In the Preface to Phenomenology of Perception Maurice Merleau-Ponty attempts to provide a description of phenomenology. He finds this necessary not only for readers who may not be familiar with previous phenomenological works, but because the nature of phenomenology is still an open question. This fact rightly raises questions about the rigor of phenomenology, for Merleau-Ponty is writing about 50 years after Edmund Husserl established phenomenology as a philosophical method. The first sentence of the preface, "what is phenomenology", does not merely serve as an introductory question that stands already answered, but as a problem to be worked out. Is phenomenology a coherent method, or simply the transposition of philosophy into subjective psychology? Or is phenomenology perhaps an awareness or disposition that gives rise to various methods of phenomenology? To answer this question, we will discuss some features of phenomenology.
Phenomenology "puts essences back into existence" (Phenomenology of Perception, vii). The notion of a thing-in-itself apart from perceptive experience plays no role in phenomenology. Phenomenology deals with what Kant termed the "phenomenal": what appears in experience. The phenomenologist must set aside the question of whether a substructure apart from perception exists, at least temporarily. What appears is epistemologically prior, and so the phenomenon of appearance must first be grasped before anything super-phenomenal could be seriously discussed.
Phenomenology limits itself to the phenomenal, but this does not provide a sufficient definition. All humans deal with what appears to them no matter what their discipline, at least in their everyday lives. Phenomenology therefore approaches phenomena in a distinctive way, it attempts to understand phenomena as phenomena. An early distinction must be drawn between thinking about things and engaging with them. Phenomenology gives a certain priority to engagement with things, and this will come into greater focus later. However, phenomenology is a philosophical enterprise, and thus by definition it engages in a thoughtful way. This contradiction can be resolved into a provisional formulation of the project of phenomenology: the attempt to think about what one engages with in a way proper to that engagement. All abstract thinking can arise only on the basis of practical engagement, but one must not assume from this that all kinds of thinking arises in the same way. Different types of thinking arise in different ways, and in some cases thinking can be at odds with engagement. One obvious example: radical skepticism. One who professes the belief that nothing truly exists and that reality is merely an illusion still professes this belief to others as if they existed and the engagement were meaningful to him. And indeed his active engagement betrays at least a tacit belief in the reality of himself, others, and his engagement with others. The skeptic would object that his actions may betray that sort of belief, nevertheless there is no proof of the reality of the world and therefore he is justified in finding reality suspect.
Phenomenology proceeds much differently than the skeptic. The skeptic assumes there must be logical proof of the reality of things in order to accept them. He gives logic the most basic role in determining the certainty of things. In this sense, he does not differ too much from logical positivism. Bertland Russell, for example, stated that one could not "prove" this world is real, but no countervailing reason stands out to reject its reality. In a way, this misses the fundamental nature of reality. One does not exist in reality in a basically reflective way; in fact, the reflective or the logical enterprise is only possible on the basis of a pre-logical existence. Put another way, logic is not self-sufficient, it has prior dependencies that logic itself cannot examine. Only two possibilities arise from this: either philosophy is groundless, or there is another way of grounding philosophy which has a different sort of proof. Phenomenology purports to be the latter way, and this is what Husserl meant by phenomenology being the grounding for philosophy. By examining the pre-logical being-in-the-world, phenomenology justifies logic and provides a more fundamental way of doing philosophy.
Phenomenology is liberated from the constrictions a purely logical form of proof labors under, but where does phenomenology begin? Logic directs itself to the objective world, the world which for everyone is the same. A basic structure of the objective world is logic. The entanglement between the two deserves more attention, but here one must only note that if the phenomenologist is to examine the foundations of logic, he is examining the foundation of the objective world. Consequently, if logic is to be set aside in order to find what makes logic possible, the objective world must be set aside at the same time. This "setting aside" Husserl calls the "epoche". Husserl pointed out that in order to lay out the ground of the objective world, he had to take it out of play through suspending it without making any judgments as to its truth or falsity. The starting point for phenomenology must then be the subject. This is no arbitrary method; a man must start with the himself because he can do nothing else. When I think about philosophy, I do this always as myself, whether I recognize it or not; I cannot do philosophy as another would.
Phenomenology requires a presuppositionless analysis of the subject, as far as possible. Therefore, the "subject" is not automatically considered as an isolated substance, but as the subject already is. Merleau-Ponty proposes that careful descriptive analysis reveals the subject as already in a world. The subject, by definition, experiences the world; and phenomenology intends to explicate this basic interaction as it actually happens.
A concrete example which distinguishes phenemenology's subjectivity from positivistic objectivity will be useful. Merleau-Ponty points out that phenomenology at its early stages is descriptive. The scientific way of conceiving of myself involves my chemical makeup, my evolutionary history, and so on. However, this characterization is foreign to me as I experience myself, and indeed it is questionable whether anyone can completely conceive of themselves in such a way. Merleau-Ponty points out:
But what is this basic experience of the world that must be awoken? First we should ask: who has this basic experience? We have already said the subject experiences, but this alone is a tautology: the subject by definition experiences. Who is the subject? The idealists believed the subject stands detached from the world. "They presented consciousness, the absolute certainty of my existence for myself, as the condition of there being anything at all..." The idealists identify the pure subject as the condition of possibility of the world, and in doing this offer not an account, but a "reconstruction" (Phenomenology of Perception, x). The detached subject who brings the world into being through an act of synthesis arises from analytical reflection which "installs itself in an impregnable subjectivity, untouched by being and time." (Phenomenology of Perception, xi) Merleu-Ponty maintains that the kind of reflective experience which presupposes a detached subject depends upon a prior unreflective experience. Reality does not wait for an act of judgment on the part of a subject to constitute itself; rather, judgment works on phenomena which have already arrived. The error of the idealists: in detaching the subject from the world the idealists introduce something alien to experience which violates the nature of experience. The relation of subject to world is not determined through an act of the intellect; the subject is already in a world. The very notion of a "detached subject" is possible only because the subject is already in a world.
The idealist conception conceals the phenomenal relation between subject and world by foisting philosophical presuppositions upon that relation and passing over its original nature. Other pernicious effects follow as well: the detached subject has no individuality, for he exists apart from a world and thus has no distinguishing characteristics. The detached subject exists apart from accidental properties such as birthplace and parentage, his historical situation and his attempts to define himself. Merleu-Ponty points out that for this reason, idealism knows nothing of the problem of the "Other", because there can exist no other. One detached subject cannot be distinguished from another, and all individuality is lost.
From this problem arises the question: in our usual way of experiencing the world, can we encounter anything like this detached subject? Indeed, if experience required this detached subject for there to be a sensible world, wouldn't this detached subject be accessible in some sense by experience? To put it more precisely, what evidence shows that I experience as a detached subject? These questions cannot be answered abstractly, we must find -- phenomenologically -- whether I am a detached subject or a concrete historical subject.
In order for there to be any real validity to inter-personal relationships I could not be a detached subject indistinguishable from the other. By definition, a relationship requires distinct persons; relationships require an "other." On this count, the weight of experience rules against a detached subject.
However, one might inquire deeper and ask if the very nature of subjective experience rules out a detached subject. My experience is always limited to my perspective, and I can never completely take over the perspective of another even in the most pure empathy. I still experience others with reference to my own being, as Heidegger pointed out. Empathy, which takes over the perspective of another always takes it over partially, and does not liberate me from my own perspective. Therefore, when I understand and act for others, I am able to do this through a constituent of my being: my potentiality to be-with-others. I am never able to escape myself, my unique perspective or my being. The idealist hypothesis of a detached subject freed from thrown historicity, not limited to an individual perspective, is not consistent with the very experience it seeks to explain.
Merleu-Ponty contends that Husserl's transcendental reduction does not separate the transcendental ego from the world; Husserl recognized that the subject and the world are interwoven. His transcendental reduction differs from Kant's in the sense that the world is suspended not because is the world and the subject exist indepentanly, but precisely because they are interwoven. Husserl recognized that this close relation of subject and world must be unconcealed, and that by taking the world "out of play" this relation might come more easily to our attention. The transcendental ego stands above the world not in any real sense, but in a very artificial sense, for it is still tied to the world. Understanding the transcendental ego in this way absolves Husserl of any apparent affinities with the idealist conception of the subject. Thus, the important lesson Husserl's reduction teaches is "the impossibility of a complete reduction." (Phenomenology of Perception, xv)
It is evident then that the subject is always in a world, that the subject is always thrown into history. The above consideration of the nature of the subject is therefore incomplete without a discussion of the "world." The phenomenal world must be distinguished from the physical universe. The universe as a totality of matter is possible only because of a world, but is not to be identified with that world. The phenomenal world only exists in relation to a subject (as it is phenomenal), and so any world which one considers as existing whether or not a subject experiences it is not the world of experience. Indeed, it is only in terms of the world of experience that any super-subjective world could be conceived. Phenomenology calls relation between the subject and world "intentional".
Merleu-Ponty distinguishes phenomenological intentionality from Kantian intentionality. To be sure, all consciousness is consciousness of..., as Kant recognized. However Kant proposed that consciousness actively gathers up and shapes sense-perceptions, whereas phenomenology finds the unity of the intentional relationship already there. One finds the world already constituted with regard to one's being; no effort is required to form it. Consciousness comes upon the world already made, yet a world that exists in relation to the perceiving subject.
Thus the constitution of the world is not based in the abstract or intellectual aspect of the perceiving subject, but in a more fundamental constitutive of the subject's being (here termed operative intentionality). This field becomes clear only in the course of phenomenological investigations.
Here we must return to the original question, "what is phenomenology?" We have discussed its field, the phenomenal. We have discussed the methodological independence from positive logic. We have discussed its primary problems of subject, others, and world. But in defining what these mean, are we guilty of the same sort of metaphysical dogmatism? The subject, after all, does not present itself to experience as an object in the world does; neither does the "other", nor even the "world"? Phenomenology isn't pure empiricism then, but it doesn't seek to go beyond experience to refer to "higher" beings as does metaphysics. Phenomenology investigates what makes experience possible, always from the limited perspective of a concrete subject. As such, phenomenology is not as much a method as it is a kind of awareness. The phenomenologist attempts to open himself to phenomena in a way possible for him as a limited perspective. He seeks to become directly aware of the foundations of experience and world, not to deduce it logically (which would be an indirect awareness). The particular method differs for different thinkers, in their aims, and the level of analysis they attempt.
Phenomenology "puts essences back into existence" (Phenomenology of Perception, vii). The notion of a thing-in-itself apart from perceptive experience plays no role in phenomenology. Phenomenology deals with what Kant termed the "phenomenal": what appears in experience. The phenomenologist must set aside the question of whether a substructure apart from perception exists, at least temporarily. What appears is epistemologically prior, and so the phenomenon of appearance must first be grasped before anything super-phenomenal could be seriously discussed.
Phenomenology limits itself to the phenomenal, but this does not provide a sufficient definition. All humans deal with what appears to them no matter what their discipline, at least in their everyday lives. Phenomenology therefore approaches phenomena in a distinctive way, it attempts to understand phenomena as phenomena. An early distinction must be drawn between thinking about things and engaging with them. Phenomenology gives a certain priority to engagement with things, and this will come into greater focus later. However, phenomenology is a philosophical enterprise, and thus by definition it engages in a thoughtful way. This contradiction can be resolved into a provisional formulation of the project of phenomenology: the attempt to think about what one engages with in a way proper to that engagement. All abstract thinking can arise only on the basis of practical engagement, but one must not assume from this that all kinds of thinking arises in the same way. Different types of thinking arise in different ways, and in some cases thinking can be at odds with engagement. One obvious example: radical skepticism. One who professes the belief that nothing truly exists and that reality is merely an illusion still professes this belief to others as if they existed and the engagement were meaningful to him. And indeed his active engagement betrays at least a tacit belief in the reality of himself, others, and his engagement with others. The skeptic would object that his actions may betray that sort of belief, nevertheless there is no proof of the reality of the world and therefore he is justified in finding reality suspect.
Phenomenology proceeds much differently than the skeptic. The skeptic assumes there must be logical proof of the reality of things in order to accept them. He gives logic the most basic role in determining the certainty of things. In this sense, he does not differ too much from logical positivism. Bertland Russell, for example, stated that one could not "prove" this world is real, but no countervailing reason stands out to reject its reality. In a way, this misses the fundamental nature of reality. One does not exist in reality in a basically reflective way; in fact, the reflective or the logical enterprise is only possible on the basis of a pre-logical existence. Put another way, logic is not self-sufficient, it has prior dependencies that logic itself cannot examine. Only two possibilities arise from this: either philosophy is groundless, or there is another way of grounding philosophy which has a different sort of proof. Phenomenology purports to be the latter way, and this is what Husserl meant by phenomenology being the grounding for philosophy. By examining the pre-logical being-in-the-world, phenomenology justifies logic and provides a more fundamental way of doing philosophy.
Phenomenology is liberated from the constrictions a purely logical form of proof labors under, but where does phenomenology begin? Logic directs itself to the objective world, the world which for everyone is the same. A basic structure of the objective world is logic. The entanglement between the two deserves more attention, but here one must only note that if the phenomenologist is to examine the foundations of logic, he is examining the foundation of the objective world. Consequently, if logic is to be set aside in order to find what makes logic possible, the objective world must be set aside at the same time. This "setting aside" Husserl calls the "epoche". Husserl pointed out that in order to lay out the ground of the objective world, he had to take it out of play through suspending it without making any judgments as to its truth or falsity. The starting point for phenomenology must then be the subject. This is no arbitrary method; a man must start with the himself because he can do nothing else. When I think about philosophy, I do this always as myself, whether I recognize it or not; I cannot do philosophy as another would.
Phenomenology requires a presuppositionless analysis of the subject, as far as possible. Therefore, the "subject" is not automatically considered as an isolated substance, but as the subject already is. Merleau-Ponty proposes that careful descriptive analysis reveals the subject as already in a world. The subject, by definition, experiences the world; and phenomenology intends to explicate this basic interaction as it actually happens.
A concrete example which distinguishes phenemenology's subjectivity from positivistic objectivity will be useful. Merleau-Ponty points out that phenomenology at its early stages is descriptive. The scientific way of conceiving of myself involves my chemical makeup, my evolutionary history, and so on. However, this characterization is foreign to me as I experience myself, and indeed it is questionable whether anyone can completely conceive of themselves in such a way. Merleau-Ponty points out:
"I cannot shut myself up within the realm of science. All my knowledge of the world, even my scientific knowledge, is gained from my own particular point of view, or from some experience of the world without which the symbols of science would be meaningless. The whole universe of science is built upon the universe as directly experienced, and if we want to subject science to rigorous scrutiny and arrive at a precise assessment of its meaning and scope, we must begin by awakening the basic experience of the world of which science is the second-order expression." (Phenomenology of Perception, ix)
But what is this basic experience of the world that must be awoken? First we should ask: who has this basic experience? We have already said the subject experiences, but this alone is a tautology: the subject by definition experiences. Who is the subject? The idealists believed the subject stands detached from the world. "They presented consciousness, the absolute certainty of my existence for myself, as the condition of there being anything at all..." The idealists identify the pure subject as the condition of possibility of the world, and in doing this offer not an account, but a "reconstruction" (Phenomenology of Perception, x). The detached subject who brings the world into being through an act of synthesis arises from analytical reflection which "installs itself in an impregnable subjectivity, untouched by being and time." (Phenomenology of Perception, xi) Merleu-Ponty maintains that the kind of reflective experience which presupposes a detached subject depends upon a prior unreflective experience. Reality does not wait for an act of judgment on the part of a subject to constitute itself; rather, judgment works on phenomena which have already arrived. The error of the idealists: in detaching the subject from the world the idealists introduce something alien to experience which violates the nature of experience. The relation of subject to world is not determined through an act of the intellect; the subject is already in a world. The very notion of a "detached subject" is possible only because the subject is already in a world.
Insofar as I am a consciousness, that is, insofar as something has meaning for me, I am neither here nor there, neither Peter nor Paul; I am in no way distinguishable from an 'other' consciousness, since we are immediately in touch with the world and since the world is, by definition, unique, being the system in which all truths cohere. (Phenomenology of Perception, xiii)
The idealist conception conceals the phenomenal relation between subject and world by foisting philosophical presuppositions upon that relation and passing over its original nature. Other pernicious effects follow as well: the detached subject has no individuality, for he exists apart from a world and thus has no distinguishing characteristics. The detached subject exists apart from accidental properties such as birthplace and parentage, his historical situation and his attempts to define himself. Merleu-Ponty points out that for this reason, idealism knows nothing of the problem of the "Other", because there can exist no other. One detached subject cannot be distinguished from another, and all individuality is lost.
From this problem arises the question: in our usual way of experiencing the world, can we encounter anything like this detached subject? Indeed, if experience required this detached subject for there to be a sensible world, wouldn't this detached subject be accessible in some sense by experience? To put it more precisely, what evidence shows that I experience as a detached subject? These questions cannot be answered abstractly, we must find -- phenomenologically -- whether I am a detached subject or a concrete historical subject.
In order for there to be any real validity to inter-personal relationships I could not be a detached subject indistinguishable from the other. By definition, a relationship requires distinct persons; relationships require an "other." On this count, the weight of experience rules against a detached subject.
However, one might inquire deeper and ask if the very nature of subjective experience rules out a detached subject. My experience is always limited to my perspective, and I can never completely take over the perspective of another even in the most pure empathy. I still experience others with reference to my own being, as Heidegger pointed out. Empathy, which takes over the perspective of another always takes it over partially, and does not liberate me from my own perspective. Therefore, when I understand and act for others, I am able to do this through a constituent of my being: my potentiality to be-with-others. I am never able to escape myself, my unique perspective or my being. The idealist hypothesis of a detached subject freed from thrown historicity, not limited to an individual perspective, is not consistent with the very experience it seeks to explain.
Merleu-Ponty contends that Husserl's transcendental reduction does not separate the transcendental ego from the world; Husserl recognized that the subject and the world are interwoven. His transcendental reduction differs from Kant's in the sense that the world is suspended not because is the world and the subject exist indepentanly, but precisely because they are interwoven. Husserl recognized that this close relation of subject and world must be unconcealed, and that by taking the world "out of play" this relation might come more easily to our attention. The transcendental ego stands above the world not in any real sense, but in a very artificial sense, for it is still tied to the world. Understanding the transcendental ego in this way absolves Husserl of any apparent affinities with the idealist conception of the subject. Thus, the important lesson Husserl's reduction teaches is "the impossibility of a complete reduction." (Phenomenology of Perception, xv)
It is evident then that the subject is always in a world, that the subject is always thrown into history. The above consideration of the nature of the subject is therefore incomplete without a discussion of the "world." The phenomenal world must be distinguished from the physical universe. The universe as a totality of matter is possible only because of a world, but is not to be identified with that world. The phenomenal world only exists in relation to a subject (as it is phenomenal), and so any world which one considers as existing whether or not a subject experiences it is not the world of experience. Indeed, it is only in terms of the world of experience that any super-subjective world could be conceived. Phenomenology calls relation between the subject and world "intentional".
Merleu-Ponty distinguishes phenomenological intentionality from Kantian intentionality. To be sure, all consciousness is consciousness of..., as Kant recognized. However Kant proposed that consciousness actively gathers up and shapes sense-perceptions, whereas phenomenology finds the unity of the intentional relationship already there. One finds the world already constituted with regard to one's being; no effort is required to form it. Consciousness comes upon the world already made, yet a world that exists in relation to the perceiving subject.
It is a question of recognizing consciousness as a project of the world, meant for a world which it neither embraces nor possesses, but towards which it is perpetually directed--and the world as this pre-objective individual whose imperious unity decrees what knowledge shall take as its goal. This is why Husserl distinguishes between intentionality of act, which is that of our judgments and of those occasions where we voluntarily take up a position--the only intentionality discussed in Critique of Pure Reason--and operative intentionality, or that which produces the natural and anti-predicative unity of the world and our life, being apparent in our desires, our evaluations and in the landscape we see... (Phenomenology of Perception, xx)
Thus the constitution of the world is not based in the abstract or intellectual aspect of the perceiving subject, but in a more fundamental constitutive of the subject's being (here termed operative intentionality). This field becomes clear only in the course of phenomenological investigations.
Here we must return to the original question, "what is phenomenology?" We have discussed its field, the phenomenal. We have discussed the methodological independence from positive logic. We have discussed its primary problems of subject, others, and world. But in defining what these mean, are we guilty of the same sort of metaphysical dogmatism? The subject, after all, does not present itself to experience as an object in the world does; neither does the "other", nor even the "world"? Phenomenology isn't pure empiricism then, but it doesn't seek to go beyond experience to refer to "higher" beings as does metaphysics. Phenomenology investigates what makes experience possible, always from the limited perspective of a concrete subject. As such, phenomenology is not as much a method as it is a kind of awareness. The phenomenologist attempts to open himself to phenomena in a way possible for him as a limited perspective. He seeks to become directly aware of the foundations of experience and world, not to deduce it logically (which would be an indirect awareness). The particular method differs for different thinkers, in their aims, and the level of analysis they attempt.
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