Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology

ISSN: 0007-1773 (Print) 2332-0486 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rbsp20

Phenomenology and The Problem of History: A

Study of Husserl's Transcendental Philosophy, by
David Carr.

Thomas Attig

To cite this article: Thomas Attig (1976) Phenomenology and The Problem of History: A
Study of Husserl's Transcendental Philosophy, by David Carr., Journal of the British Society for
Phenomenology, 7:1, 66-67, DOI: 10.1080/00071773.1976.11006448

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00071773.1976.11006448

Published online: 21 Oct 2014.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 2

View related articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rbsp20
sein. when the suggested translations are in no way
unexpected or distinctively Husserlian. And there are
scores of similar examples. On the other hand, a helpful
"guide" might have included much more. Translating is
more than substituting each word in one language with
an equivalent word in another. A translator of Cairns'
experience might have included general remarks on
Husserl's style, grammar and vocabulary, and perhaps
even hints to the translator on how to grapple with
them. And, where Cairns' suggestions are unexpected, as
they often are, one wants to know the rationale. Why,
for example, does he suggest "mental process" for
Er/ebnis? I have often wondered why Cairns claims, in
footnotes to Cartesian Meditations and Formal and
Transcendental Logic, that Husser! uses Objekt and
Gegenstand "to express importantly different senses". He
says the same about Ego and lch. This would be the
place to tell us what those different senses are (I have
never been able to distinguish them). The truly important
distinction between reel/ and real needs some explana-
tion for the English-speaking reader. Why is inneres
Zeitbewusstsein to be translated as "consciousness of
internal time" and not, as Cairns insists, as "internal (not
inner) time-consciousness"? Why is Evidenz not to be
translated as "self-evidence"? There are no answers to
these questions, no clarifications or explanations, though
Cairns' reasons were undoubtedly well thought-out and
would be worth knowing. Another help would be refer-
ences to passages in Husser! where terminology is
explicitly discussed and some explanation for Husserl's
own choices are given - e.g. the remark on the use of
the term Gegenstiindlichkeit in the first Logical Investi-
gation §9. Cairns includes only a few of these: In short,
the guide could have been made richer by a few helpful
remarks, while a great many unproblematic words could
have been left out.
Still, one should not complain. As a former translator
know that one needs all the help one can get when
dealing with Husserl's German, and I wish I had had
this book when I was translating the Crisis. I disagree
with Cairns in some details (e.g. Evidenz) and often wish
his translations were less stiff and over-literal, but there
is no faulting the general accuracy of his work and his
thorough knowledge of both the texts and the language.
This book assures that an important result of Cairns'
long efforts becomes available to the general public.
David Carr
Yale University
PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE PROBLEM OF IDS·
TORY: A STUDY OF HUSSERL'S TRANSCEND·
ENTAL PHILOSOPHY, by David Carr. Evanston,
Northwestern University Press, 1974, pp. xxvi + 283.
66
Phenomenology and the Problem of History is an
attempt to answer the question whether the Husserlian
conception of transcendental philosophy can be sustained
or must self-destruct as Husser! "comes to terms with
history". It focuses upon Husserl's last effort to provide
a systematic introduction to phenomenology, The Crisis
of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomeno-
logy. The work is read as Husserl's attempt to sharpen
and employ a new methodological tool which Carr calls
the "historical reduction". It is designed to complement
the phenomenological reduction by bringing to light
historical prejudices which may infect philosophical
reflection. Carr suggests that The Crisis leaves unresolved
the question as to the compatibility of the discovery of
the historicity of consciousness with the ahistorical
transcendental philosophical project. Speculating beyond
The Crisis, Carr argues for compatibility by carefully
explicating crucial ambiguities in the Husserlian concept
of the life-world. Incorporation of a conceptually
clarified "historical reduction" secures the transcendental
project against an historicist, skeptical critique.
As the translator of The Crisis (Northwestern Univer-
sity Press, 1970), Carr is intimately acquainted with the
inner workings of that text. Drawing upon that acquain-
tance, he here shows himself to be an able Husser!
scholar. His interpretations are illuminating; his analyses
are often subtle and incisive; and his proposed resolution
of the problem of history is both duly cautious and
ultimately persuasive.
Carr begins with concise and insightful description of
the pre-Crisis Husserlian transcendental philosophy
which couches it firmly within the Kantian transcend-
ental tradition (Chapter 1). Transcendental phenomeno-
logy is characterized as a reflective quest for the
essential and ahistorical structures of experience within
which the world presents itself to us with the "sense [it]
has for us all, prior to all philosophizing" (Cartesian
Meditations, p. 151).
The author argues forcefully that Husserl's focus upon
history in Tlte Crisis is not merely occasional, e.g., as a
response to Being and Time (Chapter 2). Rather, it is
viewed as an outgrowth of developments within his own
thinking since first taking the transcendental turn. Carr
contends (Chapters 3 and 4) that the seeds of Husserl's
new and profound concern with history were sown in
his earlier reflections on genetic phenomenology and
intersubjectivity. A fleshed out concept of the historicity
of consciousness is said to have grown out of reflection
on (I) consitution and inner time-consciousness and (2)
communication and the social horizons of experience.
In Tlte Crisis, Carr reads Husser! as linking philo-
sophical and historical reflection in an intimate manner
unprecedented in his earlier works (Chapter 5). Unlike
the philosophical reduction of the Ideas which is a
suspension of self-consciously acknowledged "doctrinal
content" of traditional philosophies, the new "historical
reduction" is a bringing to explicit awareness of that
which is "taken for granted" in the very conception of
the tasks and methods of philosophy. New here is the
view that accidental structures of consciousness, i.e.,
prejudices growing out of particular philosophical
traditions, must be brought to light if the return to "the
things themselves" is to be accomplished.
Carr goes on to describe Husserl's own use, in The
Crisis, of the historical reduction both in the critique
of the tradition (Chapter 5) and in an implicit self-
critique (Chapter 6). The principal result is the develop-
ment of the concept of the life-world as the horizon of
all experience. The tradition and the Husserl who had
earlier focused his attention upon the "thesis" of the
natural standpoint are found to have concentrated upon
modes of thought and judgment about the world to the
neglect of their foundation in modes of pre-reflective and
pre-theoretical experience of the world.
Carr deftly counters criticism by Tugendhat (in Der
Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husser/ und Heidegger) and
Merleau-Ponty (in Phenomenology of Perception) to the
effect that the discovery of this life-world is a deathblow
to transcendental phenomenology in its classical sense
(Chapter 7). To note that (l) the life-world is not posited
as an object but rather experienced as the horizon of all
possible positings (Tugendhat) or that (2) on reflection
the philosopher is left with the naive and never fully
understood acceptance of the world as life-world
(Merleau-Ponty) is to engage in precisely the mode of
reflective interrogation of the modes of givenness of the
world which the method of reduction is designed to
facilitate. Carr further notes that without the historical-
reflections of The Crisis Husserl would not have dis-
covered the philosophical prejudices at work in his own
thinking which had distorted his vision of the life-world.
Hence, the indispensability of the new procedure.
This account of the compatibility of the concepts of
the life-world and the historical reduction with the
transcendental project would suffice were it not for
ambiguous passages in The Crisis (1) wherein Husserl
states that the sciences and other cultural achievements
"flow into" the life-world and (2) which suggest that
involvement in, e.g., the scientific tradition, may render
our very experience historically relative, thus under-
mining any attempt to discern ahistorical essential
structures of consciousness (Chapter 8). The ambiguity
of the passages, Carr argues, is a function of Husserl's
never fully articulating two senses of the term "life-
world" which are operative in his thinking. It is used
both to refer to (a) the "cultural world" of taken for
granted interpretations of experience and (b) the "per-
ceptual world" of pre-reflective and pre-theoretical
experience.
In a related text, Experience and Judgment, Carr finds
Husser! maintaining that cultural achievements precipi-
tate alterations in the "perceptual world" (Chapter 9).
Carr argues that such a view renders reflection obsolete
as a philosophical method and leads to a hopeless
historicist impasse. He despairs of the possibility of ever
being able to develop the procedures for the recovery
of an unadulterated life-world experience for which
Husser) calls in that text.
Confronting historicist skepticism head-on (Chapter
10), Carr admits that differences in cultures, values and
conceptual frameworks are discovered in historical
investigation. Yet, he expresses serious reservations
about whether we actually do or in principle can
discover the differences that are alleged in the case of
the fundamental structures in world experience.
Carr opts, instead, for a reading of historical factors
as affecting reflection only to the extent that they "flow
into" our taken for granted "cultural world" (Chapter
II). Historical reduction is thus vindicated as a worthy
complement to the phenomenological reduction in that
it (l) counters pretensions of historically naive straight-
forward reflection and (2) holds open the possibility of
a valid theory of consciousness which does not simply
mirror the prejudices of the age.
In conclusion, Carr considers whether Husserl's life-
long pursuit of prejudices, including those brought to
light by historical reduction, reflects a confusion of
prejudice and false judgment which Gadamer has called
the "prejudice against prejudices" (in W ahrheit und
Methode). Carr acquits Husser! by noting that he was
dedicated to both (l) overcoming prejudices which
distort reflection on experience and (2) achieving fuller
understanding and appreciation of that which is taken
for granted in the tradition yet remains worthy of
retention.
The present text is a worthy addition to the Husserl
literature. It is of special interest to those who have
puzzled over Husserl's last great work and the implica-
tions of its investigations of the life-world and the
history of philosophy. If Carr is correct, then it can no
longer be facilely maintained that such investigations
provide but one among several co-equal "ways into"
phenomenology.
Thomas Attig
Bowling Green State University
67