Q&A: Your Choice of Husserl’s Phenomenology
Your Choice of Husserl’s Phenomenology
Question
Hello,
In your book God Plays Dice, in the appendices, as part of the discussion of informativism and actualism, you present Husserl’s position on our ability to penetrate, in a certain way, to the laws through phenomena.
My question is why you choose specifically this position, when at its core stands such a subjectivist ontology?
Aristotle already argues that we are capable of understanding lawfulness through phenomena, and in my opinion his thought is more intuitive than Husserl’s; at least in the sense that science deals with objects in the world, and not with the subjective intentions that constitute it. I’m not an expert on Husserl, but it seems odd to me to base informativism on the basis of a thinker who rather strips the external world of its significance.
In short, do you in fact tend to accept Husserl’s doctrine in a broad sense, or did you bring his view on this issue merely as an example?
Thank you
Answer
I’m not basing anything on Husserl, nor on any other thinker. I’ve explained more than once why our intuition is a kind of seeing (viewing ideas). There are excellent arguments in favor of this. Without it, you are condemned to skepticism. For example, there is no other solution to Kant’s synthetic a priori problem.
Discussion on Answer
I mean that I am not basing myself on Husserl. I make claims and justify them. The discussion of Husserl is presented as an illustration and in order to cite something in the name of the person who said it. That is not basing myself on someone, because I oppose basing arguments on people. The arguments speak, not the people.
What do you mean by “I’m not basing anything on Husserl or on any other thinker”?
For example, in order to discuss the synthetic a priori, surely one has to base oneself on Kant. And to discuss the ontological proof, one has to base oneself on Anselm. And so on and so on.
And I also heard in the name of Whitehead, of blessed memory: “All philosophy is just a footnote to Plato.”