The other day I briefly discussed the difference between theory and phenomenology. Husserl was, in certain ways, right at the cusp of what tends to separate Analytic from Continental philosophy. The difference, and what leads to the parting of ways, might be viewed as the different ways Frege was applied. I don't want to get into that discussion just yet. Let's just say that the main difference between the two tendencies is the difference between a focus on predication and on perception. Unless you keep that difference in mind, a lot of the discussions will be confusing or misleading. (And will lead to the unfortunate tendency to cry "relativism" or worse). What I wish to touch on today though is where those differences "meet" somewhat. In the question of intersubjectivity.
One way (among many) to look at Husserl is to see him as adopting a kind of Platonism that attempts to avoid being Platonism. That is, he wants to have objective "forms" of experience yet avoid having them be eternal forms outside of this world. The reason this is important is that Husserl wants to be able to get at the ultimate elements of experience we have. But he wants those experiences to be shared. That is, my experience of red can't be different from your experience of red. For them to be the same though, there must be this intersubjectivity, otherwise one really is led towards adopting something like Platonism.
The way, as I understand him, that he attempts to do this might be familiar to those who've studied Armstrong and his notion of universals. (If you're not, just ignore that comment) The idea is that when an experience is instantiated, it can be communicated or potentially communicated. For Husserl this possibility is more important than the actual issue of whether they are communicated. As he says,
...one must pay attention to the fact that a possible transcendental subjectivity in general is not merely understood as a possible singular but rather also as a possible communicative subjectivity, and primarily as one such that purely according to consciousness, that is to say, through possible intersubjective acts of consciousness, it encloses together into a possible allness a multiplicity of individual transcendental subjects. ("Kant and the Idea of Transcendental Philosophy", quoted in Moran, 176. Emphasis mine.)
Without going into too many details (this is just a blog post after all), one should be able to quickly see that Husserl establishes an opposition between the empirical real worldly and some other ideal meaning that is shared. One can, without much difficulty, see the parallel to language. We have words, but in many views, there is a meaning behind any individual instantiation of the words. Thus the written word "cat" can be written many ways, in different places, and even in different styles (fonts, calligraphy, encodings, etc.) yet the meaning of the word is the same.
Now I think one can quickly see that Husserl thus has a system analogous to what we find in Analytic philosophy and language where we have propositions as the meaning carriers of individual words. The difference is that for Husserl, as we mentioned, we aren't focused on correspondence or predication but on a kind of experience or perception. But that analogy is very important, and gets into how linguistics are viewed in the Continental tradition I feel. (An important thing to keep in mind when reading, for instance, Derrida's critique of Austin and Searle)
When Derrida comes onto the scene to criticize Husserl, he takes as his text part of Husserl's The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology called The Origin of Geometry. It is a nice little text on mathematical phenomena that can be considered an adequate representation of Husserl's mature thought. (His early thought is, in my mind, kind of contradictory and loose and evolves considerably until Crisis)
The question becomes how this intrasubjectivity has an origin with the first thinker. That is how mathematical objects are the same for all who think of them, yet only come to exist with the first person to think of them. In this text it is writing that Husserl says makes this possible. Not necessarily actual writing, but as we said earlier, possible writing.
Derrida's critique (which I'll not go into depth on) basically consists of a recognition that Husserl prioritizes the empirical origin over writing. That is, the first thinking of the mathematical object is more important than its writing. Without going into the close argument for why, Derrida reverses this, arguing that writing is privileged over this "origin." Further he argues that this is a tendency in philosophy as a whole going back to Plato. Put in the analogous form to our Analytic philosophy of language, rather than first considering meaning with writing or representation as secondary, we have writing not meaning as first. Our attempts to find an "ideal meaning" whether in predication as propositions or in phenomenology as a transcendental consciousness is mistaken. The implication of this then is what is termed unlimited semiosis - signs are always a mediation and never end. (Something we've discussed relative to Peirce, a philosopher Derrida appeals to explicitly in his most mature formulation of his thought in On Grammatology)
Ultimately the critique Derrida (and others) make of Husserl is whether the ideal and the empirical (worldy, actual, immanent - whatever word you choose) can meet the way Husserl wants. Husserl wants to have that meeting but Derrida (correctly I feel) shows Husserl's arguments to fail. The implication (and this is why it is important) is that all attempts to do this, which are common in philosophy, fail. This is why Derrida, Heidegger, and others, tend to make a move in thinking through this ideal/actual or transcendent/immanent meeting in terms of Kierkegaard. (And I'll not go into that right now) Most interesting, in this work on Husserl and mathematics, Derrida does this by a discussion of Godel.
Clark,
Thanks for your posts on phenomenology. They have been very informative for me and have interested me in the topic of phenomenology. Please keep nice posts like these coming (assuming that you have the time to do so).
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
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