‘Transcendental Phenomenology and Existentialism James M. Edie Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Sep., 1964), 52-63. Stable URL hitp:/flinks.jstor-org/sicisici=003 1-8205% 28 196409% 292573 1% 3C52%3ATPAB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B Philosophy and Phenomenological Research is currently published by International Phenomenological Society Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hup:/www,jstororglabout/terms.hml. ISTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at hupulwww.jstor-org/journals/ips hum ch copy of any part of'a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, ISTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @ jstor.org. hupulwww jstor.org/ ‘Sun Feb 26 05:17:24 2006TRANSCENDENTAL PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIALISM The great drama of the phenomenological movement, particularly since the Second World War, has been the development and enlarging of the perspectives of Husser!’s original transcendental phenomenology into an existential phenomenology. André de Muralt has described this development accurately, if negatively, as the “ultimate form of the refusal to platonize”1 on the part of Husser!’s progeny - a refusal which is, no doubt, characteristic of the general spirit of contemporary philosophy as 4 whole and which justifies those who find in phenomenology a method and a spirit of search capable of renewing and deepening the realistic and pragmatic approach to philosophy characteristic of American thought. ‘Husserl, during his middle period, characterized phenomenology as a “transcendental idealism,” and a large number of his followers have con- sistently remained faithful to an idealistic interpretation of his works.2 They have resisted the “existentialist” interpretation of his thought which is associated with the carly Heidegger, with Sartre and with Merleau- Ponty and his followers in particular. We cannot hope to solve the historical question as to which of these divergent interpretations (the “dealist” or the “existential”) has the greater claim to Husserlian legiti- ‘macy in the space of this short paper. We will, therefore, limit ourselves to pointing out some of the themes, particularly in Hussert’s later writings, which lend support to the existential interpretation of his thought and, in a positive way, attempt to show how existential phe- nomenology is a genuine and authentic phenomenology.® We will center the discussion around the meaning which has been given to the term “transcendental” in recent phenomenology. In the + André de Muralt, Lidée de ta phénoménologie, Paris, 1958, p. 361. 2 This is true not only of many’ of the older generation of phenomenologists ‘who were close to Husserl himself but also of such portexistentialst waiters as “André de Muralt and Suzanne Bachelard © It is necessary to distinguish, of course, the nonphenomenological or “ontic” cxistentialism of writers such as Kierkegaard, Nietziche, Jaspers, Marce] and Camus {rom the phenomenological or “ontological” existentialism represented by the early ‘Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and their followers. What is characteristic of the latter group is its concern for transcendental analysis as defined in this paper. 52.‘TRANSCENDENTAL PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIALISM 53 history of Western philosophy we find three major conceptions of the transcendental: that of Greek philosophy, that of Kantian idealism, and that of phenomenology. Before distinguishing them, we can note that they share in common a view of philosophy as a search for the radical, ultimate, foundational structures of experience, thought and reality. ‘A transcendental philosophy is always a “metaphysics of experience” in the senso that it means to go beyond and benetath the ordinary, common- sense, taken-for-granted evidences of daily life and “natural” thought to the foundations of these evidences. Such an enterprise involves a con- ception of philosophy as an attempt to come to grips with experience and to com-prehend it by disclosing its fundamental structures. ‘The transcendental “categories” recognized by ancient philosophy were al- ways categories of objective being, the transcendent object of experience, as it is in itself independent of human consciousness. Hence the essen- tialism and “objectivism” of Greek thought which nevertheless can be approached as a rich, yet naive, noematic analysis of experienced. being - in which being is understood not as the exercise of an activity which the philosopher is but as the object of his experience. This early conception of the transcendental as the objective structure of a transcendent reality was replaced by that of idealistic philosophy. Descartes reversed the traditional metaphysical standpoint by turning to the radical subjectivity of the thinking subject as the only accessible foundation and source of truth. Descartes saw that all “objective evi- dence” is given in and to consciousness. The only possible basis for a truly radical philosophy, said Descartes, lay in the reflexive analysis of those elements and acts of consciousness in the very exercise of which ‘consciousness coincides with itself. On the basis of the apodictic cert tude of the coindence of self with self in self-consciousness it is possible to build a “scientific,” ie. a certain and valid, philosophy. This project was further developed by Kant when he attempted to transform the objectified, transcendental categories of traditional philos- ophy into structural elements of human reason and thus establish a ‘metaphysics of subjectivity. For Kant the transcendental is no longer the object of knowledge but the immanent structure of knowledge.‘ The transcendental is no longer transcendent but immanent to consciousness.’ It is the a priori condition of the possibility, not of being, but of the knowledge of being. The object of reflexion is no longer the eternal, necessary, unchanging order of transcendent being, but the transcenden- tal conditions, the foundations, of our experience of transcendent being. 4 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, tr. Norman Kemp Smith, London, 1958, p. 299. * Dbid, Pp. 118-119.