Beyond Subjectivity as the Principle of Thinking
Eiichi Shimomissé
Cal State University
Dominguez Hills, CA
I. Prologue.
The history of Western philosophy is the history of perpetual attempts to provide an answer to the question of the Parmenidean principle of unity between being and thinking (TO GAR AUTO NOEIN ESTIN TE KAI EINAI-Frag. 3). The Ancient Greeks sought the key to their unity in being.
ˆ In contrast, contemporary Western philosophies since Descartes have attempted to resolve this opposition by means of subjectivity. This approach to self-consciousness was not limited to philosophy but also has implicitly constituted the presupposition for the pursuit of the natural sciences as well. (This we are unfortunately unable to discuss here.)
The aim of this paper is three-fold:
We intend to explore the nature of the aporia involved in this approach to subjectivity.
It is our task also to explore whether the Parmenidean principle of that identity is indeed tenable as the ultimate question of philosophy. In other words, we would like to clarify that such a unity is not a matter to be proven or to reconcile. We would like to demonstrate that the separation of being and knowing, which has been presumed to be the condition for the possibility of knowledge, is artificially contrived, a point which philosophers had not noticed and de facto simply presupposed in such questioning search. Too, by means of our phenomenological descriptions we would like to discover that being and knowing are neither separate, nor in opposition: They are one and the same. That was precisely what Parmenides’ said.
Thirdly, therefore, to overcome the aporia of Western philosophy, we must return to the state prior to the “creation” of this dichotomy of being and knowing. Thus, it is our hope to explore an alternative to that approach, namely that which takes subjectivity as the principle of thinking.
Our ultimate goal here of critically appraising Edmund Husserl is not to discard phenomenology and the many insightful analyses and descriptions of his philosophical inquiry. On the contrary, it is our sincere desire that we shall live the original intent of his phenomenological philosophy and repatriate phenomenology as a most viable approach to our own philosophical inquiry.
II. Descartes and Contemporary Western Philosophers
René Descartes has been considered the founder of contemporary philosophies because he doubted everything inherited from his predecessors in the history of Western philosophy. He sought to elicit an absolutely certain basis for any future philosophical and scientific inquiry.
It is rather strange that despite his celebrated claim, Descartes inherited too many assumptions that had constituted the implicit foundation of philosophizing in the ancient and medieval ages.
For instance, no philosopher had disputed that our senses are fallible and that philosophical knowledge through our senses cannot be trusted. Of course, Descartes never said as did Plato that the objects of our senses are in constant flux and that they become nothingness. Instead, Descartes rejected knowledge through the senses, because such knowledge can become false, i.e., it is fallible.
It had been universally accepted that in addition to the senses there be a cognitive faculty called Reason and that knowledge by reason and knowledge by senses are not only distinguishable, but also different qualitatively; the one is superior while the other inferior. Reason is active and senses are passive; rational knowledge is necessary and universally valid while knowledge by senses is contingent and valid with limitation. Descartes never questioned the above. Although Descartes referred to lumen naturale and used idea clara and distincta as necessary conditions for rational knowledge, he maintained that in rational knowledge alone adaequatio absoluta is possible.
Descartes further inherited the notion of substance from Ancient Greek philosophies such that the substantiality of substance derives from Aristotle’s notion of “to hypokeimenon” and yet he understood it in a more Platonic fashion. Indeed, a special type of knowledge is required not because its object is an immutable, perfect being called “hé idea,” but because immediacy and appropriateness of the givenness of its object to knowing was emphasized by Descartes as the basis for its apodeicticity. To him apodeictic knowledge is possible at least as an axiom, i.e., at the beginning, only for self-reflection, namely reason’s immediate grasp of itself in self-consciousness (this will be taken up in more detail later). Descartes made thinking, i.e., subjectivity, the principle of philosophical inquiry for the first time in the history of Western philosophies.
As suggested above, Descartes accepted as self-evident the active nature of reason and rational knowledge in distinction from the passivity of our senses and sense-knowledge, thus mediating this understanding to Kant. Without hesitation, therefore, the substantiality of mind as substance was viewed by Descartes as consisting in its activity rather than substratum. The superiority of mind over matter as substance was unquestionably taken by Descartes; so that the substantiality of God as Infinite Substance is spirituality, i.e. cogitatio: Thus, God is mens infinitum.
The passivity of the senses and sense knowledge is nonetheless further extended to its object, namely matter, in such a way that res extensa (being passive) is contrasted to res cogitans (being active). This opposition between activity and passivity is mediated by the traditional notion of Reason so that what is active is formal, whereas what is passive is material. Since Galileo, the mathematical, i.e., rational, description of nature has gained special prestige over the empirical qualities of our sensory knowledge.
Under these presuppositions it was not a big step for Descartes to take self consciousness more generally as the ultimate method by which philosophical inquiry is justified and further pursued. Through questioning examination, i.e., universal doubt, Descartes believed he was able to concede that he had an immediate grasp of this reflecting reason upon its own reflected self, i.e., self-consciousness. Without any doubt he ascertained the indubitable certainty of “my self” as res cogitans and was convinced that he was thereby able to posit absolutely its apodeictic existence.
It was, however, an enormous leap in the development of the history of Western philosophies that Descartes not only stipulated, besides matter, our mind as substance but also made its self-reflective activity the principle of philosophical inquiry. After that self consciousness as introspection was elevated to the only means of philosophical approach. By making our “thinking” the principle of philosophical inquiry, this inquisitive sight of self reflection was considered as being able to shed light on anything immanent in our consciousness. Yet, precisely because of this, namely being totally divorced from the outside world, it turned out that it was not possible to get out of consciousness and examine whether what really is outside consciousness is indeed the same as that which is “known” in consciousness. On the one hand, consciousness’ selfreflective act of seeing itself had since been considered the last instance of our philosophical knowledge. On the other, philosophical reflection was entrapped within consciousness while reality outside consciousness was construed simply as “other,” i.e., the negation of conscious activity.
So, by means of this subjectivity approach Descartes and his followers, both rationalists and empiricists alike, were capable of establishing the unity and identity of being and knowing only within consciousness, which undoubtedly had to end up with the so-called “unhappy consciousness.” In response to the outcome of Humean skepticism, the clearest and most articulate solution within subjectivity is found in Kant’s transcendental philosophy. Here a compromise was made such that the split and inseparability between form and matter was extensively exploited to justify the apodeictic nature of Newtonian Law while the confirmation of such a law was skillfully reserved for the material element of knowledge that was supposed to derive from senses. And yet the outside world, i.e., the noumenon, remained by nature unknowable!
The most sophisticated elaboration of the subjectivity approach may be found in Hegel’s philosophy, although Hegel was sensitive to irrational elements and attempted to incorporate them into the activities of Reason. The ultimate identity of the Parmenidean dichotomy was the totality. In this totality, according to Hegel every element is articulated and stands in relation to the rest such that beginning with the formal absolute identity everything is mediated to the others by negation. Ultimately, the self finds itself on the others. At the absolute spirit, i.e., the final stage of development, philosophy integrates everything else as a part of itself. This is the final outcome of the subjectivity approach: that Being (to eon) and Thinking (to noein) are fully unified by a series of mediations by negation.
III. Husserl Aporiai
According to Husserl’s original intent to pursue phenomenology, he was trying his best to avoid the effects of the problem of the subjectivity approach. At an early stage in the Phenomenological Movements, other phenomenologists joined in the pursuit, agreeing with Husserl on the key motive of these movements, “Zu den Sachen selbst zurückhehrenn!” The facts as here named were not limited to what is given to the subjectivity approach of self-reflection. On the contrary, for most phenomenologists, to retreat to the transcendental domain by self-reflection seemed to be no other than withdrawal to what they all had rejected, i.e., the subjectivist metaphysical viewpoint.
Whether Husserl stepped into the abyss of this subjectivity approach was not so obvious during the period of the first edition of Logische Untersuchungen at the turn of the century. We could safely declare that Husserl was not trapped in this subjectivity approach. A decisive change in his philosophical approach took place in the period of Ideen I, namely when he decided to conceive the program of his philosophy after Kantian transcendental philosophy.
While Husserl was concerned about the programmatic vision of his philosophical inquiries, the specters of that subjectivity approach was not obvious to him. However, once he began pursuing concrete analyses and descriptions of his experience, they did reappear as numerous aporiai, shedding their concealment in the process of his so-called radicalization of phenomenology.
Now we must examine how concretely this problem resurfaced in Husserl’s philosophical inquiries.
The more assiduous Husserl tried to describe what he saw with the concepts of the subjectivity approach, the more explicit became the discrepancies between Husserl’s vision of a program and his concrete analyses of experience.
The more he attempted to provide the “world” with the groundwork of the ultimate synthesis by transcendental subjectivity, the more clearly the world revealed itself as the horizon with a well-ordered unity, which he later called “pre-predicative synthesis.” While transcendental apperception should be active and unifying, what is to be constituted and unified is shown as the givenness already unified.
The ambiguity of intuition is seen, as we notice that the concept of describing the immediate relationship of introspective self-consciousness to itself is construed as “Sebstgegebenheit” in the form of passivity on the one hand, and that the same is explicated as “Selbsterfassung” in the form of activity on the other. This passivity was inherited in concealment as the nature of intuition from the tradition. The active aspect of reason, precisely because intuition is not empirical, but rational, must be incorporated into the notion of intuition.
Time also appears ambiguous: Time is the principle of activity and synthesis while it is also discovered as the “streaming present.”
Further, the accepted paradigm of form-activity and matter-passivity led Husserl to “inven t” what is called “hyletic data.”
Husserl’s so-called “Scheitern,” that is, the reverberation?????? of the irreconcilable difference between what was programmed and what was discovered as the exposure of our concrete experience through Husserl’s philosophical pursuit, is a clear indication of the subjectivity approach’s inner problem itself.
Because of this subjectivity approach, too, Husserl could not help but implicate “constitution” in creative activity, as Fink once correctly characterized. To Husserl at the time of Ideen I the noetic-noematic constitution was explicated as activity of subject. What is to be given as “hyletic data” in itself is, not only to Kant but also to Husserl, chaotic, unorganized and not yet comprehended its?????? meaning. For in the noetic-noematic constitution it is the task of the transcendental I that not only makes the universal thesis of the world alone, but articulates, organizes and unifies it. Through self-reflection, intentional analysis is to be pursued from the activity of the transcendental Ego as the ultimate justification.
IV. Intentionality
The most fundamental concept of Husserl’s phenomenology is intentionality and this very significant discovery shall be remembered forever.
If it were allowed to briefly indicate the anticipated conclusion here, the noetic-noematic correlation of act and quality that was disclosed by Husserl as the nature of our experience, was Husserl’s unerring insight into the unity of being and knowing itself.
By this elucidation Husserl actually went far beyond the scope of the subjectivity approach. And yet Husserl adhered too much to subjectivity and its self-reflection to fully elucidate intentionality. Is it an overstatement if we should say that Husserl sometimes forgot that intentionality is the very name for this unity of being and knowing as the Parmenidean principle? In fact, Husserl often talked about the co-relation between the noetic and the noematic sides of the intentional poles. Nevertheless, due to the traditional misconception of the Parmenidean principle together with the uncritical use of the traditionally stained metaphysical concepts, Husserl came to believe that the problem of constitution after all be solved from subjectivity, particularly by its activity of synthesis and unification.
On the one hand Husserl talked about the inseparability of noesis and noema. On the other, he dealt with object and subject as though they are separate and by themselves. Husserl never realized that the separation was a result of our self-reflection, the subjectivity approach.
It is indeed obvious that in actuality, the intentional correlation is one and the whole, and thus, cannot be separated, unless it is done purely conceptually.