Existentialism For Beginners by David Cogswell

Author:David Cogswell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: For Beginners
Published: 2013-03-02T05:00:00+00:00

An Alternative Method of Knowing

Husserl created a bridge between the thinking and spirit of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard and the earlier Cartesian tradition of logic, and laid the groundwork on which Heidegger and Sartre attempted to build twentieth century existentialism as a systematic philosophy.

Husserl was an exponent of classical rationalism, but he wanted to ground the rationality of mankind on a more solid and comprehensive basis than previous philosophers.

He offered an alternative view to that of positivism and the scientific, objective view. Positivism states that the only valid knowledge is from scientific inquiry, the positive affirmation of theories formulated using the scientific method. But Husserl said that all of our knowledge of so-called objective phenomena is based on subjective experience. Therefore, our subjective experience is really the more fundamental source and ultimately the most reliable.

Husserl said philosophers should cast aside all systems and preconceptions that filter their perceptions and look directly at the phenomena themselves, the actual concrete data of experience. “To the things themselves,” was the slogan of phenomenology, meaning a return to the sources themselves, casting off all preconceptions and readymade forms and theories. Philosophy must return to a pure description of what is, Husserl said.

Husserl gave validity to our experience of the world, as distinct from those who asked whether the world was real, or said it is only an outgrowth or creation of the mind, or those who said that the only reliable source of knowledge of the world was through scientific instruments and that the senses and the direct experience cannot be trusted.

Husserl brought a kind of direct realism to philosophizing. That which you see and experience is the real world, he said. His goal was to try to find a point of departure that was pre-systematic, pre-theoretical, something that would underlie different or opposing philosophizing, a common ground of pre-conceptual experience and perception.

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