The Possibility of Husserlian Phenomenological Practice

Elizabeth A. Behnke


In 1988, Margaret van de Pitte issued a challenge: have we indeed mastered the distinctive methods of phenomenology in a spirit of “resolute cooperation” (1) and carried Husserl’s project forward through original phenomenological investigation, or do we merely write “about” phenomenology instead of doing it? (2) It is true that there have been many appropriations and extensions of phenomenological method in areas beyond philosophy (notably in the human sciences), although many of these approaches take their cue from existential or hermeneutic phenomenology rather than appealing directly to Husserl’s own writings. However, we can also point to “a considerable number of good philosophers who know very well what Husserl said, who make ample use of his research results, and who nevertheless show not the slightest interest in plying the distinctive method that is supposed to have generated them.” (3) For me, this challenge is still relevant today, and I shall accordingly respond to it with a vision for the future of Husserlian phenomenology that includes not only the phenomenological philosophizing currently robustly underway, but also the grand experiment of Husserlian phenomenological practice.
       Why an “experiment”? I am assuming that Husserlian phenomenological method is an abiding intersubjective possibility (4) irreducible to the philosophical use that Husserl himself made of it. (5) In contrast, Ingarden, for example, was unwilling to edit Husserl’s Bernau time manuscripts because he felt that the research project itself entailed an idealism that he could not endorse. (6) The only way to settle the issue is to test my assumption by putting Husserl’s methods into practice for ourselves. (7) But how are we to proceed? What principles must we follow? What style of investigation is at stake here? (8)
     “To deal with these questions would require an extensive and thorough look at what Husserl does. This is meant quite literally, i.e., very often we ought not to follow what Husserl says about what he does, but what he actually does,” (9) something that requires a number of shifts in our way of reading him. These include suspending interest in philosophical “positions” in order to attend to dimensions of method; deactivating attention to “arguments” in order to bring other methods into view; focusing not on passages where Husserl explicitly discusses these methods, but on passages where they are actually in play; tracing the results of these investigations back to the specific type of practice that produced them; and testing these results by reading in a thoroughly participatory way, consulting the appropriate experiential evidence in each case. (10)
        I find that when I read Husserl in this fashion, I “see what he means” with far greater clarity, precisely because in order to consult the relevant phenomena for myself, I must take up a certain attitude, make certain sorts of distinctions, and follow him experientially at every step. When I do this, the words leap off the page in a new way. At the same time, however, I am “practicing” assuming these attitudes, making these distinctions, and cashing in these words for the fulfilling evidence, just as musicians and athletes “practice” their craft and hone their skills. The result is twofold: I am able both to take a critical stance toward Husserl’s own findings, (11) and to put his methods into practice on themes that he himself did not address.
       It is true that other authors’ explications and demonstrations of Husserlian methods can be enormously helpful. (12) But there can be no substitute for attempting to take up phenomenological practice for oneself and on one’s own, engaging, leibhaft, in the lived experience of doing original phenomenological investigation. And as I have already indicated, taking Husserl’s own descriptive analyses as musical “scores” that I must “perform” in order to make full sense of them—where the “performance” consists of giving his claims an appropriately phenomenological “realization” (13) —can be a very effective way of tuning in to Husserlian phenomenological practice and making its possibilities my own. (14)
    Of course, I do indeed want to acknowledge that there can be many possible directions for the future of Husserlian research, encompassing not only the ongoing labor of editing and exegesis, but also the work of clarifying (or seeking to systematize) his philosophical position; unearthing the traces of his assistants’ concerns in the writings he gave them to edit; (15) using his approach to address problems arising within philosophical traditions outside of phenomenology; (16) defending him against various “post-phenomenological” (mis)understandings; and so on. But for me, it is equally crucial to maintain a permanent place for Husserlian phenomenological investigation as well, as a continually open possibility of taking up the powerful yet protean theoretical practice that is Husserl’s distinctive legacy and bringing it to bear in original investigations of the emerging problems of our times. (17)

Notes

(1) 19-1/16f. All references in the form: volume number/page number(s) are to Husserliana.
(2) M. M. van de Pitte, “Phenomenology: Vigorous or moribund?” Husserl Studies 5 (1988), 3–39, here 3, 31.
(3) Ibid. 34.
(4) For me, Husserlian phenomenological practice displays a certain “open generosity” in that it is available in principle to “anyone” who is able to adopt certain attitudes, perform certain shifts, engage in certain operations, etc. (cf. 15/384 n.1), just as the set of numbers can be generated (and/or reactivated) by anyone who is able to count and to grasp the principle of an open-infinite “und so weiter” in its essential iterability. This does not mean that every beginner will instantaneously understand higher mathematics, or that each newcomer to the phenomenological tradition will immediately be able to carry out complex phenomenological analyses. It does, however, stand in contrast to a tendency in some interpretively-accented approaches within the phenomenological tradition (in the broader sense) to award a special role to an interpreter whose task is in fact to do something that not “everyone” can do—namely, to provide an interpretive framework in term of which something is to be understood, a task that is necessary precisely because the desired interpretation is “zunächst und zumeist” hidden from view, requiring the intervention of a privileged figure who “somehow” already has access to the “correct” interpretation. Cf. Harald Delius, “Descriptive Interpretation,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 13 (1952–53), 305–23, especially 321ff.; see also Thomas M. Seebohm, “The Phenomenological Movement: A Tradition without Method? Merleau-Ponty and Husserl,” in Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl, ed. Ted Toadvine and Lester Embree (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002), 53ff., on the related topos of understanding an author better than s/he understands him/herself.
(5) Cf. not only the distinction between “reinen Phänomenologie” and “phänomenologischen Philosophie” in the title of the Ideen—as well as the distinction between “phänomenologische Methode” and “phänomenologische Philosophie” in the title of the 1922 London Lectures—but also the foreword to the inaugural issue of the Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung (1913), which begins by clearly distinguishing “Phänomenologie” and “phänomenologisch fundierte Philosophie,” then explicitly claims that a phenomenological approach (understood as encompassing both phenomenological methods and achievements of investigations using these methods) can be fruitful not only for philosophical problems in the proper sense, but also for extra-philosophical disciplines (see 25/63f.). Thus my assumption that Husserlian phenomenological practice is an abiding intersubjective possibility sides with the notion of phenomenology as a rigorous science, rather than merely seeing “phenomenology” as one philosophy among others (whether we take it as “a” philosophy linked with Husserl’s name, or as several philosophies linked with several names and standing in various relations of indebtedness and critique, etc.). And what I wish to emphasize is that the “rigor” of this rigorous science does not depend solely on its engagement with issues of ultimate legitimation, but is also tied to the possibility of intersubjective (and generative) corroboration and transmission not only of research results, but also of the research methods used to arrive at them and the criteria used to evaluate them.
(6) See Edmund Husserl, Briefe an Roman Ingarden. Mit Erläuterungen und Erinnerungen an Husserl, ed. Roman Ingarden (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968), 139, 154f. On Ingarden’s reading of Husserlian methods, see, e.g., Leo Bostar, “Reading Ingarden read Husserl: Metaphysics, ontology, and phenomenological method," Husserl Studies 10 (1994), 211–36, and cf. J. N. Mohanty, Phenomenology: Between Essentialism and Transcendental Philosophy (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1997), 32–45. Note that Spiegelberg too sees certain aspects of phenomenological method as entailing a philosophical position he is extremely unwilling to adopt—see, e.g., “The Essentials of the Phenomenological Method” in his The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction, 3rd rev. and enl. ed. with the collaboration of Karl Schuhmann (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), 708ff.
(7) This can be seen as a version of Husserl’s method of critique of presuppositions; see 19-1/24, where the principle of “presuppositionlessness” is quite specifically characterized as requiring the exclusion of any claims “die nicht phänomenologisch voll und ganz realisiert werden können.” Thus the properly phenomenological way to test the presupposition that Husserlian phenomenological practice is an intersubjectively available possibility, irreducible to the historical Husserl and his own philosophical commitments or concerns, is to consult the relevant experiential evidence by actually attempting to do some “Husserlian” phenomenological investigation. And it is this attempt per se that I term the “grand experiment” of phenomenological practice (in contrast to, e.g., my own more modest series of “experiments in phenomenological practice” on themes connected with phenomenology of the body), an experiment open to anyone interested in trying it out (and able to learn the methodical approach in question)—cf. Richard M. Zaner, “The Phenomenology of Epistemic Claims and its Bearing on the Essence of Philosophy,” in Phenomenology and Social Reality: Essays in Memory of Alfred Schutz, ed. Maurice Natanson (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970), 30ff.
(8) On phenomenology itself as “an essentially new and strictly scientific style of philosophy,” see 17/256; cf. 3-1/223, 5/142f. On Husserl’s notion of “style,” see my “On the Dynamization of Phenomenological Concepts: An experimental essay in phenomenological practice,” Focus Pragensis 4 (2004), 9–39, especially 25ff.
(9) Elisabeth Ströker, The Husserlian Foundations of Science, 2nd ed. (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), 32.
(10) Husserl emphasizes that it is not enough merely to read “attentively”; rather, one must adopt an attitude of “unprejudiced cooperation” and consult the phenomenon under discussion for oneself in order to co-perform the analyses and descriptions (20-1/319, 326), “cashing in” or “redeeming” the words for what fulfils them, i.e., bringing what is emptily intended in them to the mode of itself-givenness appropriate to the type of experiencing/experienceable in question (cf. 19-1/10; 2/62; 16/9; 25/32; 3-1/41). This style of reading is not only necessary in order to understand Husserl’s investigations as “investigations,” but also supplies a criterion for distinguishing which passages are actually examples of phenomenological description and analysis: if a given passage will not support our efforts to cash in the words for the Evidenz, it is likely that the passage in question is a text of another sort (e.g., a summary of, or polemic against, a certain philosophical position) rather than a report of the results of phenomenological investigation. Note also that this style of participatory reading must be eidetically attuned: I need not have access to the very same example Husserl was describing—e.g., the brown beer bottle he was looking at in Seefeld during the 1905 summer vacation (see 10/237ff.)—but can consult another example of the style or structure in question, following a principle of “appropriate substitutability,” a locution coined to complement Robert Sokolowski’s important notion of “appropriate sensibility”; see his Husserlian Meditations (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 108–109.
(11) Consulting the appropriate experiential evidence for myself can allow me either to confirm or to challenge Husserl’s analyses; being motivated to cancel his findings outright (which implies being unable to corroborate them in any respect) would appear to be rather rare, but in many cases, it may well be possible to correct his descriptions and to carry his investigations further or to contextualize his results (e.g., by showing that they hold good at a different degree of universality than previously thought). Thus the rigor and radicality of Husserlian phenomenological practice may require the retroactive revision of results already achieved. However, my critical evaluation of these results must take into consideration the type of experiencing that is at stake in the investigation (e.g., transcendental rather than mundane) and the type of account that is being offered (e.g., static rather than genetic), as well as the larger context of motivation guiding the research at any given moment (e.g., the task of working out the correlational a priori rather than that of addressing the question of being or providing a metaphysics of the lifeworld). On the latter, cf., e.g., Gerhard Funke, Phänomenologie—Metaphysik oder Methode? (Bonn: Bouvier, 1966). Note, however, that the very fact that Husserlian research can be, and has been, transposed out of its original context of motivation and into other philosophical contexts of relevance supports the distinction between “Phänomenologie” and “phänomenologisch fundierte Philosophie.”
(12)  See, for example, Richard M. Zaner’s early papers on issues of method, e.g., “Examples and Possibles: A Criticism of Husserl’s Theory of Free-Phantasy Variation,” Research in Phenomenology 3 (1973), 29–43; the editorial introduction to Edmund Husserl, Die phänomenologische Methode. Ausgewählte Texte I, ed. Klaus Held (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1985); Harry P. Reeder, The Theory and Practice of Husserl’s Phenomenology (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1986); J. N. Mohanty, Transcendental Phenomenology: An Analytic Account (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), ch. 1; Fred Kersten, Phenomenological Method: Theory and Practice (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989); Lester Embree, Reflective Analysis: A First Introduction into Phenomenological Investigation / Análisis reflexivo: Una primera introducción a la investigación fenomenológica, trans. Luis Román Rabanaque (Morelia: Jitanjáfora, 2003). Natalie Depraz has also contributed to a number of texts on the lived experience of phenomenological method—see, e.g., Natalie Depraz, Francisco J. Varela, and Pierre Vermersch, “La réduction à l’épreuve de l’expérience,” Études Phénoménologiques Nos. 31–32 (2000), 165–84. Newer works not yet available to me as of this writing include C. Lobo, Le phénoménologue et ses exemples. Étude sur le rôle de l’exemple dans la constitution de la méthode et l’ouverture du champ de la phénoménologie husserlienne (Paris: Kimé, 2000); Denis Seron, Introduction à la méthode phénoménologique (Bruxelles; De Boeck Université, 2001).
(13) 19-1/24
(14) I find that this also helps me to recognize and value descriptive phenomenological analyses conducted within other methodological horizons—e.g., the newly available work of Romanian phenomenologist Alexandru Dragomir, who studied with Heidegger. See Studia Phaenomenologica 4/3–4 (2004) for a special issue devoted to his work.
(15) See, e.g., Marianne Sawicki, Body, Text, and Science: The Literacy of Investigative Practices and the Phenomenology of Edith Stein (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), 73–89, 153–62, on Stein’s editorial work on Ideen II, carried out under a commitment to Ingarden’s position in general and to a non-idealistic conception of “constitution” in particular; Ronald Bruzina, Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink: Beginnings and Ends in Phenomenology 1928–1938 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), on Fink’s efforts not only to systematize, but to shape the direction of Husserl’s later work, efforts carried out under the influence of Heidegger’s question of being and Hegel’s speculative thinking.
(16) This is, for example, one of the aims of the working group “Phénoménologies” (Liège), who—as the plural form of their name indicates—also draw upon other methods besides Husserl’s; see their new e-journal, Bulletin d’analyse phénoménologique.
(17)  A network has recently been formed under the title of an “Initiative in Phenomenological Practice” to further this aim in a context of disciplinary as well as methodological pluralism.