richard holmes

IS TRANSCENDENTAL PHENOMENOLOGY COMMITTED TO IDEALISM?

There are several ways one can make an appraisal of Husserl's turn to transcendental phenomenology. One way would be to look at some of the implications of this turn, such as, whether Husserl is thereby prevented from answering certain philosophical questions. Taking this course here, I treat one of the implications that appears when one critically examines the transcendental turn, namely that Husserl's philosophy is idealistic. This is an implication that many critics of transcendental phenomenology have alleged is philosophically intolerable and requires modification or abandon-ment of Husserl's transcendental turn. Important to this task is the distinc-tion between what I shall call "epistemological idealism" and "metaphysical idealism". As I detail later, epistemological idealism can be characterized as the thesis that consciousness is the sole medium of access to whatever is seen as actually or possibly existing and "metaphysical idealism" can be charac-terized as including the additional thesis that consciousness creates whatever actually or possibly exists and what exists is dependent on it. It is my con-tention that Husserl's transcendental phenomenology, which he labels trans-cendental idealism, is epistemologically idealistic but metaphysically neutral. Also I contend that metaphysical neutrality is not a deficiency of his philoso-phy but that such is the necessary conclusion of any philosophy that success-fully adheres to the policy of describing, explicating and accepting all objectivities only as they present themselves to the consciousness of them, and in terms of the consciousness of them.

There are several reasons why I think it important to treat this question about Husserl's idealism. One is that Husserl never developed a systematic account of the kind of idealism to which transcendental phenomenology is committed. There are scattered brief discussions, some of which I examine below, but there is no extensive treatment of the question. Another reason is that it may seem to anyone who is trying to understand Husserl's phe-nomenology that he has worked himself into an idealistic corner and that, whether or not he wanted this result, he is committed to maintaining that consciousness creates all that exists and what exists is dependent on it. Also, many writers within the area of phenomenology have been unwilling to accept Husserl's transcendental phenomenology because, they argue, he

IS HUSSERL COMMITTED TO IDEALISM? 99

is thereby committed to a metaphysical idealism; that he has made an un-justified metaphysical decision that rules out the possibility of the existence of the real world. Finally, I believe that this discussion will bring out some important points about the nature of the transcendental phenomenological reduction.

1. Some Criticisms of Husserl's Idealism Before proceeding, I will detail some of the criticisms. This description

is not meant to encompass all objections to transcendental phenomenology with respect to its kind of idealism, rather I want only to indicate some representatives of the types of objections that have been made, thereby determining why many philosophers, even followers of Husserl, cannot accept, or have serious reservations about, his transcendental turn.1

Theodor Celms, a student of Husserl in Freiburg, wrote a monograph on Husserl's phenomenological idealism in which he developed the claim that Husserl's idealism is metaphysical and spiritualistic.2 Celms claimed that Husserl dissolves the reality of the world into the reality of consciousness; that is, he dissolves transcendent temporal existence into immanent temporal existence.3 Also he said that Husserl's problem of immanent constitution is the problem of metaphysical constitution.4 Celms is basically concerned about the fact that Husserl cannot avoid giving metaphysical answers to problems, even the problems of the constitution of various senses of objects in immanent temporality. In effect he is saying that Husserl at least retains the metaphysical presupposition that consciousness itself is an absolute, that it exists, and that thereby Husserl, in investigating constitution in the im-manent realm is really investigating the metaphysical origins of all being. Celms thinks that Husserl cannot avoid saying that the consciousness which remains after the phenomenological reduction is a metaphysically posited entity and that he cannot specify the relation between this consciousness and consciousness as in the world, or that he can do so only in terms of the metaphysical priority of the former. In short, Celms believes it impossible to make the transcendental turn and remain metaphysically neutral.

Roman Ingarden, also a student of Husserl, has written many important and original works in the field of phenomenology. Also, he is one of Husserl's major critics with respect to Husserl's transcendental idealism.5 Some specific criticisms are given in an appendix to the Cartesianische Meditatiorten,6 in which he states that Husserl equates without justification the natural existence of the world and the world which is grasped by me. Ingarden says that Husserl now is prevented from making judgments about

100 RICHARD H. HOLMES

whether the world has any other being apart from that which is "seen" by me. Thus, Husserl is making a

metaphysical decision . . . which is equivalent to a categorical thesis about something which is not an element of transcendental subjectivity.7

His basic contention is similar to Celms's, that is, Husserl has, in spite of his saying the contrary, made metaphysical decisions regarding what actually exists, in particular he is committed to the actual existence of consciousness and the nonactual existence of a world which is autonomous and is inde-pendent of consciousness.

One of the most outstanding contemporary French phenomenologists, Paul Ricoeur, maintains that Husserl, particularly in the Cartesian Medita-tions, ignores the difference and vacillates between the two senses of the objective world as existing for me (fur mich), and as existing from me (aus mir). He quotes the following sentences to show this vacillation:

The objective world which exists for me (fur mich), which has existed or will exist for me, this objective world with all of its objects in me, draws from me (aus mir selbst) all of its sense and all of the existential status that it has for me.8

Ricoeur says that by not differentiating these two senses of the world Husserl has made a "metaphysical" decision.

This decision consists in saying that there is no other dimension of the being of the world than the dimension of its being for me, and there is no other set of problems than the transcendental one.9

The basic concern of Ricoeur, and many others, is that by making the transcendental turn Husserl has made it impossible to adequately and ac-curately describe and explicate the character of the world as existing inde-pendently of any consciousness of it. A metaphysical decision appears to have been made which prevents Husserl from ever explicating any other dimension of the being of the world, which means that Husserl is stuck with a metaphysical idealism. Implicit in this, and in most critcisms of Husserl in this respect, is the belief that when one tries to determine whether objects and the world actually exist independently of any consciousness of them, or even give a complete account of this existential sense, the answer will already be predetermined by having made the transcendental turn. Or, to put it another way, if one makes the transcendental turn, and does so consistently and permanently he is thereby committed to a certain metaphysical position.


However, I believe it can be shown that within transcendental phenom-enology, Husserl does not and could not answer such metaphysical questions about the actual metaphysical status of various entities, and that he was not interested in doing so. Moreover, I think that metaphysics, in this sense of determining what exists independently of consciousness, is not only outside of the realm of transcendental phenomenology but must remain so, and that the criticisms made of Husserl about his idealism miss the whole point of his phenomenology. Before I elaborate this contention and also try to determine whether Husserl can and does maintain such metaphysical neutrality, I first examine some of Husserl's various writings on idealism to determine his avowed position.

In what follows I do not address myself to the question of whether metaphysical idealism is an untenable position or implies absurd conse-quences. Since my contention is that Husserl's transcendental turn does not imply metaphysical idealism, I do not treat this question. Also, epistemological idealism, as it is developed below, does not need to be defended as a tenable position independently of showing it, as I believe I do, to be nothing more than the systematic explication of what is presented in experience as presented. In other words, a consistent and systematic development of the theory of intentionality and the methodological principle of accepting only that which is presented as it itself, "in person," yields a philosophy which is epistemologically idealistic. All that is meant here by "idealism" is that objectivities are studied as presented, and only as presented, to the con-sciousness of them. Moreover, it is not clear what one would mean by a phenomenology that was epistemologically realistic while being meta-physically neutral. Such a phenomenology could not be different from what is here called epistemological idealism without rejecting the basic principles of phenomenology. Thus, I am not concerned with showing that epistemological idealism in Husserl's sense is tenable, but with showing that Husserl's phenomenology is only epistemologically idealistic, and is metaphysically neutral. This does not mean that I have justified the under-lying presupposition of phenomenology, and perhaps that of philosophy in general, namely that the task is to describe and explicate all objectivities, in the broadest sense of "objectivities."

2. Husserl's Conception of His Idealism Primarily I will be characterizing what I call the epistemological idealism

of Husserl, differentiating it from metaphysical idealism on the basis of an exposition of some of his writings on idealism. At the same time I will


develop an answer to the question of whether the turn to transcendental phenomenology, and the considerations which lead one to it, actually necessitate this epistemological idealism.

Husserl's own explicit avowal of idealism, even in the sense I detail later, did not come until well after Ideas, published in 1913.10 However, as will be illustrated in what follows, this idealism is certainly implicit in the theses espoused by Husserl in the Ideas and his writings after this. His first explicit statement of phenomenological idealism appears to have been made in the London Lectures which he gave in 1922.11 More detailed statements about idealism can be found in the Formal and Transcendental Logic, of 1929, the Preface to the English Edition of the Ideas, written in 1931, and Cartesian Meditations, of 1931.1 begin my evaluation of Husserl's idealism by looking at Husserl's most systematic and explicit defense and explanation of his idealism as it appears in the above mentioned Preface.

[ l ] Phenomenological idealism does not deny the actual existence of the real (realen) world (and primarily of Nature), as if it meant, that the world which underlies, although unnoticed, the natural thinking and that of the positive sciences was an illusion. [2] Its only task and accomplish-ment is to clarify the sense of this world, precisely the sense, in which everyone accepts it, and with genuine right accepts it, as actually existing (wirkhch seiende). [3] That the world exists, that it is given as an existing universe in an experience which is continuous and always fits together in universal consonance, that is completely indubitable. [4] It is entirely something else to understand this indubitability which is carried by this life and positive science, and to clarify its justification. [5] In this respect it is a philosophical fundamental, from the discussions in the text of the Ideas, that the continuous progression of experience in this form of uni-versal agreement is a mere presumption, even if legitimately valid, and that accordingly the non-existence of the world, always remains thinkable, while up to and now the world is actually and harmoniously experienced. [6] The result of the phenomenological clarification of the sense of the mode of being of the real world, and of a conceivable real world in gen-eral, is that only the transcendental subjectivity has the existential sense (Seinssinn) of absolute being, that only it is "non-relative" (that is, relative only to itself), while the real world exists to be sure, however it has an essential relativity to the transcendental subjectivity, since it can have its sense as existing only as the sense construct (Sinngebilde) of transcendental subjectivity.12

As I show in the following analysis, Husserl is here trying to defend his phenomenological idealism, or what he calls in other contexts "trans-


cendental idealism." To this end I think he is trying to differentiate between what I call epistemological idealism and metaphysical idealism, although he is mainly explaining his own kind of idealism. In the first sentence of the above quotation, Husserl maintains that his philosophy does not deny the "actual existence of the real world." The world as actually existing is not doubted or believed to be an illusion. There is no metaphysical commit-ment made and none is expected to be made on the basis of the phenom-enological investigation. Rather, the transcendental turn has been taken and the general thesis of the natural attitude is suspended; I suspend my previously unquestioned belief that the world and its objects exist and I take an attitude of neutrality with respect to what I believe and accept, and the believing and accepting itself. This suspension does not mean that I no longer believe this "thesis", rather that it too is presented as intended and must be described and explicated as any other intending and its inten-tional object. The fact that the world, and all objects given as "in" it, is presented as existing out there independently of my perception of it is not questioned, nor is it taken for granted that because it is so presented that it must exist as such.

Instead, as the second sentence of the above quotation says, the phe-nomenologist is attempting to clarify this sense of the world as actually existing. For example, the glass of wine I am now perceiving is presented with the sense of existing independently of my perceiving it; if I leave it on the counter by the sink, after making sure it is empty, I expect it to be there in the morning needing to be washed, and I believe that it will have been there all night more or less the same as when I left it. This exis-tential sense requires description and explication just as do the characteristics of the wine as pleasant and relaxing. The point is that all objects in the world and all of our beliefs and judgments concerning them as well, are to be studied as the intentional objects of the conscious processes which intend them. Thus, these objects, including beliefs, judgments and so forth, are now taken as the present themselves with the particular determinations that they present themselves as having. Included in these presented determinations is the existential sense with which each object is presented in the natural attitude. This existential sense is preserved under the phenomenological reduction, only now it is studied and accepted merely as meant, as it is intended in the acts of consciousness of it without implying that it exists.18 Husserl says that the sense of actually existing is accepted by everyone with "genuine right," a statement which may imply that Husserl is interested in and perhaps believes he can provide a justification for this acceptance. How-


ever, I think that "acceptance with genuine right" must be read as a sense of the world. The world is accepted by everyone as actually existing and they do so with genuine right because of the nature of their experience of it. The next sentence indicates some further aspects of this experience.

In the third sentence Husserl spells out what he takes to be the presented sense of the world which is not doubted. The world is presented as an exist-ing universe throughout any experience of it, and these experiences are continuous and coherent with each other. By this Husserl means both that any individual's experiences are continuous and coherent, and that the ex-periences of all consciousnesses are continuous and coherent taken as a whole; they "fit together in universal consonance." This does not mean that we all agree on whether or not each and every part or aspect of this world exists. Rather, Husserl means that the general background of the world, and the world in which we find ourselves, the world-about-us, is believed in and accepted as existing. This world is not only a world of facts, or natural objects, but a world of values, of cultural objects, of practical objects as well. The specifics of this world may change, or we may change our minds about what we accept of them, but the world in general remains this world-about-us which we unquestionably believe to exist and to which we belong. Thus, there is corresponding to the continuous and coherent experi-ence of the world a world which is presented with the sense of being coherent and above all as actually existing.

In the fourth sentence Husserl points out that his task, of sense clari-fication, is something different from providing justification for the beliefs and acceptances, that is, different from proving that an acceptance of the world as actually existing is metaphysically justified. Transcendental phen-omenology cannot enter into such discussions of justification since the transcendental turn is a suspension of the natural belief that the world and its objects exist. Whether or not such metaphysical neutrality always can and must be maintained is another question, one which I discuss later, but for now it is enough to see that transcendental phenomenology is meta-physically neutral. The problem for Husserl is to clarify this justification, which means to determine how the experiences of the world and the pre-sented senses of this world fit together to form an experience of the world which has the sense of actually existing.

It is in the next sentence, the fifth, that the crucial statements are made. Here Husserl is saying that the nonexistence, meaning the actual metaphysical nonexistence, of the world is thinkable even though the continuous and coherent experiences are believed in and accepted as experiences of an actually


existing world. This is 'so because the experiences are experiences of some-thing which is believqd and accepted as existing, but this does not prove that what is accepted as existing, and so believed to exist, does actually exist, in the sense of existing independently of any actual or possible experi-ence of it. The belief that the world exists is legitimate insofar as it is based on a continuous and coherent set of experiences, but that does not tell us whether this belief is true in the sense that the world actually exists.

Whether or not the world actually exists is not in question for the phenomenologist since he has made the transcendental turn and is suspend-ing, or putting out of action, the general thesis of the natural attitude. He has taken an attitude of neutrality to the metaphysical question about the existence or nonexistence of the world, either in the past, present or future. Instead his task is to determine the status of this sense of existence with which the world is presented.

It should be noted that Husserl is not involved in saying that there are any existents other than the intentional conscious occurrences and their objects as intended. In fact, he does not even say that these occurrences and their objects exist, meaning that there is an identification of actual metaphysical existence with the existence of these processes and their objects.

It is in the sixth long sentence that the results of this phenomenological clarification of the sense of existence of the world are indicated. The phe-nomenologist finds that all objects in the broadest sense which includes the intentional conscious occurrences as in the world, are relative to the con-sciousness of them, to the transcendental consciousness or subjectivity. "Relative to" could mean that the objects are dependent on consciousness of them in that they are created by, or owe whatever existence they have, to transcendental consciousness. Given this interpretation it is easy to see how Husserl could be thought to be a metaphysical idealist. He would be claim-ing that all that actually or possibly exists is relative to and dependent upon, consciousness. However, to interpret "relative to" in this way would be to forget that this claim was made after having taken the transcendental turn. After taking this turn claims about the existence of something are no longer believed and accepted, rather these claims are explicated as claims. This means that the sense of actually existing that the real world is presented as having is not accepted either as evidence for or against the actual meta-physical status of the real world. The same is true of all objects including conscious occurrences which are presented as in the world. Instead, these existential senses are investigated as they present themselves to consciousness; they are senses for a consciousness. These senses are relative to conscious-


ness since they are constructed, or constituted, by consciousness through its synthetic functioning. Constitution is not a creation of sense out of nothing. Yet it is not a creation of sense out of something meaning some entities, data, or the like which are actually existing elements of the world. Rather, it is the production of sense through the synthetic functioning of conscious-ness, for example, as occurs when several intendings and what is intended as intended are synthesized and the sense of the object as remaining the same throughout a period of time is constituted.14 This is not to say that a sense so constructed is not, or can not, be a sense of existing independently of an actual or possible consciousness. It is only to say that due to the nature of the transcendental turn and the realization that consciousness is the sole mode of access to everything that is or can possibly be known the various senses of all objects can be described only as they present themselves and only as presented to consciousness. The senses are essentially relative to consciousness; they are not absolutes in themselves, they are senses for consciousness. There is no sense independently of some actual or possible consciousness.15 Thus the result that these existential senses are relative to consciousness says nothing about the metaphysical status of objects which are presented as existing independently of consciousness, nor is the task of the phenomenological clarification to say anything about actual meta-physical existence.

Moreover, to say that only transcendental subjectivity has the existential sense of absolute being is not to say that it therefore actually exists, or that we have found at least one metaphysical existent with which we can populate the universe.16 As Husserl says explicitly, transcendental subjectivity has the existential sense of absolute being. Its existential sense is that it is relative only to itself. This does not mean that because something has the existential sense of absolute being that it therefore actually exists any more than the sense of the world as existing independently of any actual or possible experience of it means that the world actually exists in this way. Again, the whole point of the transcendental turn is to suspend such metaphysical beliefs and concerns and concentrate on describing and explicating the various senses and the intentional conscious processes in which they are presented as presented; this is all that is available to the phenomenologist.

It is this second meaning of "relative to," which all the senses of all objects have, that indicates what I am calling epistemological idealism. It is a direct consequence of having made the methodological move here called the transcendental turn. Whether this transcendental turn can be, or can remain to be, metaphysically neutral as I interpret Husserl to be


saying will be examined more closely after I consider several more of the few passages which directly or indirectly indicate what kind of idealism Husserl has in mind.

Consider the following passage from Ideas (1913) : The whole spatio-temporal world, to which man and the human Ego claims to belong as subordinate singular realities, is according to its own meaning mere intentional Being, a Being, therefore, which has the merely secondary, relative sense of a Being for a consciousness. It is a Being which conscious-ness in its own experiences (Erfahrungen) posits, and is, in principle, intuitable and determinable only as the element common to the [harmon-iously] motivated appearance-manifolds, but over and beyond this, is just nothing at all.17

This quotation sets out quite strongly the rejection of realism as a position which claims that there are entities which exist independently of any actual or possible experience. Husserl is not saying that such a position is logically impossible, rather that the world is according to the way it is presented to consciousness, only experienceable and determinable as it is intended and that it has the relative sense of a being for consciousness. Having already made the phenomenological reduction Husserl finds that

what things are (the things about which alone we ever speak, and concerning whose being, so being or not so being, we can alone contend and reach rational decisions), they are as things of experience.16

This is a consequence of maintaining the phenomenological standard that says we must accept nothing that is not itself presented and "in person" in the consciousness of it. Thus Husserl is saying that not only must this position of metaphysical realism be rejected but that what is to be expli-cated is the experienced being for consciousness, its sense of existing. It is not that Husserl is claiming that metaphysical realism is wrong or right as a matter of actual fact, rather he is saying that any such claim is outside the domain of the phenomenologist.

That this rejection of realism also involves a rejection of any metaphysical claim is not particularly clear in this quotation from the Ideas of 1913. It is clearer in the following quotation from Formal and Transcendental Logic (1929):

Such an affair as an object (even a physical object) draws the ontic sense peculiar to it (by which it then signifies what it signifies in all possible modes of consciousness) originally from the mental processes of experience alone . . .


Experience is the primal instituting of the being-for-us of objects as having their objective sense.19

Here he is saying that the "ontic sense" of an object, what I am calling the "existential sense", is drawn from the experiences of it; that the exis-tential sense that each object has for us, its being-for-us, comes from experience. In other words, the sense of existing of any object comes from experience and any claim which tries to go beyond this experience and make pronouncements about the actual existence of objects cannot be based on that which is presented to the phenomenologist.

It is not a question of whether there can or cannot be realities outside of actual or possible experience, rather the point is that there can be no knowledge about such things outside of experience. This is obvious since if known then there is a consciousness of it and so it is not outside of ex-perience. Furthermore, there does not need to be such knowledge because, as Husserl says,20 nothing has been lost; all the beliefs and judgments about objects as well as the determinations with which they are presented remain intact. I have merely disengaged my "living in" the conscious processes of the natural attitude and now reflect upon these. The result of this phenomen-ological clarification is not to determine whether a belief in the existence of something independently of anyone's perception of it is "really" true, it is not a metaphysical determining of the way in which objects gain the sense that they have, how they draw the "ontic sense" and other senses from the "mental processes of experience." 21

My contention that Husserl is not espousing a metaphysical idealism is further reinforced by the following quotation from the Cartesian Medi-tations (1931):

We have here a transcendental idealism that is nothing more than a conse-quentially executed self-explication in the form of a systematic egological science, an explication of my ego as subject of every possible cognition, and indeed with respect to every sense of what exists, wherewith the latter might be able to have a sense for me, the ego. This idealism is not a product of sportive argumentations, a prize to be won in the dialectical contest with "realisms." It is sense-explication achieved by actual work, an explication carried out as regards ever)' type of existent ever conceivable by me, the ego, and specifically as regards the transcendency actually given to me before-hand through experience: Nature, culture, the world as a whole. But that signifies: systematic uncovering of the constituting intentionality itself.22

Here he most explicitly says in the latter part of the quotation that trans-cendental idealism is sense-explication, an explication of every sense of


what exists, and that it is nothing more than this, that it does not try to make metaphysical claims against, and contest, a realism. There is the puzzling statement that Nature, culture, the world as a whole are given beforehand through experience, which might appear to be a realistic state-ment that such things have a metaphysical existence independently of our consciousness. However, I think this must be read as a statement made from the transcendental attitude and as a report on the presented senses of Nature, culture and the world. They are presented as given beforehand through experience, yet this sense, as any other, must also be explicated. Again, Husserl is emphatically denying that the task of this idealism is to investigate the actual existence of any object.

It should now be clear that by making the transcendental turn I find that

By my living, by my experiencing, thinking, valuing, and acting, I can enter no world other than the one that gets its sense and acceptance or status (Sinn und Geltung) in and from me, myself.23

Therein lies Husserl's transcendental idealism; the task of transcendental phenomenology is to describe and explicate the sense with which intentional objects are presented and this explication requires, as the last sentence from the quotation from Cartesian Meditations above24 says, an explication of the constituting intentionalities themselves. Thus we are led to an episte-mological idealism wherein we find that we must explicate all the sense of all objects in terms of the intentional conscious processes in which they are intended.

3. An Answer to Husserl's Critics At this point, after having developed Husserl's position that transcen-

dental idealism is metaphysically neutral, I think it appropriate to investigate whether the transcendental turn can be made metaphysically neutral, or whether this epistemological idealism retains certain metaphysical commit-ments, or rules out certain metaphysical theories, as Husserl's critics allege. That Husserl's phenomenology is an epistemological idealism is, I believe, quite evident as I have outlined above. He has repeatedly maintained that the various senses of objects must be explicated and that to do so requires going back to the intentional conscious occurrences to which they are pre-sented.25 To call phenomenology an idealism of this kind is really nothing more than to say that it does not, in order to perform its task, accept any claims about actual being, nor make any such claims. Moreover, it finds that


this world with all its Objects . . . derives its whole sense and its existential status, which it has for me, from me myself, from me as the transcendental Ego, the Ego who comes to the fore only with the transcendental-phenom-enological epoche.28

It might be thought that Husserl has presupposed at least that his trans-cendental subjectivity exists, or that transcendental experiences and their objects exist. If one means that he presupposes they actually exist then it is quite obvious that Husserl is denying this when he takes the transcendental turn. However, there is a sense in which Husserl does allow and makes presuppositions. As Dorion Cairns points out,

Husserl himself emphasized the inevitability of starting, even in the trans-cendental-phenomenological attitude, by accepting some evidence and, in this sense, making pre-suppositions which must eventually be suspended and submitted to phenomenological analysis on a deeper level.27

And as Husserl says:

The investigations take on a painful and yet unavoidable relativity, a pro-visionalness, instead of definitiveness for which we are striving: Each investigation, at its own level, overcomes some naivete or other, but is still accompanied by the naivete of its levelwhich must then be overcome in turn by more penetrating investigations of origins.28

These presuppositions are not made, they are found and revealed as such as the phenomenologist proceeds in his investigations. Yet in no case does he accept these as anything other than "prejudices" which need sense-explication.29 Everything presented to the phenomenologist with evidence, as itself given, is accepted but only insofar as it is presented in his experience of it. Thus my transcendental subjective life and the intentional objects are accepted as they present themselves, but this does not mean I accept them as actually being what they present themselves as being.

There is another sense in which Husserl might be seen to be committed to a metaphysical idealism. By making the transcendental turn, and by main-taining that all objectivities must be described and explicated in terms of the subjective conscious occurrences he may be said to be ruling out the possibility of a metaphysical realism. That is, I may be prevented from ever deciding that some objects or other actually exist independently of any consciousness of them by starting with the commitment to a method which requires that I explicate objectivities in terms of the consciousness of them. Given the nature of the transcendental turn this claim cannot be sustained for two reasons, first, no metaphysical claim is either entertained or defended, as metaphysical,

IS HUSSERL COMMITTED TO IDEALISM? I l l

after the transcendental turn. To do so would be to violate the very principle which initiated the turn. Second, if one wanted to develop and defend a metaphysical claim independently of transcendental phenomenology, or any phenomenology which sticks to the methodological principle of only working with objectivities and the conscious occurrences as presented, no description or explication from phenomenology would present evidence for or against that claim. This is so because any description within phenomenology is con-cerned only with what is presented as it is presented and not with its existence independently of this presentation.

Unless one is willing to say that because we are conscious of something it cannot be real, I do not see how a phenomenological description of some-thing rules out the possibility that it actually exists. Similarly it does not rule out the possibility that it does not actually exist independently of a conscious-ness of it. Basically the contention that the transcendental turn does not allow or make metaphysical commitments rests on an understanding of the trans-cendental turn and the methodological principles of phenomenology, such as only describing what is presented as presented. For these reasons I think I can dismiss the critics' charges that the transcendental turn commits one to a metaphysical position. What remains to be seen is whether Husserl can and does remain metaphysically neutral.

The best way to approach this question is to look at some of the few passages where Husserl mentions "metaphysics." In section 60 of the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl speaks of "metaphysical results." He qualifies "meta-physics" by saying that it is not metaphysics in the usual sense but metaphysics which is done within phenomenology. He says that the results are meta-physical, but after listing these, including the impossibility of two separate objective worlds,31 he says:

Such results and the course of the investigations leading to them enable us to understand how questions that, for traditional philosophy, had to lie beyond all the limits of science can acquire sense (regardless of how they may be decided)for example, problems we touched on earlier.32

These questions, and their answers, acquire sense through phenomenological analysis which means that the results are results discovered by the phe-nomenological method which precludes any metaphysical answers of the traditional sort, for example, Descartes' proof of the existence of material things in Meditations VI.

Similarly, in the last section of Cartesian Meditations, Husserl speaks of metaphysics, but qualifies what he means by this.


Phenomenology indeed excludes every naive metaphysics that operates with absurd things in themselves, but does not exclude metaphysics as such.53

This latter kind of metaphysics is to provide answers to "supreme and ulti-mate" questions including various ethico-religious problems,

But stated in the realm where everything that can have a possible sense for us must be stated.34

This means that these will be answers based on the results of transcendental phenomenology, that is, results based on and taking place within the realm of sense explication.

Two points need to be made in this connection. First, if Husserl means more than this, if he means that the results of transcendental phenomenology have application beyond the realm of sense-explication then he is clearly violating the principles of the transcendental turn. However, I do not think he was trying to exceed these boundaries. Instead, and this is the second point, I think Husserl was trying to say that once we have completely carried out the phenomenological program of sense-explication, a task which he is willing to say is an infinite one, then there will be no more problems or ques-tions to be considered or answered. This is so because every sense that each and every object has for us will be explicated and be done so in terms of the consciousness of it, and that nothing more can or needs to be investigated.

Moreover, these results will answer the problems that faced traditional metaphysics, but do so within transcendental phenomenology. For example, the answer to the question "what actually exists?" appears to be a complete explication of the constitution of the various existential senses of objects; doing so by describing the way the other senses of the object, perhaps the senses of constant size, shape, color, and so forth, under constant conditions, contribute to the sense of the object as actually existing in a world independ-ent of consciousness.

I also maintain that it is this point that Husserl's critics have misunder-stood. They appear to want, in addition to the sense-explication of all objects, an answer to questions such as: "What actually exists?" "Does the world exist independently of the consciousness; is there a realm of being apart from that of which I am conscious?" The critics have failed to understand that if I have successfully explicated the existential sense of all objectivities in terms of the consciousness of them then questions about existences of which there is no actual or possible consciousness are absurd. Moreover, any such questions arise within the consciousness and thus are themselves open to explication as to their sense by phenomenology. Even further I can say


that all questions, metaphysical or otherwise, arise and are explicable only within consciousness. Of course, this does not mean that within transcendental pheonomenology there are no problems. Rather, I am trying to show that not only is transcendental phenomenology metaphysically neutral, but that it can not become metaphysically committed to whether there is a realm of existence independent of consciousness.

RICHARD H. HOLMES UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO CANADA

NOTES 1. In addition to those mentioned here there are many others who have written

critiques of Husserl's idealism, for example see: Rudolf Boehm, "Husserl und der klassische Idealismus," Vom Gesichtspunkt der Phanomenologie (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968); Joseph Kockelmans, Edmund Husserl's Phenomenological Psychology (Pittsburg: Duquesne University Press, 1967), pp. 324ff.; Ludwig Landgrebe, Major Problems in Contemporary European Philosophy (New York: F. Ungar Publishing Co., 1966), pp. 54ff.; Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (New York: Humanities Press, 1962), pp. viiiff.; Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Why is There Something Rather than Nothing (The Netherlands: Van Gorcum and Co., 1966), pp. 14-15.

2. Cf., Theodor Celms, Der Phanomenologische Idealismus Husserls (Riga, 1928), pp. 251-439.

3. Cf., Ibid., p. 431. 4. Cf., Ibid., p. 433. 5. Ingarden's major work in this area is: Der Streit urn die Existenz der Welt,

3 vols. (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1964-66). 6. "Kritische Bemerkungen von Prof. Dr. Roman Ingarden, Krakau," Cartesian-

ische Meditationen, Husserliana I (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950), pp. 203ff. 7. Ibid., p. 210 (trans. Paul Ricoeur, Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology,

trans. Edward G. Ballard and Lester E. Embree (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967), p. 89.

8. Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, trans. Dorion Cairns, (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, I960), p. 26.

9. Ricoeur, Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology, p. 89. 10. Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans.

W. R. Boyce Gibson (New York: Collier Books, 1962). 11. Cf., Herbert Spiegelberg, "Husserl in England," Journal of the British Society

for Phenomenology, 1 (1970): 11. 12. Husserl, "Nachwort," Ideas III (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952), pp.

152-53 (my translation; I have numbered the sentences to facilitate references in the following analysis).

13. Cf., Ideas, p. 194.


14. For a somewhat different interpretation of constitution, but one which is consistent with mine except in one respect, see Robert Sokolowski, The Formation of Husserl's Concept of Constitution (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), pp. 135ff., 197ff. I disagree with his claim that the real world is a necessary condition for con-stitution, see pp. 218ff. Sokolowski's claim would be correct only if it were clarified by saying that what is necessary is that the world, and the objects within it, are pre-sented as real, with the existential sense of actually existing independently of the consciousness of them. In no case does the fact that the world is presented and con-stituted as real imply or necessitate that it is real.

15. Cf., Cartesian Meditations, p. 84. 16. Cf., Ibid., sees. 10, 11. 17. Husserl, Ideas, p. 139. 18. Ibid., p. 133. 19. Edmund Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic, trans. Dorion Cairns

(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), p. 164. 20. Cf., Ideas, p. 140. 21. Cf., Formal and Transcendental Logic, p. 164. 22. Cartesian Meditations, p. 86. 23. Ibid., p. 21. 24. See Cartesian Meditations, p. 157. 25. Cf., Cartesian Meditations, sees. 20-21. 26. Ibid., p. 26. 27. Dorion Cairns, "Concerning Beck's 'The Last Phase of Husserl's Phenome-

nology,'" Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 1 (1940): 493. 28. Formal and Transcendental Logic, pp. 270-71. 29. Cf., Ibid., pp. 276-77. 30. Cf., Cartesian Meditations, pp. 139ff. 31. One other interesting result is this statement: "Moreover this one nature must

exist, if there are any structures in me that involve the coexistence of other monads {Cartesian Meditations, p. 140). It may appear that Husserl is claiming that the one Nature must actually exist, independently of any consciousness, however he is quali-fying this by saying if there are structures within me that are presented as involving the coexistence of others then there must also be presented a world in which they exist. But this result, as all other "metaphysical" results, is one within transcendental phe-nomenology.

32. Ibid., p. 141. 33. Ibid., p. 156. 34. Ibid.

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