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Husserl Studies 17: 217237, 2001.

2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
Apodictic Evidence
HANS BERNHARD SCHMID
1
New School for Social Research, Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science,
Department of Philosophy, 65 Fifth Avenue, New York 10003, USA
In contemporary philosophy, Husserls transcendental phenomenology has
been criticized for three principal reasons, its idealism,
2
its solipsism
3
, and its
foundationalism. Among these criticisms, the last one is probably the most
commonly held and the most vague at the same time. It is still an open ques-
tion whether Wilfrid Sellarss elaborate critique of foundationalism does ap-
ply to Husserl (as Richard Rorty seems to think).
4
What the critics seem to
have in mind is, however, a less sophisticated idea of foundationalism.
Husserls foundationalism in this sense simply seems to consist in his claim
to have discovered a type of experience that is not flawed by the fallibility of
normal, nave experience a type of knowledge that therefore is not in need
of confirmation in the course of further investigation and in the basic role
Husserl ascribes to this kind of knowledge in his theory. For following this
foundationalist line of thought in transcendental phenomenology, our
claims to rationality and the very idea of science depend on the existence of
such unshakeable grounds, as Husserl makes clear in the opening paragraphs
of his Cartesian Meditations.
Such foundational claims are generally considered as hopelessly outdated.
To put it in the words of Wilfrid Sellars, we hold knowledge and science to be
rational not because it is based on indubitable foundations, but because it is
a self-correcting enterprise, which can put any claim in jeopardy, though not
all at once (Sellars 1997, p. 79). Since Husserls foundationalism is so much
at odds with our current thinking, it is all too understandable that there is a
tendency among those interpreters who are sympathetic to Husserl to simply
ignore, to suppress or even explicitly to contest Husserls foundationalism in
order to present Husserl as a thinker of relevance to current philosophy. The
editors of the Cambridge Companion to Husserl are just one of many exam-
ples for this strategy. In their introduction, they simply claim that Husserl did
not seek foundations of knowledge. There is, as they continue, no indubi-
table bedrock of a foundationalist edifice in Husserls theory.
5
And yet, it
doesnt take more than an hour of reading in Husserls works to stumble upon
at least one formulation of this very foundational claim. Husserl portrays his
218
philosophical venture time and time again as a science (. . .) based on solid
foundations (Hua XXV, p. 57) on an absolute justification (Hua VII, p. 36).
Thus one of Husserls critics has even described a perfectly hard ground as
the one and only focal point of Husserls entire intellectual venture.
6
In most critical interpretations, Husserls quest for apodicticity and
apodictic evidence is taken as an expression of this foundationalist search
of a solid ground in terms of a privileged mode of experience or field of
knowledge that provides us with infallible insight. Thats why the concept of
apodictic evidence is widely unpopular among phenomenologists. One of the
most striking symptoms of this is the fact that the Encyclopedia of Phenom-
enology does not even mention this concept a term Husserl not only coined,
but also regarded as so central and essential to his philosophy that he in times
used it on about every second page of his writings!
7
In this paper I will try to challenge this more or less silent understanding
of apodictic evidence as a foundationalist concept. The first section of this
paper is concerned with a more detailed description of what is indeed foun-
dationalist in Husserls philosophy: the dogma of self-transparency. With
some remarks on the history of the concept of apodictic evidence in Husserls
phenomenology and some elements of a possible systematic reconstruction I
will try to show that Husserl developed his concept of apodictic evidence in
the course of his move away from his earlier foundationalist dogma of self-
transparency. It is of special importance for my argument to take a closer look
at Husserls slow and complicated development from the earlier identifica-
tion to the later distinction of adequate and apodictic evidence. The third sec-
tion deals with the criticism that accuses Husserl of ignoring and suppressing
internal otherness and the bearings of the phenomenon of internal otherness
on the concept of apodicticity. In a short concluding remark, the results of this
interpretation of apodictic evidence as a non-foundationalist concept shall be
gathered.
Husserls departure from the dogma of self-transparency
In his authoritative study of the concept of truth in Husserl and Heidegger,
8
Ernst Tugendhat has drawn a distinction that has been of lasting influence on
many interpretations down to the present day.
9
Tugendhat distinguishes what
he calls the critical motif in phenomenology from its dogmatic motif. On
the one side he presents Husserl as a critically-minded thinker to whom all
knowledge, including phenomenology itself, is fallible and might prove wrong
at any point in the course of further critical investigation. On the other side
Husserl appears as a dogmatic, a Cartesian thinker
10
who doesnt content
himself with that kind of soft knowledge and claims his venture to be infal-
219
lible and ultimately justified. The main point is, that this is not merely an am-
bivalence in Husserls thinking but a proper contradiction.
11
For Husserl, still
following Tugendhats reading, thereby dogmatically limits the scope of criti-
cal thinking.
A closer look at the reasons which led Husserl to this understanding of
phenomenology makes Tugendhats conclusion even more convincing. The
argument Husserl comes up with to substantiate the absolute certainty of
phenomenological insights in his earlier works is as simple as it is unaccept-
able. In Husserls words, unlike transcendent perception, immanent percep-
tion is adequately evident and therefore indubitable. That means: the objects
in the outer world are never given to our intuition in all the concrete deter-
mining parts our meaning them might assume. What is given is never fully
congruent with what is intended. There is a gap between what is present in
perception and the noematic sense of our intention, and this gap Husserl iden-
tifies as all errors gateway to human knowledge. What was meant as green
all over might turn out to be yellow on the rear side. External experience gives
just presumptive evidence, not apodictic evidence. But, according to Husserl,
the state of affairs in the case of immanent perception, i.e. if our perceiving is
directed to our own states of consciousness in phenomenological reflection
is completely different. Husserl identifies immanence in his Logical Investi-
gations as a sphere of adequate givenness (Hua XIX, p. 27f.). For as op-
posed to objects in the external world, states of mind do not have back sides
nor hidden corners to be probed. What is given in immanent perception that
is in phenomenological reflection is congruent with what is meant. And this
adequacy is what makes phenomenological reflection, according to Husserl,
ultimately justified knowledge. I can doubt the truth of an inadequate (. . .)
perception. (. . .) But I cannot doubt an adequate, purely immanent percep-
tion, since there are no residual intentions in it that must yet achieve fulfil-
ment. The whole intention, or the intention in all its aspects, is fulfilled. Or,
as we also expressed it: the object in our percept is not merely believed to exist,
but is also itself truly given, and as what it is believed to be. It is of the es-
sence of adequate perception that the intuited object itself really and truly
dwells in it, which is merely another way of saying that only the perception of
ones own actual experiences is indubitable and evident.
12
Husserl even in
his later works sometimes portrays immanent perception as evident, and evi-
dence as a grasping of something in itself that is, or is thus, a grasping in the
mode it itself with full certainty of its being, a certainty that accordingly
excludes every doubt.
13
Thats the reason why immanent perception is cer-
tain whereas transcendent perception is fallible. This describes the main fea-
ture of the basic distinction in Husserls transcendental phenomenology, of its
Leitdifferenz, to put it in a term used in systems theory.
14
Here in tran-
scendent perception an adumbrated being, not capable of ever becoming
220
given absolutely, merely accidental and relative; there in immanent percep-
tion a necessary and absolute being, essentially incapable of becoming given
by virtue of adumbration.
15
This is the main feature of Husserls famous abyss
that yawns between consciousness and reality (Hua III, p. 105 [121]).
16
Thus Husserl describes the judgement external perception is deceptive,
inner perception evident as a basic pillar of knowledge, which skepticism
cannot shake (Hua XIX, p. 753 [853]). What makes the apodicticity of in-
ner perception, its superior certainty, is its adequateness (up to the time of
First Philosophy Husserl regarded apodicticity as nothing but a special qual-
ity of adequate evidence, its certainty).
17
But how could Husserl ever rely on
such an obviously weak argument about inner perception?
18
Thus Husserl made
it easy for his critics, Gilbert Ryle among them, who very early depicted the
absolute certainty of immanent perception as a mere myth. Phenomenological
reflection is, following Ryle, nothing else than remembrance controlled by
a special interest, by no means more certain than any act of consciousness,
for we often make mistakes about our mental condition.
19
Husserl just seems
to have taken it for granted that in contrast to the world outside we are com-
pletely transparent to ourselves. But in the meantime we have learned how
unfathomable our own states of mind sometimes are. For as Freud has shown
so convincingly, a desire for something may, depending on the circumstances,
enter the inner stage disguised as, say, fear of something completely differ-
ent. Without intending to replace a problematic theory of consciousness by a
theory of the unconscious that is just as problematic: this fundamental psy-
choanalytic insight and its bearings not only on natural reflexion, but also on
the theory of the pure self-reference of the subject after the phenomenological
reduction, cannot be escaped. Our self-understanding, as pure as it may be,
tends to miss its object even more persistently than our knowledge of the things
out there in the world and our knowledge of others. Did it escape Husserls
notice how persistently subjectivity eludes the grasp of reflection?
However, in order to avoid the conclusion that Husserls idea of apodicticity
is due to this unacceptable dogma of self-transparency, it is essential to con-
sider his thought more completely. Husserl, in his later thought, moved away
from his earlier dogma of self-transparency. He himself later called the view
he had endorsed earlier as simply nave (Hua XVII, p. 295). As early as the
Ideas he started to change his position: It is the case also of a mental process
that it is never perceived completely, that it cannot be adequately seized upon
in its full unity (Hua III, p. 103 [97]). Just as the external objects of tran-
scendent perception are given as located in horizons of possible modifications
of the apprehensional sense, our own states of mind are also given in a wider
context, the stream of consciousness, and are therefore never given in adequate
evidence. According to Husserls position in the Ideas, this however does not
apply to the givenness of the pure ego: The ego (. . .) does not present itself
221
merely from a side, (. . .). Instead, the pure Ego is given in absolute selfhood
and in a unity which does not present itself by way of adumbrations; it can be
grasped adequately in the reflexive shift of focus (. . .). As pure ego it does
not harbor any hidden inner richness; it is absolutely simple and it lies there
absolutely clear.
20
But Husserl has further developed his egology in his later
works. In the manuscripts leading to his Cartesian Meditations, Husserl ex-
pounded by far a more complex egology, picking up on the fundamental in-
sight that the transcendental ego is inseparable from the processes making
up his life (Hua I, p. 99 [65]).
As such, it is not only an empty pole of identity (Hua I, p. 100 [66]), but
together with its mental processes it has to be considered from a genetic or
even historical perspective.
21
For as a substrate of habitualities it develops
customs and as personal ego (Hua I, p. 101 [67]) it commits itself to con-
victions. But it is not until it is revealed in its monadic character that the ego
becomes visible in its full concreteness, in the flowing multiformity of his
intentional life, along with the objects intended (. . .) in that life (Hua I, p.
102 [68]). In that perspective, the ego is by no means perfectly clear and free
of hidden characteristics, on the contrary: it has an abundance of concealed
inner richness, and that means: it is not given in adequate evidence. When
I am effecting transcendental reduction and reflecting on myself, the transcen-
dental ego, I am given to myself (. . .) with an open infinite horizon of still
undiscovered internal features of my own (Hua I, p. 132 [101]). And it was
in fact in this context that Husserl finally came to reject the dogma of self-
transparency he formerly had endorsed. But if immanent perception does not
give adequate evidence, there is no absolute certainty either, for I then am as
obscure to myself as is the external world. Husserl now sometimes goes as
far as to declare immanent perception, this former stronghold of certainty, an
experience like any other (Ms A I 31/11a). The field of immanent perception
doesnt appear as a privileged unshakable ground of knowledge any more. For
immanent perception, too, is nothing more than fallible experience. Thats why
the term transcendental experience
22
(seemingly a contradictio in adjecto)
comes into frequent use in Phenomenology from this moment on. Husserl
chooses that term to do justice to the fact that phenomenology, too, is nothing
else then experiencing in open and endless horizons of possible confirmation
or disconfirmation. If phenomenological reflection is transcendental experi-
ence, then phenomenology is in no way infallible and absolutely justified
knowledge. Here Husserl himself states Gilbert Ryles objection against him:
we may always be widely mistaken about ourselves (Hua XV, p. 450), and
even more: as far as the purport of phenomenological reflection is concerned,
there is no limits (. . .) to self-deception (Hua XV, p. 401). It is not surpris-
ing that Paul Ricoeur started his enterprise to bring Psychoanalysis and Phe-
nomenology closer together from this very insight into the inadequate evidence
222
of immanent perception.
23
And insofar as Husserls claim to apodicticity is
closely connected to the misconception of immanent perception as a sphere
of adequateness and Husserls indeed considered adequacy and apodicticity
to be mutually defining concepts up to the time of First Philosophy (as we
shall see in the next chapter) it seems, that the idea of apodictic evidence
shares the fate of the dogma of self-transparency.
Some remarks from the perspective of the development of Husserls
thinking and a step toward a systematic reconstruction
Many of Husserls interpreters and critics, among them some of the most
renowned, reached this conclusion in their reading of Husserls theory of
apodicticity. As Husserl explicitly rejected the dogma of self-transparency, the
claim to apodictic evidence of phenomenological knowledge, in this view,
simply has lost its justification.
24
For as we have seen, phenomenological re-
flection finally proved to be as fallible as any other kind of experience. Fol-
lowing these critics, Husserl then should have dropped his foundational claim
to apodicticity. For apodicticity seems to be, if anything, only an ideal or a
regulative idea of transcendental experience.
25
Id like to start my defense of Husserls concept of apodictic evidence by
challenging the premiss of those critics: that apodicticity depends on the ad-
equate givenness of processes of consciousness. Admittedly, this premiss as-
serts no more than Husserl himself says explicitly when he defines the term
apodicticity as referring to a special quality of adequate evidence, namely
its indubitability, thus clearly interrelating, even identifying (Hua VIII, p. 35)
adequacy and apodicticity. But this is not the ultimate truth about apodicticity,
but only one transitional stage on a long way of conceptual clarification in
Husserls thinking. In contrast to what might be assumed, Husserl didnt aban-
don his claim to apodicticity when he started to move away from the dogma
of self-transparency. On the contrary: it was only then that he started to use
this concept, and he never insisted more persistently on the idea of apodictic
evidence than in the Cartesian Meditations, where he described the non-self-
transparency of the subject more clearly than anywhere else. Id like to illus-
trate this with a simple set of statistics. The x-axis stands for the development
of Husserls thought, scaled by five important stages from the Logical Inves-
tigations from 1900 through the Crisis of European Sciences, Husserls last
work from 1936. The y-axis measures Husserls use of three adjectives per
page in the Husserliana edition of the respective works. The graphs seem to
indicate that Husserls concern with evidence remains more or less on the
same level of intensity throughout his work, whereas the motive of adequacy
continually loses its importance. Apodicticity, on the other hand, becomes
223
more important in the course of the development of Husserls thought, its
graph peaking on the Cartesian Meditations.
If apodicticity was dependent on adequacy, how, than, could Husserl em-
phasize apodicticity without even mentioning adequate evidence anymore?
And how could apodicticity play so dominant a role in the Cartesian Medita-
tions of all of Husserls works, here, where Husserl was most aware of the
essentially inadequate character of immanent perception? How does the rise
of apodicticity and the decline in adequacy fit together? The thesis I shall ex-
pound here interprets this development as follows: even though he himself
never really clarified this point, Husserls reflections on apodicticity led him
gradually towards a conception that is independent of the foundationalist
dogma of self-transparency.
As to the history of the concept of evidence, especially the relation of ad-
equate and apodictic evidence, David Michael Levins monograph on Rea-
son and Evidence in Husserls Phenomenology still offers the most detailed
account, even though limited to the few works Husserl published himself.
The principal problem of this study, however, is that Levin, too, identifies
apodicticity with self-transparency. Thus Levin, like so many other critics,
reacts with a mix of incomprehension and harsh refusal to the rise of the con-
cept of apodicticity in Husserls later works. For after Husserls insight into
the essentially inadequate character of immanent perception, there was, ac-
cording to Levin, no possible reason left for proclaiming any apodictic evi-
dence. Following this reading, either a tremendous act of mere defiance to the
loss of his basis or just plain blind dogmatism seems to be the only possible
explanation for the rise of the claim to apodicticity. Taking into consideration
the historic context of Husserls thinking especially around the time of the Car-
tesian Meditations, the first explanation may sound partly convincing. Still it
is, to say the least, somewhat unsatisfactory on an argumentative level.
Fig. 1. Apodictic and adequate evidence.
26
224
In trying to gather some elements of a different reading, I am not going
into Husserls assertion of the apodicticity of intuiting essences made espe-
cially in the Ideas.
27
What I consider more important here are the changes
in the relation between adequate und apodictic evidence especially between
First Philosophy and the Cartesian Meditations. In Paragraph 31 of the first
part of First Philosophy, Husserl still endorses his earlier rules of relations,
stating that adequate and apodictic evidence mutually define each other.
Husserl here defines absolute justification by referring to two principal
characteristics, evidence and conclusiveness, both converging in ad-
equate evidence where no horizons of possible future cancellation of the
current apprehensional sense remain open. Apodicticity here still means
nothing else than an implicit characteristic of adequate evidence. Adequate
evidence is called apodictic with regard to one of its main features, its in-
dubitability. Husserl therefore concludes that both expressions, apodictic and
adequate evidence, are equivalent (Hua VIII, p. 35) a line of thought
Husserl continued in Formal and Transcendental Logic (when, as we shall
see, he already had reached a much clearer understanding of apodicticity in
his manuscripts).
28
If that were all there was to the relation between adequate and apodictic
evidence, Husserls critics would be right. In First Philosophy at the latest,
Husserl would have had to refrain from his claim to apodicticity. For Husserl
himself states clearly that adequacy is in principle unattainable. All evidence
is, as Husserl says here, relative. There is no such thing as an absolute evi-
dence, only a continuous (. . .) ascending process of relative evidence (Hua
VIII, p. 34). In a very influential study on Husserls First Philosophy, Ludwig
Landgrebe, the last of Husserls assistants, has explicitly drawn this obvious
conclusion under the title Husserls Departure from Cartesianism,
29
and many
scholars up to the present day followed Landgrebes interpretation.
30
But, as
shown before: in spite of his acknowledgement of all evidence being deficient
in adequacy, Husserl himself did not think of refraining from his claim to
apodicticity, on the contrary. How is this to be taken as anything else than a
dogmatic act of defiance?
Already in First Philosophy, Husserl suggests a forward-looking distinc-
tion. Even though all evidence is incomplete and inadequate, there is, follow-
ing Husserl, a distinction between deficiencies making an abrogation of the
cognition possible, and deficiencies not allowing for that (Hua VIII, p. 32).
Thus Husserl suggests that there are some examples of evidence that, though
essentially inadequate, still meet the criterion of indubitability. That means
that in the view Husserl expresses here, absolute justification is possible in
spite of the essential fallibility of all evidence. But what else than a simple
contradiction can that be, asserting fallibility of all evidence and claiming some
evidence ultimately justified at the same time? And on what ground if not
225
on adequacy is this ultimate justification to be based? What else than adequacy
could ever be a legitimizing source of evidence?
An important stage of Husserls development towards a new conception
of apodicticity is embodied in an unedited manuscript, that was transcribed
just a few years ago and therefore has not been taken notice of as yet. In this
manuscript with the title On the Theory of Evidence. Absolute Justification of
Cognition. Apodicticity and Adequacy,
31
Husserls struggle for a new under-
standing of apodicticity in its relation to adequacy finds plain expression. Still,
Husserl considers apodicticity to be dependent on adequacy in a twofold way:
apodictic evidence, according to him, presupposes adequacy, and leads back
to adequacy (loc. cit./11b).
In between those two occurrences of adequate evidence lies what makes
apodictic evidence a matter in its own right. Apodictic evidence is a critical
performance (loc. cit./11b). An apodictic evidence (. . .) is not merely cer-
tainty of the affairs (. . .) evident in it; rather it discloses itself (. . .) by means
of a critical reflection. Admittedly, Husserl here still doesnt come up with a
clear answer to the question whether inadequate evidence can be of apodictic
quality. It is not until the Cartesian Meditations that Husserl clearly states the
independence of apodicticity from adequacy. But already here, in the manu-
script dating from about 1925, the difference between adequate evidence and
apodictic evidence becomes clearer than it was in First Philosophy in one
respect. For apodicticity, as portrayed in this manuscript, is not the ideal,
unattainable telos of an ascending process of relative, more or less adequate
evidence. It doesnt refer to a mode of givenness, for in a sense, apodictic
evidence doesnt belong to the sphere of transcendental experience at all.
Apodicticity discloses itself only in a critical reflection on transcendental
experience, in a reflection on transcendental reflection. At the end of his Car-
tesian Meditations, Husserl thus calls apodictic critique of phenomenological
reflection the ultimate task of phenomenology.
However, the crucial question is still unanswered, for it is still unclear on
what ground apodictic certainty is based if not on adequacy. But Husserl does
come up with an answer. As Husserl puts it in one of his late manuscripts: An
evidence is (. . .) apodictic, if it is established by insight that (. . .) the sup-
position of the non-being [of what is intended] in its possible fulfilment leads
to the being [of what is intended] and therefore to the insight into the impos-
sibility of the non-being, i.e. to the insight into the negation of its possibility
(Ms B I 22 II/Transscr. S. 8). Id like to advocate the following reading of this
and some other similarly complicated phrases that are scattered over Husserls
later works and manuscripts: something is evident in an apodictic sense if it
cannot be imagined as nonexistent without being presupposed as existing in
the self-same act of thinking. Apodicticity thus isnt grounded in foundations
of adequate givenness or some other kind of originary presentive intuition.
226
Apodicticity has a completely different structure: what is given to experience
in apodictic evidence is not any kind of matters themselves, but a contra-
diction. It is the experiencing of a cogitatio contradicting itself, for it denies
on the level of the cogitata what it presupposes as a cogitatio. The example
Husserl sometimes gives to illustrate this structure is the contradiction between
the judgements I do not exist and I judge, that I do not exist (Ms B I 22 I/
Transscr. S. 1). If this reading were to prove true, Husserls turn towards
apodicticity would mark a profound change in the basic structure of the
phenomenological venture: Phenomenology appears no longer as grounded
in an only apparently solid foundation of immanent perception, but as oriented
towards the idea of self-referential consistency.
32
Self-referential reflection and internal otherness
Following this interpretation, apodictic critique can be understood as a vari-
ation on the motif of self-referential justification,
33
a type of justification that is
set forth in current philosophy by the advocates of Transcendental Pragmatism,
by philosophers like Karl-Otto Apel and Wolfgang Kuhlmann. In one crucial
and problematic respect, the logic of reflection is the same in Transcendental
Pragmatics and Phenomenology. That close kinship was quickly covered up by
most Transcendental Pragmatists due to their strong belief to have to leave be-
hind the mentalistic paradigm of Phenomenology in order to take part in the
new linguistic and intersubjectivist paradigm. But in a sense, Transcendental
Pragmatism depends on a concept of reflection that is just as highly strained as
in Phenomenology. That problematic core assumption about reflection is the
premiss that an act of reflection can be strictly self-referential, i.e. an act of re-
flection on this very act itself. Perhaps the problematic character of this assump-
tion becomes clearer in the light of criticism. Gilbert Ryle puts his skepticism
about the phenomenological concept of reflection under the title The System-
atic Elusiveness of I : To try (. . .) to describe what one (. . .) is now doing,
is to comment upon a step which is not itself, save per accidens, one of com-
menting. But the operation which is the commenting is not, and cannot be, the
step on which that commentary is being made. (. . .) A higher order action can-
not be the action upon which it is performed. So my commentary on my per-
formances must always be silent about one performance, namely itself, and this
performance can be the target only of another commentary.
34
Just as all speak-
ing remains silent about itself, consciousness remains completely unconscious
of itself in its current acting. That the subject is oblivious of itself appears, in
this perspective, as an essential feature of subjectivity. The subject of reflection
thus never grasps itself in its very performing. In what follows I shall call this
position skepticism about reflection.
227
Its not surprising that this skepticism is widespread among Husserls schol-
ars and interpreters. For in spite of his claim to apodicticity, Husserl himself
had extensively studied how the subject misses itself in the reflective grasp.
The criticism of Husserls concept of apodicticity therefore can build on
Husserls own theory of reflection.
The reflecting Ego and the Ego reflected upon are not identical. In its cur-
rent performing subjectivity is anonymous and latent, different from the sub-
ject that appears as patent to reflection.
35
What is thematic in self-reflection
thus is never the ego performing this very act of reflection. What happens in
reflection is: An essentially changed subjective process takes the place of the
original one; accordingly it must be said that this reflection alters the original
subjective process. (. . .) reflection makes an object out of what was previ-
ously a subjective process but not objective (Hua I, p. 72 [34]). Thus a split-
ting of the Ego (Hua VIII, p. 89; Hua I, p. 73 [35]) occurs in self-reflection.
Object-Ego and Subject-Ego step apart, and while grasping an objectified
subjectivity, the living and performing ego itself remains completely inacces-
sible.
36
The subject therefore maintains, as it were, a primordial distance to
itself (Held 1966, p. 81). And as the subject itself is, as Husserl says, in a
sense another,
37
the experience of the other is, following this view, prior to
the self-reference of the subject. Not identity, but difference therefore dwells
in the innermost of the subjects self-referential being, and reflection appears
not as a monologue of the ego, but as a dialogue with another (cf. Hua VI,
p. 175 [172]). This is what the analysis of the temporal structure of reflection
points out. Reflection is not prsance soi. Husserl calls it quite correctly
subsequent awareness (Hua VIII, p. 89). The reflective act comes always
too late to catch the subject in the act of performing.
38
Is navety oblivion of
itself thus an essential feature of consciousness? Is the subject therefore not
to be enlightened by self-referential reflection? What would the consequences
for the whole phenomenological venture be? On account of this temporal
diastasis
39
the holy grail of the philosophy of the subject, its version of the
Greek Know thyself! (Hua I, p. 183 [157]) seems to turn out to be nothing
more than a common act of remembrance (though guided by special interests),
just as Gilbert Ryle objected to Husserl.
This skeptical objection also refers to the conception of reflection in Tran-
scendental Pragmatics. In this debate, the so-called transfer-argument states
that Transcendental Pragmatists ignore a similar difference, the difference
between the intuitive knowing how and the propositional level of explicit
knowing that.
40
As making explicit our knowing how alters what it grasps,
the subject here conceived as a competent linguistic practitioner appears
to be unable to reflect on her or his own competence. What the conditions of
possibility of meaningful speaking are, is never to be revealed in strictly self-
referential reflection. Following this objection, reflection therefore is unable
228
to bear the burden of proof for the possibility of ultimate justification. Reflec-
tion gives no justification, but is, if anything, a mere means of interpretation.
41
And were Husserls concept of apodictic evidence also to presuppose such a
overstrained conception of reflection, we surely had to take it as a pathological
dream of omnipotence (Waldenfels 1990, p. 78) as some critics have done.
But does Husserls theory of apodictic evidence in fact involve such a con-
cept of reflection? If, as we have seen, so much can be learned about inter-
nal otherness from Husserl, why, then, would Husserl himself be falling a
victim to this error?
Indisputably, Husserls concept of apodictic evidence as much as the con-
cept of self-referential justification in Transcendental Pragmatics do in fact
involve an immediate self-reference within the living subjective performing.
Wolfgang Kuhlmann speaks of strictly self-referential reflection, that ena-
bles the subject to do precisely what Gilbert Ryle considers impossible: to
know of our current performances and acts in an act of reflection that ena-
bles us to see beside what is thematic in that act also the thematizing activity
itself, without having to give up the original position, without observing our
own acting only subsequently and oblivious of ourselves from outside as a
distant, external object.
42
Thus Kuhlmann sometimes speaks of a constitu-
tive dimension of knowing-about-oneself that is missed by the skeptics, be-
cause they take reflection solely to be an act of theoretic self-objectification.
43
The same seems to hold true for Husserls conception when he believes phen-
omenological reflection capable of freeing the subject from its natural navety
without just shifting navety to a transcendental level. But what is that pecu-
liar and mysterious knowing-about-oneself that is supposed to be not just
making ones own part the object of theoretical consideration, but really get-
ting into contact to ones current performing? Does it exist, or is it a mere
assertion that reveals how the logic of reflection ignores the otherness, the
difference that dwells in the innermost of the subject, dissolving it with the
dangerous illusion of identity?
Because of the problem of self-objectivation, the alternative, following the
sceptical position, is either to ignore the difference between I and me, or
to conceive of the self as a stranger. But maybe self-objectivation is not all
there is to subjective self-reference. In recent debates, such an immediate
being-to-oneself has been lit up by Dieter Henrich and Manfred Frank.
Though far from endorsing any conception of ultimate justification, they point
out that subjective self-reference is never reflective self-objectivation alone.
There is indeed an underlying immediate knowing-about-oneself. Following
Manfred Frank, this basic level of subjective self-reference even includes a
Cartesian certainty. Our self-awareness is infallible in the sense that it al-
ways and necessarily establishes a contact with ourselves.
44
On a basic level,
our self-awareness just cannot go wrong. Frank illustrates this with reference
229
to Rimbauds well-famous dictum JE est un autre that has become something
like a confiteor among skeptics about reflection. This very claim to internal
otherness presupposes that it is really I, who is an other, and not an other.
The very establishment of internal otherness itself presupposes self-awareness.
As far as skeptics about reflection object to this very basic level of being-to-
wards-oneself in the name of internal otherness, they are caught in self-con-
tradiction. If therefore some popular critics put expropriation of the subject
in the place of the reflective self-possession, it must be said that this expropria-
tion is not the basic level of subjective self-reference, as already the metaphor
expropriation makes clear. Similarly, the concept Husserl uses self-ob-
jectivation and splitting of the ego make clear that the difference they
state is not the very core of subjectivity, but a separation grounded in an un-
derlying connection.
As Dieter Henrich pointed out, this basic level of identity gets out of sight
where the structure of subjective self-reference is conceived in terms of an
objectifying, distant, theoretic act of self-observation.
It is not surprising that many Phenomenologists tend to conceive of sub-
jective self-reference based on these terms ultimately leading to skepticism
about reflection. For in spite of his concept of apodictic critique, Husserl him-
self sometimes felt inclined to this model of subjective self-reference, for
example when he ascribed the establishment of the identity of the reflecting
ego and the ego reflected upon to a higher-order reflection (cf. Hua IV, p. 191f.;
VIII, p. 90f.; IV, p. 101f.). If that were true, self-awareness would be based
on (and indeed produced by) self-reflection. In reality, of course, it goes the
other way around: Im not aware of myself because of self-reflection, but I
can reflect upon myself because of self-awareness. The identity of the reflected
ego and the ego reflected upon is not itself established within reflection, but
a precondition of reflection. Because he sometimes tried to ground self-aware-
ness in reflection, Henrich classes Husserls Phenomenology in general as
belonging to this wry type of theory.
45
But as some scholars have pointed out
already before Henrichs criticism, Husserl endorses not only this theory about
the relation between self-awareness and reflection, but also its much more
plausible opposite, thereby stating that we are not aware of ourselves because
we can make ourselves an object of acts of observation, but that we can make
ourselves an object of our own acts of observations because we are aware of
ourselves.
46
On the basic level, consciousness doesnt become an other to it-
self, as the skeptical model of a primordially objectifying self-reference mis-
takenly puts it. For the stream of consciousness is not doubled if consciousness
becomes a phenomenon to itself (Hua X, p. 83; 119).
Rather, self-reference is one of the very primordial features of the streaming
consciousness. In contrast to the primordial distance of the reflecting ego and
the ego reflected upon in an act of objectifying self-observation one could there-
fore speak of a primordial bend toward itself
47
on the level of self-awareness.
230
Subjective self-reference thus is more than objectifying, distant, theoreti-
cal self-observation. But even if there is an underlying level of immediate
self-reference, this does by no means prove for the possibility of strictly self-
referential reflection. For in contrast to the phenomenological concept of
apodictic evidence and the concept of reflection in Transcendental Pragmat-
ics, this basic level of knowing-about-oneself has a pre-reflective and pre-
propositional structure. Properly speaking, it isnt knowledge in the narrow
sense of the word. Jean-Paul Sartre points at that when he speaks of conscience
(de) soi, putting de in brackets. And Manfred Frank prefers speaking of
being-acquainted-with-oneself to using the term knowledge. The crucial ques-
tion therefore seems still to be unanswered: how can something pre-propositional
be made explicit, how can it be raised to the propositional level of knowledge?
Still I shall proceed indirectly in trying to show that Husserls concept of
apodictic evidence doesnt depend on stronger assumptions about reflection
than even the skeptic position itself does. As we have seen, apodictic evidence
reveals itself only in the experience of a contradiction between the intuitive
performance and the explicit content of a reflective act of consciousness. Thus
the concept of apodictic evidence is not based in an futile attempt to wipe out
the difference between what is intuitively performed and what is explicit, as
only recently some critics have objected to Husserl. Quite on the contrary, it
presupposes this difference.
Husserls concept of apodictic evidence does not navely overestimate the
power of reflection, believing it able to seize upon the latent act of reflection
itself. To put it metaphorically: the latent, performing subjectivity becomes
visible only in the flying sparks of a clash of the living, latent subjectivity with
the way the subject is made explicit in reflection, as in the statement I do not
exist that serves Husserl as an example.
48
The experience of a contradiction
is prior to the experience of evidence. This does not mean raising perform-
ing subjectivity immediately to the light of objectifying reflection. And if
the concept of apodictic evidence does entail a negative reachability of per-
forming subjectivity, this to a certain extent holds also true for the skeptical
position. The skeptics about reflection similarly presuppose reachability of
performing subjectivity insofar as stating the essential latency of subjectivity
also means making it patent in its latent quality. Gilbert Ryle, as mentioned
above, states that my commentary on my performances must always be si-
lent about one performance, namely itself. What is at stake in the current
argument is, that this very statement does not keep silence, but comments on
itself. It in fact does tell something about its current performing, namely that
it is latent. In this negative sense, the reachability of performing subjectivity
is paradoxically presupposed also in skepticism about reflection. This argu-
ment, by the way, comes close to what Husserl himself objects to contempo-
rary critics of introspectionism in his Ideas (Hua III, p. 174).
231
Apodictic evidence beyond foundationalism and suppression of
internal otherness
Even though there seems to be something unconditional, infallible and
absolute about apodictic evidence it doesnt follow that a theory that is
oriented on the idea of apodictic critique necessarily entails foundationalism
and suppression of internal otherness. Instead, the interpretation being sug-
gested here elicited some features characteristic of apodictic evidence pertain-
ing to a modest and indeed non-foundationalist understanding of apodicticity.
Apodictic critique doesnt mean going down the stairs to the basis of the
tower of our knowledge to secure it as a stronghold of certainty. On the con-
trary, it means leaving our own in trying to confirm or disconfirm our opin-
ions in a dialogue with differing views. It means, as Husserl says, going
through negation and doubt (Hua VIII, p. 35). Apodictic evidence has ex-
perimental character. It is, as Husserl sometimes calls it, a trial evidence (Ms
B I 22 II/Transscr. p. 8). The first non-foundationalist feature of apodictic
evidence is its subsequency. Apodictic evidence doesnt provide a sound
ground to base our knowledge upon, but a subsequent test to our previously
formed opinions. That explains why in the Cartesian Meditations apodictic
critique appears not as the first, but as the last task of phenomenological
reflection.
Secondly, apodictic evidence is essentially of negative character as it con-
sists in a negation of contradiction. Husserls concept of apodictic evidence
is elenctic in its structure. This might surprise on a terminological level, for
Aristotle in his Metaphysics introduces the elenchos as a procedure of proof
that is supposed to work where proper apodeixis fails.
49
This negativity of
apodictic evidence also entails, thirdly, its partial character. To put it meta-
phorically: if the only light of apodictic critique is the flight of sparks of the
clash of self-contradiction, the structures of living subjectivity are never plainly
visible, but momentarily and in some parts only.
Moreover, what becomes visible in apodictic evidence is only the form
of subjectivity. That once more shows the profound changes in the tenets of
Phenomenology. At the beginning, Phenomenology was founded in immanent
perception of essences. What was certain was the what-content of essences,
their quiddity, whereas facticity was bracketed as dubitable. Switching over
to apodictic evidence, it is now on the contrary the facticity of the ego, that is
certain, whereas its content, its quiddity is not to be made visible in that kind
of reflection. What is evident, is merely the pure formal fact that I am leav-
ing open the question who or what I am. Apodictic critique therefore cannot
replace (and should not be mistaken as) what certainly is more important a
task: it cannot replace substantial reflection in terms of self-examination and
self-clarification, leading to a self-understanding in a concrete historical and
situative context.
232
A major problem of Husserls use of the term apodicticity seems to be
that it is flawed by this confusion. Thus Husserl writes in the manuscript
that the editor of the Husserliana edition chose as the concluding paragraph
of Husserls last work (Husserl is here commenting on the reappropriation
of the Cartesian discovery, the fundamental demand of apodicticity): In this
beginning, through the changed historical situation (. . .), there arise forces
of motivation, a radical thinking-through of the genuine and imperishable sense
of apodicticity (. . .), the exhibiting of the true method of an apodictically
grounded and apodictically progressing philosophy. (. . .) It is precisely with
this that there begins a philosophy with the deepest and most universal self-
understanding of the philosophizing ego as the bearer of absolute reason com-
ing to itself (. . .) in his apodictic being-for-himself (. . .). What follows this
is the ultimate self-understanding of man as being responsible for his own
human being, his self-understanding as being in being called to a life of
apodicticity, not only in abstractly practising apodictic science (. . .), but [as
being mankind] which realizes its whole concrete being in apodictic freedom
by becoming apodictic mankind (. . .). (Hua VI, p. 386 [340]). Not only does
Husserls use of the term apodicticity show all signs of galloping concep-
tual inflation. What is irritating is its sweeping use that ranges from the proper
place of apodicticity as a feature of the being-for-himself of the ego up to
freedom and mankind in a historic context. Husserl is mistaken in using
a formal, negative, partial and subsequent test of self-referential consistency
for the purposes of a substantial self-understanding in a historical situation.
For this latter type of reflection of course never leads to an ultimate un-
conditional and absolute self-understanding, because it always has to fol-
low the changes in the political and social context.
Without doubt, Husserl still subscribed to a foundationalist self-understand-
ing in his later years. Even then, he sometimes fell back into his earlier dog-
matic position, as can be seen in his theory of intersubjectivity. Husserls concept
of apodictic evidence, however, is not to be interpreted as a consequence of his
earlier dogmatism about self-transparency. The interpretation given suggests that
however gradually and incompletely Husserl developed it, this concept belongs
to a line that led Husserl away from foundationalism. It also suggests that the
concept of apodictic evidence doesnt rely on repression of internal otherness
either. It seems that the logic of apodictic critique is much more subtle and
complex than it may seem in the light of the interpretation and criticism that
has been shed on Husserls transcendental phenomenology until now.
Notes
1. I would like to thank the Swiss National Research Fund, the Max Geldner Foundation
and the Freiwillige Akademische Gesellschaft der Universitt Basel for their generous
233
financial support. I am also greatly indebted to the contributors to the discussion of this
paper in the Departmental Workshop of the Philosophy Department at the Graduate
Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York, especially to Richard J.
Bernstein. Bernhard Waldenfels brought to my notice Paul Ricoeurs early remarks on
the topic. Arnold G. Simmel and Lee J. Nelson helped me with their advice not only in
matters linguistic (I alone am responsible for the many remaining mistakes and peculi-
arities). I would also like to express my gratitude to the director of Husserl Archives at
the Catholic University of Leuven, Professor Dr. Samuel Ijsseling, for the kind permis-
sion to quote from Husserls unpublished manuscripts, and to an anonymous referee for
Husserl Studies for his or her comments and suggestions.
2. Cf. Michael Dummetts criticism of Husserls Idealism in Origins of Analytical Philoso-
phy (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1993).
3. Cf. among many others Jrgen Habermas, Vorstudien und Ergnzungen zur Theorie des
kommunikativen Handelns (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984), p. 50ff.
4. Cf. Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1979); Richard Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism. Essays 19721980
(Brighton, 1982), p. 37f.; 40; 160. Without doubt, Rortys criticism is too simplistic. For
even though Husserls philosophy seems to entail some transmission of authority from
underlying spheres of self-authenticating non-verbal episodes to the conceptual level of
knowledge proper (cf. Sellars description of the heart of the Myth of the Given in
Wilfrid Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1997), p. 77), Husserl doesnt reconstruct knowledge by starting out
from our immediate knowledge of appearances and building up to our knowledge of
how things really are (cf. concerning this feature of foundationalism Robert Brandoms
Cartesian reconstruction of Sellars argument in Sellars, 1997, p. 137), but only tries
to clarify this very distinction between appearance and reality itself. In the opening para-
graphs of the Cartesian Meditations however, Husserl explicitly endorses something
similar to what John L. Austin called the tower of knowledge model, describing hu-
man knowledge and science as a structure with different storeys of positive knowledge
requiring Transcendental Phenomenology as an unshakeable foundation and a sound ba-
sis for the whole structure).
5. Barry Smith, David Woodruff Smith (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Husserl
(Cambridge, 1995), p. 35f.; a continental example for the same strategy, which does
Husserls thinking a disservice, is Elisabeth Strker, Phnomenologische Studien (Frank-
furt am Main: Klostermann, 1987), p. 66f.: Manchen von Husserl anfnglich allzu
unbekmmert formulierten Behauptungen zum Trotz reklamiert seine Phnomenologie
fr ihr Erkenntnisse unumstliche Geltung nicht so wenig, da sie vielmehr zeigt, da
es und warum es fr ihre Einsichten unerschtterliche Wahrheit nicht geben kann. Das
verhindert bereits die prinzipielle Unabschliebarkeit, Korrekturbedrftigkeit und
Korrekturfhigkeit phnomenologischer Analyse. Die Phnomenologie reklamiert
fr ihre Aussagen, gngigen Fehlinterpretationen zum Trotz, so wenig unumstliche
Wahrheit, da sie vielmehr zeigt, da es und warum es in der Phnomenologie un-
umstliche Wahrheiten nicht geben kann (Elisabeth Strker, Zur Problematik der
Letztbegrndung in Husserls Phnomenologie, in Wolfgang Marx (ed.), Zur Selbst-
begrndung der Philosophie seit Kant (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1987), p.
110.
6. Leszek Kolakowski, Husserl and the Search for Certitude (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1987), p. 4. Cf. Gary E. Overvold, The Foundationalist Conflict in
Husserls Rationalism, Analecta Husserliana Bd. XXXIV, (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic
Publishers, 1991), pp. 441452.
234
7. Cf. Lester Embree et al. (eds.), Encyclopedia of Phenomenology (Dordrecht: Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 1997). There is no entry about apodicticity, and even Elisabeth
Strkers article on Evidence does not even mention Husserls concept of apodicticity!
8. Ernst Tugendhat, Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger (Berlin: De Gruyter,
1970).
9. Cf. Karl Mertens, Zwischen Letztbegrndung und Skepsis (Freiburg: Alber, 1996).
10. Cf. Tugendhat, p. 209. Among many other examples Klaus Held, Abschied vom Car-
tesianismus, Die Phnomenologie Edmund Husserls, Neue Zricher Zeitung, 3/26/96. An
interpretation accusing Husserl of anti-Cartesian dogmatism cf. George Heffernan, An
Essay in Epistemic Kyklophobia: Husserls critique of Descartes Conception of Evi-
dence, Husserl Studies 13, 1997, p. 89140.
11. Two quite incompatible lines of though in Husserls theory of evidence are also diag-
nosed in V.J. McGill, Evidence in Husserls Phenomenology. F. Kersten, R. Zaner
(eds.), Phenomenology: Continuation and Criticism. Essays in Memory of Dorion Cairns
(Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), pp. 146166, 155; cf. also loc. cit. 151: In so far
as evidence is declared absolute, efforts at corroboration are cut off, search for more evi-
dence ceases, and human error and humane correction become impossible.
12. Hua XIX, p. 770; Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, trans. by J.N. Findlay, vol. 2
(London: Routledge, 1976), p. 866 (in the following, the reference to this translation is
indicated in square brackets after the reference to the Husserliana Edition of the Logical
Investigations); translation slightly corrected.
13. Hua I, p. 56; Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations. An Introduction to Phenomenol-
ogy, trans. by Dorion Cairns (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), p. 15 (in
the following, the reference to this translation is indicated in square brackets after the
reference to Husserliana Edition of the Cartesian Meditations).
14. Cf. Niklas Luhmann, Soziale Systeme. Grundri einer allgemeinen Theorie (Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984), p. 19.
15. Hua III, p. 93; Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a
Phenomenological Philosophy, first book, translated by F. Kersten (Dordrecht: Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 1983), p. 111 (in the following, the reference to this translation is
indicated in square brackets after the reference to the Husserliana Edition of the first
volume of the Ideas).
16. Cf. Klaus Hartmann, Self Evidence, Studies in Foundational Philosophy (Amsterdam,
Wrzburg: Rodopoi, 1988), p. 27.
17. Hua VIII, p. 35; a detailed account of the development of the relation between adequacy
and apodicticity in Husserls thought will be given in the following.
18. Husserl himself gives a hint. At one point Husserl states that this doctrine only recalls
the traditional estimate of the relative value for knowledge of the two forms of percep-
tion (Hua XIX, p. 753 [853]). Does Husserl thus contravene his own methodological
instruction to put in brackets the philosophical tradition, being swayed by the latter
rather than relying on his own rational insight? Was Husserl, despite all precautions,
taken in by a traditional prejudice? Cf. Adrian Mirvish, The Presuppositions of Husserls
Presuppositionless Philosophy. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 26
(1995), pp. 147170.
19. Gilbert Ryle, Phenomenology. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 11 (1932), pp. 68
83.
20. Hua IV, p. 105; Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a pure Phenomenology and to a
Phenomenological Philosophy, vol. II: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution,
trans. by R. Rojecwicz and A. Schuwer, (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989),
p. 111.
235
21. Cf. Iso Kern, Husserl and Kant. Eine Untersuchung ber Husserls Verhltnis zu Kant
und zum Neukantianismus (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), S. 209.
22. Cf. Tobias Trappe, Transzendentale Erfahrung. Vorstudien zu einer transzendentalen
Methodenlehre (Basel: Schwabe, 1996).
23. Cf. Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy. An Essay on Interpretation, trans. by Denis
Savage, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), p. 377.
24. Among many other examples (some of which will be mentioned in the following) of this
misinterpretation see Klaus Held: Abschied vom Cartesianismus. Die Phnomenologie
Edmund Husserls, Neue Zrcher Zeitung 26/27 March 1996.
25. Cf. David Michael Levin, Reason and Evidence in Husserls Phenomenology (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1970); Tugendhat, cited above; Iso Kern, Die drei Wege
zur transzendentalphnomenologischen Reduktion in der Philosophie Edmund Husserls.
Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 24 (1962), pp. 303349; Mertens p. 218ff.; Alfred de Waelhens,
Science, phnomnologie, et ontologie. Revue internationale de Philosophie VIII (1954),
pp. 254265.
26. Data provided by The Husserl-Database (http://www.jpcs.shizuoka.ac.jp/~jsshama/
team.html).
27. This not only because Husserls elaborate theory of essences and their being intended in
some special phenomenological kind of seeing, by means of eidetic variation, might
emerge as an admirable construction to grasp something that doesnt exist (Ernst
Tugendhat, Phnomenologie und Sprachanalyse. R. Bubner, K. Craner, R. Wiehl, Her-
meneutik und Dialektik, Bd. II, Sprache und Logik, Theorie der Auslegung und Probleme
der Einzelwissenschaften (Tbingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1970), pp. 323, 15). Even if one were
to endorse Husserls essentialism as such, essences were still by no means apodictically
certain, but a transitional product of an ongoing, open and endless process of varia-
tion.
28. I decided against discussing Husserls concept of apodicticity in Formal and Transcen-
dental Logic and the often-cited assertion of the fallibility of any apodictic evidence to
be found there (Hua XVII, p. 164f.) in the body of my text. Even though Husserls theory
of pure consciousness as a genetic whole that cannot be dissected in single, independ-
ently evident moments, the dynamic picture of consciousness that he uses here to sub-
stantiate his proposal of a fallibilistic reinterpretation of his concept of apodictic evidence
has an undeniable appeal, this fallibilistic interpretation belongs to a line of thought
Husserl had already left behind in his manuscripts at that time. On that latter line, Husserl
insisted on the infallibility of apodictic evidence without however, as I will try to show,
giving up the dynamic, holistic and genetic picture of consciousness. It is of course an
important rule in Husserl scholarship to grant Husserls published text more authority
than his manuscripts. I hope to be able however to provide a systematic reconstruction
of Husserls concept of apodictic evidence as expressed in his manuscripts (and later on
in the Cartesian Meditations) that is convincing enough to justify departure from that
rule in this particular case.
29. Ludwig Landgrebe, The Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. Six Essays (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1981), pp. 66121.
30. In spite of Hans-Georg Gadamers early correction of a possible misreading of some
Husserlian statements some interpreters persistently adhere to the misinterpretation that
Husserl himself gave up his idea of an absolute, ultimately justified rational foun-
dation of science. As a recent example for that misinterpretation cf. Wolfgang Rd,
Metaphysik ohne Evidenz. Information Philosophie 5/1994, pp. 511, 11.
31. Ms A I 31. In the following, I quote from the transcription that has not been corrected
and collated as yet.
236
32. Even though Husserls concept of apodictic critique, following the interpretation given
above, is nothing but an explication of an argumentation Husserl used at the very begin-
ning of his venture. For it is its self-contradictory character that Husserl focuses on in his
refutation of psychologism in the Prolegomena to a Pure Logic.
33. On various occasions, Husserl makes clear that what he has in mind is proper Selbst-
begrndung. Thus he speaks of a sich selbst rechtfertigende Begrndung (Ms B I 10
XII/Transcr. S. 7) or says that apodictic evidence rechtfertigt sicht selbst durch sich
selbst (Ms A I 31/29a). All the more regrettable is the fact that Wolfgang Kuhlmann
didnt include Husserl in his history of the idea of Selbstbegrndung in philosophy
(Wolfgang Kuhlmann, Reflexive Letztbegrndung. Untersuchungen zur Transzenden-
talpragmatik (Freiburg i. Br.: Alber, 1985), p. 254ff.).
34. Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), p.
195.
35. Husserl makes the distinction between patenter and latenter Subjektivitt in Hua
VIII, p. 90f.
36. Landgrebe 1981, p. 115. Vgl. auch Thomas M. Seebohm, Die Bedingungen der Mglichkeit
der Transzendental-Philosophie. Edmund Husserls transzendental-phnomenologischer
Ansatz, dargestellt im Anschlu an seine Kant-Kritik (Bonn: Bouvier, 1962), p. 161; cf.
also loc. cit. 67; Seebohm 1989, p. 97; Klaus Held, Lebendige Gegenwart. Die Frage
nach der Seinsweise des transzendentalen Ich bei Edmund Husserl, entwickelt am
Leitfaden der Zeitproblematik (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), p. 71f.
37. Hua VI, p. 175; Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental
Phenomenology. An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. by David Carr
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), p. 172; in the following, the reference
to this translation is indicated in square brackets after the reference to the Husserliana
Edition of the Crisis.
38. The nave perceiving of the ego that is oblivious about itself is already over when I bring
reflection into action (Hua VIII, p. 88). Under certain conditions however, compresence
of both egos seems to be possible: cf. Hua VIII, p. 89.
39. Cf. Bernhard Waldenfels, Der Stachel des Fremden (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1990), p. 77.
40. Cf. E.G. Alfred Berlich, Elenktik des Diskurses. Karl-Otto Apels Ansatz einer tran-
szendentalpragmatischen Letztbegrndung. W. Kuhlmann, D. Bhler (eds.), Kommun-
ikation und Reflextion. Zur Diskussion um die Transzendentalpragmatik (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1982), pp. 251287.
41. Cf. Gerhard Schnrich, Bei Gelegenheit Diskurs. Von den Grenzen der Diskursethik und
dem Preis der Letztbegrndung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994), p. 162ff.
42. Wolfgang Kuhlmann, Reflexive Letztbegrndung. Zur These von der Unhintergehbarkeit
der Argumentationssituation. Zeitschrift fr philosophische Forschung 35 (1981), pp. 3
31, 14.
43. Wolfgang Kuhlmann, Reflexion und kommunikative Erfahrung. Untersuchungen zur
Stellung philosophischer Reflexion zwischen Theorie und Kritik (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1975), p. 144.
44. Manfred Frank, Selbstbewutsein und Selbsterkenntnis. Essays zur analytischen Phi-
losophie der Subjektivitt (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1991), p. 413; Dieter Henrich, Identitt
Begriffe, Probleme, Grenzen. O. Marquard, K. Stierle (eds.), Identitt. Poetik und
Hermeneutik Bd. VIII (Mnchen, 1991), pp. 133186, p. 175ff.
45. Dieter Henrich, Fichtes ursprngliche Einsicht. D. Henrich et al. (eds.), Subjektivitt und
Metaphysik (Frankfurt am Main, 1966), pp. 188232, 231.
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46. Ich bin mir (. . .) nur insofern Gegenstand, als ich Selbstbewutsein habe (. . .) Htte
ich es nicht, dann knnte ich auch nicht reflektieren (Hua IV, p. 318; cf. also Hua IV, p.
252). Herman Ulrich Asemissen, Egologische Reflexion. Kant-Studien 50 (1958/59), pp.
262272.
47. Cf. Antonio F. Aguirre, Die Phnomenologie Husserls im Licht ihrer gegenwrtigen In-
terpretation und Kritik (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1982), p. 29.
48. Die Urteile: ich urteile, da ich nicht bin; ich bin nicht, stehen im Verhltnis des
Widerstreites; ist das eine wahr, so ist das andere falsch, und umgekehrt (Ms B I 22 I/
Transcr. S. 1).
49. Cf. Aristoteles, Metaphysics IV, 1005b/351006a/28; Prior Analytics II, 1114, 14/29;
Gnther Patzig, Die aristotelische Syllogistik (Gttingen, 1963), pp. 153166.
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