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Intersubjectivity and transcendental idealism
440
Book Reviews
his book suffers from his evidently patchy knowledge of contemporary European philosophy. It is particularly regrettable that his critique doesn’t extend beyond positivism and existentialism to encompass the works of Derrida and Foucault, for instance, since both refute the recuperative ideal of rational discourse which he proposes and because his book cannot serve its (presumably) intended cultural purpose if it is at least two generations behind the contemporary forms of the problems it purports to dissolve. Despite this and its facile although deeply eloquent ‘resolution’, Crosby’s book is worthy of attention for the clarity and detail of its analyses of the epistemic background to modern nihilism. John Graham Dublin City University
Intersubjectivity and Transcendental Idealism, James Richard Mensch, SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy (New York, State University of New York Press, 1988), ix+430 pp., $44.50, cloth, $14.95, paper. This text, one in the five SUNY series in Continental Philosophy, tackles head on one of the most difficult and intractable problems facing Husserl in the later development of his phenomenology-the problem of intersubjectivity. In doing so, it goes beyond what is the locus classicus for this problem, the Cartesian Meditations, seeks to reconstruct, on the basis of a close exegesis of unpublished Husserlian manuscripts from the 193Os, an account of this philosophical problem and the outlines of a solution to it. Its success must be judged, then, from the standpoint of fidelity to the Husserlian enterprise of reduction to the transcendental ego and the positing of transcendental idealism as the only framework within which to do phenomenology. At the outset, Mensch gives an excellent account in his Introduction of the development of Husserl’s phenomenology-from the ‘realism’ of the Logical Investigations to the turn towards transcendental idealism from Ideas 1 onward. It should be noted that Mensch gives an uncompromisingly ‘metaphysical idealist’ account of Husserl’s turn, rejecting the attempts to see Husserl as using a methodological or epistemological idealism that has no necessary metaphysical implication. Thus, while a realist account seeks to make knowing dependent on being, Mensch sees Husserl as insisting that ‘the world’s existence.. is an existence posterior to, indeed dependent on consciousness’ (p.2). Thus, if an object’s being depends upon ‘its being given to consciousness’ (p. 3), the problem of how to posit subjective being in general and other egos in particular becomes a crucial test for phenomenology. Mensch’s account of Husserl’s turn to the transcendental ego is presented as a consequence of his anti-scepticism and of his demand that the reduction be carried out on the temporal subject as well as on the objects of knowledge. But if indeed there is ‘nothing outside the experience of consciousness’ (p. 3), then Husserl’s own question in Cartesian Meditations becomes paramount: When I, the meditating ego, reduce myself to my absolute, transcendental ego by means of the phenomenological epoche, am I not become a solus ipse and do I not remain such as long as I carry out a consistent self-explication under the name of phenomenology? Should not (such) a phenomenology . be branded, therefore, as a transcendental solipcism?
441
Book Reviews
Mensch attempts to meet this challenge. He examines the answer given by Husserl in Cartesian Meditations and finds it wanting. Husserl, in a series of difficult and convoluted arguments, sought to ground the givenness of others in the givenness of an intersubjective world. Mensch sees this as involving a petitio principii since, though we are supposed to suspend belief in the thesis of an intersubjective world, we must nevertheless assume a world of shared meanings with others than myself. Here Mensch’s insistence that the transcendental turn in phenomenology takes the constitutive process as fundamental means that Husserl cannot on these terms avoid transcendental solipcism. Mensch constructs his answer to this problem from the unpublished Husserlian manuscripts. It consists of a determined pursuit of the transcendental reduction, not to a finite, individually existing subject, but to an egoless streaming of pure or absolute experiences. ‘Both the acting ego and its surrounding world, which appears through its acts, are passively constituted by the stream in its factually given relations.’ (p. 149) Within this, intersubjective harmony is implicit in that self-transcendence points to the other. Mensch believes that this first answer is unsatisfactory and, via a complex chain of argument, seeks to deepen the reduction still further to the dimension of the temporality of conscious life, to ‘(the absolute’s) presence as a pure, temporal process’ (p. 206). This answer is constructed almost entirely from the manuscripts, and has at times a distinctly Sartrean ring about it. It seeks to resolve the paradox of a plurality of egos, each claiming to be a uniquely singular ground of all being and has important things to say about temporality, reason, freedom and even God. He quotes Husserl as identifying God with the logos. ‘God thus externalizes himself in an infinite series of self-reflections. . . In the process of this development, he splits himself, as it were, into a plurality of finite human subjects. His freedom, the freedom of his absolute self-determination, becomes their personal freedom’ (quoted p. 369). This is a heroic attempt to save intersubjectivity. Much of the problematic, however, stems from an uncompromisingly metaphysical-idealist account of the phenomenological reductions. Similarly Mensch sees Husserlian constitution as phenomenological explanation rather than, as for Carr or Sokolowski, for example, merely descriptive. The strength of the book lies in its attempt to think through to the bitter end this most intractable problem for a certain tradition of phenomenology. Husserl experts will welcome this account of Husserl’s late and as yet largely unpublished thought. It is doubtful whether the text succeeds in giving a successful philosophical treatment of the world of intersubjectivity. Terence
M. O’Keeffe
University of Ulster
Hobbes: War Among Nations, ed. Timo Airaksinen Aldershot: Gower, 1989), viii + 197 pp., E29.50.
and Martin A. Bertman
(Averbury,
This book is a collection of papers from a conference at the University of Helsinki in May 1987 which was devoted to the question of ‘whether World Government can be justified on the basis of the principles of Thomas Hobbes?’ It was an awkward question to have asked, since Hobbes (pace Bernard Wilims) does not take the enquirer very far as to the nature of international relations, and was evidently far from thinking that a world
Book Reviews
his book suffers from his evidently patchy knowledge of contemporary European philosophy. It is particularly regrettable that his critique doesn’t extend beyond positivism and existentialism to encompass the works of Derrida and Foucault, for instance, since both refute the recuperative ideal of rational discourse which he proposes and because his book cannot serve its (presumably) intended cultural purpose if it is at least two generations behind the contemporary forms of the problems it purports to dissolve. Despite this and its facile although deeply eloquent ‘resolution’, Crosby’s book is worthy of attention for the clarity and detail of its analyses of the epistemic background to modern nihilism. John Graham Dublin City University
Intersubjectivity and Transcendental Idealism, James Richard Mensch, SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy (New York, State University of New York Press, 1988), ix+430 pp., $44.50, cloth, $14.95, paper. This text, one in the five SUNY series in Continental Philosophy, tackles head on one of the most difficult and intractable problems facing Husserl in the later development of his phenomenology-the problem of intersubjectivity. In doing so, it goes beyond what is the locus classicus for this problem, the Cartesian Meditations, seeks to reconstruct, on the basis of a close exegesis of unpublished Husserlian manuscripts from the 193Os, an account of this philosophical problem and the outlines of a solution to it. Its success must be judged, then, from the standpoint of fidelity to the Husserlian enterprise of reduction to the transcendental ego and the positing of transcendental idealism as the only framework within which to do phenomenology. At the outset, Mensch gives an excellent account in his Introduction of the development of Husserl’s phenomenology-from the ‘realism’ of the Logical Investigations to the turn towards transcendental idealism from Ideas 1 onward. It should be noted that Mensch gives an uncompromisingly ‘metaphysical idealist’ account of Husserl’s turn, rejecting the attempts to see Husserl as using a methodological or epistemological idealism that has no necessary metaphysical implication. Thus, while a realist account seeks to make knowing dependent on being, Mensch sees Husserl as insisting that ‘the world’s existence.. is an existence posterior to, indeed dependent on consciousness’ (p.2). Thus, if an object’s being depends upon ‘its being given to consciousness’ (p. 3), the problem of how to posit subjective being in general and other egos in particular becomes a crucial test for phenomenology. Mensch’s account of Husserl’s turn to the transcendental ego is presented as a consequence of his anti-scepticism and of his demand that the reduction be carried out on the temporal subject as well as on the objects of knowledge. But if indeed there is ‘nothing outside the experience of consciousness’ (p. 3), then Husserl’s own question in Cartesian Meditations becomes paramount: When I, the meditating ego, reduce myself to my absolute, transcendental ego by means of the phenomenological epoche, am I not become a solus ipse and do I not remain such as long as I carry out a consistent self-explication under the name of phenomenology? Should not (such) a phenomenology . be branded, therefore, as a transcendental solipcism?
441
Book Reviews
Mensch attempts to meet this challenge. He examines the answer given by Husserl in Cartesian Meditations and finds it wanting. Husserl, in a series of difficult and convoluted arguments, sought to ground the givenness of others in the givenness of an intersubjective world. Mensch sees this as involving a petitio principii since, though we are supposed to suspend belief in the thesis of an intersubjective world, we must nevertheless assume a world of shared meanings with others than myself. Here Mensch’s insistence that the transcendental turn in phenomenology takes the constitutive process as fundamental means that Husserl cannot on these terms avoid transcendental solipcism. Mensch constructs his answer to this problem from the unpublished Husserlian manuscripts. It consists of a determined pursuit of the transcendental reduction, not to a finite, individually existing subject, but to an egoless streaming of pure or absolute experiences. ‘Both the acting ego and its surrounding world, which appears through its acts, are passively constituted by the stream in its factually given relations.’ (p. 149) Within this, intersubjective harmony is implicit in that self-transcendence points to the other. Mensch believes that this first answer is unsatisfactory and, via a complex chain of argument, seeks to deepen the reduction still further to the dimension of the temporality of conscious life, to ‘(the absolute’s) presence as a pure, temporal process’ (p. 206). This answer is constructed almost entirely from the manuscripts, and has at times a distinctly Sartrean ring about it. It seeks to resolve the paradox of a plurality of egos, each claiming to be a uniquely singular ground of all being and has important things to say about temporality, reason, freedom and even God. He quotes Husserl as identifying God with the logos. ‘God thus externalizes himself in an infinite series of self-reflections. . . In the process of this development, he splits himself, as it were, into a plurality of finite human subjects. His freedom, the freedom of his absolute self-determination, becomes their personal freedom’ (quoted p. 369). This is a heroic attempt to save intersubjectivity. Much of the problematic, however, stems from an uncompromisingly metaphysical-idealist account of the phenomenological reductions. Similarly Mensch sees Husserlian constitution as phenomenological explanation rather than, as for Carr or Sokolowski, for example, merely descriptive. The strength of the book lies in its attempt to think through to the bitter end this most intractable problem for a certain tradition of phenomenology. Husserl experts will welcome this account of Husserl’s late and as yet largely unpublished thought. It is doubtful whether the text succeeds in giving a successful philosophical treatment of the world of intersubjectivity. Terence
M. O’Keeffe
University of Ulster
Hobbes: War Among Nations, ed. Timo Airaksinen Aldershot: Gower, 1989), viii + 197 pp., E29.50.
and Martin A. Bertman
(Averbury,
This book is a collection of papers from a conference at the University of Helsinki in May 1987 which was devoted to the question of ‘whether World Government can be justified on the basis of the principles of Thomas Hobbes?’ It was an awkward question to have asked, since Hobbes (pace Bernard Wilims) does not take the enquirer very far as to the nature of international relations, and was evidently far from thinking that a world