Lev Shestov - Potestas Clavium - Part III

Husserl stops at nothing in his attempt to make of philosophy the science of absolute truths. His theory of knowledge extends its rights not only to the natural sciences and mathematics but also claims to impose its directives on history and, consequently, to rule all the manifestations of the human spirit. Husserl does not wish to listen to the teachings of history; it is history, on the contrary, that must accept his teaching. One really cannot deny him rigor of thought and a spirit of consistency, nor can one deny him a noble audacity and an ardor which are very rarely found in our time among "academic" philosophers.

His dispute with Dilthey is particularly significant in this respect. Husserl has the greatest respect for Dilthey. Despite this, he sends him to the insane asylum along with Sigwart and Erdmann, though using expressions - it is true - that are less rude. But a madhouse is always a madhouse, whatever words we use to designate it. Here is what provoked the pitiless judgment of Husserl. I shall quote only a few lines but they will suffice to make clear for us what Husserl considers a scientific sin. Dilthey writes:

"For him whose vision embraces the world and all its history, the absolute truth of any form of religion, philosophy, or practical organization completely disappears. And thus the elaboration of the historical consciousness destroys, in a more radical way than the examination of the struggle of systems, belief in the absolute validity of any of the philosophies which try to formulate in constraining fashion the universal relationships of being by means of a relationship of concepts."

To this Husserl replies:

"It is easily seen that historicism, rigorously developed, leads to skeptical subjectivism. Ideas, theories, truths, sciences would then, like all ideas, lose their absolute validity. That an idea is valid would then mean simply that it is a spiritual form, a fact to which a meaning is granted and which, as such, determines thought. In that case there no longer exists validity as such or an sich, which is what it is even if no one can realize it and no historic mankind has ever realized it. This is true as well of the principle of contradiction and of all of logic which, already without this, is now in total flux. Then one is finally obliged to admit that the logical principles of noncontradiction will transform themselves into their opposites. Then all the statements that we now make, all the possibilities that we examine and take into consideration, can find themselves deprived of all meaning and validity, etc. There is no need to continue this discussion and to repeat here what has already been said elsewhere." (Logos, pp. 324-25).

"Elsewhere" means, as Husserl explains in a footnote, in the first volume of his Logische Untersuchungen.

We already know what was said on this subject in the first volume of Logische Untersuchungen. The last word of this discussion is the insane asylum, where all those who accept relativism, even specific relativism, belong. I do not know how the aged Dilthey reacted to this severe judgment (he was seventy-six years old when Husserl's article appeared). Did he, under the pressure of his adversary's arguments, grant the right of reason to judge history, or did he persist in believing that history judges reason and everything that reason imagines?

This case is more complex than that of Sigwart; and Husserl's pretensions here appear infinitely vaster, for now Husserl's ideas demand that they be granted not only the predicate of being but of real being. There then appears that metabasis esi allo genos (change to another genus) because of which alone it appeared to Husserl necessary to place real objects and ideas in the same category. Husserl continues thus:

"History, the empirical science of the spirit, is incapable by its own means of deciding either in a positive or negative sense whether there is room to distinguish religion as a particular form of culture from religion as an idea, i.e., as valid religion, art as a form of culture from art possessing true meaning and validity, historical right from valid right, and finally historical philosophy from valid philosophy. Neither can history tell us whether the relationship between each of these two terms is or is not that which exists between the idea, to speak Platonic language, and its obscured, phenomenal image (Logos, p. 325). Only philosophical understanding must unveil for us "the riddle of the world and of life." (Logos, p. 336).

Rationalism here blooms magnificently with a splendor such that, to speak frankly, I am not even completely convinced that Husserl truly "dared hope" that some day human reason, even after having passed through the school of phenomenology and after having fully accepted the phenomenological method, "must unveil for us the riddle of the world and of life." Husserl said this, but he does not, it seems to me, think it; on rather, I believe that he has not yet thought truly either about the riddle of the universe or the mystery of life, postponing these "questions" to some future day, as do the majority of very busy people. Husserl confined himself always to the middle zone of being and has still not arrived at the extreme regions. He speaks of these regions with so much assurance because he sets out from the supposition that, thanks to the "unity" of being, the knowledge of the middle zone permits us by way of deduction to judge concerning the farthest regions. The meaning and attractive power of rationalism come from this postulate, and I think that it is the source of the saddest misunderstandings in the domain of philosophy and that it is here precisely that we find the original sin of which Husserl has a presentiment but does not succeed in discovering.

     We must have the courage to say it firmly: the middle zones of human and universal life do not at all resemble the polar and equatorial zones. The difference is so great that if one concludes from what one sees in the middle zone and applies it to what exists in the extreme zones, not only does he not approach the truth but he flees from it. The constant error of rationalism derives from its faith in the limitless power of reason, der Schrankenlosigkeit der objektiven Vernunft (Logische Untersuchungen II, p. 80). Reason has done much, therefore it can do everything. But "much" does not mean "everything"; "much" is separated from "everything" toto coelo; "much and "everything" belong to two different, irreconcilable categories.

     That is the first point. The second is: to answer Dilthey, Husserl was obliged to commit a real metabasis eis allo genos (change to another genus) and to make use of Plato's language about the relation between the idea and its darkened image. Plato had the right to speak thus: the idea was for him the reality kat'eksochên, par excellence, and the reality that we perceive appeared to him an obscured form of the primary reality. But, according to Husserl, the idea is not real; Husserl's idea possesses only a certain "meaning," only a being that is an und für sich and cannot "manifest itself" in reality under any form whatsoever, pure or cloudy. Husserl obviously had no other way out. If philosophy pretends to unveil the mystery of the universe and of life, it must have ideas richer in content and more alive than those with which one can combat Sigwart's logic. And Husserl hopes that his ideas will give him the possibility of answering all questions, that they will serve him not only to describe religion and art as "forms of culture" but to decide which of the religions has validity in itself - in other words, in which religion the voice of God is heard and in which the divine voice, revelation, is replaced by a human voice, and whether, in general, there is a God on earth. Such was certainly the meaning of his statement that the theory of knowledge precedes metaphysics. Husserl, to our great regret, has still not written a phenomenology of religion; I daresay he will never write it. We must believe that he will not judge himself entitled to put to his reason, outside of which there is not and cannot be any authority, the question of the "validity" of religions. And he will not, furthermore, take it upon himself to answer the question which of the existing religions has "validity in itself" and where the final truth is to be found - in the Old and New Testament, in the Koran, in the Vedas, or even in Also sprach Zarathustra. Nevertheless, he pretends that only his phenomenology is capable of resolving our doubts about the final truth!

     I have already said more than once that theory of knowledge is the soul of philosophy. One could express oneself with still greater force: tell me what your theory of knowledge is and I will tell you what your philosophy is. And this is understandable: in accordance with what he wishes to know, man invents his method of knowledge and his definition of "truth." Rationalism fears and detests the extreme zones; it holds itself firmly in the middle zone, in the center, around which are disposed all the points of the surface that it studies and with which it is concerned. And it admits the phenomena that it encounters on its way only insofar as they can be utilized for the needs and necessities of the center. Religion itself - I do not even speak of art, of morality, of law - acquires importance and meaning only in the measure that it is in agreement with the conditions of existence at the center. The rationalist wishes at all costs to bring it about that religion have "validity" in itself - in other words, that it bear the seal with which the functionaries of reason mark all merchandise carried to the spiritual marketplace. And it does not even occur to it that religion does not tolerate any control or mark, and that at the merest touch or brushing by the hand of official registrars it transforms itself immediately into its contrary. It is enough to recognize any religion whatsoever as true for it immediately to cease to exist.

     Husserl's idea about the "validity" of religion was certainly not invented by him. Following his custom, he only expresses in an open, sharp, almost brutal manner the goal of the aspirations of the "positive religions," even of those which imagined that they lived in the most elevated regions of fantastic mysticism. All of them wish before everything else that their "truths" should have objective validity, persuaded that "the rest will come." And all of them would cease to love and respect their God the moment they saw themselves obliged to renounce the objective (i.e., admitted by reason) validity of religion, not even suspecting that the thirst for objectivity comes from the devil, from the prince of this world, and that it is the indisputable sign of indifference to other worlds. The most difficult thing for man is to renounce the idea that his truth is and must be true for all! And yet he must separate himself from this "truth." It is possible that "validity in itself, a validity which is what it is even if no one can realize it and no historic mankind will ever realize it" exists, but it is not and will never be in the "public domain," for "by its very nature" it does not admit the conditions and laws that the public domain always imposes. So long as logic rules, the way to metaphysics is barred. At times man feels that so long as he does not awaken from the sleep where the evidences rule, the truth will not disclose itself to him. But, as we know, this feeling, according to Husserl, is the worst and most serious of sins.

     It is because of this presentiment, expressed very modestly by Sigwart, Erdmann, and Dilthey, that Husserl launched so violent an attack on modern philosophy. But the arguments through which he wishes to force Dilthey to renounce psychologism, on the contrary, only support psychologism. For if man has still not expressed "validity in itself" and will never express it, how could reason not rise up in wrath against itself? Or if reason is too fearful or has too much self-love and decides not to accuse itself, is it really true that there will not be found in the human soul forces capable of rebelling against the centuries-old slavery? And is not psychologism, which, despite all attacks, continues to live, the expression of this rebellion? Is it not precisely that memento mori which always lives in the souls of men, that supreme mystery of philosophy that Plato had revealed in his apothnêiskein kai tethnanai [dying and the state of death] and that he himself forgot when he had to make of philosophy a science capable of imposing itself always and upon all men? If one can reproach modern philosophy for anything, it is not that it disdains argumentation deduced from consequences but rather that it has not the courage to defend its rights and to deliver itself from the tyranny of reason. The ancient Greeks doubted whether men possess the powers necessary to attain truth. Among others, Aristotle bears witness to this. "One could say," he writes, "that the possession of truth is not proper to man. For it may be that man is by nature a slave; that, as Simonides says, the privilege [of freedom] is given only to God; and that it is appropriate for man to aspire only to that knowledge for which he is destined. If one accepts what the poets say, and if the gods really are jealous, this applies precisely to the case at hand and he who rises too high perishes" (Met., 982b, 29 ff.). So thought the ancients. Aristotle himself, however, is of a different opinion. "It is absurd to assume that the gods are jealous. It is necessary rather to suppose that the proverb is right: the poets lie a great deal. Let us not think any science more important, more elevated than this."

     "The poets lie a great deal." Husserl will certainly acquiesce in this judgment of Aristotle's and will gladly repeat with him polla pseudontai hoi aoidoi. In his eyes all that Sigwart and Erdmann bracket in their theories of knowledge, Dilthey's statement that history makes us doubt the absoluteness of human knowledge - all these are only inventions of the poet that reason cannot justify. "The gods are jealous" is a metaphysical statement and consequently completely arbitrary. Descartes' thesis that God qui summe perfectus et verax est [who is wholly perfect and true] cannot lie is also a metaphysical statement, but it constitutes de facto the unexpressed postulate of all Dilthey's demonstrations. And are not the melancholy admissions of Sigwart and Dilthey finally the expression of that obscure feeling which the sleeper experiences when suddenly the reality of the dream begins to seem to him illusory, when the vague recollection of another reality to which he belonged in another life begins to destroy the "unity of consciousness" and despite all the evidence demands imperiously of the sleeper that he awaken?