Phenomenology and the Question of Individuality
The reconsideration of subjectivity and the fate of the individual took several divergent and even contradictory forms in twentieth-century European philosophy. One of the most influential approaches was phenomenology, the philosophical discipline founded by Edmund Husserl. Where Nietzsche had given a stormy diagnosis of the modern world and its ills, Husserl, who was primarily interested in logic and epistemology, soberly inventoried the ego's constitutive capacity, its ability to invest a world with significance.
In his Logical Investigations of 1900, he had attempted to establish the objectivity of logical categories through an analysis of the invariant aspects of subjective experience. Despite its demonstration of an objective logic, the phenomenological method of "direct intuition" and insight into "essential structures" led naturally over the following decades to a broader exploration of the "stream of consciousness," and, in Husserl's case, to a form of transcendental idealism; by the time of the Cartesian Meditations of 1930, he was claim-
ing that "all that exists for the pure ego becomes constituted in it itself."[12] Nevertheless, through the key concept of intentionality, Husserl's phenomenology pointed beyond the strict subject/object dualism characteristic of Cartesian rationalism. By "intentionality," Husserl meant to specify consciousness as an inherent relation to an object: consciousness was always consciousness of something, and that in a specific manner. For example, one might doubt, surmise, hope or fear, judge, approve, or merely be presented with, an object. The notion of intentionality suggested that consciousness gained its element of intelligibility through a double relation, to the world of objects, which could appear under a variety of different aspects, and to the world of subjective acts, which could apprehend the world of objects in a number of different ways, and with different aims in mind. Husserl thus described a more or less stable structure of objectivity, grasped through the fluctuating relations of a dynamic subjectivity.
Although Husserl's focus on logic largely removed history from his purview, the rise of fascism led him to a reconsideration of the foundations of philosophy. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology , published posthumously, but written between 1934 and 1937, raised the question of a crisis as to the meaning of man. At a time when political philosophers were advocating a return to natural law (legal positivism seemed the unwitting ally of fascism), Husserl resurrected the Kantian notion of a teleological Idea of humanity. Humanity, according to Husserl, had forgotten its proper goal, the attainment of rationality and freedom, and had thus betrayed the essence of the meaning of man.
The crisis in science alluded to in Husserl's title concerned not the methodology of the objective sciences, such as physics, but rather the illicit importation of natural scientific method into the sphere of human life itself. In lieu of a reasoned reflection on man's meaning, science provided a ready-made human self-understanding. But this objectivistic self-understanding created a crisis in human existence, for "men treated as facts become facts,"[13] and a fact could hardly be expected to comprehend its own transcendental essence. Under the sway of universal objectivism, the tasks of rationality and freedom had thus been displaced by mathematical-physical knowledge, a critical human accomplishment to be sure, but one that increasingly had forgotten its human origins. Phenomenology's role in this situa-
tion became the restoration of the teleology immanent in subjectivity to its proper place. By demonstrating the grounding of any human logos, including the mathesis universalis of physics, in transcendental subjectivity, phenomenology uncovered the teleological Idea of man as an historical goal still outstanding.
Rationality in the Crisis thus became a task to be accomplished, rather than an innate endowment of the transcendental ego. Moreover, Husserl insisted that rationality, properly understood, transcended the narrow ratio of mathematical-physical objectivism, encompassing as well man's autonomous freedom to shape himself and his environment.[14] Only philosophy—only phenomenology—provided an adequate ratio for the self-reflection of mankind. Through a "bracketing" of the account of the world given by natural science, phenomenology reached the "life-world," that mundane environment of human existence, where Husserl already discovered the ongoing teleological accomplishments of subjectivity, filling the world with meaning, prior to objective understanding. Whether this life-world, precisely distinguished by him as the pregiven foundation of all higher theory, could be reconciled with his previous idealistic theory, which insisted on the transcendental constitution of the world by the ego, remained unresolved at his death. What Husserl himself desired is less debatable: "I want to establish, against mysticism and irrationalism, a kind of super-rationalism [Überrationalismus ] which transcends the old rationalism as inadequate and yet vindicates its inmost objectives."[15]
Husserl left a varied legacy to future philosophers; realists and existentialists as well as idealists could find support in some stage of his elaboration of the phenomenological method. But the relevance of phenomenology for social theory first became clear not through his own work, but through that of Max Scheler, and particularly through Martin Heidegger's Being and Time , published in 1927 in Husserl's Jahrbuch fur Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Forschung .
Being and Time had an immediate impact. On a purely philosophical level, the book criticized traditional metaphysics from Aristotle to Hegel in the name of a truly "fundamental ontology" that overcame the traditional equation of being with substance. Confronting such forebears as Kant and Descartes, Heidegger set out to destroy previous ontologies, in preparation for posing anew the
question fundamental to his own thought: "What is the meaning of Being?" Yet Being and Time also contained a detailed analysis of human being: by proposing a novel interpretation of what being human meant, he linked the ontological dispute over substance to an indictment of everyday life in the modern world. The potential for human excellence was being diminished while life was leveled down to dull uniformity: this was one message dearly transmitted through an elaborately technical philosophical prose.
Like Husserl in the Crisis , Heidegger in Being and Time wished to retrieve the capacity for transcendence inherent in human existence from its fixation within a deceptively self-evident world of objective entities. To this end, he distinguished between "authentic" (eigentlich ) and "inauthentic" ways of being human. Where the inauthentic person assumed the world he inherited as a given, the authentic individual confronted this world as a set of possibilities grasped through his own decisions, acts, and commitments. To be sure, Heidegger, like Nietzsche, presumed that most people would forfeit the creative powers and freedom inherent in being human, preferring instead the anonymous security afforded by the conformity and stereotyped possibilities of "the crowd" (das Man ) To cast one's lot with the crowd was to abdicate individuation to interchangeability: "Everyone is other and no one is himself."[16] Heidegger also drew a sharp distinction between the "concern" (Besorgen ) with which a person pursued his everyday life, and the "care" (Sorgen ) with which an authentic individual resolved on a unique (eigenst ) way of being. In his concern with daily affairs, a person could disburden and literally lose himself in mundane matters. By contrast, in caring about his world, the authentic individual realized and acted upon his inherent capacity to form his own (eigen ) life, by choosing among the factual possibilities disclosed by his thoughtful resolve.
But what led a person to care about his world? What aspects of human existence could potentially break the spell of everyday life and its seductive concerns? On Heidegger's account, the crucial moments came in fleeting moods, in nagging fears—in anxiety, in the sense of impending death, ultimately in the "call" of conscience. Where everyday life preoccupied, the thought of death disturbed: and in the experience of anxiety before death as a person's ultimate possibility. Heidegger detected the voice of conscience, calling the
individual to care about his world, and to accept responsibility for his own life. By setting a final limit to the possibilities of existence, the anticipation of death also revealed the finitude and temporal unity of a person's life span. The authentic individual faced the future knowing it was finite, and yet grasped the past as something to be assimilated in the present, through a free choice among possible ways of being.
While the anticipation of death thus individualized a person and disclosed authenticity as an essential possibility of being human, the authentic individual returned to a public world of shared endeavors, where he fashioned a unique historical "fate" for himself. Indeed, this unfolding of the individual's "finite freedom" finally overcame the powerlessness of an isolated witness before death only by submitting to the shared "destiny" of a people, a power liberated "in communicating and in struggling." Only with historical destiny on the horizon did the authentic individual become empowered with a firm resolve that confirmed his own commitments; only by "surrendering" his isolatated individuality could a person "win" himself as an "authentic self."[17]
The implications of Being and Time were far-reaching. In addition to discarding the Cartesian dualism dividing mind and body, Heidegger was concerned to show the formative significance of states of mind, such as moods, emotions, fears; instead of assuming rational judgment as a distinctive and universal human attribute, he presented it as merely one mode of existence, one way of approaching the world. In opposition to any transcendental idea of Reason, Heidegger substituted an interpretation of human beings as the sole source of reasons: through their own transcending freedom, by the ways of being human they chose, it was men alone who brought reason to life.[18]
Despite the conservative implications of his understanding of historical destiny, the importance of Heidegger's philosophy for radical theory was undeniable, although few Marxists of the period were prepared to acknowledge it; Lucien Goldmann has even argued that Being and Time contains a covert response to, and hidden affinity with, Lukács's History and Class Consciousness .[19] By suggesting that a practical concern with worldly affairs only obstructed caring enough about the world to risk changing it or making it one's own, Heidegger implicitly called into question the convergence of inter-
est, labor, and insight Marx had assumed, as well as the individuating tendencies Marx had found at work in modern society. Moreover, by pointing out the consolations a person derived from forfeiting his distinctiveness, Heidegger challenged the Marxist understanding of alienation: what in Marx represented primarily dispossession, in Heidegger appeared as "tr anquilization" as well.[20] To the extent that anonymity and unfreedom appeared comforting, while individuality and freedom appeared burdensome, the understanding of individual emancipation had to be revised.
Whatever difficulties fundamental ontology as a whole confronted, in all these particulars Heidegger helped redraw the boundaries for theoretical discussions within the human studies. He also transformed their style. If positivism had imported a dry factuality into Marxism, Heidegger's philosophy would impart a flavor of ontological salvation. The promise of authentic Being, wed to revolutionary Marxism, produced an aura of messianic hope that attracted neo-Marxist thinkers as diverse as Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Herbert Marcuse.