EVIDENCE OF COGITO: DESCARTES AND HUSSERL
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:
THE EVIDENCE OF EGO
COGITO
DISTINCTION BETWEEN
DESCARTES AND HUSSERL
M. Verónica Arís Zlatar
General aspects to consider[1]
1.
Both
have the purpose to leave the naïve evidence of everyday life in order to begin
from a radical ground of evidence.
2.
The
hyperbolic epoché of Descartes by
which he adds an evil genius for neutralizing the rational evidence of
mathematics, and in Husserl the epoché as the neutralization of the certain thesis of the natural
attitude of our everyday life, putting into brackets every level of our beliefs.
3.
The
historical scientific context of both. Descartes is founding the science as we
know it today and Husserl is in presence of a deep cultural crisis of the
rationality and its achievements. The thing in Husserl is to establish not
merely the constrictive structure of deductive sciences (for instance in Logical Investigations, 1901), but also an
authentic ground for the existent sciences for the human life (for instance in Die Krisis, 1936). In this way the
quality of the purpose is different.
4.
Descartes
find the realm of transcendental subjectivity in order to legitimate the
objective existence of the world by different kinds of inferences. Husserl opens
the realm of transcendental subjectivity in order to know how this radical
field of being is, as the condition of meaning of the constitution of the
living world experience.
5.
The
consciousness-of the world in Descartes becomes clear in attention to the self
as res cogitans. The consciousness-of
the world in Husserl becomes clear by the reflective turn to the giver transcendental
source of meaning/sense.
6.
The
exclusion of the worldly content of thoughts in Descartes reveals the
metaphysical structure of consciousness, through the innate ideas and the adventitial
ideas from them. The epoché of Husserl
lets appear the world in view of its meaning/sense.
7.
The
Cartesian epoché wants to get a valid
metaphysical starting point. The husserlian epoché
tries to explain and unveil the intentional character of consciousness. In this
way Descartes develops a lineal program of argumentation, while Husserl
develops a circular or spiral explanation regarding his constant radicallity.
8.
The
return to the world in its validity is made by Descartes through the mediation
of inferences from the cogito and the God. The “return” to the world (because
he never left the world) in Husserl consists in the open and extended structure
of intersubjectivity by a very renew monadology, overcoming at the same time
any solipsismus.
9.
In
Descartes and in Brentano as well we can identify evidence, adequatio and apodicticity. In Husserl since
1929 evidence, adequatio and apodicticity
are independent characters of what is given as how is given. On the other hand,
the givenness of cogito that is an entire immediate givenness in Descartes, has
in Husserl of 1929 its own gradient of appearing. That is why phenomenological evidence
must be studied in its critical limits to overcome the phenomenological naïveté
implicit in it.
M. Verónica Arís Zlatar
[1] Some aspects considered here are
taken from the classes of Roberto Walton in a study group that we conformed
with some friends in UBA, Buenos Aires, 2006-2008. Organizing my studies here, I
cannot resist the enormous greeting feeling for his philosophical generosity.
Comments
Post a Comment