If Western thought is what it claims to be, it must prove it by understanding all "life-worlds." It must bear factual witness to its unique significance beyond "anthropological specimens." So the idea of philosophy as a "rigorous science" - or as absolute knowledge - does reappear here, but from this point on with a question mark. Husserl said in his last years: "Philosophy as a rigorous science? The dream is all dreamed out." [8]
[8] "Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft, - der Traum ist ausgeträumt," Husserliana, VI, p. 508. (查看原文)
Whatever the validity of Merleau-Ponty's view, it does not support the myth that Husserl explicitly gave up in despair the ideal of a rigorous science of philosophy, a myth often supported by quoting Husserl's statement "Philosophy as a rigorous science—the dream is over [der Traum ist ausgeträumt]." The text in which this phrase occurs appeared as a Beilage to the German edition of the Crisis and is translated below in Appendix IX, and it is clear from the context that Husserl was attributing this view to his age, not asserting it himself. Even Merleau-Ponty attributes to Husserl only a "tacit" break with his philosophy of essences. It is amazing that this passage should still be quoted as if it were Husserl's final assessment when the full text has been available since 1954 (see, e.g., J... (查看原文)
To say that the ego "prior to" the other person is alone is already to situate it in relation to a phantom of the other person, or at least to conceive of an environment in which others could be. This is not the true and transcendental solitude. True, transcendental solitude takes place only if the other person is not even conceivable, and this requires that there be no self to claim solitude either. We are truly alone only on the condition that we do not know we are; it is this very ignorance which is our solitude. The "layer" or "sphere" which is called solipsist is without ego and without ipse. The solitude from which we emerge to intersubjective life is not that of the monad. It is only the haze of an anonymous life that separates us from being; and the barrier between us and others is... (查看原文)
As far as language is concerned, it is the lateral relation of one sign to another which makes each of them significant, so that meaning appears only at the intersection of and as it were in the interval between words. This characteristic prevents us from forming the usual conception of the distinction and the union between language and its meaning. Meaning is usually thought to transcend signs in principle (just as thought is supposed to transcend the sounds or sights which indicates it), and to be immanet in signs in the sense that each one of them, having its meaning once and for all, could not conceivably slip any opacity between itself and us, or even give us food for thought. (p.42)
Now if we rid our minds of the idea that our language is the translation or cipher of an original text... (查看原文)
[1] Husserl and the Problem of Language
In more recent writings, on the other hand, language appears as an original way of intending certain objects, as thought's body (Formale und transzendentale Logik), or even as the operation through which thoughts that without it would remain private phenomena acquire intersubjective value and, ultimately, ideal existence (Ursprung der Geometrie). (p.84-5)
... From the phenomenological point of view (that is, for the speaking subject who makes use of his language as a means of communicating with a living community), a language regains its unity. It is no longer the result of a chaotic past of independent linguistic facts but a system all of whose elements cooperate in a single attempt to express which is turned toward the present or the future and thu... (查看原文)
