Ii Transcendental Phenomenology

I

no longer survey my perception experiences, imagination experiences, the psychological data which my psychological experi ence reveals : I learn to survey transcendental experience. I am no longer interested in my own existence. I am interested in the pure intentional life, wherein my psychically real experiences have occurred. This step raises the transcendental problem (the trans cendental being defined as the quality of that which is conscious ness) to its true level. We have to recognize that relativity to consciousness is not only an actual quality of our world, but, from eidetic necessity, the quality of every conceivable world. We may, in a free fancy, vary our actual world, and transmute it to any other which we can imagine, but we are obliged with the world to vary ourselves also, and ourselves we cannot vary except within the limits prescribed to us by the nature of subjectivity. Change worlds as we may, each must ever be a world such as we could experience, prove upon the evidence of our theories and in habit with our practice. The transcendental problem is eidetic. My psychological experiences, perceptions, imaginations and the like remain in form and content what they were, but I see them as "structures" now, for I am face to face at last with the ulti mate structure of consciousness.

It is obvious that, like every other intelligible problem, the transcendental problem derives the means of its solution from an existence-stratum, which it presupposes and sets beyond the reach of its enquiry. This realm is no other than the bare subjectivity of consciousness in general, while the realm of its investigation remains not less than every sphere which can be called "objec tive," which considered in its totality, and at its root, is the conscious life. No one, then, can justly propose to solve the transcendental problem by psychology either empirical or eidetic phenomenological, without petitio principii, for psychology's "subjectivity" and "consciousness" are not that subjectivity and consciousness, which our philosophy will investigate. The transcen dental reduction has supplanted the psychological reduction. In the place of the psychological "I" and "we," the transcendental "I" and "we" are comprehended in the concreteness of transcendental consciousness. But though the transcendental "I" is not my psy chological "I," it must not be considered as if it were a second "I," for it is no more separated from my psychological "I" in the con ventional sense of separation, than it is joined to it in the conventional sense of being joined.

Transcendental self-experience may, at any moment, merely by a change of attitude, be turned back into psychological self experience. Passing, thus, from the one to the other attitude, we notice a certain "identity" about the ego. What I saw under the psychological reflection as "my" objectification, I see under the transcendental reflection as self-objectifying, or, as we may also say, as objectified by the transcendental "I." We have only to recognize that what makes the psychological and transcendental spheres of experience parallel is an "identity" in their significance, and that what differentiates them is merely a change of attitude, to realize that the psychological and transcendental phenomenolo gies will also be parallel. Under the more stringent Eroxri the psychological subjectivity is transformed into the transcendental subjectivity, and the psychological inter-subjectivity into the transcendental inter-subjectivity. It is this last which is the con crete, ultimate ground, whence all that transcends consciousness, including all that is real in the world, derives the sense of its existence. For all objective existence is essentially "relative," and owes its nature to a unity of intention, which being established according to transcendental laws, produces consciousness with its habit of belief and its conviction.

Phenomenology, the Universal Science.

Thus, as phe nomenology is developed, the Leibnitzian foreshadowing of a uni versal ontology, the unification of all conceivable a priori sciences, is improved, and realized upon the new and non-dogmatic basis of phenomenological method. For phenomenology as the science of all concrete phenomena proper to subjectivity and inter-sub jectivity, is eo ipso an a priori science of all possible existence and existences. Phenomenology is universal in its scope, because there is no a priori which does not depend upon its intentional con stitution, and derive from this its power of engendering habits in the consciousness that knows it, so that the establishment of any a priori must reveal the subjective process by which it is estab lished.

Once the a priori disciplines, such as the mathematical sciences, are incorporated within phenomenology, they cannot thereafter be beset by "paradoxes" or disputes concerning principles : and those sciences which have become a priori independently of phenomenol ogy, can only hope to set their methods and premises beyond criticism, by founding themselves upon it. For their very claim to be positive, dogmatic sciences bears witness to their dependency, as branches, merely, of that universal, eidetic ontology, which is phenomenology.

The endless task, this exposition of the universum of the a priori, by referring all objectives to their transcendental "or igin," may be considered as one function in the construction of a universal science of fact, where every .department, including the positive, will be settled on its a priori. So that our last division of the complete phenomenology is thus : eidetic phenomenology, or the universal ontology, for a first philosophy; and second philosophy as the science of the transcendental inter-subjectivity or universum of fact.

Thus the antique conception of philosophy as the universal science, philosophy in the Platonic, philosophy in the Cartesian, sense, that shall embrace all knowledge, is once more justly re stored. All rational problems, and all those problems, which for one reason or another, have come to be known as "philosophical," have their place within phenomenology, finding from the ultimate source of transcendental experience or eidetic intuition, their proper form and the means of their solution. Phenomenology itself learns its proper function of transcendental human "living" from an entire relationship to "self." It can intuite life's absolute norms and learn life's original teleological structure. Phenomen ology is not less than man's whole occupation with himself in the service of the universal reason. Revealing life's norms, he does, in fact, set free a stream of new consciousness intent upon the infinite idea of entire humanity, humanity in fact and truth.

Metaphysical, teleological, ethical problems, and problems of the history of philosophy, the problem of judgment, all significant problems in general, and the transcendental bonds uniting them, lie within phenomenology's capability.

Phenomenological philosophy is but developing the main springs of old Greek philosophy, and the supreme motive of Des cartes. These have not died. They split into rationalism and empiricism. They stretch over Kant and German idealism, and reach the present, confused day. They must be reassumed, sub jected to methodical and concrete treatment. They can inspire a science without bounds.

Phenomenology demands, of phenomenalists that they shall forgo particular closed systems of philosophy, and share decisive work with others toward persistent philosophy.