Part Four - The Adventure of Metaphysics

Edmund Husserl: Phenomenology is the Foundation of Metaphysics

Edmund Husserl: Phenomenology is the Foundation of Metaphysics

In the first decades of the last century, Edmund Husserl proclaimed to the scientific world that he had founded a new science, phenomenology, which, unlike previous philosophies, finally provided a radical and incontrovertible justification, with perfect method and logical rigor, for all sciences, as if until his time nothing like it had existed since the days of Aristotle with metaphysics.

Husserl promised to satisfy all those in philosophy who desired truth and to grasp being and things themselves as they are in themselves, with an instantly intuitive, experimental, and demonstrative method, offering objective, necessary, immutable, and universal knowledge.

Due to the seriousness of his commitment, the value of his observations and discoveries, and the didactic qualities of his thought, Husserl began to attract numerous qualified disciples and thus founded a school that still exists and is widespread worldwide. Pope St. John Paul II himself, before ascending to the pontifical throne, was a disciple of Roman Ingarden, a Polish phenomenologist. This is how Husserl's seriousness appears, together with his effective qualities, that he managed to attract his following chosen spirits, such as Edith Stein and Max Scheler, who only opened their eyes after years of subjugation to the revered master.

Husserl conceived his philosophy to remedy various errors of the philosophies of his time: psychologism, which due to its empiricism and positivism was incapable of providing universality, necessity, and certainty to knowledge, and reduced the interiority of the spirit and the dignity of consciousness to mere psychic facts only slightly superior to those of animal psyche; wandering idealism in sublime self-referential abstractions, devoid of connection to experience and adherence to facts; Thomistic realism, which he judged as naive and surpassed by Kantian criticism.

Husserl aligns himself with those philosophers who, starting with Descartes, such as Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and including later figures like Heidegger, Gentile, Bontadini, Lotz, and Rahner, feel obliged not so much to destroy Thomistic realism "with blows of the hammer," to say it with Nietzsche, but rather to provide it with a critical basis or presupposition in Cartesian cogito, with an air of benevolent understanding like a good father looking at his seven-year-old son who still believes in Santa Claus and the Befana (a specific Italian word referring to an old woman, a sort of a witch, who delivers gifts to children on Epiphany Eve in a similar manner to Saint Nicholas. (Ed.))

To show how he intends his "absolutely new" science, which is an empirical development of Cartesian cogito, let us grant him the floor:

"We keep our gaze firmly fixed on the sphere of consciousness and the 'I' inseparable from it, and seek to see what is inherent. But before carrying out this peculiar phenomenological suspension of judgment, we subject this sphere to a systematic, although by no means exhaustive, essential analysis. of What we need is a specific comprehensive perspective of the essence, to be reached through pure 'inner experience,' via the pristine internal perception of consciousness as a whole, especially of consciousness as essentially aware of 'natural' reality. And we proceed in these studies as much as necessary to reach the vision we aimed at, namely, that consciousness must be grasped through a consequent inner experience, as a sphere connected to itself, open-infinite and self-enclosed, equipped with its forms of 'immanent' temporality. It will also be necessary to show how this sphere of being does not fall under phenomenological neutralization.

In more precise terms: through the phenomenological suspension of the objective world, this 'immanent' realm of existence indeed relinquishes its significance of a real layer of that human (or animal) reality inherent to the world, which inherently presupposes its existence. It loses the sense of human conscious life, of that life that anyone can progressively grasp through pure 'inner experience.'

But it is not simply lost: through the changed attitude of the epoché (a technical philosophical term referring to the suspension of judgment or withholding of belief about the existence or non-existence of certain things or ideas (Ed.)), it gains the sense of an absolute sphere of being, of an autonomous sphere that is what it is without any questions being asked about the being or non-being of the world and the men who live in it with any stance on this matter being suspended. Hence, a sphere that inherently exists in and of itself, irrespective of one's ontological stance on the world and regardless of the ability to provide valid or invalid justifications for such a stance, a question that can only be posed within the realm of epoché.

Thus, the pure sphere of consciousness remains with everything that cannot be separated from it (including the pure 'I'), as a 'phenomenological residue,' as a region by its peculiar principle of being, which as such can become the field of a science of consciousness in a correspondingly new sense, the field of phenomenology.

What remains if phenomenological epoché suspends the validity of the universe, the totality of everything in general? It precisely remains or rather it opens up for the first time through the epoché the absolute sphere of being, the sphere of absolute or 'transcendental' subjectivity; It does not constitute a partial segment of the entirety of reality, namely, the universe; rather, it stands as a distinct realm from it and all its domains, though not in a manner that suggests mutual delimitation in the sense of being mutually delimited as if it could join and integrate with the world, forming together with it a comprehensive whole.

The world is inherently a totality, which, according to its sense, does not allow for an expansion. However, it will become clear how the region of absolute or transcendental subjectivity 'contains within itself' in a wholly peculiar way through real or possible 'intentional constitution' of the real universe or all possible real worlds, all worlds in a broad sense.

Only through this notion will the peculiar significance of phenomenological epoché come to light: its conscious implementation will be revealed as that methodical operation, necessary, capable of opening up to us with the absolute region of autonomous subjectivity that ground of being with which every radical philosophy is in reference, together with the new experience and with phenomenology, that ground which gives it the sense of an absolute science. And so, it is explained why this region, which is new, and the corresponding new science have remained unknown until now. In fact, in the state of natural disposition, nothing can be seen other than the natural world. As long as the possibility of the phenomenological attitude was not recognized, and the method for grasping in the original the objects emerging in it was not constituted, the transcendental sphere of being had to remain unknown or at most suspected." [1]

Husserl's project, as observed by Maritain [2], aligns with the line of idealism born from Descartes, which understands metaphysics not as the science of being, but as the science of the transcendental data of consciousness. Husserl's initial intent to intend in the natural state, things themselves, as objects of consciousness, already begin with the idealist prejudice of the relationship of being to thought rather than of the thought to the being.

Husserl proposes suspending the natural attitude, or realism because he wants to teach us an "absolute science," of which no one before him had ever thought. And what would this absolute science of the infinite vastness of being consist of? In looking within ourselves at what we do as "absolute subjectivity." What does this mean? It implies that we must contemplate the data and products of our consciousness "in their pure state, phenomenologically reduced." What does this mean? By considering these inner objects, we must consider them as products not of our empirical self but of our "pure or transcendental self." What is this "pure self"? It is my ‘self’ as deprived of its empirical characteristics and considered in its absoluteness.

In this context, according to Husserl, we find metaphysics truly founded and not in the naive stance of the natural attitude. Now this is where the problem lies. This is not the way to critically find metaphysics, but rather to reflect on the meaning of the natural attitude and confirm its value of truth.

Critical reflection doesn't necessitate suspending the natural attitude, or realism; it does not require any epoché because abandoning nature means going against nature, as is precisely the idealist attitude, and this is certainly not appropriate. If anything, it will be a matter of assuming a supernatural attitude; but this is the task of faith and not metaphysics.

Whether direct or reflected, knowledge must always be objective, meaning it must involve the intellect's adhesion (adaequatio) to the object. If in knowing I form an inner object - the concept - this does not mean that I should prefer this object that I produce to what I find in reality, otherwise, I replace the real with my ideas, turning into objects of knowledge those that are simply means, methods, functions, or forms of understanding. And therein lies the error of idealism, as also denounced by Pope Francis, following the traditional condemnation of the Church.

Therefore, Husserl's proposed operation of liberating my ‘self’ from its human characteristics to find a wonderful supposed "absolute subjectivity" is entirely unacceptable to me. because it would mean attributing to myself the characteristics of the divine Self. This operation is far from being novel, given that it has already been done by idealists who started from Descartes.

The being as the object of phenomenology is no longer than the extramental being, the objective being that stands before me, that is given to me, that I have not produced, that existed before me, that exists independently of me, the being that surrounds me, that transcends me, and that has created me, but it is the being of my consciousness, the being that I have produced, the being that is immanent in me, the being that I have understood and that I can dominate, a being that is not all being and that instead I consider as the whole, neglecting the rest as if it were not there. It follows then that human consciousness, blinded by pride and rebellious to its natural limits, abandons its openness to transcendence to close itself in impious self-referentiality, which separates it from reality, far from allowing it to reach it.

Karl Jaspers: Imagining Being

Jaspers would intend to valorize and rehabilitate metaphysics as the search for being and as a philosophy or rational clarification of existence. However, instead of proposing the correct method based on the formation of the notion of being derived through judgmental abstraction from the experience of sensible things, he reconnects to Cartesian and Lutheran egocentrism. For them, the primary and fundamental interest is not objective reality, not being itself, not the openness of the mind to you, to the other, to what is different from me, not the thing-in-itself, the totality of being, and therefore the first cause of the world and my self, in their universality and objectivity as known by the intellect through transcendental notions universally evident to the reason of anyone. Instead, it is the affirmation of my ‘self’, of my existence, of my self-consciousness, of my being, of my thinking, of my truth, of my knowledge, of my will.

Everything must be for me and everything must come from me. Everything must start from me and everything must return to me. I posit myself, negate myself in the other, and return to myself through the negation of the other. It is that process of thinking and acting that Hegel calls "dialectic."

What about God in this way of thinking? Certainly, it does not admit a first cause, a supreme being, an ultimate end, the highest good, a most perfect being, an unmoved mover, infinite goodness, the creator ex nihilo of visible and invisible things, and therefore also of myself, provident Lord and legislator of man, his savior and redeemer.

But then who is God? If God is the foundation, the principle, the origin of being, of reality, of thinking, of willing, of freedom, of humanity, and of the universe, well, then God is me or God is the God-for-me or the God-constructed-by-me, functional to me and based on me, willed and decided by me, considering that I am not created by Him from nothing, but I, who exist from myself, thinking myself, posit and create myself and Him.

As noted by scholars [3], Jaspers' background is Luther reformed by Descartes reformed by Hegel reformed by Kierkegaard reformed by Nietzsche. Descartes translates Lutheran fideistic subjectivism into philosophy; Hegel translates Lutheran faith into dialectical terms; Kierkegaard translates Hegel's transcendental self into the single and unique self; Nietzsche translates Kierkegaard's singularity into my will to power.

Jaspers, who has behind him all these thinkers who have maligned and stretched poor metaphysics from all sides, thinks he is reforming metaphysics as no one else has done and gives it a new and definitive conception, not devoid of interest, but which has nothing original about it, except for the exacerbation of Lutheran impotence of syllogistic conceptual reason in the face of Transcendence, and the proposal of a "philosophical faith," for which the symbol, the shipwreck, the checkmate, and the symbol substitute the concept and reasoning, imagination, narrative, myth, and metaphor substitute the intellect, feeling replaces reasoning, the rational manifests itself in the irrational, the impossible appears possible, the unthinkable is thought, the absurd is believable, a faith not in the sense of believing in the authority of God who reveals himself, as it still was for Luther, but as an athematic experience of the nothingness of being, an immediate and ineffable and incommunicable experience of Transcendence in subjective self-awareness, for which silence replaces words, essentiality coincides with historicity, the singular becomes universal, the concrete replaces the abstract, anguish paradoxically joins peace, doubt to certainty, hope to despair, failure to success; freedom is not being able to choose otherwise and accepting fate, communication coexists with incommunicability, unity with conflict.

Jaspers ends up calling this personal, imaginative, and contradictory ideological construction "metaphysics," where, despite the desire for concreteness, there are abundant abstract terms without logical connections and probative arguments, suggestive poetic images, obscure figures and allusions, flashes of sudden light, tormented feelings of the soul, senses of frustration and impotence, enthusiastic exaltation, troubled emotional states, with the persistent presence of metaphysical terms, but without it being understood or appearing clear how and why they hold together.

We find, for example, terms like "being," "existence," "entity," "consciousness," "thought," "reason," "transcendence," "absolute," "subject," "object," "spirit," in a disjointed sequence of gratuitous assertions with an oracular tone, without ever bothering to demonstrate or explain what is being said, proceeding by allusions, images, paradoxes, and metaphors, with a coded and symbolic language, to speak of a "circumscribing" (Umgreifende) being in which everything would be included and understood, without further determining in what this Circumscribing Being, otherwise called "Transcendence," should consist. It seems to be facing a form of pantheism similar to that of Hinduism.

However, this "Transcendence," according to Jaspers, would be indefinable, unthinkable, unreachable, unconceptualizable, ineffable, irrational, and dialectical, before which all concepts "founder" and are therefore entirely useless.

Such Transcendence vaguely brings to mind God, but then Jaspers takes care to specify that he does not intend at all to refer to a personal God, subsistent Being, prime creator and provident savior of man, revealed in Christ and known through the dogmas of the Church, towards which he even shows his disdain. So then, which God is it? It's not clear. Jaspers says:

"It's not the intellect, but the imagination, and not just any imagination of consciousness, but that which is realized as the game of existential foundation is the organ through which existence" (= man) "ascertains being." [4]

In this way, metaphysics does not express itself in deductions and concepts but through images and symbols:

"We speak of a symbol in the meaningful sense of metaphysical significance, which, in the image, must be existentially grasped, without being able to be objectively thought. While the resemblance found in the world is a translation or representation of something that in itself is always objective, whether it be something thinkable or intuitable, the metaphysical symbol is the objectification of something that in itself is not objective." [5]

We can imagine what esteem can arise for this metaphysics in those who truly address the problem of being, of those who search for the foundations of reality and truth, the cause and end of the universe, the meaning and purpose of human existence, and do not want to play the part of the visionary who glimpses and declaims with a solemn and dramatic tone and a broken voice the glimpse in the empirical self of absolute self-awareness, a rapid and fleeting moment of the circumscribing Horizon, happily, anxiously, and silently shipwrecked in Transcendence. Let's give some examples of how Jaspers understands metaphysics.

"Existence" (= man), by unconditionally acting in limited situations, experiences its orientation in the symbols of Transcendence, which, as absolute objectivity, fill its consciousness, just as the objects of the world fill consciousness in general. But if in metaphysics one proceeds directly towards absolute objectivity, understood as the symbol of Transcendence, this cannot be reached.

It is necessary to seek contact with its existential roots. Only through the clarification of one's limited situation and the unconditionality of one's actions is this contact realized, for which objectivity assumes the value of the symbol, as its content has become sensible. The systematic analysis of absolute objectivity, its appropriation, and its creation - to the extent that it is not mere intuition and history - constitute philosophical metaphysics.” [6]

Jaspers claims to teach metaphysics but falls into frightful contradictions: on the one hand, he admits Transcendence (it's not clear what) intuited or experienced originally and atematically (a proper Jaspersian philosophical term (Ed.)), but on the other hand, since this Transcendence seems to be God, he denies the possibility of proving the existence of God through reason. Moreover, for him, "existence" is not an act of being but is man himself, from which it follows that only man exists. And what about other things? And God?

Secondly, he admits the possibility of human communication through language and concepts, and this is evident, otherwise, he would not have written so many books and would not have dedicated himself to studying Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, or Nietzsche; but to the other hand, he declares that communication is impossible because, given that there is no objective, universal truth, one for all, but each person has their truth different from that of others, it is impossible to transmit a message from one person to another in such a way that there can be adherence and agreement from everyone around the same common truth or the sharing of a universal and common truth by more people.

So, given these convictions, I wonder with what spirit and why Jaspers wrote his books, taught, communicated with his peers, believed he could understand what he read or was communicated to him, with what intention and for what purpose he dedicated himself to proving the falsehood of ideas different from his own, even accusing the Catholic Church of being an enemy of truth, with what face he wrote a book dedicated to the essence of truth, precisely he who denies the objectivity and universality of truth and asserts, under the pretext of freedom of thought, that everyone is the creator of their truth, different and contrary to that of others.

Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli OP

Fontanellato, March 7, 2024

Source:

https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/lavventura-della-metafisica-parte_12.html

[1] Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and a Phenomenological Philosophy, Publisher Einaudi, Milan 1976.

[2] See the critique that Maritain makes of Husserl in "Les degrés du savoir" (Desclée de Brouwer, Bruges 1959), pp.195-208.

[3] Nicola Abbagnano, History of Philosophy, UTET-TEA, Turin 1995, vol.VI, pp.489-501; Roger Verneaux, Lessons on Existentialism, Téqui, Paris 1964, pp.77-98.

[4] Metaphysics, Mursia Editions, Milan 1972, p. 54.

[5] Ibid., p.105.

[6] Ibid., p.53.