Husserl’s critique of Descartes in the First Mediation revolves mainly around the central principle of the ego cogito. Descartes makes no distinction between the act of thought and its object. Husserl takes “intentionality” from Brentano but incorporates a new meaning (Jacobs 132). He speaks not of an intentional relation but the intentionality of consciousness. It is understood in a transcendental epistemological and ontological sense. The intentional analysis of consciousness entails an analysis of the temporal structures of the cogito. Husserl insists that the apodictic obviousness of the ego cogito, because of the latter’s immanent temporality, cannot express its meaning and structure completely exhaustively. Analyzing the experience of transcendental subjectivity as a continuous stream of consciousness, Husserl points out that the content of the temporal horizons of cogito, which branches out into past and future, is not given adequately. Based on the critically differing notion of ego cogito, Husserl’s criticism adopted the idea of intentions instead of Descartes’ explanation through a symbiotic and divine relationship between a higher power and a cognitive understanding of a belief that becomes the truth.
Descartes’ First Mediation is the philosopher’s nuanced approach to the world, or rather, it is complete denial in order for the truth to be found. Thus, the approach implies the belief that the perceived is false, which creates a vacuum in which the world acquires a new meaning. Descartes realized that presumptions and subjective understanding of life are to be doubted in order for a new understanding to form. The philosophical effort has been criticized by Husserl, and another method was proposed (Jacobs 134). The criticism is based on the definition of one’s understanding of reality, which is given and cannot be denied or avoided. Thus, the critical overview is based on the concept of an imminent sense of appearance, which does not imply the possibility of doubt since it is innate. The criticism is based on the aim to entirely distance from the priorly perceived, which has ultimately been suggested in Descartes’s effort to differentiate the mental and the material (Antoine-Mahut and Roux 58). Husserl’s approach is based on the concept of intentionality, which is the source of consciousness, perceived experience, and judgment. Thus, Husserl’s criticism of the First mediation is exemplified through Descartes’ setting everything aside instead of setting himself aside. Moreover, the disapproval is suggested by Descartes’ approach of perceiving everything as false instead of not giving perceived information the label of truth or lie and having a more neutral and balanced position as illustrated by Husserl.
The two philosophical approaches are both similar in the sense of looking for truth through questioning of reality, yet different in terms of the medium of seeking the answers. The differences in the concept of philosophy as a science between Husserl and Descartes relate primarily to the concept of intentionality and the method of intentional analysis. Descartes believed that in the reflexive treatment, consciousness coincides with itself; that is, it apprehends itself as cognitive (Carriero 74). By performing the procedure of doubt, one directs our attention to oneself, transforming the natural obviousness of consciousness into its apodictic obviousness. For Husserl, consciousness is always and entirely intentional, so consciousness directed toward itself is always directed toward its intentional states.
The radical beginnings of philosophy for Husserl consist in the discovery of a world which is as total intentionality and as a latent teleology, or product of constitutive meaning-giving. In Husserl, consciousness coincides with itself; it always coincides with its intentions or the world. Husserl predominantly focuses on a critical analysis of Cartesian cogito and presents an alternative program to realize this fundamental principle in “Cartesian Reflections” (Elveton 127). The possibilities of the transcendental field of experience missed by Descartes were replaced, according to Husserl, by the metaphysical ventures of objectivism, which became the main characteristic of the theoretical constructions of the era. The ideal of philosophical radicality was not fully realized. The two lines of development of Cartesian philosophy, rationalism and empiricism, did not reach the transcendental level of inquiry, remaining at the tertico-cognitive level.
Only a complete rejection of the problem of objective scientificity and its replacement with a transcendental problem can suggest ways of overcoming the crisis of the sciences. The program of overcoming the critical state of science and philosophy was called by Husserl the program of neo-Cartesianism. However, the further development of the cogito with its now pre-logical a priori of the lifeworld further distances phenomenology from the original Cartesianism. It moves from the abstract Cartesian subject to the concrete subject of the lifeworld. Moreover, the first historical result of the phenomenological program was the philosophical teachings known as existentialism, which declared the new philosophy post-Cartesian and post-metaphysical.
Nevertheless, there is an overlap between Husserl’s motives in his search for a prerequisite-free science and Descartes’s construction of universal mathematics. Both Descartes and Husserl are dissatisfied with the state of modern philosophy. Descartes, however, understands the sphere of innate cogito ideas. In contrast, Husserl understands the sphere of transcendental subjectivity that constitutes a priori essences (Mazijk 27). The desire for the radicalization of philosophy for both Descartes and Husserl is primarily related to the attempt to ground the unity of all sciences in the cogito. For Descartes, it becomes the point of reference for subsequent deductively derived true judgments, and for Husserl, it becomes the sole domain of phenomenological analysis (Antoine-Mahut and Roux 78). The problem of constructing science on absolute and prerequisite-free foundations thus emerges as the first and foremost task that both philosophers set themselves at the beginning of their philosophical journey.
Works Cited
Antoine-Mahut, Delphine, and Sophie Roux. Physics and Metaphysics in Descartes and in His Reception. Routledge, 2018. Web.
Carriero, John. Descartes and the Autonomy of the Human Understanding. Routledge, 2018. Web.
Elveton, Roy. The Phenomenology of Husserl: Selected Critical Readings. Routledge, 2020. Web.
Jacobs, Hanne. The Husserlian Mind. Routledge, 2021. Web.
Mazijk, Corjin. Perception and Reality in Kant, Husserl, and McDowell. Routledge, 2020. Web.