EPISTEMOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF HUSSERL'S PHENOMENOLOGICAL EPOCHĖ

____________

A Research Paper

Presented to the

Department of Philosophy

College of Arts and Sciences

University of San Carlos

Cebu City, Philippines

_____________

In Partial Fulfillment

Of the Requirements for the Degree

MASTER OF ARTS IN PHILOSOPHY

____________

By

Ruben O. Balotol Jr

March 2010
 What can we really know? How can we be certain that?
we have the truth? How can we be certain that we know?
anything at all? What is knowledge and how it is we
know that we know it?
Louis Pojman1
Introduction

Almost every individual desire to comprehend the world, provoking theories of various

kinds to help make sense of it, because many aspects of the world defy easy explanation. However,

some individual are likely to cease their effort at some point and to content themselves with

whatever understanding they achieved, but no with Edmund Husserl.

The paper aims to come up a clear and striking epistemological assessment of Edmund

Husserl's “phenomenological epoché” which lay genius integration of traditional ideas from

Aristotle, Descartes and Hume with new ideas, to a more sophisticated of mind and consciousness

derived from Brentano,2 which gives way to a new horizon of understanding man not merely as

thinking subject but the acting, feeling, living individual condition of existence. The author solely

concern's phenomenological epoché; suspension of all natural belief in the objects of experience

where every method is taken by itself and investigated by the method that would modify the old

established science,3 bracketing everything contingent, empirical and relative to arrive at “apodictic

certainty”; at the essence which form the a priori conditions upon which empirical phenomenology

is premised. Assessing epistemologically its method of epoché as it attempts to study the nature,

origin, scope and validity of knowledge as the basis of erecting philosophy as rigorous science.4

Husserl's leaping evolution from traditional philosophy to the philosophical concerns of the
1
Louis Pojman, The Theory of Knowledge: Classical and Contemporary Readings (California Publishing,
1999), 1.
2
Smith Barry and David Smith, “The Cambridge Companion to Husserl” [on-line]; available from
http://books.google.ie/booksid=1PIhzc6ZBlIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Cambridge+Companion+to+Husserl
; Internet; accessed November 19, 2009.
3
Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans., W.R. Boyce Gibson (New
York: Collier, 1962), 41.
4
Maurice Natanson, Edmund Husserl: Philosopher of Infinite Task (Evanston: Northwestern University,
1973), 63.
late 20th century, taking philosophy beyond time alternatives of psychologism and formalism,

realism and idealism, objectivism and subjectivism.5 Considering the historical development made

in the search of method as a tool to solve the disagreement and speculations regarding abstruse

question over the nature, scope and validity of knowledge, the paper will include remarkable

thinkers that had influence the shaping of Edmund Husserl's concept of the phenomenological

epoché.

Epistemological Literature

Two young dogs in a mock growl fight wrestle and slightly bite each other. One, observer

thinks both dogs are practicing for future battles. Hence, work. Another observer thinks both dogs

are having fun in the mock fight. Hence, play. A third observer thinks both dogs are working and

playing.6 The quest for the certitude has dominated most of philosophers thought, contributing to

such yearning of certainty constructing historical issues in the field of epistemology (Theory of

Knowledge), philosophical inquiry in to the nature, origin and scope of knowledge addressing

issue such as “(1) Whether knowledge of any kind is possible, and if so what kind. (2) Whether

human knowledge is a priori or whether instead all significant knowledge is acquired through

experience (a posteriori). (3) Whether knowledge is inherently a mental state (behaviorism). (4)

Whether certainty is a form of knowledge; and (6) Whether the primary task of epistemology is to

provide justification for broad categories of knowledge”.7

Plato's remarkable inquiry into the nature of knowledge lead him to formulate the notion

that there are two types of knowledge; One, sense perception which is only concerned with fleeting

objects which appears differently at varied period of time, second reason which look into the
5
Donne Melton, “The Essential Husserl: Basic writing in Transcendental Phenomenology” [on-line]; available
from
http://books.google.ie/booksid=hC2Ac8VGLacC&pg=PP1&dq=The+Essential+Husserl+Basic+writing+in+Transcend
ental+Phenomenology; Internet; accessed November 22, 2009.
6
Leonardo Mercado, Elements of Filipino Philosophy (Tacloban; Philippines: Divine Word University, 1974),
27.
7
“Epistemology” [on-line]; available from
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/190219/epistemology; Internet; accessed December 10, 2009.
highest form of knowledge, inquiring further beyond what the senses can achieved, yielding not

merely to fallible opinions.8 Thus, convinced Plato concluded that things appreciated by the senses

are mere copy from the world of forms (ideas) recognized by innate ideas and that the reason for

such ignorance is due to soul's attachment to the body. Motivated and interested into the nature of

knowledge, Aristotle embarks a new course taking refuge into the role of nature in attaining

certitude. In his book De Anima (On the Soul), Aristotle consider that matter and form is not

separate as previously held by his teacher, but works as one and that anything exists in the

consciousness are not acquired without passing from the senses, mind at birth is empty

(Tabularasa) and that knowledge can be attained through experience which senses collects the data

and by science, experience are verified. Aristotle concludes that senses aid man to attain certainty

in harmony with the laws of nature.9

Plato and Aristotle's realization shove dichotomy in the latter development particularly in

the field of epistemology. In the coming of new age, new concerns come to light aiming for

certitude of knowledge. Rene Descartes (1596-1650), prominent among rationalist was chiefly

concerned with the problem of intellectual certainty and thus able to come up a method that would

harness the abilities of the mind with specific set of rules. 10 Descartes's departure from the

established realization give a new start where every idea must be subjected to doubt in order to

grasp certainty as a starting point for building up knowledge. Convinced by Descartes's notion

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) had also consider that

rational faculties are capable of constructing ideas that reflects the true nature of things, 11 believing

that by mathematics could discover the underlying structure of everything. Empiricist alters the

course, dissatisfied with the claims made by the key continental rationalist. John Locke (1632-
8
Louis Pojman, The Theory of Knowledge, 63-68.
9
Joan Price, Philosophy Through Ages (Arizona: Wadsworth, 2000), 78-82.
10
Ibid., 71-74.
11
Samuel Enoch Stumpf and James Fieser, Socrates to Sartre and Beyond: A history of Philosophy (New
York: McGraw-Hill, 2008), 206.
1708) gives the grounding for empiricism, rejecting rationalist notion and that experience (senses

and reflection) is the axiom that guarantee certainty.12 George Berkeley (1685-1753) and David

Hume (1711-1766) in their separate ways further support Locke's position that nothing comes to

mind that doesn't pass through the senses. Empiricist claims that knowledge is derived from

experience that the mind is a blank slate prior to experience and sensations are atomic and simple, 13

that the axiomatic principles of logic such as the principle of identity and contradiction could not

proved as innate ideas for there are no clear deductive argument into the existence of such entities

and that empirical way of knowing is far more reasonable.14

Rationalist and Empiricist thinkers made great contributions to philosophy, particularly in

the field of epistemology by its scope and influence. Indeed, their influence is such that we refer to

both schools of thought as rationalism and empiricism strands of thought. Due to its continuing

contradictions and arguments between these two philosophical movements, Immanuel Kant (1724-

1804), a remarkable German philosopher sets a “Copernican revolution” over the scope, nature and

validity of knowledge where Kant argued that knowledge is limited only on its scope which takes

in two forms; (1) limited to the world of experience, (2) knowledge is limited by the manner of

faculties of perception and organization of the raw data of experience. 15 Kant bridge the chasm

between rationalism and empiricism resolving contradictions that are inherent to the two

philosophical movement, maintaining that the nature of things-in-themselves is hidden and that the

mind is structured in such a way it prevents of going beyond the realm of experience

(phenomena).16

Husserl and Phenomenological Epoché

12
Albert Avey, Handbook in the History of Philosophy (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1961), 142.
13
William Schroeder, Continental Philosophy: A Critical Approach (Oxford:Blackwell, 2005), 5.
14
Walter Kaufman, Philosophic Classics: Bacon to Kant (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1961), 191.
15
William Schroeder, Continental Philosophy: A Critical Approach, 16-22.
16
Samuel Enoch Stumpf and James Fieser, Socrates to Sartre and Beyond: A history of Philosophy, 277-280.
 Phenomenology is the disciplined investigation of fundamental structures and features of

experience, basic type of experience and various kinds of objects that are correlated with them. It

tends to clarify differences and connections among diverse structures objects of consciousness. 17

Best understood as a radical, anti-traditionalist style of philosophizing which emphasizes that

attempt to described phenomena, in the broadest sense as it appears as it manifests itself to

consciousness. The term phenomenology could be traced back to Hegel and Kant who frequently

employ the terminology. Hegel sets a technical definition attached to it, defining phenomenology

as it appears to consciousness but Hegel consider it as grounding towards the absolute knowledge

of the “Absolute”. Exhibiting the path to anyone who yields knowledge of the ultimate reality,

where the mind is the ultimate reality in the world.18

Edmund Husserl (1859—1938), at the turn of the century set himself the goal of

establishing a rigorous science, a body of knowledge that is based on any presuppositions refining

the study of consciousness and establish the discipline of phenomenology which need a new

starting point far from those established natural sciences where in his words:

Pure phenomenology, to which we are here seeking the way, whose

unique position in regard to all other sciences we wish to make clear,
and to seth forth as the most fundamental region of philosophy, is
an essentially new science, which in virtue of its own governing
peculiarity thinking and has not until out own day therefore show
an impulse to develop.19

Husserl intends to create an independent discipline that would solidify foundations of all other

field intellectually by giving a clear standard of evidence, intersubjectively verifiable results that

would reform philosophical knowledge by setting aside habits of thought, breaking those habits

which lay hold to those philosophical problems in need of new ways of looking such problem

17
Agustin Sollano, “Augustine and Husserl on time: An Analaytico-Comparative Study” (Ph.D diss University
of San Carlos, 1984), 5.
18
Joseph Kockelman, Phenomenology: The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and its Interpretation (New York:
Doubleday and Company, 1967), 24-25.
19
Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to the Phenomenology, 41.
without reverting to old view points.20 In one of his work, Crisis of European Sciences, 1936 he

discuss the urgency of providing best possible answers to human concerns, directing his criticisms

towards the assumption and method of natural sciences.

The task of describing the given is complicated by the fact that man has its own inherited

dogmas or principles in life which is obscure to clear intuition or experience where it must be

purify by means of phenomenological epoché (reduction); that is the suspension of any beliefs

other than those can be justified from experience. General concepts, physical objects, the world

itself must not be assumed for such prejudices must be suspended, bracketing everything

contingent, empirical and relative. “To bracket means to put certain belief out of action or

consideration so that they may not interfere with the pure and unadulterated apprehension of an

event or experience.”21 epoché, a Greek word to which Husserl gives his own peculiar meaning

rather than coin a word in his own language.

Assessment

Husserl's philosophy by the usual account evolved through three stages. First, he overthrew

a purportedly psychologistic position to the foundations of arithmetic, striving instead to establish

anti-psychologistic, objects to the foundations of mathematics and logic. Second, he moved from

the concept of philosophy as rooted in the Brentanian descriptive psychology to the development

of a new discipline called 'phenomenology' and a metaphysical position dubbed as “transcendental

idealism”. Third, he transformed his phenomenology which initially amounted to a form of

methodological solipsism, into a phenomenology of intersubjectivity and into the ontology of life

world (especially in his, Crisis of European Science, 1936), embracing the social worlds of culture

and history.

In ordinary experience most people often take for granted that the world around exist

20
Ibid., 43.
21
Agustin Sollano, “Augustine and Husserl on time: An Analytico-Comparative Study,” 61.
independently both of us and our consciousness of it. This might be put by saying that we share an

implicit belief in the independent existence of the world and that this belief permeates and informs

our everyday experience. Husserl to this positing of the world and entities as “natural attitude.” In

the Ideas of Phenomenology, Husserl introduces what refer as “epistemological reduction;”

according to which we are asked to supply this positing of a transcendental world with “an index of

indifference.” In Ides I this becomes the “phenomenological epoché,” according to which

presuppositions and other inherited concepts must be put out of action for they belong to the

essence of the natural attitude; everything that posits independent existence of the world or worldly

entities must be suspended; and all judgment presuppose such judgment are to be bracketed and no

use is to be made in the course of engaging in phenomenological analysis.

This epoché is the most important part of the phenomenological reduction, the purpose of

which is to open us up to the world of phenomena, how it is that the world and the entities within it

are given. The reduction, then, is that which reveals to us the primary subject matter of

phenomenology—the world as given and the givenness of the world; both objects and acts of

consciousness.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Primary Sources

Husserl, Edmund. Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. trans., W. R. Boyce

Gibson. New York: Collier Book, 1962.

_____________, Phenomenology and The Crisis of Philosophy. trans., Lauer, Quentin. New
York: Harper & Row Publishers Inc., 1965.

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Cottingham, John. ed., Western Philosophy: A Critical Approach. Oxford:
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Farber, Marvin. The Foundation of Phenomenology: Edmund Husserl and the Quest for a
Rigorous Science of Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1968.

____________, The Aims of Phenomenology: The Motives, Methods, and Impact of

Husserl's Thought. New York: Harper & Row, 1966.

Kockelman, Joseph. ed., Phenomenology: The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and Its
Interpretation. New York: Doubleday & Company Inc., 1967.

Lauer, Quentin. Phenomenology: Its Genesis and Prospect. New York: Harper & Row,
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