Ⅵ．Transcendental Phenomenology and Reality as Reason

It should be said that transcendental phenomenology is the core concept of Husserl's philosophy and the unique attribute of Husserl's phenomenology. The word “transcendental” has two different meanings:the first one is nothing more than an understanding of the overall essence,which is effective from the essence, the second meaning is a law about essence.

In the first kind of transcendental, phenomenology and essence are related to the original giveness, and also to the kind of overall intuition. In a word, everything can intuitively construct the field of absolute giveness(we have talked about this part of intuition in the previous part). In the second concept, it is related to the “rational principle form”, and it is also manifested by its own giveness. This requires a discussion of symbols and logic (which is also the focus of our last part).

As pointed out in the discussion just now, although Husserl tried to exclude “pure” logic and symbols from phenomenological research, all judgments inevitably involved this part of knowledge. Otherwise, how can people describe the universal nature with universality? To put it simply,Husserl not only chose to inherit Kant's “propositional logic and category are meaningful only in practice” to some extent, but also chose to absorb Frege's meaning and reference to some extent to transform it into his so called syntactic base and symbolic theory.

In The Idea of Phenomenology , Husserl tried to transform the abstract arithmetic expression of the concept into a kind of purely explicit thing, a purely given thing and eliminate its being-in-itself. In other words, different from the traditional idea that the geometric world and the mathematical world exist independently of experience, Husserl thinks that there is no difference between arithmetic logic and experience: they both have pure giveness. But he soon realized such a problem:

It should never be said now... Therefore, all things perceived,imagined, fictional, symbolic imaginary, all fiction and absurdity are evident and given.

Husserl himself admits here that if such a radical definition is adopted,there will be nothing in the world that is not purely given, which is unacceptable to him. Therefore, Husserl must seek another way out instead.However, Husserl's efforts mentioned above should never be regarded as a kind of “semiotics and logic” of complete nominalism. Husserl acknowledged the independent existence of formal logic after recognizing the difficulties in this part, but it is meaningless if it is not discussed in reality (this will be further explained in the next part). Finally, Husserl said that the meaning of logic can be perceived by experience in events.

Husserl believes that there should be no doubt that the behavior level of expression is the logical behavior level, which reflects and frames the scope of expression through meaning and bedeutung (the same word with Frege's“reference”). In other words, the expression must be logical to be understood, and all logical expressions can be actually established through meaning. For example, we say, “This piece of paper is white.”But when we say this sentence, we actually think of “this is white” or “p=q”.In this process, the former is a meaningful expression, while the latter shows the logic of expression. The expression form of the original sub proposition is enriched by meaning, and “p” and “q” are enriched by“white paper” and “white”. In Husserl's words: “Logical meaning can only be an expression.” It expresses the “core” of every object, and elevates it to the realm of Logos, concepts, and universals, which can be intentional and intuitive through experience. In every expression, there is always an existence as the essence of meaning, which is the essence of this expression, that is, the core. When we say that this piece of paper is white,an essential attribute pointed by white that can only be understood can be used as the core of the paper.

Now, we find that in each individual expression, the thinker always points to an expressed object, which makes the meaning of the sentence possible. Our expressions are always descriptive, such as “this is white”and “he is handsome”. The knowledge about the object is expressed by these described predicates. In an expression, a predicate is a predicate about something, and all expressions can't be separated from the “core”of this sentence. However, this “core” can't be simply equated with the set of these predicates. It should be distinguished from the predicates,not juxtaposed with the predicates. If there must be a difference between predicates and predicates, and they point to the same core so magically,then this core obviously cannot be equated with any predicate itself, but is just an all-encompassing existence. But in turn, all predicates are its predicates, and Husserl named this all-encompassing one “X”. In precise terms:

As the central intentional object factor, it is separated: target, object,same thing: pure X after all predicates are extracted, and it is separated from these predicates, or precisely, the intentional object of the predicates.

All predicates point to an ultimate object, which is the ultimate foundation of cognition. Husserl's move is quite interesting, because there is an implied conclusion that different intentions have different cores, but all of them imply the existence of an absolute unity, or the universality of absolute thinking. In this ingenious way, the problem of core individualization and generalization has been solved. To simply summarize the concept of meaning: as we have defined it, meaning can't be simply equated with experience, but an abstract form embedded in the intentional object. Through this abstract form, universal knowledge exists.

By appealing to the general knowledge of human beings, the truth can be classified into the truth of theory, the truth of fact and the truth of value.As discussed in the previous section, the essence related objects or these predicates appear in their unique rational characteristics and eventually point to their common “original belief”, or use a more moving and universal name: truth. Undoubtedly, all propositions of original beliefs are rational related items, which contain rational principles. Take Husserl as an example:

It is completely equivalent for a thing to be “true” and its completely rational characteristics to be applied to the corresponding concepts. “In the truth of value and the truth of fact, the same principle fully applies.” The truth of theory or belief, or evidence, has its parallel in the truth of value and fact, so the latter truth is expressed and recognized in the truth of belief,that is, in the truth of special logic.

Husserl believes that if we can establish a rational phenomenology by relying on a scientific way, and this phenomenology can describe phenomena and beliefs, then we have the reason to think that the answers brought by this phenomenology correspond with the truth.

Husserl's final goal is to recognize and find out the ultimate setting and the ultimate truth, which is the dream of all metaphysical scholars before.Therefore, the result is still the real existence of Eidos, which is correspondingly equivalent to the fully given and provable set existence of Eidos. However,existence is sometimes an internal existence, and sometimes a transcendental existence. At this time, it needs this related term as the material of existence(Seins “materie”). Husserl pointed out the legitimacy and necessity of a new science here. He stopped answering and only set up a new research field.Phenomenologists should study the relationship between related terms and phenomena in this sense and trace the essential source of phenomenology.