In his 1923/24 lectures published under the title Erste Philosophie (First Philosophy), Edmund Husserl continues his valiant struggle against empiricism. The first section, "Von Platons Idee der Philosophie zu den Anfängen ihrer neuzeitlichen Verwirklichung bei Descartes" (From Plato's Idea of Philosophy to the Beginnings of its Modern-Age Realization with Descartes) of his Kritische Ideengeschichte, ranges from Plato through to Descartes. Already Plato, who first opened the ontological difference with his uncovering of the idea in its proper sense, had to contend with sophistic scepticism. The second section, "Die Anfangsgründe des Versuches einer Egologie bei Locke und ihre bleibende Problematik" (The Principles of the Attempt at an Egology with Locke and its Lasting Problematic), follows in detail the line of British empiricist thinking from Locke (English) via Berkeley (Irish) to Hume (Scottish).
I will not enter into an exegesis here of Husserl's critique of empiricism from Locke onward. Needless to say that its grip on philosophical thinking to the present day remains unrelenting. Rather, I will first content myself with a brief comment on Husserl's diagnosis on where philosophical empiricist thinking leads in Hume's scepticism, namely, "daß es nichts geringeres war als das Ende aller Philosophie und Wissenschaft selbst" (that it was nothing less than the end of all philosophy and of science itself; p.102). Empirical induction from singular instances to likewise empirical generalizations will never allow the mind to pass through the ontological difference to the realm of ideas, and that's just the way Hume wants it. Empiricism was always at an advantage, from antiquity to the present day, for it seems commonsensical.
Where, according to Husserl, did philosophy go wrong? In short, Locke and his British empiricist bedfellows missed the lesson of Descartes' cogito cogitare, namely that consciousness is always necessarily consciousness of something which consciousness is directed, ex-tended, stretched out toward. This is the germ of what Husserl regards as his great discovery, the intentionality of pure consciousness, whose purity consists in its a priori, or transcendental, nature. A priori here means prior to any "äußere[n] Erfahrung" (external experience; 95 passim) of the natural world. Like Descartes, Husserl posits pure consciousness as absolutely certain. Its own absolute experiences are solely "das innere Erfahren" (the inner experience; 103 passim) of "das Bewußthaben des Ich von den Vorkommnissen" (the ego having consciousness of the occurrences; 103) in this "Feld der inneren Erfahrung" (field of inner experience; 103). Elsewhere (e.g. in his Ideen) Husserl terms such having-of-experiences "noetisch" (noetic), and the experienced occurrences themselves "Noema" (noema), both terms being derived from Greek νοῦς for 'mind'. Consciousness is thus mentally active.
Husserl performs his famous (or notorious) phenomenological reduction that brackets off the empirically given world to focus on this absolute, indubitable, inner experience with the aim of rigorously establishing a phenomenological science (genuine philosophy) essentially different from any empiricist science, natural or social, that today is regarded as the only kind of knowing worth its salt. From this perspective, one could say that Husserl's attempt to rescue an "eidetic science" from hegemonic empiricist science has so far failed dismally. "Eidetic science" is only possible if the ontological difference between the ontic, empirical fact and the ontological 'look' or εἶδος is clearly visible for the mind.
Inside? Outside?
What is most striking from a phenomenological viewpoint is how Husserl insists unquestionably, without the shadow of a doubt, on the distinction between an outer and an inner sphere of experience. Especially to the contemporary mind it seems obvious enough. What is the inside/outside (or inner/outer, interior/exterior, internal/external) distinction supposed to mean? In the first place, this external world is supposed to be populated by real, physical things with their sizes, shapes, positions, movements or stasis, etc. in short, by extended things in space that is 'obviously' outside. For Husserl, internal consciousness has a consciousness of these external, physical things such as the blossoming cherry tree in his garden, the chosen example in his Ideen. This consciousness is presumably an inner experience of something outside; the blossoming cherry tree is a mental noema of consciousness's noetic experience. Husserl has no problem acknowledging that the cherry tree is a real, existing, physical thing, but now phenomenologically reduced. Notably he does not say what it means for something to be real or to exist; he does not pose the question concerning the meaning of being itself, as if it were self-evident.
Wiggle your big toe
This is all very strange. The blossoming cherry tree outside consciousness is stripped down by the phenomenological reduction to a mental noema inside. Let us try a phenomenological exercise to try to clarify this. Wiggle your big toe. You can feel your toe wiggling in a present bodily sensation, can't you? Your wiggling toe is physical, extended and thus, for Husserl, outside, yet your sensation is noetic and therefore inside. Furthermore, according to Husserl, the noetic sensation of which you are conscious is a consciousness of your toe as a noema. But in sensing your wiggling big toe you are with the toe itself which, according to Husserl, is outside. Now stop wiggling your toe, close your eyes and imagine recollectively the big toe you have been wiggling. In this recollection, your wiggling toe presents itself again to your mind from the (temporal dimension of the recent) past. You are still with your big toe itself, not with any surrogate internal image of it, aren't you, even though you are no longer sensing it? Why should sense perception in the present be superior to your recalling your toe non-sensuously to mind?
Similarly, the sounds you presently hear from your surroundings are of the sound-emitting things themselves, e.g. passing traffic. In your sense perception you are with the traffic itself presenting itself from the (temporal dimension of the) present. This is still the case when you recall how loud the traffic was last night, only that the noisy traffic now presents itself from the past, and no longer sensuously. Where is the supposed inside and outside upon which Husserl insists? You now have last night's noisy traffic in mind (but not in your head).
It would seem that by insisting upon a distinction between consciousness as a world of inner experience, on the one hand, and a world of things outside, on the other, Husserl is tying his thinking in knots. Leaving aside this distinction, your feeling sensuously your wiggling big toe is what I term a presencing of your big toe itself from the present to your understanding mind. Likewise, your presently recalling the loud traffic last night is a presencing of the traffic itself from the past to your mind. Likewise, you can turn your mind's attention to planning what groceries you are going to buy tomorrow, which amounts to focusing your mind at present on an occurrence presencing from the (temporal dimension of the) future (no matter whether you actually go shopping tomorrow). The three modes of presencing for the mind from three different temporal dimensions are certainly very different, with there also being a difference between sensuous and non-sensuous presencing from the present. The three temporal dimensions in their unity constitute a contiguous openness that reaches, i.e. is passed through to, your psyche as this unity. Your wiggling big toe is an occurrence occurring, i.e. presencing, in this three-dimensional temporal openness.
Turning its attention toward and focusing are characteristic of the mind's movement within the psyche that itself belongs to all-encompassing three-dimensional time that, as all-encompassing, has no outside and therefore also no inside. For anything or anyone 'to be' means for it to presence in and absence from the mind's focus in the three-dimensionally temporal psyche and thus to partake (participially) of time. The ancient term 'psyche' is preferable to 'consciousness' that, since Descartes, inevitably connotes some kind of inside. 'Outside' and 'inside' are, in any case, spatial terms referring to the category of physical whereness. The psyche and its mental capacity, however, are not tied to physical things located somewhere and presencing sensuously. The mind can move freely through three-dimensional time, no time machine needed.
Further reading: Edmund Husserl Erste Philosophie Erster Teil Kritische Ideengeschichte Husserliana VII und VIII 1956/1959 Nijhoff, The Hague (Meiner, Hamburg 1992).
Edmund Husserl Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie Buch I, Husserliana III/1 and V 1976/1971 Nijhoff, The Hague (Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 1992).
On Human Temporality: Recasting Whoness Da Capo De Gruyter, Berlin 2024.
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