Phenomenological Philosophy As A Rigorous And Constitutive System Of Science

This dissertation follows the route of Husserl’s own thought, making a comprehensive study on his three volume masterpiece of Ideas, as well as some earlier works related to it. Our end is to expose Husserl’s view on the theory of science and phenomenology in detail, explicating the ideas of phenomenological philosophy together with the essence of a strict, self-founding science that founds knowledge in general.Husserl learned from Weierstrass and Brentano that the strict demonstration of the foundation of sciences needs to be done and be exerted in an analysis of the constitution of scientific concepts. Logical Investigations extends the foundational explorations of mathematics and logic to possible theory-forms of sciences, putting forward a manifold theory as the program of pure logic, thus it makes possible for a formal realization of "mathesis universalis". Descriptive noetics or phenomenology plays a key role in the succeeding justification of pure logic, and it distributes a logical-noetic structure to the theory of science.After the publication of the second volume of Logical Investigations, Husserl was regarded as making a submittal to psychologism. He realized that the only way to solve the problem of the theory of science and seek the foundation for general knowledge is to reflect upon the possible conditions for universal knowledge and to rethink the relationship between consciousness and the transcendent. Meanwhile, Husserl was occupied with other problems, especially the rivalship between natural and human sciences. With the accumulating works from1906, the philosopher arrived at the first systemic construction of transcendental phenomenology in his Ideas, which makes it possible for the overcome of all those problems mentioned above.Transcendental phenomenology preserves the structure of Logical Investigations and turns it into some sort of double-layered "architectonics", or to say, includes eidetic sciences and noetics in the realm of pure consciousness and illuminating them in a transcendental way. So the first goal of Ideas I is to render all the transcendent as correlates of intentional acts, separating their contents from existential characters, suspending all the validities of their ontological default points. Thus the intentional correlates can only be regarded as the accomplishments of pure consciousness, while all sorts of objectivities are noematic "senses" that follow the essential laws of the eidetic structures of consciousness in form and material.This conditions universally for possible cognitions in general, and it alone composes the pure phenomenology in special sense. Husserl divided all the eidetic objectivities into three general types through analysis of the concept of eidos, which forms the material region, formal region and the primordial region of pure consciousness. It is necessary for a strict theory of science to lean on the phenomenological descriptions and explanations on those regions as well as eidetic sciences built on them. The key to such an approach is the two-fold methodology named phenomenological reduction and constitution.Ideas I does not survey the problems in formal ontology properly, but focuses on the structural analysis in the primordial region. Ideas II proceeds to examine the entire material region closely and comprehensively and dealing three concrete regions with constitutive phenomenology. The whole nature, which consists of material and animal subnature, stands against the spiritual world, and each of them requires unique theories of science and phenomenology. Besides, their objects in relation to ego and then world can be set into different sense configuration within different attitudes. Not until the original givenness and the foundational relationship amongst essences have been grasped in the order of appearances and apprehensions with static and genetic constitutive method, can we understand the limit of natural science. Naturalistic attitude must be conditioned by natural attitude in full sense, i.e. spiritual or personalistic attitude, and the natural reality has to be subordinated to spiritual world in order to ascertain the universal validity of corresponding sciences.Ideas III turns to ontologies from regions per se, concerning the relationship between natural eidetics and phenomenology. This volume tries to interpret the theory of science with the guide of phenomenology and to make distinctions in them. With the analysis in exemplars of natural sciences such as physics and psychology, we discern different types amongst descriptive sciences and then explain the meaning of phenomenological description to the theory of science. Also, it needs to be emphasized on the methods and characters of ontology and phenomenology as such and to be illustrated why it is only transcendental phenomenology that paves the way for the radical clarification of significations and validities of all ontologies.This thesis, divided into seven chapters, conforms to the structure of Ideas and follows its order in general. The first chapter exposes the formation of Husserl’s notion of a strict science and his pivotal turn towards transcendental philosophy, in the perspective of the historical development of his thought. Chapter two and three work on the eidetic and phenomenological part in Ideas Ⅰ respectively. The next three chapters, in a final purpose to clarify the relationship between nature and spirit, contribute a full-scale reading on all the three regions delineated in Ideas Ⅱ, each of which receives a close study both in Husserl’s train of thought and argumentations. Chapter seven deals with the phenomenological foundations of natural sciences discussed in Ideas III.We come to the conclusion after thorough examinations that the essence of transcendental phenomenology is to investigate in terms of eidetic description the senses of all objectivities in their constitution within pure consciousness, exploring the eidetic relationship in their static as well as genetic foundation. In the view of the theory of science, all sorts of possible knowledge are founded on formal or material ontologies according to their formal and material characters. The validity and truth in such ontologies can be clarified only in the strict and constitutive transcendental phenomenology.