Husserl's
Phenomenology
by
Dan Zahavi
Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2003
178 pp.
ISBN 0-8047-4546-3
Reviewed by Robert Pepperell
pepperell@ntlword.com
There can be few philosophers whose work is more
important to the ongoing debates about consciousness
than Edmund Husserl, and there is perhaps no more
perplexing question than that of the relationship
between mind and world, a relationship he tried
hard to clarify. In this concise book Dan Zahavi,
a widely acknowledged authority on Husserl, offers
a clear exposition of Husserlian phenomenology -
a hugely influential philosophical method that seeks
to grasp the central core of inner thought through
a rigorous process of analysis. In doing so, the
book describes various strategies Husserl employed
to manage the dialectic between the subjective realm
of the conscious mind and the objective realm of
external objects (including other conscious minds).
Husserl's phenomenological method attempts to isolate
those irreducible aspects of mentality by stripping
away or suspending naïve appearances, what
Husserl calls the 'natural attitude'. This 'pretheoretical'
attitude, he argues, is prejudiced and prone to
erroneous assumptions, particularly the assumption
that there is some kind of 'real' world that exists
independently of our own thinking existence. Instead
we suspend all metaphysical speculation and concentrate
on the 'giveness' of reality in direct experience,
what we really see rather than what we think we
see. In an analogous way (although it is not
an analogy suggested by either Husserl or Zahavi)
it is easy to get untrained people to improve their
drawing skills simply by pointing out to them how
they tend to draw what they think they see rather than what is actually
there. Hence, "we should . . . not let preconceived
theories form our experience, but let our experience
determine our theories." (p. 45).
Because of Husserl's emphasis on the giveness of
mental experience, and the objects perceived therein,
he has been regarded by later critics as essentially
an idealist thinker - one who believes that "subjectivity
can persist without the world" (p. 71). It
is a reading of Husserl that Zahavi works hard to
correct, marshalling evidence from previously unpublished
material in the manuscripts smuggled out of Germany
prior to the second world war. Husserl's Jewishness
was grounds for his condemnation by the Nazis, and
consequently he was invisible to a whole pre-war
generation of German philosophy students who were
instead led towards Husserl's former student, Heidegger,
with repercussions that persist today. In
his earlier work, Husserl adopted a metaphysically
neutral position vis-à-vis the existence
of a mind-independent reality. Therefore the question
of whether objects presented to the mind are 'real'
or 'imaginary' (e.g. hallucinatory) is irrelevant
as far as phenomenological analysis is concerned,
being instead "methodologically suspended"
(p. 40). But this stress on the giveness of the
object in our direct experience of it, on its appearance,
does not equate, as Zahavi argues, with a dual world
composed of separate subjective appearances and
objective realities. This would lead to the kind
of idealistic, introspective and eventually solipsistic
position that is being avoided. Rather, "phenomenology
is not a theory about the merely appearing, or to put it differently, appearances
are not mere appearances. For how
things appear is an integral part of what they really
are.. . The reality of the object is not hidden
behind the phenomenon, but unfolds itself in the
phenomenon." (p. 55).
Indeed, In the later Husserl the very idea
of a distinction between subject and object (which
might give rise to the suggestion of a mind-independent
reality) is, so to speak, transcended. It makes
no sense, it is argued, to imagine a worldly reality
not constituted by a subject, just as it makes no
sense to imagine a subject unconstituted by worldly
reality. Furthermore, it makes no sense to talk
about a subject not constituted by other subjects
through a relation of so-called 'intersubjectivity'.
Thus, as Zahavi points out, Husserl effectively
anticipates later phenomenologists such as Heidegger,
Sartre and Merleau-Ponty by positing a triad of
subjectivity-intersubjectivity-worldly reality,
none of which exists as an independent condition
but takes form only in its relation to the others.
The second half of the book summarises some key
ideas in Husserl's latter research; his conception
of time and the flow of consciousness, the necessity
of embodied kinaesthetic experience in the perception
of objects, the intersubjective nature of self-awareness,
his critique of the assumption of objectivity in
the scientific method and its estrangement from
our experience of ordinary reality. In many ways
this latter work foreshadows more recent trends
in philosophy of mind, such as the 'enactive' approach
adopted by current researchers who stress the 'sensorimotor
contingencies' of perceptual action (see the review
of British Psychological Society conference in the
August 2003 issue of Leonardo Reviews). This late
work of Husserl, much of it still unpublished or
untranslated, is revealed by Zahavi's careful research
to be an intricate weave of subtle insights into
the nature of being and experience. Just as in the
very best literature, one gets the sense here of
a mind in the throes of a kind of metaconsciousness,
or consciousness of consciousness itself' where
the very bounds of self knowledge are being expressed.
Hence Zahavi's claim that the widespread interpretations
of Husserl's work as idealistic and solipsistic
are inaccurate, partial and outdated. Instead, Husserl
emerges as a figure who still has much to offer
and whose influence is set to grow rather than recede.
Given the nature of the subject matter and the shear
breadth of Husserl's output, the author has
managed to construct a short volume that rings with
clarity, abounds with illuminating examples, and
which provokes profound thought. Zahavi expresses
the wish that this book will turn the reader towards
Husserl's own writings, and one could not
imagine a more authoritative and helpful introduction
to them than this.