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Tom Rockmore (USA). Phenomenology and Knowledge: Response to Smirnova
Григорий Гутнер (Россия). Прагматический аспект научного дискурса
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Том Рокмор (США). Феноменология и знание: ответ Смирновой

Tom Rockmore (USA). Phenomenology and Knowledge: Response to Smirnova


In her very interesting paper, Natalia Smirnova raises again the question of the relation of phenomenology and theory of knowledge. The link between phenomenology and theory of knowledge is not well understood. Smirnova’s paper is based on a careful description of an important paper, which was quarried from the Nachlass of Alfred Schutz, the social phenomenologist. Smirnova emphasizes the link between Schutz’s phenomenology, especially his concept of relevance, and epistemology. This seems to be a slight stretch. I do not want to deny that Schutz’s theory has epistemological consequences. Yet his main focus lies in phenomenology, which he develops in an original way that would certainly have displeased Husserl. Husserl can be understood as an epistemologist, but he was clearly opposed to the social development of phenomenology that interests Schutz. In my comments, I will be focusing on the general relation of phenomenology to epistemology, and only then on Schutz’s interest for epistemology.

Husserl’s position unfolded in a series of stages in the course of which he vastly modified his original position. In schematic form, we can identify three such stages: in the early stage, before his phenomenological breakthrough, he was committed to something like what later became known as psychologism, which was famously criticized by Frege; then, in reacting against psychologism, there is a later stage, including the breakthrough to phenomenology in Logical Investigations around 1900; and finally there is a late stage beginning around 1911 when Husserl discovered the concept of reduction that he later considered to be essential to what he called transcendental phenomenology, which he also understood as idealism.

In her paper, Smirnova points to the important of Schutz’s concept of relevance for social phenomenology and, she claims, contemporary epistemology. She means by this the problems of theme and horizon as concerns the life-world that define phenomenology from the perspective of social phenomenology. This approach is clearly inconsistent with the position of the mature Husserl, who insisted on the reduction as the cornerstone of phenomenology. In introducing this concept, he presents the idea of the subject as an ego cogito he later features in his increasingly Cartesian form of phenomenology. The mature Husserlian subject strongly resembles the Kantian subject reduced to its mere epistemological capacities, once again in order to distinguish between the logical and psychological aspects of knowledge.

We must, I think, concede that Schutz’s social approach to phenomenology, and Smirnova’s effort to apply it to contemporary epistemology, run counter to Husserl’s own efforts. Husserl spent his entire career in working out a theory of phenomenology as the answer to the age-old dream philosophy as rigorous science. This is the same dream he later came to believe was dreamed out. His view of phenomenology as in fact a rigorous science was one of the strongest influences on the development of the philosophical debate in the twentieth century. Husserl influenced a long series of gifted thinkers, who, in different ways, all later betrayed the master in disagreeing with his view of phenomeology. Thus like Heidegger, they simply abandoned any pretext at scientific rigor or like Merleau-Ponty, they called attention to the impossibility of reduction as Husserl understood it. A faithful Husserlian would find Schutz’s position and Smirnova’s use of it to conflict with the both the spirit and the letter of Husserl. Yet that is not a reason to criticize and reject but rather to applaud both Schutz and Smirnova’s suggestion concerning him.

The general question Smirnova raises is the relation between phenomenology and epistemology. To make a beginning on this question, we need to clarify the terms: What is “phemenology”? How does it relate to “epistemology”? Obviously “phenomenology” can be understood in different ways. Depending how one understands the term, it is scarcely new, and hence does not originate in Husserl, but goes back to the early part of the Western philosophical tradition. Husserl, who is often but mistakenly thought to have invented phenomenology, invented at most a form of phenomenology. Husserlians, who, like Husserl, are often not very knowledgable about the history of philosophy, tend to credit him with inventing phenomenology while disagreeing with him, as Smirnova does, about how it should be understood. In fact, even Husserl was not consistent since the changes in his view of phenomenology clearly suggest that someone who continued to hold to phenomenology as it appeared in his early phenomenological writings would no longer be a phenomenologist in the sense he later understood it, for instance after his invention of the phenomenological reduction.

Phenomenology as Heidegger reminds us concerns the science of phenomena. In the famous passage on the divided line in the Republic, Plato distinguishes between what for Kant would be phenomenal and noumenal objects. The former lie below the line and are given through the senses, hence can be seen. The latter lie above the line, are not given through the sense, cannot be seen, hence are invisible, and are given only through the mind.48 Distantly following Plato, Kant later controversially distinguished between noumena that can be thought but not known, and phenomena that can be experienced and known.49

The term “phenomenology” (Ger. Phänomenologie) seems first to have been used by J. H. Lambert, a contemporary of Kant, in his Neues Organon, published in Leipzig in 1764.50 Kant apparently employs the term “phenomenology” only twice. In a letter to Lambert written in 1770 as he was beginning to formulate what later became the critical philosophy, Kant mentions he is working on a theory of metaphysics that presupposes a negative science he calls “general phenomenology” (phaenomenologia generalis). This science is concerned with determining the limits of the principles of sensibility.51 About a year and a half later, Kant comes back to the topic in the famous letter to his friend Marcus Herz. In describing the plan of the book that later became the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant indicates it will contain a theoretical and a practical part, and that the former will be divided into what two sections, including (1) general phenomenology and (2) metaphysics.52

For an understanding of the later evolution of phenomenology, Kant is crucial. Though he understands himself as a deep Platonist, capable of understanding the father of the Western tradition better than he understands himself (B 370), Kant both follows but also parts company with Plato on the relation of phenomenology and epistemology. Plato rejects the very idea of restricting knowledge to the world of appearance to which he prefers the world of reality, or knowledge of the forms. In the Phaedo, he attacks the Sophists for refusing to go beyond mere appearance, hence as refusing genuine philosophical explanation.53 His critique of artists and poets in the Republic is usually taken as indicating the folly of conflating phenomena with reality.

Kant strong influences the later evolution of phenomenology. The three main varieties of post-Kantian phenomenology are identified with the names of Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger. In France, perhaps influenced by Descartes’ supposed reliance on method, a series of observers (e. g. Kojève, Hyppolite, Derrida) incorrectly claims that all three phenomenological thinkers rely on the same phenomenological method. The most expeditous answer is that there is no single phenomenological method and its use does not identify a common feature in the positions of Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger.

These three forms of phenomenology are very different, arguably incompatible, not reducible to any single insight. They share a concern to analyze phenomena from the perspective of the subject, a reaction Kant, as well as a generally constructivist approach, though this claim would need to be qualified for Heidegger.

In the critical philosophy, Kant develops two different epistemological approaches: a representationalism and a constructivism. Representationalism, which concerns phenomena understood as appearances, is continuous with the new way of ideas. It consists in understanding the solution to the problem of knowledge on the basis of the relation of ideas, what Kant calls representations, to mind-independent objects. Kant’s constructivism consists in denying representationalism in favor of a solution to the problem of knowledge on the basis of phenomena that are not appearances, or representations, hence that do not refer to anything beyond themselves. To put the same point in Kantian language, for a phenomenologist phenomena are not appearances of something that lies beyond them.

In reaction to Kant, Hegel rethinks phenomenology as the phenomenology of spirit, more precisely as the science of the experience of consciousness. Spirit is a general term referring to the conscious life of human beings. Hegel revises Kant’s understanding of experience and knowledge. Like Kant, he stresses consciousness, and unlike Kant he also stresses self-consciousness. The science of the experience of consciousness refers to a process of knowledge with no preconditions that studies the practical conditions of knowing understood as unfolding in a social and historical context. The Phenomenology of Spirit traces the historical process of working out the real conditions acquiring knowledge. The process begins in immediate consciousness before rising in a dialectical discussion centering on understanding the nature of knowledge, through such stages as natural science, morality, art and religion. The process culminates in the highest or properly philosophical standpoint Hegel characterizes as absolute knowing (das absolute Wissen), which is often misdescribed in the literature as absolute knowledge. In the Introduction to the book, Hegel depicts knowledge as a process in which various theories of the object are formulated, tried out in experience, and reformulated. Truth appears as the limit in which, since the theory of the object is adequate to the object of the theory, further experience no longer reveals a distinction between them.

Unlike Hegel, whose position he scarcely knew, Husserl takes an ahistorical approach to the study of phenomena. Husserlian phenomenology studies the constitution of phenomena through his theory of constitution, his name for constructivism. This theory is at least described in passing in a long series of writings, including at least the Philosophy of Arithmetic, Ideas I, Cartesian Meditations, and in two posthumously published books The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology and Experience and Judgment. A typical statement occurs in Ideas I (§ 55), where he contends, in refuting subjective idealism, that all reality exists through the dispensing of meaning.54 Husserl, who considers the subject, understood as consciousness, as self-contained and absolute, hence dependent on nothing, seems to be saying that the spatio-temporal world only is for a subject as what is intended.55 If that is correct, then Husserl appears to be committed to the idea that there is a mind-independent external world with which we come into contact and which we know insofar as it is constituted in our consciousness through the intention, or way in which consciousness is directed toward its object.

Heidegger, who uses similar terminology, and who claims to be a phenomenologist, in part displaces the meaning of the concept away from constructivism and toward representationalism. For Heidegger, “constitution” does not mean producing or making, but rather letting something be seen.56 In Being and Time, he forges a link between phenomenology and ontology. Like Husserl, Heidegger understands this approach as permitting access to what the former already calls the things themselves (die Sachen selbst), that is, to what is directly given in experience, as distinguished from Kant’s thing in itself, which is not and cannot be given in experience. According to Heidegger, “phenomenon” means appearing in the sense of “not showing itself.” A phenomenon announces something that shows and fails to show itself.57 “Logos” means “discourse which lets something be seen.” Phenomenology, which is the science of the being of entities, hence ontology, is descriptive, and description is interpretive, or hermeneutical.

The three forms of phenomenology are clearly very different and arguably incompatible. The difference in the way each phenomenologist relates to Kant is instructive. Under Kant’s influence, Hegel rejects any effort to grasp the thing in itself, or what is as it is, in concentrating on an approach to knowledge on the basis of phenomena that do not refer beyond themselves. Also influenced by Kant, Husserl similarly gives up any effort to refer beyond phenomena, whose essence he desires to grasp from an anti-psychologistic perspective combatting naturalism, relativism and historicism. Heidegger officially claims: “Philosophy is universal phenomenological ontology, and takes its departure from the hermeneutic of Dasein, which as an analytic of existence, has made fast the guiding-line for all philosophical inquiry at the point where it arises and to which it returns.58 Though under Kant’s influence, he goes beyond Kant in making a qualified return to Plato in order to return to knowledge of what is as it is beyond things, or being that is as Plato said eneka tes ousias. 59

After this long lead up, I can come rapidly to the relation of phenomenology to epistemology. Hegel, who is concerned to know what is present to mind, adds a social and historical dimension to Kantian constructivism. Husserl, who desires to know what is present to mind, remains closer to Kant in his ahistorical, anti-contextual form of transcendental phenomenology. In his concern with being, Heidegger concentrates on knowing invisible being from within the visible through a historical approach dependent on both Kant’s representationalism and constructivism.

An important difficulty of Heideggerean phenomenology lies in showing how to reverse the Platonic view that through appearance we cannot know reality as it is. In comparison, Hegel and Husserl make more modest claims, linked only to knowledge of the visible. For reasons I cannot adequately explore here, Hegel seems more plausible than Husserl in virtue of his limitation of knowledge claims to fallible assertions that can be refuted through experience and his on finite human being as the real cognitive subject. Husserl’s insistence on apodicticity and an ahistorical transcendental subject appear less plausible. One way to put the point is to say it is difficult, perhaps not possible, to show the relation between the ahistorical Husserlian or Kantian subjects and what human beings are capable of doing. A theory of knowledge that does not respect the limits of finite human being is necessarily an exercise in philosophical fiction. In comparison, the considerable promise of Hegelian phenomenology lies in arguing for an approach to knowledge on the basis of what human beings are capable of and in fact have done.

Though Schutz derives from Husserl, I would like to suggest that his relevance for epistemology lies not in his Husserlian but rather in his anti-Husserlian dimension. Unlike Husserl but like Heidegger and especially like Hegel, he understands the subject as finite human being in a social context. That is all to the good since it is implausible to build a theory of human knowledge on anything other than one or more finite human subjects. Many of the comments about Schutz’s form of phenomenology make sense in an epistemological context. It seems obvious that knowledge turns on a life-world shared with others, hence is rooted in context. Perhaps that is what is meant in Schutz’s claim that a person depends on his own biography. The idea that cognitive assertions must be ratified in relation to the outside world is an important corrective for traditional philosophical claims, often echoed in phenomenology, for absolute truth. The conception of relevance seems interesting. Where I find a problem is in the limitation of the conception of the problem of knowledge to problems of theme and horizon, in other words to analysis of the subject. One would have hoped for more attention to the conception of the object as it appears to a subject.

Let me close with a provisional answer to the question of the relation of phenomenology to epistemology. If human beings are the cognitive subjects of human knowledge, and if knowledge is confined to what appears in the form of phenomena for human beings rooted in a social, hence historical world, then there is apparently no reasonable alternative to a social phenomenological approach to epistemology. This does not mean that we can know being in a general sense. Nor does it mean that phenomenological claims are somehow apodictic. It does mean that we are necessarily limited by our starting point in the surrounding social world.


Григорий Гутнер (Россия). Прагматический аспект научного дискурса

Grigorii Goutner (Russia). Pragmatic aspect of scientific discourse


There exist two tendencies in the philosophy of language of XX century. One is usually called “syntactical-semantic” and is connected mainly with formal logical analysis. This analysis has, as a rule, an aim to find out how can propositions of a language express facts of reality or some ideas or concepts of mind. The other tendency, usually qualified as “pragmatic”, considers a language as means of communication. An approach, developed in the frame of the tendency, implies a well-known slogan: “meaning is use”. It usually avoids consideration of physical or mental reality as a non-linguistic content of verbal expressions.

The syntactical-semantic approach seems to be quite attractive for epistemology and philosophy of science. Science must find an objective truth about world. Therefore, it must be possible to express this truth by means of the language of science. Consideration of its syntax and semantics is supposed to demonstrate this possibility or help to make proper modification of the language. The development of the approach in question is correlated with various projects of an ideal scientific language. It is well known that no such projects had been ever implemented. There exists rather deep reason for all difficulties of syntactical-semantic approach. This reason is the following: syntactical-semantic approach misses the question about a subject of science. In other words, the analysis of formal structure of scientific language is insufficient for understanding the nature of scientific truth and relation between scientific knowledge and reality. It is important to consider who uses this language. In the frames of syntactical-semantic approach, the question of subject is not discussed. However, this does not mean that there is no such question at all. This approach bases on the implicit presupposition, which may be characterized as a presupposition of a ‘methodical solipsism’ (See K.-O. Apel. Transformation der Philosophie. Frankfurt a. M., 1988). Its roots may be found in Cartesian concept of subject, because the only source of main forms and principles of knowledge is (in the frame of the presupposition) that one who uses a language. This language must be considered as personal language, which belongs to the subject.

The methodical solipsism is a result of the fact, that a use of a language is not considered in the frame of syntactical-semantic approach. It is well known, however, that such a position faces with Wittgenstein thesis of personal language. The language considered only from syntactical-semantic point of view can be only personal. To be more exact it is a subjective language of transcendental subject, which generated the whole body of scientific knowledge. Therefore, a more adequate approach to language must take into consideration a pragmatic point of view. This approach was developed in the philosophy of science of last decades of XX century. It is rather usual now to research a correlation between scientific discourse and communicative norms and values of scientific community. Moreover, the discourse itself is considered as generated in the process of communication and so the content of scientific knowledge is not mere approximation to the absolute truth about reality as it is. Knowledge is dependent upon forms of communication, i.e. upon customs, traditions, interests and even prejudices shared by community. Thus, the pragmatic approach implies some kind of relativism in estimation of scientific discourse. This relativism concerns first of all the status of so-called laws of nature. Pragmatic approach allows seeing some ambiguity of these laws. On one hand, they are considered as principles of existence of real objects. Therefore, they constitute the content of scientific knowledge. On the other hand, however, they are the norms of communication in scientific community. Each participant of communication is supposed to express his personal knowledge in commonly accepted form, which is considered by community as a law. This is the necessary condition of mutual understanding. In other words, scientific laws play two different roles: they are both principles of explanation and principles of understanding. Taking into consideration these two types of activity, one must admit that explanation (realized through laws of nature) and understanding (realized through rules of communication) are two aspects of one communicative process. In this paper, we shall demonstrate that both laws of nature and rules of communication are generated and functioning quite alike.

As far as laws of nature are concerned, they are related with some empirical material of scientific discourse. In the structure of the discourse, they play the role of hypotheses formed for explanation of facts. Therefore, they are not absolute truths but are involved in the process of corroboration and refutation. Two details concerning this process must be pointed out as rather important. First, we must note, that the process in question has a circular structure. A hypothesis is always made for explanation of previously observed facts. If the hypothesis is going to be a law, it must not be an ‘ad hoc’ hypothesis. Forming of the hypothesis has an aim to find some totality that could unite a group of separate facts. A proper explanation is possible only in the frame of such totality. It is important, that the empirical character of scientific discourse demands that particular observations precede the totality. We must first observe and only then explain. On the other hand, however, quite right is also the converse: a totality must precede any particular observation. There must be some criterion for extracting the fact from variety of data. We need some previous hypothesis just to pay an attention for the fact that is going to be then explained. Thus, scientific discourse develops in a circle: from hypotheses to facts and from facts to hypotheses. It is obvious, that it is not a vicious circle. However, the circular structure of a discourse demonstrates that a question about an initial point of scientific knowledge has no sense. Experience cannot be such an initial point (as empiricists say) because any experience is possible only under some previous general conditions. General hypotheses, postulates or conventions, however, cannot be an initial point either, because the very acceptance of these hypotheses and postulates has any sense if they allow dealing with some facts (e.g. explaining them). Scientific discourse, therefore, always begins “from the midst”. It has no an absolute beginning.

The second character of scientific discourse is that it is never predetermined. Process of forming hypotheses makes the discourse in some degree uncertain. No hypothesis can be derived from observed facts with necessity. It always is a kind of a guess and so presupposes a creative act. A hypothesis is something new; it is some increment to a previously developed discourse. A supervention of this is a risk of a mistake. A threat of corroboration always exists for each hypothesis. It cannot be completely determined by the previous discourse and so an alternative hypothesis is always possible. Hence, hypothesizing implies an act of a responsible choice.

All that means that scientific discourse has a subjective character. The fact that the forming a hypothesis is a creative and responsible act, implies that there must be that one who makes the act. In other words, scientific discourse is impossible without a subject of this discourse. However, the subject has little in common with the transcendental subject of classic philosophy. His acts, as distinct from acts of the transcendental subject, are performed only in frames of communication and have meaning only as publicly interpreted. The subject of scientific discourse exists only as a member of community. His act of hypothesizing is responsible as any openly made, public act. The subject, developing the scientific discourse, pretends his subjective hypothesis to be accepted by community as scientific law.

Let us consider now the other aspect of the discourse and try to describe an act of understanding. An understanding of a speech act in direct communication as well as an understanding of a written text is possible when the speech act or the text are formed in accordance with rules, shared by the community. Here we meet the problem, which was first formulated by Wittgenstein. That is the problem of following a rule. A rule (as Wittgenstein demonstrates) cannot be general instruction that beforehand includes all situations of its use. Rule exists as a row of examples of communicative behavior. Knowing the rule means an ability to continue the row by means of performing proper communicative act in a situation that is similar to the previous ones. Certainly, nobody keeps in mind various rows of examples. Experience of communication forms a custom to copy these examples in proper situation. However, no custom could be universal. Here we face with the difficulty rather similar to one, described by Hume. One never knows exactly, which of his customs is valid in a new communicative situation or even whether all his customs are valid at all. In other words, one never knows what row of examples is to be continued now and what continuation is appropriate.

Therefore, every member of community faces with the necessity of forming hypotheses in process of communication. No rule can be ever exactly determined, but one has to guess what it could be. Thus, all that is said above about scientific hypothesis is valid about the rule of communication. The following characters of communicative activity so, are to be discussed: circular structure, risk of misunderstanding and subjectivity. Circular structure of communication is well known in hermeneutics as the circle of understanding or hermeneutic circle. Traditionally it consists in the fact that before understanding the whole it is necessary to understand parts, but it is impossible to understand any part without previous understanding the whole. This is the problem that appears when we consider following the rule in communication. The rule, as we consider before, exists as a row of examples. Therefore, understanding the rule is possible only under the condition of previous understanding of particular examples. But, on the other hand, any example has no sense without understanding the rule, which example it is.

For further consideration it is useful to remember traditional approach to the problem of hermeneutic circle. Schleiermacher in his studies in the hermeneutics of text found that there is something mystical in the process of understanding. It is possible only as a result of some illumination that gives comprehending the meaning of the whole before understanding parts. This comprehension is, however, only previous one. It allows then understanding parts and on the base of this understanding another comprehension of the whole is possible. These steps of understanding (from the whole to parts and then again to the whole) may be repeated not once, and next step would reveal more exact and deep meaning of the text then previous one.

This approach is as well valid for the following the rule in communication. We must first note that the act, which Schleiermacher described as an illumination, is a hypothesizing. No particular act of communication can be performed without a kind of guess about the general rule, to which the act is submitted. An example of communicative behavior can be interpreted if there already exists a hypothesis about the rule. In particular the understanding the example implies a way of its reproduction and ability to identify any situation when the reproduction is valid. However, we cannot consider some “general vision” as an absolute initial point of understanding. Communicative process begins neither from rules nor from particular acts of communication. It implies both and so we are always in the midst of communication. Thus, the question about the beginning of communication is quite alike the above considered question about the beginning of scientific discourse.

The fact, that rules of communication are hypotheses, implies risk of misunderstanding in each act of communication. The problem of following the rule is the direct effect of this risk. Communicative situation is ever quite uncertain. Hence, the act of communication is an act of a responsible choice. Everyone, who is involved in the process of communication, has to perform this act of choice and assume the responsibility for its result. It is important, that, as well as the scientific discourse, the communicative process has subjective character. Community is not just milieu, in which the events of communication occur. It is very essential, that community consists of subjects, i.e. those who are able to make a free responsible act. It is essential also, that such an act is not a private matter of a member of community. The responsibility is implied by its public character. We demonstrated before, that scientific hypothesis that is, on one hand, the result of subjective activity, pretends, on the other hand, to be an expression of scientific law. One, who formed the hypothesis, believes that scientific community will assume it and use for the further research activity. This, however, concerns every communicative act. It pretends to be an expression of general rule. One, who performed the act, believes that community will accept it as an example to follow. As distinct from the case of scientific hypothesis, however, this belief is not always conscious. Nevertheless such a belief must be considered as a principle of communication. There is no use to perform an act, which is not considered as an expression of general rule. In other words, every communicative act must be considered (by the subject, performs the act) as an example for the whole community. Here is an interesting analogy with Kantian ethics. The proposition that we formulated just now is quite similar to categorical imperative. The last demands that every moral act must correspond to the principle, which can be considered as the universal law. In other words, moral act pretends to be the universal example. The moral subject behaves that way, which he believes everyone must behave in this situation. Communicative behavior presupposes the same. The subject of communication performs such a communicative act, which every member of community must perform in this communicative situation. The scientific discourse, as our considerations show, is submitted to similar condition. The hypothesis, which one forms as a product of his subjective activity, must have an objective meaning. One who makes the hypothesis must believe it will be accepted by everyone.