Theoretical and Epistemological Problems in Western Philosophy of The 19th-20th Centuries

Phenomenology

The concept of "phenomenology" has been used in various contexts throughout the history of philosophy. For Kant, it denoted the objects of human experience. In Hegel's thought, it referred to the doctrine of the development of scientific-philosophical knowledge—his "Phenomenology of Spirit," which Marx deemed both the source and the enigma of Hegel's speculative philosophy. In the works of the German philosopher Franz Brentano (1838-1917), phenomenology was understood as descriptive psychology, highlighting and detailing the structure of mental phenomena. He is credited with the discovery of the intentionality of consciousness, emphasizing the correlation between the object and the act of experience, and asserting the self-evidence of inner experiences.

In the 20th century, phenomenology emerged as a profoundly influential philosophical movement focused on pure, pre-reflective, and ahistorical consciousness, along with its structures that facilitate genuine interaction with the world of ideal meanings expressed in language and psychological experiences. The advent of phenomenology as a distinct philosophical direction is closely associated with the name of the German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), a student of Brentano.

In his two-volume work "Logical Investigations," published in 1900-1901, Husserl outlined the fundamental tenets of his philosophy. "The object of philosophy is scientific knowledge and cognition," he asserts. Here, Husserl aligns with the general trajectory of modern European philosophy, which prioritizes epistemological issues as essential for resolving human problems through science. According to Husserl, the main task of scientific philosophy is to construct a theory of scientific knowledge. "If science builds theories to address its problems," writes Husserl, "then philosophy asks about the essence of theory, what enables theory, and so forth. Only philosophical inquiry completes the work of the naturalist and the mathematician, thus fulfilling pure and authentic theoretical cognition." The task of philosophy is to articulate criteria of scientific validity and to answer the question, "What is truth?" The significance of these inquiries is amplified by the fact that scientific truths, even Newton's laws, are not absolute truths since they arise from experience. Husserl claims that "none of the natural laws are known a priori, that is, with an awareness of their obviousness. The sole way to justify such laws is through induction from particular facts of experience." Yet, these positions still resonate with those of the neo-positivists.

When discussing the specificity of phenomenology as a philosophical direction concerned with the investigation of the nature of scientific knowledge and truth, it is crucial to address its approach to these issues. Husserl posits that the primary characteristic of natural-scientific knowledge, as understood by previous philosophy, lies in the relationship between knowledge and reality, with the cognitive process depicted as the real interaction between subject and object. In this framework, truth is seen as the correspondence of knowledge to reality. However, this approach to knowledge and truth does not satisfy Husserl. He also rejects the psychological perspective on cognition that emerged at the end of the 19th century, primarily due to the efforts of Mach and Avenarius, which views cognition through the lens of psychological perceptions and experiences that arise in the subject during interactions with the object in the cognitive process.

From Husserl's perspective, the task of phenomenological philosophy is to uncover the overarching structure of the mental process of experiencing genuine, universally significant knowledge. Phenomenology focuses on the structures of pure consciousness of truth. It is interested in the functioning of consciousness as such, independent of its relationship with objective reality and even separate from its connection to the mental experiences involved in the awareness of that reality. Phenomenology engages with the pure flow of consciousness, devoid of any objectivity, where the elements are phenomena. Phenomena are the ultimate constituents of our consciousness that capture the attention of phenomenological philosophy.

In epistemology, the concept of "phenomenon" is introduced by Kant, where it is contrasted with the noumenon, the "thing-in-itself," representing its manifestation. A phenomenon is the result of human cognitive activity, the product of the influence of the "thing-in-itself" on the a priori forms of human sensibility and reason. For Kant, a phenomenon is the manifestation of the essence of the "thing-in-itself." Therefore, phenomena are interesting not in their own right, but as manifestations of something else, the essence. Husserl highly values Kant for his analysis of consciousness and for considering consciousness as self-sufficient and fundamental in its interaction with objective reality. However, Husserl finds Kant's understanding of the phenomenon unacceptable.

For Husserl, a phenomenon is that which reveals itself; it is an element of pure consciousness, encompassing a verbal shell, mental experiences, the content and meaning of cognitive experiences, and the object understood through its meaning. A phenomenon is not merely the appearance of something; it is the totality of the appearance and essence; nothing stands behind it—it is itself the extreme point, the boundary of pure consciousness. A phenomenon is not an image of a reflected object nor merely the mental experiences associated with perceiving external objects. Rather, a phenomenon is the act of pure consciousness that forms the content and meaning of the object. Reality is presented to humans as a flow of phenomena, and to comprehend it, one must first exclude the physical world, the realm of external objects—this involves applying the method of phenomenological reduction. In doing so, pure consciousness remains with its intentionality directed towards the object. It is here and now that meanings and significances of things and objects are born; it is here and now that we arrive at the true world of things, "to the things themselves." Husserl emphasizes that the objects are conceived by us as we attribute meanings to them within our consciousness. For instance, a house can be perceived as a dwelling, an architectural object, an obstacle, and in other significances, all determined by the intentionality of our consciousness. Significance is perceived as the invariant of the intentional meanings of the object, independent of historical and other contexts. In this regard, the phenomenological analysis prioritizes not the object of significance or even the significance itself, but rather the intentional act of attributing meaning and revealing significance. For example, there exists the object of love, the experience of love as a process of mental experiences and actions, and the act of understanding love as a flow of pure phenomena. This flow cannot be conceived as an object or as a phenomenon of something else; it must be experienced and described from within. Consciousness, in its essence, is non-objective and cannot be regarded as an object; it is intentional and reveals itself as directed towards an object through content and meaning, thus cannot be an object of cognition, but can only be experienced from within, assimilated, and examined through intuition.

Based on these premises, phenomenology approaches science and truth. The crisis faced by modern science, according to Husserl, is linked to the naturalism of science, which equates existence with physical nature, even viewing consciousness in terms of dependence on nature. Knowledge and truth are considered as results of the reflective capacities of the psyche, in terms of the relationship between image and object. However, in such a case, relativism and subjectivism are inevitable. This is not only about relativism in our understanding of nature, but also about the relativity of our ideals and norms. Thus, the crisis of science triggers a crisis of civilization.

Truth, in Husserl's view, is timeless and not a result of reflective thought. Truth is self-evident and self-revealing, grasped through intuition, immediate judgment of essence, content, and meaning. Here, Husserl refers to Descartes and his understanding of truth as that which does not evoke doubt in the mind. Husserl defines truth as the determination of being itself, the unity of meanings contained in being. Simultaneously, truthfulness is an act of consciousness that perceives this determination, recognizing meanings in their true unity. Truth is absolute and timeless. "What is true is absolute, true 'in itself'; truth is uniquely one, whether perceived by humans, monsters, angels, or gods." The world of meanings, from Husserl's perspective, is independent of humanity; geometric figures, as ideal representations of the real spatial characteristics of objects, are intersubjective and not determined by the subject. Nonetheless, in his later work, Husserl speaks of the lifeworld as the meaningful foundation of science. This assertion should not be understood to imply that consciousness deduces content and meanings from everyday experience; rather, it indicates that science must correlate its contents and meanings with the subjectively meaningful interpretations of the scientist. The lifeworld serves as the basis for all objective knowledge; it is not merely primary in a genetic sense but establishes the foundation for constructing meaningful structures.

The phenomenological movement has influenced the entirety of 20th-century philosophy. Existentialism, in essence, grew out of phenomenology, not only because Heidegger was a student of Husserl. Hermeneutics, pragmatism, even neo-positivism, and analytical philosophy all intersect with phenomenology.