Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Phenomenolgy and Logic: The Boston College Lectures on Mathematical Logic and Existentialism

Titel: Phenomenolgy and Logic: The Boston College Lectures on Mathematical Logic and Existentialism

Stichwort: Kritik 6 an Husserl: Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften; Priorität des Subjektes; Köhler (Schimpansen; Mangel an Imagination); participatio creata lucis increatae: Grund des Wissens; transzendentale Reduktion -> Sein (nicht Subjekt)

Kurzinhalt: ... we cannot follow Husserl in his demand for absolute necessity and absolute certitude. What we know is true as a matter of fact, and to demand more is ... finally, Husserl's transcendental reduction to the subject is not ultimate: ...

Textausschnitt: 9.6 Priority of the Subject

264b Finally, there is a real priority of the subject in knowledge. The human sensitive psyche is not the animal psyche. Kohler, in his experiment with the apes, discovered that even the most intelligent type of ape, the chimpanzee, does not have free images.1 If you put an element of the solution of a problem to the ape within its field of vision, the ape will solve the problem. But if you put the element such that the ape can only see one element now and another element later, he cannot form a free image, even though the problem is essentially the same. In man, the free image is fundamental. Children are continually imagining and pretending, and that is something essentially human. To educate people you have to give them a formation in language and literature; otherwise they lack imaginations, and without imaginations they do not have a sensitive tool of sufficient suppleness and range to provide a basis for intellectual activity. This is the theoretical ground of classical or humanistic education. (Fs)

264c Again our participatio creata lucis increatae is in fact the ground of questions and of all intellectual activity. (Fs)

265a Still, though the subject has this priority in knowledge, we cannot follow Husserl in his demand for absolute necessity and absolute certitude. What we know is true as a matter of fact, and to demand more is to move towards an impossible ideal that backfires into skepticism. In Husserl's epochê, as we will see in the next hour, there is involved the confusion between what Santayana calls animal faith and, on the other hand, rational judgment. (Fs)

265b And finally, Husserl's transcendental reduction to the subject is not ultimate: the ultimate reduction is of subject and object, scientific world and world of common sense, to being.2 The subject is, and if he is, then he is among the beings. (Fs)
265c So much, then, for a very rough outline of a powerful book by Husserl. I hope I have conveyed to you some idea of its sweep and radicalness, and some intimation also of the way Husserl worked all his life long in search of foundations for philosophy and science. The more obvious limitations I have indicated, but Husserl's great discovery was phenomenology, and in the next period we shall say what comes to mind regarding its nature, its significance, and its limitations.3 (Fs; E08 21.12.2008)