My Serbian correspondent Milosz sent me a reference to an article in which we read:
What attracted these Catholics to Husserl was his theory of intentionality—the notion that human consciousness is always consciousness “of” something. This appealed to Catholics because it appeared to open a way beyond the idealism of modern philosophy since Kant, which had threatened to undermine the possibility that human beings could possess an objective knowledge of realities outside the mind, including God.
Husserl’s phenomenology seemed to offer a solution to this problem. His promise to return “to the things themselves” sounded to many Catholics like a vindication of medieval scholasticism, which stressed that human beings have the capacity to objectively know reality independent of the mind. This led some Catholics to dub phenomenology a “new scholasticism.” By pointing “beyond” modern philosophy, they hoped that phenomenology could also serve as a path “back” to medieval thought, so that one might begin from the perspective of modern philosophy and end up somewhere closer to Thomas Aquinas. Husserl’s phenomenology thus opened up the possibility that modern, secular philosophy could be converted to Catholicism.
The article is annoyingly superficial, and the last sentence quoted is just silly. Do I need to explain why? At the very most, Husserl's doctrine of intentionality prior to the publication in 1913 of Ideas I could be interpreted as supportive of realism, and was so interpreted by many of his early acolytes, among them, the members of the Goettingen and Munich circles. And so in some very vague sense, Husserlian intentionality could be taken as pointing back to medieval thought and to Thomas Aquinas in particular, assuming one didn't know much about Thomas or Husserl. But the claim that "Husserl’s phenomenology thus opened up the possibility that modern, secular philosophy could be converted to Catholicism" is risible. Roman Catholicism consists of extremely specific theological doctrines. No one could reasonably hold that a realistically interpreted Husserl could soften secular philosophers up for Trinity, Incarnation, Virgin Birth, Transubstantiation, etc. The most that could be said is that the (arguably merely apparent) realism of the early Husserl was welcomed by Catholic thinkers.
But now let's get down to brass tacks with a little help from Peter Geach. I will sketch the intentionality doctrine of Thomas. It will then be apparent, if you know your Husserl, that there is nothing like the Thomistic doctrine in Husserl.
A theory of intentionality ought to explain how the objective reference or object-directedness of our thoughts and perceptions is possible. Suppose I am thinking about a cat, a particular cat of my acquaintance whom I have named 'Max Black.' How are we to understand the relation between the mental act of my thinking, which is a transient datable event in my mental life, and its object, namely the cat I am thinking of? What makes my thinking of Max a thinking of Max? Or perhaps Max is in front of me and I am seeing him. What makes my seeing a seeing of him?
Here is what Peter Geach has to say, glossing Aquinas:
What makes a sensation or thought of an X to be of an X is that it is an individual occurrence of that very form or nature which occurs in X -- it is thus that our mind 'reaches right up to the reality'; what makes it to be a sensation or thought of an X rather than an actual X or an actual X-ness is that X-ness here occurs in the special way called esse intentionale and not in the 'ordinary' way called esse naturale. This solution resolves the difficulty. It shows how being of an X is not a relation in which the thought or sensation stands, but is simply what the thought or sensation is . . . .(Three Philosophers, Cornell UP, 1961, p. 95)
But what the devil does that mean? Allow me to explain.
The main point here is that of-ness or aboutness is not a relation between a mental act and its object. Thus intentionality is not a relation that relates my thinking of Max and Max. My thinking of Max just is the mental occurrence of the very same form or nature -- felinity -- which occurs physically in Max. Max is a hylomorphic compound, a compound of form and (signate) matter. Old Max himself, fleas and all, is of course not in my mind. It is his form that is in my mind. But if felinity informs my mind, why isn't my mind a cat? Here is where the distinction between esse intentionale and esse naturale comes in. One and the same form -- felinity -- exists in two different modes. Its mode of being in my mind is esse intentionale while its mode of being in Max is esse naturale.
Because my thought of Max just is the intentional occurrence in my mind of the same form or nature that occurs naturally in Max, there is no problem about how my thought reaches Max. There is no gap between mind and world. One could call this an identity theory of intentionality, or perhaps an 'isomorphic' theory. The knower is not enclosed within the circle of his ideas. There is a logically antecedent community of nature between mind and world that underwrites the latter's intelligibility.
What if Max were, unbeknownst to me, to cease to exist while I was thinking about him? My thinking would be unaffected: it would still be about Max in exactly the way it was about him before. The Thomist theory would account for this by saying that while the form occurs with esse intentionale in my mind, it does not occur outside my mind with esse reale.
That in a nutshell is the Thomist theory of intentionality. If you can see your way clear to accepting it as the only adequate account of intentionality, then it supplies a reason for the real distinction of essence and existence. For the account requires that there be two distinct modes of esse, an immaterial mode, esse intentionale, and a material mode, esse naturale. Now if F-ness can exist in two different modes, then it cannot be identical to either and must be really distinct from both. (Cf. "Form and Existence" in God and the Soul, pp. 62-64.)
I don't have time to explain in detail how Husserl's approach to the possibility of knowledge differs from the above. But if you consult his The Idea of Phenomenology, which consists of five lectures given in 1907, just a few years after the publication of the Logical Investigations in 1900 which so inspired his early followers, you will soon appreciate how absurd is the notion that Husserl's phenomenology is a "new scholasticism."
The Commonweal article under critique is here.
Philosophische Gesellschaft Göttingen (1912)
Front Row (from Ieft to right): Adolf Reinach, Alexandre Koyre, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Max Scheler, Theodor Conrad.
Back Row: Jean Hering, Heinrich Rickert jr., Ernst Rothschild, Siegfried Hamburger, Fritz Frankfurter, Rudolf Clemens, Hans Lipps, Gustav Hübener, Herbert Leyendecker, Friedrich Neumann.
Recent Comments