Edmund Husserl

Coming in as one of the last entries to Strauss and Cropsey’s History of Political Philosophy, Richard Valkley examines the thought of Edmund Husserl. Firstly, Valkley notes that in many ways, Husserl is an odd choice to have an essay devoted to him in a book about political philosophy as he makes no commentary on political matters. However, Husserl’s conception of the telos can have many important political implications, particularly as it relates to full autonomy as a human goal. This relates to Husserl’s search for new grounds in rationality. This is politically important as he sees reason’s essence as being absolute autonomy. These aspects of Husserl’s thought are important for three reasons. These reasons are as follows: 1) it provides a notion of rationality as essentially normative and sees the task of “rescuing” rationality to be in the service of the human good. 2) It proposes a critique of positivism (or, as Husserl prefers, “psychologicalism”) and historicism which are of course immediately relevant to political science. And finally 3) it engages in a close examination of the inherited premises of the philosophic tradition, an examination that has provided an impetus to fundamental historical inquiries into the sense of the Greek beginnings and the early modern “foundations” of philosophy.

            One of the most important aspects of Husserl’s thought is phenomenology and while he is not the first phenomenologist, his phenomenology is important for two reasons. These reasons are as follows: 1) The science of phenomenology must be without presuppositions in order to create proper grounding for human ideas and 2) The science of phenomenology is the first philosophy and the foundation for all sciences. Indeed, all 20^th century phenomenologists owe something to Husserl is if not all of them fully accept his arguments.

This relates closely to Husserl’s understanding of modernity as for him, modernity is in a crisis of self-understanding and this crisis has brought us to the edge of collapse and barbarism. As such, a new telos is needed which will better conceptualize the idea of reason as autonomy. This also relates to a common criticism of Husserl in that while he claims that thought must be without presuppositions, his own thought ultimately falls into its own presuppositions. Valkey however sees this criticism as not being entirely convincing as fist off, he notes that Husserl’s emphasis on reason causes him to place more importance on human essence than on human nature. Husserl also places a greater emphasis on the relationship between reason and the surrounding world than was done in antiquity.

Furthermore, Husserl also sees the telos as being grounded in history, but separates this from historicism, an idea which he rejects. Husserl also spends a good deal of time developing a critique of psychologicalism, the idea that all human knowledge is rooted in the functions of the brain, which he sees has having two fundamental errors. These errors are as follows: 1) it falls into naturalism by trying to understand the human mind in the same way as physical objects are understood and 2) there is an attempt to create a foundation for all of human knowledge within the confines of these principles and thus falls into relativism. In a way, Husserl is trying to bridge Descartes’ gap between the mind and objects as while physical objects are very real, they are connected together and given meaning in our minds.

Husserl’s radical ideas on autonomy also keeps him from falling into another danger, that of “commonsense realism.” Husserl accepts absolute reason, but understands that humans tend to conceptualize this pure reason through their surroundings. This can be seen in Husserl’s writings on historicism Husserl rejects historicism as he sees it as damaging truth as “truth” always becomes dependent upon the particular age in which it exists. In Husserl’s view, fact must be independent of worldview and philosophy’s scientific impulses must be restrained. This is important as through the modern attempt to closely identify reason with science, the attempt to free humans from science has become transformed into an attempt to free humanity from reason. As such, Husserl understands that understanding worldview is important, but does not want to place philosophy under worldview, which he sees historicism as being guilty of doing.

Husserl sees phenomenology as being better able to make us aware of our own presuppositions. Philosophy in its purest form is without presuppositions, but in order for it to be understood it must be brought down to earth where it will lose some of its purity. As such history has a place in philosophy but cannot be its master. Instead, the telos must be the ultimate guide and indeed, true philosophy must be primarily concerned with comprehending the telos. This is important as for Husserl, the rejection of the telos, particularly as it relates to falsification, has created a major crisis in the West. The rejection of the telos makes manipulation easier and this leads Husserl to place great emphasis on mathematics as the mathematization pf other fields have made them easier to manipulate and thus we must be careful with its use, particularly in relation to philosophy.