Lev Shestov - Potestas Clavium - Part III

     We arrive here at the very source of Husserl's philosophy. The first volume of his Logische Untersuchungen, entitled "Prolegomena to Pure Logic," was devoted almost exclusively to this question, formulated, it is true, differently than I have done. Husserl does not once say that the theory of knowledge must test by every means at our disposal whether reason truly possesses the rights to which it pretends. Posed in this form, the question, from his point of view, already contains a contradiction and therefore cannot be admitted. He begins his investigations by refuting what in modern philosophical language is called psychologism. He quite correctly sees psychologism in all the representatives, without exception, of modern philosophical thought: Mill, Bain, Wundt, Sigwart, Erdmann, Lipps - all are psychologists. Psychologism for Husserl is relativism, but relativism contains a contradiction which renders it absurd and, consequently, totally unacceptable to reason.

     We know that the contradiction inherent in all relativism was already formulated by the ancients. Relativistic theories destroy themselves, says Aristotle, speaking in this case not in his own name, not as if he had discovered a new principle, but as if he were expressing a commonplace of philosophy. This principle for Husserl is an articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae [proposition on which the church stands or falls]. Furthermore, for his opponents also, the English psychologists and the German theorists of knowledge, the attitude of Protagoras and his maxim - "man is the measure of things" - are completely unacceptable. But Husserl declares that their thoughts conceal this contradiction unconsciously and implicitly, and that they do not realize it for the reason only that they are not absolute relativists, but, according to his expression, "specific" relativists. That is, they see the absurdity of the statement that each man possesses his own particular truth, but they do not notice that those who affirm that the human species possesses its own truth, its human truth, necessarily fall into the same contradiction. Such a specific relativism (i.e., "of species") does not have any advantage over individual relativism. For he who declares that men possess their own purely human truth thinks that the contrary truth is absolutely false. His statement is absolutely true and, therefore, contradicts itself.

     This reasoning is simple and comprehensible and also well known. What distinguishes Husserl's position is that he pitilessly uncovers the traces of relativism in all philosophical systems without exception and shows in his researches a rigor and obstinacy that are often almost provoking. But this is precisely what constitutes, to my mind, the greatness of the service he renders and the significance of his work. Husserl reproached his contemporaries for not having confidence in the demonstration deduced from the consequences of a thesis. He himself has full confidence in this kind of demonstration. That is, having set up a certain statement, he boldly accepts all the consequences that flow from it. Having dethroned specific relativism, he declares openly: "What is true is true absolutely, in itself; the truth is one, identical with itself, whatever may be the beings who perceive it - men, monsters, angels or gods" (Logische Untersuchungen I, p.117). This is said very daringly. Other theorists of knowledge, even such as Sigwart, never dared express such statements. Sigwart, for example, writes:

"The possibility of establishing criteria and rules of progress in thought, progress that is necessary and has general value, rests on the faculty of distinguishing objectively necessary thought from thought that is not necessary, and this faculty is manifested in the immediate consciousness of evidence that accompanies the necessary thought. The experience of this consciousness and the faith in its certainty are a postulate that one cannot deny. When we ask ourselves if and how it is possible to solve the problem in the sense that we have posed it... we can answer only by referring to the subjectively experienced necessity, to the inward feeling of evidence that accompanies a part of our thought, to the consciousness that, given the suppositions, we could not think any other way than we do. The faith in the legitimate character of this feeling and in its trustworthiness is the final basis of all certainty in general; for one who does not recognize it there is no science but only accidental opinion." (Logik, I, p. 15. Italics mine. - L.S.)

Where Sigwart, then, sets up a postulate, in other words, an indemonstrable statement, Husserl sets up an axiom. And if Husserl is right, if the argumentation deduced from consequences is everywhere and unconditionally admissible, Sigwart's words are absurd, for they are tainted with specific relativism, i.e., they contradict themselves.

     How could it happen that a thinker as rigorous and severe toward himself as Sigwart could have admitted such an obvious error and one that completely ruins his theory of knowledge? This contradiction had, furthermore, already been indicated even before Husserl by Wundt. But Sigwart maintained his point of view. Even more: the very same Wundt who accused Sigwart of founding knowledge on a deceptive feeling did not escape the same accusations: his theory of knowledge is also tainted, according to Husserl, with relativism. Who, then, is here mistaken, consciously or unconsciously? Who is blind? I am certain that Sigwart would not have been willing for anything in the world to renounce the traditional attitude of philosophy toward skepticism. And I think, likewise, that Sigwart had no need of Husserl to see that specific relativism contains the same contradiction as individual relativism. And Sigwart would certainly have been very happy to be able solemnly to proclaim that our truths are absolute truths which impose themselves on all beings - angels, demons, and gods. But the old scholar who had dedicated his entire existence to searching for the foundations of truth was obliged toward the end of his life to declare that our truth is based in the final analysis only on a postulate and that trust in the feeling of self-evidence is the cornerstone of our scientific certainty. I think that one cannot pass indifferently over such an admission and believe himself justified in setting it aside for the reason only that it contains a contradiction. If it were a question of Mill, this would not have been so serious. One can indeed admit that, in the heat of his polemics, Mill was capable at times of expressing extreme judgments in which he himself did not fully believe. Even here, however, suspicion would be a bad counsellor. But as far as Sigwart is concerned, one can say with certainty that relativism was for him a very heavy cross to bear and that only his intellectual honesty as a scholar and scientist obliged him to this painful admission.

     Sigwart, it is true, could not resolve to develop explicitly the idea contained in his admission. To say what he said amounts finally to saying that beyond certain limits the competence of reason comes to an end and a new power then imposes its rights upon us - a power that has nothing in common with reason and whose effects we men feel here in our empirical world. Sigwart, however, did not conclude thus, no more than did Lotze, who admits that we are condemned to move constantly in the same enchanted circle; and no more than did Kant, who found himself in the same situation as Sigwart and Lotze. According to Kant our most indisputable judgments, synthetic a priori judgments, are also the most false, for they flow not from the power that reason possesses of seizing the very essence of things, but from a necessity that is imposed upon it externally and that it represents as its prerogative to create its own ideas, valid for it alone - in other words, illusions and fictions.

     Kant's conclusion that metaphysics cannot be a science since it does not have any special source for its synthetic, a priori judgments (a conclusion generally considered as a refutation of metaphysics), argues rather in its favor. Mathematics and the natural sciences are rigorous disciplines and obligatory upon all because they have agreed to submit blindly to blind masters. Metaphysics, however, is still free, and therefore can not and does not wish to be a science and pretends to independent knowledge. Kant did not dare take up the defense of metaphysics in this way. The empiricists of the school of Hume and Locke did not dare to do so either (perhaps also because metaphysics did not interest them), nor did the idealists of Sigwart's type. To do so it would have been necessary, indeed, to question the rights of reason - something that none of the philosophers could accept. They would have been obliged to admit a metaphysics that is fantastic, arbitrary, alien to science. Who would have dared this? Philosophy preferred to remain in the middle way. It did not pretend to absolute truth, but it did not renounce the sovereign rights of reason. The latter were brilliantly proven by the rapid blossoming of the positive sciences. In the domain of logic, however, one never went beyond admissions of the type made by Sigwart and Lotze.

     In order to justify such a self-limitation men thought to establish a rigorous distinction between the point of view of the theory of knowledge and the psychological point of view. The task of the theory of knowledge is not to establish the origin of our knowledge. Its task is to show its structure, the inner relationship of the laws by means of which man's thought leads to the knowledge of truth. But the question whence these laws came is in the province of psychology and of no interest to the theory of knowledge; the problems of the theory of knowledge must not be confused with psychological problems.

     Let us examine this argument. It is extremely important for us, since Husserl uses it in the same way as the Neo-Kantians of the end of the last century. But we must first of all emphasize that Husserl does not agree to admit relativism, either implicitly or explicitly, under any form whatsoever. Specific relativism is for him as absurd as individual relativism. This decisiveness constitutes, in my opinion, the great merit of Husserl. It is time at last to lay all the cards on the table and to raise questions as radically as Husserl did: either reason can express absolute truths that angels and gods, as well as men, must accept, or we must renounce the philosophic heritage of the Greeks and re-establish the rights of Protagoras of which he was robbed by history.

     Let us recall that in his critique of the ancient theories of knowledge Husserl uses the classical argument: every theory that contains statements contradicting it is absurd. To establish his own theory of knowledge, however, he makes use of a different argument. In order to avoid the attacks of psychologism he tries, quite like the Neo-Kantians, rigorously to distinguish the psychological point of view from the point of view of the theory of knowledge. But to justify reason he develops his own theory of ideas, which is close to that of Plato and the realism of the Middle Ages.

     But can one separate the point of view of the theory of knowledge from that of psychology? And why do theories of knowledge, or rather apologists of the theory of knowledge, avoid so carefully all demands for genealogical information? Both in the first and in the second volume of his Logische Untersuchungen Husserl repeats dozens of times that genetic questions are of no concern to him. He admits that logical concepts have a psychological source but rejects the psychological conclusions that are drawn from this fact. Why? Because for his discipline the psychological question of the birth of abstract ideas does not present any interest. In other words, whatever may be the origin of truth, it is a fact that truth exists and that it rules our judgment. It is for us therefore to determine, by means of a rigorous analysis, how, by what methods, and by the action of what laws truth realizes its sovereign rights.

     The theorists of knowledge are willing to compare, for more clarity, truth with morality. The goal of the moralists, they say, is not to explain the origins of the "good." The moralists, quite like the theorists of knowledge, are persuaded that the good in itself (an sich) has no origin. One can speak of origins only in connection with real objects which are born and disappear. But ideas are outside of time: they exist, they have always existed, they will always exist, they would have existed even if the universe had never existed, or if, having existed, it returned to the nothingness whence it arose.

     What is true - is true. We must admit that if one renounces the search for origins, the tasks of the theorists of knowledge and the moralists, who aspire to absolute truth and absolute good, appear much simpler and easier. Pretenders to the throne are generally fearful of genealogical researches. Try to "explain" morality, as utilitarianism and economic materialism did, and its rights will immediately appear quite illusory. Plato understood this perfectly well and in his reasonings always took the good as his point of departure. In analyzing human actions, he discovered that they were completely determined by an independent principle, one which could not in any way be deduced from the experiences of daily life and reduced to pleasure or usefulness or anything else. If I kill a man, I can feel a certain satisfaction: if I am rid of a rival, for example, I can draw profit from this by seizing the wealth of the deceased or even his throne; nevertheless, my action was, is, and always will be evil - and not because of the wrong that I have done to the deceased. It may be that the soul of my victim has immediately flown from this vale of tears to the Elysian Fields and gained by the change. Despite this, I have done evil and no power in the world can take away from my action the stamp of evil. And, on the other hand, if I have suffered for the cause of truth, if I have been despoiled of my goods, if I have been imprisoned and condemned to death, I have acted well, and neither men nor angels nor gods have the power to transform my good action into an evil one. The good is sovereign and does not admit any power above itself. Plotinus himself, who was not as rigorously consistent as Plato, speaks of the aretê adespotos [virtue that is not a tyrant], which in modern philosophic language is equivalent to the autonomy or independence of morality.

     In despotic states court jurists developed similar theories about the origins of royal power. These jurists never admitted, indeed could not admit, any reflections on the historical development of the autocratic idea. The monarch, from their point of view, is the source whence all powers and all rights flow; consequently his rights cannot come to him from any source. They are beyond and above time, they are the rhidzômata pantôn. Or, if one will allow theological phraseology, their source is in the heavens. The monarch is the autocrat through the grace of God; he is the anointed of God. Only explanations of this kind, or the complete absence of all explanation, can guarantee absolute ideas the rights which they claim. Under our very eyes, as it were, a miraculous transformation occurred: after having tried to "explain" morality, Nietzsche arrived at the formula "beyond good and evil." Or, more exactly, when the good had lost its power over Nietzsche, he discovered for it a genealogy such that it could only take away from us all desire to worship morality.

     Such, in brief, are the reasons for the obstinacy with which the theorists of knowledge refuse to confront the psychological and logical problems of the theory of knowledge. They cannot, however, completely renounce genetic questions, for then they would be obliged to allow metaphysical and theological assumptions that are completely discredited by contemporary positivist thought. Indeed, neither Husserl nor Sigwart nor Erdmann could seriously develop the Platonic theory of anamnêsis, or rely on the Ten Commandments that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai directly from God's hands. Husserl even rises against Plato's desire to hypostatize the ideas. Postulates and metaphysical theories are as inadmissible for Husserl as for the Neo-Kantians. They try to base philosophy exclusively on the lumen naturale; hence they are obliged to endow the lumen naturale with absolute rights. The negative method that Husserl employs in this task is the same as that of the Neo-Kantians: he forbids himself to test the pretensions of reason through investigations about its origin. But this still does not suffice for him: he proposes to us his theory of ideas which ought, once and for all, to justify the absolute confidence that we place in reason. Let us look, then, somewhat more closely at this theory.