The Crisis of Meaning and the Life-World - Ľubica Učník Series in Continental Thought

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must be based on something that is unchanging, something that only such a formal, foundational science can provide. As Husserl notes, “A rich imagination, a comprehensive memory, a capacity for close attention etc., are fine things, but they have intellectual meaning only in the case of a thinking being, whose validation falls under laws and forms” (LI, § 8, 22; italics in original); and this validation cannot be explained by our mental processes alone. To put it another way: no empirical science can serve as the realm of formal truth on which empirical science itself is based. To accept that “the essential theoretical foundations of logic lie in psychology” (LI, § 17, 40) is to propose that logic is relative to our experience. It is to deny that the idea of truth can be understood consistently by any and all thinking beings, because, in this formulation, truth in itself does not depend on any particular thinking being. Following Husserl, we can say that truth is the property of a proposition—apophansis—and is universal: in other words, truth is the general idea that guides our thinking. It is atemporal. It can be accessed all the time and everywhere as long as the formal structure of judgments is understood. Thus, the idea of the universality/generality of truth means nothing other than that regardless of time or space, there is the possibility of the repeatability of formal, timeless judgments that are the domain of truth in itself. This is the system of formal knowledge, and it is this system that is passed on throughout the ages.48

      If man loses this faith [in reason], it means nothing less than the loss of faith “in himself,” in his own true being. This true being is not something he always already has, with the self-evidence of the “I am,” but something he only has and can have in the form of the struggle for his truth, the struggle to make himself true. True being is everywhere an ideal goal, a task of epistēmē or “reason,” as opposed to being which through doxa is merely thought to be, unquestioned and “obvious.” (Crisis, § 5, 13; italics in original)

      The issue Husserl tackles is that of where the system of formal knowledge, or “pure logic,” comes from if it is not, as psychologism decrees, an outcome of our singular mental processes, our individual thinking. Is the system of formal logic based on our mental processes; in other words, on the empirical foundation? Is logic a formal system, a normative science, or a technology?49 In short, is the art (technē) of thinking the same as logic, which is the domain of the formal rules that are at the basis of our finite thinking?

      For Husserl, every finite judgment must have some basis: something that transcends the particular act of judging. There must be something other that can validate our experience, so that we can arrive at knowledge that others can understand, too. As Husserl explains, we must distinguish between someone judging that 2 × 2 = 4 and “the true judgement, as the correct judgement in accordance with truth” (LI, § 36, 80). In other words, we must draw a distinction between the true content of judgment and the act of judging. So, if I assert that 2 × 2 = 4, this is clearly determined causally because my assertion is caused by the actual question asked, say, in a mathematical class. It is my subjective judgment that I offer to others on a certain occasion. But if my judgment was not based on something that transcends my particular mental process (subjectivity), there would be no way to account for it. There would be no principle according to which my teacher could mark my judgment as correct. Hence there is a difference between my judgment that 2 × 2 = 4 and the content of my judgment, which expresses “the truth, 2 × 2 = 4” (LI, § 36, 80). This is the puzzle that Husserl notes at the beginning of LI: the relationship between our acts of judgment, or, in other words, the subjectivity of thinking; and the objectivity of the content of judgment. Our acts of judgment are events in the world; they are causally determined and subjective. We can always be wrong. Yet their content is objective, guaranteed by the formal laws that are independent of our thinking (LI, 2). If this distinction is denied (or forgotten), then it seems that the validity of our judgments is dependent on the subjectivity of our thinking; the event in the world. The possibility of distinguishing between doxa and epistēmē vanishes.

      Since the ancient Greeks, epistēmē and science have been related: “Science aims at knowledge” (LI, § 6, 17). Yet knowledge is not something self-evident. If it were, we would have neither science, nor, at the most basic level, any disputes about things in the world. As every one of us surely acknowledges, this is not the case. But how can we then distinguish between doxa and epistēmē?

      Husserl explains that to know something means to give reasons; it is to validate our assertions, which will show to anyone that a certain state of affairs is, or is not. It is to furnish reasons for others to see beyond doubt why something must be so, or cannot be. It is to present a valid judgment about the given state of affairs. Yet truth is not something in the world: “We possess truth as the object of a correct judgement. But this alone is not enough, since not every correct judgement, every affirmation or rejection of a state of affairs that accords with truth, is knowledge of the being or non-being of this state of affairs.” We must be able to distinguish our judgment from “blind belief, from vague opining, however firm and decided” (LI, § 6, 17; italics in original). It is one thing to be correct about a state of affairs (doxa), and it is quite another to be able to give reasons to validate our judgment concerning this state of affairs as correct (epistēmē). Doxa becomes epistēmē—knowledge—if we give reasons for the truth of our propositions, if “we methodically validate them” (LI, § 6, 19).

      However, Husserl notes that to provide validating arguments is not sufficient. In order for validating arguments to be understandable by anyone at any time and any place, they must be repeatable across time. “If they were formless and lawless, if it were not a fundamental truth that all validating arguments have certain indwelling ‘forms,’ [. . .] typical of the whole class of arguments, and that the correctness of this whole class of arguments is guaranteed just by their form [, . . .] there would be no science” (LI, § 8, 21). Science, as we know it, can exist only because it is based on formal validating arguments that present the acid test for the correctness of our judgments. Once those formal arguments are systematized, sedimented into repeatable forms, not only can we offer a justification for our claims about the world, but, in turn, those formal validating arguments will also guide our investigation of nature.

      According to Husserl, “The most perfect ‘mark’ of correctness is inward evidence; it counts as an immediate intimation of truth itself” (LI, § 6, 17). The marker of truth is independent of our particular experience; it is something that is a priori and something that we can see in a single glance. Knowing something with certainty and without a doubt is analytic thinking because it is independent of experience. Yet it is “no gift of nature,” as Husserl notes; rather, it is something we can achieve only through methodological procedures (LI, § 6, 19). In other words, through methodical steps we arrive at the formal law that is given to us in certainty because “connections of validation are not governed by caprice or chance, but by reason and order, i.e., by regulative laws” (LI, § 7, 20). Take, for example, the modus Barbara. If I assert that all As are Bs, and all Bs are Cs, the conclusion must follow that all As are Cs. This judgment is valid without exception whether I, or anyone else, think it or not; whether I pronounce it or not. It is an a priori formal categorical judgment that will always be true because of its form. It is evidence that I can access immediately by inward reflection. When this type of judgment is established, it transgresses its particular instantiation and becomes valid for anyone acquainted with formal logic.

      Formal judgments have no experiential content. They deal with concepts only and hence can be examined by insight alone. By contrast, natural laws are extrapolated from experience, and they always depend on some state of affairs in the world. We observe many particular instances of certain states of affairs, and, by abstracting from those particulars, we subsume them under the one, preferably simple, explanation, thereby formulating a so-called natural law. Natural laws are not apodictic. Their stipulation is only an approximation to the observed regularities of nature, and they are relative to our state of knowledge at a particular time. This does not mean they do not help us to predict, and hence master,

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