The Definition of Good
A path to resolve our moral quarrels, this is what here I would define as one of the most important contributions of husserlian phenomenology to the philosophical thought of our times. Husserl’s moral philosophy is a remarkable product of his phenomenological research and it gives us a definition of good which allows us to orient ourselves in all of the choices of our lives.
There are three key words summarizing the husserlian definition of good: authenticity, duty and responsibility. Now I will try to go through the meaning of these words with the purpose of clarifying the definition itself.
Authenticity
Looking at the husserlian moral research we can notice how Husserl opens the doors of the transcendental dimension of human mind and discovers an ancient but deeply actual definition of human good. As with the Delphic saying “ghnòthi seaùton,” he refers the personal and common good to the idea of authenticity. He writes: “die Lebensform ‘echter Humanität’” it is born thanks to “beurteilenden Menschen sich selbst, sein Leben, sein mögliches Wirken.” (1) The authentic man is he who “auf Grund einer prinzipiell-allgemeinen Selbstbestimmung das praktisch Vernünftige überhaupt und rein um seines absoluten praktischen Wertes willen erstrebt, folglich konsequent das praktisch Wahre oder Gute als das Beste seiner jeweiligen Sphäre nach Kräften einsichtig zu erkennen und danach zu verwirklichen beflissen ist.” (2) According to Husserl the practical good consists in everyone’s power to be an authentic man. A man who knows himself rationally and tries to realize his absolute value through the self-determination activated by his rational will. For absolute value Husserl means the best telos rationally chosen in relation to practical horizon of everyone’s possible option. Only this absolute value makes life “jeweils b e st m ö g l i c h e s (...) für sein Subjekt” and “charakterisiert als das absolut Gesollte.” (3) Thanks to the realization of this kind of life, man can grasp what Husserl calls the best practical good.
Duty and Responsibility
As for the concept of duty we can say that, according to Husserl, the personal good of everyone is not only a personal good but a duty which involves all of the rest of society too. “Jeder Mensch steht,” he writes, “(…) einem ‘k a t e g o r i s c h e n Imperativ’ unter. Er kann‚ wahrer Mensch’ schlechthin als gut zu bewertender nur sein, sofern er sich selbst willentlich dem kategorischen Imperativ unterstellt — diesem Imperativ, der seinerseits nichts anderes sagt als: Sei ein wahrer Mensch; führe ein Leben, das du durchgängig einsichtig rechtfertigen kannst; ein Leben aus praktischer Vernunft.” (4) Thus the best practical good consists in the realization of a life which can be justified before our rational will. The practical good is in the observation of a categorical imperative which drives everyone to live complying with knowledge of own absolute value. The Husserlian categorical imperative “tue dein Bestes nach bestem Wissen und Gewissen!” (5) is itself the absolute value everyone has to know and to respect. It involves not only the development of our capacity for knowledge but also our conscience, that is our sense of responsibility.
For Husserl, every human being should have the personal responsibility (Verantwortlichkeit) of knowing and trying to realize his or her own value. “Verantwortlichkeitsbewußtsein der Vernunft” is “das ethische Gewissen” (6) itself, considered as the infinite starting and ending point of every responsible act.
The infinite task of the acquisition of good is so for us that “die Sorge einem zeitlich Unendlichen und im Zeitlichen dem Ewigen gilt – der Zukunft der Menschheit, dem Werden wahren Menschen gilt (...) wofür wir uns doch selbst verantwortlich fühlen.” (7) The acquisition of good is infinite because the time when it occurs is infinite and because human nature is opened to infinite possibilities of choice. For that matter every man should contribute to this research to improve the society he lives in. “Die einzelnen – in fact – nicht nebeneinander und gegeneinander, sondern in verschiedenen Formen der Willensgemeinschaft (willentliche Verständigung) handeln.” (8) Then everyone has the duty to contribute to the creation of a voluntary agreement through the increase of the common and personal good.
Thus, if we want to summarize the main characteristics of the husserlian definition of good, we might say that: 1)the personal good is not a personal good only but also a moral and social duty; 2) the personal good coincides with the idea of an authentic human being who acts on the basis of the principle of the best choice considered as the absolute value of every person; 3) the personal good is deeply linked to the concept of responsibility which represents the infinite task of every ethical conscience; 4) the ethical good can be a personal and common, a theoretical and practical good.
Now I will seek to develop one of the consequences of this definition of good by employing it in today’s world.
Freedom and identity
In the previous paragraph I have pointed out the correspondence between common or personal good and the man. Now, in order to introduce husserlian definition of good within our social context, I have to clarify briefly husserlian definition of the subject.
About the subject Husserl writes: “der Andere ist Spiegelung meiner selbst.” (9) Every subject can be deeply in contact with other persons, because every man can live the analogue experience of another man through his perceptions. He says: “Ich habe eine Monade in sich bezogen auf eine andere Monade und habe die andere Monade bezogen oder sich einfühlungsmässig beziehen könnend auf die erste Monade. Und so habe ich eine Vielheit von Monaden in wirklicher und möglicher Kommunikation, dann aber in Beziehung auf sie eine identische Natur, eine intersubjektive, allen zusammenseienden möglichen Monaden als möglich gemeinsame.” (10) Husserl affirms: “I am a monad” and “the other is simply a pure modification of myself.” The other lies in me due to enthropaty, that is through my capability to perceive the other and to live the analogue feelings of mine. We are linked to each other and this link is absolutely pure because it derives from my original structure. Everyone is born in fact in a family or in a specific environment, surrounded by parents or friends. Everyone grows up in a particular educational context with precise habits and rules. His history, his personal character and his way of living are the result of all these interactions. No one is born in solitude and in a totally isolated place. His behaviors and a big part of himself are the sum of all this. His corporeity is already constituted by other monads. Like Husserl says: “Ich erfahre einen Leibkörper dort, und in eins mit dieser Erfahrung ist, und durch die Analogie mit meiner Leiblichkeit motiviert, eine zweite Monade appräsentiert.” (11) Even the experience of my pure corporeity as monad includes, through my enthropatical or analogue experience, the representation of a second monad.
Then, according to Husserl’s thesis, Rousseau’s famous sentence “l’homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers” (12) seems to stress a theoretical situation that is difficult to justify. For Husserl freedom from society and from the others is, often, an illusion because we are the others and society. From the theoretical point of view the passage from a state of nature to a state of law and order is difficult to explain because everyone from the moment of his birth is in a particular form of society. We can not say that there is a moment when we get into a political society and we give up our freedom because we are politics, we are the society. So our freedom is in society and, first of all, in our identity; it consists in our capability to find new legal solutions to express our identity which change over time. We can be free in time if, as Walzer writes (13), we make possible “the escape.” Women’s rights or the right to divorce are an example of this specific connotation of freedom. All the rights and the rules which are in society are results of our evolutionary struggle: we are formed by them and we create them. Our identity changes, our needs change and so our duties and rights have to change too. The freedom consists in this struggle for being what we want to be. “Freiheit ist,” Husserl write, “ein Ausdruck für das Vermögen und vor allem für den erworbenen Habitus kritischer Stellungnahme zu dem, was sich (…) als wahr, als wertvoll, als praktisch seinsollend bewusstseinsmäßig gibt.” (14) The absolute value of every person consists just in this capability to put into practice our freedom through the correspondence between duty and will. Our freedom considered as the expression of our identity is the “Gesollte” that everyone has to respect.
When we talk about freedom, we are talking about an effort that everyone has to make to express his identity. Freedom consists in the possibility for everyone to choose rationally and voluntary to be what everyone is, according to his rational will. So the freedom of a man, who is at the same time “the other,” consists in this capability to struggle in order to acquire new forms of expressions of identity which are more and more true. Human rights are the results of this struggle because they are at the same time the expressions of everyone’s freedom and moral, social and political duties. They are the perfect contemporary expression of the husserlian idea of good applied in a social, ethical and political context.
The method
The method to understand the distinction between good and bad can be understood always within the phenomenological description of the human being. According to the characteristics which came out during the analysis, for Husserl the subject is a monad originally connected to others and to the world it lives in. Husserl writes: “die objektive Welt als I d e e, als ideales Korrelat (…) ist wesensmäßig bezogen auf die selbst in der Idealität endloser Offenheit konstituierte Intersubjektivität (…). Danach gehört zur Konstitution der objektiven Welt wesensmäßig Harmonie der Monaden.” (15) The world is described as an idea correlated and referred to the inter-subjective life of every monad. The harmony of the world depends on the inter-subjective harmony between monads. From the ethical point of view, as we already know, this harmony can be generated by the effort of every monad to reach its good. “Es gehört also — Husserl writes — zu meinem echt menschlichen Leben dass ich nicht nur mich als Guten, sondern die gesamte Gemeinschaft als eine Gemeinschaft Guter wünschen und, soweit ich kann, in meinen praktischen Willens-, Zweckkreis nehmen muss. Ein wahrer Mensch sein ist ein wahrer Mensch sein wollen und beschließt in sich, Glied einer ‚wahren’ Menschheit sein wollen oder die Gemeinschaft, der man angehört, als eine wahre wollen, in den Grenzen praktischer Möglichkeit.” (16) The good of every man corresponds to everyone’s authenticity, and every man hopes to live in a community formed by authentic and good people. Surely “eine jeweilige Gemeinschaft ist (…) eine Vielheit von Menschen, die teils von egoistischen, teils von altruistischen Motiven und meist passiv geleitet sind, Menschen, unter denen manche Selbstzucht haben, freie Überlegung, freie Entscheidung üben und manche dabei einen ethischen Lebenswillen.” (17) In this context the possibility of an inter-monadic harmony can be only approximately reached through the rational will of every monad. “Die ethische Besinnung (…), dass die ethische Form unseres individuellen Lebens diesem nur einen sehr beschränkten Wertgehalt geben kann und dass wir, wie alle gut Gesinnten, dahin wirken müssen, die Gemeinschaft nach Möglichkeit der Idee einer guten Gemeinschaft anzunähern in dem oben bezeichneten Sinn.” (18)
The method (that‘s meta-odòn, the path) that Husserl shows in order to pursue this idea of good community is the epoché. The epoché consists in the neutralization of all empirical reality, fulfilled with the aim of understanding the original nature of the man. “Vollziehe ich aber die phänomenologische epoché, verfällt, wie die ganze Welt der natürlichen Thesis so ‘Ich, der Mensch’ der Ausschaltung, dann bleibt das reine Akterlebnis mit seinem eigenen Wesen zurück.” (19) Through the epoché we can change our ethical attitude toward ourselves and toward the world we live in. Namely, the epoché applied to the mundane man allowed to activate the responsible research of his own absolute value.
Consequently, in this phenomenological context, the bad derives from the incapability or lack of will of a man to express and to know his “good and bad parts.” In fact, everyone can be dominated by passion or egoism. The man “steht nun im täglichen Kampf und übt immer neue Entscheidung und fühlt sich in ihr verantwortlich. Leidenschaften überrennen seinen guten Willen, er wird zu Überlegungen motiviert, wie sich dagegen versichere (…). Er irrt sich auch tief in der Beurteilung maßgebender Umstände, er vergreift sich in den Mitteln und wählt statt des Nützlichen das Schädliche, statt eines edleren Wertes einen minder edlen. Oder er beurteilt andere Menschen falsch, und auch wo er von keinen egoistischen Motiven geleitet ist, sondern in wahrer Menschenliebe lebt (...). Alle solche Erfahrungen zeigen ihm, dass er unvollkommen ist, dass er lernen muss, sich vor Irrtum zu hüten, seiner Erkenntnisfähigkeit zu besinnen. So hat er neben der Verantwortung der Entscheidung im einzelnen Fall auch verantwortliche Sorgen für die Vorbereitung von Fähigkeiten von einzelnen Entscheidungen für Klasse von Fällen sichern könnten.” (20) The man can learn from the experiences of his past and can avoid repeating all of his mistakes derived from his irrational part. Every man is a whole constituted both by rational and irrational characteristics. Everyone has to know also his irrational, impulsive or usual aspects because only in this way can he better control himself and better understand the surrounding world. Our explication of the world is the result of the comprehension of ourselves; if we were able to explain and to manage our irrational part we could comprehend better the irrational part of the world. Then, the task of every person is to pursue his identity, changing his attitude toward himself and the world. The world is the product of our experience and we can improve it only through acting responsibly.
Notes
(1) Husserl, E., Aufsätze und Vorträge (1911-1921). Mit ergänzenden Texten, hrsg. von Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp [Husserliana XXVII] (The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986), p. 33.
(2) Ibid.
(3) Ibid.
(4) Ibid., p. 36.
(5) Husserl, E., Einleitung in die Ethik. Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1920 und 1924, hrsg. von H. Peucker [Husserliana XXXVII] (Netherlands, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004), p. 7.
(6) Husserliana XXVII, op. cit., p. 32.
(7) Ibid., p. 12.
(8) Ibid., p. 46.
(9) Husserl, E., Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, hrsg. von S. Strasser [Husserliana I] (The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), p. 125.
(10) Husserl, E., Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität, Texte aus dem Nachlass, Zweiter Teil, 1921-1928, hrsg. von Iso Kern [Husserliana XIV] (The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), p. 265.
(11) Ibid., p. 263.
(12) Rousseau, J., Du contrat social (Paris: GF-Flammarion, 1992 [1762]), p. 29.
(13) Walzer, M., Ragione e passione (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1999), p. 34.
(14) Husserliana XXVII, op. cit., p. 63.
(15) Husserliana I, op. cit., p. 138.
(16) Husserliana XXVII, op. cit., p. 46.
(17) Ibid., pp. 46-7.
(18) Ibid.
(19) Husserl, E., Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, 2, Halbband: Ergänzende Texte, (1912-1929), hrsg. von Karl Schuhmann (The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1988), p. 160.
(20) Husserliana XXVII, op. cit., p. 45.