[In the following essay, Cairns challenges Hook's critique of Husserl.]

In the course of a recent article called “A Personal Impression of Contemporary German Philosophy” (this Jornal, Vol. XXVII, No. 6, March 13, 1930, pp. 141-160) Mr. Sidney Hook says:

Writers of the phenomenological school keep their eyes on the object, for that in a sense is what the phenomenological method is defined to be. Consequently they are the strongest analytical group in Germany and closest to the English and American school of neo-realism. But latterly Husserl's school has abandoned the standpoint of “pure description” and invaded the field of ontology. For many years, its opponents had maintained that its so-called “presuppositionless analysis” was only a deceptive phrase which concealed many presuppositions about the nature of knowledge, logic, and consciousness with which it was operating. And now Heidegger has come forward, as one crowned by the master himself to reveal what these presuppositions are and where they lead. Husserl had originally attracted notice with his Logische Untersuchungen, a keen attack on all psychological interpretations of the idea of validity. He himself regarded this work as a preface to larger studies which would contain a new logic. But in his subsequent works, instead of a new logic, he presented a new psychology—or rather a logicized version of pre-Lockean psychology. The fundamental dogmas of this “new logic” are the belief in immediate knowledge, the conviction theory of evidence and the doctrine of hypostatic essences which these entail. These entities, maintains Husserl, are self-contained and autonomous, but are imbedded in the content of consciousness and recognized by an act of intellectual vision (Wesenschau). [p. 152.]

To begin with, let me point out that Husserl had already attracted notice through the publication of the first volume of his Philosophie der Arithmetik in 1891, nine years before the publication of the first volume of his Logische Untersuchungen. In the second place, the Logische Untersuchungen are not in the main an attack on psychological interpretations of the idea of validity. The first volume is called a Prolegomena zur reinen Logik, and the first nine of its ten chapters are indeed largely devoted to a refutation of the doctrine that logic should be based on psychology. But the second volume, published in 1901 and entitled Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis, contains six Untersuchungen, none of which is devoted to “an attack on … psychological interpretations of the idea of validity.” The attack on psychologism is entirely prolegomenary, and occupies only about a fifth of the entire book.

“Keeping one's eyes on the object” is a bad definition of the phenomenological method. If it means “testing judgments by observed facts,” it is too wide. If it means “restricting observation to the non-subjective,” it is even more clearly false. For Husserl and his followers it is not the mere object, but the subjective act with its intentional correlate as such, which is the fundamental datum. Mere Wesensanalyse of objects is not what Husserl means by phenomenology. Incidentally, the emphasis on act-analysis, quite apart from profound metaphysical differences, would distinguish Husserl from the neo-realists.

If the recentness of Husserl's Formale und transzendentale Logik justified ignoring it, Mr. Hook would be justified in saying that Husserl's work published subsequently to the Logische Untersuchungen did not contain a new logic. Since the original publication of the Logische Untersuchungen and prior to 1929, there had been published, in addition to a revised edition of the Logische Untersuchungen, three philosophical contributions from Husserl's pen: in 1911 a fifty-page article on “Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft” in 1913 the first book of the Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie—this first book of the Ideen bears the subtitle, Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie—and in 1928 his Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins. The titles alone should show that Mr. Hook is wrong in intimating that any of these works pretends to offer a “new logic.”

What is meant by saying Husserl presented a “logicized version of pre-Lockean psychology”? Were there not many different psychologies before Locke? Of which did Husserl present a “logicized” version? In explanation Mr. Hook states, as fundamental dogmas of this logicized psychology, “belief in immediate knowledge, the conviction theory of evidence and the doctrine of hypostatic essences.” Of these three alleged dogmas, only the first is accepted by Husserl; the second and third are expressly rejected in his published writings.

Moreover, as Mr. Hook doubtless knows, the doctrine of immediate knowledge is expressly asserted in Locke's Essay (Bk. IV, ch. I, sec. 4, and especially Bk. IV, ch. II, sec. 1), and has had many non-phenomenologist adherents since Locke's day. How, then, does it earn for Husserl's doctrines the epithet, “pre-Lockean”?

Husserl is quite explicit in asserting that conviction is no indication of truth (cf. Ideen, Bk, I, sec. 136, p. 284). Indeed the phenomenological method is designed to lessen the danger of uncritically accepting as truths what are merely blind convictions. Immediate self-givenness of the object is for Husserl the source of all evidence (cf. op. cit., secs. 142 et seq., pp. 296 ff.). Such intuition brings, not mere conviction, but rational insight.

It is true that, according to Husserl, essences are recognized in an act of intellectual vision (Wesenschau), though, of course, Husserl does not say we have such a vision every time we mean an essence—any more than we have a vision of a horse every time we mean a horse. Wesenserschauung is the act in which an essence is given “in person” (cf. op. cit., secs., 3 and 4, pp. 10 ff.). An act which “intends” an essence is necessarily founded upon another act, wherein a particular exemplification of the aforesaid essense is intended (cf. loc. cit.). To say that Husserl maintains that essences are “imbedded in the content of consciousness” is, to say the least, misleading. We think most properly of the “content” of consciousness as being the immanent constituents of consciousness, the acts of seeing, hoping, remembering, etc., as contrasted with the generally transcendent objects, which are seen, hoped, remembered, etc. If “imbedded” is here equivalent to “exemplified,” then essences are not, according to Husserl, “imbedded” only in the immanent content of consciousness; they are exemplified in every particular, in the outer world as well as in our minds (cf. op. cit., sec. 2, pp. 8 f.). If, on the other hand, we take the phrase more literally, “imbedded in” may mean “being present as particular parts of.” But it were absurd to suppose that a universal essence could be a particular part of anything. The only plausible meaning which Mr. Hook's phrase can have, if what he says is true, is that, according to Husserl, particular objects of consciousness are exemplifications of essences. But what an infelicitous way of saying the obvious!

If the denial that an essence is reducible to its particular exemplifications, to parts of its exemplifications, to the class of its real or possible exemplifications, or the like, implied the doctrine of hypostatic essences, then Husserl's views would imply it. But he does not believe that essences are real or substantial (cf. Logische Untersuchungen, Bk. II, pt. I, IIte Untersuchung, passim.; also Ideen, I, sec. 22)—and that is what the doctrine of hypostatic essences properly means.

Husserl's ideal is a philosophy based on clear intuitions of essences, a philosophy which never goes beyond what is clearly given, but remains purely descriptive of that given. Neither he nor his closer followers feel it necessary to renounce that ideal in order to invade the field of ontology. The phenomenological ideal and the phenomenological method can and do govern their treatment of ontological problems. Some who have come under Husserl's influence—and in that sense are of his “school”—add speculation to phenomenological description, but to abandon the standpoint of pure description is to abandon the central principle of phenomenology. If only to keep our concepts clear, we ought not to call such speculative philosophers phenomenologists.

Mr. Hook's characterization of Heidegger as one crowned by the master himself to reveal what the presuppositions of phenomenology are and where they lead, is inexcusable, even as a bit of ironic rhetoric. True, Husserl has long recognized Heidegger's extraordinary capability and achievement, but the “master” is far from accepting or sponsoring all the pupil's views. In particular, Husserl would not take it, from Heidegger or anyone else, that phenomenology rests ultimately on any presuppositions whatsoever.

There remains a word to be said about the identification of phenomenology with psychology, a confusion indicated by Mr. Hook's epithet, “logicized psychology.” Psychology deals with the actual nature of existent minds, the minds belonging to organisms in the physical world. Phenomenology deals with the necessary natures of acts, quite apart from the reality or unreality of their exemplifications (cf. op. cit., Einleitung, pp. 2 f.). There are indeed important similarities between the two disciplines, but their differences are of at least equal significance.

Mr. Hook warns us at the beginning of his article that his “Personal Impression of Contemporary German Philosophy” is “a truer picture of the student impressed, his interests, prejudices, and mindset, than of the cause of his impressions, German philosophy.” Even so, it is interesting to note that his impression of Husserl's phenomenology seems largely erroneous.