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A Treatise on Phenomenological Essentialism New Key to the Transcendental Eidetic Sciences

Shotaro Iwauchi 5615D001-4 January 20, 2018

A doctoral dissertation submitted to the Graduate School of International Culture and Communication Studies Waseda University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Acknowledgments Without Prof. Seiji Takeda, I would not have become interested in phenomenology. I am grateful to him for passionate and critical discussions on the future of philosophy. I would like thank to Prof. Ken Nishi and Prof. Keiko Katsukata for their extraordinary support in this thesis process. Prof. Timothy Seul and Prof. Norimasa Morita always help me discover new horizons, and without thoughtful conversations with them, this study would have been impossible. Finally, I would like to express my appreciation to Prof. Graham Law and Prof. Takashi Aso for their continual encouragement and support. Last but not the least, I would like to thank my family for supporting me spiritually throughout writing this thesis and in my life in general.

ii Abbreviations and Explanatory Notes 1) The Husserliana edition is cited in the text and is indicated with the abbreviation “Hua.” 2) Regarding the other works of Husserl not published in the Husserliana, I use the following abbreviations: EU: Edmund Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil: Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik, ed. Ludwig Landgrebe (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1999). 3) I use English translations of Husserl’s works (see bibliography), but I change translations according to the circumstances. 4) I use italics within quotation marks (1) when the original words are in italics; (2) when the original words are Gesperrt in German; and (3) when I specify original German or Latin words.

iii Table of Contents

Preface The End of Phenomenology? (1)

Chapter 1 Husserl’s Phenomenological Reduction (9) 1.1. General Positing of the Natural Attitude and Phenomenological Epoché (10) 1.2. Intentionality, Noesis, and Noema (13) 1.3. Indubitability of the Perception of Something Immanent (16) 1.4. Husserl’s Phenomenological Reduction (18)

Chapter 2 Defending Cartesianism in Phenomenology (23) 2.1. Cartesian Doubt and Ideal of Universal Science (24) 2.2. Husserl’s Divergence from the Cartesian Way (26) 2.3. Husserl’s Critique of Descartes (28) 2.4. Contribution of Epistemology to Phenomenology (30)

Chapter 3 General and Transcendental Eidetic Science (34) 3.1. Definition of Eidetic Science (35) 3.2. Phenomenology and Essentialism: Dan Zahavi versus Nicolas de Warren (37) 3.3. Entwinement of Eidetic Sciences (41) 3.4. General Eidetic Science and Transcendental Eidetic Science (46)

Chapter 4 Miscommunication of Phenomenology: The Case of Martin Heidegger (53) 4.1. The Concept of Phenomenology in Heidegger’s Interpretation (54) 4.2. Heidegger’s Critique of Husserlian Phenomenology (57) 4.3. Heidegger’s Divergence from Phenomenology (60)

Chapter 5 Max Scheler’s Essentialism and Metaphysics as General Eidetic Science (66) 5.1. The Phenomenological Reduction of Scheler (67) 5.2. Natural Outlook and Scientific Outlook (70) 5.3. Philosophical Outlook: Moral Conditions of Philosophy (72) 5.4. Mission of Philosophy: Man and the Absolute (76)

Chapter 6 Eidetic Seeing and the Teleology of Monads (83) 6.1. The Method of Eidetic Seeing (83) 6.2. The Problem of Circularity in Eidetic Seeing and the Openness of Free Variation (85)

iv 6.3. Conciliation of the Controversy Concerning Truth (87) 6.4. Relativity of Intuited Essences (90) 6.5. Eidetic Seeing and the Teleology of Monads (92)

Chapter 7 The Phenomenological Language Game: The Original Contract of Goodness (97) 7.1. Language Games (98) 7.2. Family Resemblance versus Morphological Essence (100) 7.3. Eidetic Seeing as a Language Game (104) 7.4. The Philosophical Language Game in Karl-Otto Apel (106) 7.5. The Original Contract of Goodness (109)

Chapter 8 The Confrontation between Essentialism and Constructionism (114) 8.1. Essentialism in Tradition: Plato and Leibniz (116) 8.2. Philosophy of Constructionism: Hume and Nietzsche (119) 8.3. Social Constructionism as Modified Relativism (122) 8.4. Phenomenological Essentialism: Intersubjective Confirmation and Mutual Recognition (124)

Chapter 9 Essentialism and the Other: Two Vectors of Imagination (129) 9.1. The Role of Imagination in Essentialism (130) 9.2. The Other as Transcendence (133) 9.3. The Subaltern and Strategic Essentialism (136) 9.4. Transformation of Imagination and Essentialism: Toward “Imagine Thyself” (139)

Conclusion The Idea of Phenomenology in the Present (144)

Bibliography (152)

v A Treatise on Phenomenological Essentialism New Key to the Transcendental Eidetic Sciences

Preface The End of Phenomenology? Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, believed that the phenomenological enterprise would disclose the infinite field of study, including not only the study of consciousness but also the regional ontologies of thing, life, person, and culture. Moreover, many scholars and researchers have demonstrated so far that the phenomenological method effectively works as a method for qualitative research and that phenomenology can also be applied to psychology, sociology, pedagogy, and nursing science,1 and that it enables us to see the essential structures and conditions of lived experiences filled with meanings, emotions, and values, such as the essence of love, nihilism, and sexuality.2 However, Husserlian phenomenology itself has been the subject of criticism from other philosophical camps such as linguistic philosophy, postmodernism, and speculative realism, or even from phenomenologists such as Max Scheler, Martin Heidegger, and Emmanuel Levinas. Furthermore, the term “phenomenology” is, ironically, becoming ambiguous to the extent that we can hardly discover the fundamental idea that unifies individual phenomenological investigations as the number of such investigations has increased under the name “phenomenology of something.” In 1967, for instance, Richard Rorty edited an anthology of linguistic philosophy entitled The Linguistic Turn, which became an emblem of the turning point in the discourse of philosophy from epistemology of traditional continental philosophy to linguistic philosophy on the basis of the view that “philosophical problems are problems which may be solved (or dissolved) either by reforming language, or by understanding more about the language we presently use.”3 Phenomenology as an attempt to revive Cartesian and Kantian transcendentalism seemed already outdated and inept, and was regarded as a part of metaphysics standing to an unverifiable and dogmatic manner from a

1 Amedeo Giorgi, The Descriptive Phenomenological Method in Psychology: A Modified Husserlian Approach (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2009). Alfred Schütz and Thomas Luckmann, The Structures of the Life-World, trans. Richard M. Zaner and Hugo T. Engelhardt, Jr. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973). Max van Manen, Researching Lived Experiences: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy (London: The Althouse Press, 1990). Patricia Benner, From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Power in Clinical Nursing Practice (Menlo Park: Addison-Wesley, 1984). 2 Max Scheler, The Nature of Sympathy, trans. Peter Heath (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1954). Jiro Watanabe, Nihilism: Phenomenology of Inwardness (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1975). Jacqueline M. Martinez, Communicative Sexualities: A Communicology of Sexual Experience (Lanham / Boulder / New York / Toronto / Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2011). 3 Richard M. Rorty, ed., The Linguistic Turn: Essays in Philosophical Method with Two Retrospective Essays (Chicago / London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 3.

1 viewpoint of linguistic philosophy. In this context, phenomenology is considered a dogmatic foundationalism that seeks the potentiality of something absolute. In contrast to The Linguistic Turn claimed by linguistic philosophy, The Speculative Turn4 claimed by speculative realism makes the situation that phenomenology is in more equivocal and interesting. In the logic of speculative realists, phenomenology is regarded as “correlationism” and “fideism.” That is, they claim that phenomenology indeed contributes to relativism and blocks access to the absolute.5 These two symbolic turns shed light not only on the ironic and curious situation of phenomenology but also on the conflicting intortus situation of contemporary thought; linguistic philosophy criticizes phenomenology because of its tendency to dogmatism and metaphysics, but speculative realism determines phenomenology as a sort of relativism and fideism. Both camps do not realize, I think, that the fundamental problem lies in the epistemological aporia that appear between relativism and universalism, or skepticism and dogmatism.6 The discourse of epistemology cannot be replaced by the new discourse of linguistic philosophy or speculative realism, but is to be fundamentally elucidated within the logic of epistemology itself. Further, Husserl indeed has already elucidated the epistemological aporia and presented a new method for developing a new form of essentialism, preparing the potentiality of The Eidetic Turn. However, simultaneously, it can be said that some critiques of phenomenology give a hint of the reasons why phenomenology was misunderstood and why Husserl’s fundamental motive was miscommunicated. For instance, Tom Sparrow published The End of Phenomenology in 2014.7 In this book, he criticizes the ambiguity of phenomenology in terms of a speculative viewpoint and claims that the method of phenomenology cannot access genuine realism. His critique of phenomenology actually has a point in the sense that, even now, we do not have exact consensus on

4 Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek, and Graham Harman, eds., The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism (Melbourne: re.press, 2011). 5 The terms “correlationism” and “fideism” originated from Quentin Meillassoux. According to Meillassoux, “correlation” means “the idea according to which we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other,” and thus “correlationism” refers to “any current of thought which maintains the unsurpassable character of the correlation so defined.” Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, trans. Ray Brassier (London / New Delhi / New York / Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2012), 5. More importantly, correlationism inevitably results in “fideism”: “Faith is pitched against faith, since what determines our fundamental choices cannot be rationally proved.” Meillassoux, After Finitude, 46. 6 Michael Weinstein criticizes Rorty saying, “It is possible to explore the latter alternative, with the help of such philosophical friends as Husserl, Bergson, James, Freud, Alexander, Whitehead, Scheler, Santayana, and Ortega, all of whom turned inward to grasp life and experience as a radical reality, seizing subjectivity, rather than voiding it into language.” Michael A. Weinstein, “Liberalism Goes Post-Modern: Rorty’s Pragmatism,” Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory X, no. 1-2 (1986): 19. 7 Tom Sparrow, The End of Phenomenology: Metaphysics and the New Realism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014).

2 the specific characteristics of the phenomenological method shared among all phenomenological investigations: “would-be phenomenologists are left without a definitive statement of how properly to conduct a phenomenological investigation.”8 While Husserl himself repeatedly reconsidered what phenomenology is from the bottom and defined the principles of phenomenology, his followers were less concerned about a rigorous scientific phenomenological method, but rather criticized him regarding the phenomenological reduction, which is the core principle of Husserlian phenomenology. According to Sparrow, “Husserl’s followers interpret and apply phenomenology as they wish, often preferring to reroute it down a less scientific, more existential path,” and “this is phenomenology’s fateful, perhaps fatal, vice.”9 As a result, Sparrow declares that “phenomenology began and ended with Husserl.”10 I agree with Sparrow in that the “phenomenological” still remains ambiguous and rhetorical, and the term “phenomenology” seems to have gone out of its founder’s control. Furthermore, Husserl’s idea of phenomenology based on transcendental subjectivity may sound outdated or even nostalgic in terms of contemporary thought and the present social situation after postmodernism. However, I think the principle of phenomenology is still alive and of value, at least for the sake of the creation of common understanding beyond social, cultural, religious, and environmental differences, and that the method of phenomenological essentialism should be redefined to fit the motive of contemporary thought such as social constructionism and cultural relativism.11 In this study, I discuss the specific characteristics and dimensions of phenomenological essentialism in terms of “mutual recognition” of difference and “intersubjective confirmation” of essence. My original contribution to knowledge is to determine phenomenology as the center of potentiality for a theory of meaning and value by presenting the original idea of the transcendental eidetic sciences, the phenomenological language game, and the original contract of goodness. What this study attempts, then, is a reorientation of phenomenological essentialism toward social goodness through scrutinizing the opposite viewpoint claimed by social constructionism and cultural

8 Sparrow, The End, 3. 9 Sparrow, The End, 4. 10 Sparrow, The End, 12. 11 Actually postmodernism, on which social constructionism and cultural relativism develop an argument, expresses antipathy toward essentialism and universalism, which have thoroughly determined the characteristics of modern philosophy, and in terms of a postmodernist perspective, phenomenology might be regarded as a form of violence and a metaphysics of subject, namely, an outdated heritage of a bad tradition based on trust in the evidence of subject and reason. However, as Terry Eagleton points out that “it is dogmatic of postmodernism to universalize its case against universals and conclude that concepts of a shared human nature are never important, not even, say, when it comes to the practice of torture,” the logic of postmodernism itself includes a sort of universalism that universally rejects any form of essentialism and universalism. Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernism (Oxford / Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996), 49. Furthermore, regarding the defense of phenomenology against postmodernism, see Seiji Takeda, Toward Linguistic Thinking: Deconstruction and Phenomenology (Tokyo: Komichi-Shobo, 2001).

3 relativism. In chapter 1, I clarify the aim and scope of phenomenological reduction by examining the original text of Husserl that focuses on the difference between natural attitude and phenomenological attitude. Husserl effects phenomenological reduction with the operation of epoché in order to elucidate the epistemological aporia: how the subject meets the object. Husserl suggests that phenomenological reduction enables to see all beings (transcendences) as a conviction constituted in consciousness (immanence), and that it is necessary to extract the conditions and structures of objectivity instead of inquiring into the possibility of a meeting of subject and object. This chapter also discusses the essential structures of consciousness characterized by key concepts such as intentionality, noesis, and noema. According to Husserl, perception of something immanent and of something transcendent differ in that the former is not doubtable in nature, but the latter always leaves room for doubt. In this sense, perception of something immanent as perception of perception forms the basis for all cognitions. The point is that phenomenological reduction only constitutes the beginning of phenomenology, and, based on it, Husserlian phenomenology’s principle can be applied, but not dogmatically, to the ontology of meaning and value, particularly to social phenomena around freedom, equality, justice, and discrimination. The aim of chapter 2 is to defend Cartesianism in phenomenology. It is apparent that, to begin eidetics of cognition, Husserl takes his inspiration from René Descartes and follows the lead of Cartesian doubt. Therefore, one might argue that Cartesianism in phenomenology is too obvious and commonplace, and that it is mostly meaningless to defend it. However, the situation is not simple. For instance, some famous phenomenologists (i.e., Iso Kern and Rudolf Bernet) stand opposed to the idea of Cartesianism and claim that phenomenology should part ways with it. Furthermore, Husserl himself declares the need for divergence from the Cartesian way and seeks for new ways to transcendental phenomenology. I agree that the image of Cartesianism leaves a dogmatic, solipsistic, and even a bit outdated impression. However, it indeed plays a significant role in Husserlian phenomenology, especially in terms of epistemological validity. This does not mean that Husserlian phenomenology corresponds precisely to Cartesianism as Husserl criticizes Descartes from the viewpoint of transcendent subjectivity and transcendental realism. Phenomenology is to be considered a radicalized Cartesianism, and Husserl works out and deepens the principle of phenomenology through confronting Cartesian transcendentalism. In chapter 3, the conceptual distinction between general and transcendental eidetic science is introduced: the former as eidetic science in the natural attitude and the latter as that in the transcendental attitude. These two concepts are introduced in order to (1) distinguish Husserl’s eidetic science from the general eidetic science of the Munich and Göttingen Circles; (2) show that phenomenological psychology and ontology of the life-world is to be explicated within a transcendental attitude; and (3) sweep away an epistemic-theoretical general image adhering to

4 transcendental phenomenology. Compared with general eidetic science, transcendental eidetic science can be determined as a discipline of intersubjective confirmation and mutual recognition. That is, it has the potentiality to conciliate belief conflict and create common understanding without oppressing the difference between plural subjects, societies, cultures, and religions. A phenomenologist must effect universal epoché and transcendental reduction by which phenomenological essence is considered the correlate to transcendental subjectivity, not the substantial hypostasis that absolutely, one-sidedly determines what the individual should be. In chapter 4, I discuss how Heidegger understands and interprets the method of phenomenology by focusing on his thinking around the time of the 1920s. It is true that the name “phenomenology” would not have become well known and expanded to various academic disciplines without Heidegger, but at the same time, it is Heidegger who distorts the phenomenological method and spoils the principle of Husserlian phenomenology. Heidegger indeed employs hermeneutic intuition instead of eidetic seeing, because the given to consciousness in everydayness itself may disguise and conceal the authentic existential understanding of being, and it cannot be worthy of trust: intuition itself requires a sort of interpretation concerning how the falling of Dasein neglects the question of being and of the being of the intentional. Heidegger also claims that Husserl belongs to a part of the tradition of philosophy that has disguised the question of being, and that the phenomenological reduction based on epistemological concerns makes it impossible to inquire into what being is and what the being of the intentional is. In my view, however, it is difficult to say that Heidegger understands the aim and scope of transcendental phenomenology—intersubjective confirmation of essence and mutual recognition of difference—, but rather he presupposes the groundless hierarchy between falling and authenticity. By replacing eidetic seeing with hermeneutic intuition, his phenomenology is no longer phenomenological, because the ground is lost on which anyone can examine and assess the validity of belief formation. Chapter 5 of this study aims at clarifying how Scheler characterized the philosophical outlook in comparison with the natural outlook and the scientific outlook by reviewing the dynamic dialectic between life and spirit. Basically, life and spirit are opposite principles—the former expresses the biological aspect of all living beings, whereas the latter is unique to man. However, Scheler argued that the cooperation between life and spirit forms the meaning of history through a process in which life is spiritualized and spirit is animated. The existence of the absolute makes this cooperation possible as life and spirit, which are inherent in man, are originally bestowed by the absolute, and all beings are one with the universe. Although Scheler’s argument presented a new perspective regarding phenomenological investigations and philosophical anthropology, this study criticizes his essentialism and metaphysics, particularly in terms of the meaning of objectivity: the dogmatic aspect in his essentialism and metaphysics must be reinvestigated. I suggest that the process of intersubjective reassessment and confirmation should be implemented into his essentialism and

5 metaphysics to negate the dogmatic way of thinking. In chapter 6, I reexamine the method of eidetic seeing in Husserlian phenomenology in terms of the teleology of monads. According to Husserl, essence should be distinguished from a matter of fact, and it can be characterized by necessity and universality. However, because a phenomenologist who carries out eidetic seeing in practice is inevitably limited by a certain historical–social situation, the question remains of how it is possible to say that an obtained essence has universal validity. I focus on the motivation for creating universality in eidetic seeing from the viewpoint of monadology in Husserl, especially from the teleology of monads. In discussing the teleology of monads, Husserl selects two different aspects of telos: passive ideas and practical ideas. Eidetic seeing is motivated by obtaining a universal essential condition common among individuals through universal teleology on both the passive and the active level. It can be argued that the teleology of monads provides a basis for the motivation to overcome the relativity of attained essences, and that necessity and universality, which can be regarded as the idea of essence, are gradually realized through continual intersubjective critique from the diachronic perspective. The task of chapter 7 is to present phenomenology as being the “phenomenological language game.” I claim that the highest aim of the phenomenological language game is extracted as the creation of intersubjective confirmation beyond sociocultural differences, in order to obtain consensus on social justice, human rights, freedom, the legitimacy of public education, the basis of laws, valid economic systems, and so on. These concepts all require universality and universal consensus because they are directly connected to the goodness of society and life. Whoever wants to participate in the phenomenological language game, and whoever makes an effort to obtain common understanding, is regarded as agreeing with the first consensus that participants will start the game for the sake of goodness, to create a better society, and to consider the potentiality of human life. I call this contract the “original contract of goodness,” which is characterized as an inquiry into essences instead of matters of fact, using language instead of power games, and having the will to goodness instead of nihilism. In chapter 7, first, I present a brief description of language games in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s work. Crucially for Wittgenstein, meaning in language is generated through a language game, and no meaning can exist independently of each individual context. Second, the distinction between morphological essence in Husserl and family resemblance in Wittgenstein is made clear. It cannot be said that these two concepts are completely opposed; rather, in some respects they intersect. However, the difference between universalism in Husserl and relativism in Wittgenstein is clearly reflected in this distinction. Next, I try to present the idea of the phenomenological language game and to examine the philosophical language game in Karl-Otto Apel, presented against critical rationalism. Apel legitimately points out the inadequacy of critical rationalism, but his argument has clear limitations, especially in terms of ethical and normative viewpoints. Finally, I review the original contract of goodness and its necessity and inevitability for

6 the phenomenological language game. In chapter 8, the confrontation between essentialism and constructionism is reconsidered in terms of a phenomenological perspective. I claim that phenomenological essentialism as “science of intersubjective confirmation” and “science of mutual recognition” will conciliate the radical epistemological and ethical aporia between essentialism and constructionism. However, this does not mean phenomenology works as a compromise plan; rather, it is a new form of essentialism that is completely different from traditional essentialism. To clarify the basic schema of traditional essentialism, this chapter picks up Plato and Gottfried Leibniz. It is clear that the concept of essence in their two philosophies is closely connected with the concept of substance, so that it retains invariable and absolute characteristics that may turn out to oppress social and cultural minorities because the idea of substantial essence can label someone as having substantial unchangeable characteristics. In contrast, philosophers such as David Hume and Friedrich Nietzsche point out that human cognition or knowledge is inevitably constructed, and it is claimed that knowledge can be regarded as a bundle of impressions in Hume’s philosophy and as something power-correlational in Nietzsche’s philosophy. It seems that constructionism is more persuasive than essentialism in terms of the possibility of experiential verification and of obtaining a clear vision of cognitive structure on the surface, but the situation is not simple. If concepts such as freedom, equality, or justice, and social systems such as law, education, or human rights are socially constructed by the interaction of a community without any evidence, these concepts and systems will lose the ground of universal justification. In other words, it is not possible for constructionists to establish a universal basis for ethics and morals in order to liberate the voiceless of social and cultural minorities. A way of thinking is required that does not abandon the possibility of universal “intersubjective confirmation” but that simultaneously denies the principle of violence that suppresses social and cultural minorities. That is to say, a new form of essentialism should be oriented to the “mutual recognition” of difference. Finally, in chapter 9, I reconsider the relationship between essentialism and the other by focusing on the role of imagination in essentialism. Traditionally, imagination has served the essentialist doctrine in that essentialism requires the unification of multiplicity into category and the imagination of other aspects not given to consciousness of the self. However, by encountering the other as transcendence or the subaltern, the imaginative faculty encounters setbacks. This occurs because this direction of imagination (from the self to the other) may be regarded as a form of dogmatism, Eurocentrism, and egocentrism, as Levinas and Gayatri Spivak suggest. In this regard, essentialism seems to be collapsed in parallel. Despite the existence of the subaltern, Spivak seeks the potentiality of essentialism and finds that only the “strategic” use of it by the weak in society can be justified to counteract the international division of labor. In this chapter, referring to the discussion of Spivak, I part ways with strategic essentialism in terms of the necessity of the universal justification of

7 conceptions such as freedom, equality, human rights, and social justice. I claim that imagination directed toward the self, in other words, “Imagine thyself,” provides the sense of risk, the function of self-critique into essentialism. In other words, essentialism must be modified so that it opens itself up to continual reassessment by the other. The gameness of essentialism oriented toward creating intersubjective confirmation should be defended in order to be responsible for the voiceless in society. In my view, the idea of phenomenology in the present can be redefined as a science of intersubjective confirmation and a science of mutual recognition. This study proves that phenomenological essentialism can become a new essentialism that enables the creation of a common understanding—but not in a dogmatic way—, with a sense of mutual recognition of difference. Historically, traditional essentialism has claimed that objects have noumenal essences, which are distinguished from nonessential or accidental predications, but this line of thought may entail oppressive and discriminatory discourse in some cases. For instance, when the majority in society determines what a minority is in an essentialist manner, the identity of the minority is one-sidedly fixed by social power. In this sense, I agree with the idea that essentialism is thoroughly deconstructed. Namely, I stand on the side of the idea of social constructionism and cultural relativism. However, once it comes to the question of the basis for caring for and rescuing sociocultural minorities, sexual minorities, or someone who suffers from the social system, the logic of relativism would not be of value, for relativism itself cannot justify the universality of humanity based on freedom, equality, human rights, and justice. Thus, in order to avoid aporia that appears between essentialism and constructionism, it is necessary to employ essentialism in a limited and modified way in correlation to a specific aim: the strategic use of essentialism is required. Phenomenological essentialism will fulfill this requirement and provide a new method for the humanities and social sciences.

8 Chapter 1 Husserl’s Phenomenological Reduction Introduction This chapter aims to review how and why Husserl employs phenomenological reduction as the fundamental method of enabling access to things in themselves. Husserl establishes phenomenology for the sake of elucidating epistemological aporia, namely the question of agreement between subject and object. From modern philosophy’s beginnings, epistemology has been a key topic of discussion, for if the subject and object do not agree, all knowledge of sciences, including not only natural sciences but also mathematics and logic, would inevitably collapse. We could not explain knowledge’s already existing universality; in this case, there would be merely plural subjective and relative knowledge in the world. In addition, epistemology’s misfire entails the collapse of good and evil’s order. Indeed, modernity began with the reformation that caused a controversy of the genuinely religious faith between Catholic and Protestant. Ultimately, the controversy also affected a pile of dead victims in both camps. Thus, understanding that epistemology has been a pressing problem in modern philosophy is not difficult, but philosophers before Husserl, for instance, Descartes, Hume, and Immanuel Kant, could not solve the aporia. In this study, I do not examine reasons for these philosophers’ failures (although some are discussed in later chapters), but instead focus on Husserl’s methodological strategy, which he actually calls “phenomenological reduction.” Note that Husserlian phenomenology employs phenomenological reduction in correlation to a specific aim: expanding common understanding and adjusting belief conflict. In other words, in phenomenology, phenomena are transcendentally reduced through mutual recognition of difference and intersubjective confirmation of essence; the question is whether generating intersubjective consensus is possible without oppressing differences. Thus, if someone has a different aim and scope (for instance, to obtain subjective existential truth or to commit to a deep obligation to God), Husserlian phenomenology can bring its insufficiency to light, so it no longer suffices as a destination. In this regard, Heidegger and Scheler’s interpretations of phenomenology swerve from its original aim, as this study’s chapter 4 (Heidegger) and chapter 5 (Scheler) explain. First, this chapter clarifies the difference between natural attitude and phenomenological attitude in reference to phenomenological epoché. Epoché requires suspension of all judgment of being and exclusion of all positing of being, to break free from general positing within the natural attitude. Second, the chapter reviews essential structures of consciousness phenomenologically investigated by Husserl, focusing on the concept “intentionality.” Third, the chapter sheds light on the indubitability of perception of something immanent and the dubitability of perception of something transcendent. The immanental sphere, which one’s reflection on lived experiences unveils, provides grounds of undoubtedness as a starting point for phenomenological investigation. Finally,

9 phenomenological reduction’s specific aim and scope are presented; starting from appearances’ relativity, phenomenology aims to investigate an object’s essential structures and conditions. To create intersubjective confirmation with a sense of mutual recognition of difference, phenomenological reduction is employed—by which every being such as entity, concept, essence, idea, or God should be methodologically regarded as conviction at different levels constituted in transcendental subjectivity.

1. General Positing of the Natural Attitude and Phenomenological Epoché In Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book (from here on, Ideas I), Husserl presents a path leading to transcendental phenomenology, starting from the “general positing of the natural attitude (General Thesis der natürlichen Einstellung).” Husserl makes a proposal: “We begin our consideration as human beings who are living naturally, objectivating, judging, feeling, willing ‘in the natural attitude’” (Hua III/1, 56).1 Basically, living human beings naturally take for granted that the world and its entities exist objectively in space and time. They usually accept the world without question; the world “endlessly spread out in space, endlessly becoming and having endlessly become in time” is there, simply on hand (vorhanden) (ibid.). I am conscious of the world as such and directly experience it through sensuous perception: seeing it, hearing it, and touching it. No doubt, furthermore, other people exist in the world with me. I communicate with them: “I look up; I see them; I hear their approach; I grasp their hands; talking with them I understand immediately what they objectivate and think, what feelings stir within them, what they wish or will” (ibid.). Additionally, Husserl describes the field of actual perception as surrounded by “an obscurely intended […] horizon of indeterminate actuality” (Hua III/1, 57). For instance, when I focus on an apple, obscure figures of a table and chair, some bread, and a glass of water more or less surround it. In other words, the figure–ground relationship is always an essential structure of perception. The structure of actuality and horizon is not valid simply for space, but is applicable to temporality, that is, every waking Now (Jetzt) is surrounded by indeterminate horizon and infinitum as a sequence of past and future. Husserl calls this naive acceptance of the world’s existence, along with its entities and people, the “general positing of the natural attitude.” In other words, what is posited by those living naturally is “actuality (Wirklichkeit)” “as a factually existent actuality,” and they “accept it as it presents itself to me as factually existing” (Hua III/1, 61). Importantly, however, no individual doubt about entity or state of affairs in the natural world can alter the natural attitude’s general positing. This means that

1 Note that the concept “natural attitude” is indeed a phenomenological concept, because if the phenomenological attitude is not in view, identifying what the natural is would not be possible in the first place. Thus, the natural attitude’s description is based on phenomenological reflection.

10 even though a person might begin to doubt the apple’s existence on the table alongside the bread, that doubt does not impact general positing itself, for, in this case, the world’s existence is still presupposed. In a similar way, although an apple is revealed to be a replica, the actuality itself remains as it stands. Therefore, if general positing of the natural attitude is to be radically altered, something but all doubt concerning the natural world is necessarily demanded. In this regard, Husserl thought that radical alteration is made possible by epoché (Epoché, ἐποχή), which is originally derived from skepticism in ancient Greek philosophy, Pyrrhonism.2 In fact, Husserl did not learn of epoché directly from Pyrrhonism; instead, Descartes provided its inspiration.3 Namely, Husserl attempts to alter the natural attitude in reference to methodic doubt by which Descartes initiated modern philosophy. As explained above, for human beings living naturally, general positing is “something that lasts continuously throughout the whole duration of the attitude, i.e., throughout natural waking life” (Hua III/1, 62). Husserl points out that Descartes’s attempt to doubt universally would be of assistance to the natural attitude’s radical alteration, but would serve Husserl “only as a methodic expedient.” He does not simply follow Cartesian philosophy.4 According to Husserl, “We can attempt to doubt anything whatever, no matter how firmly convinced of it, even assured of it in an adequate evidence, we may be” (ibid.). As previously discussed, no individual doubt about givenness in the natural world can influence the natural attitude’s general positing. The whole attitude is radically altered so that the attempt to doubt universally necessarily “effects a certain annulment of positing” (Hua III/1, 63). We should suspend, exclude, and parenthesize all positing, including not only positing of all the world’s entities and other people but also the world horizon itself. My natural positing that the world objectively and substantially exists in space and time, the positing that entities, other people, meanings, and ideas constitute the actuality in which I live, think, and feel must be inverted. The daily attitude that

2 As Sextus Empiricus states, “Scepticism is an ability, or mental attitude, which opposes appearances to judgments in any way whatsoever, with the result that, owing to the equipollence of the objects and reasons thus opposed, we are brought firstly to a state of mental suspense and next to a state of ‘unperturbedness’ or quietude.” Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, in Sextus Empiricus, vol. 1 (The Loeb Classical Library), trans. and ed. Robert G. Bury (London: William Heinemann, Cambridge / Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1933), 7. 3 Descartes was significantly influenced by Pyrrhonism through reading a Latin translation of Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism. See Charles Larmore, “Descartes and Scepticism,” in The Blackwell guide to Descartes' Meditations, ed. Stephen Gaukroger (Malden / Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 17 ff. Regarding the relationship and difference between Cartesianism and Pyrrhonism, see Myles F. Burnyeat, “Idealism and Greek philosophy: what Descartes saw and Berkeley missed,” in Myles F. Burnyeat, Exploration in Ancient and Modern Philosophy, vol. 1 (Cambridge / New York / Melbourne / Madrid / Cape Town / Singapore / São Paulo / Delhi / Mexico City: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 245 ff. Furthermore, see Marjorie Grene, “Descartes and Skepticism,” The Review of Metaphysics 52, no. 3 (1999). 4 Husserl indeed criticizes the inadequacy of Descartes’ transcendentalism. See chapter 2 of this study.

11 unquestioningly accepts the world’s objectivity and actuality changes into the questioning, reflective attitude, namely the philosophical (phenomenological) attitude. We should bear in mind, however, that phenomenological epoché does not mean “transmutation of positing into counter positing, of position into negation,” but rather “we do not in any respect alter our conviction” (Hua III/1, 63). As Dan Zahavi points out, “It is of crucial importance not to misunderstand the purpose of epoché. We do not effect it in order to deny, doubt, neglect, abandon, or exclude reality from our research, but simply in order to suspend or neutralize a certain dogmatic attitude toward reality, that is, in order to be able to focus more narrowly and directly on the phenomenological given—the objects just as they appear.”5 What should be understood is that epoché is attentively and methodologically employed and effected to elucidate the subject–object problem. Thus, suspension of judgment does not signify phenomenology’s idealistic worldview in the Berkeleian sense, nor denial of the world’s actuality. In this sense, epoché is an epistemological term, not an ontological one. Phenomenology’s question is what conditions and structures underpin the world’s objectivity and actuality (entities, other people, and my empirical body and mind) within it in the first place, and further, how knowledge’s universality (in many cases, blindly established and accepted without questioning its meaning) in mathematics, logic, and natural sciences should be understood. To understand objectivity’s meaning is of great interest in phenomenology. This is why Husserl claims that epoché is indeed “compatible with the unshaken conviction of truth, even with the unshakable conviction of evident truth” (Hua III/1, 64). Through the natural attitude’s radical alteration, what sort of domain then remains or is unveiled? Is something regional to be investigated? Since, clearly, all positive sciences stand on the natural attitude, the unique domain for phenomenological investigation must differ from that of positive sciences. Husserl’s answer is simple: “consciousness (Bewußtsein),” or more precisely, “pure consciousness (reines Bewußtsein).” Since, by suspending all judgment about the world’s existence and all daily human life activities, the empirical and psychological mind’s positing is also parenthesized. Husserl uses the term “pure consciousness” or “transcendental subjectivity” for expressing consciousness of phenomenological investigation, to distinguish it from empirical and psychological consciousness. In the same manner that Descartes concludes that the act of doubting itself cannot be doubted, Husserl claims that the sphere of pure consciousness itself protects its own absoluteness from epoché: “Consciousness has, in itself, a being of its own, which in its own absolute essence, is not touched by the phenomenological exclusion” (Hua III/1, 68). The sphere of pure consciousness offers “a region of being which is of essential necessity quite unique and which can indeed become the field of a science of a novel kind: phenomenology” (ibid.).

5 Dan Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 45.

12 Along this line of thought, Husserl next attempts to clarify the essential structure of consciousness. After suspending all positing of being by epoché, Husserl claims that every being in the world is reduced to a conviction within transcendental subjectivity—this is, “phenomenological reduction.” Husserl needed to provide adequate accounts of what consciousness is in the first place, to shed light on how a conviction is formed in consciousness. Before examining phenomenological reduction’s aim and scope, I review how Husserl extracts the essence of consciousness and what can be viewed specifically as grounds of undoubtedness if we continue along the line of approach that Husserl suggests.

2. Intentionality, Noesis, and Noema Intentionality is a specific essential characteristic of consciousness, defined as “directedness” or “directing-itself-toward” by the conscious state. The term intentionality is originally derived from scholastic philosophy, but Husserl learned this concept through his teacher Franz Brentano.6 “Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself, although they do not all do so in the same way. In presentation something is presented, in judgment something is affirmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired and so on,”7 as claimed by Brentano. Crucially, however, Husserl does not accept intentionality just as Brentano defines it, but refines it into a phenomenologically legitimate concept. As Heidegger argues, “Brentano wavers in two directions. On one hand, he takes the ‘intentional object’ to be the entity itself in its being. Then again it is taken as the how of its being-apprehended unseparated from the entity. […] Intentionality is identified with the psychic.”8 Namely, since phenomenology aims to clarify objectivity’s conditions, intentionality cannot be understood within the traditional subject–object schema. Intentionality does not mean the mind as entity is always directed to the object itself, but rather, to the phenomenological principle to grasp essential conditions and structures that constitute what “something” lies beyond the Cartesian dualism of material entity and spirit. Put otherwise, intentionality as an essence of consciousness provides light to elucidate the transcendental problem. In Ideas I, Husserl argues, “It belongs to the essence of every actional (aktuell) cogito to be consciousness of something,” but also, this characteristic applies to the modified cogitatio, namely presentification (Vergegenwärtigung), such as memory (Erinnerung) and fantasy (Phantasie) (Hua III/1, 73). In addition, Husserl declares that all lived experiences commonly sharing intentionality are called “intentional lived experiences,” and as far as they are conscious of something, they are

6 See Martin Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena, trans. Theodore Kisiel (Bloomington / Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992), 27 f. 7 Franz Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, trans. Linda L. McAlister (London / New York: Routledge, 2015), 92 f. 8 Heidegger, History, 46.

13 “intentionally referred” to this something. Notably, however, “Here we are not speaking of a relation between some psychological occurrence—called a lived experience—and another real factual existence—called an object (Gegenstand) —nor of a psychological connection taking place in objective (objektiv) actuality between the one and the other” (Hua III/1, 74). Furthermore, Husserl does not claim for intentionality that an object (especially a material entity) is constituted in the subject and that the world’s existence is ultimately reduced to the ideal. Hence, Husserl does not support subjectivism or objectivism, but presents a new paradigm of cognitive structure in which the subject and object are not separated, but in which consciousness always already includes an intentional object within itself. Intentionality is considered not in the subject–object schema but in the immanence–transcendence schema. As Heidegger claims, “It is not the case that a perception first becomes intentional by having something physical enter into relation with the psychic, and that it would no longer be intentional if this reality did not exist. It is rather the case that perception, correct or deceptive, is in itself intentional. Intentionality is not a property which would accrue to perception and belongs to it in certain instances. As perception, it is intrinsically intentional, regardless of whether the perceived is in reality on hand or not.”9 In intentional analysis, phenomenology’s aim is to understand a variety of objectivity (Gegenständlichkeit) including actuality, reality, ideality, and imaginariness from different modi of each objectivity’s givenness to consciousness. Husserl divided cognition’s structure into two parts: conscious act (cogitatio, noesis) and conscious object (cogitatum, noema). According to Husserl, “Each passing cogito intends its cogitatum, not with an undifferentiated blankness, but as a cogito with a describable structure of multiplicities, a structure having a quite definite noetic–noematic composition, which, by virtue of its essential nature, pertains to just this identical cogitatum” (Hua I, 78). The point is that an intentional object’s (noema’s) meaning depends on the givenness of each intentional conscious act (noesis), yet at the same time, noema essentially includes something not included within noesis: “Intentional analysis is guided by the fundamental cognition that, as a consciousness, every cogito is indeed in the broadest sense a meaning of its meant, but that, at any moment, this something meant is more something meant (with something more) than what is meant at that moment explicitly” (Hua I, 84). Directed toward noema, noesis transcends itself in the intentional relation. In other words, it belongs to cognition’s essence to see merely a perspective of the object, but even so, I always produce what the object is, as a whole, from limited information. As Toru Tani indicates, appearance always already exceeds itself toward what appears.10 Husserl calls the intentional conscious act “reell (reell) components” and the intentional

9 Heidegger, History, 31. 10 Toru Tani, The Physis of Consciousness (Tokyo: Keiso-shobo, 1998), 96.

14 conscious object “intentional correlates.” Reell components consist of “hyletic (hyletisch)” and “noetic (noetisch)” moments, and intentional correlates signify “noematic (noematisch)” moments. “Corresponding in every case to the multiplicity of data pertaining to the really inherent noetic content, there is a multiplicity of data, demonstrable in actual pure intuition, in a correlative ‘noematic content’, or in short, in the ‘noema’” (Hua III/1, 181 f.). Correlativity between noesis as reell components and noema as intentional correlates necessarily belongs to the essence of intentional lived experiences: Perceiving has the perceived; remembering has the remembered; and judging has the judged. Important to understand from intentional lived experiences’ essential structure is that we always produce a certain belief as meaning (noema) from conditions given to consciousness (noesis). If conditions change, meaning also changes. In this very sense, Seiji Takeda paraphrases the process of epoché and phenomenological reduction in simple terms: phenomenology is a “study of conditions of belief formation.”11 I think belief formation clearly presents phenomenology’s aim and scope. Here, more attention should be paid to keenly distinguishing noema from the real object existing in actuality. “The tree simpliciter, the physical thing belonging to nature, is nothing less than this perceived tree as perceived which, as perceptual sense, inseparably belongs to the perception. The tree simpliciter can burn up, be resolved into its chemical elements, etc. But the sense (Sinn)—the sense of this perception, something belonging necessarily to its essence—cannot burn up; it has no chemical elements, no forces, no real properties” (Hua III/1, 205). Here, we should remember that phenomenology treats transcendentally reduced phenomena. Namely, the true identity of “transcendence” is nothing more or less than noema; but noema itself is found in immanence, so transcendence, realistically, and substantially posited as entity mediated through opposing processes of epoché and transcendental reduction is considered. The noematic sense cannot be identified with “actual object” in reality, in that noema, of its essence, belongs to the domain of immanence, but actual object, in the nature of things, belongs to transcendence. Even if the actual object does not exist in truth, we cannot doubt the noematic sense of the same object as an immanental given to consciousness. In short, intentionality, which Husserl adopted from Brentano, belongs to the essence of consciousness to be consciousness of something, to direct itself toward something. Intentional lived experience consists of “reell (Reell) components” and “intentional correlates”: noesis is the active mental act that intentionally integrates hyletic contents (sensuous data) into noema (meaning). However, we must remember that within the phenomenological attitude, cognition’s intentional analysis also extracts this schema, that is, the noesis–noema schema cannot be confounded with the

11 Seiji Takeda, “Renaissance of Phenomenology,” in Seiji Takeda, Husserl’s “The Idea of Phenomenology” (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2012), 203 ff.

15 one within natural attitude, for instance, the Kantian schema: cognitive structures such as sensation, understanding, and reason, with imagination as a mediator that synthesizes sensory data (gained through sensation) into the category of understanding. As far as phenomenology opens itself to further examination and confirmation through each investigator’s reflective insight, it can be called “phenomenological.” By reviewing in more detail the difference between perception of something immanent and of something transcendent, the next section illuminates what kind of possibility intentional analysis offers phenomenology.

3. Indubitability of the Perception of Something Immanent Intentionality’s discovery provides a hint for the transcendental problem; by that discovery, the question changes radically from “How does the subject meet the object itself?” to “What conditions convince us something is objective or transcendent?” Phenomenology claims that, in principle, agreement between subject and object is impossible simply because I cannot examine my cognition’s objectivity from a standpoint outside my cognition; as Descartes argued in the discussion of methodic doubt, the examination itself inevitably gets to the subjective.12 The claim that the subject and object have no agreement is a starting point in phenomenology, but phenomenology does not fall into relativism because conditions that produce objectivity and universal cognition through examination of belief formation’s structure can still be investigated. However, if nothing is certain, at least for the subject, identifying conditions of object constitution is impossible. Put otherwise, something undoubtable is required to extract conditions of belief formation; as Husserl says, “Our purpose is to discover a new scientific domain, one that is to be gained by the method of parenthesizing” (Hua III/1, 65). To begin, according to Husserl, there is “a fundamentally essential difference between being as lived experience and being as a physical thing. Of essential necessity it belongs to the regional essence, lived experience (specifically to the regional particularization, cogitatio) that it can be perceived in an immanental perception; fundamentally and necessarily it belongs to the essence of a spatial physical thing that it cannot be so perceived” (Hua III/1, 87). This distinction between being as lived experience and being as a physical thing is critical. While being as lived experience is seen directly in immanence through reflection, a physical thing is not seen in immanence because the physical thing is, in principle, transcendence. For instance, when I reflectively see an apple’s givenness in immanental perception, I discover its red, round, shiny hyletic contents and its noema (meaning), which the intentional act of noesis integrates. However, a real apple as a physical thing cannot be found anywhere in consciousness; it exists in the actuality transcending consciousness. As Husserl indicates, “Contrast between something immanent and something transcendent

12 Regarding Cartesian doubt, see chapter 2 of this study.

16 includes an essentially fundamental difference between the corresponding kinds of givenness” (Hua III/1, 88). “We perceive the physical thing by virtue of its being ‘adumbrated (abschattet)’ in respect of all the determinations which, in a given case, ‘actually’ and properly ‘fall within the scope of’ perception. A lived experience is not adumbrated” (Hua III/1, 88). In the perception of transcendence, the object is given in one perspective, namely through adumbration (Abschattung), and the object’s other sides always remain as an endless undetermined horizon. On the other hand, in something immanent, namely in lived experience, within each experience itself lies no undetermined horizon. Only the structure of noesis and noema expresses the lived experience’s entirety: for an existent belonging to the lived experience, “anything like an ‘appearing,’ a being presented, through adumbrations makes no sense whatever” (Hua III/1, 88). Husserl’s discussion on the difference between something immanent and something transcendent is complicated and might be confusing. Most difficult is that lived experience is not adumbrated. Thinking naturally, a lived experience can also be regarded as partial cognition of the whole object. Thus, we seem to see the relation of adumbration and the object itself even in lived experience, by expecting the continuous process of each passing lived experience (as if each lived experience functions as adumbration and the stream of lived experiences constitutes the object). However, Husserl’s point lies in a different location. When I reflect on a lived experience through immanental perception, only and all I can see is the structure of noesis and noema, that is, I discover the intentional conscious act and the intentional conscious object. As far as the structure of noesis and noema is concerned, there is no adumbration at all. Thus, Husserl stresses the essentially fundamental difference between corresponding kinds of givenness, for phenomenology’s way of thinking is not “I see one perspective of the object that has already actually existed,” but “I am convinced by noesis and noema that the object actually exists.” The natural view (subject–object schema) is radically converted to the phenomenological view (immanence–transcendence schema). More importantly, a critical distinction lies between something immanent and something transcendent: indubitability of perception of something immanent and dubitability of perception of something transcendent. Husserl explains, “Every perception of something immanent necessarily guarantees the existence of its object. If reflective seizing-upon is directed to a lived experience of mine, I have seized upon something absolute itself, the factual being (Dasein) of which is essentially incapable of being negated, i.e., the insight that it is essentially impossible for it not to exist; it would be a countersense to believe it possible that a lived experience given in that manner does not in truth exist” (Hua III/1, 96). On the other hand, it belongs to the essence of perception of something transcendent that “a doubt is conceivable because, of essential necessity, the possibility of the non-being of the world is never excluded” (Hua III/1, 99). For instance, even though I see an apple on the table and think I am sure the apple is on the table, it could happen that the apple turns out to be a replica of an apple or a trick image of the apple, now that I look closer. In this sense,

17 dubitability always tags on after we perceive something transcendent; the possibility of non-being cannot be excluded from transcendent being. However, in perception of something immanent, I no longer doubt the conscious object’s givenness, or I have no motive to doubt what is certainly given to consciousness. For instance, when I reflect on the immanental givenness of an apple, I see the apple’s hyletic contents—red, round, and shiny and its meaning as a whole, what the apple is. That the apple’s hyletic contents and meaning are given to my consciousness and I reflectively see and confirm them in immanence, then, can be never overthrown, whatever occurs in the future. If in truth, the apple is revealed to be a replica, the conviction that its image and meaning are certainly given to consciousness does not alter in any sense. This is why Husserl calls the sphere of lived experiences the “absolute sphere,” in which “there is no room for conflict, illusion, or being otherwise” (Hua III/1, 98). Perception of something immanent, that is, reflection on lived experience, provides grounds for undoubtedness. Thus, the heart of phenomenological thinking beats so that transcendence is constituted in immanence, rather than in how the subject meets the object itself. Reflection on lived experiences provides grounds for undoubtedness, and hence, the starting point of phenomenological analysis. However, the question why phenomenology takes the position of transcendentalism still remains unanswered. In other words, what is the effect of epoché and phenomenological reduction? What is aimed at in Husserlian phenomenology? The next section clarifies the aim and scope of phenomenological reduction.

4. Husserl’s Phenomenological Reduction Phenomenological reduction constitutes the core of phenomenology. Simply stated, phenomenological reduction regards all beings as a conviction constituted in transcendental subjectivity, based on the operation of epoché, which suspends the natural attitude’s general positing. Thus, the fundamental question in phenomenology is not how the subject meets the object itself, but in what conditions transcendence is constituted in immanence. “Reality and world are names here precisely for certain valid unities of sense, unities of ‘sense’ related to certain concatenations of absolute, of pure consciousness which, by virtue of their essence, bestow sense and demonstrate sense-validity precisely thus and not otherwise,” as Husserl states (Hua III/1, 120). Yet even after effecting epoché and phenomenological reduction, “We have not lost anything but rather have gained the whole of absolute being which, rightly understood, contains within itself, ‘constitutes’ within itself, all worldly transcendencies” (Hua III/1, 107). Phenomenology does not deny the world’s reality or claim that the world is a bundle of ideals. Instead, phenomenology attempts to understand the world’s meaning. However, a question remains unanswered. Can we utilize already-existing knowledge of natural and social sciences or achievements of traditional Western philosophy? According to Husserl, if we

18 exclude the natural world where entities, psychophysical beings, and human beings live and act, “all individual objectivities which become constituted by axiological and practical functionings of consciousness” are excluded as well (Hua III/1, 122). Namely, not only all cultural formations, works of technical and fine arts, knowledge of sciences, and aesthetic and practical values, but also every form of social system, such as state, custom, law, and religion, is excluded from phenomenological investigation of pure consciousness (ibid.). As a result, all natural and social sciences, the existence of God, and the transcendency of eidetics are to be suspended by epoché (Hua III/1, 122 ff.). Phenomenology limits its own sphere of investigation to pure consciousness; without any presupposition, I directly see and purely describe how an event is given to consciousness. Phenomenology’s thoroughness might visit feelings of strangeness on those who work in other disciplinary fields or follow other practices. The concept of phenomenology seems far removed from daily life and almost impossible to realize. Some might criticize Husserl himself, saying that Descartes actually provided him with the inspiration of epoché (isn’t this a presupposition?). They might question, since language itself is culturally and socially formed, whether Husserl could describe immanental givenness without language. Husserl seems to throw straws into the wind. These critiques of Husserl are certainly true in the sense that no one can completely escape all socio-cultural formations and preoccupied ideas derived from the environment. Everyone exists and thinks within certain social and historical limitations; in principle, every human existence and cognition is finite. However, Husserl emphasizes that we should not unquestioningly accept our heritage from tradition and history, but should examine its validity according to the undoubtedness of immanental perception. If what is given by society, science, custom, and history were no longer interpreted “under duress of prejudgments (Vorurteile)” (Hua XXV, 61), there would be no way to examine and assess its validity, so belief conflicts caused by plural worldviews could no longer be conciliated. To absolutize and fix the order between central and peripheral is the most dangerous form of thinking, for it eliminates other values and worldviews, at least in some situations, through irrational discrimination and violent acts. Honestly, however, understanding why a phenomenologist cannot remain within the natural attitude is difficult; indeed, Husserl does not clearly present phenomenological reduction’s aim and scope. Certainly, in The Idea of Phenomenology, Husserl finds phenomenology on a clear epistemological concern and defines phenomenology as “critique of knowledge (Erkenntniskritik)” (Hua II, 3). However, to what end the critique of knowledge is conducted remains obscure; that is, Husserl does not clarify how the epistemological problem impacts the ontological issue. In addition, in the lecture The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, Husserl stresses the absence of motivation for phenomenological reduction: “One need not assign any motives as to why phenomenology disengages the positing of experience. As phenomenology, it has no such motives” (Hua XIII, 156

19 f.).13 Therefore, true motivation for phenomenological reduction still seems controversial. In what follows, I examine phenomenological reduction’s genuine intention in terms of how critique of knowledge impacts the ontological issue. To begin, I state the following: phenomenological reduction is conducted as an epistemological concern; namely, for the sake of epistemological aporia’s elucidation through a viewpoint’s radical alteration from unquestioning acceptance of the actuality, reality, or world to phenomenological reflection on the global constitution’s essential conditions, by methodologically reducing every being to my conviction. For instance, thinking’s natural order is that there exists a desk, and therefore, I see the image “desk.” On the other hand, phenomenological thinking changes thinking’s natural order: in consciousness, I see an image of desk, and therefore, am convinced that there exists a desk. Here, we can easily see that in phenomenology, general subject–object order is radically altered to immanence–transcendence order. Phenomenology claims that no absolute truth exists separately from transcendental subjectivity. Epoché then follows this insight and all positing of being is suspended or excluded. Therefore, all—including entity, meaning, value, essence, and idea—are methodologically regarded as my conviction. Not only that, all knowledge and achievements of mathematics, logic, natural sciences, social sciences, the humanities, and religious dogmas are parenthesized: “To avail oneself ourselves of nothing but what we can make essentially evident by observing consciousness itself in its pure immanence” (Hua III/1, 127). Then, belief formation’s essential conditions, upon which others also agree, are investigated. First, phenomenology sees essential conditions of constitution of object and the world within transcendental subjectivity, but the next step is to examine common essential structures of object and the world in the dimension of intersubjectivity. This is why Husserl had to tackle the constitution of other ego in Cartesian Meditations’ fifth meditation, based on the empathy principle (Einfühlung). In this sense, phenomenology interprets objectivity and actuality as something intersubjectively consitituted and validated; objectivity and actuality do not exist in themselves. As previously discussed, the sphere of perception of something immanent supports indubitability, which provides grounds of undoubtedness of object constitution. On both noesis and noema sides, I cannot doubt their givenness to consciousness seen through reflection in immanence, even though the real object in truth does not exist. Without any presupposition and doxastic, a phenomenologist

13 Notably, as Takashi Yoshikawa states, this passage does not mean there is no motivation at all for reduction, but rather only private motivations for starting phenomenology should be excluded from phenomenological investigation: in his Göttingen age, Husserl is thinking a philosophy that turned its regard to private or historical-communal concerns is inevitably involved in a relative worldview and abandons the objectivity of truth, goodness, and beauty. Takashi Yoshikawa, “How Does Philosophy Talk about Way of Life?: Revisit the Problem of Motivation for Phenomenological Reduction,” Contemporary Thought (Gendai-Shisou) 37-16 (2009): 52 ff.

20 attempts direct access to things in themselves. In what conditions am I convinced of the object’s existence? In phenomenology, this is a basic form of question. Phenomenological reduction radically alters the naive natural attitude that accepts the existence of the world and entities within it without questioning, transforming it to the reflective phenomenological attitude that attentively thematizes these things in intentional relation to transcendental subjectivity or intersubjectivity. Of importance, however, is understanding that phenomenological reduction itself is not phenomenology’s end, but only its beginning. Regarding this point, I claim that phenomenological reduction opens a new ontological possibility of generating common understanding in meaning and value without oppressing differences of value, sensitivity, and concern among individuals, cultures, societies, and other possible communities. 14 Phenomenological reduction’s value can be demonstrated where intersubjective consensus is needed and does not coerce diversity. For instance, we utilize phenomenology to deter violence and create rules for coexistence, to eliminate irrational discrimination and prejudice, to deepen mutual understanding, to adjust conflicts among theories and engage in productive debate, and to obtain significant concepts’ essences for human life and society, for example, freedom, equality, and justice. Wherever such motivations appear, phenomenology can assist in creating common understanding. Husserl sheds light on conditions of commonality and differences of cognition, and phenomenological reduction provides innovative access to cognition’s essence. As long as someone dwells on how to meet the object itself, the epistemological aporia will never be solved. As I review in chapter 2, Descartes is the first Western philosopher who recognizes that one cannot examine one’s cognitive validity from outside it. Certainly, Descartes’s doubt first offers a glimpse into cognition’s essence, but from a phenomenological viewpoint, he places too much trust in the power of God and mathematics. Only Husserl succeeds in radically changing perspective by stating that all cognitions are originally constituted as my conviction. This statement innovatively revolutionizes epistemology.

Conclusion For Husserl, phenomenology promises renovation of social sciences and the humanities. In a manner of speaking, he attempts to return to the Western philosophical tradition that had thematized the world and human life’s meaning and value. A central problem since Plato has been the question concerning truth, goodness, and beauty. In the late nineteenth century, however, positivism began to colonize the philosophical domain, and the positive approach imported from natural sciences was

14 The term ontology refers to regional ontology, namely eidetic science. I clarify the distinction between eidetic science within the natural attitude (ontology without critique of knowledge) and eidetic science within the transcendental attitude (ontology with epistemological validity) in chapter 3 of this study.

21 incompatible with philosophy because it merely treats observable, mathematically determinable events. The essence of truth, goodness, or beauty is, of course, not observable nor mathematically determinable. Untrue, however, is that philosophers did nothing in this situation: some actually found a new way to distinguish the philosophical method from the positive method (e.g., Wilhelm Dilthey and Heinrich Rickert). To counteract positivism’s emergence, Husserl was also situated in the current of German thought, but his originality lies in his re-examination of grounds of cognition and knowledge. Indeed, Husserl’s concept of phenomenological reduction was found nowhere but in Husserl. At first sight, Husserl’s strategy seems a peculiar proposal: every cognition is regarded as the subject’s conviction, and all cultural and social products, for instance, mythos, religion, law, and custom, are originally validated at the subjectivity level by certain corresponding conditions of belief formation. The point is that Husserl’s is a methodological proposal for the sake of extrication from epistemological aporia. Certainly, Husserl stands neither on the side of naive idealism nor of materialism. Husserl effects epoché and phenomenological reduction radically to alter the natural attitude’s general positing. Then, he clarifies how an object is constituted in transcendental subjectivity by analyzing essential structures of consciousness, such as intentionality, noesis, and noema. Furthermore, according to Husserl, perception of something immanent and that of something transcendent differ in that the former is not doubtable in nature, but the latter always leaves room for doubt. The sphere of immanence is a privileged place where I can directly see how and in what conditions an object is constituted. This is the brief process of phenomenological reduction. After the reduction, every being is considered my conviction, but this is the beginning—not the end—of phenomenology. Starting from transcendental subjectivity’s relativity, phenomenological investigation aims to extract intersubjectivity’s essential conditions. Especially in chapters 6 and 7 of this paper, I argue the dimension of intersubjectivity. Importantly, phenomenological reduction is conducted to elucidate the subject–object problem, but simultaneously, epistemological elucidation lays out a new possibility for ontological issues. Husserlian phenomenology’s principle can be applied, but not dogmatically, to the ontology of meaning and value, particularly to social phenomena around freedom, equality, justice, and discrimination. Phenomenology’s aim and scope are not limited to epistemology, but range to every discipline and practice as far as they demand intersubjective consensus without oppression and violence.

22 Chapter 2 Defending Cartesianism in Phenomenology Introduction At the outset, Husserl establishes phenomenology upon epistemological concerns. Namely, phenomenology is defined as “critique of knowledge,” which inquires “How can knowledge be sure that it corresponds to things as they exist in themselves, that it ‘makes contact’ with them” (Hua II, 3)? To begin eidetics of cognition, Husserl takes his initial clue from Descartes, that is, Husserl follows the lead of the “Cartesian Meditation on Doubt (Cartesianische Zweifelsbetrachtung)” (Hua II, 3). In this regard, inquiring into epistemology’s meaning in phenomenology and defending Cartesianism in phenomenology seem superficially meaningless. In previous research, however, Cartesianism is often viewed as a negative phenomenological factor in Husserl’s divergence from the Cartesian way and a swift review of the relation between phenomenology and positive sciences (e.g., brain science and developmental psychology) follows. For instance, Kern argues, “In its essence, Husserl’s philosophy is scarcely Cartesian at all. At most, its basic tendency toward an apodictic and absolute evidence provides a general and vague parallel with Descartes. […] In The Paris Lectures and Cartesian Meditations, Husserl explains that his philosophy could be taken as a new Cartesianism; but in so doing he lets himself be pulled too strongly by a single idea, as well as by the purely external context in which the lectures were delivered.”1 Furthermore, Bernet claims, “In the current philosophical context, a phenomenology that starts from the apodictic self-givenness of intentional consciousness and that indicates its transcendental-constitutive accomplishments and the implied idealism is hardly convincing. Thus, even before one ventures into phenomenology, one should already have parted with Cartesianism.”2 As Kern and Bernet suggest, Cartesianism’s role in phenomenology still remains controversial. On one hand, apparently, Husserl employs Cartesian doubt to institute phenomenological reduction and to find transcendental idealism. On the other hand, some phenomenologists maintain that phenomenology’s Cartesian aspect is open to misconstruction in that phenomenology is thought limited to a sort of outdated cogito-centrism that cannot describe the world’s reality. In this chapter, I defend Cartesianism in phenomenology according to its contribution to fundamental elucidation of epistemological aporia (subject–object problem). It can be argued that the motive of Cartesian doubt

1 Iso Kern, “The Three Ways to the Transcendental Phenomenological Reduction in the Philosophy of Edmund Husserl,” trans. Frederick A. Elliston and Peter McCormick, in Husserl: Expositions and Appraisals, ed. Frederick A. Elliston and Peter McCormick (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1977), p. 145. 2 Rudolf Bernet, “Transcendental Phenomenology?,” trans. Hanne Jacobs and Trevor Perri, in Phenomenology in a New Key: Between Analysis and History, ed. Jeffrey Bloechl and Nicolas de Warren (Cham Heidelberg / New York / Dordrecht / London: Springer, 2015), p. 117.

23 is always alive in Husserl. It forms a vital portion of Husserlian phenomenology. However, this does not mean that Husserlian phenomenology corresponds precisely to Cartesian transcendentalism. Indeed, Husserl criticizes Descartes from the viewpoint of transcendent subjectivity and transcendental realism. Phenomenology is thus determined to be radicalized Cartesianism.

1. Cartesian Doubt and Ideal of Universal Science Modernity began with disaffection from the authority of the church and Christianity, but more precisely, modernity could not entirely eliminate their effects. At least from the philosophical viewpoint, however, modern philosophy refused the theological world explanation; instead it launched a project of global, universal explication based on human reason, in tandem with mathematics without theological dogma and Aristotelean logic in scholastic philosophy. After the Renaissance and the Reformation passed, Descartes fired the engine of this philosophical enterprise. For Descartes, the fundamental problem lies in the epistemological aporia: how is it possible for the subject to meet the object itself because, if this aporia were not resolved, establishing a basis for universal sciences would become impossible? While in scholastic philosophy, argument for God’s existence always remains at the heart of Descartes, instead of theological dogma and Aristotelian philosophy to provide knowledge’s ultimate foundation, he determines evidence of cogito as deductive inference’s first term. The strategy employed by Descartes—eager to create a basis for all sciences from the absolute presuppositionless—is to doubt anything doubtful in the world. After the operation of all-encompassing methodic doubt, Descartes sees whether any undoubted residuum remains in the world; in the end, he finds the act of cogito itself undoubtable. What drives Descartes to the cognition problem is eternal adoration and unbending determination toward an absolute scientific foundation. He writes in Meditations on the First Philosophy, “I was convinced of the necessity of undertaking once in my life to rid myself of all the opinions I had adopted, and of commencing anew the work of building from the foundation, if I desired to establish a firm and abiding superstructure in the sciences.”3 Simultaneously, however, he is aware of the pressure confronting this transcendental project, saying, “There is nothing at all that I formerly believed to be true of which it is impossible to doubt.”4 According to Descartes, while “All that I have, up to this moment, accepted as possessed of the highest truth and certainty, I received either from or through the senses,” these senses sometimes mislead and deceive us so that we cannot place in them absolute confidence.5 In this regard, we are

3 René Descartes, Meditations on the First Philosophy, in René Descartes, Discourse on Method and the Meditations, trans. John Veitch (New York: Prometheus Books, 1989), 73. This Cartesian motif is succeeded by into Husserl. Indeed, Husserl quotes this phrase in Cartesian Meditations (Hua I, 44). 4 Descartes, Meditations, 76. 5 Descartes, Meditations, 74.

24 convinced that there seems to be no undoubted thing in the world. However, how can we know “there is no undoubted thing in the world?” From where does evidence of this proposition come? In the first place, a doubt is held to make a basis of undoubtedness for all sciences, as Descartes maintains that “Although the utility of a doubt so general may not be manifest at first sight, it is nevertheless of the greatest, since it delivers us from all prejudice, and affords the easiest pathway by which the mind may withdraw itself from the senses, and finally, makes it impossible for us to doubt wherever we afterwards discover truth.”6 While all sense data and the existence of entity, concept, or idea remain ultimately doubtful, the act of doubt itself must not be doubtful. Evidence of cogitatio provides grounds of undoubtedness and forms the first term to deduce objective knowledge of the world. Even though I cannot completely eliminate the possibility of being one “who is possessed at once of the highest power and the deepest cunning, who is constantly employing all his ingenuity in deceiving me,”7 Descartes believes that the deceiving being cannot nullify my existence, at least as long as I am conscious that I am something, namely something thinking. Along this line of thought, Descartes concludes, “This proposition (pronunciatum) I am, I exist, is necessarily true each time it is expressed by me, or conceived in my mind.”8 Conducting operation of methodic doubt, Descartes becomes convinced that the act of cogito itself cannot be doubted. We should note, however, that evidence of cogito does not directly assure objective knowledge, for certainty of cogito can be distinguished from that of judgment concerning authenticity. In other words, even though “I think” proves “I am,” merely my thinking and existence does not satisfy objectivity of judgment concerning what is true and what is false. Consequently, Descartes must have proved the existence of God, who assures judgment of all that is clearly and distinctly perceived by cogito, that is, by reason. According to Descartes, “Those that represent substances are something more, and contain in themselves, so to speak, more objective reality [that is, participate by representation in higher degrees of being or perfection] than those that represent only modes or accidents.”9 Additionally, by law of causality, he claims, “There must at least be as much reality in the efficient and total cause as in its effect,”10 and therefore, “Not only that what cannot be produced by what is not, but likewise that the more perfect—in other words, that which contains in itself more reality—cannot be the effect of the less perfect.”11 Put simply, Descartes reasons that the presence of something perfect cannot arise from the presence of something imperfect in either “objective reality” or “actual or

6 Descartes, Meditations, 68. 7 Descartes, Meditations, 79. 8 Descartes, Meditations, 79. 9 Descartes, Meditations, 90. 10 Descartes, Meditations, 90. 11 Descartes, Meditations, 90.

25 formal reality.”12 That I indeed have the concept of “God” as “a substance infinite [eternal, immutable], independent, all-knowing, all-powerful, and by which I myself, and every other thing that exists, if any such there be, were created”13 indicates that God must exist because I, who am not perfect, cannot be the origin of the infinite God. Therefore, according to Descartes, God’s existence assures the right of human reason and the validity of reasonable judgment: “It is impossible for him ever to deceive me, for in all fraud and deceit there is a certain imperfection. […] I am conscious that I possess a certain faculty of judging [or discerning truth from error], which I doubtless received from God, along with whatever else is mine; and since it is impossible that he should will to deceive me, it is likewise certain that he had not given me a faculty that will ever lead me into error, provided I use it aright.”14 Descartes believes that validity of judgment by reason is pledged by God’s conscience. In summary, by conducting methodic doubt, Descartes reaches the undoubtedness of cogito, which is the act of consciousness itself. Beginning from the evidence of cogito, he becomes convinced that the world’s universal truth can be deduced as definite knowledge in the mathematical order. However, that Descartes must prove God’s existence by mathematical inference paradoxically demonstrates modernity’s beginning, in which medieval, communal religious belief—God’s existence and the soul’s immortality—gradually collapsed. Without the existence of God and mathematics, Cartesian doubt could lapse directly into nihilism, for evidence only of cogito proves nothing other than solipsism. In this regard, Descartes stands in a precarious position. One step ahead, it’s all darkness.15 Indeed, since phenomenology is not permitted to presuppose God or any mathematical method, Husserl needs to pursue other avenues to universal sciences.

2. Husserl’s Divergence from the Cartesian Way Phenomenology is modified Cartesianism, just as Husserl calls transcendental phenomenology “neo-Cartesianism” (Hua I, 43) and addresses the importance of Meditationes de prima philosophia (Hua I, 47). In other words, phenomenology can be viewed as the outcome of Husserl’s confrontation with Descartes. Husserl deepens phenomenology’s meaning and extends the range of phenomenological enterprise by repeatedly reexamining the role of Cartesianism inherent in phenomenology. However, as Bernet and Kern claim, whether phenomenology should be regarded as a sort of Cartesianism is still controversial. While Husserl determines transcendental phenomenology as

12 Descartes uses “objective reality” to refer to representative reality in ideas and “actual or formal reality” to refer to reality of things themselves. 13 Descartes, Meditations, 93. 14 Descartes, Meditations, 98 f. 15 See Hitohiko Tanaka, Journey of Descartes / Dream of Descartes: Read Discourse on the Method (Tokyo: Iwanami, 2014), 329 f.

26 neo-Cartesianism, at the University of Freiburg from 1923 to 1924, he presents a lecture titled First Philosophy. In this lecture’s second part “Theory of Phenomenological reduction,” Husserl initially treats the specific process of phenomenological reduction based on Cartesian doubt, but gradually, he begins to stress advantages of a new way—through intentional psychology. Furthermore, in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (from here on, Crisis), Husserl calls the transcendental phenomenology schema, presented in Ideas I, the Cartesian way and reflectively questions it; the Cartesian way “has a great shortcoming: while it leads to the transcendental ego in one leap, as it were, it brings this ego into view as apparently empty of content, since there can be no preparatory explication; so one is at a loss, at first, to know what has been gained by it, much less how, starting with this, a completely new sort of fundamental science, decisive for philosophy, has been attained” (Hua VI, 158). Thus, the question is to what extent Husserl distances himself from Descartes. Previous research has already much discussed Husserl’s divergence from the Cartesian way. Ludwig Landgrebe, a disciple and Husserl’s private assistant in his later life, attaches much value to Husserl’s divergence from the Cartesian way in First Philosophy; he sees Husserl’s monumental philosophical divergence from Cartesianism. According to Landgrebe, Husserl’s divergence in First Philosophy can be regarded as an inevitable consequence of phenomenological reduction’s radicalization. He quotes a sentence from Husserl’s 1935 draft: “Philosophy as science, as serious, rigorous, even apodictic rigorous science—the dream is over” (Hua VI, 508). Furthermore, Landgrebe claims that the first philosophy seeking rigorous science’s absolute foundation has already been abandoned; the Cartesian approach to world cognition, starting from apodictic evidence of transcendental subjectivity as the absolute undoubted location, has been relinquished.16 In line with Landgrebe’s discussion, Husserl becomes inescapably aware that he has no choice but to relinquish the leading idea of phenomenology’s ground discipline with the title First Philosophy.17 First philosophy as universal science is based on the belief that transcendental subjectivity’s apodictic evidence enables the creation of a foundation for all sciences by reference to Cartesian doubt and evidence of cogito. However, Landgrebe indicates that where Husserl discusses phenomenology’s historical background in the First Philosophy lecture, he gradually realizes that phenomenology holds “the secret longing of the whole Western-European thought.” 18 Thus, following Landgrebe, Husserl’s situating phenomenology in historical necessity compels him to give up the dream of first philosophy inherited from Descartes so that the phrase “philosophy as science, as serious, rigorous, even apodictic rigorous science—the dream is over” can be regarded as

16 Ludwig Landgrebe, Der Weg der Phänomenologie: Das Problem einer ursprünglichen Erfahrung, 3. Aufl. (Darmstadt: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1969), 186 ff. 17 Landgrebe, Der Weg, 166. 18 Landgrebe, Der Weg, 170.

27 merkmal (characteristic) of Husserl’s divergence from Cartesianism.19 On the other hand, some have argued against Landgrebe’s position. First, Hans-Georg Gadamer rejects Landgrebe’s claim. According to him, Husserl’s words “philosophy as science, as serious, rigorous, even apodictic rigorous science—the dream is over” should not be interpreted as his true intention. Gadamar states that Husserl instead thinks, “The idea of scientific philosophy cannot be continued without “explicit historical justification.”20 Furthermore, Ernst Tugendhat holds the same opinion as Gadamer: “Husserl has, although he has dismissed the dogmatism of apodicticity in his universal theory of truth, held on to the idea of philosophy as apodictic science till last.”21 By the same token, Ernst Orth points out that “autonomous—and that is ‘rigorous’—science is a dream which is over in Germany because the ‘new worldview’ makes it impossible; Husserl distinguishes from this political worldview such a worldview based on autonomous science. Thus, he combines his ideal of philosophy as rigorous science, which he polemically had distanced from the theme of worldview earlier in 1910/1911, positively with the problem of worldview.”22 Thus, Orth concludes that Husserl would not abandon the idea of rigorous science and rationality, so his critique can be thought to help mark true understanding of rationalism.23 As explained, Husserl’s divergence from Cartesianism does not simply indicate that he discards first philosophy and rigorous science. Rather, we should regard his divergence as an attempt to amend a strategy to reach and realize transcendental phenomenology’s genuine form. The idea of Descartes is always alive inside Husserl; as Jiro Watanabe signals, undeniably, what is essential to Husserl’s idea is closely connected with that essential to Descartes’s idea.24 In particular, without inspiration from Descartes’s methodic doubt, Husserl could neither have disclosed transcendental subjectivity nor could he have discovered the indubitability of perception of something immanent. Yet at the same time, Husserl’s phenomenology does not precisely correspond to Descartes’s philosophy, and the difference between them can be clarified if we consider Husserl’s critique of Descartes.

3. Husserl’s Critique of Descartes

19 As for the number of new ways other than Cartesian, Landgrebe declares it impossible to determine how many ways are to be distinguished in definitive fashion. Landgrebe, Der Weg, 175. 20 Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Die Phänomenologische Bewegung,“ in Hans-Georg Gadamer, Kleine Schriften III: Idee und Sprache (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1972), 173. 21 Ernst Tugendhat, Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1970), 253. 22 Ernst W. Orth, Edmund Husserls „Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie“ :Vernunft und Kultur (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1999), 31. 23 Orth, Edmund Husserls, 32. 24 Jiro Watanabe, “Connection between Ideas I and Crisis,” in Husserl Phenomenology, ed. Hirotaka Tatematsu (Tokyo: Keiso-shobo, 1986), 103.

28 Husserl criticizes Descartes from two perspectives: Descartes’s philosophical system turns out to be “transcendental realism” (Hua I, 63) organized deductively from “transcendent subjectivity (transzendente Subjektivität)” (Hua I, 66). In other words, Descartes’ philosophy can be viewed as “transcendental” in that he elucidates objectivity’s conditions from within consciousness, but indeed, he thinks cogito “substantial (transcendent),” offering the absolute starting point to deduce the world’s existence, so that in the end, the world deductively organized by the substantial cogito remains the realist world. According to Husserl, “Descartes introduced the apparently insignificant but actually fateful change whereby the ego becomes a substantia cogitans, a separate human ‘mens sive animus,’ and the point of departure for inferences according to the principle of causality” (Hua I, 63). For Husserl, Descartes’s philosophy is inadequate because it lacks universal epoché and transcendental reduction. Simply stated, Husserl directs his criticism to the fact that Descartes naively regards “transcendental subjectivity” as “transcendent subjectivity” and “transcendental idealism” as “transcendental realism.” Descartes is limited by “the prejudice that, under the name ego cogito, one is dealing with an apodictic ‘axiom,’ which, in conjunction with other axioms and, perhaps, inductively grounded hypotheses, is to serve as the foundation for a deductively ‘explanatory’ world-science, a ‘nomological’ science, a science ordine geometrico, similar indeed to mathematical natural science” (ibid.). Moreover, Descartes stresses predominance of mind over senses that may sometimes deceive us. Yet for Husserl, “simply referring to the well-known fact that sensuality deceives is not sufficient” (Hua XXXIV, 406). Phenomenologically speaking, multiple levels of beings should be distinguished from one another in the mode of self-givenness of object; conditions determine the object’s modality. Moreover, the basic form of the object’s direct self-givenness depends on “perception,” which provides a basis for being convinced of reality and objectivity. Although the senses sometimes deceive me (e.g., perceptual illusion and heteroptics), the object’s reality and objectivity also depend on perception. As Heidegger notes, “The perceived as such has the feature of bodily presence (Leibhaftigkeit). In other words, the entity which presents itself as perceived has the feature of being bodily-there. […] Bodily presence is a superlative mode of the self-givenness of an entity.”25 For instance, when I see an apple on the table, the perception of the apple, without a doubt, assures me that this apple is real. Even when I move to the other side of the table and see the apple’s other side or its top, the apple keeps itself as a whole within continuous harmony, regardless of each perspective. Furthermore, compared to memory and fantasy, the apple’s perceived vividness underpins its reality and objectivity. Of course, the apple that seems real could be a replica or 3D animation, and I cannot exclude these possibilities: if the apple’s image blinks on and off, of course,

25 Heidegger, History, 40 f.

29 I recognize that the apple is not real, but a virtual image created artificially in space. Here, the point is that I am always convinced of what something is by how it presents to my consciousness; in this regard, perception plays a significant role in forming evidence of reality and objectivity. Thus, from a phenomenological perspective, “Descartes missed, as well as the whole modern age, every interpretation of evidence as performance of self-representation (Selbstdarstellung) in which the currently thought comes to original self-givenness” (Hua XXXIV, 409). Due to naive substantiation of cogito and direct deduction of the world’s existence from it, Descartes has no motivation to consider intentional constitution and the object’s belief formation; he does not describe in what conditions the object is constituted in such a way. Namely, Descartes’s philosophy wholly misses correlativity between intentional act and intentional object. Intentional structures and moments that constitute objectivity (Gegenständlichkeit) cannot be clarified in line with Descartes’s philosophy. While Descartes sets in motion a project of modern philosophy, that is, he formulates a question of the transcendental problem apart from scholastic philosophy’s traditional dogma, it is hardly possible for him to elucidate the epistemological problem in principle, for he presupposes the objectivity of mathematics and the existence of God, in addition to the hypostatization of cogito’s existence. The difficulty Descartes inevitably confronts can be easily understood if one considers that he cannot avoid the aporia of mind–body dualism. In a way analogous to Descartes, Husserl also starts from evidence of cogito, but phenomenology does not appeal to and utilize the substantial existence of God and the deductive logicality of mathematics. In other words, Descartes ensures linkages to the first philosophy as universal science by proving the existence of God, whose conscience is expected to assure human reason’s ability. On the other hand, Husserlian phenomenology must be “transcendental idealism” based on “transcendental subjectivity,” which suspends all positing of beings including God, mathematics, and empirical subjects.26 This means that they are regarded as my (or our) convictions constituted in transcendental subjectivity so that in phenomenology, a transcendent being’s conditions and structures can be grasped in the immanental sphere of consciousness. Through intentional analysis, then, Husserl rebuilds the genuine meaning of cogito’s evidence. Thus, it seems right to presume that Husserl does not diverge from Cartesianism, but rather, in truth, radicalizes it: phenomenology is new Cartesianism in that it can be determined as radical, including more strict methodic doubt than

26 In Husserlian phenomenology, the empirical subject and the transcendental subject are distinguished by different levels of constitution. According to Zahavi, “the relation between the transcendental subject and the empirical subject is not a relation between two different subjects, but between two different self-apprehensions, a primary and a secondary. The transcendental subject is the subject in its primary constitutive function. The empirical subject is the same subject, but now apprehended and interpreted as an object in the world, that is, as a constituted and mundanized entity.” Zahavi, Husserl’s, 49.

30 that of Descartes. Namely, without the passport of God and mathematics, phenomenology seeks a path to universal science, that is, it claims that the only evidence for phenomenological research lies in perception of perception, immanental perception.

4. Contribution of Epistemology to Phenomenology Husserl confirms the sphere of undoubtedness by reference to Cartesian meditation on doubt, which leaves no doubt, at least for me. For Husserl, the aporia of agreement between the subject and object can be elucidated by reviewing in what conditions and structures transcendent objectivity is constituted in immanence. Compared to Descartes, Husserl directs intentional analysis to essential structures of consciousness such as intentionality, noesis–noema, habit, and passive synthesis: in phenomenology, structures of consciousness are analyzed for the first place, instead of depending on Cartesian punctate cogito. Thus, transcendental subjectivity cannot be regarded as a mundane, empirical subject in any sense, but, indeed, contains plenty of meaningful content within itself to be clarified. Moreover, regarding another pole of cognition, the object is viewed as the intentional correlate to transcendental subjectivity. Husserl radicalizes Descartes’s methodic doubt and clearly offers evidence as the philosophical principle. Directly seeing the given to consciousness assures the sole plate of undoubtedness, which is valid, nonce at least, for me. If no cognitions have any basis, on one hand, every knowledge and value are relativized by relativism, and on the other hand, plural dogmatism claims each isolated dogmatic legitimateness of absolute truth and justice, only to wreck irreparable belief conflict. Elucidation of epistemological aporia forms the most significant condition for furbishing eidetic sciences as rigorous science. Since, in phenomenology, universality’s meaning does not lie in absolute validity from God’s decision, but in intersubjective validity generated through intersubjective assessment and confirmation, the universal science at which phenomenology aims can be interpreted as intersubjectively validated science. Notable here is that in Husserlian transcendental phenomenology, evidence of immanental perception unquestionably descends from Descartes, but as a radicalized form: in phenomenology, Cartesianism indeed provides a basis for establishing philosophy as universal science. Thus, we should defend Cartesianism in phenomenology despite Husserl’s divergence from the Cartesian way and his critique of Descartes. As Husserl asks, “Must not the only fruitful renaissance be the one that reawakens the impulse of the Cartesian Meditations” (Hua I, 47)? The enigma of agreement between the subject and object—how the subject meets the object itself—is crucially clarified to avoid entanglement of relativism and dogmatism. In this regard, Cartesianism frees Husserl from this dilemma through clarification of immanental perception. From the mid-nineteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century, in which Husserl devoted his life to universal science’s establishment, humanism’s whole worldview was thoroughly

31 determined by the positive worldview and explanation, not only by natural sciences but also by newly emerging social sciences. Subsequently, philosophy was seen as European tradition’s outdated heritage and lost its principle of providing meaning and value to human life and society. Since positive science must limit itself only to observable facts, unobservable events and relationships, such as life’s meaning and social goodness, were written out of positive thinking. Consequently, philosophy was criticized as a sort of metaphysics that can in no way be assessed and confirmed. Husserl’s situation resembles that of Descartes, who saw both Christian authority and the Renaissance losing traction. As Hitohiko Tanaka observes, “if the world in which all certainties are entirely lost is defined as the Mannerist world, the Cartesian philosophy that attempts to reconstruct the world based on a single point of cogito can be seen exactly as the Baroque philosophy, as Baroque precisely denotes the power to forcibly create the new order which has been already lost once at least by excess energy.”27 The common platform that Husserl and Descartes share is an effort to establish the first philosophy as universal science when the traditional, valid order of meaning and value in society was collapsing. They had no choice but to rebuild de novo the foundation of knowledge and to rethink radically the grounds of universal cognition. Therefore, during the twilight of traditional communal order, Cartesianism in phenomenology is here defended as enlightened inwardness driven to universal science on behalf of recovery and reconstruction of the right of reason and knowledge. Descartes and Husserl both sought a certain starting point for philosophy because they had noticed that in the end, any arbitrary departure point would boil down to relativism or dogmatism. From a phenomenological viewpoint, epistemology does offer the theoretical potentiality of meaning and value (i.e., the essence of goodness, beauty, justice, history, and society). However, without fundamental elucidation of epistemological aporia, it is impossible to avoid the nihilism that completely nullifies all certainties in the world and the antagonism that discretely isolates every truth; in either case, the possibility of universal cognition and intersubjective confirmation can be an undreamed-of luxury. Of course, philosophers cannot be prohibited from philosophizing without considering the epistemological aporia, but at least from the Husserlian viewpoint, they forsake the idea of universal science, being subject to “idle reason (faule Vernunft)” (Hua VI, 14). As more fully discussed below, phenomenologists in the Munich and Göttingen Circles, such as Scheler, applied the phenomenological method to ethics and axiology and dramatically expanded phenomenology’s horizon; indeed, they proved that the range of phenomenological enterprise cannot confine itself to discourse on epistemology. Notably, however, to explicate universal, not dogmatic, eidetic sciences, epistemological justification is required as a matter of first priority. In this regard, Cartesianism in phenomenology embeds epistemological validity in phenomenological enterprise,

27 Tanaka, Journey, 330.

32 and thus, must be defended, at least to create a basis for philosophy as universal science.

Conclusion Husserl finds phenomenology under great influence from Descartes. Their common motivation is epistemological concern about what principle conciliates the epistemological aporia. They both stand methodologically on the side of idealism; all beings in the world exist in correlation with subjectivity that offers grounds of evidence. Descartes originally establishes the philosophy of subjectivity based on epistemological concern, but Husserl succeeds to the Cartesian position of transcendentalism in a more radical way than Descartes. Namely, for Husserl, what is done by Descartes is indeed transcendental realism organized deductively from substantial transcendent subjectivity. Compared to Descartes, Husserl expects phenomenology to be transcendental idealism, which is immanently described by transcendental subjectivity. Defending Cartesianism in phenomenology denotes defending the phenomenological enterprise that attempts to describe human nature and the world’s meaning and value according to evidence in immanence. Yet, this affection for Cartesianism does not result in solipsism. On the contrary, phenomenology is considered the study of intersubjectivity; it is a language game aimed at intersubjective confirmation and mutual recognition, as is discussed in this paper’s chapter 7. Simultaneously, however, the phenomenological language game always requires transcendental subjectivity as the only starting point of thinking grounded on immanental perception. Thus, the problem in phenomenology consists in conflicting opinions among plural transcendental subjectivities, intuitions, and evidences. There is no absolute guarantee that an intuited essence in question exactly corresponds to another intuited essence, for any promise of universality, God, and mathematics, for instance, should be methodologically suspended in phenomenology. On this point, while a phenomenologist suspends judgment of whether the essential or the universal exists as hypostasis, one attempts to generate universal consensus through intersubjective communication. Regardless of Husserl’s divergence from the Cartesian way and critique of Descartes, Cartesianism is always unswervingly alive inside phenomenology; this offers a starting point for phenomenology and provides Husserl with the basis of undoubtedness as the evident immanental sphere.

33 Chapter 3 General and Transcendental Eidetic Science Introduction This chapter clarifies two distinct dimensions of eidetic science in phenomenology. The clarification also lays out specific characteristics of eidetic science conducted in the transcendental attitude. Although Husserl presented the innovative and promising idea of transcendental enterprise and provided the method to explicate it, he could not cover and actualize all its ontological aspects. What seems lacking is clarification of the distinction between eidetic sciences in the natural attitude and the transcendental attitude. In connection with this vagueness, little study has been conducted on the distinction between eidetic seeing conducted in the natural attitude and in the transcendental attitude. This chapter mainly aims to introduce a conceptual distinction between “general eidetic science” and “transcendental eidetic science.” This is discussed in detail later, but in the meantime, it might suffice to determine the former as eidetic sciences in the natural attitude and the latter as that in the transcendental attitude. Following are the three reasons for introducing such a distinction. First, Husserl’s eidetic sciences (transcendental eidetic sciences) should be keenly distinguished from general eidetic sciences of the Munich and Göttingen Circles. As is well known, early phenomenologists in the Munich and Göttingen Circles—Scheler, Moritz Geiger, Roman Ingarden, and Hedwig Conrad-Martius—deploy regional ontology of love, beauty, art, life, and religion, etc., through eidetic seeing.1 The early phenomenological movement is emblematic of the initial sign of phenomenological eidetics’ presence, and the movement has distinctive value even in comparison to Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas. However, eidetic sciences of the Munich and Göttingen Circles, I think, have another aspect: they spoil transcendental eidetic sciences’ potentiality by refusing Husserl’s transcendental turn because their eidetic descriptions mostly presuppose the order of objective (objektiv) values and ideas.2 This means that early phenomenologists basically negate transcendental correlationism. Many distance themselves from Husserl’s transcendental turn in ideas I because they believe in the objective validity of essence and value that Husserl discusses in Logical Investigations. They see a sort of reversion to psychologism within the principle of transcendental phenomenology. From an epistemological perspective, eidetics of the Munich and Göttingen Circles conflict with Husserl’s phenomenology. Second, unfortunately, Husserl himself mentions that eidetic sciences can be explicated in both natural and transcendental attitudes. From the mid-1920s to the 1930s, rather than following the

1 See works of early phenomenologists published in Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung. 2 In this study’s chapter 5, I clarify some particular aspects that make Scheler’s essentialism dogmatic and present clear reasons why it should be regarded as general eidetic science.

34 Cartesian way, Husserl gropes for new paths, leading to transcendental phenomenology, for instance, intentional psychology and ontology. Then, he claims that “phenomenological psychology” and “ontology of life-world” can be considered even within the natural attitude. However, I would like to emphasize that transcendental eidetic science is of prime importance in light of phenomenology because the two new paths eventually lead to transcendental phenomenology. In this regard, Husserl’s allusion to entwinement of eidetic sciences misleads and confuses. This is why I distinguish transcendental eidetic sciences from general eidetic sciences; they are close, but not the same, differing more than what might first be surmised. Finally, taken into consideration is an epistemic-theoretical, general image adhering to transcendental phenomenology. Since Husserl’s concern always remains epistemic-theoretical centered (his argument mostly begins with perception, for instance), the discussion often impresses readers as adhesion to epistemology. Certainly, as discussed in the prior chapter, fundamental elucidation of the epistemological aporia with reference to Cartesian doubt provides a basis for phenomenological investigation. Importantly, however, a possible form of applied phenomenology can be prismatic in principle, not limited to epistemological discourse such as essence of perception, inference, and judgment: “There is no conceivable meaningful problem in previous philosophy, and no conceivable problem of being at all, that could not be arrived at by transcendental phenomenology at some point along its way” (Hua VI, 192). Major works that Husserl himself published—not a huge number of drafts and appendices in Husserliana—contain pure description of perception and consciousness; this causes misapprehension that Husserlian phenomenology’s method cannot be applied to eidetic sciences with various meanings and values, including essences of goodness, beauty, justice, and freedom. This chapter provides counterargument to Husserl’s misconceived image. In fact, Husserlian phenomenology’s transcendental enterprise ranges to ontology of meaning and value, like phenomenologists in the Munich and Göttingen Circles presented. However, phenomenology’s potentiality here does not lie in returning toward the early phenomenological movement, but, on the principle of Husserlian phenomenology, in creating new ontology as transcendental eidetic science based on phenomenological reduction and eidetic seeing.

1. Definition of Eidetic Science Eidetic science is, as the name suggests, a science dealing in essence (Wesen) or eidos (Eidos). This raises the question “What is essence?” Specific characteristics of “essence” can be clarified in contrast to “matter of fact (Tatsache).” According to Husserl, “the ground for a corresponding interrelation between sciences of matters of fact and eidetic sciences is the connection (itself eidetic) obtained between individual object and essence, according to which an essential composition belongs to each individual object as its essence—just as, conversely, to each essence there

35 correspond possible individua (Individuen) which would be its factual singularizations (Vereinzelungen)” (Hua III/1, 20). Any existence of individual object is “contingent (zufällig),” that is to say, exists in or is bound by particular space and time (for instance, here and now) so that it is changeable (Hua III/1, 12). In contrast, essence designates “what is to be found in the very own being of an individuum as the What (Was) of an individuum” (Hua III/1, 13), which has the character of “eidetic necessity (Wesens-Notwendigkeit)” and “eidetic universality (Wesens-Allgemeinheit)” (Hua III/1, 12). For instance, an individual apple on a store shelf moves to a table in a house if someone buys it and carries it home. If no one eats it, the apple gradually rots. The individual apple must exist according to a particular “when” and “where” in any case. However, the apple’s essence (meaning) remains unchangeable even if an individual apple spoils. Even though someone might have eaten the apple on the table, one still knows what “apple” means conceptually. Namely, while an individual object (an apple) is temporospatially restrained and changes in correlation to time– space varying, its essence always remains hyper-temporospatial. By the way, matter of fact (individual object) and essence (ideal meaning) have respective correspondent original intuition: “intuition of something individual (individuelle Anschauung)” and “eidetic seeing (Wesensschauung, Wesenserschauung)”:3 “The essence (Eidos) is a new sort of object. Just as the datum of individual or experiencing intuition is an individual object, so the datum of eidetic intuition is a pure essence” (Hua III/1, 14). Notable here is that eidetic intuition is not a sort of instantaneous and all-embracing intuition that presents the object’s all essential aspects in a trice. Jiro Watanabe observes, “In the case of seeing by ‘eidetic intuition,’ this is a process in an endeavor to grasp and posit the ‘essential state of affairs,’ motivated by the ‘original givenness’ concerning the ‘essential state of affairs,’ so that this process can never be completed at a stroke with no basis.”4 Eidetic intuition can be determined as an endeavor in time to clarify essential structures and conditions common among individuals. Thus, eidetic intuition is neither epiphanic intuition, nor religious inspiration, which enables an investigator to obtain the truth at once, but a rational continual process in which the investigator attempts repeatedly to see and confirm the intuited essence’s validity. Husserl does not limit the intuition’s range to sensory aesthesis as does Kant.

3 In this study, I translate “Wesensschauung,” “Wesenserschauung,” and “Ideation” as “eidetic seeing,” and “Wesensanschuung” as “eidetic intuition.” Husserl also calls the method of eidetic intuition “eidetic reduction (eidetische Reduktion).” Husserl, indeed, does not separately use these terms in a rigorous manner. However, at least, all these terms refer to the same dimension of seeing essence. Additionally, note that eidetic seeing and eidetic intuition must be distinguished from “idealization (Idealisierung),” which is criticized in the context of “mathematization of nature” by Husserl in Crisis. The intuited types in experience essentially cannot have unambiguous determination, but modern mathematics transforms typical experiences into pure unambiguity by mathematical determination. Simply stated, the essence in eidetic intuition and eidetic seeing “can be intuited,” but the ideal (i.e., mathematics) “cannot be intuited” in principle. The life-world cannot be given to consciousness in the form of mathematics. 4 Jiro Watanabe, Phenomenology of Inwardness (Tokyo: Keiso-shobo, 1978), 83.

36 Rather, he expands intuition to the realm of category and meaning, and claims that eidetic intuition can become the method for eidetic sciences. According to Husserl, eidetic sciences can be classified into two disciplines. One is “regional ontology,” which is ontology of phenomena filled with specific content such as ontology of nature, mind, and person. The other is “formal ontology,” which investigates pure objective forms such as pure mathematics and logic. On the one hand, “any concrete empirical objectivity finds its place within a highest material genus, a region, of empirical objects. To the pure regional essence, then, there corresponds a regional eidetic science (regionale eidetische Wissenschaft) or, as we can also say, a regional ontology” (Hua III/1, 23). Regional ontology clarifies how and in what conditions we articulate various regions, that is, it discovers distinct borders among nature, mind, and person. Since regional ontology investigates a region with material content, it is also called “material ontology.” On the other hand, Husserl asserts that every being is objectified according to logical categorical linkages of thinking. Formal ontology can be established as an investigation into how and in what conditions an object is objectified in thinking: the essence of logical concepts such as “object,” “relationship,” “state of affairs,” “proposition,” and “class” is examined in formal ontology, or in light of genetic phenomenology; how these concepts have essentially become during the successive process in time is also analyzed in this ontology. According to Husserl, formal objectivity indeed is “not something co-ordinate with the material regions (the regions simpliciter); properly it is not a region but the empty form of any region whatever” (Hua III/1, 26). Furthermore, “formal ontology contains the forms of all ontologies (sc. all ontologies ‘proper,’ all ‘material’ ontologies) and prescribes for material ontologies a formal structure common to them all” (ibid.). Note that phenomenology, as eidetic science that describes concrete lived experiences’ essential interlinkages, must belong to material ontology with morphological essences, in contrast to exact sciences with exact essences, such as mathematics and logic (Ideas I, §73–74). Husserl also explains the distinction between morphological essence and exact essence in terms of objective science’s a priori and the 1930s’ life-world’s a priori (Crisis, §36–37). Thus, phenomenology can be defined as descriptive eidetic sciences of lived experiences filled with concrete content, described not with exact essence (determination of mathematics) but with morphological essence (determination of language).

2. Phenomenology and Essentialism: Dan Zahavi versus Nicolas de Warren Husserl defines phenomenology as pure descriptive eidetic sciences of lived experience, not sciences of matters of fact based on positive method. Eidetic sciences can be operated in a transition from factual and empirical objectivity to essential universality. “Our phenomenology is to be an eidetic doctrine, not of phenomena that are real, but of phenomena that are transcendentally reduced” (Hua III/1, 6), as Husserl states.

37 However, the situation around eidetic science in phenomenology is not simple. One reason for this relates to eidetic sciences in the Munich and Göttingen Circles being explicated without transcendental reduction because Husserl’s transcendental turn in Ideas I instills them with a feeling of strangeness. This means that in phenomenology, eidetic sciences can be divided into two: eidetic sciences of the Munich and Göttingen Circles (general eidetic sciences) and eidetic sciences of Husserl (transcendental eidetic sciences). In addition, the relation between Husserlian phenomenology and its essentialist aspect has been greatly discussed, but little agreement has been reached on whether phenomenology can or should be characterized as a sort of essentialism. In other words, the question of whether essentialism sufficiently qualifies phenomenology still remains unanswered. To begin, Zahavi has established the position that essentialism cannot be inherent to phenomenological enterprise. According to Zahavi, “eidetic variation” or “eidetic reduction” should not be confounded with “phenomenological reduction” and “transcendental reduction”5: “Husserl’s considerations concerning the possibility of an eidetic reduction and variation, his distinction between material and formal ontology, and his reflections on the relation between sensation and thought are all important philosophical investigations. Nevertheless, in my opinion, they all constitute part of the more traditional heritage in Husserl’s philosophy and should consequently not be taken as the truly distinctive features of his phenomenology.”6 Following Zahavi, the eidetic aspect of Husserl’s phenomenology indeed exists and constitutes part of Husserl’s concerns, but cannot display phenomenology’s essence. Instead, we should regard it as traditional philosophical heritage from typical Western essentialists, such as Plato and Leibniz. I agree with Zahavi in that phenomenological essentialism ostensibly requires recurrence to Western philosophical tradition and phenomenological reduction or transcendental reduction is the very nature of phenomenology keenly distinguished from Western philosophy’s traditional essentialism. 7 However, eidetic seeing, I think, can and must be conducted based on phenomenological reduction and essentialism is always alive inside phenomenology, even in investigations such as time, the body, intersubjectivity, and the life-world that Zahavi regards as phenomenology’s distinctive features.8 Thus, I oppose Zahavi’s claim “concerning the possibility of a Wesensschau has been taken to constitute one of the most important features of Husserlian phenomenology. But, although it is true that Husserl was more interested in insights into the essential structures of consciousness than in investigations of the factual and empirical composition

5 Zahavi, Husserl’s, 38. 6 Zahavi, Husserl’s, 39. 7 In chapter 8 of this study, I discuss the distinction between phenomenological essentialism and traditional essentialism. 8 See part 2 of Husserl’s Phenomenology.

38 of human consciousness, and although his phenomenology can in part be seen as an attempt to spell out the necessary and universal laws that govern and structure intentionality, this interest in essential structures is so widespread and common in the history of philosophy that it is nonsensical to take it as a defining feature of phenomenology.”9 While Zahavi recognizes that eidetic doctrine, along with eidetic seeing, partly constitutes phenomenological investigations, “the first nature” of transcendental phenomenology cannot lie in its essentialist aspect. Rather, following Zahavi, as a matter of first priority, the world itself must be thematized in phenomenological enterprise. I understand that Zahavi attempts to defend Husserl’s phenomenology from a popular generalized misunderstanding against phenomenology (i.e., solipsism, dogmatism, and cogito-centrism) and succeeds in offering a new image of Husserl. However, his argument seems to overrun somehow, only to spoil phenomenology’s central motif. In other words, seeing the methodological disjuncture between eidetic seeing and phenomenological reduction in Zahavi’s discussion is not difficult. In contrast to Zahavi, Nicolas de Warren defends phenomenological essentialism in “On Husserl’s Essentialism.” Because this paper is important to the current study, let me discuss de Warren’s argument in detail. First, de Warren assesses Zahavi’s work positively: “Zahavi’s specialized work best characterized by its intellectual dexterity, as it operates on and across different fronts simultaneously: correcting mistaken views of Husserl’s phenomenology, not only by way of scrupulous reconstructions of Husserl’s arguments but also by way of original research into Husserl’s vast Nachlaß.”10 However, de Warren rejects the claim “Interest in essential structures is so widespread and common in the history of philosophy that it is nonsensical to take it as a defining feature of phenomenology.” He terms this an “unfortunate and inaccurate claim”: “Husserl’s so-called ‘essentialism’ (an unhappy term) should in fact be recognized as one of the defining features of phenomenological philosophy.” 11 In addition, de Warren claims that in Husserl’s phenomenology, the unique role of the a priori “renders both transparent and necessary connection between Husserl’s essentialism and his transcendental project.”12 Thus, de Warren attempts to discover a connection between eidetic sciences and transcendental phenomenology, but not by subordinating eidetic sciences to transcendental phenomenology. He believes that the a priori concept in phenomenology can ravel this entwinement. To begin, de Warren argues that Logical Investigations’ main theme consists in the possibility of cognition and knowledge of universal and ideal objects, such as logical laws and mathematical rules,

9 Zahavi, Husserl’s, 37. 10 Nicolas de Warren, “On Husserl’s Essentialism,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 14, no. 2 (2006): 255. 11 De Warren, “On Husserl’s,” 258. 12 De Warren, “On Husserl’s,” 258.

39 to counteract various forms of psychologism. Moreover, “categorial intuitions”13 play a critical role in creating an epistemological foundation for universal cognition.14 Although Zahavi subordinates Husserl’s essentialism to transcendental doctrine by asserting it as part of traditional Western philosophical heritage, de Warren refutes Zahavi’s account: “Zahavi does not in fact demonstrate to his readers how Husserl’s ‘essentialism’ is a shared feature of the traditional heritage. Moreover, this claim assumes an equivalency between ‘common to all philosophy’ and ‘not distinctive of an individual philosophy.’ But, is Husserl not the philosopher who elevated the themes of normality, tradition and generativity, as Zahavi shows in the third section of his introduction, to the level of transcendental relevancy in his later thinking?”15 According to de Warren, three specific features of “eidetic variation” and “eidetic seeing” contribute to the whole phenomenological enterprise: 1) Eidetic seeing clarifies the imagination’s role in philosophical thinking; 2) Eidetic seeing is constituted of “a complex form of activity and passivity” so that it should be distinguished from mere formalization; 3) Eidetic seeing can require “more than one individual and even generations of thinkers to describe and fix structurally an ‘essence’.”16 As discussed in this study’s chapter 6, imaginative variation should free eidetic seeing from factual and empirical limitation. In comparison to empirical generalization, eidetic seeing can actively grasp essential structures and moments of object (i.e., what is common among individuals) constituted in the level of passivity. Eidetic seeing can be regarded as a historical-intersubjective project that requires continual reassessment and confirmation by others, not established at once by intellectual intuition. I agree with de Warren in that these three specific features clearly differentiate phenomenological essentialism from other traditional heritages of essentialism in Western philosophy, especially in intersubjective confirmation of essence and mutual recognition of difference. Husserl attentively innovates a new method to explicate eidetic doctrines in terms of imagination, passivity, and historicity. 17 Therefore, I argue that Husserl transubstantiates

13 The idea of “categorial intuition” presented in Logical Investigations becomes the predecessor of “eidetic seeing” in Husserl’s later works. 14 De Warren, “On Husserl’s,” 259 f. 15 De Warren, “On Husserl’s,” 261. 16 De Warren, “On Husserl’s,” 262 f. 17 Essences in Husserlian phenomenology will have been eventually generated through free imaginative variation and continual intersubjective reassessment. With regard to this characteristic of essence, it is not difficult to understand that Moritz Schlick’s critical remarks on phenomenological essentialism miss the whole point. Schlick writes, “In Phenomenology we do not meet with the question as to the ‘can,’ the question of ‘possibility’ in the Kantian sense. Is this not, however, a genuine problem? May one not go on to ask how the ‘Wesensschau’ goes about the business of delivering synthetic, universally valid knowledge to us, or must we accept this as a simple matter of fact? Even in Husserl himself we find on this point only obscure passages concerning ‘self-evidence’ which are of highly dubious propriety, coming, as they do, from the great warrior against psychologism.” Moritz Schlick, “Is There a Factual A Priori?” in Moritz Schlick, Philosophical Papers Volume II (1925–1936), trans. Peter Heath, ed. Henk L. Mulder and Barbara F.B. van de

40 phenomenological essentialism into a totally new form of essentialism that first emerged from Western philosophical history, and in this sense, phenomenology and essentialism can no longer be separated. Furthermore, de Warren classifies phenomenological essentialism into two levels: “First, on the level of providing an ‘a priori ontology’ of various domains of ‘givenness’ (i.e., the ontology of the life-world), including the domain of pure consciousness (i.e., phenomenological psychology), it is the method of ‘ideal free variation that delivers an a priori ontology’ of the life world as well as the eidetic structures of pure consciousness. Second, on the level of providing a transcendental analysis of constituting subjectivity (which Husserl demarcates strictly from the analysis of pure consciousness provided by a phenomenological psychology), the essential structures of the life-world are investigated under the heading of the constitutive problem of ‘meaning bestowal’ (Sinngebung) and the title of a ‘phenomenological correlations-research’ (phänomenologische Korrelationsforschung).”18 Notably, eidetic investigations into essential structures of pure consciousness and the life-world secure transcendental phenomenology’s infinite program so that essentialism is consonant with phenomenology and constitutes a requisite part of the whole transcendental enterprise. Furthermore, as de Warren observes, the meaning of the a priori in phenomenology is a correlational concept between transcendental subjectivity and intentional object, namely “the given is structured by an a priori that corresponds to the a priori of subjectivity.”19 Thus, de Warren concludes, “it is apparent that Husserl recognized something truly distinctive about this phenomenological thinking of the a priori into a universal structure of correlation, which renders both transparent and necessary inseparable connection between the transcendental enterprise and the essentialism of Husserlian phenomenology. The reduction may lead us to the transcendental domain of analysis, but it is the eidetic variation and Wesenschau that secure the a priori significance of phenomenological claims.”20 In Husserlian phenomenology, the a priori lies not in consciousness or in the object, but in the correlation between them. In short, eidetic seeing constitutes a quintessential symbol of phenomenological investigations as well as transcendental reduction. Phenomenology follows essentialist directions right down the line. Then, how does transcendental reduction contribute to phenomenological essentialism? In other words, what is the critical difference between general eidetic science and transcendental eidetic science? In what follows, I attempt to answer this question by clearing the path through intentional psychology.

Velde-Schlick (Dordrecht / Boston / London: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1979), 163 f. 18 De Warren, “On Husserl’s,” 264. 19 De Warren, “On Husserl’s,” 265. 20 De Warren, “On Husserl’s,” 265.

41 3. Entwinement of Eidetic Sciences Husserl clarifies the basic characteristics of phenomenological psychology by contrasting it with the positive psychology that appeared in the nineteenth century. Phenomenological psychology is determined as an eidetic science and positive psychology as a science of matter of fact. Husserl addresses four fundamental characteristics inherent in phenomenological psychology: “apriority (Apriorität),” “eidetics (Eidetik),” “intuition or pure description (Intuition bzw. reine Deskription),” and “intentionality (Intentionnalität)” (Hua IX, 46). On the other hand, Husserl defines positive psychology as “the science dealing with the ‘psychical’ in the concrete context of spatio-temporal realities,” and in positive psychology, the psychical is seen basically as “merely a stratum of human and animal being” (Hua IX, 278). As Herbert Spiegelberg notes, “Husserl’s picture of scientific psychology was shaped principally by contemporary psychophysics and physiological psychology, whose dominating interest was to determine quantitatively and experimentally the relationships between objective stimuli and subjective responses. In this picture, the ‘psychological’ was nothing but part and parcel of a complete animal organism, on an equal level with its physical parts.”21 On the path to transcendental phenomenology through intentional psychology, Husserl distinguishes three psychologies: empirical psychology (science of matters of fact), phenomenological psychology (general eidetic sciences), and transcendental psychology (transcendental phenomenology and transcendental eidetic sciences). In parallel with each level of psychology, a corresponding reduction is required; namely, “psychological-phenomenological reduction” is required in transition from empirical psychology to phenomenological psychology, and the “transcendental-phenomenological reduction” is required in transition from phenomenological psychology to transcendental psychology. In what follows, I focus on why phenomenological psychology should migrate to transcendental phenomenology. Husserl maintains that phenomenological psychology as eidetic science is keenly distinguished from empirical psychology as science of a matter of fact. Moreover, phenomenological psychology entails a certain phenomenological reduction because the specific region of inquiry in phenomenological psychology is the eidetic region of consciousness. In other words, phenomenological psychology’s aim is not to confirm factual relation of cause and effect between mind and other entities (e.g., if someone is placed in a dark room for three days, how does the mind react?). Rather, phenomenological psychology clarifies essence of mind, and in addition, essence of psychological concepts and experiences such as essence of person, habituation, association, fear, and trauma. Thus, Husserl states that phenomenological reduction is “the foundational method of pure

21 Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction, Volume One (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), 150.

42 psychology and the presupposition of all its specifically theoretical methods” (Hua IX, 282); a phenomenologist “must inhibit every co-accomplishment of objective positing produced in unreflective consciousness” (ibid.). Hence, phenomenological psychology is considered qualitative research of mind that investigates essential structures of consciousness and lived experiences related to psychological events.22 When, in contrast to positive and empirical psychology, Husserl determines phenomenological psychology as eidetic science, phenomenological psychology’s function lies not only in reforming empirical psychology but also in serving “as a preliminary step for laying open the essence of a transcendental phenomenology” (Hua IX, 287). Husserl’s explanation of phenomenological psychology is actually ambiguous. On one hand, Husserl argues that phenomenological psychology must effect phenomenological reduction because phenomenological psychology cannot remain in the grounds of naturalistic attitude, within which mind is treated as entity, namely within which mind is investigated through causal laws in irritation–response sequences found among substantial entities. Thus, what Husserl rejects is the prevailing naturalistic viewpoint and positive explanation in psychology. However, on reconsidering the matter, Husserl discerns that even phenomenological psychology cannot distance itself from grounds of positive science so long as it terms itself “psychology”: “We must not overlook the fact that psychology in all its empirical and eidetic disciplines remains a ‘positive science,’ a science operating within the natural attitude, in which the simply present world is the thematic ground. What it [psychology] wants to explore are the minds and communities of minds that are actually found in the world” (Hua IX, 290). Even though phenomenological psychology certainly constitutes part of eidetic investigation, in phenomenological psychology, the mind “retains the sense of being which belongs in the realm of what is present in the world; it is merely related to possible real worlds” (Hua IX, 290). In light of transcendental phenomenology, it is still naive.23 Considering the two types of eidetic science can clarify this point. Phenomenological psychology itself is eidetic science in the natural attitude (but it is neither the naive attitude in daily life nor the naturalistic attitude in positive psychology). Namely, it limits itself to general eidetic science in nature. However, since phenomenological psychology’s aim partially overlaps transcendental phenomenology (because transcendental phenomenology is indeed defined as eidetic of consciousness), there is the mere—but distinctive for Husserl—difference between

22 For instance, Amedeo Giorgi, The Descriptive. Fredrick J. Wertz, “A Phenomenological Psychological Approach to Trauma and Resilience,” in Five Ways of Doing Qualitative Analysis: Phenomenological Psychology, Grounded Theory, Discourse Analysis, Narrative Research, and Intuitive Inquiry, ed. Fredrick J. Wertz et al. (New York / London: The Guilford Press, 2011), 125 ff. 23 I would like to add that the difference between phenomenological psychology and transcendental phenomenology can be understood by the difference between empirical subject and transcendental subject.

43 phenomenological psychology and transcendental phenomenology, that is, the difference between the general eidetic attitude and the transcendental eidetic attitude. Regardless of its incompletion, phenomenological psychology’s content can be transcendentally converted to transcendental phenomenology’s content, and the domain of phenomenological psychology, in its genuine sense, exactly corresponds to that of transcendental phenomenology as a study of transcendental subjectivity, if phenomenological psychology employs transcendental-phenomenological reduction instead of psychological-phenomenological reduction. That is, if the analysis of phenomenological psychology is explicated within the transcendental attitude, knowledge of psychology can be immediately regarded as knowledge of transcendental phenomenology. Since Husserl developed a complicated system of transcendental phenomenology, his discussion might sometimes addle our phenomenological understanding. While Husserl claims that phenomenological psychology is a general eidetic science, in that it remains within the natural attitude that presupposes persons’ reality of mind and experiences, according to Husserl, phenomenological psychology is, in the end, commensurate with transcendental phenomenology. Apparently, Husserl provides two meanings that two eidetic-sciences attitudes cause to phenomenological psychology: one is eidetic psychology existing between empirical psychology and transcendental phenomenology conducted within the natural attitude, and the other is eidetic psychology consonant with transcendental phenomenology conducted within the transcendental attitude. Phenomenological psychology’s entwinement seems derived from the complexity of Husserl’s discussion of eidetic science and regional ontology. Regarding not only phenomenological psychology but also the life-world’s ontology, which is eidetic science of the perceivable world filled with colorful meanings and practical concerns in daily life and which rescues the life-world from mathematization of nature, Husserl maintains, “the invariant structures of the life-world” can be investigated within the natural attitude (Hua VI, 176). However, he also argues that the life-world’s ontology within the natural attitude cannot satisfy transcendental phenomenology’s demands because “Epoché [through] which we freed ourselves from all objective sciences as grounds of validity, by no means suffices” (Hua VI, 150). In line with Husserl, developing regional ontology within both the natural attitude and the transcendental attitude is possible, but we should note that what Husserl really intends is transcendental analysis of regional ontology. The problem is that Husserl does not clearly state the difference between them, including advantages and disadvantages as a discipline. Remaining unanswered is the question of how general eidetic sciences are distinguished in effect from transcendental eidetic sciences. What Husserl’s discussion lacks is how universal epoché and transcendental reduction contribute to eidetic sciences; Husserl repeatedly stresses the need for transition to transcendental phenomenology, but does not adequately explain why one cannot remain within the natural attitude. In other words, Husserl did not clarify how the epistemological problem

44 impacts the ontological issue. Understanding that mathematics and logic use eidetic seeing to treat and investigate ideal mathematical and logical law is not difficult. In addition, one has always already intuited essence in daily life. For instance, if one looks at an apple, one sees both the apple’s perceptual image and its ideal meaning. Consciously or unconsciously, one sees essences in the natural attitude. Consequently, it seems relevant to assume that regional ontology can be investigated within the natural attitude, and in this case, one makes use of only eidetic seeing without transcendental reduction. At least, we can accept a situation in which general eidetic science and eidetic seeing within the natural attitude are conducted without any notion of phenomenology. However, mere eidetic seeing does not suffice for phenomenology’s demand because phenomenological eidetics become meaningless when ending in belief conflict about absolute essence. In other words, when phenomenological eidetic investigation cannot create common understanding extending beyond differences among individuals, societies, cultures, and religions, then each respectively isolated and individually believed essence remains closed to intersubjectivity. To embed epistemological validity—insight into mechanisms and conditions of belief conflict among plural opinions and theories—with eidetic sciences, universal epoché and transcendental reduction are absolutely required. Husserl states, “Remarkable consequences arise when one weighs the significance of transcendental phenomenology. In its systematic development, it brings to realization the Leibnizian idea of a universal ontology as the systematic unity of all conceivable a priori sciences, but on a new foundation which overcomes ‘dogmatism’ through the use of the transcendental phenomenological method” (Hua IX, 296). No doubt, Husserl believes in the possibility of universal ontology that appears subsequent to elucidation of epistemological aporia as a basic phenomenological department and treats transcendentally reduced phenomena. Yet, Husserl could not prove transcendental eidetic sciences’ distinctive and specific features in comparison to traditional eidetic sciences, such as the Platonic theory of ideas and Leibnizian universal ontology. Hence, we must confirm that the transcendental problem constitutes only a preface to the entire phenomenological program. In other words, epistemology begins phenomenology. Transcendental eidetic sciences in psychology, aesthetics, pedagogy, nursing science, sociology, ethics, and history or in eidetic analysis of various lived experiences such as essences of sexuality, emotion, desire, nihilism, trauma, discrimination, the other, or death will unfold after the transcendental problem is solved from its foundation upward. Of course, this study cannot describe every possible perspective of eidetic science; the whole program of transcendental phenomenology can be clarified as each specific eidetic analysis in each disciplinary field gradually appears develops in practice. Nevertheless, this study attempts to elucidate principles that distinguish transcendental eidetic sciences from general eidetic sciences; I clarify how Husserlian phenomenology is distinct from the theory of ideas in Plato, the universal ontology of Leibniz, or even from eidetic sciences in the Munich and Göttingen Circles. As already

45 noted, what I call transcendental eidetic science is regional ontology as universal science within the transcendental attitude, while general eidetic science includes any regional ontology or eidetic that does not complete universal epoché and transcendental reduction. While Husserl attempts to distinguish his phenomenology from any positive sciences, or other phenomenological investigations such as philosophical anthropology and hermeneutic ontology, he explains a basis only for the barrier that separates them on the foundation of non-presupposition of philosophy and the philosopher’s self-responsibility. That is, a philosopher cannot naively remain in the ground of the world’s reality and must start with apodictic evidence as a philosopher who bears the responsibility of thinking by oneself. As a result, merely fanatic adoration of “First Philosophy” seems to drive Husserl to the establishment of phenomenology. This constitutes one reason the genuine meaning of transcendental phenomenology could not be understood even by followers such as Scheler and Heidegger. However, Husserlian transcendental phenomenology as transcendental eidetic sciences, I think, has superiority over other phenomenological investigations in its possibility of creating an attitude of mutual recognition of difference and expanding intersubjective confirmation of essence. In the next section, I clarify specific characteristics of transcendental eidetic sciences in comparison with those of general eidetic sciences.

4. General Eidetic Science and Transcendental Eidetic Science What sort of prospects will be brightened through distinguishing between general eidetic science and transcendental eidetic science? This distinction is not a totally new idea; in fact, Husserl distinguished between “constitutive phenomenology” and “constitutive phenomenology of natural attitude” (Hua V, 158). Nevertheless, I newly introduce these concepts to clarify the philosophical prospect and range of Husserlian phenomenology as transcendental ontology—not clearly discussed by Husserl himself in comparison with other phenomenological eidetic sciences or essential enterprises of other philosophical camps. Transcendental eidetic sciences have three unique characteristics.

1. Transcendental Reduction and Eidetic Seeing Transcendental eidetic science is founded on transcendental reduction and eidetic seeing. Transcendental reduction should always entail universal epoché that attentively and methodologically suspends all judgments of being and excludes all positing of being. Through epoché, every positing of being—positing of thing and entity, value and meaning, idea and God, society and history, unconsciousness and body, the other and being itself, or power and act—is suspended. Based on epoché, every being proves to correlate with transcendental subjectivity. This is what Husserl calls transcendental reduction. Transcendental reduction leads a phenomenologist to a relative viewpoint of transcendental

46 subjectivity from which all beings should be regarded as merely my conviction. One is returned to transcendental subjectivity’s relativity as a starting point for phenomenological investigation, accordingly severing its connections with dogmatism. Within transcendental subjectivity’s pure sphere, a phenomenologist investigates essential structures of concrete regions, lived experiences, and ideas. Transcendental eidetic sciences’ method should be eidetic seeing conducted within the transcendental attitude, which is to say, eidetic seeing should begin only after the operation of transcendental reduction. If an eidetic science is explicated without transcendental reduction, it is regarded as a general eidetic science.

2. Mutual Recognition and Intersubjective Confirmation Transcendental reduction on which any transcendental eidetic science fundamentally depends ushers in mutual recognition of difference and intersubjective confirmation of essence. What awaits general eidetic science is strife among dogmatisms concerning truth and segmentalization of thoughts that, in principle, cannot be conciliated. Since within transcendental attitude, nothing can be objectively posited in advance, strife occurring among absolute ideas, different schools, and Gods is not possible. All positing of being is methodologically reduced into my conviction. A phenomenologist is assured of one’s own absolute pure consciousness, but one is also firmly convinced that other phenomenologists have their own absolute pure consciousness as well. Of course, here, absoluteness nonce means undoubtedness in reflection, something valid at least for me, distinguished from absolute truth in the cosmos. Thus, if, through eidetic seeing, an intuited essence differs from another, the situation is accepted with epistemological insight; the only attitude remaining is mutual recognition of difference. Transcendental eidetic science is the discipline of mutual recognition. However, that an intuited essence unfailingly disagrees with another is not guaranteed. Transcendental eidetic sciences aim to clarify what is common among plural transcendental subjectivities. Moreover, considering conditions required, or to be established, to create common understanding and universality is important. For instance, communality, death, and ego desire form fundamental conditions shared among all individuals in modern society, and these conditions function as moments to articulate intersubjective concern’s common order. Namely, not to die, to coexist with others, and to obtain a sense of freedom, the social order of good and evil universally requires consensus among individuals. Alternatively, in mathematics and logic, formalization has already generated universality of the general form of reasoning. Furthermore, based on mathematical exactness, natural science has succeeded in creating broad common understanding beyond socio-cultural diversity. Conditions that enable obtaining intersubjective confirmation and generate universality deserve more attention, even though conditions of universality depend on each field of study. A certain insight is exposed to another insight through mutual critique and exchange of words in a language game, and only then do we understand the deep reasons for possibility and

47 impossibility of creation of universality. Transcendental eidetic science is the discipline of intersubjective confirmation.

3. Discourse on Theory of Eros Transcendental eidetic science aims toward “discourse on theory of Eros” instead of “discourse on epistemology.”24 Transcendental phenomenology has mainly thematized how the world’s objectivity or transcendence is constituted in immanence. Transcendental phenomenology has been the epistemological sphere, for instance, investigating essential structures of perception, judgment, and reasoning, for Husserl’s main concern always remains discourse on epistemology. For instance, in Cartesian Meditations, Husserl considers the problem of the other, more precisely, the constitution of the other ego, but his analysis of the other is basically directed to the transcendental other who co-constitutes the world’s objectivity with the self; this is obviously limited in the transcendental problem.25 In discourse on the theory of Eros, transcendental eidetic science investigates the intersubjective structure of desire, concern, and emotion in noesis and analyzes the meaning and value of human life and society in noema. In addition, from a genetic phenomenology viewpoint, analyzing the genetic constitution of human desire and world articulation all through life, or history, is important. What essential moments generate the border between good and evil, or beauty and ugliness, in early stages of development? How does romanticism grow within one’s mind? How does eroticism grow and influence human social structure? What are grounds of validity for justice in society? These are merely a few themes of transcendental eidetic sciences, and all these questions are to be considered through eidetic seeing. Regarding the other’s essence, we must consider critically what role the other plays in existential desire of recognition or how the other appears as a spring of anxiety and Eros. Furthermore, the other can be distinguished at different levels, for example, stranger, friend, romantic partner, mentor, and family; in existence, each category’s essence might differ. This is the line of thought in transcendental eidetic sciences.

Albeit briefly, I outlined three fundamental conditions of being in transcendental eidetic science. Transcendental eidetic science is regarded as a language game of understanding based on the two

24 The terms “discourse on epistemology” and “discourse on Eros” originated from Takeda. According to Takeda, “What is the world? If we recognize this is the basic question of epistemology, the question of theory of Eros is, What are the meaning and value of the world for human beings?” Seiji Takeda, The World-View of Eros (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1997), 56. 25 I do not deny that Husserl indeed considered not only epistemology but also ethics and axiology (e.g., Hua XXXVII). Furthermore, Husserl analyzes the problem of communication between the self and the other as inter-monadic communication; this is lacking in Cartesian Meditations (e.g., Hua, XIV). Nevertheless, no doubt Husserl’s main concern turned to epistemology if one examines the main works published by Husserl himself.

48 principles of mutual recognition and intersubjective confirmation aiming toward meaning and value in the discourse of Eros through eidetic seeing and transcendental reduction. Various phenomenological enterprises such as constitutive phenomenology, constitutive phenomenology of natural attitude, realistic ontology, regional ontology, transcendental phenomenology, and hermeneutics of being constitute the entire phenomenological movement, united in the name of phenomenology. The whole movement includes phenomenology of the Munich and Göttingen Circles, Heidegger’s ontology, and phenomenological sociology developed by Alfred Schütz. However, in my view, many of them do not understand Husserlian phenomenology’s fundamental aim and scope; Husserl and his followers definitively differ in principle. Transcendental eidetic science offers a way of thinking, whose validity anyone can assess and examine regardless of nationality, religion, color of skin, culture, place of origin, and language; a way of thinking that investigates border commonality and difference without constraint and violence. Phenomenology exists in-between relativism and universalism; it is not simple universalism because transcendental reduction indeed leads to bigeminal relativities. The first relativity comes from the consequence of universal epoché and transcendental reduction, by which the world and entities within it become regarded as conviction validated in transcendental subjectivity. Phenomenology as “study of conditions of belief formation” does not entail any absolute hypostasis, that is, every being becomes relative to transcendental subjectivity. At the same time, however, transcendental subjectivity revels in its privileged position; it is the only place where I can directly reflect and gain insight into lived experiences’ essential structures. However, the second relativity strikes the absolute privilege of transcendental subjectivity: the relativity caused by other transcendental subjectivities. Even supposing that an intuited essence can be necessarily and universally validated at least for the self, would that obtained essence be accepted by the other lives in different conditions? Apparently, intersubjective assessment and confirmation to ensure that the essence presented by one transcendental subjectivity agrees with other transcendental subjectivities are demanded to create universality in phenomenology. On this second point, Husserl might be optimistic about creating universal consensus. He presupposes a symmetrical relationship between the self and the other; namely, the other can be regarded as a variation of the self.26 Following Husserl’s logic, the self can reach universality through free variation of the self’s ego. He writes, “With each eidetically pure type we find ourselves, not indeed inside the de facto ego, but inside an eidos ego; and constitution of one actually pure possibility among others carries with it implicitly, as its outer horizon, a purely possible ego, a pure

26 Here I must extend my gratitude to Ken Nishi for drawing my attention to the importance of the dimension of intersubjectivity in eidetic seeing.

49 possibility-variant of my de facto ego” (Hua I, 105). This passage unfortunately leaves an impression of solipsism and leads to misunderstanding phenomenological essentialism. Important here is that essences in phenomenology always open themselves to intersubjective assessment and confirmation. Rather, we should say that essences in phenomenology are generated through intersubjective confirmation. “The image of ‘lonely reflection’ should be replaced by the image of ‘mutual exchange of experiences’,” as Ken Nishi puts it.27 The expectation that the other will not be a variant of the self is apparently deficient in Husserl’s discussion of eidetic seeing. In an eidos color or sound, sociocultural difference indeed might be out of question. However, when it comes to eidetic analysis of meaning (such as the essence of nostalgia, discrimination, or trauma) and value (such as the essence of freedom, goodness, or justice), we need to see whether the other agrees with the obtained essence, simply because meaning and values’ essences would depend more on specific sociocultural conditions than would those of perception of things. Phenomenological essentialism always requires intersubjective confirmation through the language game. In chapters 6 and 7, I discuss this point in more detail. True, Husserl’s followers—Scheler, Heidegger, and Levinas—have already criticized Husserl’s concern as too epistemological: he always chose theoretical-epistemological themes for phenomenological investigation, for instance, perception, inference, and judgment. Not only did they criticize Husserl, they also thematized discourse on the theory of Eros—the existential meaning of love, death, and the other. In this regard, some might think it too late to claim the necessity of discourse on the theory of Eros, and transcendental eidetic science itself has already become outdated. Yet, we must briefly pause here to examine whether his followers’ phenomenology really adheres to their teacher and whether it is actually transcendental, not general, eidetic analysis. In my view, it does not adhere, and later, I review Scheler and Heidegger’s interpretation of phenomenology. In the end, a philosophy that lacks senses of mutual recognition and intersubjective confirmation reaches impasse; it cannot recognize another philosophy’s existence and thought established on totally different motives and grounds because it establishes certain absoluteness outside consciousness or beyond this world. The attitude governing such philosophy is denial, antagonism, ignorance, and connivance so that endless scholastic arguments emerge, leaving no way to adjust different values and contribute to constructive discussion. Eidetic science as universal science unavoidably requires epistemological validity of transcendental eidetic sciences. For merely general eidetic sciences to conciliate fundamental conflicts among individuals, societies, cultures, religions, and other communities and to help them co-exist is impossible. If we start with truth secreted

27 Ken Nishi, “’Essential Insight’ as a method of understanding our internal life,” The Journal of Tokyo Medical University 69, no.1 (2011): 17.

50 somewhere in the world or with transcendent being and objective value beyond the world, belief conflict among plural truths, Gods, and values will continue as the fate of dogmatism. In contrast, if uncertainty and transcendency do not exist to offer a glimpse into the world’s beyondness, our life is faced with nihilism as the consequence of relativism and skepticism. To see essential conditions and moments of object constitution in transcendental subjectivity, which is a depiction of methodologically radicalized relativism, and to ensure whether extracted essences can be agreed upon by others through the language game, only these phenomenological processes can clarify whether life is really relative or participates in determinate common conditions. The effort to discern the necessity of difference and the possibility of creation of essence characterizes phenomenology; this line of thought is a path of resistance appearing between dogmatism and relativism, but is also the only path of philosophy as universal science that does not activate the logic of exclusion and oppression. In summary, to understand the critical distinction between general eidetic science and transcendental eidetic science, we must understand how elucidation of epistemological aporia contributes to phenomenological essentialism. Husserl’s significant, groundbreaking achievement lies in converting essentialism, fundamentally, from dogmatic essentialism to intersubjective essentialism.28 As I discuss in the following chapters, in the phenomenological movement, eidetic sciences are truly ambiguous from thinker to thinker. However, transcendental eidetic sciences can distinguish themselves from general eidetic sciences, at least in mutual recognition of difference and intersubjective confirmation of essence. Finally, I would like to point out that transcendental eidetic science entails the possibility of transformation and rebuilding of already existing eidetic sciences in light of epistemological validity.

Conclusion In this chapter, I introduced the conceptual distinction between general eidetic science and transcendental eidetic science to illuminate Husserlian phenomenology’s potentiality. As the dispute between Zahavi and de Warren demonstrates, evaluation of phenomenology’s essential aspect is still undetermined. Some phenomenologists see phenomenology’s essentialism merely as heritage from the Western philosophical tradition. Others, including this author, discover a new perspective of phenomenological essentialism distinguished from traditional essentialism, for instance, Plato’s theory of ideas. In addition, Husserl himself states that eidetic sciences can be developed within the natural attitude, but this turn of phrase might bring about misunderstanding of what Husserl actually means.

28 Phenomenological essentialism can be regarded as intersubjective essentialism, in contrast to traditional dogmatic essentialism. In chapter 8, I review traditional essentialism’s main characteristics.

51 In the broadest sense, eidetic science includes not only Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology but also mathematics and logic or essentialism from other philosophical camps such as Platonism, Neo-Kantianism, and the Munich and Göttingen Circles; they have, in fact, explicated eidetic analysis so far even though they do not really know about phenomenology. In this sense, undoubtably, eidetic science is not phenomenology’s exclusive feature, but rather, as a practical matter, can be investigated within the natural attitude. Thus, Husserl was so conscious of this hard fact that he presented a misleading statement about the potentiality of general eidetic sciences. Crucially, however, his genuine intention is to rebuild eidetic science on the basis of phenomenological transcendentalism. In light of intersubjective confirmation of essence and mutual recognition of difference, especially, transcendental eidetic science apparently behaves in a completely different manner than general eidetic science, and this can be easily understood. As discussed in this study’s last two chapters, when essentialism encounters social constructionism and the problem of the subaltern, the difference between general eidetic science and transcendental eidetic science is maximized; of necessity, general eidetic science cannot exclude the possibility of oppressing the voiceless in society. Transcendental eidetic science must effect universal epoché and transcendental reduction by which phenomenological essence is considered the correlate with transcendental subjectivity, not the substantial hypostasis that absolutely, one-sidedly determines what the individual should be.

52 Chapter 4 Miscommunication of Phenomenology: The Case of Martin Heidegger Introduction It is not easy to accurately estimate Heidegger’s contribution to phenomenology. There is no doubt that the phenomenological movement could not have advanced to its present status without Heidegger, but at the same time, it is Heidegger who radically altered the original motive and method of Husserlian phenomenology, as Hubert Dreyfus argues: “In Heidegger’s hands, phenomenology becomes a way of letting something shared that can never be totally articulated and for which there can be no indubitable evidence show itself.” 1 Heidegger seems correctly to understand what phenomenology intends and how phenomenology is prominent in comparison with neo-Kantianism and Dilthey’s philosophy of life, but Heidegger is so enamored of the question of Being2 that his phenomenology parts ways with Husserl’s in the end. What should be noted is that Heidegger’s divergence from Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology is not a small shift, such as, by analogy, the difference between water and ice, but rather it entails a crucial transformation, such as the relation between water and oil, especially in terms of an epistemological viewpoint. In other words, while for Husserl it is of importance to adjust belief conflict and to generate common understanding in such a way that anyone can examine and confirm the intersubjective validity of one’s own experience and belief formation, Heidegger abandons the possibility of intersubjective universality, or, rather, he sometimes seems to be recusing mass everydayness by regarding it as a form of “falling (Verfallen).” The task of this chapter is to clarify how Heidegger accepts and modifies the method of phenomenology by focusing on his thinking around the time of the 1920s. However, because it is not possible to provide in this space an overview of the whole huge picture of Heidegger’s ontology, in particular, I do not review his later philosophy, which can be characterized as mystic and poetic speculation of Being itself, but I instead only describe the relation between phenomenology and ontology in Heidegger, that is, how he makes use of phenomenology to access the question of being. First, I discuss the concept of phenomenology in Heidegger’s interpretation. Whereas Heidegger evaluates phenomenological concepts such as intentionality, categorical intuition, and a priori as disclosing a new horizon onto ontological issues, his interpretation of phenomenology includes what is not taken into account in Husserlian phenomenology. Then, I review Heidegger’s critique of Husserl regarding the idea of phenomenological reduction. For Heidegger, the operation of

1 Hubert L. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division I (Cambridge / London: MIT Press, 1991), 30. 2 In this study, I use the capitalized term “Being (Sein)” especially when I would like to stress the difference between Sein and Seiende. Regarding quoted passages, I use the translated version of each of Heidegger’s works.

53 phenomenological reduction itself closes the door on accessibility to the question of being because it postulates the being of consciousness and the intentional. Finally, this chapter examines to what extent Heidegger’s divergence from Husserl influences Heidegger’s philosophical scheme and distorts the original meaning of phenomenology. Heidegger implicitly introduces the hierarchy of value order, which can no longer assessed and confirmed; therefore, his self-designated phenomenological investigation cannot be called phenomenological in terms of Husserl’s viewpoint. Heidegger spoils the core of phenomenology—the intersubjective confirmation of essence and the mutual recognition of difference—by looking down on the everydayness of the general public and saying that the truth of being is disguised somehow through everyday understanding.

1. The Concept of Phenomenology in Heidegger’s Interpretation In 1919, Heidegger began working as a research assistant for Husserl in Freiburg and developed a familiarity with the idea of phenomenology. That same year, he delivered a series of lectures entitled “The Idea of Philosophy and the Worldview Problem,” and claimed in his lectures that a critique of knowledge in the agency of psychology is necessary to distinguish philosophy as Urwissenschaft from the mere worldview.3 Apparently, Heidegger had already been influenced by Husserl’s idea of philosophy as rigorous science at that point, but at the same time, more attention should now be paid to the fact that he presented the term “hermeneutic intuition (Hermeneutische Intuition)” instead of using Husserl’s “eidetic intuition” or “eidetic seeing.”4 For Heidegger, phenomenology provides a possible way to approach to things in themselves, but it can be said that his interpretation of phenomenology somehow missed the point from the very beginning. The late nineteenth and the early twentieth century was the age of empiricism and positivism. The power of positivism gradually began to invade the realm of the humanities in those days (i.e., the birth of psychology and sociology), and consequently, “philosophical foundations in science, or for science in general, suddenly came to seem dispensable; even in the normative sphere, it now seemed, the sciences could look after themselves. Philosophy was thus in the unfortunate position of having constantly to demonstrate its indispensability, or even its right to exist.”5 The rise of positivism confronted philosophy with a big challenge: philosophy had to prove its necessity and independence as both a subject of research and a method. The effort of neo-Kantians and Dilthey to defend the uniqueness of philosophical thinking and of the method can be understood in this context; however, to “meet the needs which a specialized and professionalized science could no longer satisfy

3 Martin Heidegger, “Die Idee der Philosophie und das Weltanschauungsproblem,” in Martin Heidegger, Zur Bestimmung der Philosophie (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1987). 4 Heidegger, “Die Idee der Philosophie,” 117. 5 Herbert Schnädelbach, Philosophy in Germany 1831–1933, trans. Eric Matthews (Cambridge / London / New York / New Rochelle / Melbourne / Sydney: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 67.

54 there sprang up a constantly increasing supply of world-views, which promised to provide what the scientists could no longer provide and which for the most part claimed to be scientific themselves.”6 However, it belongs to the essence of worldview that any worldview does not cross over to intersubjective universality extending beyond individual or communal guide, which provides a valid sense of value and a specific reason for living to only a closed individual and community. Both Husserl and Heidegger share this situation and tackle the problem of philosophy and worldview, and they believe that it is phenomenology that can make a breakthrough against mathematical positivism and a rapid and easygoing worldview. Namely, they are certain that phenomenology offers the possibility for reexamining the relationship between science and philosophy from the bottom and enables a revival of the role of philosophy again. Before publishing Being and Time in 1927, which is dedicated to Husserl, Heidegger gave a series of lectures entitled “History of the Concept of Time” at the University of Marburg during the summer semester in 1925. In these lectures, Heidegger attempts to define phenomenology in exact detail. First, he regards intentionality, categorical intuition, and a priori as innovations of phenomenology, which opens a new dimension of the question of being (§5-7), “bringing the subject matters under investigation to an original experience, before their concealment by a particular scientific inquiry.”7 However, the maxim of phenomenology “to the things in themselves” raises a question: “what are these matters to which philosophy must return if it ever is to be scientific research?”8 In other words, what sort of realm remains for phenomenological investigation? Heidegger’s answer to this question is the same as Husserl’s, “Phenomenology is the analytic description of intentionality in its apriori.”9 To approach the genuine meaning of phenomenology, the strategy employed by Heidegger is to return to the original meaning of the term “phenomenology.” According to Heidegger, phenomenology can be divided into two parts, phenomenon and -logy (logos). Both words originated from Greek: phenomenon originally meant something that shows itself, and logos originally meant letting something be seen in itself and from itself.10 Thus, Heidegger defines phenomenology as “letting the manifest in itself be seen from itself.”11 It is important, however, that phenomenon should be strictly distinguished from semblance and appearance because a semblance pretends to be manifest but not really being it, and an appearance refers to something that is not given, something that is concealed behind appearance. Heidegger claims, “A phenomenon is nothing behind which there would be something else. More accurately stated, one cannot ask for something

6 Schnädelbach, Philosophy in Germany, 72. 7 Heidegger, History, 5. 8 Heidegger, History, 76. 9 Heidegger, History, 79. 10 Heidegger, History, 80 ff. 11 Heidegger, History, 85.

55 behind the phenomenon at all, since what the phenomenon gives is precisely that something in itself.”12 However, Heidegger also argues that “what can in itself be exhibited and is to be exhibited can nonetheless be covered up. […] As research work, phenomenology is precisely the work of laying open and letting be seen, understood as the methodologically directed dismantling of concealments.”13 Here, Heidegger’s discussion of the concept of phenomenon is complicated. On the one hand, phenomenon is defined as something that shows itself, and is to be distinguished from semblance and appearance, so one cannot ask for anything behind the phenomenon at all. On the other hand, Heidegger draws attention to the fact that what can in itself be exhibited and is to be exhibited can nonetheless be covered up: “First, a phenomenon can be covered up in the sense that it is still quite undiscovered, so that there is no knowledge or clue to its existence. Second, a phenomenon can be buried. This means that it was discovered before but once again got covered up.”14 The question is, what covers up the phenomenon that is to be exhibited? One possible answer is theoretical preoccupied ideas in history, such as the idea that the true essence of nature and spirit are determined only by mathematical laws in the case of positivism or the idea that the question of Being is clarified in light of the question of beings15 in the case of the tradition of Western philosophy. The form of being covered up, which appears as being buried or disguised in the sense of the originally seen phenomena being “uprooted, torn from their ground, and […] no longer understood in their origins”16 clearly lays out Heidegger’s interpretation of phenomenology. For Heidegger, phenomenology opens accessibility to the genuine phenomenon that has been covered up and disguised in history. This is why he employs the term “hermeneutic intuition” instead of “eidetic intuition” as the principle of principles for phenomenological investigation. This means that Heidegger doubts that givenness through intuition is to be trusted in itself, for givenness is often contaminated by implicit historical discourses and unconsciously accepted general ideas. Not regarding givenness as what is given in the case of Husserl, Heidegger instead stresses the necessity of interpretation to disclose and extract the genuine phenomenon that is no longer contaminated. While Heidegger recognizes that the idea of phenomenology provides an eminent way to the revival

12 Heidegger, History, 86. 13 Heidegger, History, 86. 14 Heidegger, History, 86. 15 According to Heidegger, “We understand the ‘is’ we use in speaking, although we do not comprehend it conceptually. […] This understanding of the ‘is’ and of being in general is so much a matter of course that it was possible for the dogma to spread in philosophy uncontested to the present day that being is the simplest and most self-evident concept, that it is neither susceptible of nor in need of definition. Appeal is made to common sense. But wherever common sense is taken to be philosophy’s highest court of appeal, philosophy must become suspicious.” Martin Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. Albert Hofstadter (Bloomington / Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988), 14 16 Heidegger, History, 87

56 of philosophy, especially against positivism, he ends up confirming that Husserl’s reduction contributes partly to disguising the question of being. Husserl still stands on the side of the traditional, just as do Descartes and Kant for Heidegger. 2. Heidegger’s Critique of Husserlian Phenomenology Heidegger’s critique of Husserl is twofold. One aspect is that Heidegger actually furthers the phenomenological movement and deepens the question of being by criticizing Husserl’s insufficiency of analysis on the being of the intentional. This is a positive aspect. However, the other aspect is that Heidegger distorts the method of phenomenology according to the idea that the truth is somehow disguised and that the general public cognition is untrusted so that interpretation plays a more significant role in phenomenological investigation than directly seeing the given to consciousness. Thus, it is necessary to clarify both the validity and the invalidity of Heidegger’s critique of Husserl. Namely, the task of this section is to review to what extent Heidegger philosophically carries forward the question of being in immanent critique of phenomenological research. Heidegger extracts the four determinations of consciousness, or the intentional, from Husserl’s discussion of the indubitability of the perception of something immanent: (a) consciousness is immanent being; (b) consciousness is absolute being in the sense of absolute givenness; (c) consciousness is absolutely given in the sense of “nulla re indigent ad existendum”; (d) consciousness is pure being.17 As discussed in chapter 1, Husserl regards the immanental sphere of consciousness as absolute not only in the sense of absolute givenness directly apprehended in itself but also in terms of its independence of existence in the Cartesian sense, as Heidegger argues that “consciousness is that sort of being [object-constituting being] which for its part is not constituted once again in another consciousness but which, in constituting itself, itself constitutes every possible reality.”18 Moreover, because transcendental phenomenology investigates irreal phenomena, in other words, the aim of phenomenology is to describe the essential structures of transcendentally reduced pure phenomena that are correlates with transcendental subjectivity (i.e., pure consciousness), and the being of consciousness is to be seen pure as ideal, not real being. Therefore, it can be said that Heidegger’s argument is appropriate enough on the surface to characterize the concept of consciousness in Husserlian phenomenology. However, Heidegger points out that “all of these determinations of being are derived with a view to working out the context of lived experience as a region for absolute scientific consideration,” and thus, the question of being is left behind by considerations.19 Because the idea that “consciousness is to be the region of an absolute science” is an idea that “has occupied modern philosophy ever since

17 Heidegger, History, 103 ff. 18 Heidegger, History, 105. 19 Heidegger, History, 107.

57 Descartes,” Husserl in fact does extract determinations of consciousness not by going back to things in themselves but to the tradition of philosophy.20 Thus, for Heidegger, “none of the characters which emerge as determinations of the being of lived experiences is an original character.”21 Namely, from Heidegger’s viewpoint, Husserl does not reflect on the being of consciousness from itself and in itself, and it is a part of the heritage of Western philosophy, the current of transcendentalism that was invented by Descartes and succeeded by Kant. Husserl determines the region of consciousness as region on the epistemological and transcendental concern, but does not question the being of consciousness itself. Furthermore, Heidegger points out that the idea of phenomenological reduction itself lies in the way of treating the question of being in the genuine sense: phenomenological reduction is carried out “by disregarding what is really posited, by withdrawing from every real positing” so that “we disregard precisely the reality of the consciousness given in the natural attitude in the factual human being. […] the reduction is in principle inappropriate for determining the being of consciousness positively.”22 Namely, Heidegger suggests that, while Husserl argues that an immanental perception as perception of perception provides the absolute undoubtedness that forms the ground of every transcendent cognitive act, he conversely limits his considerations on consciousness by effecting epoché and transcendental reduction. In Husserl, the factual human being is not questioned, or, rather, it is impossible for Husserl to lay out the factual structures of consciousness because consciousness is regarded as abstract transcendental subjectivity and still remains unclear regardless of his analysis of intentionality, immanence, and lived experience. That is, it works merely as the means to see the object constitution in Husserlian phenomenology. Thus, Heidegger concludes that “in the consideration and elaboration of pure consciousness, merely the what-content is brought to the fore, without any inquiry into the being of the acts in the sense of their existence. Not only is this question not raised in the reductions, the transcendental as well as the eidetic; it gets lost precisely through them.”23 Then, what is the being of the consciousness or the intentional that Husserl does not inquire about? When Husserl was invited to write the entry “phenomenology” for the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1927, he asked Heidegger for help in completing the article.24 However, as the dialog between Husserl and Heidegger progressed, Husserl gradually realized that his own idea of

20 Heidegger, History, 107. 21 Heidegger, History, 107. 22 Heidegger, History, 109. 23 Heidegger, History, 110. 24 Regarding the specific communication and confrontation happened between Husserl and Heidegger in 1927, see Thomas Sheehan, “The History of the Redaction of The Encyclopaedia Britannica Article” in Edmund Husserl, Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology and the Confrontation with Heidegger (1927-1931), trans. and ed. Thomas Sheehan and Richard E. Palmer (Dordrecht / Boston / London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), 36 ff.

58 phenomenology was totally different from Heidegger’s, especially in terms of the fundamental motive to employ the method of phenomenology. Heidegger sent a letter to Husserl, writing, “Transcendental constitution is a central possibility of the existence of the factual self. This factual self, the concrete human being, is as such—as an entity—never a ‘worldly real fact’ because the human being is never merely present-at-hand but rather exists. And what is ‘wondersome’ is the fact that the existence structure of Dasein makes possible the transcendental constitution of everything positive” (Hua IX, 601 f.). Heidegger agrees with Husserl concerning the difference between the human being and other beings, because only the human being is able to constitute all other beings in existence and can inquire about its own Being and the Being of other beings. Consequently, the existence structure of Dasein is to be clarified in the first place for the sake of unveiling the question of being. Namely, as Heidegger discusses in Being and Time, Dasein always already exists as “being-in-the-world (In-der-Welt-sein),” and “state-of-mind (Befindlichkeit),” “understanding (Verstehen),” and “discourse (Rede)” are extracted in the existential constitution of the “there (Da).” Furthermore, intentionality is essentially based on “care (Sorge)” in Heidegger, because being-in-the-world belongs to essentially to Dasein, and its being to the world is essentially “concern (Besorgen).”25 Namely, Dasein is always already directed to the world through concern, and intentionality is originally grounded on this fundamental facticity. Thus, for Heidegger, the four determinations of consciousness do not suffice the demand of the question of being: “Two fundamental neglects pertaining to the question of being can be identified. On the one hand, the question of the being of this specific entity, of the acts, is neglected; on the other, we have the neglect of the question of the sense of being itself.”26 In my view, Heidegger’s critique of Husserl is persuasive and of crucial value for the development of phenomenology in that Heidegger alters and deepens the discourse of phenomenology from “discourse on epistemology” into “discourse on theory of Eros”: Heidegger indeed inquires question of theory of Eros is, “What are the meaning and value of the world for human beings?” instead of the question of epistemology, “What is the world?” As I discussed in chapter 3, the task of transcendental eidetic science lies in investigating the intersubjective structure of desire, concern, and emotion in noesis and analyzes the meaning and value of human life and society in noema. In this regard, Heidegger’s ontological and existential concerns effectuate a new dimension to phenomenology. Nevertheless, it should be said that Heidegger misunderstands the aim and scope of transcendental phenomenology. Especially when he says the neglect of the question of being and of

25 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York / London / Toronto / Sydney / New Delhi / Auckland: Harper&Row, 1962), 84. 26 Heidegger, History, 115.

59 the being of the intentional is grounded in the falling of Dasein itself,27 his argument loses its basis. Heidegger criticizes the method of phenomenological reduction, but the aim of phenomenological reduction in Husserl is to create common understanding and to adjust belief conflict, not to open up the question of being itself, and transcendental subjectivity is a methodological device for seeing the conditions of belief formation. In this regard, Heidegger seems to confound empirical subject and transcendental subject.28 Whether or not Dasein or the transcendental subject is falling, is not the subject matter of phenomenology. There is no way to examine by oneself whether one’s existence is truly falling or not, because falling is also seen as a conviction constituted in transcendental subjectivity, following Husserl. The fact that Heidegger presupposes the true form of understanding of being in advance, and, what is more, he refuses intersubjectivity in everydayness, indicates that his investigation has already broken away from phenomenology.

3. Heidegger’s Divergence from Phenomenology Now it becomes understandable why Heidegger employs hermeneutic intuition instead of eidetic seeing to obtain accessibility to things in themselves. There are two reasons. The first reason is that, because Heidegger rejects phenomenological reduction in that it closes the way to the question of being, he also rejects seeing the essential structures of lived experience, which is directly given to consciousness. Rather, it is more crucial for Heidegger to interpret what determines or constitutes consciousness and intentionality than to directly accept the given just as what gives itself. The second reason is that the given to consciousness does not deserve admiration because of the falling of Dasein. That is, the everyday experience of the human being somehow conceals and disguises the truth, the truth of existential authenticity (Eigentlichkeit) so that intuition itself requires interpretation. In what follows, I review the concept of falling in Heidegger and prove that Heidegger’s phenomenological investigation is not phenomenological, at least in terms of a transcendental perspective. He spoils the central principle of Husserlian phenomenology, which is to say, the intersubjective confirmation of essence and the mutual recognition of difference. The dichotomy between falling and authenticity that Heidegger embeds in phenomenology is to be seen as phenomenologically groundless even though Heidegger, nevertheless, artfully analyzes the structures of falling as if he does not introduce any hierarchy of value to the discussion of the everyday being of the there and the falling of Dasein. According to Heidegger, Dasein is proximally and for the most part (zunächst und zumeist) thrown into the publicness, and there are three being modes of Dasein in everydayness: “idle talk (Gerede),” “curiosity (Neugier),” and “ambiguity (Zweideutigkeit).”29

27 Heidegger, History, 128 ff. 28 See footnote 26 of chapter 2. 29 Heidegger, Being, 210 ff.

60 First, the phenomenon of “idle talk” shows how everyday Dasein understands and interprets its own being and the being of the world. Everyday Dasein talks and communicates with each other, but through everyday talk, they understand one another “in the same averageness.”30 Namely, idle talk will never transcend the average understanding of being, or rather it does not need to understand what is truly said: we just blindly hear what is said and unquestioningly share it with others in this case. As Heidegger states, “Idle talk is something which anyone can rake up; it not only releases one from the task of genuinely understanding, but develops an undifferentiated kind of intelligibility, for which nothing is closed off any longer.”31 Thus, idle talk does not disclose a genuine understanding of being, but every discourse becomes equivalent in the same averageness. One loses oneself in idle talk as melting into the publicness: “The ‘they’ (das Man) prescribes one’s state-of-mind, and determines what and how one ‘sees’”32 in advance. Second, Heidegger calls a specific tendency to seeing in everydayness “curiosity.” Curiosity always drives Dasein to a passing new aspect of the world, but nonetheless, “it concerns itself with seeing, not to understand what is seen […] but just to see. It seeks novelty only to leap from it anew to another novelty. In this kind of seeing, that which is an issue for care does not lie in grasping something and being knowingly in the truth; it lies rather in its possibilities of abandoning itself to the world.” 33 Curiosity concerns “the constant possibility of distraction” so that “Dasein is constantly uprooting itself” within a new curiosity coming and going.34 Again, one forgets the genuine understanding of being in it (or one does not even notice that one indeed forgets it). Third, idle talk and curiosity in the state of everyday Dasein inevitably cause “ambiguity” about Dasein’s being. In the average understanding of being in the publicness, the “they” cannot differentiate what is genuine and what is deceitful, because all of state-of-mind, understanding, and discourse are essentially given by the world, by anonymous other people. That is, there is no criterion or center point (e.g., authentic self-care) to judge and choose something; rather, everything seems similar and flowing in the discourse of everydayness: “In the ambiguity of the way things have been publicly interpreted, talking about things ahead of the game and making surmises about them curiously, gets passed off as what is really happening, while taking action and carrying something through get stamped as something merely subsequent and unimportant.”35 Consequently, Dasein misunderstands the genuine possibilities of being. Heidegger calls the basic kind of being in everydayness that is characterized by idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity “falling,” which corresponds to the general characteristic of everyday

30 Heidegger, Being, 212. 31 Heidegger, Being, 213. 32 Heidegger, Being, 213. 33 Heidegger, Being, 216. 34 Heidegger, Being, 216 f. 35 Heidegger, Being, 218.

61 Dasein by being proximally and for the most part thrown into the publicness: falling signifies that Dasein has “fallen away” from itself—fallen away from authenticity—, and “fallen into” the world—fallen into inauthenticity—, so that it has lost itself in the publicness.36 The question is whether or not the distinction between authenticity and falling can be regarded as a phenomenological insight that anyone can examine and confirm through reflection on lived experiences. In fact, it is not easy to judge this, because Heidegger carefully states that the term “falling” “does not express any negative evaluation,” to indicate there is no hierarchy between authenticity and falling, as if he is just describing the structures of everyday Dasein. Nonetheless, in my view, it should be said that the distinction is arbitrary enough that analysis of everydayness itself is a dogmatic task. The logic of Heidegger seems right in the case that one is tormented by a specific existential concern, namely, in the case that one is always suffering from the fear of death, but what he actually does is deny the everydayness of Dasein to justify his own concerns and fear; he produces the dogmatic composition that only the fear of death can be a path to a genuine life, and that other everyday concerns are a form of a loss of self. If he were Nietzsche, he would say it was a form of ressentiment. Heidegger claims the following: “The obviousness and self-assurance of the average ways in which things have been interpreted, are such that while the particular Dasein drifts along toward an ever-increasing groundlessness as it floats, the uncanniness of this floating remains hidden from it under their protecting shelter”37; “Idle talk and curiosity take care in their ambiguity to ensure that what is genuinely and newly created is out of date as soon as it emerges before the public. Such a new creation can become free in its positive possibilities only if the idle talk which covers it up has become ineffective, and if the ‘common’ interest has died away,”38 but is there really something uncanny and hidden by the common interest? Rather, by rejecting the common interest and common intuition, does his argument not apparently lose the basis for intersubjectivity and universality that Husserl considers the most significant aim of phenomenology? Although I do not discuss what authenticity means for Heidegger in detail in this study, the image of authenticity he has, is that something exists only for me, the possibility of being itself, which is disclosed by “freedom toward death (Freiheit zum Tode),”39 which is completely released from the illusions of the “they.” There is indeed room for further discussion regarding the question of whether or not only the origination for Dasein to recover its authenticity is freedom toward death, but at least it can be argued that Heidegger’s argument abandons the fundamental basis of phenomenology, that is, trust in the givenness through intuition.

36 Heidegger, Being, 220. 37 Heidegger, Being, 214. 38 Heidegger, Being, 218. 39 Heidegger, Being, 311.

62 In short, the consequence of a dichotomy between authenticity and falling lies in the disruption of intuition: while Husserl’s eidetic seeing attempts to create intersubjective confirmation based on the self-givenness of the object, Heidegger’s hermeneutic intuition aims at disclosing a genuine understanding of Being and at returning Dasein back from falling into everydayness by doubting the self-givenness of the object in everydayness. In the idea that something genuine and authentic is disguised by publicness and generality Heidegger deviates from phenomenology. Especially when he rejects phenomenological reduction and eidetic seeing, his investigation becomes no longer phenomenological and loses the principle of establishing a universal science. Heidegger certainly succeeds in turning the direction of phenomenology toward a discourse of the theory of Eros by explicating the structures of Dasein on existential concerns, but at the same time, his method does not originate from transcendental eidetic science but from general eidetic sciences.

Critical Remarks Last, I would like to defend phenomenological reduction and eidetic seeing in Husserl in this section. Heidegger says the method of reduction makes it impossible to inquire about the question of being, but it should be said that he miscommunicates phenomenology. The point of reduction lies in that (1) the subject-object problem cannot be elucidated if one remains within subject-object schema (i.e., natural attitude), because one cannot confirm the basis for objectivity from outside oneself in principle; (2) then, one should conduct epoché, which suspends all positing of being, and refrain from all judgments about what the real object genuinely is; (3) therefore, what is to be investigated in phenomenology is under what conditions the conscious object is constituted in immanence, and the subject-object schema is radically altered to the immanence-transcendence schema through reduction. Namely, phenomenological reduction requires the radical alteration of attitude, and transcendental subjectivity is an irreal place where one can directly see, examine, and confirm “conditions of belief formation.” Heidegger criticizes Husserl in that four determinations of consciousness presented by Husserl are obtained not by going back to things in themselves but by going back to the tradition of philosophy, whose concern is mainly epistemology, that is, the transcendentalism of Descartes and Kant. Heidegger’s claim is correct, as Descartes provides him with the inspiration of reduction, and the transcendental problem clearly derives from Kant. However, Heidegger’s critique of Husserl misses the point. It is true that Husserl does not in fact investigate the structures of Dasein or present any specific analysis about how Dasein is to the world. It is Heidegger who discovers a new horizon in phenomenology. Regardless of this, transcendental subjectivity does not block the path to the question of being, because Dasein and its existential structures can be also regarded as conviction constituted in transcendental subjectivity. Rather, if one posits Dasein or Being itself independent of transcendental subjectivity, one question arises: what is the channel for accessing it? In my view, it is

63 nothing other than consciousness for seeing the structures of Dasein. In this sense, Heidegger does not understand that transcendental subjectivity is a methodological device to generate universality and to control belief conflict. Thus, Heidegger’s critique of reduction is void in terms of epistemological validity. Further, without epistemological validity, one should not take a step toward ontological issues. Certainly, as regards analysis of human existence, Heidegger carries forward the principle of philosophy by finding the uniqueness of the existential situation as “being-in-the-world,” which is always already to the world through the medium of care, and by presenting “state-of-mind,” “understanding,” and “discourse” in the existential constitution of the “there” instead of in the theoretical consciousness in Husserl. Yet Husserl’s transcendental subjectivity is indeed to be disclosed on a different level from Dasein, because Dasein’s existential structures are also regarded as conviction constituted within it from a Husserlian viewpoint. Thus, it can be said that the direction of the investigation about the being of consciousness and the intentional is philosophically legitimate, but that Heidegger’s critique of reduction misses the mark. Moreover, it belongs to the essence of eidetic seeing in Husserlian phenomenology to generate an intersubjective confirmation of essence and to shed light on the importance of the mutual recognition of difference. In my view, Heidegger does not understand this point; rather, he abandons the creation of universality by saying that intuition itself requires interpretation. For eidetic seeing, it is of critical importance to accept the given to consciousness through intuition as what is given in itself. According to Husserl, “the principle of all principles” can be defined such that “every originary presentive intuition (jede originär gebende Anschauung) is a legitimizing source of cognition,” and “everything originarily […] offered to us in ‘intuition’ is to be accepted simply as what it is presented as being, but also only within the limits in which it is presented there” (Hua III/1, 51). The given through originary presentive intuition (i.e., eidetic seeing and intuition of something individual) is to be accepted as what is presented without any adding and subtracting, because these two intuitions form the basis for all theories and cognitions. If one denies what is really seen or guesses what is not in fact seen, the legitimizing source of cognition loses its position as the principle of principles. In this regard, hermeneutic intuition is phenomenologically absurd, and it undermines the foundation of phenomenological investigation. It is certainly true that eidetic seeing cannot reach intersubjective agreement in some cases. Further, the intuited essence itself may be contaminated by prejudice and discrimination, which come from the environment. For example, if one grows up in an environment in which one is taught that women should not work outside the home, the articulation of essences becomes distorted and biased. In this sense, Heidegger seems correct, as intuition itself should be doubted somehow, and positive interpretation plays a significant role in redressing biased intuition or falling intuition. I agree that one’s intuition and cognition may be biased to the extent that abuse of human rights is

64 implicitly justified within a certain individual mind and communal custom. However, is it authenticity in the Heideggerian sense that could redress and modify eidetic intuition? Does hermeneutic intuition work instead of eidetic seeing? In my view, it is not through authenticity completely closed within oneself but from the other that one realizes intuition and the given through it has no universal ground, even though what is given to consciousness is still absolute and undoubted for oneself. Namely, one hardly has the motivation to genetically reconsider the ground of essence (i.e., articulation of sensitivity and desire) before human and social relationships go wrong in reality. When one lacerates another’s mind or when one does not fit into the environment, it is of crucial value to examine the intersubjective validity of the intuited essence, to understand the difference between self and other. Why do I intuit an essence in such a way? Is this given agreed upon by others? Without the moment of the other, it is impossible to reweave the articulation of essence, concern, sensitivity, and desire. In this regard, Heidegger misses the point again, because what I need to do is not look down on the general public and recover the authentic understanding of being at once but rather discuss with other people and revise my frame of mind little by little. Heidegger’s philosophy drives the paradigm of Western philosophy toward a hermeneutic ontology of being, but his investigation becomes not phenomenological in his teacher’s sense by rejecting phenomenological reduction and eidetic seeing. Especially in terms of the intersubjective confirmation of essence and the mutual recognition of difference, Husserl’s phenomenology is more convincing than Heidegger’s hermeneutics. The confrontation between Husserl and Heidegger is a turning point in phenomenology: we have to decide which philosophical principle is better for human life and society, eidetic science or hermeneutics.

65 Chapter 5 Max Scheler’s Essentialism and Metaphysics as General Eidetic Science Introduction Scheler believed that the mission of philosophy undergoes evolution through a gradational disclosure of essential structures in the world. Moreover, this mission is only possible through the loving act of human spirit. Scheler employed the method of phenomenology, which was established by Husserl. It seems right to argue that Scheler inherited the eidetic disciplines from Husserl, since Scheler began an intellectual relationship with Husserl, through a discussion regarding the expansion of concept intuition; he was significantly influenced by Husserlian phenomenology, particularly by its eidetic method.1 However, it is sometimes difficult to see Scheler as a genuine phenomenologist because he opened and developed the unique dimension of investigations, including ethics, sociology, biology, medical science, and the science of religion in a distinctive way. Although it is true that Scheler was greatly influenced by the phenomenological enterprises of Husserl, Scheler often seemed to consciously distance himself from Husserlian phenomenology, and in some cases, his discussions lacked a consideration of phenomenology, as Manfred Frings pointed out, “That which distinguishes Scheler fundamentally from Husserl and Heidegger are his multilateral interests and thoughts, […] especially, his continuous occupation with the ultimate source of all intellectual and voluntary powers of man: love.”2 Especially when Scheler explicated philosophical anthropology on the basis of the dualism of life and spirit in his latter period, his method apparently deviated from the principle of Husserlian phenomenology, and his critique of Husserl gained intensity. However, it is true that Scheler continued to evaluate phenomenology as a method for understanding essences up to the last moments of his life. This chapter aims to explain what philosophy meant to Scheler by reviewing the dynamic relation between life and spirit. First, it confirms how Scheler employed the method of phenomenological reduction in order to unveil the essential structures of the world and man. The biological aspect of man (i.e., life) should be excluded through the operation of phenomenological reduction while spirit directly extracts essence, i.e., the one thing that is common among all individuals. Second, it elucidates the main characteristics of the natural outlook (Weltanschauung) and the scientific outlook: the naive worldview in daily life and the positive scientific worldview in natural sciences, respectively. Both the outlooks entail a certain relativity that is derived from individual and communal differences (or species differences) in comparison to what the

1 Max Scheler, “Die deutsche Philosophie der Gegenwarts,” in Max Scheler Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 7 (Bern: Francke, 1973), 308. 2 Manfred S. Frings, Max Scheler: A Concise Introduction into the World of a Great Thinker (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1965), 25.

66 philosophical outlook attempts, i.e., to evidently and adequately grasp the meaning of something. Third, it reviews the moral conditions for the philosophical outlook: the act of love and how it plays a significant role in the Scheler’s essentialism. Fourth, this chapter discusses how the knowledge of essence can be a starting point for all critical metaphysics, especially in terms of how to ensure the connection between man and the absolute. Finally, this chapter describes the mission of philosophy in terms of the dynamic relation between life and spirit. In this regard, Scheler argued that life and spirit intrinsic to human nature are bestowed by the absolute. Scheler argues that philosophical anthropology, as a philosophical investigation of man, bridges the essence of knowledge and metaphysics. With a sense of oneness with the universe in which all living beings are originally derived from the divine drive of the absolute, what man thinks, feels, loves, and the way in which man lives in and with God generates the meaning of history. The final part of this chapter criticizes Scheler’s essentialism instead of presenting a traditional conclusion. Scheler stressed the objective order of essences and values, but the evidence of eidetic seeing seems to lack intersubjective validity. More specifically, as Scheler had abandoned the universal validity of essences, which is generated through intersubjective confirmation, his essentialism was unavoidably involved in both relativism and elitist dogmatism. As a result, the philosophical outlook claimed by Scheler itself turned out to be merely an outlook among several other outlooks: it is essentially a general eidetic science. In this regard, Scheler’s essentialism and metaphysics can be considered fideism.

1. The Phenomenological Reduction of Scheler This section discusses how the method of phenomenological reduction unfolds what is common among individuals under philosophical investigation. Scheler saw two different principles in man: life and spirit. Life is shared among all living beings with psychic life that “are not only objects for external observers but also have a being in and for themselves, or an inner life of their own.”3 Conversely, spirit is only equipped by man (and God) who can distantiate from an object and question its existence. In this regard, phenomenological reduction is employed to close off the life-drive and disclose spirit. According to Scheler, life is characterized as driving “‘toward something,’ for example, nourishment or sexual satisfaction.” Drive (Trieb) is the inner principle of action prior to consciousness and representation, i.e., the “movement ‘toward,’ as toward light, or ‘away from,’ as a state of pleasure or suffering devoid of object, are the only two modes of this primitive feeling.”4 This primitive drive toward something is also shared by man, as stated by Scheler: “The first stage of

3 Max Scheler, Man’s Place in Nature, trans. Hans Meyerhoff (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), 8. 4 Scheler, Man’s Place, 9.

67 inner life, the vital feeling or drive, is present in all animals and also in man. There is no sensation, no perception, no representation behind which there is not the dark impulse burning continuously through periods of sleeping and waking. Even the simplest sensation is not merely the response to a stimulus, but always the function of a drive-motivated attention.”5 Thus, the power of this drive underlies every cognitive process in man, such as sensation, perception, and representation. Human cognition depends on the life-drive, and the reality of the world marks the correlation with this drive. Scheler claimed that drive and resistance form the fundamental condition of what reality is, i.e., the condition of reality lies in the resistance against drive, which is the vital center of man. As long as man cannot escape the impulse to drive toward an object, the object inevitably appears as impedance toward the realization of an intentional goal. Moreover, the sense of reality and real existence of an object are “derived from the experience of resistance in a world already present as given, and this experience of resistance is inherent in the vital drive, in the central life impulse of our being.”6 Since the resistance is only against the vital drive or the central life impulse, the original experience of reality, which appears in combination with the experience of resistance, “precedes any consciousness, conception and perception.”7 While the driving act inherent in life is regarded as the common characteristic among all animals and man and provides the fundamental condition of what constitutes reality (by means of forming the experience of resistance), life does not suffice to determine the nature of man as it is in the very nature of spirit that every man acquires humanness. For Scheler, the question to be answered was “whether we can assign to man unique characteristics not comparable to those of any other species.”8 Scheler argued that the principle distinguishing man from other species is spirit, which “in addition to conceptual thought, also includes the intuition of essences and a class of voluntary and emotional acts such as kindness, love, remorse, reverence, wonder, bliss, despair and free decision.”9 In other words, spirit is related not only to the conceptual realm of reason, such as inference and calculation, but also to the voluntary and emotional realm of humanness, including the loving act and the willing act. According to Scheler, spirit “is not a stage of life, especially not a stage of the particular mode of life called psyche, but a principle opposed to life as such, even to life in man.”10 Put otherwise, spirit refers to “its existential liberation from the organic world—its freedom and detachability from the bondage and pressure of life.”11 This also indicates that the function of spirit emancipates man from the environment (Umwelt), which appears in correlation with life. Thus, the

5 Scheler, Man’s Place, 13. 6 Scheler, Man’s Place, 52. 7 Scheler, Man’s Place, 53. 8 Scheler, Man’s Place, 7. 9 Scheler, Man’s Place, 36. 10 Scheler, Man’s Place, 36. 11 Scheler, Man’s Place, 37.

68 spiritual being is “free from the environment” or “open to the world (weltoffen).”12 Animals are simply immersed in their environment and aroused by the drive within life, but man can distantiate from the environment and objectify it. In this regard, “man is the being who can say ‘No,’ the ‘ascetic of life,’ the protestant par excellence, against mere reality,” whereas animals always say “Yes” to the environment.13 Scheler employed the method of phenomenological reduction in order to interdict the life-drive and unfold the spiritual or essential realm. Basically, for Husserl, phenomenological reduction was employed with the operation of epoché for elucidating cognitive problems (i.e., subject-object problems) and explicating the eidetic sciences of lived experiences instead of the sciences of matters of fact. On the basis of the Cartesian doubt, Husserl suggested that we put it out of action, exclude it, and parenthesize it because transcendental phenomenology “is to be an eidetic doctrine, not of phenomena that are real, but of phenomena that are transcendentally reduced,” and “the phenomena of transcendental phenomenology will become characterized as irreal.” Phenomenology treats irreal phenomena that are transcendentally reduced (i.e., which correlate to transcendental subjectivity), by epoché and transcendental reduction. Through transcendental reduction, it is possible to obtain transcendental subjectivity in its own absolute being: “we have not lost anything but rather have gained the whole of absolute being which, rightly understood, contains within itself, ‘constitutes’ within itself, all worldly transcendencies.” Within the transcendental attitude, Husserlian phenomenology investigates common structures and moments among individuals (or individual cases) by means of the method called “eidetic seeing.” However, Scheler believed that Husserl’s idea of transcendental reduction was insufficient.14 To grasp essences, Scheler stated the following: “The questions concerning the factor of reality itself and the acts that furnish it that are decisive for the ‘technique of essential insight (die Technik der Wesenserkenntnis),’ especially insofar as it is bent on grasping the primitive phenomena ingredient in every cognition of essence. Husserl has called this technique ‘phenomenological reduction.’ […] Husserl has never discussed this question with any thoroughness but has contented himself with the

12 Scheler, Man’s Place, 37. 13 Scheler, Man’s Place, 55. 14 Scheler criticized the inadequacy of Husserl’s idea of reduction; however, from a Husserlian viewpoint, Scheler’s divergence from transcendentalism cheapens the quality of his philosophy into merely anthropologism. See Edmund Husserl, “Phenomenology and Anthropology,” in Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology and the Confrontation with Heidegger (1927-1931), trans. and ed. Thomas Sheehan and Richard E. Palmer (Dordrecht / Boston / London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997). As Marvin Farber correctly pointed out, “Scheler’s conception of the phenomenological reduction appears to be crude and incorrect. He seems not to have grasped its real methodological nature, and to be viewing it in accordance with his own standpoint and needs.” See Marvin Farber, “Max Scheler on the Place of Man in the Cosmos,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 14, no.3 (1954): 397.

69 vague as well as false declaration that real being in synonymous with ‘having a place in time.’15 Although the present section does not examine the validity of Scheler’s critique of Husserl, it can at least be argued that what Scheler was interested in the specific conditions of reality (i.e., resistance against the driving act in life) and that the constituents of reality must be either clarified in advance or nullified for the sake of obtaining genuine essences. Merely the suspension of the judgment of being (in the Husserlian sense) does not effectively disclose the essential order of the world, but it is necessary for eidetic seeing to nullify the life-drive itself: “man employs a technique which may be described as a tentative experimental suspension of reality. In this experimental technique the essence is peeled off, as it were, from the concrete sensory object.”16 Therefore, the phenomenological reduction in Scheler can be considered the methodological and practical technique to nullify the life-drive, which is always directed toward something in the environment, and to emancipate man from the restraint of the environment. Phenomenology opens the accessibility to the essential world through spirit, which is the very nature of man. Scheler parted ways from Husserl in that Scheler analyzed the specific conditions that constitute reality (i.e., life-drive and resistance). Overall, Scheler’s reduction was aimed at the exclusion of the life-drive itself but was not limited to parenthesizing the positing of being, as in the case of Husserl.

2. Natural Outlook and Scientific Outlook With regard to evidently and adequately extracting the essence of various objects, Scheler stressed the need that the animal aspect of man should be suspended (or excluded) through phenomenological reduction. The essential knowledge about the world exactly bespeaks the knowledge of philosophy for Scheler. Before comprehensively reviewing the philosophical outlook, the following examines the main characteristics of the natural outlook and the scientific outlook in order to determine how Scheler viewed the mission of philosophy more clearly. As Scheler noted, “the point of outset common to all kinds of higher mental activity related to the group of values [...] is man’s natural Weltanschauung.”17 First, it should be noted that the natural outlook and the scientific outlook are distinguished from the philosophical outlook in that both the outlooks are still bound by the moment of reality from which the philosophical outlook attempts to free itself through the operation of phenomenological reduction; the natural outlook and the scientific outlook are limited by life-drive and resistance. In other words, the natural outlook and the scientific outlook can be considered specific versions of the

15 Max Scheler, Idealism and Realism, in Max Scheler, Selected Philosophical Essays, trans. and ed. David R. Laghterman (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 315. 16 Scheler, Man’s Place, 51 17 Max Scheler, On the Eternal in Man, trans. Bernard Noble (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1960), 93.

70 real world, which should be excluded for the sake of disclosing the essential and philosophical world. The natural outlook is the worldview of man as seen from the life perspective. As previously discussed, animals cannot be freed from their surrounding environment (because they are always immersed in it), and only man can investigate the essential interconnections of the world through the act of spirit. Thus, the natural outlook appears in the relation between life and the environment, i.e., it is the naive and natural worldview in which the world exists in a perceivable, spatio-temporal environment and it is capable of being a verbalized state of being. This can be seen in the following words by Scheler: “A primary feature of the natural Weltanschauung is that the subject takes the environing world of the moment, or all possible human-environmental worlds, to be the world-being. And this applies in all directions, in space, in time, externally, internally, and in respect of the divine as well as of ideal objects.”18 Here, it is important to note that the natural outlook includes not only the external and the internal world but also divine and ideal objects. For Scheler, divine and ideal objects are ultimately seen by the spirit in its genuine sense, although the natural outlook is also related to them. As the general environment “appears to man it is in any case peculiar both to the environment’s objective being and to its structure that their existence is relative to the special bio-organism of man as a particular species of universal life,”19 it can be argued that divine and ideal objects in the natural outlook remain relative to the life aspect of man. In this sense, phenomenological reduction is a method that purifies and essentializes the world and brings it into genuine essential knowledge. Thus, the natural outlook unavoidably entails the relativity of an individual, race, tribe, or other possible collectivity, which is to say, the natural outlook is a specifically limited worldview, as stated by Kazuo Hatakenaka: “The environment is consistently the “surrounding” world which exists in correlation with human beings as biological beings. Within the natural outlook, the environment is nonce regarded as the world itself, but the environment correlative to biological beings—it certainly constitutes a part of the world content in the broad sense—is indeed not the whole world correlative to spiritual beings.”20 The natural outlook naively posits the existence of the world and senses that the environment itself is the world. However, it is instead the relative world within life-relativity, which each individual or collectivity respectively holds. Then, the scientific outlook appears as an attempt to overcome this relativity inherent to the natural outlook, i.e., an attempt toward the creation of objectivity. Scheler focused on the following two main characteristics of the scientific outlook: “the principle

18 Scheler, On the Eternal, 93. 19 Scheler, On the Eternal, 94. 20 Kazuo Hatakenaka, Philosophical Anthropology of Max Scheler: Concerning the Dualistic Human-View in Life and Spirit (Kyoto: Nakanishiya, 2013), 120.

71 of the univocal determinability of all facts through signs” and “the principle of economy.”21 First of all, the strategy employed by science in order to create objectivity is to establish “technical signs and conventions about their meaning” by which “all scientifically relevant facts can be univocally designated.” Then, it chooses “the smallest possible number of such signs and the smallest possible number of forms of their combination” in order “to designate the greatest number of facts and combinations of facts.”22 In fact, phenomena that appear within the environment are so complicated and variable that the natural outlook can only determine things that are instantaneous and ephemeral, in correlation with continually flowing desire and emotion. On the contrary, science establishes the law(s) behind the stream of phenomena (by means of technical signs) in order to explain the causal association as compactly as possible. However, for Scheler, objectivity in the scientific outlook was still nagged by a certain relativity, because the scientific objects “are ‘absolutely there,’ as regards human organization; but they are relative in regard to life in general.”23 In other words, natural science succeeded in overcoming the relativity of the natural outlook derived from individual sensations, feelings, desires, and body and in describing the world as a system of technical signs; however, this artificial objective system only comes into effect for man so that it will be considered a relative outlook in terms of life in general. Moreover, since the scientific outlook depends on the limited reality of the world, it remains the “cognition of the environing world, as opposed to philosophy, which is cognition of the world (or ‘world-wisdom’).”24 At this point, it should be noted that the world itself can only be extracted through phenomenological reduction, i.e., only the act of spirit enables us to acquire essential knowledge of the world. Furthermore, according to Scheler, the act of spirit is indeed the act of love, and the love toward the being itself can be the fundamental condition for providing the essential knowledge of the being. In this sense, philosophy demands some moral conditions for overcoming the life aspect of man. In other words, it is not in a way that objects are artificially and univocally determined by technical signs and conventions about their meaning, but that philosophy directly sees the essence of the object in the mode of pure-lived experiences: “Philosophical cognition, by its essence, is asymbolical. It seeks to know a being just as it is in itself, not in its role of simply providing the filling for symbols applied to it.”25 In this regard, philosophy is on a higher cognition level than science.

21 Max Scheler, “Phenomenology and the Theory of Cognition,” in Selected Philosophical Essays, trans. and ed. David R. Laghterman (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 177. 22 Scheler, “Phenomenology,” 177. 23 Scheler, “Phenomenology,” 176. 24 Scheler, “Phenomenology,” 176. 25 Scheler, “Phenomenology,” 178.

72 3. Philosophical Outlook: Moral Conditions of Philosophy According to Scheler, philosophy should be determined as “autonomous philosophy” that establishes “knowledge independent of hypothesis.”26 He employed the method of phenomenology in order to access the essential; namely, the philosophical knowledge of the world. In addition, phenomenological reduction enabled him to unfold the essential aspect of the world by excluding reality. Under the significant influence of Plato’s “love of essential reality,” Scheler extracted the definition of the essential nature of philosophy: “a love-determined movement of the inmost personal Self of a finite being toward participation in the essential reality of all possibles.”27 Without the natural outlook and all the knowledge established on its basis, philosophy requires the integral movement of the self, which is based on the loving act. Furthermore, Scheler noted that “philosophy is knowing and the philosopher one who knows.” 28 In other words, although philosophy participates in essential reality, philosophy can be its true form only when essential reality is brought to knowledge. Thus, merely the participation in reality cannot be regarded as philosophy (e.g., entry into Nirvana, in the sense of Buddhism itself, cannot be seen as a philosophical outlook). What makes Scheler’s essentialism unique is that moral acts play an important role in the transmutation into philosophical attitude. According to Scheler, man can directly access philosophical knowledge under the following conditions: “1) the whole spiritual person must love absolute value and being; 2) the natural self and ego must be humbled; 3) self-mastery must be achieved: in this way it is possible to objectify the instinctual impulses of life, which are ‘given’ and experienced as ‘of the flesh’ and which must needs exert a constant influence on natural sensory perception.”29 Here, the specific moral conditions for participating in essential reality are presented as follows. Scheler required specific moral commitments for the sake of a phenomenological investigation of essences. In this regard, Scheler’s essentialism turns out to be distinctive to the transcendental eidetic enterprise of Husserl, who argued that the operation of universal epoché and phenomenological reduction are the vital conditions for explicating the eidetic sciences of lived experiences. Transcendental phenomenology “is to be an eidetic doctrine, not of phenomena that are real, but of phenomena that are transcendentally reduced,” and “the phenomena of transcendental phenomenology will become characterized as irreal,” as mentioned in section 1. In comparison with Husserl, Scheler claimed that epoché is insufficient for disclosing essential reality. The philosopher also rejected the instinctual impulses of life that blindly attempt to negate and control the being of objects. To emancipate the act of love from natural egoism, it is necessary to

26 Scheler, On the Eternal, 70. 27 Scheler, On the Eternal, 74. 28 Scheler, On the Eternal, 74. 29 Scheler, On the Eternal, 95.

73 humble the natural self and ego through self-mastery. Certainly, the scientific outlook also shares the condition of self-mastery for the sake of establishing valid physical laws and chemical causal associations that underlie flowing, changeable phenomena. However, positive sciences differ from philosophy, as stated in the following: “In positive research the scientist’s will to know is primarily inspired by a will to master and, thence arising, a will to order the whole of nature: it is for that very reason that ‘laws,’ in obedience to which nature lets herself be governed, represent the highest goal of his endeavor. What interests him is not what the world is, but how it may be considered as constructed, so that, within the scope of this highest goal, it may be regarded as practically modifiable. For this reason, his basic ethos is not love and not humility, but it is self-domination—self-mastery for the sake of potential world-mastery.” 30 In contrast to the scientific outlook, the philosophical outlook must always entail the “love of the very being of objects”31 and “philosophy is strictly self-evident insight, which cannot be either augmented or nullified by induction and which has a-priori validity for contingent existents.”32 In this regard, philosophy exposes the world to the rejection of resistance and coercive power in reality. Then, what does love denote according to Scheler’s philosophy? Scheler claimed that “love is the tendency or, as it may be, the act that seeks to lead everything in the direction of the perfection of value proper to it—and succeeds, when no obstacles are present.”33 Moreover, Abdul Luther noted that “love is eminently creative.”34 Here, it should be noted that love is determined as the act that leads “everything in the direction of the perfection,” unless “no obstacles are present.” The obstacles that skew the act of love consist in the life-drive which hides the genuine essences from view according to the ego-centered life perspective. Although the environment is ultimately organized by its value structure, which is based on the order of love,35 the life-drive inherent to human nature distorts the genuine essential order of the world despite the fact that “love is always what awakens both knowledge and volition.”36 However, it is critical that the relation between drive and love is not very simple, i.e., they are not simply competing, because the act of love does not work without the power of drive. Nevertheless, love is a different principle than life, and the spiritual loving act is not derived from drive. The power of drive administers to the movement of love, which aims to increase each corresponding division of value order (i.e., life, culture, and spirit). Only the cooperation of drive

30 Scheler, On the Eternal, 97. 31 Scheler, On the Eternal, 97. 32 Scheler, On the Eternal, 104. 33 Max Scheler, “Ordo Amoris,” in Selected Philosophical Essays, trans. and ed. David R. Laghterman (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 109. 34 Abdul R. Luther, “Scheler’s Interpretation of Being as Loving,” Philosophy Today 14 (1970): 222. 35 Scheler, “Ordo Amoris,” 100. 36 Scheler, “Ordo Amoris,” 110.

74 and spirit enables the visibility of essences in the genuine sense. Regarding the entwined relation between drive and love, Scheler noted the following: “[It is] only in our organization and the conditions it sets for the occurrence and arousal of the act of love. For this arousal is bound up with the life of our body and our drives and with an object stimulates and calls this life into play. But what we grasp as worthy of love is not bound up with these, any more than the form and structure of the realm of which this value shows itself to be a part.”37 Thus, the role of drive is twofold. First, the driving impulse bestows the power of the movement of loving, and second, it causes a delusion and stagnation of the spiritual-ethical development of love, and the “function of the drive by which love is aroused and its object held within limits is perverted into one which enchains and represses.”38 Moreover, since both love and drive contribute to the philosophical outlook, phenomenological reduction cannot be certainly considered the complete exclusion of the life-drive. Rather, the act of spirit and the act of love needs to be provided with the energy from the driving act: “Spirit and life are complementary and interrelated. It is a fallacy to represent them as original enemies consumed in struggle with each other.”39 This point will be discussed comprehensively in section 4. Determining what characterizes the philosophical outlook will be clearer if Scheler’s theory of knowledge is considered. Scheler focused on three different types of knowledge: 1) “knowledge of control and achievement”; 2) “knowledge of essence or culture”; and 3) “knowledge of metaphysical reality or salvation.” 40 The positive scientific knowledge precisely corresponds to the first knowledge, as mentioned previously. What remains to be discussed is that how the knowledge of essence or culture differs from the knowledge of metaphysical reality or salvation. First, according to Scheler, the main characteristics of essential knowledge and investigations can be determined as having a loving attitude (instead of the will to control or order the being of objects), imagination that emancipates us from the limits of the real existence of things, and independence of all experiences in a priori validity compared with empirical induction.41 The point is that “knowledge of essence and of essential relationships is valid, above and beyond the diminutive realm of the real world,” (which is accessible to sensory experiences) so that this type of knowledge “is valid also for being by itself and in itself.”42 In addition, “It has a ‘transcendental’ dimension and thus becomes the jumping-off point for all ‘critical metaphysics’.”43

37 Scheler, “Ordo Amoris,” 112 f. 38 Scheler, “Ordo Amoris,” 114. 39 Scheler, Man’s Place, 87. 40 Max Scheler, Philosophical Perspectives, trans. Oscar A. Haac (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958), 3. 41 Scheler, Philosophical Perspectives, 6 f. Except for the need for a loving attitude, Scheler shared the basic characteristics of essential investigation (the role of imagination and the radical difference from the experiential generalization) with Husserl. 42 Scheler, Philosophical Perspectives, 7. 43 Scheler, Philosophical Perspectives, 7.

75 Essential analysis basically investigates what something is or determines what the commonality is among individuals. In this regard, the knowledge of essence validates (above and beyond) the real world, which is filled with contingent individual matters of fact. As discussed in section 1, phenomenological reduction enables one to uproot the real world of resistance (which appears in correlation with life) and disclose the essential interlinkages of the world (which are correlative to spirit). It also demands moral commitment to the world in which the intellect must serve reason, wisdom, and moral ideas.44 These are the main characteristics regarding the knowledge of essence and essential investigation. What greatly interested Scheler was the knowledge of essence and how it worked as the starting point for all critical metaphysics, i.e., the knowledge of metaphysical reality or salvation is based on the knowledge of essence, although these two types of knowledge are distinguished. As true essence (or the existence of something containing true essence) cannot ever be explained by experimental science, it is the task of philosophy (i.e., task of metaphysics) to elucidate the true basis of world existence: “The supreme aim in forming a metaphysical outlook through philosophy is, therefore, to conceive and consider absolute being through itself in such a way that it corresponds and is appropriate to the essential structure of the world as discovered in ‘first philosophy,’ to the real existence of the world as it appears to us in its resistance to our drives, and to all fortuitous circumstance.”45 In addition, Scheler stated the following: “’First Philosophy,’ i.e., the ontology of the nature of the world and the self, is a springboard to this knowledge [knowledge of metaphysical reality or salvation], but it is not yet metaphysics. We obtain metaphysics only when we tie together the findings of reality-conscious, experimental sciences and the results of ontological first philosophy and then relate both of these to the conclusions of the disciplines which involve judgment (general theory of values, esthetics, ethics, philosophy of civilization).”46 Therefore, it can be argued that, for Scheler, the mission of philosophy, ad extremum, is to obtain the knowledge of metaphysics. The knowledge of metaphysics demands the knowledge of not only essence but also positive sciences and values because metaphysics is an all-embracing discipline of what the world is, i.e., metaphysics attempts to understand the world and man in the cosmos. Moreover, all sides of the world are to be unveiled, including factual physical laws (knowledge of positive science), essential interconnections (knowledge of essence), and the order of values (knowledge of value) for the completion of metaphysics. In other words, the fundamental question of metaphysics is what the ultimate cause of the world and man is. Scheler expected that the nature of the absolute (the world maker) can be led by the nature of the world and man. From this hypothesis, Scheler extracted two characteristics of the absolute being: irrational drive (life) and rational power

44 Scheler, Philosophical Perspectives, 7. 45 Scheler, Philosophical Perspectives, 8. 46 Scheler, Philosophical Perspectives, 9.

76 (spirit), which posits the irrational real existence and the essential structures of the world, respectively.47 Again, regarding this point, it is not difficult to see that life (drive) and spirit (love) are not simply separated but that there is some cooperation between them. In sum, the mission of philosophy is laid out through the continual process of the animating sprit and the spiritualizing life.

4. Mission of Philosophy: Man and the Absolute For Scheler, the mission of philosophy cannot be merely understood in terms of phenomenological reduction. As Hatakenaka pointed out, Scheler claimed the importance of the “cooperation of life and spirit or the human view as harmony” in his philosophical anthropology.48 In other words, the establishment of metaphysics depends on the balance between life and spirit. In addition, Scheler’s philosophy seems to stand on the side of spirit and love (at least on the surface), especially if one understands his outstanding eidetic analysis of love and senses his emphasis on the priority of phenomenological reduction. However, this viewpoint lacks precision and remains superficial. Rather, he indeed highlighted the inadequacy of spirit, i.e., the “spirit has no original power or active energy.”49 In this regard, phenomenological reduction cannot be regarded as a completely pure act of spirit, but life-drive plays a significant role in providing energy in such reduction. Certainly, Scheler presented the opposite reduction, called the “Dionysian reduction,” which is characterized as the “exclusion of spirit (Ausschalten des Geistes),”50 namely, the emancipation of the life-drive or the reduction through which “we leave the real world not to climb into the spiritual sphere of pure essences but to immerse us into the sphere of pre-real life (vorreales Leben).”51 Apparently, Scheler believed that the biological life aspect of man cannot be ignored in the sense that the life-drive originally constitutes the spring of power and energy behind all activities. However, even with this Dionysian reduction, the act of spirit cannot be entirely excluded: “Whenever we find a Dionysian state of human existence in its original and naïve form, this Dionysian state itself is based upon a complicated conscious technique of the will. In other words, it uses the very spirit that is to be put aside.”52 Thus, since phenomenological reduction and Dionysian reduction make up for one another, it was an extremely complicated point for Scheler. Life and spirit, drive and love, and Dionysian reduction and phenomenological reduction are distinct in that the former (i.e., life, drive, and

47 Scheler, Philosophical Perspectives, 8 f. 48 Hatakenaka, Philosophical Anthropology, 134 49 Scheler, Man’s Place, 86. 50 Max Scheler, Schriften aus dem Nachlass, Bd. II. Erkenntnislehre und Metaphysik (Bern / München: Francke Verlag, 1979), 251. 51 Eberhard Avé-Lallemant, “Die Phänomenologische Reduktion in der Philosophie Max Schelers,“ in Max Scheler in Gegenwartsgeschehen der Philosophie, ed. Paul Good (Bern / München: Francke Verlag, 1957), 170. 52 Scheler, Man’s Place, 86 f.

77 Dionysian reduction) is based on the biological aspect of man, which continually provides power for self-preservation and self-amplification, whereas the latter (i.e., spirit, love, phenomenological reduction) enables Idealisierung and seeing essences by distantiating from an object and opening oneself to the world. However, they are also mutually dependent, because Dionysian reduction cannot be carried out without the pure will of spirit (the will that excludes the act of spirit), and phenomenological reduction is only possible when the life-drive cooperates with the operation (the life-drive that excludes the act of life). Yet it is unreasonable to assume that Scheler attempted to execute an impossible mission. It should be believed that life and spirit cooperate with one another, i.e., “life for spirit and spirit for life” should be a possible maxim for expressing Scheler’s intention. Then, the following question emerges: How is it possible to establish such a cooperation between life and spirit? This question is closely related to how Scheler viewed the role of metaphysics as a whole. The ultimate cause of the existence of the world and man can be based on the absolute being itself, who possesses the irrational drive to posit irrational existence and fortuitous circumstance and the infinite spirit to bestow the essential structures of the world and man. These two predicables contained in the absolute can be inferred by what Scheler called the “transcendental argument”: “Its principle is: It is certain that the being of the world itself depends neither on the fortuitous existence of man on earth nor on his empirical consciousness. However, there are strong essential analogies between certain categories of spiritual acts and certain realms of being to which these categories give us access. For these two reasons, all acts and operations that grant this access to us transitory creatures must be ascribed to the source of all things.”53 For Scheler, it cannot be doubted that the world itself (or the absolute order of value itself) objectively exists, independent of our consciousness. Nevertheless, the reality of the world only appears in correlation with the life-drive, and the essential value order is grasped through the act of spirit. This incompatible situation indicated to Scheler that life and spirit are bestowed to man by someone who can create commonalities that bridge the world and man, namely, the being of the absolute. According to Scheler, “We can only relate the realms of being, which are and persist independently of short-lived man, to the act of a single supra-individual spirit must be attribute of original being, is active in man, and grows through him.”54 In this sense, a man is a microcosm, and the ultimate source of the macrocosm can be studied in him: “the being of man as microtheos is also the primary access to God.”55 Thus, philosophical anthropology bridges the knowledge of essence and metaphysics. A study on man would unveil the secret of the world’s existence. Nevertheless, it is important to note that man cannot become the absolute and cannot cognicize it, because the absolute being cannot be objectified in principle: “The only access to God is, therefore,

53 Scheler, Philosophical Perspectives, 10. 54 Scheler, Philosophical Perspectives, 10 f. 55 Scheler, Philosophical Perspectives, 11.

78 not theoretical contemplation which tends to represent God as a concrete being, but personal and active commitment of man to God and to progressive self-realization.”56 Man, as the finite and mortal, inherently has life and spirit, which are bestowed by the absolute being (i.e., God), the infinite and immortal. For Scheler, the only thing that man could do was co-cognition with the absolute, i.e., to think, love, feel, and live under God. Life and spirit have dialectically developed over time and have gradually acquired the genuine ability to unfold the essential structures of the world and man. According to Scheler, the meaning of human history “is a growing spiritualization of the creative driving force which had originally been blind to ideas and ultimate values. From the other point of view, it is the progressive acquisition of power and strength by the infinite spirit which originally was powerless and could not formulate ideas.”57 In this sense, life and spirit cooperate with one another. More specifically, spirit will become gradually animated, whereas life will become gradually spiritualized. Through this process, man can be the “co-creator, co-founder, co-executor of a stream of ideas which develop throughout world history and with man,” in collaboration with the absolute.58 Overall, it will finally be possible to realize that all man and all life are rooted in the divine drive and that they are one with the universe. In conclusion, Scheler believed that the mission of philosophy is to unveil the ultimate cause of the existence of the world and man through eidetic analyses and arguments concerning the nature of man. Scheler concluded that the nature of man is bestowed by the absolute, in reference to what he referred to as “transcendental argument.” Furthermore, although the knowledge of essence and metaphysics are bridged by philosophical anthropology, it is crucial that man will never theoretically objectify and cognicize the absolute. Instead, man should only think, love, feel, and live under God. Finally, the history of man shows the dialectic between life and spirit in which life has been spiritualized and spirit has been animated while the history of philosophy will reveal the meaning and value of cosmos and man by providing the entire outlook concerning their ultimate cause. “Philosophy must no more be the mere servant of the sciences than the servant of religious faith,”59 as stated by Scheler.

Critical Remarks Scheler believed that the mission of philosophy lies in the creation of the metaphysical outlook, which offers the knowledge of the absolute, namely, the ultimate cause of the world and man. According to Scheler, “Intellectual consciousness of absolute being is a part of man’s nature and

56 Scheler, Philosophical Perspectives, 11. 57 Scheler, Philosophical Perspectives, 9. 58 Scheler, Philosophical Perspectives, 12. 59 Scheler, Philosophical Perspectives, 1.

79 forms a single indestructible unit with consciousness of self, consciousness of the world, language, and conscience.” 60 Thus, man (consciously or unconsciously) must create an idea of the metaphysical outlook and the absolute. In this sense, Scheler was not satisfied with merely acquiring the knowledge of essence and thus, emphasized the need to transcend the knowledge of metaphysics. I agree with Scheler in that essential knowledge itself does not provide the ultimate cause of the world and man, and an answer to this must somehow be created in a way different from epiphanic religion. Alternatively, it may be possible to give up the idea of metaphysics altogether (as Nietzsche previously declared), and start a new life without depending on transcendent meaning and value beyond this phenomenal world. As far as Scheler’s argument is concerned, it can be undoubtedly said that the knowledge of essence is vital for obtaining the knowledge of metaphysics. In the following, I critically examine the validity of Scheler’s argument regarding seeing the essence and its evidence. In other words, the meaning of objectivity is reviewed without intersubjective confirmation and reassessment of Scheler’s essentialism and metaphysics. For Scheler, it did not matter whether the intuited essence by the self is confirmed by the other. Nevertheless, he claimed the objective order of essences without intersubjectivity. He also argued that “an evident cognition of essence can very well aim at a unique, individual existence or value (Wertsein), depending on the region of being or value certain objects inhabit.”61 In other words, the essence in Scheler’s essentialism does not necessarily entail universality or, more appropriately, intersubjective validity. In this case, how is the objectivity of essence secured? What criteria determine the border between the subjective and the objective? For instance, when someone insists that a certain essence of an object is evidently and adequately given to one’s consciousness through intuition, how is it possible to say that this cognition of essence can be regarded as objective truth and not subjective doxastic in the logic of Scheler? Without intersubjective confirmation, who promises what is given to my consciousness exactly corresponds to what is given to your consciousness? Regarding this point, Scheler’s essentialism is weak and it presents its dogmatic characteristic. Scheler noted the following: “The unique collective destiny of the individual ‘mankind’ can be fulfilled only when this exhibition reaches completion in a simultaneous (social) and successive (historical) conjunction, bringing together love (Miteinander des Liebens) within the various regions of value ordered in accordance with the ordo amoris.”62 According to this passage, it seems that Scheler was aware of the relativity of intuited essence, which is the relativity of the investigator who lives under specific sociocultural conditions and demands the dimension of intersubjectivity in continual history for the completion of the ordo amoris. However, this viewpoint remains superficial.

60 Scheler, Philosophical Perspectives, 2. 61 Scheler, “Ordo Amoris,” 124. Furthermore, see Scheler, On the Eternal, 23 f. 62 Scheler, “Ordo Amoris,” 115 f.

80 It is apparent that Scheler himself did not trust the human reason of all man by relying on Plato’s well-known notion that the masses will never be philosophers; “philosophy belongs and aways [sic] did belong to an elite centered around the outstanding personality of a thinker.”63 Therefore, only the elite can have the criteria for seeing the essence of an object, whereas others will be ignored, even if they evidently and adequately see such essence through intuition. Again, the question remains whether objectivity, which is only seen by a limited number of elites, can actually be objective. This is clearly a type of stubborn insistence or it can be said that Scheler’s essentialism includes the residuum of dogmatic Platonism whose evidence cannot be verified in principle. What makes Scheler unique is that his essentialism ignores the creation of intersubjective validity. More specifically, he was indifferent toward a universal philosophical outlook and attempted to extract objective truth that is merely valid for the subject, as Scheler stated: “Since the individual person of each man is immediately rooted in eternal being and spirit, no philosophical outlook is universally true, but, in each case, its ‘content’ is valid only for one individual and history then determines its measure of perfection and appropriateness. There is, however, a universally valid method by which each person, whoever he may be, can find ‘his’ metaphysical truth.”64 In this regard, Scheler’s essentialism is actually relativism as well as dogmatism. More specifically, he dogmatically and naively presupposed the objectivity of essences and the “truth-ness” of the metaphysical outlook. However, he did not care whether essences and metaphysics can be valid for one another. Although Scheler believed in the objective order of essences and values (which are originally rooted in the absolute), he refused the claim that the philosophical outlook was universally true. Moreover, he maintained that it was more important to find existential (subjective) truth than to create intersubjectively validated universality. Generally speaking, dogmatism and universalism tend to be bound by asserting that the universal certainly exists. Even if the universal is grounded on something that is transcendent, such as God or ideas in the Platonic sense, the claim would be regarded as dogmatism as there is no way to confirm and assess such universality and it does not open itself to intersubjective examination. However, in the case of Scheler, dogmatism is connected with a type of relativism in that intersubjectivity is not vital for justifying objectivity and “truth-ness.” In sum, finding out the subjective truth is important above all things. Furthermore, in transcendental argument, Scheler inferred the following: the existence of the world is not dependent on subjective or empirical consciousness, but the essential interconnections of the world can only be unfolded through the act of spirit. Consequently, Scheler concluded that there must be strong essential analogies between spiritual acts and realms of being and that the

63 Scheler, Philosophical Perspectives, 1. 64 Scheler, Philosophical Perspectives, 12.

81 absolute must exist and the act of spirit is originally rooted in the genuine act of spirit inherent in the absolute. This is the basic idea of what Scheler referred to as “transcendental argument.” However, how could he prove that the existence of the world is objective? If the world is only accessed through the life-drive and the act of spirit, why did he not say that the world is the correlation to subjectivity or man? Overall, it is clear that Scheler naively asserted that the world is independent of subjective consciousness. If Scheler argues that the objectivity of the world, essences, and values are assured by the absolute, there seems to be no contradictions mentioned above. However, in this case, it is not difficult to find circularity in the logic of his transcendental argument. Although Scheler attempted to prove the existence of the absolute on the basis of the claim that the being of the world does not depends on subjective consciousness, certainly, if the objectivity of the being of the world presupposes the being of the absolute as the “promiser,” Scheler’s transcendental argument will be easily included in the circular structure. The meaning of objectivity in Scheler’s essentialism and metaphysics is that something is objective for me. Scheler claimed the objectivity of the world, essences, and values, but such objectivity does not necessarily demand intersubjective confirmation. In addition, the knowledge of metaphysics does not require universal validity but works as subjective truth. In this regard, Scheler seemed to skip the subject-object problem, which has been thematized from Descartes to Husserl. Furthermore, he refused transcendentalism in the heritage of Western philosophy, as stated by Frings: “Scheler’s philosophy is characterized by the tendency to stress the purification of spirit, i.e., to cancel all factors which might disturb clear insight so that genuine devotion to the world becomes possible. Husserl’s phenomenology lacks this aspect of devotion to the world because, with him, consciousness withdraws into its own spheres, in which Scheler saw a remnant of the loveless, and almost inimical attitude towards world, characteristic of Descartes and Kant.”65 Nevertheless, Husserl inherited the fundamental motivation of transcendentalism from Descartes and Kant, and, as a result, Husserlian phenomenology may lack genuine devotion to the world. However, Husserl attempted to understand the meaning of the world from within the immanence of transcendental subjectivity or, more importantly, within the adjustment of “controversy concerning truth.” 66 Transcendental phenomenology thematizes what objectivity (transcendence) means and in what conditions one is convinced that there is an objective being; a concept that Scheler skipped. Conversely, for Husserl, the essences treated in phenomenology are not transcendent essences but immanental essences of lived experiences, even though Scheler argued that “Husserl’s assertion, that ‘immanent essence’ precedes ‘transcendent essence’ […], in no way follows from the procedure of

65 Frings, Max Scheler, 43. 66 Klaus Held, “The Controversy Concerning Truth: Towards a Prehistory of Phenomenology,” trans. Amy Morgenstern, Husserl Studies 17 (2000): 35. See chapter 6 of this study.

82 the reduction.”67 Overall, Scheler believed that the objective order of essences cannot be reduced into an immanental sphere, but that it transcendently exists and validates consciousness through intuition. Finally, although Scheler’s achievements related to the development of phenomenology and the establishment of philosophical anthropology are (without a doubt) outstanding and apparent, the dogmatic aspect in his essentialism and metaphysics must be reexamined. What is the meaning of objectivity without intersubjectivity? Is it reasonable that an intuited essence only leads to subjective truth and not a universal one? Can we indeed call it “essence”? In this regard, his argument is nothing more than fideism. However, transcendentalists such as Descartes, Kant, and Husserl, could provide a possible alternative; in other words, converting Scheler’s essentialism and metaphysics into intersubjective validity can be possible. In other words, the process of intersubjective reassessment and confirmation should be embedded into his essentialism and metaphysics in order to not fall into a dogmatic way of thinking that may exclude or oppress opinions, senses of values, and outlooks presented by others from different sociocultural backgrounds.

67 Scheler, Idealism and Realism, 317.

83 Chapter 6 Eidetic Seeing and the Teleology of Monads Introduction As discussed in the prior chapters, Husserl defines the characteristics of essences (Wesen) or eidos (Eidos) to be necessity and universality, in contrast to such matters of fact as contingency and individuality, and he calls the method of obtaining eidos—the essential structures and conditions that determine what something is—eidetic seeing. However, is it reasonable to assume that an intuited essence immediately provides necessity and universality, because eidetic seeing is operated by a person who exists at a specified historical point within limited social–cultural conditions? The question remains whether an intuited essence seen by a phenomenologist will be valid for others in the present or even in the future. The aim of this chapter is to reconsider the method of eidetic seeing in terms of the teleology of monads, and to present a fundamental hypothesis of how the relativity of essences intuited by a particular insight would be surmounted. In previous research, some phenomenologists (e.g., Richard Zaner and Rochus Sowa) have treated of the relativity of intuited eidos and have established the position that eidetic seeing is to be determined as a continual historical–intersubjective process. More specifically, the intuited essence should be open to examination and confirmation by others, who live in different socio-cultural backgrounds and conditions, and the universality of the essence, can be legitimated only through intersubjective reassessment. However, little attention has been paid to the motivation for demining the relativity of essences and the teleological aspect of essences. If intersubjective reassessment and confirmation play a significant role in phenomenological essentialism, how the motivation for establishing universal eidetic sciences functions under the operation of eidetic seeing is important, especially from the viewpoint of the mutual network of the plural subject. This problem of consciousness spurred the present chapter, undertaken in order to clarify the motivations of inter-monadic communication as the principal condition for eidetic seeing. I focus on a theory of Husserlian monadology, a theory of intersubjectivity in phenomenology; in particular, the teleology of monads. Universal teleology, which consists of a teleology of impulse and teleology of reason, motivates communication among plural monads and offers the possibility of pulling through the relativist aspect of phenomenological essentialism.

1. The Method of Eidetic Seeing According to Husserl, phenomenology is to the eidetic science of materially filled experiences; namely, “a purely ‘descriptive’ eidetic science” (Hua III/1, 138). A phenomenologist must express or describe the essential interconnections of what is currently intuited in events of pure consciousness and bring them to perfect clarity by means of universal insight (ibid.).

84 However, phenomenology is not essentialism, such as is found in the theory of ideas in Plato, which substantially and objectively posits essences beyond the phenomenal world, for the essences treated of in phenomenology are not transcendent essences but immanental essences of the lived experiences (Hua III/1, 128). Transcendental phenomenology “is to be an eidetic doctrine, not of phenomena that are real, but of phenomena that are transcendentally reduced,” and “the phenomena of transcendental phenomenology will become characterized as irreal” (Hua III/1, 6).1 Therefore, essence or eidos in phenomenology “as the theory of the essence of transcendentally purified consciousness” (Hua III/1, 128) should be understood in relation to transcendental subjectivity, and eidetic intuition or eidetic seeing can be defined as the method of directly grasping immanental essential interconnections.2 I briefly confirm the procedure of eidetic seeing by referring to Experience and Judgement. According to Husserl, in order to obtain essence, the experiential comparison of real individuals given within factual experiences proves inadequate, and the characteristic of contingency should be excluded from eidetic seeing. Consequently, “it is based on the modification of an experienced or imagined objectivity, turning it into an arbitrary example, which, at the same time, receives the character of a guiding ‘model,’ a point of departure for the production of an infinite multiplicity of variants. It is based, therefore, on a variation” (EU, 410 f.). Through free variation, new similar images appear as copies in the subjective mode of the “arbitrary (beliebig),” and “an invariant is necessarily retained as the necessary general form (notwendige allgemeine Form)” (EU, 411). This multitiered overlapping of imagined variants is called “a general essence (allgemeines Wesen)” (ibid.), which is brought to a purely passive synthesis, and intuiting or grasping the passively constituted essences in the active way is called eidetic seeing (EU, 414). Husserl describes the specific process of eidetic seeing by using the example of sound. “For example, if we take a sound as our point of departure, whether we actually hear it or whether we have it present as a sound ‘in the imagination,’ then we obtain the eidos sound as that which, in the

1 As seen in chapter 5 of this study, Scheler, who began a relationship with Husserl through a discussion of the expansion of the concept “intuition,” states that ideal objects that exist within the order of objectiveness must validate to the subject beyond any noesis. “Not through any ‘activity of forms’ or a synthesis and so on, does the apriori becomes a component of experience, let alone through the act of ‘self’ or a ‘transcendental consciousness.’” Max Scheler, “Phänomenologie und Erkenntnistheorie” in Gesammelte Werke 10 (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 2000), 383. Scheler explicates the method of eidetic seeing in the unique way as a member of the Munich and Göttingen Circles, but his essence should be regarded as transcendent essences, and distinguished from the immanental essences of subjective experiences in Husserl. 2 The following studies provide a diachronic perspective of eidetic seeing and clarify how Husserl worked through the development of the eidetic method. See the editor’s preface by Dirk Fonfora for Husserliana XLI (Hua XLI, XVII–XLV). See also Tetsuya Sakakibara, Die Genesis der Phänomenologie Husserls. Eine Untersuchung über die Entstehung und Entwicklung ihrer Methode (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2009). See especially Chapter 4, “The Genesis of Eidetic Intuition.”

85 course of ‘arbitrary’ variants, is necessarily common to all these variants” (EU, 412). If we take another departure point of a sound phenomenon, the result will be the same, that is, the obtained eidos sound will be common in the two distinct free variations of sound. In any circumstance, the eidos sound will be directly given to consciousness in the same mode, because the eidos fundamentally determines what the individual is, namely, what is in common among individuals. However, Husserl maintains that “even totally free variation is not enough to actually give us the universal as pure,” (EU, 423) for the universal is still related to the positing of actuality, although the relationship with the first departing model has already been excluded through free variation. Therefore, pure essences require the exclusion of the general thesis and the suspension of all judgments of positing of being, that is, they demand “universal epoché.” Free variation alone is insufficient to obtain pure essences, and this claim of Husserl leads us to conclude that eidetic seeing should be employed in the transcendental attitude with the transcendental reduction, as Husserl determines phenomenology to be an eidetic doctrine of phenomena that are transcendentally reduced.3

2. The Problem of Circularity in Eidetic Seeing and the Openness of Free Variation As mentioned above, a process of eidetic seeing starts with picking up an arbitrary model of the essence in question and then freely imagining various copies of the model through free variation. However, the problem appears to lie in the fact that eidetic seeing includes and presupposes a sort of circularity. Unless one knows what an object is in advance, it is impossible to choose an arbitrary departing point and continue the act of free variation. In such a case, there is no way to know exactly when free variation should be stopped.4 For instance, if I do not know anything about what sound is, how do I take an experienced or imagined objectivity as a guiding model? How do I imagine other forms of sound? Finally, how do I know that “this variant” is the last one, to stop free variation? Clearly, a condition is required here: I must know something about sound before free variation. However, the problem lies, I think, not in the circular structure itself, but in whether circularity

3 Of course, eidetic seeing can be employed with a natural attitude. Indeed, at the beginning of Ideas I, Husserl describes the method of eidetic seeing without reference to the operation of the phenomenological reduction (See chapter 1 “Matter of Fact and Essence,” in part 1 “Essence and Eidetic Cognition”). However, in terms of the conciliation of the controversy concerning truth, it can be said that eidetic sciences must be developed in the transcendental attitude. I discuss this in more detail in section 3 of this chapter. Furthermore, see chapter 3 of this study. 4 Regarding the problem of circularity in eidetic seeing, see David Kasmier, “A Defense of Husserl’s Method of Free Variation,” in Epistemology, Archaeology, Ethics: Current Investigations of Husserl’s Corpus, ed. Pol Vandevelde and Sebastian Luft (London / New York: Continuum, 2010), 27. In addition, J. N. Mohanty, Transcendental Phenomenology: An Analytic Account (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 33.

86 leads to methodological defectiveness, and whether the latter should be focused on. On this point, it can be argued that circularity in eidetic seeing is an inevitable, necessary, and legitimate factor in a certain way, because phenomenology firmly seeks the basis of the life-world for its transcendental enterprise. That is, eidetic seeing is defined as a method of consciously and conceptually clarifying and determining the meanings of objects or concepts, which are naively, axiomatically, and preliminarily trusted in the natural attitude.5 The fact that Husserl does not use the words “freely” and “arbitrarily” in the sense of the complete emancipation from every restriction deserves more attention, so that it lays out a significant perspective of eidetic seeing as a process of clarification. According to Husserl, “Free phantasies acquire a position of primary over perceptions,” and “a freedom opens up to him for the very first time, an access to the expanses of essential possibilities with their infinite horizons of eidetic cognitions” (Hua III/1, 147). However, he also states that, “I have, of course, continuously chosen freely and have in this way produced the harmonious unity ‘in’ phantasy, but even in this freedom I am limited. I constantly have a choice, but it is precisely a choice. If I decide for one thing, many others are excluded. And what is identical, the synthesis of images that go together to form the unity of something that is continuously identical with itself throughout (something appearing in harmonious quasi-appearances) is—as synthesis—by no means in my power to choose. I am bound by an eidetic law, and I bring this eidetic law to givenness in universal thinking on the basis of reflection on the appearances and their unity, and on the consciousness constituting them” (Hua XXIII, 563). In phantasy, I can arbitrarily produce images of an essence through free variation, but essence itself, as a synthesis of images, is not under the control of my arbitrariness (Willkür), because eidetic law has already prescribed my power to choose in advance. Thus, free variation coincides with a process in which eidetic law is brought to clear givenness, in which vague essence is brought to clarity. Consequently, it is clear that circularity in eidetic seeing should not be regarded as a methodological defect, but as a legitimate methodic presupposition of it. Then when would it be time to stop the process of free variation? In other words, are there any standards or signs to inform us of the end of free variation? Husserl states “that the eidos depends on a freely and arbitrarily producible multiplicity of variants attaining coincidence, on an open infinity, does not imply that an actual continuation to infinity is required, an actual production of all the variants” (EU, 412). What is important in free variation is consciousness of “and so on, at my

5 According to Sowa, eidetic seeing can be viewed as a process of “critical examination (kritische Prüfung) in a way that “it is true for every imaginable x that: if x is (an) F, then x is (a) G (für jedes erdenkliche x gilt: ist x (ein) F, dann ist x (ein) G).” Rochus Sowa, “Wesen und Wesensgesetze in der deskriptiven Eidetik Edmund Husserls,” Phänomenologische Forschungen (2007): 31 f. Also, according to Zaner, obtaining an essence through free variation does not imply the “verification” of the essence, but the “clarification” of it. Richard Zaner, “Examples and Possibles: A Criticism of Husserl’s Theory of Free-Phantasy Variation,” Research in Phenomenology 3 (1973): 35.

87 pleasure (und so weiter nach Belieben)” (EU, 413); as Richard Cobb-Steven has it, “what matters is that the manner of variation should be such that not only do we have the sense that the progress could go on indefinitely, but also that it would in fact be fruitless to continue.” 6 Thus, as Cobb-Stevens argues, “Intelligence is the power to distinguish the essential from the accidental,”7 so that the end of free variation will be realized with intelligent insight of “fruitlessness.” Furthermore, as Sowa notes, what is identical will be clarified by means of taking counterexamples and limit cases into consideration.8 This means that, when thinking on the essence of “love,” for instance, grasping the essence of “enmity” (counterexamples) or “friendliness” (limit cases) are beneficial for clarifying what exactly the essential structures and moments of love are, for what it is stands out in comparison to what it is not. Thus, Husserl does not present any specific criteria for the completion of free variation. He states only that consciousness of “and so on, at my pleasure” would consummate the process of free variation. However, the fact that free variation will never come to the end in an absolute sense also assures us that, “though I may stop the variation at any moment, I may correspondingly not only continue, but after stopping I am also able to return to it. I can, in other words, ‘pick up where I left off,’ I can return and perhaps revise, reiterate, or refute what I did before, and also go on from there.”9 Completing the process of free variation with explicit standards enables us to verify what is identical, intuited by eidetic seeing, but the real significance of eidetic seeing as a historical– intersubjective project lies in its possibility of continuing free variation or restarting it again as the need arises. In other words, the lack of a specific standard for stopping free variation will always open eidetic seeing to continual intersubjective reassessment and confirmation, such that phenomenological essentialism can avoid falling into dogmatism based on the substantial essences.

3. Conciliation of the Controversy Concerning Truth As shown previously, Husserl thinks that eidetic seeing needs to be carried out in the transcendental attitude. In such a case, essences do not objectively exist as beings in themselves beyond consciousness; they rigidly appear to the transcendental subjectivity: that is, they are validated in correlation to the transcendental subjectivity. It is still controversial whether or not the essence obtained by eidetic seeing in the transcendental attitude should be a “pure” essence. For instance, Schütz, who explicates the ontology of the life

6 Richard Cobb-Stevens, “Husserl on Eidetic Intuition and Historical Interpretation,” American Cathoric Philosophical Quarterly LXVI, no. 2 (1992): 267. 7 Cobb-Stevens, “Husserl on Eidetic Intuition,” 264. 8 Rochus Sowa, “The Universal as ‘What is in Common’: Comments on the Proton-Pseudos in Husserl’s Doctrine of the Intuition of Essence,” in Philosophy, Phenomenology, Sciences, ed. Carlo Ierna et al. (Dordrecht / Heidelberg / London / New York: Springer, 2010), 547 f. 9 Zaner, “Examples,” 33.

88 world not in a transcendental but in a natural attitude, maintains that “is it possible to grasp by means of free variations in phantasy the eidos of a concrete species or genus, unless these variations are limited by the frame of the type in terms of which we have experienced in the natural attitude the object from which the process of ideation starts as a familiar one, as such and such an object within the life-world? Can these free variations in phantasy reveal anything else but the limits established by such typification? If these questions have to be answered in the negative, then there is indeed merely a difference of degree between type and eidos. Ideation can reveal nothing that was not preconstituted by the type.”10 For Schütz, still, “the notion of eidetic reduction is at least partially an operative one.”11 The circularity in eidetic seeing implies that eidetic seeing is a continual process of clarification of types and structures that have been already articulated in the natural attitude. If so, what does it mean to obtain a pure essence instead of the empirical universal? Is there indeed merely a difference of degree between empirical type and pure eidos, as Schütz argues? Alternatively, is the method of eidetic seeing close to the empirical inductive method?12 Eidetic seeing contains a circular structure and can be defined as an operation that sees essential interconnections or typicality already articulated in the life-world. However, more attention should be paid to the fact that Husserl stresses “the necessity of an explicit exclusion of all positing of being for the purpose of attaining pure generality” (EU, § 89). This means that eidetic seeing should be employed with the transcendental reduction, as transcendental eidetics treats phenomena that are transcendentally reduced. Here we can understand the unique characteristics of eidetic seeing; unlike empirical generalization, the purification of eidos in eidetic seeing can in principle reconcile “the controversy concerning truth” (Klaus Held).13 “Pure essence” signifies intersubjectively validated common structures of world articulation, instead of ideas in the Platonic sense or the substantiality of essences. It presents the phenomenological elucidation of why a theory can be antagonistic to other theories, and how it is possible fundamentally to conciliate conflicts in belief. Consequently, the operation of eidetic seeing in the transcendental attitude inevitably presupposes the resolution of “the controversy concerning

10 Alfred Schütz, “Type and Eidos in Husserl’s Late Philosophy,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 20, no. 2 (1959): 164. 11 Schütz, “Type,” 165. 12 Regarding closeness between induction and eidetic seeing, David M. Levin, “Induction and Husserl’s Theory of Eidetic Variation,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 29, no. 1 (1968). 13 In addition to potentiality for conciliation of belief conflict, eidetic seeing can be distinguished from empirical generalization. For instance, phantasy can form a guiding model for eidetic seeing as well as perception (EU, 415), and furthermore, the truth-ness of empirical abstraction itself demands eidetic insight into what truth-ness is beyond limited experiential observations and experiments (Hua III/1, 44).

89 truth,” or, more precisely, if phenomenology is not aimed at this resolution, the method of eidetic seeing would lose the academic significance of establishing itself as universal science. According to Held, “The relativity of appearances constitutes the departure point of phenomenology as it was founded by Edmund Husserl. As such, phenomenology is a novel resumption of the task of overcoming controversy.”14 Starting from the relativity of appearance, phenomenology attempts to avoid serious philosophical antagonism in advance, for “controversy erupts when each involved party maintains that the way in which something appears to him or her is the only way that corresponds to what and how this thing itself is.”15 For the sake of this, phenomenology should always be undertaken through epoché: “while it in itself remains what it is, we, so to speak,‘put it out of action,’ we ‘exclude it,’ we ‘parenthesize it’” (Hua III/1, 63). “Phenomenology, as established by Husserl, is nothing other than the method of a strict abidance by the epoché. Thus, it is a kind of skepticism that is radically serious about itself.”16 Therefore, it is absurd for phenomenology to stand for the absolute legitimacy of a certain truth, and, beyond the controversy concerning truth; phenomenology is oriented to promote mutual understanding and intersubjective confirmation. Without excluding all positing of being, intuited essences always hold the potential for being substantiated or objectivized, which would lead to a controversy concerning truth. While purification of essence makes disconnecting the relationship between inevitable essence and contingent actuality an open possibility, eidetic seeing in the transcendental attitude with universal epoché also enables the avoidance of “Platonic hypostatization” (Hua III/1, 47); namely, preventing the phenomenologist from falling into a dogmatic essentialist way of thinking. As a matter of first priority, phenomenology should not become one of the “sciences of the dogmatic attitude,” which are “unconcerned with epistemological or skeptical problems” (Hua III/1, 54), but “an eidetic doctrine, not of phenomena that are real, but of phenomena that are transcendentally reduced.” In short, whereas the empirical generally cannot contain the principle of the elucidation of conflicts of belief, the pure eidos always demands that the phenomenologist begins with the relativity of appearance, so that the transcendental eidetic sciences are explicated in the course of adjusting plural opinion, doctrine, theory, thinking, and philosophy. It assures us of the potentiality for the coexistence of different types of thinking, while at the same time aiming to create intersubjective confirmation without oppressing socio-cultural differences. However, no evidence has been provided to suggest how the relativity of appearance as a starting point of phenomenology could be extended to universality. That is to say, the question has remained unanswered whether intuited essence can be regarded as necessity and universality; namely, can it be

14 Held, “The Controversy,” 35. 15 Held, “The Controversy,” 35. 16 Held, “The Controversy,” 44.

90 validated not only by the transcendental subjectivity but also by the transcendental intersubjectivity? As phenomenological essentialism does not dogmatically presuppose the universality of essences, the question whether essences grasped in the transcendental attitude can extend beyond the relativity of the subject is a burning question for phenomenology.

4. Relativity of Intuited Essences Indeed, Husserl himself has given us the thought of the relativity of intuited essences. According to Husserl, “this seeing which is presentive of the essence and, perhaps, presentive of it originarily, can be an adequate one such as we can easily obtain in, for a seeing of the essence tone. But it can also be a more or less imperfect, ‘inadequate’ seeing.” (Hua III/1, 13). Certainly, eidetic seeing always works as “the ultimate legitimizing source of all rational assertions (die letzte Rechtsquelle aller vernünftigen Behauptungen),” and there is no doubt that directly seeing eidos in the way of “I see it” forms the basis for legitimate cognition and knowledge (Hua III/1, 43). However, the fact that eidetic seeing may be inadequate, depending on the conditions, shows that the intuited essences always entail an undetermined horizon; it is inevitable for eidetic seeing not only to certify common structures at one time, but rather to make repeated efforts to bring it to perfect clarity. Moreover, in the case of adequate essences, such as eidos tone, relativity of intuited essences does come into question. Even in this case, the problem of relativity arises, because whether or not the intuited essence obtained by “the subject” corresponds to that by “others” remains unclear, for “one seeing conflicts with another and likewise that one legitimate assertion conflicts with another,” even though this does not imply “seeing is not a legitimizing basis” (Hua III/1, 43). While eidetic seeing certainly can be “the ultimate legitimizing source of all rational assertions,” it may be inadequate or conflict with another seeing according to the conditions. This proves that intuited essences cannot be viewed immediately as necessary and universal. As Burt Hopkins points out, this relativity derives from the difference of specific nature, characteristics, or environment hold by each phenomenologist; that is, “the relativities of historical meaning, of social, cultural and political environing worlds, of masculine and feminine aspects of subjectivity, and indeed, of both a natural world and subjectivity itself.”17 Essences in phenomenology include a certain type of relativity in order not to become dogmatic concepts or ideas. Husserl maintains that, “the result is tainted by a relativity which is not revealed and taken into account. It is only when all relativities are displayed and brought into the

17 Burt C. Hopkins, “Phenomenological Cognition of the A Priori: Husserl’s Method of ‘Seeing Essences’ (Wesenserschauung),” in Husserl in Contemporary Context: Prospects and Projects for Phenomenology, ed. Burt C. Hopkins (Dordrecht: Springer, 1997), 177 f. Also, regarding cultural relativity in eidetic seeing, Dieter Lohmar, “Die phänomenologische Methode der Wesensschau und ihre Präzisierung als eidetische Variation,” Phänomenologische Forschungen (2005): 88 ff.

91 contemplation of the essence that the idea arises of the regional essence of a thing in general: henceforth, in the context of an infinitely open nature in general, and, further, of a possible concrete world in general with reference to a community of subjects in general, whose open environing world it is. It is only then that we obtain an insight into essence in full concretion” (EU, 441). In this regard, it is not impossible to interpret “the character of eidetic necessity and with this a relation to eidetic universality” (Hua III/1, 12) as the essence of essence; namely, the idea of essence as Jiro Watanabe suggests.18 In order to obtain the essence in the full concretion, all relativities need to be brought into eidetic seeing. Therefore, it seems right to presume that the universality of essences will be gradually generated through mutual expression of the intuited essential interconnection by each participant in the phenomenological language game. Only going through the stage of mutual critique and mutual understanding, the intuited essence becomes intersubjective certitude from the merely subjective under the guidance of the idea of essence. Consequently, it cannot be said that an intuited essence holds the absolute necessary truth-ness immediately; for the universal is hardly confirmed before the historical–intersubjective assessment is conducted. 19 In the case of the eidos of perceivable spatio-temporal objects such as the eidos of sound or the eidos of red, or in the realm of mathematics and logics, it could be still possible to obtain adequate evidence to assure the universal validity at a time. However, in the realms of meaning and value, such as the eidos of freedom, justice, love, faith, beauty, and goodness, universal and necessary validity of the eidos always requires the process of intersubjective continual critique and reassessment in time, because the articulation of these regions depends upon the respective cultural, social, or religious conditions. Namely, opening an essence intuited by a certain subject to assessment by others is an inevitable dimension of eidetic seeing, aimed at the possibility of universal cognition. Therefore, eidetic seeing can be determined as a

18 According to Watanabe, while eidetic seeing should not be thought in closed completeness, simultaneously “a not improbable ideal form of ‘eidetic’ sciences must be established in eidetic universality and eidetic necessity, namely, essence of ‘eidetic’ sciences, the idea of that, can be legitimated in the different way.” See translator’s note for the Japanese edition of Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, trans. Jiro Watanabe (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobo, 1979), 349. 19 Zaner and Sowa have already shown that eidetic seeing is a historical–intersubjective process. According to Zaner, “as should be clear, and certainly was to Husserl, ‘evidence’ necessarily must mean that every epistemic claim, including the eidetic, is essentially subject to error, modification, denial, as well as confirmation,” and “this openness to continual criticism (critical analysis and explication) is itself an essentially necessary characteristic of every eidetic claim, and surely as well every epistemic claim generally.” Zaner, “Examples,” 37. Sowa claims that, “in contrast to the chimerical variation procedure presented by Husserl, this variation procedure is not only both possible and viable but even necessary for a descriptive eidetics such as Husserl’s phenomenology, which was conceived of as an eidetic science, and consequently presupposes the intersubjective reassessibility of its results in the form of eidetic laws.” Sowa, “The Universal,” 551.

92 historical–intersubjective project, which inquiries into common structures and conditions of the world, with articulation beyond the relativities of characteristics and environments among cultures, religions, societies, and various communities. Starting from the relativity of appearance, the phenomenological eidetic enterprise can avoid and reconcile the controversy concerning truth. Then, how is the motivation to overcome the relativity of eidos defined? In the next section, I will demonstrate the link between eidetic seeing and the teleology of monads and clarify how eidetic seeing is motivated by universal teleology. 5. Eidetic Seeing and the Teleology of Monads When Husserl directs his attention to the mutual connections of plural consciousness, that is, when he phenomenologically considers the problem of intersubjectivity, monadology is introduced into the discussion: It is a transformation from egology (Egologie) to monadology (Monadologie) (Hua XIV, Nr. 13). As shown above, the universal validity of eidos refers to intersubjective confirmation through critique and assessment by others. For a study of eidetic seeing as a historical– intersubjective project, how eidetic seeing can be motivated by mutual interconnections among the plural transcendental subjectivity is a subject of concern. In this section, I will not explicate the entire picture of the relationship between the phenomenological eidetic enterprise and inter-monadic communication, but will elucidate the motivations for eidetic seeing in the light of teleology of monads. In the monadology of Husserl, each ego is called a “monad”: a unity of the stream of mental processes, the natural world, and the ideal world. However, each monad is not discretely isolated, but communicates with others through the window of empathy (Einfülung) (Hua XIV, 260). “Consequently the constitution of the world essentially involves a ‘harmony’ of the monads: precisely this harmony among particular constitutions in the particular monads; and accordingly it involves also a harmonious generation that goes on in each particular monad” (Hua I, 107). Husserl considers that communication among monads is performed in the two distinct dimensions: passivity and activity. While the inter-monadic communication on the level of passivity exists for the sake of “passive ideas (ideas, which determine becomingness of passivity),” in the level of activity, the ideal or practical ideas dominate over the teleology of inter-monadic communication (Hua XIV, 260). Whereas the former can be regarded as “the conditions of possibility for the higher development,” the latter is determined as the “normative, genuine ideas” “for the working personal subject-behavior, for the development of ideas of community” (Hua XIV, 271 f.). These two distinct ideas form the entire universal teleology in Husserlian phenomenology. The universal teleology of the plural monad can be seen as a teleological determination in eidetic seeing, promoting the process of overleaping the relativity of intuited essences. In other words, through the mediation of “passive ideas” and “practical ideas,” eidetic seeing is teleologically motivated orienting to the creation of universality. That is, the relativity of essences is not

93 automatically transcended simply through diachronic confirmation; it is motivation and telos in the dimension of impulse and reason that enable the expansion of subjective belief toward intersubjectivity, providing the phenomenologist with purposefulness and effort to realize a transcendental eidetic doctrine. Let me discuss this in more detail. To begin, impulse–intentionality (Triebintentionalität) plays a key part in shaping passive ideas. Impulse–intentionality bespeaks all intentionalities, which automatically operate without the participation of the ego; for instance, appetite or sleep drive. Here, in particular, I would like to draw attention to the impulse passively oriented to the other, the “impulse striving into other streams, for some situations, with other self-subject” (Hua XV, 594). This passive communication never operates consciously and explicitly, but can be directly affirmed in the phenomena of the impulse of love in the parent-child relationship or sexual desire toward others (ibid.). What is important here is that even such an impulse is a sort of intentionality, and is always already intended in a particular direction; that is, a “transcendent destination (transzendentes Ziel)” (ibid.). For instance, “in the case of sexual hunger, in the determined direction to its affecting and provoking destination, the destination is the other” (Hua XV, 593). Because impulse is a motivated intentionality, the expression of passive ideas or destinations of impulse can come into effect. More significantly, this passive communication is not limited to bipolar relationships, such as parent–child relationships and sexual relationships. On this foundation, Husserl thinks that the whole plural monadic interlinkage is mediated and connected by passive communication. Moreover, the fact that since inter-monadic communication is a fundamental condition not only for constituting synchronic community but also for diachronic intergenerational communication, temporality and the historicity of social community are created deserves more attention. Husserl maintains that “the totality of monads in originally (ursprünglich) instinctive communication, each living in its individual life all the time, and therefore, each exists with a sedimented life, with a hidden history, which simultaneously implies the “universal history (Universalhistorie)” (Hua XV, 609). Also, “the entire process which corresponds to the phylogenetic development is sedimented in every nucleus monad (Keimzellenmonade) that comes into existence,” and that is, even though “a monad, for instance, a human monad, which dies” sinks in “absolute sleep,” “it somehow acts in all of the monads” (ibid.). The totality of monads is latently connected with each other by impulse–intentionality, which entails a hidden history. Each human individual is placed in a predetermined place, with birth and death, but the effort of individuals can survive in whole ideas that inherit the mantle as a contiguous relay baton. Knowledge and effort will be phylogenetically sedimented in the next generation. Whereas passive ideas aim at the level of impulse–intentionality and become the conditions for the cooperation and historicity of a community, they are subsumed within the practical ideas as “normative, genuine ideas” “for the working personal subject-behavior, for the development of ideas

94 of community,” for they are also viewed as “the conditions of possibility for the higher development.” In this light, the relationship between passive ideas and practical ideas interact in a complementary style, because passive ideas form the basis for the phylogenetical realization of practical ideas by means of passively turning a regard on the other; while on the other hand, practical ideas accumulate in a hidden universal history that all monads passively accept in the process of birth. Taking these matters into account, it is suggested that both passive and practical ideas impinge on the phylogenetical development of monads. On the concept of “practical ideas,” Husserl states that “all of the monads, a monadic all-unity (All-Einheit), is in the improving process in infinitum, and this process is necessarily a constant process of development from sleeping monads to patent monads, and development to a world, which is always reconstituted in monads […] And this world constitution is always constituted by higher humanity and super-humanity (Übermenschentum), in which the all becomes conscious of its own true being, and takes the form of being that freely constitutes itself to the reason or perfection-form (Vollkommenheitsgestalt)” (Hua XV, 610). Simply stated, practical ideas bespeak the telos of reason. Active inter-monadic communication is motivated and determined by the telos of reason; that is, the whole monadic community always keeps itself moving forward toward the completion of person-community on the basis of the idea of higher humanity. Thus, it is practical ideas that underpin the infinite course of explicitly becoming conscious of telos. Here, the ultimate idea of human practice ad infinitum aiming to create a better society and the consideration of the potentiality of human life may be termed God, because “God is not all of the monads themselves, but the entelechy lying in monads, as the idea of the infinite development of telos, the infinite development of telos of ‘humanity (Menschheit)’ on absolute reason” (ibid.). However, it is important that God does not mean any religious and practical God, but it should be regarded as the ideal of reason, “as source of endlessly increasing value-possibilities and value-actualities.” (Hua III/1, 125). That is, God is excluded by the phenomenological reduction from the field of pure consciousness as Husserl writes that “we extend the phenomenological reduction to include this ‘absolute’ and ‘transcendent’ being” (ibid.). In short, through the medium of the two distinct teloi, passive ideas and practical ideas, inter-monadic communication is motivated and determined. While passive ideas underpin the cooperation and historicity of a community and become the conditions for the completion of an individual person at a higher stage and the potentiality of the establishment of a person–community on a basis of mutual solidarity of plural persons, practical ideas serve in the role of building norms and values for constructing a better society and life through the explicit communication of plural monads. Let me go back to the argument of eidetic seeing. In terms of the teleology of monads, eidetic seeing can be defined as the process of realization of practical ideas (the telos of reason) among

95 plural transcendental subjectivity, relying on passive ideas (the telos of impulse) based on impulse– intentionality. In this regard, eidetic seeing should operate not only on theoretical–epistemological concern but also on practical–axiological concern. As seen in section 2, all participants in the phenomenological eidetic enterprise need to conduct transcendental reduction in order to avoid controversy concerning truth or belief conflict. Phenomenological essentialism is a completely new essentialism in that it attempts to create universality without any transcendent factor. For Husserl, even God works as the ultimate idea of entelechy, not the transcendent substantial being which assures the objectivity of essences. For this reason, anyone can have an equal right to participate in the phenomenological language game, whether or not they believe in a particular thought or religion. The only evidence for the validity of essences is no more than my insight, but starting from there, phenomenology always aims gradually to form intersubjective confirmation, for the sake of counteracting the emergence of oppressive dogma and irrational violence. Certainly, it is difficult to say that every eidetic seeing is directly aimed at the practical ideal. For instance, the question remains how the essential structures of consciousness grasped by Husserl, such as noesis–noema, intentionality, and passive synthesis become engaged in practical realms such as social justice or human rights. However, as Husserl makes an intensive appeal in later life, since distrust of reason is closely connected to the crisis of humanity and human freedom (Hua VI, 9ff.), the process of obtaining universality by eidetic seeing itself denotes restitution of trust toward rational thinking and the possibility of avoiding the crisis of humanity and human freedom. In this regard, eidetic seeing as the transcendental project of historical–intersubjective confirmation is motivated by the telos of reason throughout. The fact that eidetic seeing is motivated by universal teleology consisting of the telos of both reason and impulse does not mean that the relativity of essences will be overcome with absolute certainty. However, only inner motivations, to which passive and practical ideas conduce, establish the fundamental conditions for creating will and effort to a continual reassessment of the plural transcendental subjectivity. In phenomenological essentialism, there is a sort of tension between relativity and universality, so that a phenomenologist always stands in possession of a sense of risk: an intuited essence may differ from that of others; it may bruise others’ feelings. If there is no teleology or motivation, the eidetic enterprise must collapse, and then we have only to gaze absently into the victory of outrages, as though Western philosophy could not find a way to resist the logic of Nazism and Stalinism. Thus, it can be concluded that the relativity of essences cannot be easily overcome at the drop of a pin, but this is possible only when plural transcendental intersubjectivity seeks to obtain universal cognition with will and effort, which are always invoked by the universal teleology of inter-monadic communication at the level of passivity and activity.

Conclusion

96 At the beginning of this chapter, we outlined the basic characteristics of eidetic seeing to explicate the descriptive eidetic sciences; eidetic seeing is regarded as the method of actively grasping what is common in individuals based on free variation, which is passively synthesized. However, in order to begin, continue, and stop free variation, pre-understanding of the essence in question is required. The circularity of eidetic seeing comes to a settlement by regarding it as a process of continual clarification and intersubjective reassessment, but the question remains of how we can know exactly when it should be stopped. Husserl claims that the consciousness of “and so on, at my pleasure” consummates the process of free variation. It seems that his answer to the question of how to complete free variation is insufficient on the surface. However, it can be said that the potentiality for eidetic seeing as a historical–intersubjective project can be upheld only if there are no absolute criteria to stop it. Next, the essence obtained through eidetic seeing should be pure essence, and sharply distinguished from the empirical general essence. The significance of carrying out eidetic seeing in the transcendental attitude lies in preventing the absolutizing orthopraxy of opinion, so that eidetic seeing inevitably conciliates the controversy concerning truth; in other words, it can avoid it in advance by means of starting from the relativity of appearance. On the other hand, this means that even the universality of eidos should not be absolutized immediately. It includes a sort of relativity and demands the intersubjective confirmation, for a phenomenologist lives in a life limited in characteristics, environmental world, culture, gender, and religion. Thus, it is suggested that the phenomenological language game has gradually generated the universal validity of essences through a critical examination in the process of history. Finally, we considered the fundamental relationship between the teleology of monads and eidetic seeing. The universal teleology of monads is divided into two dimensions: the telos of impulse and the telos of reason. These two factors supplement each other. Eidetic seeing is motivated in the phases of impulse and reason; in particular, it is the method for realizing the telos of reason; that is, attentively constituting intersubjectively validated world images where universal consensus is required. Therefore, the method of eidetic seeing can be defined as a transcendental eidetic project for the expansion of historical–intersubjective confirmation, and it will have actively realized the teleology of reason for oppressive violence and irrational injustice, which world history repeatedly has seen.

97 Chapter 7 The Phenomenological Language Game: The Original Contract of Goodness Introduction In this chapter, phenomenology is reconsidered in terms of the language game of Wittgenstein. In particular, I claim that the method of eidetic seeing should be regarded as a type of language game that attempts to expand intersubjective confirmation through a constant process ad infinitum. By defining the method of eidetic seeing as a phenomenological language game, the following points will be clarified: 1) Phenomenology is not solipsism, but a study of intersubjectivity; 2) Eidetic seeing should not be operated to obtain dogmatic eidos, but to create intersubjective consensus; 3) The phenomenological language game should be based on the original contract of goodness. It is not easy to introduce these three perspectives into phenomenology directly from Husserl’s original text, although Husserl himself considered the possibility of a transformation of phenomenology from egology to monadology, which is reviewed in chapter 6 of this study.1 Regardless of Husserl’s stress on monadology instead of egology, and some prominent previous research on intersubjectivity in Husserl, there remain some strongly-rooted vulgar views stating that phenomenology has clear limitations in terms of its foundationalism, dogmatism, or idealism.2 Of course, there is no versatile principle that can disclose every aspect of the world in the absolute sense, but phenomenology, I think, should be defended at least for the sake of its purpose and motivation, which is to promote intersubjective confirmation in order to inquire into possible conditions and structures of a “good” society. In what follows, I do not present a comprehensive description of the language game. The point I would like to stress is that the idea of the language game proclaims that we continually produce and exchange our various world images, concerns, emotions, desires, and values through the language game, and that there is no substantial essence, such as absolute truth or thing-in-itself. In fact, as is well known, the language game is often used in the context of relativism, as every meaning is generated through a particular local language game; in other words, meaning in language wholly depends on its context and performance. Indeed, the conflict between universalism in Husserl and relativism in Wittgenstein is reflected in two distinct concepts: morphological essence in Husserl, and family resemblance in Wittgenstein.

1 Furthermore, see V. Meditation in Cartesianische Meditationen (Hua I) or enormous articles in Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität (Hua XIII-XV). 2 In addition to postmodernist thinkers such as Jacques Derrida or Rorty, who clearly challenged phenomenology, the emergent thinking of speculative realism tries to criticize the phenomenological dimension of transcendental idealism. According to Sparrow, “For the speculative philosopher who wants to affirm and speak of the reality of objects in the ordinary or material sense, "intentional objects" (objects whose transcendence is only demonstrable immanently) will not suffice.” Sparrow, The End, 36.

98 In this chapter, however, the possibility of a philosophical language is upheld, with reference to the work of Apel. That is, I claim that there should be a language game that seeks universal structures and conditions common among all individual language games. I call it “the phenomenological language game.” The method of eidetic seeing in phenomenology is redefined in terms of the language game, and the concept of essence is evaluated as intersubjective consensus. In other words, essence is seen to be generated through interaction of participants in the phenomenological language game through agreement, criticism, question, response, description, example, and counter-example: in sum, “mutual critique” and “mutual exchange” of words. Also, it is important for phenomenology to clarify that the phenomenological language game has a particular aim and purpose. Aimless eidetic seeing is meaningless, and thus we firstly need to think about why we conduct eidetic seeing. To address this point, I introduce the idea of “the original contract of goodness” in the last section of this chapter. The original contract of goodness, or an implicit consensus on starting the language game in order to create a good society and life based on freedom and equality, determines the orientation of phenomenology, and continually motivates the will and efforts of phenomenologists.

1. Language Games According to Wittgenstein, meaning in language does not exist in itself, nor is it constituted in the subject. Meaning is generated through a language game. He asks, “What is the meaning of the word ‘five?’—No such thing was in question here, only how the word ‘five’ is used.”3 Wittgenstein describes how the meaning of a word is determined through the context of the language game by means of a parable. He writes that, “The language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B. A is building with building stones: there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass him the stones and to do so in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose they make use of a language consisting of the words ‘block,’ ‘pillar,’ ‘slab,’ ‘beam.’ A calls them out; B brings the stone which he has learnt to bring at such-and-such a call.—Conceive of this as a complete primitive language.”4 Usually we tend to assume that the meanings of “block,” “pillar,” “slabs,” and “beams” validly and objectively exist in language, so that we can use their meaning for communication. However, Wittgenstein inverts the established, trusted order: that is, the uses of “block,” “pillar,” “slabs,” and “beams” provide their meaning. Moreover, this complete primitive language can be regarded as one of those games by means of which children learn their native language, which Wittgenstein calls “language-games,” conceptually

3 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. Elizabeth Anscombe et al. (The Atrium / Southern Gate / Chichester / West Sussex: Blackwell, 2009), 6. 4 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 6.

99 including “the whole, consisting of language and the activities into which it is woven.”5 Therefore, the concept of the language game includes communicative language itself, and the activities of people. Simply stated, the language game can be defined as the activities of people based on rules.6 However, according to Wittgenstein, “There are countless kinds; countless different kinds of use of all the things we call ‘signs,’ ‘words,’ ‘sentences.’ And this diversity is not something fixed, given once for all; but new types of language, new language-games, as we may say, come into existence, and others become obsolete and get forgotten,”7 so it is impossible to identify exactly what rules determine a certain language game, and to clarify an unambiguous “use” of a language. That is, as Wittgenstein notes, “When language-games change, then there is a change in concepts, and with the concepts the meanings of words change.”8 But, if a language is always fluid and mobile, then some people might question how it is possible for us to communicate with each other. Are there any rules in such a language, such as grammar and rhetoric? These questions arise from our common sense, and seem natural and pertinent. However, it is not true that our ability to communicate with each other in practice can aid us in identifying grammar, rhetoric, and the opposite order: as Wittgenstein wrote, “You must bear in mind that the language-game is so to say something unpredictable. I mean: it is not based on grounds. It is not reasonable (or unreasonable). It is there—like our life.”9 On the other hand, we must be aware that the variability of language games does not necessarily mean randomness and nonsense. Rather, “to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life,”10 and there still exists a way to analyze and describe what types of rules determine a certain language game, even though the analysis and description cannot be conducted in exact terms, such as in mathematics and logic. In terms of phenomenology, the question still remains of whether or not there are some common structures and essential conditions that can be validated among different language games. Regarding this point, the idea of Wittgenstein intersects with that of Husserl, as the

5 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 8. 6 Regarding this point, Daisaburo Hashizume develops a unique idea about the language game. He presents “the language game of enlightenment (satori)” in Buddhism. According to him, the language game of enlightenment can be divided into the three levels: 1) The language game, in which all disciplinants ask each other about “satori.” 2) The language game in which each disciplinant starts sadhana living through the teaching of Buddha (dharma). 3) The language game in which the sutra is passed down to the next generation after Buddha’s death. As Hashizume shows, the idea of the language game can be applied to various social fields to explicate the activities and rules in a certain event. Daisaburo Hashizume, Language Game for Beginners (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2009), 196 f. 7 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 14 f. 8 Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, trans. Denis Paul and Elizabeth Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969), 11. 9 Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 74. 10 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 11.

100 difference between morphological essence in phenomenology and family resemblance in language games.

2. Family Resemblance versus Morphological Essence Wittgenstein claims that language is not defined as a strict system of a bundle of rules, but as a “game” whose rules can be changed by the activities of people and their acknowledgement of them; in other words, a game in the process of gradual and moderate change, in a similar manner to a form of life.11 According to Wittgenstein, “Instead of pointing out something common to all that we call language, I’m saying that these phenomena have no one thing in common in virtue of which we use the same word for all—but there are many different kinds of this affinity, or these affinities, we call them all ‘languages’.”12 This affinity is called “family resemblance” in Wittgenstein’s philosophy.13 For instance, can we discover an essence of game that is common among a variety of games, such as board games, card games, ball games, and athletic games? The answer is negative, because “if you look at them, you won’t see something that is common to all, but similarities, affinities, and a whole series of them at that.”14 “We see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: similarities in the large and in the small.”15 For Wittgenstein, it is an absurdity to consider the possibility of an essence common to all such individuals, when viewing the network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing. As a result, for Wittgenstein, understanding what a game is means that “he is now to employ those examples in a particular way,”16 rather than grasping the essence of game. Here, I would like to point out that the concept “family resemblance” should be called “morphological essence” in terms of phenomenology. Indeed, it can be said that Wittgenstein’s method of seeing family resemblances is very close to Husserl’s free variation, even though these two philosophers ultimately produced conflicting ideas. That is to say, Wittgenstein refuses the idea of essence, which is common among different language games, while Husserl attempts to grasp essential structures and common conditions by which the individual identity is determined. According to Husserl, phenomenology can be defined as “a purely ‘descriptive’ eidetic science” and “a science within the limits of mere immediate Intuition” (Hua III/1, 138). This means that phenomenology attempts to describe the essential linkages of universal insight with the mental processes within intuition.17

11 Takeda, Toward Linguistic Thinking, 108. 12 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 35. 13 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 36. 14 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 36. 15 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 36. 16 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 38. 17 Regarding the point that phenomenological thinking should be based on “universal insight,” I

101 As discussed in chapter 3, Eidetic sciences consist of two different ontologies: “formal ontology,” which is related to objectivity in general, including property, states of affairs, relationships, and class; and “material ontology,” which grasps essences of events with concrete contents such as thing, mind, person, and culture. However, phenomenology as “an eidetic theory of lived experiences” (Hua III/1, 149) should belong to the latter ontology (Hua III/1, 150). Moreover, simultaneously, phenomenology is not regarded as “a definite system of axioms” with a deductive justification, but as a concrete-eidetic discipline composed of “essences of lived experiences which are not abstracta but instead concreta” (Hua III/1, 164). Consider the other side of this issue. According to Husserl, on the one hand, there are “explanatory sciences,” such as mathematics and logic, which can create “unambiguous determination” or “exact determination” by means of “ideal concepts,” and on the other hand, there are “descriptive sciences” whose method is “description,” with “descriptive concepts” (Hua III/1, 154). For instance, the Pythagorean Theorem explains that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides (a2 + b2 = c2), and this theorem will be valid beyond social-cultural differences. It is clear that primary propositions in mathematics and logic can create exact validity. However, in phenomenology, a phenomenologist needs to directly see the lived experience and grasp essential structures of it, crucially with “words,” so that we cannot expect exact determination, as in the explanatory sciences. Importantly, it should be noted that participants need to share their concerns about and interest in the topic in question in advance, especially when eidetic seeing is conducted in the field of meaning and value. Nishi points out that eidetic seeing does not coincide with directly grasping the a priori immanent essence but that it always requires “some vital ‘viewpoint,’” and therefore “essential insight or essential description is ‘viewpoint-correlative.’”18 Nishi also argues, however, that this does not mean that “all knowledge is only relative. If one sets an adequate viewpoint and tries to extract essence, knowledge can arise, the correctness of which everyone can examine and confirm.”19 For instance, when trying to see the essences of “the other,” we have to clarify the concern and purpose of this eidetic seeing in advance, that is, why we are extracting the essences of the other or what sort of concern we share regarding the other. On the one hand, the other intersubjectively constitutes the objectivity of the world with the self in terms of transcendental concern, but on the other hand, the other can be a source of joyousness and anxiety in terms of existential concern. The essences of the other emerge out of the specific concern, so it is not easy to learned a number of things from Nishi. See Ken Nishi, Philosophical Thinking (Tokyo: Chikuma, 2005). 18 Nishi, “’Essential Insight’,” 17. 19 Nishi, “’Essential Insight’,” 17.

102 extract essential structures of the other that are common among participants from different sociocultural backgrounds without any viewpoint. In what field of study do we need universality? What for is essence to be extracted? What sort of perspective do we need to take? These are crucial questions that we should examine before seeing essence in practice, and the specific concern and perspective should be clearly presented in the process of eidetic seeing. This point was not explained by Husserl himself.20 To cite another case, when I attempt to grasp the essence of “discrimination,” obviously it is not possible to determine what the essence of discrimination is by using mathematics and logic. I reflect on my experiences regarding discrimination, and I imagine various other forms of discrimination through free variation, in order to obtain intersubjective validity. In what follows, I review the specific procedure of eidetic seeing by taking the essence of discrimination as an example. First, it is necessary for eidetic seeing to clarify and to express clearly why and from what perspective I see the essence of discrimination. My main concern is how discrimination is different from merely distinction, what can be the psychological reasons for creating such an order, and what does the experience of discrimination conduce to? Let me start with my own experience. When I lived in Ireland, I belonged to a rugby club in college. Soon after signing up to join the club, I sensed that I had generated a sense of aversion among some of my Irish colleagues although I had many other good friends there. Because I was the only player from an Asian country in the club, they did not want to accept me. Often, they asked me how I knew rugby if I had grown up in Japan. They did not want to accept the fact that Asian people also play rugby. One day, during practice, one of them kicked me in the face, insulting my nationality, and I was taken to a hospital. This incident was the result of discrimination. The particular distinction between Irish and Japanese led to this act of violence. Here, it is clear that the distinction between Irish and Japanese offers something different from the distinction between red and blue, and that the experience of discrimination just because someone is a foreigner is not a special but a universal case found all around the world. Also, through free variation, I can imagine various sorts of other cases expressing the discriminatory, such as discrimination against women, sexual minorities, believers in a particular religion, ethnic minorities, single mothers and children, and against people with a particular accent, color of skin, and so on. What are the essential structures of discrimination common to these cases? How are these distinctions different from the distinction between red and blue? This leads us to the next stage of

20 According to Nishi, even the essence of perception demands a specific perspective that precedes eidetic seeing such as the difference of perception and imagination. Husserl indeed extracts the essence from a specific viewpoint, but he is not aware of it. This naive attitude of Husserl’s leads to a misunderstanding of phenomenology as if the essence itself could exist without any concern and perspective. Nishi, Philosophical Thinking, 425 ff.

103 extracting common structures of discrimination. First, distinction and discrimination are different in that discrimination always entails creating a hierarchy of value order. Basically, the distinction between red and blue does not include the hierarchy of value order (although there is a difference in meaning), but discrimination against Japanese produces a sense of mastery. Second, this hierarchy of value order is generated without any rational verification by making use of an inevitable sense of belonging, such as physical characteristics, nationality, and place of origin. The person who is discriminated against cannot escape from this unavoidable situation, so discrimination can diminish that person’s self-worth and self-confidence just because that person simply cannot change his/her belonging. Thus, the essence of discrimination can be determined as the creation of a hierarchy of value order without any rational verification, which enables one to elevate oneself to a relatively superior position by making use of an inevitable sense of belonging. As a result, discrimination enables those who discriminate to secure a self-identity and a superiority complex, or to avoid otherness and alienation, but those who are discriminated against may feel distress and blame themselves, thinking that “possibly, the blame could be all mine,” because they cannot understand the reason why I am rejected by others, and they assume the possibility that the cause of discrimination exists inside myself.21 There are different levels of discrimination, such as individual discriminative feeling, communicative and collective discriminatory sentiments, and substantive discrimination in laws and institutions.22 As demonstrated above, the essence of discrimination is totally different from the Pythagorean Theorem, in that the former can create only morphological universality and structural commonality. In other words, in the realm of the descriptive sciences, intuited essence will be inevitably reassessed by intersubjective critique, and it cannot require an exact intermediate agreement among people. However, the question has remained unanswered whether it is possible to conceive of a descriptive eidetic science which creates universality in the morphological sense. Is phenomenology ultimately a relativistic method? Indeed, Wittgenstein would have thought so, in the context of family resemblance. In this regard, Husserl states that there are “morphological concepts of vague configurational types which are directly seized upon on the basis of sensuous intuition and which, in their vagueness, become conceptually and terminologically fixed. The vagueness of such concepts, the circumstance that their spheres of application are fluid, does not make them defective; for in the spheres of knowledge in which they are used they are absolutely indispensable, or in those spheres they are the only legitimate concepts” (Hua III/1, 155). Those concepts are essentially “inexact” and

21 I learned a lot regarding depression of self-value caused by discrimination from Kim Taemyeong, professor of legal philosophy and human rights at Osaka University of Economics and Law. I would like to express my appreciation to him. 22 Of course, the essence of discrimination I have presented here will be open to further continual intersubjective critiques, and is no more than a hypothetical description.

104 “non-mathematical,” but still hold “the firmness and the pure distinguishability” in the realm of “fluidity” (Hua III/1, 155 f.). Certainly, it is not possible for phenomenology to obtain an unambiguous determination of every moment that consists of eidetic singularities; but, being limited to concrete experiences, “the situation is quite otherwise in the case of essences belonging to higher levels of specificity” (Hua III/1, 157). These generic essences can be determined by “strict” (rather than “exact”) concepts, and “these are accessible to rigid differentiation, to continuous identifying maintenance, and strict conceptual formulation and likewise to analysis into component essences” (ibid.). In short, for Husserl, it is still possible to regard phenomenology as a descriptive eidetic “science” that aims to grasp essential moments and structures of experiences in the “strict” way, even though phenomenology should be keenly distinguished from exact sciences such as mathematics, logic, and physics. To summarize this section, it can be stated that the definitive difference between Wittgenstein and Husserl lies in the conflict between family resemblance and morphological essence. While Wittgenstein claims that there are no common structures that transcend the classification of language games, Husserl points out that, in higher levels of generic essences, there are morphological essences that share something beyond cultural-social differences.

3. Eidetic Seeing as a Language Game In contrast to Wittgenstein, I state that there can exist a language game that inquires into common structures among a number of language games, and I call it the “phenomenological language game.” It should be noted that regarding eidetic seeing as the phenomenological language game opens one’s eyes to an important perspective in phenomenology: namely, intersubjectivity. As I pointed out in my introduction, there is much evidence to demonstrate that phenomenology should not be considered as solipsism and dogmatism; but at the same time, it is not easy to extract the idea of phenomenological essentialism as a “science of intersubjective confirmation”23 from Husserl’s original text on the method of eidetic seeing. In this section, I will not describe the detailed process of eidetic seeing based on Husserl’s text, but will present several points to be taken into consideration with regard to the phenomenological language game.24 To begin, as Wittgenstein states, “When philosophers use a word—‘knowledge,’ ‘being,’ ‘object,’ ‘I,’ ‘proposition/sentence,’ ‘name’—and try to grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask oneself: is the word ever actually used in this way in the language in which it is at home?—What we

23 Regarding phenomenological essentialism as a science of intersubjective confirmation, see chapter 3 and 8 of this study. 24 Regarding the specific characteristics and arguments concerning eidetic seeing in Husserl, see chapter 6 of this study.

105 do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.”25 Philosophers tend to presuppose the realm of substance, such as the absolute truth, thing-in-itself, meaning itself, and objective value, but all these presuppositions lapse into paralogism. There is no independent essence in itself expressed through the everyday use of words, and philosophers must examine how words are used in the language in the first place. The phenomenological language game should be operated under the same conditions. The morphological essences do not substantially exist beyond the life-world, to be discovered like some lost treasures. Essence does not exist in the same way as do substantial entities, and it can be validated only through intersubjective confirmation among participants in the phenomenological language game. For instance, when I think of the essence of freedom, I do not imagine such an essence in the sense of Plato’s ideas, independently existing beyond the phenomenal world. Additionally, I cannot depend on the great works that describe the essence of freedom, such as The Phenomenology of Spirit by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, or Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm. The only evidence for the phenomenological language game is my experience and insight, so that heritages from all authorities in the specific field of study should be excluded and parenthesized. Then, I reflect on my experiences of the sense of freedom: when I am released from a drinking session with a senior associate, when I finish writing an academic paper; or, from the other perspective, when I cooperate with friends to interpret a philosophical text, when my supervisor evaluates the importance of my paper, and recognizes my efforts, etc. Thus, I can describe a variety of experiences of freedom, and the next stage is to grasp the essential structures of multiple forms of freedom. I will say that the essential moments of freedom can be extracted as liberation or emancipation from oppressive restraints, realization of one’s purposes, and gaining recognition from others. In addition, sometimes freedom appears not only as I can, but also we can. But, if the purpose is easily realized, I do not feel the sense of freedom; that is, the experience of freedom should follow previous efforts, having overcome difficulties, or fraught periods. The situation in which I can do anything I want is far from being freedom. It is important that the points on freedom raised above should be criticized by others, and that their validity will be reassessed from different viewpoints. The terms and keywords to express the essential structures that sustain and form the experience of freedom will have been gradually refined based on “mutual critique” and “mutual exchange” of words in principle. This means that, if you are bothered by a feeling of strangeness, you should criticize my terms and keywords on freedom, and simultaneously present your own ideas on the essence of freedom (i.e., mutual critique). Of course, when you are convinced by my argument to a greater or lesser extent, you can then adopt my turn of phrase (i.e., mutual exchange).

25 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 53.

106 According to the circumstances and topics, it might not be possible to reach intersubjective confirmation. However, if so, still we need to elucidate why it is impossible to obtain agreement on the essence of a particular realm. Simply stated, there are reasons and conditions, even for intersubjective disagreement. It can be said that elucidation of intersubjective disagreement leads participants in the phenomenological language game to “mutual recognition of difference,” because in that case, they already deeply understand the necessity and inevitability of why our opinions differ from each other. As Wittgenstein claims, “our mistake is to look for an explanation, where we ought to regard the facts as “proto-phenomena;” that is, where we ought to say: this is the language-game that is being played,”26 we can only create the attitude of mutual recognition against cultural and social difference. In sum, it can be argued that eidetic seeing is regarded as a historical-intersubjective project in order to inquire into universality and common understanding among plural language games, on the basis of mutual critique and mutual exchange of words. Essences in phenomenology should be open to continual criticism and intersubjective reassessment, but simultaneously, in the case of intersubjective disagreement in which mutual difference is actualized, the attitude of mutual recognition of difference forms the basis for the phenomenological language game. Therefore, we have come to the conclusion that phenomenology is unconcerned about solipsism and dogmatism; rather, it should be redefined as a study of intersubjectivity, tending toward intersubjective confirmation and mutual recognition.

4. The Philosophical Language Game in Karl-Otto Apel In this section, I will outline a colorful discussion about the philosophical language game presented by Apel. He claims there should be some common conditions underlying all language games and paradigms, and attempts to defend “the transcendental-pragmatic dimension of the uncriticizable conditions of the possibility of intersubjectively valid philosophical criticism and self-criticism”27 against critical rationalism. First of all, Apel picks up the idea of “the Münchhausen trilemma” devised by Hans Albert, who is a distinguished scholar of critical rationalism. For Apel, “’Critical Rationalism’ combines simultaneously with this distancing from an uncritical rationalism (which has thus far not reflected critically on the impossibility of self-grounding) the claim that the philosophical program of fundamental-grounding might be superseded in a satisfactory form by the alternative program of

26 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 175. 27 Karl-Otto Apel, “The Problem of Philosophical Fundamental Grounding in Light of a Transcendental Pragmatics of Language,” trans. Karl R. Pavlovic, Man and World 8, no. 3 (1975): 261.

107 unlimited rational criticism.”28 Albert maintains that all attempts at a fundamental-grounding for knowledge must be chosen from the following:

1. an infinite regress, which seems to arise from the necessity to go further and further back in the search for foundations, and which, since it is in practice impossible, affords no secure basis; 2. a logical circle in the deduction, which arises because, in the process of justification, statements are used which were characterized before as being in need of foundation, so that they can provide no secure basis; and, finally, 3. the breaking-off of the process at a particular point; which, admittedly, can always be done in principle, but involves an arbitrary suspension of the principle of sufficient justification.29

A philosophical fundamental-grounding must take a form of an infinite regress, a logical circle in the deduction, or the breaking-off of the process at a particular point in a definitive fashion. That is to say, seeking the foundation of knowledge cannot succeed, and, instead of this, endless rational criticism plays an important role in the theory of knowledge. According to Albert, “Since both an infinite regress and a circular argument seem clearly unacceptable, one is inclined to accept the third possibility, for the simple reason that no other way out of the situation is thought possible.”30 Following the argument of Albert, it is natural to refuse the concept of “cogito,” which Descartes provides as a starting point for evidence of philosophy, because evidence of cogito can be regarded as a variation of the breaking-off of the process at a particular point, which can be viewed as grounding by appeal to a dogma. “Thus Albert not only rejects the Cartesian reduction of the validity of truth to knowledge-evidence or certainty, but goes beyond this to the thesis that the quest for certainty is entirely profitless.”31 However, it is also clear that Albert hardly gives adequate accounts of the criteria for the legitimacy and justification of rational criticism itself. In other words, the question remains unanswered of how a given critique is to be justified by endless rational criticism. Jürgen Habermas points out that, in order to criticize a given theory or notion with validity, it is necessary to rely on at least one idea or perspective, because if there is no boundary between validity and invalidity at all, every perspective should be relativized, so that criticism will lose its authority and self-justification. “If they do not want to renounce the effect of a final unmasking and still want to continue with critique, they will have to leave at least one rational criterion intact for their explanation of the corruption of all rational criteria. In the fact of this paradox, self-referential

28 Apel, “The Problem,” 240. 29 Hans Albert, Treatise on Critical Reason, trans. Mary V. Rorty (Princeton / New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985), 18. 30 Albert, Treatise, 18 f. 31 Apel, “The Problem,” 241.

108 critique loses its orientation.”32 In this regard, it is difficult for critical rationalism to explain the legitimacy of endless critique itself, so that critical rationalism cannot elucidate the conditions of universality and objectivity in each academic discipline. Thus, the idea that “criticism appears to retain the last word on the (meta-scientific) level of reflection of philosophy is clearly grounded in the fact that there is something like a philosophical language game in which the scope of all language games can from the outset be discussed with a claim to universal validity.”33 The philosophical language game cannot be equated with other individual language games in being empirically changeable and revisable; rather, it supports the possibility of critique itself, and conditions for the possibility of intersubjectively valid criticism. Consequently, according to Apel, the philosophical language game discloses “the transcendental-pragmatic dimension of the uncriticizable conditions of the possibility of intersubjectively valid philosophical criticism and self-criticism,” and it is this dimension that enables the philosophical fundamental-grounding through a totally new procedure. Then, how can the conditions for intersubjective criticism and validity be determined? Regarding an “institution or language game which can only be exposed by transcendental pragmatic reflection upon the conditions of the possibility of criticism itself,” Apel calls more specifically this institution “the transcendental language game,”34 and concludes that “the ‘life-element’ of philosophical arguments is a transcendental language game in which, along with some rules of logic and the existence of a real world, something like the transcendental-pragmatic rules or norms of ideal communication is presupposed.”35 I think Apel’s motif and logic are reasonable and legitimate methods for pointing out the inadequacy of critical rationalism; in fact, there is no doubt that he is successful in indicating the possibility of a universal language game. However, it is obvious that his argument is limited only to conditions for opening the way to a constructive discussion. Although he attempts to underpin all efforts towards a settlement of the critical situation in an ethical crisis by saying that the individual exists “as a successfully socialized ‘homo sapiens’ with ‘communicative competence,’ necessarily constituted as a being who has identified himself with the ideal communication-community” and “who has implicitly accepted the transcendental-pragmatic rules of communication also as ethically relevant norms,”36 the concept of “the ideal communication-community” itself can be seen as being constitutively produced through a local language game, because each individual may have accepted

32 Jürgen Habermas, “The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment: Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno,” in Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987), 127. 33 Apel, “The Problem,” 259. 34 Apel, “The Problem,” 262. 35 Apel, “The Problem,” 267. 36 Apel, “The Problem,” 267.

109 different ethical norms through different language games. The problem is that Apel seems to presuppose the ideal situation, and he actually does not present any basis for justifying the ideal communication-community. Indeed, the ethical problem does not lie in the transcendental-pragmatic rules of communication, but in actual belief conflict present in the practical situation, such as religious antagonism or political contention. In this regard, Apel’s claim cannot escape the criticism of being an arbitrary optimistic assumption.37 In short, the philosophical language game discloses the potentiality of common structures and universal rules among different language games, but the limitation of Apel’s idea resides in the presupposition of the ideal communication-community. Also, he thinks that, if the conditions for intersubjective criticism are illuminated, ethical aporia also will be elucidated in a comprehensive way; however, a form of the ideal communication-community may in fact be distinct in each culture and society. It is critical for the universal language game, in terms of the philosophical language game and the phenomenological language game, to provide a framework for examining the case of intersubjective disagreement. In addition, it should be noted that common understanding is not easily achieved by the ideal communication-community, but rather, can only be gradually created, led by will towards goodness. My suggestion is that we have to rethink the possibility of universality from the foundation; that is to say, what primordially determines the phenomenological language game itself? Why do we inquire into essence? The aim and purpose of the phenomenological language game should be clearer in the first place. On this point, I will say that eidetic seeing, as the phenomenological language game, depends upon the original contract of goodness. It is this contract that enables to create the possibility of common understanding about the order of good and evil in society, and only the original contract of goodness can make the basis for phenomenological language game.

5. The Original Contract of Goodness The participants in the phenomenological language game are seen implicitly to agree with the original contract of goodness. The original contract of goodness means the initial consensus for conducting eidetic seeing; in particular, the consensus that the aim of eidetic seeing lies in creating a good life and society. That is to say, the original contract explains the reason why we attempt to extract essence, and the attitude required for the phenomenological language game. In the first place, what does essence fundamentally mean? As mentioned before, essence in phenomenology does not indicate the absolute truth or thing-in-itself existing substantially and

37 Although I cannot discuss this in detail in this study, the dogmatic tendency in Apel recognized as naïve assumptions some rules of logic, the existence of a real world, the transcendental-pragmatic rules, or norms of ideal communication; this derives from his misunderstanding and disparagement of the method of phenomenological epoché. Confer Apel, “The Problem,” 266.

110 independently with autonomy. Rather, essence is generated through intersubjective confirmation; that is, essence can be defined as a consensus among participants. Also, it is important to note that essence appears in correlation to desire and concern; but individual desire, communicative desire, and universal desire are partly homologous, so that the phenomenological language game becomes available. If there is no agreement at all in the level of desire, the foundations of the phenomenological language game will collapse, only to result in dispersion. I claim that there should be reasons why the world is articulated in a such-and-such a way; that is, the articulation of the world cannot exist without any basis. What does “this” order and structure of the world mean for us? Wittgenstein’s idea of family resemblance is valid in the sense that every culture has slightly different (similar) affinity. For example, the sense of values will be diverse and different from person to person, and culture to culture. But simultaneously, there is no doubt that every culture shares the distinctions of truth-falsity, goodness-evil, beauty-ugliness, and sacredness-secularity. The morphological universality in the phenomenological language game does not signify the universality of denotation and connotation, but the universality of the structure and order of the world. Why do we need this order and structure of the world? For what reasons have we created such an order? We can think of an essential moment that segmentalizes desire and its correlative (the world) in genetic phenomenology. At this level, phenomenology works in order to confirm the commonality and co-identity of desire and the world. However, at the higher level, a new question will appear: If there is the possibility of a new world order, what kind of order would we demand? I know this is a very difficult question on which to obtain intersubjective consensus, but I would like to point out that the phenomenological language game has the potentiality to weave the form of desire into the intersubjectivity, confirmed by means of cross-interaction through mutual critique and mutual exchange of words. Put otherwise, I believe that it is possible to change and modify the articulation of desire if we are convinced by reasonable logic and universal necessity of it, namely, if we see through the necessity of the original contract of goodness; aimless eidetic seeing is commensurate with nothingness. The phenomenological language game is always based on the original contract of goodness, as demonstrated in the following points:

1. Inquiry of Essence Instead of Amassed Collection of Facts The phenomenological language game is the inquiry into essence, and cannot be regarded as an amassed collection of facts. Thinking and philosophizing to make a good society and life is critical to eidetic seeing. In seeking common structures of desire and concern, and at the same time recognizing mutual difference, participants must always trust in human reason and rationality.38

38 According to Michel Foucault, it is not possible to separate knowledge from power, because

111 Without certitude regarding rational efforts, it is not possible to reach intersubjective confirmation, especially in the realm of practical reason. Again, it should be noted that essence in phenomenology is not related to traditional substantial concepts, such as ideas in Plato, but rather, the phenomenological language game should be seen as a process in which phenomenologists have gradually produced intersubjective belief, and a world image that is valid and legitimate for everyone who interacts with others. That is to say, phenomenology seeks the most convincing explanation and description of what type of society and life can be regarded as “good,” among multiple ideas presented by plural players from different backgrounds.

2. Language Instead of Power The phenomenological language game is aimed to provide intersubjective confirmation and mutual recognition, by means of language, not power antagonism. It requires equal partnership and freedom of speech and thought, instead of the game of interests and patriarchy. Violence cannot be the basis for final decision-making, so it is critical for eidetic seeing to create rules and covenants for human and social relationships through mutual critique and mutual exchange of words. Consequently, in the phenomenological language game, anyone can say anything, but it should be presented in simple terms that anybody can understand. Language countermoves against the power game to create intersubjectively-valid images of a good society and life.

3. Will to Goodness The will to goodness is a necessary foundation for the phenomenological language game, especially when seeking the essence of ethical and practical events. In philosophy, a role of the will is often described as the opposite factor against desire and emotion; which is to say, the rational will must cognition is already mediated by the power relation in advance, and “it is not the activity of the subject of knowledge that produces a corpus of knowledge, useful or resistant to power, but power-knowledge, the processes and struggles that traverse it and of which it is made up, that determines the forms and possible domains of knowledge.” Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1976), 28. However, the question still remains of how it is possible for Foucault to legitimate its social critiques without rationality, or why he can say his claim is right and that other claims are socially constructed in an unconscious power network. On this point, Habermas maintains that “on the one hand, Foucault has to retain for his concept of power―which ironically conceals itself in discourse as the will to truth and at the same time makes itself felt therein―the transcendental meaning of a condition of the possibility of truth. On the other hand, he not only brings to bear against the Idealism of the Kantian concept a temporalizing of the a priori—so that new discourse formations, which push out the old, can emerge like events—but also strips this transcendental power of the connotations that Heidegger prudently leaves to an auratic history of Being.” Jürgen Habermas, “The Critique of Reason as an Unmasking of the Human Sciences: Michel Foucault,” trans. Frederick Lawrence, in Jürgen Habermas, Critique and Power: Recasting the Foucault / Habermas Debate, ed. Michael Kelly (Cambridge / Massachusetts / London: The MIT Press, 1994), 64.

112 control natural desire and emotion in order to secure morality and normative consciousness. In fact, as mentioned above, the phenomenological language game always comes into effect with trust in rationality, but rationality or the will to goodness in phenomenology should be distinguished from a force to counteract desire. Rather, the will to goodness can be regarded as a variant of desire, and participants will seek the basis of universal goodness through desire. Only commonality in the level of desire can assure phenomenological essentialism.

The original contract of goodness fundamentally serves as the backbone of game-ness and the system of phenomenology, and it will be called the “teleology of reason” in the Husserlian sense.39 Of course, it is not true that everyone should participate in the phenomenological language game in order to reflect on a good society and life. In addition, some people may say that principles in the real society are compromised by interests and patriarchy, so that the idea of the original contract of goodness seems mere romanticism, an empty ideal, despite its superficial logic. Here it is crucial that the original contract of goodness is given only to those who demand to obtain intersubjective universal cognition with the conciliation of belief conflict, and who want to participate in the universal language game. However, at the same time, inside the phenomenological language game, participants should consider and imagine those who exist outside the game,40 because phenomenological universality does not result in a local universality validated only among phenomenologists, but is open to every individual, society, and culture. The idea of phenomenology in the contemporary age will be redefined as “science of intersubjective confirmation” and “science of mutual recognition,” based on the “original contract of goodness.” Consequently, the phenomenological method should be attentively understood as being the method used to elucidate the conditions for common cognition, rather than an all-purpose method that discloses every aspect of the world. That is, it extracts the reasons why objectivity can be universally achieved in the realm of mathematics, logic, and the natural sciences, whereas in the humanities, such as sociology, history, psychology, anthropology, and esthetics, it is difficult to create universal knowledge. If there is the possibility of producing universality in such fields, what conditions are required? In this way, the phenomenological language game always opens itself to continual criticism. This is the real significance of phenomenology. I already pointed out the phenomenological language game often results in intersubjective disagreement, and the only possible attitude in this case will be the mutual recognition of difference.

39 See chapter 6 of this study. 40 Here, I cannot review this in detail, but it is critical that the problem of the subaltern is included in considering and imagining those who exist outside the game. On this point, see chapter 9 of this study.

113 We must understand that there are certainly some realms in which we can never reach intersubjective confirmation, and we can only hope to mutually accept one other. It should be noted that mutual recognition of difference is hardly enabled before efforts are made towards creating intersubjective confirmation, for mutual recognition and mutual neglect are two sides of the same coin. The will to goodness is conducive to the attitude of mutual recognition, which should be mediated by the effort to attain common understanding. Without the will and effort to attain goodness, there is indeed merely a difference of degree between recognition and neglect. To sum up, whether or not the phenomenological language game has a functional role in philosophy depends on the reconfigurability of the original contract of goodness. The original contract of goodness is the primordial implicit consensus among participants in the phenomenological language game, which requires participants to seek essences instead of matters of fact, to use language without power-games, and to obtain the basis of the will to goodness within the level of desire. Although each individual operation of eidetic seeing is determined by a particular aim, every act of eidetic seeing should ultimately be oriented to goodness. That is the contract of phenomenology—as a science of intersubjective confirmation and a science of mutual recognition—and it supports the will and effort in phenomenology as a transcendental enterprise, consistently approaching universality ad infinitum.

Conclusion The end of phenomenology will come when the phenomenological language game loses the original contract of goodness, and people no longer hope to inquire into the possibility of a better society and life. Wittgenstein’s innovative idea, the language game, opens new horizons for phenomenology. That is, phenomenology should no longer be interpreted and criticized as dogmatism, solipsism, and metaphysics, because the idea of the language game clarifies the dimension of intersubjectivity, and the method of eidetic science is transformed into a phenomenological language game that aims for intersubjective confirmation with the sense of mutual recognition of difference. Apel presents the philosophical language game as an argument against critical rationalism. His point is that criticism in critical rationalism itself must have presupposed the basis that assures the possibility of critique itself, conditions of the possibility of intersubjectively valid criticism in the transcendental performative dimension. The argument of Apel is powerfully convincing in that it discloses the fragility of continual criticism, but it is limited to the conditions of intersubjective criticism; and regarding morals and ethics, his claim is very naive and weak in terms of presupposing the existence of the ideal communication-community. In my view, the question is whether or not we ask the goodness. If you ask, you will receive. In contrast to Apel, the phenomenological language game consolidates the reasons and conditions for starting the game in the first place. I call the implicit consensus in phenomenology the

114 “original contract of goodness,” which conveys the meaning of seeking essence, and the motivation for intersubjective consensus. Moreover, it can be argued that limitless discussion alone cannot achieve anything; however, it is important for phenomenology to operate along two vectors: a vector to commonality, and a vector to difference. More importantly, it must profoundly accept the necessity and inevitability of the genesis of difference. In the phenomenological language game, phenomenologists make efforts to create intersubjectively legitimate world-images by means of mutual critique and the mutual exchange of words. The basis of goodness does not exist beyond the world, nor does it wait to be found somewhere within it: rather, only people themselves can create and confirm its existence within the level of desire, through the universal language game.

115 Chapter 8 The Confrontation between Essentialism and Constructionism Introduction Essentialism and constructionism are two poles in philosophy, and they are antagonistic in terms of an epistemic sense. Even a philosophy that is not generally categorized into these two schemas can be involved in the similar epistemic confrontation because somehow every philosophy shares cognitive antinomy such as a situation between dogmatism and relativism, realism and nominalism, or logicism and psychologism. The former “ism” believes that there is the universal beyond differences while the latter denies the idea of universality or truth itself. The question of whether it is possible for the subject to grasp something objective and universal is the core motif in every epistemological dilemma. What sort of philosophy as a discipline oriented to universality should be involved in that epistemological dilemma? Is there objectivity or universality in the world? If so, how can the subject reach it? This is the basic form of the epistemological challenge. In particular, the confrontation between essentialism and constructionism goes beyond philosophical arguments over principles and influences belief conflicts in the practical realm of social theories. For instance, Edward Said claims in his famous work, Orientalism, “The orient that appears in Orientalism, then, is a system of representations framed by a whole set of forces that brought the Orient into Western learning, Western consciousness, and later, Western empire.”1 Therefore, his contention is that “Orientalism is fundamentally a political doctrine willed over the Orient because the Orient was weaker than the West, which elided the Orient’s difference with its weakness.”2 According to Said, it can be concluded that the essentialist thinking that Western thought has historically employed is the origin of the evil of discrimination, because it oppressively and one-sidedly labels someone as having unchangeable characters. It is critical for Said to uncover how Western society has constructed cultural categories without any evidence; essentialism tends to transforming into dogmatism. The ideological conflict between essentialism and constructionism has deeply synchronized with the voiceless of oppressed and downtrodden people in history.3 The oppressive relationship between the strong and the weak based on the power of a ruler over the ruled can emerge variably in the context of philosophy as an asymmetrical power of rationality over irrationality, consciousness over unconsciousness, or actuality over latency. In this regard, essentialism seems to rest on a dogmatic and violent way of thinking. Constructionism, on the other hand, seems to have the potential to

1 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1979), 202 f. 2 Said, Orientalism, 204. 3 In cultural studies and gender studies, it is not difficult to find a similar situation. See Mary Gergen, ‘Social Constructionist Theory,’ in Encyclopedia of Women and Gender: Sex similarities and differences and the impact of society on gender, vol. 2, ed. Judith Worrel et al. (San Diego: Academic Press, 2001), 1043 ff.

116 rescue the voiceless of social minorities. By saying that every custom and knowledge has been socially constructed through the historical language game with no evidence, certainly every prejudice and discrimination would lose its justification. However, the situation is not simple, because constructionism also leads to relativize concepts such as “freedom,” “equality,” or “justice” and social systems such as “law,” “education,” or “human rights” by regarding them as something socially constructed through the interaction of a community. If there is no reasons to justify freedom of speech, for example, how is it possible for those subject to violation of human rights to insist on freedom of life? This aporia is not just related to a matter of ideological standpoints but a matter of epistemology. Namely, traditional essentialist thinking has substantiated the relationship between the center and the periphery, and it has always been dangerous to oppress social minorities latently and violently. On the other hand, it is not possible for constructionism to establish a universal basis for ethics and morals because it claims that all things and concepts are socially and culturally constructed, including values and meanings. The aim of this chapter lies in reconsidering the confrontation between essentialism and constructionism in terms of epistemological validity. I claim that phenomenological thinking as a principle of philosophy conciliates the dichotomy of essentialism and constructionism. This does not mean that phenomenology works as a compromise plan. It is rather a new form of essentialism that is completely different from traditional essentialism. In other words, phenomenological essentialism does not abandon the possibility of universal “intersubjective confirmation” but simultaneously denies the principle of violence that suppresses the voiceless of social minorities by orienting to the “mutual recognition” of difference.4 First, to clarify the basic schema of traditional essentialism, this chapter focuses on Plato and Leibniz. It can be argued that the concept of “essence” in their two philosophies is closely connected with the concept of “substance” so that it retains invariable, absolute characteristics that may prescribe the specific role and identity of a person in the society. Following this, the contrasting principles of constructionism are elucidated by reexamining Hume and Nietzsche. They present a radical antithesis to epistemological essentialism. Finally, this chapter shows that contemporary thought in social constructionism and sociology of knowledge cannot avoid relativist consequences, even though it should be differentiated from simple and naive skepticism. If the human rights of social and cultural minorities are to be guaranteed, a universal basis for ethics and values is required. This means that a philosophy should be sought on an epistemological foundation in which common understandings are created and a sense of mutual recognition is validated. I claim that phenomenological essentialism as a “science of intersubjective confirmation” and a “science of mutual recognition” will entirely conciliate the radical epistemological aporia in the history of

4 See chapter 4 of this study.

117 philosophy and create the possibility of common understandings in the realm of meanings and values. 1. Essentialism in Tradition: Plato and Leibniz Traditionally, essentialism is the idea that objects have essences which determine what it is compared with non-essential or accidental predications. In the history of philosophy, the beginning of essentialism can be found in Plato’s idealism. Then, when it comes to modern age, it is Leibniz who inherits the traditional essentialist thought from Plato although he transforms it into his unique Monadology. In what follows, I review essentialism of these two philosophers in order to clarify the basic ideas of essentialism. To begin, Plato presents essentialism as “theory of ideas,” and describes what “idea” is by using parables, the most famous of which is the “parable of the cave.”5 In this parable, prisoners are held in a cave, and the only thing they can see is the wall at the bottom of the cave. There is a fire at the cave entrance and a raised area, on which various statues and figures of animals and human beings made of wood and stone move between the fire and the prisoners. Prisoners can see only the shadows of the statues and figures on the cave wall. According to Plato, we are like the prisoners because “the prison house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world.”6 Plato sets pure intellection and thinking against senses in order to reach “idea” itself.7 What is notable is that “essence,” “idea,” and “form” are all inevitably united with the concept of “substance” (Ousia) in Plato’s philosophy. Therefore, essence means not only what a thing is but also what it should be, based on the true form of existence and the real being itself. In any circumstances, essence maintains self-identity, and it should be distinguished from variable individual objects.8 According to Plato, “You know of no way in which anything comes into existence except by participation in its own proper essence.”9 Moreover, as he states, “Of just and unjust, good and evil,

5 Plato, Republic, in Plato, Plato: Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Republic, trans. Benjamin Jowett, ed. Louise R. Loomis (Princeton / New Jersey / Toronto / New York / London: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1942), 398 ff. 6 Plato, Republic, 401. 7 Writing about absolute beauty and absolute good, Plato also claims in Phaedo, “Did you ever reach them with any other bodily sense? ― and I speak not of these alone, but of absolute greatness, and health, and strength, and of the essence or true nature of everything. Has the reality of them ever been perceived by you through the bodily organs? Or rather, is not the nearest approach to the knowledge of their several natures made by him who so orders his intellectual vision as to have the most exact conception of the essence of each thing which he considers?” Plato, Phaedo, in Plato, Plato: Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Republic, trans. Benjamin Jowett, ed. Louise R. Loomis (Princeton / New Jersey / Toronto / New York /London: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1942), 95. 8 Plato, Phaedo, 112. 9 Plato, Phaedo, 138.

118 and of every other class, the same remark holds: taken singly, each of them is one; but from the various combinations of them with actions and things and with one another, they are seen in all sorts of lights and appear many.”10 In short, Plato contends that essence is grasped by the intellectual process as what is in common among individuals. Here, notably, all ideas should be oriented to the “idea of good” as the supreme court. Through the act of recollection, thinking can reach the world of ideas existing beyond the actual world of the senses, and thinking will meet the idea of good that is regarded as the ultimate cause of the world. That is to say, “in the world of knowledge, the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right.”11 If the idea of good, the idea of all ideas, is to be considered “the universal author of all things,” “the good has a place of honor yet higher”12 than “substance” in fact. Therefore, it should be said that everything in the world and beyond the world depends on the idea of good, and, in Plato’s theory, the aim of philosophy lies in grasping it. Thus, what is to be noted is that “essence” refers not only to theoretical “meaning” but also to “value” such as truth, beauty, and goodness in the tradition of the Western philosophy. This is one reason why essentialism is not easily collapsed by constructionist theories, as essentialism is supported by a strong motivation toward understanding the meaning of life based on goodness and happiness. That is to say, essentialist views have natural persuasive reasons that comes from their intuitive moral appeal. In short, for Plato, “ideas” exist as “substance” beyond the world, the becoming, and the protean phenomenal world. Thereafter, it follows that the concept of “essence” can be defined as a substantial and permanent entity predicated outside the life-world in the Husserlian sense, and all ideas should be fundamentally oriented to the idea of good. Before turning to the essentialism of Leibniz, it is important to outline the fundamental presuppositions of his worldview, in particular, the “existence of God” and the “theory of pre-established harmony.” According to Leibniz, “God is an absolutely perfect being” both metaphysically and morally.13 The world is created by God, and God has always maintained supreme perfection of the world in order to realize the idea of goodness. Therefore, Leibniz believes that “in whatever manner God might have created the world, it would always have been regular and in a certain order.”14 Leibniz insists that each individual can have a close encounter with God by means of spirit. However, he also points out that each individual remains in imperfection before the

10 Plato, Republic, 363. 11 Plato, Republic, 401 f. 12 Plato, Republic, 397. 13 Gottfried W. Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics, in Gottfried W. Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics, Correspondence with Arnauld, and Monadology, trans. George R. Montgomery (Chicago / London: Open Court Publishing Company, 1931), 3. 14 Leibniz, Discourse, 11.

119 presence of God, because it is not possible that a form of thought of an individual, i.e., human understanding, can completely reach up toward his transcendent existence. Following Leibniz, the concept of “essence” is called “individual substance” or “substantial form,” and in his later works it is also called the “Monad.”15 According to him, “essence” refers to what is given by God, that is, called “hæcceity” in the Scholastic term, through which possible being can be realized into actual being. This is “the nature of an individual substance or of a complete being, namely, to afford a conception so complete that the concept shall be sufficient for the understanding of it and for the deduction of all the predicates of which the substance is or may become the subject.”16 It can be argued that “individual substance” includes all characteristics and predicates of the subject in not only the present but also the past and future. For instance, when God investigates the individual substance of the mind of Alexander the Great, he will be able to know a priori whether the king destroys Darius and Porus or whether he dies a natural death or dies by poison.17 Namely, as Leibniz argues, “Everything which is to happen to anyone is already virtually included in his nature or concept, as all the properties are contained in the definition of a circle.”18 Thus, it is not surprising that Leibniz agrees with the theory of innate ideas, because God has already determined who you are and what the world is in aprioricity, and all these things have been given to the human spirit in advance. “The soul virtually knows those things, and needs only to be reminded (animadverted) to recognize the truths. Consequently, it possesses at least the ideas upon which those truths depend. We may say even that it already possesses those truths, if we consider them at the relations of the ideas.”19 The spirit created by God recollects the essences of objects and already knows what they potentially are. Although there are often obscure perceptions, eventually, an essence will be grasped by the spirit remembering it.20 In the same way as Plato, Leibniz connects the idea of essence with the concept of substance.

15 According to Leibniz, “The Monad, of which we will speak here, is nothing else than a simple substance, which goes to make up composites; by simple, we mean without part,” and “the existence of Monads can begin or end only all at once, that is to say, the Monad can begin only through creation and end only through annihilation” of God. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, The Monadology, in Gottfried W. Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics, Correspondence with Arnauld, and Monadology, trans. George R. Montgomery (Chicago / London: Open Court Publishing Company, 1931), 251. 16 Leibniz, Discourse, 13. 17 Leibniz, Discourse, 14. 18 Leibniz, Discourse, 20. 19 Leibniz, Discourse, 45. 20 Leibniz supports Plato’s recollection argument. Plato argues that “since the soul both is immortal and has been born many times, and has been both what is here and what is in Hades, and in fact all things, there is nothing it has not learned. And so it is no matter for wonder that it is possible for the soul to recollect both about virtue and about other things, given that it knew them previously. […] For seeking and learning turn out to be wholly recollection.” Plato, Meno, in Plato, Meno and Phaedo, trans. Alex Long, ed. David Sedley (Cambridge / New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 15.

120 Instead of “the idea of good,” “God” is the absolute and perfect being that assures the conditions and grounds of essence to secure the goodness of life and the world. Of course, the forms of traditional essentialism appeared multiple, but essence needs to be substituted because of defending the certainty of existence of “ideas” or “God,” which plays a significant role in the order of good and evil. However, it can be said that these types of essentialism are easily transformed into oppressive and pinning labels against social and cultural minorities in terms of the origin of the clan, gender, or religion as well as in the contemporary society, where various contradictions and discriminations lying under modern rationality and enlightenment have appeared. Therefore, it can be concluded that, on the one hand, essence would work for keeping a well-ordered system giving assurance of a possibility to goodness and happiness, but on the other hand, the character of substantive essence would fix the order of evil and disgrace. There is nothing for the idea of substantial essence but to be reconsidered when those grounds are directly based on transcendent beings beyond this world.

2. Philosophy of Constructionism: Hume and Nietzsche Constructionism is another tradition in the history of the Western philosophy. It has appeared as if to countervail essentialism, claiming that cognition itself has already been constructed. This section picks up Hume and Nietzsche to sketch the basic principle of constructionism, focusing on how the concept of “essence” is captured in constructionist thinking. Hume stands on the site of British empiricism against continental rationalism, and he believes that even an essence should be constructed based on empirical sense data. Nietzsche is more radical than Hume in that he refuses all heritages of modernity together with morality in Christianity by declaring “God is dead.” For Hume, sciences should basically be built on the foundation of “experience” and “observation.”21 Simply speaking, because all sciences must be based on the solid foundation of “experience” and “observation,” every thought, idea, value, and norm cannot be innate but must be constructed by experiential elements. Naturally, transcendent essence existing beyond experiences and observations should be denied, and Hume attempts to elucidate the structure of human cognition and the objectivity of epistemological objects. Hume points out that all human perception can be divided into two distinct elements: “impressions” and “ideas.” While “impressions,” such as “sensations,” “passions,” and “emotions” can be defined as “perceptions, which enter with most force and violence,” “ideas” refers to “the faint images of these in thinking and reasoning.”22 In other words, this is the difference between feeling and thinking. In addition, both can resolve themselves into “simple” and “complex,” and complex impressions and ideas are constituted of

21 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. David F. Norton and Mary J. Norton (Oxford / New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 4. 22 Hume, A Treatise, 7.

121 simple ones.23 The important thing is that “all our simple ideas in their first appearance are deriv’d from simple impressions, which are correspondent to them, and which they exactly represent.”24 The claim that all simple ideas correspond with simple impressions means that concepts and thoughts are all constituted from impressions. By the way, the complex ideas in philosophy can be divided into “relations,” “modes,” and “substances,” and the principle of connecting different simple ideas into complex ones is known as “association.” As Hume states, “The qualities, from which this association arises, and by which the mind is after this manner convey’d from one idea to another, are three, viz. RESEMBLANCE, CONTIGUITY in time or place, and CAUSE and EFFECT.”25 That is, when people form a relationship between two ideas, the two ideas must have already been experienced in the context of resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect in the past. Therefore, it is said that “the idea of a substance as well as that of a mode, is nothing but a collection of simple ideas, that are united by the imagination,” and “the particular qualities, which form a substance, are commonly referr’d to an unknown something, in which they are suppos’d to inhere.”26 The idea of a substance is a result of passive association and nothing other than a collection of simple ideas, that is, originally a collection of simple impressions through empirical recurrence. Hume’s argument seems stronger than substantial essentialism from the viewpoint of experiential verifiability. However, the question remains regarding how it is possible to create an order of values and ethics without a theory of ideas or the existence of God, because following Hume, every perception, including essences and values, is regarded as a bundle of impressions, and objectivity and constancy derive only from “custom” in daily life.27 In this regard, the ethics of Hume, i.e., the ethics of sympathy, requiring common sense among people which enables them directly to sympathize with feelings and thoughts of others, is built on fragile underpinnings and depends on a flimsy reason: “The minds of all men are similar in their feelings and operations; nor can any one be actuated by any affection, of which all others are not, in some degree, susceptible.”28 It can be argued that Hume’s philosophy is characterized as a mixture of radical empiricism and facile optimism; however, it is difficult to say that he appreciated the fundamental significance of essentialism in terms of how to assure the grounds of ethics.

23 Hume, A Treatise, 7. 24 Hume, A Treatise, 9. 25 Hume, A Treatise, 13. 26 Hume, A Treatise, 16. 27 “Now as we call every thing CUSTOM, which proceeds from a past repetition, without any new reasoning or conclusion, we may establish it as a certain truth, that all the belief, which follows upon any present impression, is deriv’d solely from that origin. When we are accustom’d to see two impressions conjoin’d together, the appearance of idea of the one immediately carries us to the idea of the other.” Hume, A Treatise, 72. 28 Hume, A Treatise, 368.

122 Next, Nietzsche pushed ahead with the constructionist project. His creativity and originality consist of his radical consideration of the epistemological aporia as a problem of values. Thus, he understood more seriously than Hume the riskiness of how constructionism could lead to value disorder. For Nietzsche, the problem to be solved is how to rebuild the European humanities, which philosophy and Christianity have spoiled in the diachronic history. The Western philosophy has always presupposed the concept of “essence itself,” “truth itself,” and “thing in itself”; however, they should be regarded as fictions that emaciated human instinct created for self-preservation. Without a joint illusion such as religion, communicative spirit, habits, customs, and normative consciousness, how is it possible to justify the affirmative attitude towards life such as rapture and intoxication even in the age of nihilism? The epistemology in Nietzsche, i.e., the chaos–power schema, should be understood in this context. Nietzsche asks: Is there a right to perceive “being itself” in the first place? According to Nietzsche, modern philosophy from Descartes to Kant places “cogito” as an erroneous starting point “as if there existed ‘facts of consciousness’ ―and no phenomenalism in introspection.”29 However, the idea of “facts of consciousness” or “consciousness itself” stands at the height of absurdity because consciousness always exists as relational consciousness in correlation to “will to power.” We have no right to perceive “being itself.” Nietzsche writes: “Knowledge works as a tool of power. Hence it is plain that it increases with every increase of power―The meaning of ‘knowledge’: here, as in the case of ‘good’ or ‘beautiful,’ the concept is to be regarded in a strict and narrow anthropocentric and biological sense,” namely, in other words, “the measure of the desire for knowledge depends upon the measure to which the will to power grows in a species: a species grasps a certain amount of reality in order to become master of it, in order to press it into service.”30 It is easy to recognize that Nietzsche inverts the order of subject–object schema in traditional epistemology,31 establishing instead a power–correlation schema, which means that there is no absolute truth in the world, and a perceptional object always appears as something valuable and meaningful for me or for my interpretation. Power is the fundamental principle, and an object is interpreted in correlation to it: “No, facts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations. We cannot establish any fact ‘in itself’.”32 In addition, Nietzsche claims that “the world is knowable; but it is interpretable otherwise, it has no meaning behind it, but countless

29 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and Reginald J. Hollingdale (New York: Random House, 1968), 263. 30 Nietzsche, The Will, 266 f. 31 For instance, as mentioned in chapter 2 of this study, it is clear that Descartes attempts to begin with evidence of “cogito” and deduce the world and the sciences from it based on the mathematical deductive method and conscience of God. 32 Nietzsche, The Will, 267.

123 meanings.―‘Perspectivism’.”33 As a result, it is unavoidable that “essence,” the “essential nature” is something perspective and already presupposes a multiplicity; in other words, even essence is just one possible answer to the question “what is that for me?”34 Consequently, the meaning of essence should be changed from what we think to be substantial and invariable to only a terminal phenomenon that has been constituted by my desire. As mentioned above, Nietzsche deeply recognized the result of constructionist thinking. The world image in which “being itself” is presupposed spoils the existence of human beings because the true world “is the great inspirer of doubt and devaluator in respect of the world we are.”35 However, simultaneously, the question has remained unanswered: How can we stand up to the world without truth? If this is not possible, nihilism will occur. Nietzsche responded to the question with the concept of positive nihilism and eternal recurrence; however, these views on overcoming nihilism may be questioned again because there is no path to others in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Stated another way, self-affirmation should be done by oneself without any common norms in Nietzsche, but no evidence has been provided to suggest that a person would be able to affirm oneself without recognition given by others. In summary, the philosophy of constructionism claims that cognition is constructed in a certain way, such as a bundle of impressions or power–correlation. Notably, we cannot reach and perceive substantial essence itself in the strict epistemological sense because essence is objectivized in relation to my desire and concern. The idea of constructionism is more persuasive than that of essentialism in terms of the possibility of experiential verification and a clear vision of cognitive structure. However, is there really no essence validated beyond cultural and social differences? Is there no way to create universal common understandings without oppression and discrimination? Strictly speaking, no one can say “no” in the absolute sense because there are no facts in the world as Hume and Nietzsche presented it.

3. Social Constructionism as Modified Relativism Essentialism may turn out to label social minorities by means of relating “essence” to “substance.” On the other hand, constructionism can avoid the risk of oppression and discrimination by claiming that “essence” is socially and culturally constructed. However, the point is that the validity of essence is deeply related to the realm of normative consciousness and social ethics; thus, essentialism and constructionism are inevitably confronted with epistemological and ethical aporia. Because radical constructionism maintains that everything has already been constructed, it cannot mention the universal grounds of social justice in order to save social minorities. In other words, the

33 Nietzsche, The Will, 267. 34 Nietzsche, The Will, 301. 35 Nietzsche, The Will, 314.

124 ideas of justice, human rights, freedom, or goodness cannot cross the border of cultural diversity in the logic of constructionism; as a result, ethical relativism appears. Social constructionism, i.e., the idea that mutual social interaction generates “meanings” and “values” within a community, also shares similar challenges and difficulties. According to Kenneth Gergen, the basic thesis of social constructionism is represented in the statement “what we take to be the truth about the world importantly depends on the social relationships of which we are a part.”36 Long-honored words such as “reality,” “objectivity,” “reason,” and “knowledge” are questioned, and the way in which these traditional concepts appeared from social relations is a crucial matter.37 As a matter of course, the subject–object schema for the problem of knowledge in modern philosophy is criticized in terms of four perspectives: the ways in which we describe and explain the world are not required by “what there is”; the ways in which we describe and explain the world are the outcomes of relationships; constructions gain their significance from their social utility; and values are created and sustained within forms of life, including science.38 That is, social constructionism claims that there is no absolute being itself in any sense and that all objects are reflected by social relationship, social utility, and form of life. On these points, I agree with social constructionism. Moreover, it is clear that social constructionism is not simple skepticism or naive relativism because it comprehends the analytic philosophy of Wittgenstein and Derrida and the theory of power of Foucault and Deleuze. Rather, Gergen is conscious of lacking grounds for social justice and equality in constructionist thought: “Standing before us is a vast spectrum of possibility, an endless invitation to innovation. This is not to say that we should abandon all that we take to be real and good because it is socially constructed. Not at all!! It is only because we socially construct that there are meaningful realities, and valued actions.”39 Thus, according to Gergen, oppressive tradition and history should be abandoned; however, tradition and history that act under the direction of social utility and individual freedom should be preserved. New words and interpretations are required to overcome various forms of discrimination and prejudice and to promote dialogue among different cultures. Such a fundamental motif of social constructionism is convincing and reasonable. Consequently and in line with this, it can be argued that social constructionism thinks of the possibility of a new form of morals and ethics although every perspective is socially constructed.40 However, it is also clear that social constructionism is no less relative in that it has no philosophical criteria of justification and validity to distinguish goodness from evil. What type of “construction” is

36 Kenneth J. Gergen, An Invitation to Social Construction (Los Angeles / London / New Delhi / Singapore / Washington DC /Boston: Sage, 2015), 3. 37 Gergen, An Invitation, 3. 38 Gergen, An Invitation, 8 ff. 39 Gergen, An Invitation, 6. 40 Gergen, An Invitation, 224 ff.

125 to be justified? How is an act regarded as good? The conditions and grounds of validity are diffused through social construction into cultural diversity. It is still involved in epistemological aporia, and social constructionism has no fundamental methodology to resolve this problem. In short, when the logic of the strong is accumulated in history and institutionalization and the conventionalization of it become commonplace, we must relativize it uncompromisingly from the point of the view of the weak. In addition, when the traditions of a community oppress individual freedom, we feel suffocated by the society. In this regard, social constructionism is a significant idea that liberates downtrodden people from power-based suppression. However, liberation cannot be justified in the context of social constructionism because the idea of liberation is also socially constructed. This is the inevitable result of social constructionism, which has abandoned the possibility of universal consensus. Moreover, the sociology of knowledge based on a constructionist guide falls into similar difficulties in the same way. For instance, according to Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, “specific agglomerations of ‘reality’ and ‘knowledge’ pertain to specific social context”; therefore, it is irrational to separate one from the other.41 Here, it is not difficult to see that the problem in principle is the very same epistemological aporia lying between essentialism and constructionism. They note that “humanness is socio-culturally variable”;42 however, what is the exact verification for that statement? Relativism will rebound on itself. I claim that we should reconsider the possibility of common understandings beyond cultural and religious differences, especially in the realm of meanings and values. In averting the violence of dogmatic essentialism, a way of thinking is required in which people with different values and sensibilities do not sacrifice to create intersubjective confirmation. Simultaneously, a cultivation of a sense of mutual recognition is also required.

4. Phenomenological Essentialism: Intersubjective Confirmation and Mutual Recognition In this study, I have already described the specific characteristics of phenomenological essentialism. In what follows, let me confirm the basic principles of phenomenology once again in order to clarify the possibility of phenomenological essentialism in comparison to traditional essentialism and social constructionism. Husserl established phenomenology as eidetic science at the outset. He astutely distinguished “eidetic sciences” from “sciences of matters of fact.” While the aim of phenomenological essentialism consists in evolvement of transcendental eidetic sciences, Husserl thinks that the transcendental problem (subject–object problem) should be resolved before developing ontologies,

41 Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Anchor Books Doubleday, 1966), 3. 42 Berger and Luckmann, The Social, 49.

126 as, without the fundamental elucidation of transcendental problem, it would not be possible to create universality and common understandings in the realm of ontology that should be established as “rigorous science.” Husserl claims that “‘essence’ designated what is to be found in the very own being of an individuum as the What of an individuum. Any such What can, however, be ‘put into an idea.’ Experiencing, or intuition of something individual can become transmuted into eidetic seeing (ideation)” (Hua III/1, 13). In this regard, phenomenological essentialism seems to be no more than traditional essentialism on the surface, i.e., it is focused on the difference of modality between fact and essence. However, phenomenological essentialism should be separated from the general form of essentialism in the manner of Plato and Leibniz. According to Husserl, phenomenology is often criticized as “platonizing realism,” which regards ideas or essences as substantial realities (i.e., “Platonic hypostatization”) but generates misunderstanding in truth (Hua III/1, 47 f.). On the one hand, “matter of fact” and “essence” are capable of making distinctions because “the two sorts of intuition are essentially different” (Hua III/1, 15). But, on the other hand, the two aspects are inseparable because “no intuition of essence is possible without the free possibility of turning one’s regard to a ‘corresponding’ individual and forming a consciousness of an example” (ibid.). Therefore, “all the semimystical thoughts clinging particularly to the concepts Eidos (idea) and essence will remain cleanly separated from them” (Hua III/1, 16). It should be noted that “essence” (idea) is closely connected with “matter of fact” (experience) in phenomenological essentialism. However, it is still possible to extract two different intuitions, i.e., “eidetic seeing” and “intuition of something individual,” and two distinct objectivities, i.e., “essence” and “matter of fact,” through the reflecting subjective process of consciousness. To grasp essences, phenomenology does not require any substantial and transcendent beings at all. Therefore, phenomenology attempts to inquire essential structures of consciousness and world without substantial entities and the existence of God at variance with Plato and Leibniz. The specific characteristics of phenomenological essentialism will be made clearer if the concept of “the phenomenological epoche” is considered. Husserl starts with a consideration of the form of life in the natural attitude. Mundanely, I know that “as what confronts me, I continually find the one spatiotemporal actuality to which I belong like all other human beings who are to be found in it and who are related to it as I am. I find the ‘actuality,’ the word already says it, as a factually existent actuality and also accept it as it presents itself to me as factually existing” (Hua III/1, 61). Husserl calls this “the general positing which characterizes the natural attitude.” However, in order to carry out critique of cognition, or to elucidate the subject-object problem, phenomenologists cannot stay in the natural attitude that presupposes subject–object schema naively and naturally. As we have seen in earlier sections of chapter, the confrontation between essentialism and constructionism radically exists as the problem of epistemology or the problem of cognition. Husserl’s solution is clear. He

127 claims that phenomenologists should shift their attitudes from the subject–object schema to the immanence– transcendence schema, i.e., methodologically supposing every object (transcendence) in the world is constituted in the transcendental subjectivity (immanence), drawing its “meaning” (the What) from the realm of immanence. In Ideas I, referring to Cartesian doubt “as a methodic expedient,” Husserl claims that “the attempt to doubt anything attended to as something on hand necessarily effects a certain annulment of positing,” that is, “while it in itself remains what it is, we, so to speak, ‘put it out of action,’ we ‘excluded it,’ we ‘parenthesize it’” (Hua III/1, 62 f.). This peculiar epoché is conducted as refraining from judgment that discloses the realm of transcendental subjectivity and makes the whole phenomenological region accessible to us (Hua III/1, 68). This set of processes is known as “phenomenological reduction,” which enables phenomenologists to shift to the phenomenological attitude and embark on the transcendental enterprise. Simply stated, this is a methodological suggestion to regard every object, concept, meaning, value, and being as “my” conviction constituted in the transcendental subjectivity with a claim that there is no absolute truth in the world. Instead, a constellation of world images including private belief, religious dogma or scientific knowledge should be described by differences in the level of intersubjective conviction, as Husserl explains: “Reality and world are names here precisely for certain valid unities of sense, unities of ‘sense’ related to certain concatenations of absolute, of pure consciousness which, by virtue of their essence, bestow sense and demonstrate sense-validity precisely thus and not otherwise” (Hua III/1, 120). A phenomenologist needs to have insight regarding how a certain belief is formed and what essential conditions and structures are critical to belief formation by means of eidetic seeing and reflection without any absolute truth or transcendent being. However, this does not mean that it is possible to acquire common essences in every field of study and ontological region. The most important consequence of phenomenological thinking lies in the fact that phenomenological essentialism can be defined as efforts to draw a line between common understandings and distinct differences. For instance, it is obvious that a Muslim has a different dogma than a Christian, and it would be impossible to phenomenologically respond to a question of which is a representative of “true” dogma. However, it is still possible to pay attention to the “mutual recognition” of differences because each belief is constituted with each undoubtedness. In addition, Islam and Christianity may have common understandings of the essence of “religion” because they share the essence of religion in that they both actually exist as religions. To take another example, “the sense of beauty” varies from person to person, but we can question why every culture and person has “the order of beauty.” On the one hand, in some regions the subject can come to intersubjective confirmation, but on the other hand, in other regions the subject can recognize only the differences in an eye-of-beholder rhetoric. In order to make a border between them, I have to start with the transcendental subjectivity,

128 which has evidence at least for me. It is not until I start from my reality, my undoubtedness, and my evidence, that the possibility of intersubjective confirmation and mutual recognition will open ad infinitum. Consequently, it can be concluded that phenomenology should not be regarded as dogmatic essentialism but as intersubjective essentialism based on mutual recognition orienting to create intersubjective confirmation. An essence in the phenomenological sense is not “captured” but “generated” from mutual affirmation and consensus. For Husserl, sciences of matters of fact, such as positive psychology and sociology based on the method of natural sciences, cannot deal with problems of meanings and values of human life and human nature. “Positivism, in a manner of speaking, decapitates philosophy” (Hua VI, 7) and “merely fact-minded sciences make merely fact-minded people (Bloße Tatsachenwissenschaften machen bloße Tatsachenmenschen)” (Hua VI, 4). Phenomenological essentialism overcomes the difficult point in traditional ways of essentialist thought and simultaneously accepts the idea of constructionism. In other words, phenomenology denies the form of substantial essence existing beyond experiences and claims that every object is constituted in transcendental subjectivity. In this regard, it can be argued that phenomenology is a more radical constructionism than those offered by Hume and Nietzsche because the ultimate ground of constitution of an object is nothing more than I. However, a phenomenologist is less easily satisfied with cultural relativism and nihilistic skepticism. In addition, it is absurd for phenomenology to substantiate “body,” “language,” “society,” “culture,” “time,” or “unconsciousness” to advocate socially and culturally constructing processes because the transcendental subjectivity (or transcendental intersubjectivity) is the only place where various meanings and values are becoming. Starting from radical relativity, phenomenology will make an effort to seek common structures and mutual understandings among different people and distinct cultures. It inquires into the common structure underlying the process of construction, such as similarity of the structure of body, emotion, rationality, or human desire. There is room for further research into the possibility of establishing the universality of “freedom,” “justice,” and “equality” in phenomenology, understood as the “science of intersubjective confirmation,” and the “science of mutual recognition.”

Conclusion The confrontation between essentialism and constructionism appears as epistemological and ethical aporia. In traditional essentialism, the concept of “essence” is closely connected with the concept of “substance,” such as “idea” in Plato and “substantial form” in Leibniz, so the order between good and evil in this world is guaranteed and protected from skeptical thinking. However, the confrontation has another aspect. Essentialism may label someone as having substantial

129 unchangeable characteristics, and it is criticized from constructionist theorists as leading to prejudice and discrimination. Against essentialism, constructionism claims that there is no valid essence because every object is constructed in subjective cognition. Hume attempted to explain the structure of knowledge by a combination of “expressions” and “ideas” based on a prominent position of “experience” and “observation.” In addition, Nietzsche described the world as power–correlational phenomena. On this view, there is no truth itself, the world itself, essence itself, or “thing in itself” in the Kantian sense but simply individual interpretation created by “will to power.” In addition, social constructionism and the sociology of knowledge take over the ideas of Hume and Nietzsche, maintaining that cognition and knowledge are socially and culturally constructed within a community, and no idea or principle can supersede the cultural differences. For constructionists, there is no universality in the world. Clearly, however, there are some difficulties in social constructionism and the sociology of knowledge. First, the idea of constructionism is inevitably relativized by constructionism itself because constructionism must be constructed by a certain ideology, position, or status if obeying the logic of construction. It relativizes itself. Second, because they cannot present any universal principle, it is not easy for constructionists to claim ethical validity and to defend the human rights of social minorities as problematized in cultural and gender studies. In short, social constructionism and the sociology of knowledge relativize their own ideas and make skeptical consequences and ethical challenges unavoidable. While I agree with the motif of social constructionism standing on the side of social and cultural minorities, I claim that phenomenological essentialism provides the idea to overcome the confrontation between essentialism and constructionism in terms of “intersubjective confirmation” and “mutual recognition.” The concept of “essence” in phenomenology is not defined as “substantial essence,” rather, it should be generated through free variation and intersubjective confirmation. Phenomenology agrees with the idea that everything is constructed somehow but disagrees that there are no universal ideas. We have always been producing and are producing various levels of world images, from mathematics, personal opinion, and social justice to religious dogma, universal principle, and individual belief. Although the border between myths and enlightenment, insanity and rationality, consciousness and unconsciousness, good and evil, oriental and Western, or man and woman will certainly not become final and binding, there should be an effort to rethink what kind of line is to be justified and in what kind of realm it is still possible to reach common understandings, at least to defend freedom, justice, and equality in the living society. Then, regarding the differences, we have only to create an attitude of “mutual recognition.”

130 Chapter 9 Essentialism and the Other: Two Vectors of Imagination Introduction There are two kinds of essentialism. One is dogmatic essentialism (general eidetic sciences), which regards essences as the substantial entities that exist objectively beyond this phenomenal world (such as the Platonic theory of forms). The other is intersubjective essentialism (transcendental eidetic sciences), which requires intersubjective reassessment and confirmation to validate the universality of essences (such as Husserlian phenomenological essentialism).1 This chapter mainly deals with the latter kind. In intersubjective essentialism, the question is whether what is identical to the object grasped by the self can also be validated by the other. If the other refuses the proposal, then the essence does not reach universality and merely stands on subjective or communal belief. Thus, the self needs to examine and refine the ways in which to express the essential structures and conditions in the process of insight. In other words, the self must critically imagine the different conditions and aspects in which the other exists as if I were there. In this regard, imagination is closely connected to the establishment of intersubjective essentialism. However, with the emergence of the other as transcendence in Levinas’ sense, essentialism must be modified, somehow, because the imaginative faculty directed toward the other no longer works adequately. Merely imagining the conditions of the other from the first-person perspective becomes inadequate for obtaining intersubjectively validated essences. This is because imagination of the self cannot reach the lived experiences of the other. Rather, it may be regarded as a form of arrogance that intellectuals blindly hold on to because the self unilaterally internalizes alterity in this case. Thus, it can be argued that the existence of the transcendent other creates a significant challenge for essentialism. It concerns whether the self can obtain the universal validity of the essence beyond socio-cultural differences and without the use of oppressive mechanisms. Is it possible for essentialism to accommodate plural opinions and conciliation of belief through conflict in itself? Or, is essentialism to be seen as already outdated as a part of the heritage of Western egocentrism? In this chapter, I make an attempt to defend the potentiality of essentialism in terms of two vectors of imagination. Taking not only imagination directed toward the other but also imagination directed toward the self into consideration, essentialism learns the sense of risk, i.e., the ability to self-critique, which provides tension to essentialism. However, this does not mean that essentialism should be applied to every field of study. It is important to determine the realm in which essentialist thought is required and the aim for which it is employed. In other words, essentialism is to be

1 Regarding the intersubjective aspect of phenomenological essentialism, see chapter 7 and 8 of this study.

131 employed in correlation to a specific aim. I cannot discuss the comprehensive clarification of the aim of essentialism in this chapter; however, I do claim that the dimension of essences is still called for—at least in order to support the voiceless or the subaltern in society. I first review the role of imagination in essentialism. Imagination can be defined as the ability to unify the multiple sensory data or individual ones into categories and examine the validity of the unified category obtained in the subjective consciousness. Second, the other as transcendence that appears in the dimension of infinity is described, with reference to Levinas’ Totality and Infinity. For Levinas, the other cannot be internalized into the self, and consequently, the schema of the Western deserves criticism. Third, the relationship between the subaltern and the strategic essentialism of Spivak is clarified. For Spivak, the use of “strategic” essentialism can still be justified to mobilize the subaltern even though “theoretical” essentialism, which may label the subaltern as fixedly being identified, should be abandoned. Finally, I attempt to lay out the potentiality of essentialism in a way that is different than Spivak's. Essentialism is equipped with the function of self-critique, which is to say that it bears the sense of risk, by means of bringing imagination toward the self into essentialism.

1. The Role of Imagination in Essentialism In general, essentialism is defined as “a metaphysical theory that objects have essences and that there is a distinction between essential and non-essential or accidental predications.” 2 That is, essentialism claims that an essence must exist for determining the identity of something, which is characterized as a necessary and universal property that is common among individuals in comparison with accidental properties. As I mentioned, dogmatic essentialism and intersubjective essentialism are discriminate in that the former presupposes the essence as a substantial entity, while the latter always requires assessment by the other to confirm the validity of the essence. Insofar as an essentialist theory attempts to avoid falling into a naive and dogmatic way of thinking, essentialism always requires the intersubjective dimension in which the self assesses the validity of essences through imagining the situations, feelings, and thoughts of the other. Alternatively, in the field of modal logic, an investigator must expand the field of consideration to other possible worlds to which only imagination is able to reach. Thus, it can be argued that imagination and essentialism cannot be separated because essences in the sense of intersubjective confirmation always exist in combination with imagining different aspects lived by the other. However, imagination has been subordinated to the power of intelligence in the history of modern philosophy. For instance, Descartes maintained that “bodies themselves are not properly perceived by the senses nor by the faculty of imagination, but by the intellect alone.”3 For Descartes,

2 Robert Audi et al., eds., The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 3rd edition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 324. 3 Descartes, Meditations, 85.

132 neither sense nor imagination could serve in the role of mediation between cognition and the world, i.e., subject and object, while intellect alone had the quality of explicating the nature of the world. The trust placed in human reason underpins the confidence in disciplinary knowledge from the beginning of modernity, with sensation and imagination thought to be dependent on intelligence. It was in the eighteenth century that two philosophers—Adam Smith and Kant—presented the unique dimensions of imagination, which had been unnoticed by modern philosophers for a long time4 even though these two philosophers focused on different aspects of it. Whereas Smith thematized the specific role of imagination in terms of empathy for the other,5 Kant schematized a priori cognitive structures such as sensation, understanding, and reason, with imagination determined as mediation that synthesized sensory data (given through sensation) into the category of understanding. To begin with, according to Smith, “As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation. […] By imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as it were into his body, and become in some measure the same person with him, and thence form some idea of his sensations, and even feel something which, though weaker in degree, is not altogether unlike them.”6 What is important here is the fact that imagination of the self is directed toward the other, and conceiving what we ourselves should feel in a similar situation is enabled by the symmetric stability of the relationship between the self and the other, such that the other is regarded as a variation of the self. Therefore, for Smith, “every faculty in one man is the measure by which he judges of the like faculty in another. I judge of your sight by my sight, of your ear by my ear, of your reason by my reason, of your resentment by my resentment, of your love by my love. I neither have, nor can have, any other way of judging about them.”7 Kant stipulates the role of imagination on epistemological concern. In the Critique of Pure Reason, he claims that “yet the figurative synthesis, if it pertains merely to the original synthetic

4 However, it can be said that the philosophy of Hume is an exceptional instance. According to Hume, “The idea of a substance as well as that of a mode, is nothing but a collection of simple ideas, that are united by the imagination,” and “the particular qualities, which form a substance, are commonly referr’d to an unknown something, in which they are suppos’d to inhere.” Hume, A Treatise, 16. Because the aim of this section lies in the clarification of the role of imagination in essentialism, I do not discuss the concept of imagination of Hume in detail. 5 In this study, I review only empathetic imagination in Smith in order to clarify the direction of imagination from the self to the other. However, Smith indeed discusses two types of imagination: one of sympathy and the other of intellectual endeavor. I learned this distinction from the article, Charles L. Griswold, “Imagination: Morals, Science, and Arts,” in The Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith, ed. Knud Haakonssen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 6 Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (New York: Prometheus Books, 2000), 3. 7 Smith, The Theory, 18.

133 unity of apperception, i.e., this transcendental unity, which is thought in the categories, must be called, as distinct from the merely intellectual combination, the transcendental synthesis of the imagination. Imagination is the faculty for representing an object even without its presence in intuition. Now, since all of our intuition is sensible, the imagination, on account of the subjective condition under which alone it can give a corresponding intuition to the concepts of understanding, belongs to sensibility; but insofar as its synthesis is still an exercise of spontaneity, which is determining and not, like sense, merely determinable, […] its synthesis of intuitions, in accordance with the categories, must be the transcendental synthesis of the imagination.”8 The transcendental synthesis of imagination must be an a priori structure embedded in human cognition as well as sensation, understanding, and reason so that it is called the “productive imagination” and distinguished from “the reproductive imagination, whose synthesis is subject solely to empirical laws, namely, those of association, and which, therefore, contributes nothing to the explanation of the possibility of cognition a priori and, on account of that, belongs not in transcendental philosophy but in psychology.”9 Through productive imagination, discrete sensory data is synthesized into a united meaning and classified on the basis of the categories of understanding that clarify what an entity is. It is Kant who attentively connects imagination to the category of understanding for the first time in the history of Western philosophy. After Smith and Kant, imagination has often played a functional role in the attainment of universal essences or the creation of an imagined unity. For instance, as discussed chapter 6 of this study, Husserl explicitly employs imaginative variation in the establishment of phenomenological essentialism. Compared with the scientific investigator, who seeks factual truths based on experience, for the investigator of the essence, only phantasy provides “the ability to run through freely and on all sides the endless manifolds of possibilities, here of possibilities of lived-process (to see universalities according to eidetic law, to attack problems like those of the constitution of real things in general)” (Hua V, 51 f.). The phenomenological method of grasping the essential structures and conditions of the object is called eidetic seeing, which is “based on the modification of an experienced or imagined objectivity, turning it into an arbitrary example, which, simultaneously, receives the character of a guiding ‘model,’ a point of departure for the production of an infinite multiplicity of variants. It is based, therefore, on a variation” (EU, 410 f.). Here, it is clear that Husserl attentively makes use of imagination (that is, imaginative variation) to clarify and attain what is identical to the object. Furthermore, Saul Kripke employs the power of imagination in order to review possible worlds and determine a rigid designator. A rigid designator (e.g., names or statements representing scientific discoveries) designates the same object in every possible world regardless of whether the object

8 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 256 f. 9 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 257.

134 exists in all possible worlds.10 That is, “when we think of a property as essential to an object we usually mean that it is true of that object in any case where it would have existed.”11 For instance, in the case of gold, its atomic number (79) can be regarded as its rigid designator, and “any world in which we imagine a substance which does not have these properties is a world in which we imagine a substance which is not gold, provided these properties form the basis of what the substance is.”12 Indeed, the question has remained unanswered as to whether or not Kripke’s essentialism blindly reposes trust in the achievements of the natural sciences having been validated. However, we can at least figure out that imagination plays a significant role in inquiring into common properties in every possible world. Moreover, as is well known, Benedict Anderson indicates that the nation is “an imagined political community–and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign” because “the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.”13 Here, it can be argued that imagination contributes to the integration and union of unknown others. In other words, imagination brings forth a category in which the self and the other are yoked together, and the stability between them engages in the construction of a totality. After all, according to Anderson, imagined community without any specific ground has caused people to kill each other or to willingly die over the past two centuries.14 In short, the main function of imagination in terms of essentialism can be defined as unifying multiple sensory data or individuals into categories and assessing the validity of the subjective category by imagining the different conditions and aspects of the other. It should be noted that the potentiality of essentialism depends on its capability of imagining common structures and conditions inter-subjectively validated among others. Furthermore, the discourse of essentialism is underpinned by an assumption, namely, that the other is a variant of the self. This does not mean, however, that essentialism claims that there is no difference between the self and the other but rather that the self can know the difference (or commonality through actualizing differences) between them through firing up the imagination. Of course, an essentialist has the right to determine what something is without the dimension of imagining the other; however, in this case, obtained essences would fall into unverifiable dogmatism, leading to possible other world views trusted by the other being ignored. Therefore, we come to the tentative conclusion that imagination is an act of integration that provides for categories and the essence, allowing the self and the other to hold a stable symmetric

10 Saul A. Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 48. 11 Kripke, Naming, 48. 12 Kripke, Naming, 125. 13 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Revised edition (London / New York: Verso, 1991), 5. 14 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 7.

135 relationship.

2. The Other as Transcendence While the relationship between the self and the other holds symmetric stability, it is still possible for the self to know the situation of the other by imagining it “as if I were there.” However, this one-sidedly constituting procedure of thinking is stigmatized as cogito-centrism, and consequently, the basis of essentialism, the symmetric stability between the self and the other, collapses via the emergence of the other as transcendence. In this section, I briefly review how Levinas criticizes the entirety of Western philosophy, which has always been a philosophy of the same. According to Levinas, war as the ultimate form of violence encompasses all beings within a totality, and no one can create distance from the totalization of war; “the visage of being that shows itself in war is fixed in the concept of totality, which dominates Western philosophy.”15 While totality does not permit the existence of outside-ness so that there is no room for echt transcendence, infinity as non-encompassable within a totality expresses transcendence in the discourse of metaphysics, and “what remains ever exterior to thought is thought in the idea of infinity.”16 Simply stated, the tradition of Western philosophy has always remained the philosophy of the same and has contributed to the formation of a totality and, consequently, has no means to counteract the outrage of violence. The dominance of ontology over metaphysics betrays the inability of Western philosophy, for the egocentricity of ontology spoils the ethical relationship with the other. For instance, Heidegger claims that “all ontology, no matter how rich and firmly compacted a system of categories it has at its disposal, remains blind and perverted from its ownmost aim, if it has not first adequately clarified the meaning of Being, and conceived this clarification as its fundamental task.”17 The question as to the meaning of being forms the central theme of Being and Time, preceding any tangible ontological question and explication as “in the question which we are to work out, what is asked about is Being—that which determines entities as entities, that on the basis of which entities are already understood, however we may discuss them in detail.”18 In other words, Being itself should be distinguished from any entities that “are” in the world. This is why Levinas maintains that Heideggerian ontology subordinates “the relationship with the Other to the relation with Being in general.”19Apparently, it becomes absurd or even abusive for Levinas that

15 Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 21. 16 Levinas, Totality, 25. 17 Heidegger, Being, 31. 18 Heidegger, Being, 25 f. 19 Levinas, Totality, 46. Alphonso Lingis, translator of Totality and Infinity, notes that he translates “autrui” (the personal Other, the you) by “Other,” and “autre” by “other.” See Levinas, Totality, 24. Further, I would like to thank Isabelle Lavelle-Katramiz for drawing my attention to the difference of these concepts.

136 “Dasein’s resoluteness towards itself is what first makes it possible to let the Others who are with it ‘be’ in their ownmost potentiality-for-Being, and co-disclose this potentiality in the solicitude which leaps forth and liberates.”20 In contrast to Heidegger, Levinas contends that a metaphysics in which “desire tends toward something else entirely, toward the absolutely other” 21 should precede ontology because “ontology, which reduces the other to the same, promotes freedom—the freedom that is the identification of the same, not allowing itself to be alienated by the other.”22 Ontology should be explicated in terms of the metaphysical relationship with the other as a matter of priority; in other words, the meaning of being should be interpreted in terms of an ethical perspective, while the converse does not hold true. Therefore, Levinas concludes that ontology as the first philosophy may be defined as “a philosophy of power,” and “a philosophy of injustice,”23 only to serve under the logic of totality. Furthermore, the Husserlian transcendental enterprise remains a sort of philosophy of the same in terms of Levinas’ metaphysical perspective. Husserl employs the well-known method known as the “phenomenological reduction” in order to disclose the realm of transcendental subjectivity. In the phenomenological (transcendental) attitude, all positing of being should be entirely suspended or parenthesized with the operation of “epoché,” with transcendental subjectivity being regarded as the only place where every being in the world, including entity, concept, and idea, is constituted. According to Husserl, “The epoché can also be said to be the radical and universal method by which I apprehend myself purely […] The world is for me absolutely nothing else but the world existing for and accepted by me in such a conscious cogito” (Hua I, 60). Naturally, in Husserlian phenomenology, the other is thought to be constituted in transcendental subjectivity; the transcendental ego constitutes the other in the mode of alter ego (Hua I, 130 f.). In this way, the other “is therefore conceivable only as an analogue of something included in my peculiar ownness” (Hua I, 144). Thus, it is not difficult to determine the symmetric relationship between the self and the other in Husserlian phenomenology; this is why Levinas says that “the metaphysical relation can not be properly speaking a representation, for the other would therein dissolve into the same: every representation is essentially interpretable as a transcendental constitution.”24 Levinas is clearly opposed to the discourse of the symmetrized philosophy of the same in Husserl, for “the metaphysical other is other with an alterity that is not formal, is not the simple reverse of identity, and is not formed out of resistance to the same, but is prior to every initiative, to all imperialism of the same.”25 For Levinas, the “Other” as the wholly other must be the “Stranger” over whom one

20 Heidegger, Being, 344. 21 Levinas, Totality, 33. 22 Levinas, Totality, 42. 23 Levinas, Totality, 46. 24 Levinas, Totality, 38. 25 Levinas, Totality, 38.

137 has no power.26 In the dimension of infinity, the relationship between the self and the other apparently becomes asymmetric and disproportional, for the other as unambiguously undeterminable is always going forth from the understanding of the self. Levinas claims that “the metaphysician and the other do not constitute a simple correlation, which would be reversible. The reversibility of a relation where the terms are indifferently read from left to right and from right to left would couple them the one to the other; they would complete one another in a system visible from the outside. […] the radical separation between the same and the other means precisely that it is impossible to place oneself outside of the correlation between the same and the other so as to record the correspondence or the non-correspondence of this going with this return.”27 The other as transcendence lays out the limitations of empathy and the understanding of the self toward alterity. Here, the self cannot objectively condescend to the situation of the other because the other is no longer a variant of the self; it is the endless movement always going beyond the intentional power of the self; the asymmetric relationship between them is “irreducible to the distance the synthetic activity of the understanding establishes between the diverse terms.”28 Thus, it should be said that the emergence of the other as transcendence comes to disclose a clear limit of essentialism in that imagination becomes unable to reach out to the other and the other seems to exist beyond the imagination and understanding of the self. In this case, the self is not sure how the other thinks, feels, and experiences the world.

3. The Subaltern and Strategic Essentialism There is no doubt that postmodern thought in Europe has presented the antithesis of the whole of modernity through reflection on the consequences of modernity, i.e., WWI and WWII and the outrage of Nazism and Stalinism. The fact that intellectuals in Europe could not find a way to countervail irrational violence presses for a fundamental paradigm change in the fields of philosophy and thought. For instance, Foucault presents strong opposition to the epistemological model of modern philosophy shared from Descartes to Husserl, i.e., “the model of knowledge and the primacy of the subject.” This is because knowledge is always already mediated by a certain power network, and the forms and possible domains of knowledge have been determined by complicated and floating power relations.29 Thus, for Foucault, there can be no isolated transcendental subject working as the evident starting point in modern philosophy. In the context of the critique of power and, in particular, the critique of political power, it can be said that Foucault stands on the side of

26 Levinas, Totality, 39. 27 Levinas, Totality, 35 f. 28 Levinas, Totality, 39. 29 Foucault, Discipline, 27 f.

138 social minorities and protects them from invisible oppression. This is to say that he turns his regard to the other in society (i.e., prisoners and sexual minorities) who have been ignored and exist outside of the political language game. In this regard, Spivak’s critique of Foucault and Gilles Deleuze is surprising because the existence of the subaltern uncovered by Spivak seems to be analogous to socio-cultural minorities on the surface. However, Spivak sees a sort of arrogance and blindness of European intellectuals in the narrative of Foucault and Deleuze. According to Spivak, the conversation between Foucault and Deleuze entitled “Intellectuals and Power”30 implies that “intellectuals must attempt to disclose and know the discourse of society’s Other. Yet the two systematically ignore the question of ideology and their own implication in intellectual and economic history.”31 That is to say they ignore the fact that they themselves are inevitably involved in ideological discourse and are indeed blind to the system of the international division of labor—standing on the side of exploiters and using the logic of Europeans. They believe that they can be a neutral medium for the Third World32 by stating that “the intellectuals represent themselves as transparent”33; however, this transparency itself indeed should be called into question.34 The subaltern can neither be objectified nor subjectified by a one-sidedly determining gaze. Apparently, the subaltern is thought to be the asymmetric other as transcendence so that “it is impossible for contemporary French intellectuals to imagine the kind of Power and Desire that would inhabit the unnamed subject of the Other.”35 The conditions of the subaltern always overflow from the imagination and understanding of the self. An attempt to define unambiguously the heterogeneous other is inevitably thwarted as “outside (through not completely so) the circuit of the

30 Michel Foucault, “Intellectuals and Power,” in Michel Foucault, Language Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon, ed. Donald F. Bouchard (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977). 31 Gayatri C. Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak?, in Gayatri C. Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea, ed. Rosalind C. Morris (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 238. 32 In “Intellectuals and Power,” Foucault maintains that “if the fight is directed against power, then all those on whom power is exercised to their detriment, all who find it intolerable, can begin the struggle on their own terrain and on the basis of their proper activity (passivity).” Foucault, “Intellectuals,” 216. However, this vision is so naive and simple for Spivak, as the situation of the subaltern cannot be unambiguously determined, and the question of whether or not the subaltern can speak remains unanswered. 33 Spivak, Can the Subaltern, 243. 34 Spivak sends a skeptical look toward the First World feminism such as Julia Kristeva’s About Chinese Women in an analogous way to the critique of Foucault and Deleuze. According to Spivak, “In order to learn enough about Third World women and to develop a different readership, the immense heterogeneity of the field must be appreciated, and the First World feminist must learn to stop feeling privileged as a woman.” Gayatri C. Spivak, In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (London / New York: Routledge, 1998), 187. 35 Spivak, Can the Subaltern, 248.

139 international division of labor, there are people whose consciousness we cannot grasp if we close off our benevolence by constructing a homogeneous Other referring only to our own place in the seat of the Same and the Self. Here are subsistence farmers, unorganized peasant labor, the tribals, and the communities of zero workers on the street or in the countryside.”36 In this sense, no one can be a representative or diaphanous mediate of the subaltern; rather the subaltern cannot speak at all.37 It is also worth noting that the heterogeneity of subalternity seems to be contradictory to the idea of essentialism, for essentialism determines what is identical among individuals. For instance, the statement “women should be like women” apparently presupposes a substantial essence shared by all women and, in terms of feminism, includes the very discriminative sense that ignores the plurality and multiplicity of personality. In this case, essentialism becomes a sort of dogmatism discriminating and oppressing the weaker “category” in society. While Spivak is aware of the precariousness of essentialism, she attentively and strategically employs the idea of essentialism in order to counteract the fixed social system that is based on substantial concepts such as gender, class, and race. This is called “strategic essentialism.” Indeed, I have a different vantage point on essentialism from Spivak; however, I agree with her that essentialism cannot be easily abandoned but simultaneously requires a sort of modification in order not to function as an oppressive mechanism. I expand on this point in detail later. In what follows, let me briefly review how and why Spivak employs the idea of essentialism. To begin with, it is important that Spivak regards essentialism not as philosophical theory but as a strategic device to emancipate or mobilize socio-cultural minorities. Spivak writes: “If one is considering strategy, one has to look at where the group—the person, the persons, or the movement—is situated when one makes claims for or against essentialism. A strategy suits a situation; a strategy is not a theory.”38 As Stephen Morton points out, “Spivak’s account of strategic essentialism is precisely an attempt to develop a more situated account of the agency of relatively disempowered social groups such as women, the colonized or the proletariat.”39 In other words, it can be argued that Spivak bestows essentialism in correlation to the specific aim, i.e., on a tentative basis, always preparing to discard it. While Spivak claims that “we have to choose again strategically, not universal discourse but essentialist discourse,”40 she clearly stands opposed to traditional

36 Spivak, Can the Subaltern, 259. 37 However, this does not mean that the subaltern cannot speak in practice, but that “even when the subaltern makes an effort to the death to speak, she is not able to be heard.” Gayatri C. Spivak, “Subaltern Talk: Interview with the Editors (1993-94),” in Gayatri C. Spivak, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ed. Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean (New York / London: Routledge, 1996), 292. 38 Gayatri C. Spivak, Outside in the Teaching Machine (New York / London: Routledge, 1993), 4. 39 Stephen Morton, Gayatri Spivak: Ethics, Subalternity and the Critique of Postcolonial Reason (Cambridge / Malden: Polity, 2007). 40 Gayatri C. Spivak, The Post-colonial Critique: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues, ed. Sarah

140 essentialism with the fixed distinction between the essential and the accidental. The question is under what conditions strategic essentialism is required. In other words, why do we need essentialism? Tetsuya Motohashi picks up on three situation types that are appropriate for strategic essentialism.41 1. Strategic essentialism can be used when “women” talk about their gender or when people from India talk about India. The point here is the power relationship of discourse. That is, when men talk about “women” or when the stronger or dominant group talks about “India,” the discourse of essentialism is easily fixed and serves already existing power relationships. 2. The aim of strategic essentialism is to defend adverse claims by the weak against discrimination based on human categories (gender differences, ethnic groups, sexual orientation, culture, class, race, religion, age, and ability, among other things). Through recognizing the essence (conditions) of “the weak,” the oppressed in society can uncover a clue because the essence of the weak enables the unification of people who are suffering under the same circumstances. 3. The unification of subordinate groups provides the potentiality of solidarity open to the other. The self-essentialization of strategic essentialism enables the continual creation of the self through the sharing of the essence with the other. As Motohashi observes, strategic essentialism plays a key role in preventing the isolation of the weak, for the essence necessarily reminds them of their connection with neighbors. Resisting the oppressive fixed social system, the new, modified essentialism is oriented to the establishment of a movement that is based on the unification of subordinate groups. Moreover, it is important to be aware that this is a temporal strategy. If essentialism begins to determine persons, groups, or communities in the irrational way, it should be deconstructed with thoroughness. Thus, the essentialism employed by Spivak provides a means for political movement of the social-cultural minorities to counteract traditional power mechanisms. In sum, Spivak does not think that the existence of the subaltern is incompatible with essentialism as a whole. To the extent that the use of essentialism is limited to being a strategy for the weak, it can efficiently become functional for the sake of counteracting the dominant political power of the majority. Therefore, for Spivak, the potentiality for essentialism arises from considering the specific conditions under which essentialism does not oppress given social categories such as gender, class, and race, such that discussion on essentialism is not decimated.

4. Transformation of Imagination and Essentialism: Toward “Imagine Thyself” Imagination directed toward the other that helps obtain intersubjectively validated essences meets

Harasym (New York / London: Routledge, 1990), 11. 41 Tetsuya Motohashi, Postcolonialism (Tokyo: Iwanami, 2005), 149 f.

141 with a setback by encountering the other as transcendence (i.e., the subalternity). The existence of the subaltern nullifies the self’s attempt to imagine other conditions, such that the self cannot judge whether unified categories given to subjectivity can be confirmed by the other. The subaltern exists outside of the “horizon” of the life-world. When the self is faced with the clear limitation of the imaginative faculty, the self itself is called into doubt because the other is no longer a variant of the self; the evidence of the self is called into question. Here, we can find another form of imagination: imagination directed toward the self. Namely, imagination issues forth from the self toward the other but rebounds on the self from the other. How might this be conducive to essentialism? How might essentialism be modified by this? Levinas maintains that “we think that existence for itself is not the ultimate meaning of knowing, but rather the putting back into question of the self, the turning back to what is prior to oneself, in the presence of the Other.”42 Alternatively, Spivak claims that “to confront them (the subaltern) is not to represent (vertreten) them but to learn to represent (darstellen) ourselves.”43 Both thinkers refer to the similar dimension that the logic of the self unavoidably encounters: “Imagine thyself.” To certify what the self is constitutes the basis of modern philosophy, which is to say that the evidence of the cogito has provided the unquestioned starting point for philosophy as rigorous science. However, the emergence of the transcendent other breaks with this foundation and creates another form of imagination, i.e., imagination toward the self, which provides the “sense of risk” to philosophy. That is, the self here can make a mistake or bruise the other’s feelings; thus, the essence works here in a dogmatic way or allows labeling someone as being substantially identified. Consequently, a certain tension arises in essentialism. As far as it seeks essential and universal structures, essentialism clings to overcoming relativity among persons, cultures, religions, and communities. However, essentialism always exposes itself to falling into oppressive dogmatism as far as it has a clear limitation with respect to imaginative capability. The thought based on the other as transcendence or the subaltern may involve refusing the idea of essentialism itself, which attempts to make a universal (intersubjective) basis for the establishment of society. Even though Spivak employs “strategic” essentialism to mobilize the subaltern, she apparently stands opposed to “theoretical” essentialism. I agree with Spivak in the sense that essentialism is employed in correlation to the specific aim. However, in contrast to Spivak, I think essentialism should be theoretically defended in pursuance of universal justification in some specific regions and explicated by anyone who would like to take part in the universal language game regardless of whether the person belongs to a high or low social class in the international division of labor.

42 Levinas, Totality, 88. 43 Spivak, Can the Subaltern, 259.

142 It can be argued that assessing what realms require and deserve essential thinking itself constitutes a valuable challenge. For instance, the question of whether only the weakest in society should make use of essentialism must be reconsidered. More attention should be paid to the fact that only those who live in the First World can change the international labor system; more precisely, if “we” do not make any effort to understand and imagine the situation of the subaltern, there is no way to change the system except grin and bear the countercharge the weak for the emergence of outrage (such as terrorism and violent incidents). The subaltern indeed has no means to counteract the international political system of power. Moreover, it is not possible to provide universal reasons why the weak in society are to be rescued in the logic of Spivak. That is, no evidence has been provided as to the reasons why the self must be responsible for the oppressed other in society. Therefore, it is apparent that strategic essentialism hardly comes into effect before the universal justification of concepts such as freedom, equality, social justice, and human rights, which should be shared among all human beings, are obtained in advance. In the case of “women” or “India,” the essence generated within the discourse of the strong reproduces the fixed discriminatory mechanism, which always operates in favor of the powerful. However, this does not mean that essentialism must be abandoned. As Said notes, “Universality means taking a risk in order to go beyond the easy certainties provided us by our background, language, nationality, which so often shield us from the reality of others. It also means looking for and trying to uphold a single standard for human behavior when it comes to such matters as foreign and social policy.”44 Not regarding universalism itself as the origin of evil, Said considers the potentiality of what sort of universalism would be justified. For Said, universality does not signify a straightforwardly naive or dogmatic idea; rather, it is avoidable by taking a risk that goes beyond certainties. In tracking what Said states, we can also examine what sort of essentialism would be justified, and I think, the other as transcendence will provide a clue to aid the answering of this question. That is, it is in the possibility of the subaltern that essentialism becomes aware of the risk in itself. The omnipotence of thought of the self should be regarded as a treacherous presupposition. With regard to this, the possibility of the subaltern should be upheld as a possibility such that we can always be ready to explain, correct, and recant the affirmative claim that seemed to be unquestionable at first. In addition, we can apologize for insisting on inaccuracy; as Spivak suggests, “the possibility of subalternity for me acts as a reminder.”45 In other words, the possibility of the subaltern assures the self of the awareness as regards misunderstandability, and as a consequence, the self recognizes the need for imagining itself, always shouldering the sense of risk. It is through a domineering egocentricity that the sense of risk is cauterized, resulting in essentialism falling into oppressive dogmatism based on the teeth of repression.

44 Edward W. Said, Representations of the Intellectuals: The 1993 Reith Lectures (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), xiv. 45 Spivak, “Subaltern Talk,” 293.

143 Importantly, on the one hand, the claim that “the other is a variant of the self” draws on dogmatism and egocentrism that irrationally discriminate and oppress the voiceless in society. However, on the other hand, this claim has supported the expansion of the sense of membership that assures the building of a society that is based on the respect of fundamental human rights. Quite simply, the awareness of the membership of humanity guarantees that anyone can possess human rights as far as they are human beings, and this awareness is cultivated by the proposition that “the other is also [a] human being as well as the self.” Modern society has actually set a project of the universal evolvement of freedom in motion on this presupposition. That is, instead of embracing the power of religion and the authority of the church, they decided to create rules and a foundation by “language” for building a new society in which anyone can be respected as a human being. With regard to this, the other should be regarded as a variant of the self, and the essence of freedom should be defended at least for the sake of basic civil liberties even though we need to recognize the risk of the logic of modernity. Essentialism will contribute to defend the universal normative ethics in society. As Said claims, “All human beings are entitled to expect decent standards of behavior concerning freedom and justice from worldly powers or nations, and that deliberate or inadvertent violations of these standards need to be testified and fought against courageously.”46 Therefore, essentialism cannot be easily superseded by the ethics that the dimension of infinity is conducive to. By encountering the transcendent other, imagination has been faced with its own envelope at least once, and essentialism seems to have collapsed in parallel. However, we should resume the essentialist perspective in the light of the subaltern in order to strive against relativism, in which the basis for ethics is lost. Two vectors of imagination: imagination directed toward the other and to the self, generate the possibility of modifying the schema of essentialism. Examining the beliefs given to the self and becoming aware of the risk of essentialism, the self, notwithstanding, makes an attempt to imagine the situation of the other. In that case, “Imagine thyself” can be a guidepost for essentialism. “Imagine thyself” is different than the maxim “Know thyself” in that it requires us to question anew the idea of self-knowledge, of which Foucault and Deleuze are devoid. As Spivak points out, “When you seem to have solved a problem, that victory, that solution, is a warning.”47 Thus, we do not forget that the subaltern always exists outside the horizon of understanding. However, at the same time, we do not abandon the potentiality of essentialism that provides the basis for universal civil liberties.

46 Said, Representations, 11 f. However, it should be noted that Said stands opposed to the position of the dogmatic essentialism. According to Said, “the construction of fictions like ‘East’ and ‘West,’ to say nothing of racialist essences like subject races, Orientals, Aryans, Negroes and the like, were what my books attempted to combat.” Said, Representations, xi f. 47 Spivak, “Subaltern Talk,” 293.

144 Conclusion Essentialism requires two vectors of imagination in order to avoid dogmatism. Indeed, the eidetic enterprise exists as the continual project ad infinitum, and we cannot fix what is identical to something in an absolute manner (insofar as all human beings are mortal). At every moment, future generations come into the world, and they create new possibilities. In this sense, the essence always entails the undeterminable horizon, which opens essentialism to continual intersubjective confirmation. What should be noted is that the undeterminability of the essence does not signify the impossibility of essentialism. Instead, we learn that essentialism can serve as the logic of the strongest according to circumstances. I would also like to add that the aim of essentialism is not only to create a common understanding beyond socio-cultural differences but also to understand the differences among people, cultures, societies, religions, and communities. This is because what it is stands out in comparison with what it is not. The game-ness of essentialism (that is, universal and essential debate in order to create the meaning and value of society) ought to be preserved. If human conditions such as mortality or the desire for freedom changes for any reason, essential structures and moments of the object will be inevitably transmuted. The important thing is not to certify that the essence factually exists in or beyond the world but to examine whether we really require a common understanding. If we do not need essences, we do not need essentialism either. In order to defend human rights as a universal condition for all human beings or to realize coexistence instead of zero-sum competition, we require essential thinking, which provides the intersubjective conditions for consensus and rules—the last bastion of the ethical. The direction of imagination toward the self provides the sense of risk in essentialism and the possibility of avoiding dogmatic and oppressive mechanisms that have been problematized by Levinas and Spivak. Modified essentialism excludes “absolute” essences as substantial entities; however, I would like to stress that the concept of the essence is to be defended in correlation to its aims.

145 Conclusion The Idea of Phenomenology in the Present Regardless of critiques and misunderstandings of phenomenology, this study proves that phenomenological essentialism provides a philosophical principle and method for reconsidering the meaning and value of human life and society from the bottom. Epistemology should be a First Philosophy that forms the basis for axiology, ontology, ethics, and metaphysics as long as each field of study is a science. If one philosophical investigation ends up being isolated from other investigations, and there is no way to find common ground for unifying all philosophical studies, then what is philosophy at all? This question is not valid simply for philosophy but also for many other disciplines facing the same situation. It is often said, however, that the present age is the age of globalism and that we should protect diversity and respect one another as equal human beings. Yes, it is not difficult to respect another culture as long as it does not interfere with one’s business. Some people may say that it is relativism that fits with the feelings in contemporary times and deserves a great deal of credit. Other people may think that skepticism is necessary in order to critically examine the veracity of given information from the mass media and the government: the world is brimming with information. Actually, I agree with these people. Relativism and skepticism are preferable to dogmatism and totalitarianism. Indeed, we have already experienced and known the consequence of totalitarianism. If you visit Auschwitz concentration camp in Oświęcim, Poland, you see vast amounts of old shoes, glasses, trunks with names, and human hair. The victims killed there believed that they could take a shower after a disastrous train journey, but they took a shower of gas in the end. Here you come in contact with a concrete form of violence and realize that work did not set them free. Nazism is a symbol of the greatest misery in human history and an emblem of the defeat of humanity. We know how dangerous dogmatism and totalitarianism are, and these “-isms” should be radically relativized. When Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno survived years after a great struggle, they stated, “It turned out, in fact, that we had set ourselves nothing less than the discovery of why mankind, instead of entering into a truly human condition, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism.” 1 The consequence of modernity is uncanny killing in their eyes. The problem lies in, however, not only violence itself but also the fact that violence is supported by rational thinking, namely, the Hitler regime attempted to establish a streamlined process for killing people. Killing should be efficient and effective, and they needed to reduce the cost of it. If we can regard Nazism or another form of totalitarianism such as Stalinism or the Empire of Japan as

1 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), xi.

146 exemplifying a loss of sanity, it is still possible to have an antidote to irrational violence, as if that were the consequence of insanity. However, what we in fact then confront is a situation in which reason itself contributed to violence. In other words, violence seems to be the consequence of reason. As Horkheimer and Adorno pointed out, “myth is already enlightenment; and enlightenment reverts to mythology.”2 Violence has always been inherent to reason, and the process of rationalization and enlightenment automatically prepared the ground for Nazism, as Nazism presented some reasons for why the Jewish people must be killed. This is a tragedy that was supported by enlightenment, according to Horkheimer and Adorno.3 Compared with Horkheimer and Adorno, Habermas overturns the project of modernity in that he attempts to build a new verification for social critique with the tool of communicative reason. Of course, even for Habermas, modernity can be seen as a continual history in which the realm of the life-world has been colonized by the power game of capitalism and politics. However, he still trusts in the recovery of the public sphere, which is going to be constituted by communicative discussion among citizens based on an ideal speech situation. According to Habermas, there is no ground or foundation for Adorno’s argument, because it seems that he rejects any theoretically grounded philosophy. If one would like to defend the validity of critique itself, it is necessary to justify at least one idea or one criterion based on which critique is made possible. Without any criterion that distinguishes validity from invalidity at all, every perspective should be relativized so that criticism itself will lose its authority and self-justification.4 Although Adorno secures some aspects of enlightenment such as “remembrance of nature in the subject”5 and “the real subject of thought,”6 it seems right to presume that his solution does not suffice for social critique because he in fact proposes no actual plan, and because all his arguments are involved in negative dialectics. In this respect, Habermas argues that “Horkheimer and Adorno adopt another option by stirring up, holding open, and no longer wanting to overcome theoretically the performative contradiction inherent in an ideology critique that outstrips itself. Any attempt to

2 Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic, 29. 3 According to Adorno, Husserl’s phenomenology constitutes a part of the history of enlightenment that has implicitly had the principle of violence. Adorno criticizes Husserl’s phenomenology by saying that “in order to enforce continuity and completeness, it [prima philosophia] must eliminate everything which does not fit from whatever it judges. The poverty of philosophical systematics which in the end reduces philosophical systems to a bogey, is not at first a sign of their decay, but is rather teleologically posited by the procedure itself, which in Plato already demanded without opposition that virtue must be demonstrable through reduction to its schema, like a geometrical figure.” Theodor W. Adorno, Against Epistemology: A Metacritique: Studies in Husserl and the Phenomenological Antinomies, trans. Willis Domingo (Cambridge / Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1983), 10. 4 Habermas, “The Entwinement,” 127. 5 Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic, 40. 6 Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic, 37.

147 develop a theory at this level of reflection would have to slide off into the groundlessness; they therefore eschew theory and practice determinate negation on an ad hoc basis, thus standing firm against that fusion of reason and power that plugs all crevices.”7 Furthermore, Habermas points out that, because Adorno legitimates the grounds of social critique within the aesthetic–expressive sphere of value (avant-garde art and art criticism), and validity for social critique and the order of good and evil become involved in the aesthetic–expressive sphere in this case, consequently the determinative authority of philosophy within the aesthetic–expressive sphere of value ends up as a valuation of power (Nietzsche) or a recursive aspiration of beauty (Adorno), and “like historicism, they surrendered themselves to an uninhibited skepticism regarding reason, instead of weighing the grounds that cast doubt on this skepticism itself.”8 Mere relativism cannot produce any criteria of social critique, following Habermas. By the way, if Nazism is a form of violence caused by dogmatism and totalitarianism, we have met recently another form of violence caused by relativism and skepticism, which is terrorism. For instance, when the Islamic State attacks a city by truck bomb, they assert their own logic to justify terrorist explosions. Can we criticize this on particular grounds? Is not the logic of the Islamic State also generated through a specific local language game and socially-culturally constructed? Alternatively, when a little girl is murdered by complete strangers in a random killing, how can we say the incident is unacceptable? Should we not also respect terrorism or random killing simply because it is one form of diversity? Are not a terrorist and a murderer subalterns in society? We almost feel at a loss: we have already confronted the limits of relativism. The point is that universalism, essentialism, and rationalism cannot be mixed with dogmatism and totalitarianism. It is true that modernity produced an excess of faith in reason, and as a result, it spelled defeat for humanity once. However, this does not mean we must abandon the whole ability of reason—the ability of seeing through the ground of cognition and judgment with evidence—, but rather we had better restart by accepting the failure of reason. When reason becomes so dogmatic that it excludes any other opinions, it may lead to the Holocaust. Nonetheless, if the use of reason is appropriately limited and controlled for the sake of creating intersubjective confirmation, it can assume the role of ruling the principle of violence and of a power game. In my view, the idea of phenomenological essentialism will overcome the past defeat of reason and produce the possibility of intersubjective, universal consensus on the order of good and evil in society. The basis for critiquing totalitarianism and terrorism does not lie in the relativist claim that everything is socially-culturally constructed or the dogmatic claim that the truth absolutely exists whatever happens, but in the universal claim that no one can diminish the right of freedom because

7 Habermas, “The Entwinement,” 127 f. 8 Habermas, “The Entwinement,” 129.

148 the principle of society is based on the original contract of goodness. Society chooses rules of language instead of violence, and diversity is respected as long as it follows rules in society. Phenomenological essentialism offers the principle of thinking and forms the basis for other social sciences and humanities. The most important task for future phenomenology is to systematize the method of eidetic seeing to fit various academic disciplines and practical fields. Although the method of eidetic seeing has been already broadly used in psychology, sociology, pedagogy, and nursing science, the application of the eidetic method often deviates from its original direction. Namely, the principle of Husserlian phenomenology is not correctly grasped in some cases. However, the misunderstanding of phenomenology by applied phenomenologists includes a subtle problem that lies between theory and practice in general. That is, as might be expected, a method should achieve an effect for researching and analyzing specific phenomena, and in this sense, it does not matter for those who attempt to apply phenomenology to their own stage whether or not the method used by them exactly corresponds to what Husserl himself writes. In other words, they are mainly concerned about whether the phenomenological method is of practical use. Simultaneously, however, it is clear that the meaning of “phenomenological” should be shared among all investigations as long as they call themselves phenomenology. In my view, the minimum conditions of phenomenology can be defined as follows: (1) to effect epoché and transcendental reduction; (2) to aim at intersubjective confirmation; (3) to create an attitude of mutual recognition. Namely, eidetic seeing can be regarded as a historical-intersubjective project among plural transcendental subjectivities for the sake of creating common understanding. The process of eidetic seeing must move forward avoiding controversy concerning truth. In other words, eidetic seeing clarifies not only commonalities but also differences among persons, cultures, and societies, and we can only create an attitude of mutual recognition against personal, cultural, and social differences. Starting from my insight, eidetic seeing requires the phase of intersubjectivity in order to determine whether the intuited essential structures can agree with each other. In this regard, phenomenology can be seen as a universal language game aimed at obtaining common understanding through the sense of mutual recognition of difference on the basis of mutual critique and mutual exchange of words. The procedures of eidetic seeing can be described as follows:

1. Universal Epoché and Transcendental Reduction The subject–object schema should be changed to the immanence–transcendence schema through the operation of the universal epoché and transcendental reduction. Preoccupied doxastic ideas that posit objective being, absolute truth, substantial essence, and autonomous value should all be parenthesized, and authorities in the field of study under investigation, such as a dictionary, a scholar, a theory, or a famous book, should also be excluded. All being is to be thought in correlation with

149 transcendental subjectivity.

2. Eidetic Analysis The essential and structural moments that underpin the articulation of the object, concept, and idea in question should be caught with keywords through reflection on lived experiences. Reflecting on lived experience itself, which is the only evidence of eidetic seeing, should at first be based on one’s insight and the undoubtedness of the investigator of essences. “What xxx is” is the basic form of question in eidetic seeing.

3. Mutual Critique and Mutual Exchange of Words Through mutual critique and mutual exchange of words the intuited essence should be refined to generate intersubjective confirmation and consensus. What is to be noted is that one eidetic seeing should be reassessed by other eidetic seeings. Each participant sees the essence in reflection and makes sure that the intuited essence certainly and undoubtedly can be validated among all individual cases of the object. This means that a person with a merely skeptical attitude who always criticizes and rejects other opinions without offering his/her own ideas cannot participate in the phenomenological language game. The only way of critiquing is to present one’s own insight and ideas.

4. Common Understanding versus Absolute Truth To grasp essence does not mean to grasp the absolute truth. In this regard, eidetic seeing may be considered as a specific language game that is aimed at creating common understanding that extends beyond sociocultural diversity. The main goal of eidetic seeing is to clarify the essential structures and moment of the object under investigation by means of presenting keywords and assessing them through mutual critique and mutual exchange of words.

Eidetic seeing is not a subjective project of a solitary thinker but an intersubjective project of plural transcendental subjectivity. Although the actual procedure of eidetic seeing may be conducted mostly all by oneself (because eidetic seeing does not necessarily take the form of oral discussion), the intuited essence must be reassessed through other transcendental subjectivities. In this regard, essence in phenomenology is not the absolute truth or an eternal substantial entity. Rather, essence is generated through the phenomenological language game: mutual critique and mutual exchange of words. Namely, through mutual critique and mutual exchange of words, the intuited essence is redefined toward intersubjective confirmation; eidetic seeing may be considered as a sort of language game (that is, phenomenological language game) so that phenomenological essentialism cannot be

150 dogmatism or solipsism. It is a study of intersubjectivity. Essence and common understanding in phenomenology are generated only through the dimension in which every participant assesses and confirms the border between what is identical and what is accidental to the object in question. In what follows, I would like to briefly describe some concrete possibilities that are opened up by eidetic seeing. Of course, I do not think that all the possibilities of eidetic seeing can be revealed in the following, but these items constitute part of the aims and possibilities of eidetic analysis.

1. Understanding of the Self and the Other Participants in the phenomenological language game mutually exchange their own experiences. Problems consciously and unconsciously confronted in life can be clarified and deeply understood through communication. Through examining and understanding not only the sensitivity of the self but also the sensitivity of the other, the process of mutual recognition is of utmost importance. Eidetic seeing is employed as a method for discussion (for example, the essence of nostalgia, jealousy, anger, or death).

2. Elucidation of the Controversy concerning Truth When plural opinions, hypotheses, policies, doctrines, or theories conflict with one another in the practical or the disciplinary realm, eidetic seeing opens up the possibility for creating a common basis on which every theory can exist. For instance, in the case of the conflict between traditional education and progressive education, the essence of education offers a fundamental regional basis for each camp. Or, before we examine whether medical care can be regarded as infrastructure in society or as a service in business, it is important first to clarify what medical care means. Eidetic seeing offers constructive engagement based on common essential conditions.

3. Reexamination of Theory The theory that has already been presented can be reexamined through eidetic seeing. For instance, by seeing the essence of unconsciousness, the validity of the Oedipus complex proposed by Sigmund Freud may be assessed. Eidetic seeing enables us to assess and examine the validity of already existing fixed systems and theories and sometimes to reveal that there is indeed no validity or relevance to them and that they are merely a fundamental hypothesis or misconception.

4. Method of Philosophical Investigation Transcendental eidetic sciences can be gradually established only through development in the specific eidetic analysis of lived experience, region, and idea. For instance, the essence of love, faith, existence, unconsciousness, sexuality, discrimination, eroticism, language, meaning, reality, consciousness, life, person, society, the other, value, truth, freedom, beauty, goodness, human rights,

151 and justice constitute the main topics in transcendental eidetic sciences. Eidetic seeing provides a method for philosophical investigation that attempts to counteract the outrage of violence, irrational dictatorship, and the enigma of life.

It should be said that these four possibilities and aims of eidetic seeing are entwined with one another rather than independent from one another. Further, according to each field of study, a new possibility and aim will appear. However, what should be shared among all possibilities and aims is that eidetic seeing is directed toward common understanding without the oppression of difference. When distinct characteristics between persons, societies, religions, and cultures are forced to fuse together into sameness, the phenomenological language game is faced with the end. In this regard, phenomenology is also a study of diversity and difference. In short, eidetic seeing is conducted within the transcendental attitude in order to avoid and to conciliate the controversy concerning truth. The possibility of universal cognition starts from a very relative position, my insight, but it is always oriented toward universal consensus through mutual assessment and confirmation. In this regard, the phenomenological language game requires that every participant create a transcendental attitude through the operation of the universal epoché and transcendental reduction. This is the historical project of essential investigation into common understanding confirmed by plural transcendental subjectivities. We may prefer to forget that the possibility of conflict and dominance is always waiting on the opposite side of philosophy. Because there is not any path for preparing common conditions and rules for protecting diversity and coexistence at the same time, only passively observing the strongest in competition in a power game can control the weak, the poor, and the downtrodden. Fundamentally speaking, philosophy exists to strive against violence, and the phenomenological language game is enabled only when the participants agree with the first contract, namely, the original contract of goodness, in which discretion to take a decision is turned over from the logic of the strongest to intersubjective consensus about the rules of society. Through mutual communication, the participants attempt to create a plausible image of society. The phenomenological language game, certainly, demands a certain amount of time to generate intersubjective confirmation: it is a different game from mathematics and the natural sciences. Human and social relationships inevitably include something that defies measurement in numerical terms, because it is not possible to make an exact unit of emotion, desire, concern, value, and their complex relations (although it is still partially possible by reducing it to a physiological causal association). The essence of society is to be distinguished from that of nature, and this is why positivism is confronted with its own limitations in the social sciences and humanities. While it does not matter for us whether or not nature is good or wrong, in the case of society, the value and virtue of it always occupy our concern. It belongs to the essence of social events that consensus is

152 gradually obtained through mutual critique and mutual exchange of words. Namely, it takes time. However, we should not cast off the phenomenological language game from the academic stage just because of the investment of time, at least as long as we wish to live with the ability to control irrational outrage and dogmatic oppression. If we do not so wish, then competition based on power dominates, and philosophy becomes useless. Philosophy is teetering on the edge of a cliff, but I believe that the basic principle and method for reviving it have been prepared by this study. One of the limitations of this study is, however, that it only presents the principle and method of new essentialism but does not show any specific analysis of what society is and how society should be. I have repeatedly stressed the importance of the universal justification of freedom, equality, human rights, and social justice, but in fact did not adequately conduct eidetic seeing of these concepts. In particular, although the original contract of goodness can be a necessary condition for establishing the phenomenological language game and creating a better society, it is not a sufficient condition for realizing the ideal of society. This means that further investigations are required into what sort of political and economic system is justified based on the idea of the original contract of goodness: we need to move to the next level of investigation in transcendental sociology, political philosophy, and economic philosophy. The research subject of meaning and value is to be embedded in these academic disciplines. Currently, I do not have a clear image of the extent to which the idea of phenomenology can be applied to these matters. However, I am sure that the outcome of the present study will be of some use in furthering phenomenological research in terms of its essentialist aspect, and that further study of applied phenomenology would be of value.

153 Bibliography 1. Works by Edmund Husserl in German (The Husserliana Edition) Bd. I: Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge. Edited by Stephan Strasser. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973. Bd. II: Die Idee der Phänomenologie Fünf Vorlesungen. Edited by Walter Biemel. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950. Bd. III/1: Ideen zu einer Reinen Phänomenologie und Phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die Reine Phänomenologie 1. Halbband: Text der 1.-3. Auflage. Edited by Karl Schuhmann. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976. Bd. IV: Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution. Edited by Marly Biemel. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952. Bd. V: Ideen zu einer Reinen Phänomenologie und Phänomenologischen Philosophie. Drittes Buch: die Phänomenologie und die Fundamente der Wissenschaften. Edited by Marly Biemel. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952. Bd. VI: Die Krisis der Europäischen Wissenschaften und die Transzendentale Phänomenologie: Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie. Edited by Walter Biemel. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976. Bd. VII: Erste Philosophie (1923-1924). Erster Teil: Kritische Ideengeschichte. Edited by Rudolf Boehm. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1956. Bd. VIII: Erste Philosophie (1923/24). Zweiter teil: Theorie der Phänomenologischen Reduktion. Edited by Rudolf Boehm. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1959. Bd. IX: Phänomenologische Psychologie: Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1925. Edited by Walter Biemel. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968. Bd. X: Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893-1917). Edited by Rudolf Boehm. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966. Bd. XI: Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten 1918-1926. Edited by Margot Fleischer. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966. Bd. XIII: Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Erster Teil: 1905-1920. Edited by Iso Kern. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973. Bd. XIV: Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Zweiter Teil: 1921-1928. Edited by Iso Kern. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973. Bd. XV: Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter Teil: 1929-1935. Edited by Iso Kern. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973. Bd. XVIII: Logische Untersuchungen. Erster Band: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik. Edited by Elmar Holenstein. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975.

154 Bd. XIX/1: Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Band, Erster Teil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis. Edited by Ursula Panzer. The Hague / Boston / Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984. Bd. XIX/2: Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Band, Zweiter Teil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis. Edited by Ursula Panzer. The Hague / Boston / Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984. Bd. XXIII: Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung. Zur Phänomenologie der anschaulichen Vergegenwärtigungen. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1898-1925). Edited by Eduard Marbach. The Hague / Boston / Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980. Bd. XXV: Aufsätze und Vorträge (1911-1921). Edited by Thomas Nenon und Hans Rainer Sepp. Dordrecht / Boston / Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987. Bd. XXXIV: Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1926-1935). Edited by Sebastian Luft. Dordrecht / Boston / Lancaster: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002. Bd. XLI: Zur Lehre vom Wesen und zur Methode der Eidetischen Variation. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1891-1935). Edited by Dirk Fonfara. Dordrecht / Heidelberg / London / New York: Springer, 2012.

2. Works by Edmund Husserl in German (Other Edition) Husserl, Edmund. Erfahrung und Urteil: Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik. Edited by Ludwig Landgrebe. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1999.

3. Works by Edmund Husserl in English Translation Husserl, Edmund. The Basic Problems of Phenomenology: From the Lectures, Winter Semester, 1910-1911. Translated by Ingo Farin and James G. Hart. Dordrecht: Springer, 2006. ―. Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology. Translated by Dorion Cairns. The Hague / Boston / London: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960. ―. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Translated by David Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970. ―. Experience and Judgment: Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic. Translated by James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks, and edited by Ludwig Landgrebe. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. ―. The Idea of Phenomenology. Translated by Lee Hardy. Dordrecht / Boston / London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999. ―. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology. Translated by Fred Kersten. The

155 Hague / Boston / Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983. ―. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution. Translated by Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer. Dordrecht / Boston / London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989. ―. Logical Investigations, Volume I. Translated by John M. Findlay. London / New York: Routledge, 2001. ―. Logical Investigations, Volume II. Translated by John M. Findlay. London / New York: Routledge, 2001. ―. Phantasy, Imageconsciousness, and Memory (1898-1925). Translated by John B. Brough. Dordrecht: Springer, 2005. ―. Phenomenological Psychology: Lectures, Summer Semester, 1925. Translated by John Scanlon. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977. ―. Phenomenology and the Foundations of the Sciences, Third Book: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Translated by Ted E. Klein and William E. Pohl. The Hague / Boston / London: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980. ―. Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology and the Confrontation with Heidegger (1927-1931). Translated and edited by Thomas Sheehan and Richard E. Palmer. Dordrecht / Boston / London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997.

4. Works by Edmund Husserl in Japanese Translation エトムント・フッサール『デカルト的省察』浜渦辰二訳、岩波書店、2001 年。 ―『現象学の理念』立松弘考訳、みすず書房、1965 年。 ―『イデーンⅠ‐Ⅰ 純粋現象学と現象学的哲学のための諸構想 第 1 巻 純粋現象学 への全般的序論』渡辺二郎訳、みすず書房、1979 年。 ―『イデーンⅠ‐Ⅱ 純粋現象学と現象学的哲学のための諸構想 第 1 巻 純粋現象学 への全般的序論』渡辺二郎訳、みすず書房、1984 年。 ―『イデーンⅡ‐Ⅰ 純粋現象学と現象学的哲学のための諸構想 第 2 巻 構成につい ての現象学的諸研究』立松弘考、別所良美訳、みすず書房、2001 年。 ―『イデーンⅡ‐Ⅱ 純粋現象学と現象学的哲学のための諸構想 第 2 巻 構成につい ての現象学的諸研究』立松弘考、榊原哲也訳、みすず書房、2009 年。 ―『イデーンⅢ 純粋現象学と現象学的哲学のための諸構想 第 3 巻 現象学と、諸学 問の基礎』渡辺二郎、千田義光訳、みすず書房、2010 年。 ―『ヨーロッパ諸学の危機と超越論的現象学』細谷恒夫、木田元訳、中央公論新社、1995 年。 ―『ブリタニカ草稿 現象学の核心』谷徹訳、筑摩書房、2004 年。 ―『間主観性の現象学 その方法』浜渦辰二、山口一郎監訳、筑摩書房、2012 年。

156 ―『間主観性の現象学 II その展開』浜渦辰二、山口一郎監訳、筑摩書房、2013 年。 ―『間主観性の現象学 III その行方』浜渦辰二、山口一郎監訳、筑摩書房、2015 年。 ―『世界の名著 62 ブレンターノ フッサール』責任編集細谷恒夫、中央公論社、1980 年。 ―『経験と判断』ルートヴィッヒ・ランドグレーベ編、長谷川宏訳、河出書房新社、1999 年。 ―『論理学研究１』立松弘考訳、みすず書房、1968 年。 ―『論理学研究 2』立松弘考、松井良和、赤松宏訳、みすず書房、1999 年。 ―『論理学研究 3』立松弘考、松井良和訳、みすず書房、1974 年。 ―『論理学研究４』立松弘考訳、みすず書房、1976 年。

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