Phenomenology on the Way to Existentialism

Summary

Enlightenment Assignment

By Zuha Rasool

1517197

Sir Irfan Mohammad

 The third and fourth decades of the twentieth century see a really great change in philosophical

concepts and sensibilities in France. In these years laid the emergence of Thomist and Non-Thomist

Philosophy. These philosophies acted as cultural forces which were totally independent of academic

centers. Thomists including Jacques Maritain and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, nor non-Thomists like

Gabriel Marcel and Emmanuel Mounier, used to teach at the Sorbonne or E´ cole Normale Supe´rieure.

These philosophers published their numerous books and journals, which reflected their interest in

questions concerning human existence, these concepts were what attracted a wide audience. This played a

significant role in the development of existentialism theory and concept within the field of philosophy. In

addition young philosophy students turned away from the four B’s- Bergson, Blondel, Boutroux, and

Brunschvic- and onto German philosophy’s three H’s: Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger. This turn, right

from France to Germany, was also a turn from spiritualism to phenomenology, from the concept of

idealism to the concept existentialism, and from the influence of Thomas Aquinas to the influence of

Marx. Historical events also facilitated of transference of German philosophy to France immigration of

German philosophers to France. Russian Alexandre Koyre´ immigrated to Paris in 1919 and was the first

person to introduce Husserlian phenomenology to the French and also gave lectures on Hegel. Lithuanian

Emmanuel Levinas, who came first to France in 1923 the year after he published the first French book on

Husserl, and the year before he published one of the first articles in French on Heidegger. It is difficult to

establish precisely when in time these three H’s were introduced but French philosophy during that era

was transformed from spiritualist form to a rational phenomenology.

Phenomenology was first introduced in the presence of Max Scheler (1874–1928) and Husserlian

phenomenology and then in the renaissance of Hegel studies in France Scheler, who in the early 1920s

was regarded in Germany as one of the best philosophers, only second to Husserl in significance within

the phenomenological movement, was the first and foremost of the leading phenomenologists to be

invited to visit France, in the year 1924 and again in the year 1926, and his text Wesen und Formen der

Sympathie (The Nature of Sympathy) was the first work of phenomenology to have come out translated in
the French language, published by Payot in the year 1928. Georges Gurvitch, a Russian Professor, in his

influential book on present tendencies in German philosophy, Scheler’s work has received the lengthiest

of treatment. As mentioned previously, the greatest efforts in bringing Husserl’s work into French

attention had been put forward by Alexandre Koyre´ and Emmanuel Levinas. Not only did Levinas

devote his work to Husserl but Emmanuel Levinas also co-translated Husserl’s work to French, with

Gabrielle Peiffer. Me´ditations carte´siennes was the first of Husserl’s work to arrive in France in 1931.

This was in fact a revised version of Husserl’s earlier works ‘‘Introduction to Transcendental

Phenomenology,’’ which included two lectures – the so-called ‘‘Paris Lectures’’ – that Husserl had

delivered at the Sorbonne, in Paris, on February 23 and 25, 1929 as a response to an invitation sent by the

Institut d’E´tudes germaniques and the Socie´te´ Franc¸aise de Philosophie. In the years 1930’s the

younger generation had shown more enthusiasm with reception of Husserl’s work compared to what the

older generation in the past had shown. Amongst the appreciators of the work were some of the latter, to-

be-famous philosophers such as Raymond Aron and Sartre.

After Husserlian phenomenology, Hegel’s phenomenology received more light and started to

grow in interest of the people, specifically being, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Jean Wahl’s La

Malheur de la conscience dans la philosophie de Hegel “The Unhappy Consciousness in Hegel’s

Philosophy’’, which was published in the year 1929, marks the beginning of the Hegel renaissance in

France. Hegel’s work’s reading is seen to be more ‘‘existential’’ rather than being so much focused on

‘‘System.’’ First Koyre´ and then Alexandre Koje`ve lectured on Hegel, at the E´ cole Pratique des Haute

E´tudes, and specially Koje`ve’s seminar that he had held, which ran from the year 1933 to the year 1939,

had attracted an audience from which immerged French intellectual scene for much of 20th century

examples including among others Raymond Aron, Georges Bataille, Andre´ Breton, Aron Gurwitsch,

Jacques Lacan, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Where the British Hegelians had clearly had seen Hegel’s

work as absolute idealism, Koje`ve highlighted existential and political import as the precursor to Marx,

in the works of Hegel. In Koje`ve’s materialist reading of Hegel’s master–slave dialectic he highlighted
the Master Insofar’s “tragic situation” who had depended his self-assurance and self-certainty upon being

‘‘recognized by someone whom he does not recognize’’ meaning he was only self-assured if strangers to

him recognized him without him recognizing them, he can only find satisfaction when he is recognized by

someone who he believes is worthy of recognizing him. He introduces this concept as ‘‘existential

impasse’’, meaning, of depending on an evaluation from one whose judgment he does not value. He

concludes from Hegel’s work that future belongs to the slave, a proletarian, who can set himself free

through his labor. It was not only that which brought attention from the younger people to this theory but

it was also done through comparing his existential–ontological account of self-consciousness by Koje`ve,

with Jean-Paul Sartre’s existential ontology. Koje`ve, offers the following dialectical account of the I of

self-consciousness: ‘‘not to be what it is (as static and given being, as natural being, as ‘innate character’)

and to be (that is, to become) what it is not” as compared to Sartre’s work where he defines the being of

human being qua being-for-itself as ‘‘being what it is not and not being what it is [e´tant ce qu’il n’est

pas et n’e´tant pas ce qu’il ist],’’. This clearly shows that Sartre was familiar with Koje`ve’s reading of

Hegel. A tradition of Hegel studies had never developed in France. For all practical purposes, Koyre´

reported, there were no Hegelian studies in France. But 16 years later after Koje`ve’s lectures and

Hyppolite’s translation of Hegel’s work, did Hegel’s philosophy become so famous that it has said to be

the beginning of the philosophies of Marx and Nietzsche, phenomenology, German existentialism, and

psychoanalysis. It was Hegel who started the attempt to explore the irrational. To go against Hegel, you

have to have a precise appreciation. However it’s a trick that Hegel plays which leaves us speechless at

the end, if we try to move away from Hegel’s teachings.

Heidegger was also introduced in France in early 1930s. Heidegger’s essays ‘‘What is

Metaphysics?’’ and ‘‘On the Essence of Reasons’’ both appeared in French journals in 1931. In 1930’s

and 1940’s it became difficult to interpret Heidegger’s philosophy from Husserl’s, both tended to

interpret each through the other. As the young philosophers of the 1930s were looking elsewhere than

idealism and spiritualism, they felt great sympathy toward Heidegger’s work. French philosophy had lost
touch with the real world and they desired, as the title of Jean Wahl’s book made clear, a philosophical

approach that would allow them to move toward the concrete. This approach they found in Husserl’s

method of phenomenological description and Heidegger’s account of phenomenological ontology.

Phenomenology was, first and foremost, a method with positive content. For Husserl, the goal of

phenomenology was to attain absolutely valid knowledge of things through a rigorous method, including

the methodical tools of epoche– the bracketing or suspension of preconceptions – and the

phenomenological reduction. The proper or right use of this method and the methodical tools, leads to the

finding of a “pure description”. This prevents interpretative conclusions which will turn to be incorrect.

Anyone who uses this method is a radical empiricist who, in the words of Husserl’s motto, could get ‘‘zu

den Sachen selbst’’ or ‘‘to the things themselves.’’ Meaning he will arrive to the final conclusion himself,

which will be correct. The main task of this phenomenological method is to achieve the “pure

description”. According to Husserl the starting point of philosophical reflection, is what he described as

the world of the natural attitude or natural standpoint, by which he meant our unsophisticated,

unreflective consciousness of the world-as-experienced. Through the methodical tools of epoche one puts

aside all worldly assumptions and beliefs – all theoretical assumptions, all scientific, religious,

philosophical constructions and interpretations, in order to understand or reveal the underlying structure

or the depth of the world and thus understand the thing itself. The epoche leads to phenomenological

reduction, which “reduces” our experiences, meaning that it leads us to the origins or the source of the

things, thereby reducing the cultural world to the world of our immediate experience – the Lebenswelt –

the world as lived. What the French learned from Husserlian phenomenology was firstly and most

importantly, a methodology that grounded philosophical reflection in the immediate world of lived

experience (ve´cu).

Phenomenology set aside the methodological rigor, that interpreted philosophy as a “rigorous

science”, provided a theory of consciousness, which was totally unlike the idealist account of philosophy,

which could remain connected to the world. Husserl put forward that consciousness is intentional and that
consciousness always exists as consciousness-of-something. Descartes introduced a structure called the

dyadic structure of the ego cogito or ‘‘I think,’’ whereas phenomenology starts with a structure called the

triadic structure; ego cogito cogitatum or ‘‘I think object-thought.’’ In explanation consciousness is

always attached to something, example when we love we love something, when we fear we fear

something, so there is always something connected to the consciousness hence the consciousness is

intentional. Consciousness is essentially directed toward what it is not – its object. Thus phenomenology

claims that every act of consciousness (cogito or noesis) was conjoined to an object of consciousness

(cogitatum or noema).

The subject–object dualism had created the idealist problem of needing to prove the existence of

an outside world, separate from the consciousness. Phenomenology merely shifts the focus and attention

from the relationship between the ego and the cogito to the relationship between the act of consciousness

and its object, through the concept of intentionality, which also was a created escape from the subject-

object dualism of the idealist approach. Concentration of questions of reality of the world shifted to

questions for world’s meaning of consciousness. However in his lectures in Paris, Husserl concentrated

too much on the ego and was criticized by many, including Sartre himself. Sartre used his Transcendence

of the Ego, to back up his argument that Husserl’s transcendental ego was both unnecessary to a

phenomenological description and a hindrance that would ultimately wrong any analysis made using

Husserl’s phenomenological concepts completely—Heidegger’s account of phenomenology grounded it

firmly in a hermeneutic-interpretive description of existence that made the meaning of Being and its basic

ontological structures phenomenology’s central concern.

The French used Heidegger’s phenomenology to define and describe the concrete modes of

human beings. Heidegger’s phenomenology put forward a method for recovery from failure and trying

once again by asking questions of the meaning of Being again and again. It explains that it is the

meaningful facts which need to be analyzed hence why interpretation is an important aspect of

phenomenological description. Interpretation is the laying-out of meanings that are already understood.
Heidegger also left the French to not only question “meaning of Being” but “existentialism” as well, of

what it means to be. The word “Being” describes concrete human experiences example being in the

world, being in love, being anxious, being guilty, etc. It also shows us that philosophy cannot detach itself

from history because what it means to be is “to be in time”, which is also evidential that human beings are

historical i.e. the Being of human being. Phenomenology will detach itself from French, however, it

cannot be ignored how enthusiastically the French had accepted German Philosophy by Husserl, Scheler,

and Heidegger, by its students in the years 1920s and 1930s.