sign in sign up
<<
Home , Don Ihde, Geisteswissenschaft, Georg Misch, Heinrich Rickert, Human science, Wilhelm Dilthey

Sacred Heart University DigitalCommons@SHU , and Religious Studies Faculty Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Publications

4-1988 Husserl's Position Between Dilthey and the Windelband-Rickert School of Neo- John E. Jalbert Sacred Heart University

Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/rel_fac Part of the Commons, and the Philosophy of Commons

Recommended Citation Jalbert, John E. "Husserl's Position Between Dilthey and the Windelband-Rickert School of Neo-Kantianism." Journal of the of Philosophy 26.2 (1988): 279-296.

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies at DigitalCommons@SHU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@SHU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. +XVVHUO V3RVLWLRQ%HWZHHQ'LOWKH\DQGWKH:LQGHOEDQG5LFNHUW 6FKRRORI1HR.DQWLDQLVP

John E. Jalbert

Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 26, Number 2, April 1988, pp. 279-296 (Article)

3XEOLVKHGE\7KH-RKQV+RSNLQV8QLYHUVLW\3UHVV DOI: 10.1353/hph.1988.0045

For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/hph/summary/v026/26.2jalbert.html

Access provided by Sacred Heart University (5 Dec 2014 12:35 GMT) Husserl's Position Between Dilthey and the Windelband- Rickert School of Neo- Kanuamsm

JOHN E. JALBERT

THE CONTROVERSY AND DEBATE over the character of the relationship between the natural and (Natur- und Geisteswissenschaflen) became a central theme for philosophical reflection largely through the efforts of theo- rists such as and the two principal representatives of the Baden School of Neo-Kantians, and .~ These turn of the century theorists are major figures in this philosophical arena, but they are by no means the only participants in the effort to grapple with this issue. If we broaden our historical perspective, we find that the problematic is actually prefigured in the writings of and ,' and it continues to be a vital issue today under the influence of works by , Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Paul Ricoeur.~ Despite the long his-

Research for this project was supported by grants in 1983 from the Penrose Fund of the American Philosophical Society and the Sacred Heart University Research/Creativity Council. My thanks to the Husserl Archives in I_.euven, Belgium and Cologne, West for access to and permission to cite from Husserl's unpublished manuscripts. This article is a revision of a paper presented at the 1985 meeting of the Husserl Circle in Ottawa, Canada. See, for example, Plato, "Statesman" in Plato: The CollectedDialogues, The Bollingen Series 71, ed. by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 283c-~85b and Aristotle, Nicomathean Ethics, trans, by H. Rackman, Loeb Classical Library, No. 73 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), I, iii, l- 5. s See especially, Martin Heidegger, , trans, by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 196u); Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Method (New York: The Seabury Press, 1975); Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict oflnterpretation: Essays in , ed. by (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974); and Paul

[~79] 280 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 26:2 APRIL 1988 tory of philosophical attention directed to this question, the debate has to a certain extent engendered the erroneous impression that what is really at stake is primarily an epistemological and/or ontological matter. What has been obscured is the larger, more fundamental problem that spawned the debate in the first place. The main issue, conceived broadly, is an ethical one and con- cerns the possibility of a genuinely human, that is, rational and ethical, . The makes a significant contribution to the debate which is, unfortunately, not always recognized. Husserl's contribution is significant because, among things, it attempts to keep the underlying issue, that is, the ethical dimension of the question, clearly in focus. This effort can be seen as early as 191o/1 1 in Husserl's essay Philosophy as Rigorous Science, where he reminds us that it is not the mere "theoretical lack of clarity regard- ing the sense of the '' investigated in the natural and humanistic sci- ences"4 that is at issue, but the impending crisis in humanity, which originates with the tendency of these sciences to fall prey to the prejudices of and/or . Of course, the crisis with which Husserl is concerned per- tains primarily to the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaflen), for it is the task of the human sciences, not the natural sciences, to provide humanity with the antidote for a spiritual life gone awry.s Both naturalism and historicism "misinterpret ideas as and.., trans- form all reality, all life, into an incomprehensible, idealess confusion of 'facts'. ''6 Therein lies their impotence. For Husserl, all life involves taking a position and judging according to norms--norms which, in the hands of sci- ences blinded by naturalism or historicism, are empirically falsified and ren- dered devoid of any ideal validity. In this respect, Philosophy as Rigorous Science anticipates Husserl's later work in the Cr/s/s where he again issues the warning that "merely -minded sciences make merely fact-minded people."7 While the tone of the Cr/s/s is decidedly more positive toward the human sciences and their role in the guidance of humanity, it nevertheless does not represent a major revision of Husserl's earlier assessment. His position was never one of wholesale condemnation or rejection but, rather, a recognition that the hu- man sciences were being hampered in their task because they lacked a scien-

Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays in Language, Action and Interpretation, ed. and trans, byJ. B. Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1982). 4 Edmund Husserl, "Philosophy as Rigorous Science,"in Husserl: Shorter Works, ed. by Peter McCormick and F. A. Elliston (Notre Dame: Notre Dame UniversityPress, 1981), 193. Hereafter cited as PRS. 5 Edmund Husseri, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Intro- duction to Phenomenological Philosophy, trans, by David Carr (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 197o), ~7o. Hereafter cited as Crisis. 6 PRS, a93. 7 Crisis,6. HUSSERL'S POSITION 281 tific or philosophical foundation. One of the principal aims of Husserlian phenomenology is to provide just such a foundation. In order to bring this aspect of Husserl's into focus, we should recall the positive goals of naturalism and historicism and the price paid to achieve these goals. Naturalism, for example, does strive to be scientific even though its method ultimately results in the falsification and obfuscation of its subject matter. His- toricism, on the other hand, does endeavor to remain faithful to its subject matter but, in the process, abandons the project of science. The problem here is to fuse the two seemingly conflicting but nevertheless positive goals, that is, the goal to be scientific and the goal to be true to one's subject matter. This, then, is the question confronting Husserl: how can the human sciences remain true to their unique subject matter and still lay legitimate claim to the title science? Can there be a science of life that does not in the process alienate itself from and distort its subject matter? As we shall see, the phenomenological methods of eidetic reduction and variation figure largely in Husserl's response to these questions. First, however, let us broaden our historical perspective in order to better appreciate both the problem and Husserrs proposed solution to it. Here the debate between Dilthey and the leading figures of the Baden School of Neo- Kantians, Windelband and Rickert, is relevant.

1. Husserl, Dilthey, and the Neo-Kantians found themselves united in their aver- sion to naturalism and methodological . One of the questions that required their immediate attention, then, was how and according to what principle the sciences should be distinguished and classified. In the course of his philosophical development, Dilthey proffered several responses to this question. In his Einleitung in ~883, Dilthey distinguishes the sciences on the basis of their subject matter. Sciences that deal with physical reality are natural sciences, and sciences that deal with the realm of mind are human sciences. Dilthey later modifies and refines his position so that in the Ideen of ~894 he suggests that sciences be Classified on the basis of their reliance on inner or outer experience. Human sciences, then, are those sciences that rely on inner experience, and natural sciences are those sciences that rely on outer experi- ence. In the Ideen, moreover, the rudiments of a methodologically based dis- tinction of the sciences are evident in assertions such as, "We explain , [but] we understand psychic life. ''8 Building upon this position, Dilthey was then a short step from his final position in which, generally speaking, he

8 WilhelmDilthey, Die Geistige Welt: Einleitung in die Philosophie des Lebens, GesammelteSchriften 5, Hrsg. (Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner Verlagsgesellschaft, 1928), 144. Hereafter cited as G.S. 5. 282 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 96:~ APRIL I988 aligned the hermeneutical method with the human sciences and the method of causal with the natural sciences. This admittedly rough sketch of Dilthey's position provides a background against which one can better comprehend the basic point of disagreement between Dilthey and the Baden Neo-Kantians which, in turn, was to have both positive and negative impact on Husserrs on the subject. The Neo- Kantians, Windelband and Rickert, objected strenuously to Dilthey's separa- tion of the sciences according to subject matter, and they therefore rejected the Diltheyan appellation Geisteswis.senschaften as an inappropriate expression for the historico-cultural sciences. Windelband and Rickert were largely influ- enced in this connection by the then prevalent naturalistically oriented psy- chology. For them, meant exclusively psychophysical psychology, and they therefore maintained, not unexpectedly, that the sciences could not be demarcated according to subject matter. After all, psychology is concerned with both the physical and psychic or, more precisely, with the (causal) relation- ship and interplay between them. In terms of method, though, psychology is like the natural sciences inasmuch as it pursues the general obtaining in its field of research. Windelband and Rickert's general conclusion is that method, not subject matter, distinguishes one type of science from another. Thus, according to Windelband's formulation, natural sciences are described as "" because they aim at general laws, and historical sciences are "idiographic" because they focus their theoretical interest upon the individual and unique. Naturally, Dilthey elaborated his own critique of Windelband's nomothetic- ideographic distinction, but we are here primarily interested in examining Husserl's obvious dissatisfaction with both the Neo-Kantian and Diltheyan posi- tions.9 It should first be mentioned, though, that despite Rickert's obvious indebtedness to Windelband, Rickert did not consider his own generalizing- individualizing distinction to be a mere duplication of Windelband's well- known methodological distinction. In fact, Rickert felt the latter would "commit one to much too narrow a concept of history and would, moreover, shift the focal point of history from its character as a science. ''~o But Husserl seems to overlook the substantive reasons which prevented Rickert from borrowing

o For a detailed discussion of Dilthey's response to Windelband's nomothetic-idiographic distinction and to Rickert's more cautious reinterpretation of it, see Rudolf Makkreel, Dilthey: Philosopher of the Human Studies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 39-44, 2 t8-93 and Rudolf Makkreel, "Wilhelm Dilthey and the Neo-Kantians: The Distinction of the Geisteswissen- schaften and the Kulturwissenschaften,"Journal of the History of Philosophy 7 (October, 1969): 425-32. 1o Heinrich Rickert, Science and History: A Critique of Positivistic , trans, by G. Reisman and ed. by A. Goddard (Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1962), 78, cf. 72, 85 . Hereafter cited as Science and History. HUSSERL'S POSITION 283 Windelband's terminology and, instead, views Rickert as primarily providing the detail missing in Windelband's outline for classifying the sciences. H In his 1925 lectures on phenomenological psychology, where he exten- sively summarizes Dilthey's psychology, and in his 1927 lectures on Natur und , where he focuses on the works of Windelband and Rickert, Husserl demands a return to the world of experience in order to arrive at a solution to the problem of how to distinguish the sociocultural sciences from the natural sciences." "If this [world-experience and experienced world] is the original source of all science related to the world, then.., every differentiation of the sciences which is clear about its origin must be carried out by a return to the experiential world .... Here we see the place of origin of a radically grounded distribution or division of possible world-sciences."'~ In his lectures on phenomenological psychology, Husserl embarks upon a brief analysis of the structure of the experiential world which leads him to several noteworthy . "Nature" and "mind," we are told, do not exist as scientific themes prior to scientific theorizing. They are, rather, intertwined components of the experiential world, but, even in the experien- tial world, they are nonetheless discernible from one another and descrip- tively distinguishable. That is to say, the invitation or motivation to take up the theoretical attitude characteristic of either the natural or socio-cultural sciences is grounded in experience itself. With this , another means of distinguishing between the two groups of sciences begins to emerge, namely, one that focuses on the manner in which each science proceeds to interpret and understand the relationship between nature and mind. For , this relationship is viewed as a strictly causal one while, for , it is essentially intentional or motivational. Accord- ingly, intentionality is found to be that principle by which the mental is distinguished from the physical, and, as Brentano had clearly perceived, the "fundamental characteristic of psychic life which is given quite immediately and evidently prior to all theories."'4 The intentionality of is then carried over into Husserl's phenomenological theory of the human

~' For example, regarding Rickert's enormous work, Die Grenzen der Naturwissenschaftlichen Bergriffsbildung, Husserl observes: "Eine neue Theorie ist da nicht geworden, das ganze Grund- geruest der Windelbandschen Gedanken bleibt bestehen .... " in the unpublished manuscript "Vorlesungen Natur und Geist, Sommer-semester, ~927'' classified by the Husserl Archives, Leuven, Belgium as F 1 32, p. 143 (pagination of the typed transcription is used throughout this essay). Hereafter cited as F 132. '" Edmund Husserl, Phenomenological Psychology: Lectures, Summer Semester; 19=5, trans, by John Scanlon (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), 4 o. Hereafter cited as Phen. Psych. See also F 132, pp. 32 , 66-67 , 149. ,s Phen. Psych., 47. ,4 Ib/d., 22. 784 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY ~6:z APRIL ~988 sciences where it plays a central role, granting to human science a certain priority over natural science. The role of intentionality in Husserl's understanding of the domain of human science can hardly be overemphasized for, as he himself observes, "Whoever does not see what is essential to intentionality and the particular pertaining to it, does not see what is essential to personality and personal productions either."~5 We should recall at this point that Husserl bases his critiques of Windelband and Rickert to a large extent upon their failure to recognize the possibility of psychology as a study of intentionality and the correlations between personality and personal productions. 16 There- fore, it is probably with them in mind that Husserl asserts toward the end of his psychology lectures that, "Since... the entire realm of personal subjectiv- ity and its formed products, is the exclusive theme in all socio-cultural sci- ences, they all belong under the broader title psychology. ''~7 Husserl's response to Dilthey's position is less clear-cut and, therefore, considerably more difficult to assess. We are told, for example, that Dihhey had not recognized that the relationship of consciousness to its objects is "the proper and infinitely fruitful theme of systematic analyses of the psyche and indeed as analyses of essence. '''8 Later, we are told that the "central signifi- cance of intentionality plays no role in his [Dilthey's] work."'9 A careful analy- sis convinces the reader, however, that Dilthey is never exactly accused of remaining completely oblivious to the intentional structure of mental life. This is, of course, as it should be for the idea of intentionality does enter into Dilthey's studies of mental life and, what is more, Husserl in all probability knew as much. ~~ But what, then, is the point of Husserl's criticism? Husserl's point is that Dilthey did not follow through with his initial in- sights into intentionality and, consequently, did not penetrate and solve the "radical problem of the of mental formation. ''~ One researcher, Michael Ermarth, maintains that Husserl's criticism is based solely on Dilthey's Ideen (1894) and not on Dihhey's later investigations in the Aufbau, where the

,5 Ibid., 169. ,6 F132 ' 129. ,7 Phen. Psych., 169. ,8 Ibid., 9. ,9 Ibid., 24 . ,o For a more thorough discussion of the idea of intentionality in Dilthey (and Husserl), see John Scanlon, "The Status of Intentionality in Dilthey'sStudies Toward the Foundation of the Human Sciences" in R. Makkreel and J. Scanlon, eds., Dilthey and Phenomenology (Washington, D. C.: The Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology & UniversityPress of America, 1987). See also Michael Ermarth, Wilhelm Dilthey: The Critique of Historical Reason (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978), 216-22. ~' Edmund Husserl, Phaenomenologische Psychologie, Husserliana 9, Hrsg. Walter Biemel (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968), Beilage lI, p. 359. HUSSERL'S POSITION 285 problem of the objectivity of mental formations is addressed. ~2 Ermarth's position seems plausible, especially since Husserl does describe Dilthey's Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt as one of his most "beautiful writings on the theory of the human sciences."~s What Ermarth's view does not take into sufficient account, however, is Husserl's observation regarding Dilthey's writ- ings: "one can not gain from them instruction in that purely inner-directed psychology which Dilthey actually had in mind and which he himself had not yet formed into a rigorous science with a conceptually rigorous method and decisively carried out establishments.'~4 Thus, it may be true that the empha- sis placed on the objectivity of mental products in the Aufbau~5 obviates Husserl's criticism, but in another sense it does not and surely did not for Husserl. In fact, from Husserl's point of view, it is easy to see why the issue in question would be exacerbated by the Aufbau. Recall, for instance, that the Aufbau, which is where the influence of Husserl's Logical Investigations is thought by some to be especially prominent, is also the place where Dilthey makes a decisive turn in the direction of hermeneutics, accompanied by a de- emphasis on the previously attempted psychological foundation of the human sciences, which is precisely the part of Dilthey's program that Husserl attempts to salvage. ~6 Nevertheless, one must agree with Rudolf Makkreel, who holds that de-emphasis here is not the same as rejection, and Husserl, too, must have understood this because he persisted in trying to complete Dilthey's project by restoring psychology to its former place of preeminence among the particular Geisteswissenschaftenwith the help of phenomenology. We should, moreover, keep the following considerations in mind. It may be, in principle, correct to underscore the objective status of mental products as well as the fact that the operation of Nacherleben has more to do with the re- creation or production of that mental formation than it does with the reitera- tion of the psychic acts that produced it in the first place. This emphasis,

" Ermarth, Wilhelm Dilthey: The Critique of Historical Reason, 372, n. 59. '~ See Phen. Psych., 25. ,4 Ibid. ,5 See, for example, Wilhelm Dilthey, Der Aufbau der Geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissen- schaften, Gessamelte $chriften 7, ed. by B. Groethuysen (Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner Verlagsgesell- schaft, 1973), 85. Hereafter cited as G.S. 7. ,6 See, for example, Jfirgen Habermas, and Human Interests, trans, by Jeremy J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), 337, n. a and Makkreel, Dilthey: Philosopher of the Human Studies, 279ff., who emphasizes Husserl's impact on studies leading directly to the Aufbau. Habermas, however, gives the erroneous impression that Dilthey's early tendency toward psychoiogism is necessarily linked to his conception of a descriptive and analytic psychology, and the later emphasis on hermeneutics appears, therefore, to take aim at both the and the psychology of the earlier period. Fortunately, from Makkreel's work (3o2-3o3), we learn not to construe Dilthey's reconsideration of psychology's foundational role in relation to the other Geisteswissenschaften as a complete rejection of the importance once attached to it. 286 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 26:2 APRIL 1988 however, does tend to eclipse the subjective side of the intentional equation. In order to overcome the last vestiges of psychologism in the theory of mental formations, a full-fledged eidetically executed intentional analysis is required-- one which neither ignores in favor of the objective meaning and context belonging to mental products nor simply "psychologizes" it. Husserl tries to make precisely this point when he reminds us in the introduction to the lectures on phenomenological psychology of the necessity and significance of the type of correlational investigations initiated in the Logical Investigations: "it is evident that whenever something like numbers, mathematical multiplicities, propositions, theories, etc. are to become subjectively given, become objects of consciousness in subjective lived experiences, the lived experiences which are needed for that to happen must have essentially necessary and everywhere identical structure.'27 Even more significant for our present interests is Husserrs subsequent remark that the above holds true for "all investigations of psychic correlations referring to objects of every region and category. '''8 In other words, it applies not only to mathematical propositions and the like, but to the entire realm of culture and objective spirit that forms the subject matter of the human sciences .,9

2. Another dimension of Husserl's phenomenological conception of the human sciences to which we have already alluded must now be examined more closely. Besides intentionality, what distinguishes Husserl's view most clearly from that of Dilthey, Windelband, and Rickert is the conviction that phenome- nological psychology, as the foundational science for the particular human disciplines, must be in its aim and method a purely eidetic science. Husserl contends that previous practitioners and theorists of the human sciences were themselves, despite their protestations against and attacks on naturalism, blinded by this prejudice inasmuch as they "totally failed even to see the problem of a universal and pure humanistic science and to inquire after a theory of the essence of spirit purely as spirit which would pursue what is unconditionally universal, by way of elements and laws, in the spiritual sphere,

97 Phen. Psych., 27. Emphases mine. ,s Ibid. ~9 Perhaps the clearest example of the form this type of historico-intentional research would take can be found in Husserl's essay "the Origin of Geometry" (Cr/s/s, Appendix VI, especially 356-6o). While this essay focuses on a mathematical formation, it is evident that Husserl means the analysis to which geometry is subjected to be applicable to other forms of cultural objectivities and, in particular, to works of literature and other documents or traces (357). It must be noted, however, and Husserl seems to have been aware of this (see note, 357), that the latter class of cultural objects does not admit of the same degree of infinite "repeatability" and "accessibility" to others that is characteristic of mathematical objects. See, in this connection, Robert D'Amico, "Husserl on the Foundational Structures of Natural and Cultural Sciences," Philosophy and Phe- nomenological Research 4 ~ (i 981 ): l o- 1 I. HUSSERL'S POSITION 987 with the purpose of proceeding from there to scientific in an absolutely final sense."3o An eidetic human science would call into question earlier attempts to the distinction between the human and natural sciences back to distinctions between description and explanation on the one hand or individual and - oriented scientific attitudes on the other. Thus, in contrast to Dilthey and the Neo-Kantians, Husserl maintains that a systematic investigation and disclo- sure of the essential laws pertaining to the mental domain is precisely what is needed to render psychology a rigorous science and to render the special human disciplines "scientific." Only through such an investigation would em- pirical observations and facts be referable to a corresponding set of ideal laws and essences. What is more, the development of an a priori science of the mental is Husserl's answer to the urgent need for the human sciences to provide the necessary "medicine" for a nation or humanity confronted with a spiritual crisis. It should be noted, finally, that from the historical perspective of the present essay, that the introduction of an eidetic component into the theory of the human sciences not only sets Husserl apart from Dilthey and the Neo-Kantians but, at the same rime, places him squarely between them. In other words, Husserl attempts to avoid their errors while simultaneously pre- serving and fusing their positive aims. A brief discussion of a point of basic disagreement between Dilthey and Rickert will serve to elucidate Husserl's position. Dilthey and the Neo- Kantians generally agreed that the categories and methods suitable for an investigation of the world conceived as nature are not necessarily the catego- ries and methods most suitable for articulating the socio-historical world. Dilthey maintained that the human sciences must employ concepts taken from life itself if these sciences were not to mirror the natural sciences and become alienated from life.3' Rickert believed, on the other hand, that Dilthey's insis- tence on a certain attachment to "life" and his attempt to draw philosophical principles and concepts from socio-historical or cultural life is precisely what secured Dilthey's place in the tradition of historicism.3~ In an attempt to avoid the historicism which he associated, as did Husserl, with Dilthey, Rickert called upon a system of transcendental values to serve as the basis for the merely empirical and derived concepts of the socio-cultural world. Rickert's basic reasoning is that socio-cultural and natural scientists are confronted with a plethora of data that must be pared down and distilled before it can be ren-

so Crisis, ~73; see also Phen. Psych., lxo, 169. s~ See especially, Dilthey, G.S. 7: 136-38. s, Heinrich Rickert, Die Philosophie des Lebens: Darstellung und Critique der Philosophischen Modestroemungen Unserer Zeit (Tubingen: Verlag von J. C. B. Mohr, 1922), 46, 48. Hereafter cited as Ph. Lebens. 288 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 26:~ APRIL 1988 dered intelligible. This selection process must rely on principles and not, as is the case with some historical researchers, on mere "instinct" or "feeling."z3 The principles upon which the 's process of selection is based are expressed in the notion of culture or, as Rickert would have it, that which is affected with value or has relevance to values. Since values occupied a central role in his theory of cultural sciences, Rickert inevitably had to address the problem of subjectivism in historical research. He does so by making a sharp contrast between reference or relation to values (Wertbeziehung) and evaluation (Wertung). Wertbeziehung is a theoretical performance whereby the historian estab- lishes the historical significance of a by ascertaining whether it advanced or retarded cultural values; Wertbeziehung has nothing to do with evaluation or the introduction of the historian's own values and biases into the subject matter. In fact, for Rickert, the objectivity and hence "scientific" char- acter of history hinges upon this distinction. The demand for objectivity re- quires that the historian not remain satisfied with the culturally limited values manifested in religion, art, law, and so on as guiding principles. Instead, Rickert poses the following rhetorical question: "Must we not therefore ... assume the validity of suprahistorical values and the complexes of meaning constituted by them, which the values actually receiving acknowledgement in the various cultures investigated by the historical sciences at least more or less approximate? Is this not the sole basis on which the objectivity of history can be made comparable to that of the natural sciences?"34 No further elaboration is needed here to explain why Husserl could no more fully agree with Rickert than he could with Dilthey. We should note, however, that there are indeed instances where Husserl is evidently closer to Rickert than to Dilthey and where Rickert's formulations had measurable positive impact on him. The real character of Husserl's relationship to the Neo-Kantians and to Rickert in particular has to some extent been obscured by the scholarly attention given to the Husserl-Dilthey relationship and, of course, by Husserl's own avowed "affinity" with Dilthey. Husserl undoubtedly agrees with Dilthey's position, expressed in the Ideen, that psychology is the fundamental and unifying human science and that the preservation of the intimate bond between the human sciences and life is a necessary goal. In fact, for Husserl, this bond to life holds true, in principle, for all the sciences of the world insofar as they all rest upon and arise out of the life-world. But contact with "life" does not constitute science, and here Husserl is in a certain sense closer to Rickert. Husserl and Rickert agree in their estimates of Dilthey,

33 Ibid., 47- Rickert, Science and History, 137. HUSSERL'S POSITION 28 9 whom they viewed as extraordinarily sensitive to history, yet lacking in the requisite philosophical rigor and acumen to delineate the basic principles and concepts for a genuine science of life.35 Thus, even though Husserl's lectures on phenomenological psychology laud Dilthey's efforts and accomplishments, Husserl nonetheless regards Dilthey's as failing to go beyond "vague empirical generalizations," an "inductive morphological typology," and a "natural his- tory of historical forms of mind."~6 In short, one fails to attain the level of genuine science and scientific knowledge. But does an answer lie in the other direction? Can one turn for an answer to Rickert's speculations and formal deduction of the fundamental (suprahis- torical) concepts or values obtaining in the domain of the cultural sciences? Husserl responds to this question in his 192 7 lectures on Natur und Geist. Here he describes the theoretical foundation Rickert gives to the sciences and their respective modes of concept-formation as "brilliant and impressive" (geistreich und eindrucksvoU) but, as with all formal constructions, "extremely dangerous" (sehr gefaehrlich). The resulting , Husserl avers, can too easily and perhaps too often be mere "illusory evidences" (Scheinevidenzen),37 not to men- tion that the relevant concepts remain vague and empty insofar as they are neither taken from nor traced back to their source in experiencing life and the experienced world. Protection against Rickert's formalism requires "a genuine concrete epistemology or, better, a phenomenological foundation [Fundamen- tierung] that draws the ethereal [luftigen] formal universalities from their intu- itive sources."38 The precise sense in which the phenomenological program can be said to occupy a position between Dilthey and the Baden Neo-Kantians should now be clear. Phenomenological psychology endeavors to be "intuitive and descrip- tive" yet, at the same time, a priori. To do so, it begins where it must, that is, with "intuitive concrete instances," and ascends from there to "intuitive neces- sities and universalities."39 Phenomenological psychology and, through it, the particular Geisteswissenschaften can satisfy the Diltheyan demand for a concrete and descriptive discipline as well as Rickert's apparently conflicting demand for a science that accesses the realm of a priori values and concepts. To be sure, the a priori required to place the Geisteswissenschaften on a scientific foundation cannot be reached from Rickert's position. Husserl agrees with Dilthey that Rickert's formal deductions lead only to constructions and abstrac- tions that are devoid of any intuitive content. The solution, though, according

s5 See, for instance, Ibid., xvii; and Husserl, Phen. Psych., 3, 7, 95. 36 Phen. Psych., 8, 11. 37 SeeF132 , 154 , 165. 3s Ibid., 154. 39 Phen. Psych., 28; see also ~9, 34. ~9 o JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 26:2 APRIL 1988 to Husserl, is not to abandon the search for the a priori belonging to the domain of the human sciences but to pursue it in a suitable manner, that is, to proceed with the method of eidetic variation to transform factual experience into possible experience (m6gliche Erfahrung). By following this procedure, the basic concepts, nature and mind, as well as the fundamental structural ele- ments of the experiential worlds to which they correspond, are brought to light. Thus, ideation serves "as a means for arriving at a radical division of the sciences of the world or at a radical conceptual articulation of the world into the essential provinces of the world."4o It thereby explicitly addresses a central issue over which Dilthey and the Neo-Kantians could not agree. Hussert also clarifies how this procedure secures "objectivity" for the socio- cultural sciences without lapsing into a priori constructions. By freely varying the experiential world, Husserl writes: "we therefore remain in the intuitive sphere and our a priori has the character of a material a prior/. Only in that way do concepts such as those of objective space and objective time, of material and animal , persons and personal accomplishment and thus of culture and history, concepts which Rickert's deduction [die Rickertsche Deduktion] persis- tently presupposes, obtain their intuitively determined sense."4~ Implicit in all this is Husserl's conviction that, alongside the Geisteswissenschaften as factual- empirical sciences, there arises a science of principles, that is, a universal a priori science of personal spirit or a universal .4~ Hence, it is in this light and in obvious opposition to the Neo-Kantians' formal classification of the sciences, whereby nomological is equated with natural scientific methods, that Husserl alludes to this universal Geisteswissenschaft as "nomological."43 The method of eidetic variation and the doctrine of essences are necessar- ily connected with the idea of a universal a priori Geisteswissenschafl, and they are intended to provide the theoretical basis of valid knowledge, that is, "objec- tivity," in the Geisteswissenschaften. For some theorists, however, they raised serious questions regarding the possibility of success of this aspect of Husserl's program. For instance, Dilthey apparently felt comfortable to employ some Husserlian insights to sharpen his own position and defend it against the Neo- Kantians, yet Dilthey persistently regarded Husserl as someone who "creates abstract entities"44 and as a "true Plato" who tries to impose fixed concepts on

40 Ibid., 65; see also 67 , 69 . 4, F132 , 194. 42 See Edmund Husseri, unpublished manuscript classifiedby the Husserl Archives, Leuven, Belgium asA VI z8 0925), 3. 43 See Edmund Husserl, unpublished manuscript classifiedby the Husserl Archives, Leuven, Belgium as A IV 8, 32, 35- Dilthey, G.S. 7: 237. HUSSERL'S POSITION 291 "things that become and flow."45 If the goal is to render life intelligible without simultaneously distorting it beyond recognition, then Dilthey presents us with the possibility that an eidetic Geisteswissenschaft with its essential concepts and laws offers no real advantage over the transcendental values of Rickert.46

.

Dilthey raises questions about the relationship between fact and essence in Husserl's thought, so it is to this relationship that we now direct our attention. Given Husserl's attempt to redress the deficiencies he found in the Diltheyan and Neo-Kantian conceptions of the human or cultural sciences, it is unlikely that he would have been insensitive, in formulating his doctrine of essences, to the danger of severing essences from facts, knowledge from experience, or science from life. It is true, however, that Husserl's thoughts about the rela- tionship between facts and essences are rather obscure and have therefore resulted in a predictable lack of consensus among commentators. Maurice Merleau-Ponty provides some insight in his essay "Phenomenology and the Sciences of Man" when he writes that "insight into essence is an intellectual taking over, a making explicit and clarifying of something concretely experi- enced.'47 For this reason, the knowledge of essences is "at the same time universal and concrete."48 Finally, he insists that phenomenological psychol- ogy and the particular socio-cultural sciences that draw their sustenance from it can only circumscribe the essence of their subject matter and delineate the essential concepts pertinent to that sphere of reality if they do not remain totally isolated from the facts of experience.49 Of course, no one is claiming that the validity of essential or norms can be derived from facts or experience alone. Husserl and other phenomenologists have generally and persistently argued that eidetic truths can be neither proven nor denied on the basis of facts, and this is, you will recall, an argument used in Philosophy as Rigorous Science against Dilthey's alleged historicism.5o It is significant, too, that Rickert, who also attacks histori-

45 See Georg Misch's introduction to Dilthey, G.S. 5: cxii. 46 For an interesting parallel to this line of criticism, see Rudolf Boehm, "A Tale of Estrange- ment. Husserl and " in John Sallis, ed., Husserl and Contemporary Thought (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Press, 1983). 47 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "Phenomenoiogy and the Science of Man" in The Primacy of and Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics, ed. by James M. Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 68. 4s Ibid. 49 Ibid., 95. ~~ See PRS, 187. 292 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 26:2 APRIL 1988 cism in Dilthey, reminds us of Husserl's critique of , even though he is skeptical of the phenomenological notion of Wesenschau which is the key to Husserl's critique.5~ According to Husserlian phenomenology, essential in- sights and principles may not be reducible to mere facts, but this in no way precludes the need to arrive at these truths by applying the method of imagina- tive variation to the realm of experience which, after all, constitutes the subject matter of the Geisteswissenschaften. The present interpretation receives further support in an unpublished letter from Husserl to Dietrich Mahnke (2. Weihnachtstag 19~7) in which Husserl writes that Dilthey's gross misunderstanding (arges Missverstaendnis) was to view the investigation of essences, that is, eidetic phenomenology, as though it somehow failed to grasp factual life and as though it aimed to exclude and detach itself altogether from historical and factual investigation. Predictably, Husserl assures Mahnke that Dilthey was incorrect: "All eidetics presuppose as a point of departure that which is factually given, possibly fantasy [Phantasie], but that is obviously a transformation of a fact. The first matter for research, therefore, is to become familiar with experience and naive natural surveying [Umsehen]. But that is not a science."53 Thus, in a certain sense, naive experience and even the sciences which preoccupy themselves with naive experience can be said to provide material for eidetic research, but, without the latter, a crucial aspect of prescientific experience necessarily re- mains hidden and thereby threatens the "scientific" status of the mundane disciplines. Accordingly, Husserl claims in the Mahnke letter that every inter- pretation undertaken by Dilthey and, indeed, the method of human science (Geisteswissenschaft) in general is "eidetic and should have been explicitly grounded as such." Moreover, as early as the Logos essay, Husserl believed that the "inner movement" of Dilthey's thought was away from a merely empirical point of view toward the "phenomenological essential point of view."54 And, as previously noted, the eidetic point of view is required if the human sciences

5~ Rickert, Ph. Lebens, 5o. 52 Ibid. 28. 53 See letter from Husserl to Dietrich Mahnke (2. Weihnachtstag 1927) as cited in Guy van Kerckhoven's article "Die Grundansaetze yon Husserls Konfrontation mit Dilthey im Lichte des geschichtlichen Selbstzeugnisse,"p. 151 in Ernst Wolfgang Orth, Phtinomenologische Forschungen, Bd. 16, Dilthey u.nd der Wandel des Philosophiebegriffs seit dem 19. Jahrhundert: Studien zu Dilthey und Brentano, Mach, Nietzsche, Twardowski, Husserl, Heidegger(Freiburg/Muenchen: Verlag Karl Alber, 1984). Translation and emphases are mine. It should be mentioned that the criticism of Dilthey implied in the cited passage fails to take sufficient account of the distinction Dilthey makes between Erlebnis and Lebenserfahrung: "Das setzt ein Erleben voraus, und das Erlebnis wird erst zu einer Lebenserfahrung dadurch, dass das Verstehen aus der Enge und Subjektivit~t des Erlebens hinausfiihrt in die Region des Gangen und des Allgemeinen" (G.S. 7: 143). 54 PRS, 197, n. t 1. From Husserl's point of view, the notion of Lebenserfahrung (see fn. 4 o) could perhaps be taken as a sign of or clue to this "inner movement." HUSSERL'S POSITION 293 are to help humanity right itself by advancing insights that take on a norma- tive function and lead toward a truly human, that is, rational and ethical, existence. From a Husserlian perspective, this task cannot be assigned to the Geisteswissenschaften so long as they operate from a purely empirical point of view nor can it be assigned to a purely formal and transcendental philosophy, as advocated by Rickert, that eschews the empirical altogether. However, in an attempt probably to meet the objections of Dilthey, Rickert is himself eventually forced to clarify his position: "Philosophy can hope to approach the suprahistorical solely by way of the historical. A system of cultural values that lays claim to validity can be found exclusively/n meaningful experi- ence and can only gradually be elaborated from it by our asking what general and formal values underlie the substantive and continuous diversity of cultural life.'55 There seems little in this passage with which Husserl could not agree. So, while Husserl agrees with Dilthey that we must learn from historical reflection what it means to be human and what values obtain in the socio-cultural world, he is closer to Rickert when he insists that we not mire ourselves in merely factual history and neglect to rise to the level of eidetic reflection. Dilthey does, of course, mention the universally human (Allgemeinmenschlichen) and allude to a common nature or condition shared by human beings (die Gemeinsamkeit menschlichen Wesens),s6 but he stops far short of calling for the eidetic disclosure of our human essence which Husserl believed was necessary in order to undergird factual and empirical investigations of this region. Con- sequently, Husserl argues, unlike Dilthey, that every fact has an essence or points to an essence, and this is true for factual humanity even though one arrives at essential insights here only with great difficulty.57 In short, what is lacking yet urgently needed in the Geisteswissenschaften is, according to Husserl, an a priori science of the mental and, more specifically, of the human person that would disclose the essential structures pertaining to it and to personal productions, that is, culture. In contrast to Windelband's formal division of the sciences, which does not, indeed cannot, distinguish between human and natural history, Husserl forcefully maintains that the Geisteswissenschaften are concerned with "human beings exclusively as persons, at their personal life and accomplishments .... Personal life means living communalized as 'I' and 'we' with a community horizon, and this in communi- ties of various simple and stratified forms such as family, nation, suprana- tional communities."58 But what happens when this personal and community life has been or is in the process of being destroyed and the principles and

55 Rickert, Science and History, 144-45. 56 See Dilthey, G.S. 7: 159. 57 Husserl alludes to this in Phen. Psych., 69. 58 Crisis, ~7o; see alsoA VI 18, II 4, a95. 294 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 26"2 APRIL 1988 norms needed to hold it together have been dissolved into historical facts? What then? Can more facts, more statistics, more causal explanations, more mathematization, and more quantification provide answers to the ultimate questions of human existence? The answer, it seems, is no. For all of its sophisticated and impressive techniques, an answer will not come from meth- odological naturalism because the specifically human sphere does not lend itself to the same type of rationalization as physical nature. As Husserl notes, "A human being is in the world of facts and in it is culture, but a human being is not only a fact and cultures are not only facts, they are in truth or not in truth."59 To make a decision about whether or not our existence is genuine or "in truth" (in der Wahrheit) implies taking a position and critically evaluating that life. This, in turn, demands insights into the relevant norms and not merely into historical facts and relativities. In this connection, Husserl asserts that "with the human sciences, a very special manner of rationalizing the empirical domain appears: the normative judgment according to universal norms, which belongs to the a priori essence of'rational' humanity. ''6~ This theme, which is the focal point of Husserl's "Renewal" essay, also opens his last major work, the Cr/s/s. In fact, the "Renewal" essay sheds some light on precisely how the internal movement of the Crisis is initiated. If, by beginning with one's present factual situation, one condemns that culture as spiritually ill, then the measure--"true and genuine" humanity--must be clari- fied if the condemnation is to be meaningful. Whatever features belong a priori to the idea "true humanity" must be carefully unravelled and conceptu- ally determined. This includes the concepts of humanity, community life, family, state, etc.; it includes cultural formations such as art, religion, and science as well as their normative forms, "true" and "genuine" art, religion, and so on. 6~ Norms attained in this manner, and evidently seen, not only provide a basis for evaluating where and what one has been but also give a due to which path one "ought" to follow. A question that arises at this point, which cannot be fully addressed at this time, is how and to what extent an eidetic personal science such as that pro- posed by Husserl would relate to pure transcendental phenomenological phi- losophy. Suffice it to say that the sharp distinction found in Philosophy as Rigorous Science between phenomenology and the human sciences and, thus, between questions of validity and absolute norms and those of fact is generally quite similar to Rickert's view. In later writings, however, Husserl seems less concerned about insisting on such a sharp contrast. One way to account for this shift is to remember that Philosophy as Rigorous Science attempts to contrast

59 A VI 18, x96-97. 60 Edmund Husserl, "Renewal: Its Problems and Method" in Husserl: Shorter Works, 398; see also 329 . 6~ Ib/d. 33o. HUSSERL'S POSITION 295 philosophy and empirically (factually) oriented human sciences, and, once the notion of an a priori essential personal science (Geisteswissenschaft) is devel- oped, the lines separating it from transcendental phenomenological philoso- phy are more faded and difficult to discern. 6~ One point is certain, though, according to Husserl, a phenomenological reorientation and grounding of the human sciences would purge them of their naturalistic tendencies and restore to them their task of serving humanity.

CONCLUSION As we have just seen, Husserl demands an eidetic Geisteswissen~chafl that would provide the scientific and theoretical foundation for the particular sciences dealing with the region of culture and spirit. This grounding science would be, on the one hand, intuitive and concrete and, on the other hand, universal and a priori. We have argued, furthermore, that this position represents a middle ground between Dilthey's emphasis on lived experience and the Baden Neo- Kantians' emphasis on scientific rigor. As Husserl himself states: "The funda- mental character of phenomenology is thus scientific .'63 In his introduction to Husserl's third volume on the phenomenology of , Iso Kern cites this same statement in order to emphasize the internal connection between Husserl's constitutive phenomenology and the Diltheyan project.64 Kern, who is well aware of Husserl's relationship to Rickert and the Neo-Kantians in general, nonethelesss makes no mention of them in this context. The historical perspective afforded by the present essay and the conditions under which Husserl himself describes phenomenology as a scientific Lebensphilosophie suggest, however, that this striking description of phenomenology implies significant affinities with the Neo-Kantians as well as with Dilthey while simultaneously harking back to the ancient Greek ideal of philosophy. Beyond the merely historical dimension of our examination of Husserl's relationship to and estimates of other major theoreticians of the Geistes- and Kulturwissenschaften, what is important is that the illuminates what is ultimately at stake in the debate over the connection between the Natur- and Geisteswissenschaften, namely, ethical norms and ideals. While it is admittedly no longer fashionable today to speak about the quest for rational and ethical "norms" as necessary conditions for genuine (i.e., rational and ethical) human life, the present paper is nonetheless predicated upon the conviction that what is out of fashion on the theoretical level is not necessarily extirpated from the

6, See, for example, Crisis, 333-334; A VI 18, 178. 63 FI32 ' 168. 64 See Iso Kern's introduction to Edmund Husserl, Zur Phaenomenologie der lntersubjektivittit: Texte am Dem Nachlass, Drifter Tell: ~929-1933, Husserliana t5, ed. by Iso Kern (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, t973), XLVI1. 296 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 26:9 APRIL 1988 practical scene. In fact, it is not really a question of whether or not we, as practitioners of the human sciences or in our everyday , resort to norma- tive judgments; it is, rather, a question of whether or not what is, in fact, accepted as "normative" has been clarified and justified on the basis of genu- ine insight. Ironically, it is precisely when the socio-cultural sciences attempt to model themselves after the natural sciences and seek to control as well as to explain and predict their subject matter that the need for the kind of ground- ing Husserl demands is underscored. Otherwise, on what basis and toward what end would this control take place? The need for a grounding of this sort is all the more pressing when we recognize that "philosophical" ethics today is becoming increasingly fragmented into applied areas (e.g., business ethics, medical ethics, and legal ethics), while the principles and norms necessary for the meaningful examination of case studies in these areas are either forgotten, glossed over, or, perhaps worst of all, simply accepted as self-evident. It is to Husserl's credit that he recognized that what was being jeopardized in the naturalistic tendencies of the Geisteswissenschaften was the ideal validity of the very norms necessary for a genuinely human life and governance of the per- sonal sphere, yet he neither succumbed to the speculations of the Neo-Kantians nor to the alleged historicism of Dilthey. Husserl's views, though, were not completely at odds with either. They too, after all, recognized that the success- ful elaboration and study of human existence required more than the naturalis- tic methodology that was and, of course, still is so fashionable in the socio- cultural sciences. The Neo-Kantians, Rickert in particular, moved immediately in the direction of pure a priori values, but the penalty for doing so was the alienation of (scientific) philosophy from life, a fate similar to the naturalism they opposed. Dilthey, who in this regard is closer to Husserl, observed that a too rigid dichotomy between life and science, fact and value (essence) had no place in the socio-historical world and the Geisteswissenschaften. On the contrary, he states that "that which is shows itself as inseparable from its validity and what ought to be. Thus, the norms of life are attached to the facts of life."65 Precisely how these norms are to be wrested from the facts of life and how their validity is to be secured is not spelled out by Dilthey or, at least, not as clearly and systemati- cally as Husserl would have liked. Unless one understands that the methods of epoche and eidetic reduction are devoted in part to this task a task whose demands Dilthey did not clearly see and the Neo-Kantians, in a certain sense, circumvented---one fails to appreciate an important aspect of Husserl's plan for the rehabilitation of the Geisteswissenschaften.

Sacred Heart University

% Dilthey, G.S. 5: 267.