Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-nwzlb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T02:11:33.367Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Making Sense of Husserl’s Notion of Teleology: Normativity, Reason, Progress and Phenomenology as ‘Critique from Within’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2017

Andreea Smaranda Aldea*
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College, USAAndreea.S.Aldea@dartmouth.edu
Get access

Abstract

The paper examines Husserl’s notion of teleology through the lens of necessity and argues that there are two senses of teleology—historical and transcendental—at work in the task of phenomenology, especially as Husserl comes to conceive it in the Crisis. To understand not only how these two senses are related but also how their relationship shapes Husserl’s notions of normativity, reason, and progress, I argue that we must look closely at phenomenology as a distinctive form of critique, namely critique ‘from within’. What emerges is a philosophical stance that is fundamentally ambiguous: at once historical and transcendental-eidetic. This productive notion of ambiguity, I contend, differentiates Husserl’s conceptions of normativity, reason and progress from their Enlightenment guises.

Type
Articles
Copyright
© The Hegel Society of Great Britain 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adorno, T. (1940), ‘Husserl and the Problem of Idealism’, Journal of Philosophy 37:1: 518.Google Scholar
Aldea, A. S. (2016), ‘Phenomenology as Critique: Teleological–Historical Reflection and Husserl’s Transcendental Eidetics’, Husserl Studies 32: 2146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aldea, A. S. and Allen, A. (eds.) (2016), The Historical A Priori in Husserl and Foucault, Continental Philosophy Review 49: 1.Google Scholar
Al-Saji, A. (2014), ‘A Phenomenology of Hesitation: Interrupting Racializing Habits of Seeing’, in E. Lee (ed.), Living Alterities: Phenomenology, Embodiment, and Race. Albany: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Beauvoir, S. de (1948), The Ethics of Ambiguity. New York: Citadel Press.Google Scholar
Carr, D. (1974), Phenomenology and the Problem of History: A Study of Husserl’s Transcendental Philosophy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Carr, D. (2014a), Experience and History. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Carr, D. (2014b), ‘The emergence and transformation of Husserl’s concept of world’, in H. Heinämaa and T. Miettinen (eds.), Phenomenology and the transcendental. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Carr, D. (2016), ‘Husserl and Foucault on the historical a priori: Teleological and anti-teleological views of history’, in A. S. Aldea and A. Allen (eds.), The Historical A Priori in Husserl and Foucault, Continental Philosophy Review 49:1: 127137.Google Scholar
Crowell, S. (2013), Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Crowell, S. (2016), ‘Husserl’s Existentialism: Ideality, Traditions, and the Historical A Priori’, in A. S. Aldea and A. Allen (eds.), The Historical A Priori in Husserl and Foucault, Continental Philosophy Review 49:1: 6783.Google Scholar
Dodd, J. (2004), Crisis and Reflection. An Essay on Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Findlay, J. N. (1964), ‘Hegel’s Use of Teleology’, The Monist 48:1: 117.Google Scholar
Gendler, T. and Hawthorne, J. (2002), Conceivability and Possibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1928), Phänomenologie des Geistes. Sämtliche Werke vol. 2., ed. G. Lasson. Leipzig: Meiner.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1934), Wissenschaft der Logik, Zweiter Teil. Sämtliche Werke vol. 4, ed. G. Lasson. Leipzig: Meiner.Google Scholar
Heidegger, M. (2006), Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Husserl, E. (1910–1911), ‘Philosophie als Strenge Wissenschaft’, in Logos, 1/3. ‘Philosophy as Rigorous Science’, in Q. Lauer (trans.), Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy. New York: Harper and Row. p. 3 1965.Google Scholar
Kern, I. (1962), ‘Die Drei Wege Zur Transzendental-Phänomenologischen Reduktion in der Philosophie Edmund Husserls’, Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 24: 303349.Google Scholar
Lohmar, D. (2003), ‘Husserl’s Type and Kant’s Schemata: Systemic Reasons for Their Correlation or Identity’, in D. Welton (ed.), The New Husserl. A Critical Reader. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Miettinen, T. (2014), ‘Teleology Beyond Metaphysics: Husserlian Phenomenology and the Historical Consciousness of Modernity’, Journal of Speculative Philosophy 28:3: 273283.Google Scholar
Moran, D. (2016), ‘ Sinnboden der Geschichte: Foucault and Husserl on the Structural A Priori of History’, in A. S. Aldea and A. Allen (eds.), The Historical A Priori in Husserl and Foucault, Continental Philosophy Review 49:1: 1327.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, P. (2007), Husserl: An Analysis of his Phenomenology, trans E. Ballard and L. Embree. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Sowa, R. (2007), ‘Essences and Eidetic Laws in Edmund Husserl’s Descriptive Eidetics’, in Hopkins and Crowell (ed.), The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy 77108.Google Scholar
Sowa, R. (2008), Einleitung des Herausgebers. Hua XXXIX (2008), Die Lebenswelt. Auslegungen der Vorgegebenen Welt und Ihrer Kostitution. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1916–1937). Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Sowa, R. (2010), ‘The Universal as “What is in Common”: Comments on the Proton-Pseudos in Husserl’s Doctrine of the Intuition of Essence’, in Ierna et al., ed., Philosophy, Phenomenology, Sciences. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Zambrana, R. (2012), ‘Hegel’s Logic of Finitude’, Continental Philosophy Review 45: 213233.Google Scholar