The Philosophy Book

224

EXPERIENCE

BY ITSELF IS

NOT SCIENCE

EDMUND HUSSERL (1859–1938)

IN CONTEXT

BRANCH

Ontology

APPROACH

Phenomenology

BEFORE

5th century BCE Socrates

uses argument to try to

answer philosophical

questions with certainty.

17th century René Descartes

uses doubt as a starting point

for his philosophical method.

1874 Franz Brentano, Husserl’s

teacher, claims that philosophy

needs a new scientific method.

AFTER

From 1920s Martin

Heidegger, Husserl’s student,

develops his teacher’s method

of phenomenology, leading to

the birth of existentialism.

From 1930s Husserl’s

phenomenology reaches

France, influencing thinkers

such as Emmanuel Levinas

and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

H

usserl was a philosopher

haunted by a dream that

has preoccupied thinkers

since the time of the ancient

Greek philosopher Socrates: the

dream of certainty. For Socrates,

the problem was this: although we

easily reach agreement on questions

about things we can measure (for

example, “how many olives are

there in this jar?”), when it comes

to philosophical questions such

as “what is justice?” or “what is

beauty?”, it seems that there is no

clear way of reaching agreement.

And if we cannot know for certain

what justice is, then how can we

say anything about it at all?

The problem of certainty

Husserl was a philosopher who

started life as a mathematician.

He dreamed that problems such as

“what is justice?” might be solved

with the same degree of certainty

with which we are able to solve

mathematical problems such as

“how many olives are in the jar?” In

other words, he hoped to put all the

sciences—by which he meant all

branches of human knowledge and

activity, from math, chemistry,

and physics to ethics and politics –

on a completely secure footing.

So experience

by itself is

not science.

Science aspires to

certainty about the world.

But science is empirical:

it depends upon

experience.

Experience is subject to

assumptions and biases.