Experience and Reality in the Philosophy of Edmund Husserl

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Brentano introduced Bernard Bolizano to Husserl as a co mathematicism. Bolzano gave him (Husserl) the insight to overcome his mater’s inadequate treatment of intentionality by propounding an objectivity immanent in the ego and valid for all.

Brentano’s influence enables Husserl to overcome the Kantian distinction between Noumenon and phenomenon. Husserl expounded the doctrine of these men with some innovations.

Husserl gave a radical turn to this debate of experience and reality just as John Locke declared that “philosophy started on a wrong end”6 so Husserl declared that till his time;

….Philosophy is as yet not merely an incomplete or imperfect science, it simply not science at all; there are no objectively valid philosophical systems, there are only philosophical tendencies which do not add up to a philosophy7

He set out to establish philosophy on an unimpeachable rationalistic bases so as to give an end to these conflicting articulations in philosophy. He advocated for a return to the root of things and the suspension of all presuppositions. This was to avoid building on a prefabricated system.

He sought for the root of things in the consciousness of an “I” to whom the non “I” appears. Thus he let this proclaimed “back to the things themselves” become, a return to the subject by way of reflection and self-awareness. Consciousness therefore becomes the edifice on which his thought is to be based.

He identified reality and experience in the transcendental or pure ego. An analysis of consciousness will expose the core of the relation between the experience (subject, consciousness) and the experienced (object, reality).

- Statement of Problem

For Husserl, philosophy is fundamentally conceived as a science, however this conception of philosophy underwent several transformations.

“His major quest was for the path to indubitable knowledge of objective truth upon which all human knowledge could be based8

Husserl in his early version of phenomenology focused principally upon it as a philosophy of knowledge, introverting into the mind which is the seat of experience. Husserl observed that what are intentional in Bretano’s sense and which therefore refer to phenomena that are not evident to us in unreflective moment that is in moment which we adopt what Husserl called “Nature Attitude”.

Thus, when we reflect upon our perception of a cube from different angles, it appears to us to have different shapes and these appearances or phenomena (sense data for British empiricists) are the primary object of interest for phenomenology.9

Reflecting upon the different appearances of any object and doing it from different angles, we talk of them as appearance of a particular angle of a particular object. For Husserl, we must give up this natural attitude in order to concentrate on the pure phenomenon of the appearance itself.

Experience and reality is all there is in things and their modes of appearance to us. Though there are differences among the many philosophers who treated experience and reality, what they had in common was a concern about human existence, the conditions and qualities of the existing human individual, most especially, how he experiences and interprets his environment.

The task therefore in this work is to expose the different conceptions of experience and reality and the influence it had on Husserl’s phenomenology.

- Objective of the Study

No one set out on a journey without a definite purpose and goal. And as such, this piece is born out of the love and reverence for man, gearing towards making the whole being of man aware of their experiences and how it relate to the real things.

In this work, I will examine experience and reality in the light of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology. It will equally make sense to adumbrate the view of most philosophers and philosophical positions, especially those that have something to offer on experience and reality, that had direct influence on Husserl.

The primary goal here is therefore aimed at proper understanding of experience and reality and how both relates and differenciates from each other. In achieving this, I believe there would be need to make a constructive comparison of the thoughts x-rayed by earlier philosophers.

- Significance of the Study

It is obvious that the works of Edmund Husserl led to a turning point in philosophy and focus on existentialism and phenomenology.

The method Husserl developed to understand the structures of experience and reality, had a lasting influence on philosophy as well as the other disciplines.

He helped spark a movement within the social sciences among those who believed the human subject cannot be understood on the same terms as the objects of other sciences. Psychologists and sociologists who have been influenced by phenomenology claim that the human subject lives life from the inside out.

Simply focusing on empirical facts, physical stimuli and external causes, will not explain human behavior, they say instead, the human sciences must understand how experience is structured by the subject and must chart the structure of the life-world interms of which the data are interpreted and made meaningful by the experiencing subject.

I believe this work will widen the horizon of any scholar who reads it, and suggest further researches on the subject topic in the existentialist and phenomenologist school.

- Scope of the Study

Any philosophical enterprise cannot be open-ended, as such we do not claim to be exhaustive of the problematic, and neither are we going to offer a holistic viewpoint of the case study. One of the weaknesses of this research work so to say, is the limitedness of the work not minding the vastness of Husserl’s claims.

This project is articulated in chapters of five (5). The first chapter deals with the general introduction to the study. Second chapter x-rays literature of different scholars on experience and reality.

The third chapter led us into the person of Edmund Husserl and exposes the key terms of this work. It gives a global view of other philosophers’ conception of these terms and Husserl’s methods.

The fourth chapter takes time to analyze consciousness in the light of Husserl’s conception. It exposes the relation between experience and reality and establishes that