressions" and "ideas" the perfectly valid refusal to
interpose any dualism between the ego and the object. Rightly
understood, Hume's identification of the a priori with what is
grounded on mere "ideas" is the legitimate demand for intui
tive evidence based on " ... the lived act, the subjective being
given of truth ... In Husserl's opinion Kant's indebtedness
"5
to German rationalism blinded him to the decisive insight
shared by Hume and the other British empiricists
... that transcendental philosophy intends nothing else, and must intend
nothing else, than to clarify the sense of cognition and its validity; and
that clarification means here nothing else than to go back to the origin,
to evidence, thus to consciousness, in which alI cognitive concepts are
realized.6
In the later stages of his life Husserl accentuated more
extensively and with ever increasing force the affinity of his
phenomenology to Hume's thought. Thus, in the main text of
Erste Philosophie I, which dates from 1923/24, Husserl attacks
Hume's psychologism while arguing that a correct analysis of
the misleading text of Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature
will show that " ... this Humean psychology is the first
systematic effort of a science of the pure givenness of con
sciousness; I would say, it is the effort of a pure egology ...
"7
That is why Husserl goes so far as to say that, despite its empiri
cism, " ... Hume's Treatise is the first sketch of a pure pheno
menology.
"8
In this main text of Erste Philosophie I from 1923/24,
Husserl's tum from a static to a genetic phenomenology be
comes plainly discernible. In this connection it is relevant to
note that Husserl lauds Hume for being the first to see that the
problem of synthetic unity or intentional constitution involves
INTRODUCTION 3
not only the unity and identity of the object but also the unity
and identity of the ego itself in its manifold noetic perfor
mances. Hidden in Hume's inductive-psychological problematic
is
... the problem of the genesis of consciousness, or the problem, so to
speak, of the history (the eidetic and the empirical respectively) of the
pure transcendentally grasped Intersubjectivity and the history of its
performances, and so of the real and ideal "worlds" constituted indivi
dually and jointly in the pure subject.9
In Formal and Transcendental Logic, published in 1929/30,
Husserl again criticizes Hume's naturalism and, in particular,
his theory which reduces " ... the pure concrete ego, in which
all objectivities and worlds accepted by him are constituted
subjectively ... [to] a senseless bundle or collection of Data
Nevertheless, Husserl admits that if Hume had under
.•. "10
stood correctly the "productive intentionality" of conscious
ness, his reflection on the ego would have been " ... a trans
cendental subjectivizing, which is not merely compatible with
genuine objectivity but the a priori other side of genuine
Objectivity."
11
What must be underlined in Husserl's Formal and Trans
cendental Logic is the radically concrete character his genetic
analyses have taken. This explains why Husserl underscores
his affinity with Hume who was
... the first to see the necessity of investigating the Objective itself as a
product of its genesis from that concreteness, in order to make the legi
timate being-sense of everything that exists for us intelligible through
its ultimate origins.12
From a noematic aspect Husserl finds in Hume's theory of
"abstraction" the problem of the transcendental origin of
ideal objectivities. Whereas Kant failed to question the
possibility of logic, Hume's attack on abstract ideas impels
Husserl to try to show how logic as the theory of science and
the sciences themselves are to be grounded in pre-scientific
nature or the life world. In Husserl's interpretation the merit
of Hume's skepticism was to place concretely fundamental
questions " ... about pre-scientific Nature, as it itself becomes