Husserl and the Search for Certitude (The Cassirer Lectures Series) by Kolakowski

by Leszek Kołakowski

"[Husserl] better than anybody, compelled us to realize the painful dilemma of either consistent empiricism, with its relativistic, skeptical results (a standpoint which many regard discouraging, inadmissible, and in fact ruinous for culture) or transcendental dogmatism, which cannot really justify itself and remains in the end an arbitrary decision. I have to admit that although ultimate certitude is a goal that cannot be attained within the rationalist framework, our culture would be poor and miserable without people who keep trying to reach this goal, and it hardly could survive when left entirely in the hands of the skeptics." - From the author's conclusion. "Kolakowski's Husserl and the Search for Certitude consists of his three Cassirer Lectures, delivered at Yale in 1974. In broad, general terms, he places Husserl in the tradition of philosophers, from Descartes to the Logical positivists, who were engaged in the attempt to discover some knowledge which was certain and indubitable. His final view is that such a quest must fail. But he also argues that unless it is undertaken, the tension and disharmonies which exist between the claims of the skeptics and relativists on the one hand, and those who believe in the possibility of absolute certainty on the other, must come to an end. And since he believes that this tension is to a large extent the source of all culture and intellectual life, we should be disastrously impoverished if the search were finally given up. . . . [Kolakowski's] purpose is to show the ways in which Husserl pursued, and inevitably failed to reach, his goal, and to justify, at least in part, the claim he made for his philosophy, that iswas the defense of culture and civilization. The lectures are elegant, persuasively clear and delightful." - Mary Warnock, Times Literary Supplement

Genres: Philosophy

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Distinguished Polish philosopher and historian of ideas. He is best known for his critical analysis of Marxist thought, especially his acclaimed three-volume history, Main Currents of Marxism. In his later work, Kolakowski increasingly focused on religious questions. In his 1986 Jefferson Lecture, he asserted that "We learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are.”

In Poland, Kołakowski is not only revered as a philosopher and historian of ideas, but also as an icon for opponents of communism. Adam Michnik has called Kołakowski "one of the most prominent creators of contemporary Polish culture".

Kołakowski died on 17 July 2009, aged 81, in Oxford, England. In his obituary, philosopher Roger Scruton said Kolakowski was a "thinker for our time" and that regarding Kolakowski's debates with intellectual opponents, "even if ... nothing remained of the subversive orthodoxies, nobody felt damaged in their ego or defeated in their life's project, by arguments which from any other source would have inspired the greatest indignation."

Reviews

[Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

These three lectures, presented as the first Cassirer Lectures at Yale, offer us Kolakowski's very cursory reading of Husserl. In the first lecture, Kolakowski sets up what he believes Husserl is after. In the second he judges whether Husserl was successful and in the third he tries to gather some value from Husserl's work. Throughout, Kolakowski argues that Husserl unsuccessfully sought certainty and opposed skepticism. Philosophy, Kolakowski explains, "must not accept any ready-made results from the sciences and 'generalize' them" (6). But in outlining Husserl's pursuit of certainty, Kolakowski goes in the wrong direction. Instead of emphasizing the intentionality of transcendental subjectivity, the adumbrations of perceived objects, and the always-able-to-be-otherwise character of empirical knowledge, Kolakowski argues that Husserl tried to find absolutely indubitable essences of objects through eidetic variation: "[t]he eidetic insight . . . is not a procedure of abstraction but a special kind of direct experience of universals, which reveal themselves to us with irresistible self-evidence" (45). What, in fact, reveals itself to us with absolute self-evidence, on Husserl's account, are the always incomplete perceptions and the subject-world distinction, among other relations and not, as Kolakowski seems to argue, the essences of objects and universals.

In the final section, Kolakowski concludes that the value of Husserl's work lies not in any particular accomplishments, but in his struggle against skepticism and offers us the somewhat odd suggestion that the interminability of this struggle contributes to the development of culture: "it is the conflict of values, rather than their harmony, that keeps our culture alive" (85).

Given in the 70s, Kolakowski's treatment is now largely out of date. So I would only recommend this book for its historical value. Someone wanting to read a criticism of Husserl should look for something more recent.

[Ejansand · Rating 3 out of 5]

Passable description of Husserl’s project, contains a good breakdown of why the transcendental Ego is not an object. Essentially the three lectures very quickly run through the development of Husserl’s thought and deal briefly with the paradoxical effects of his late-stage transcendental idealism.

I will say, however, that there are a few very clear insights into the problem of idealism as well as the problems realist phenomenology faces.

[Molsa Roja(s) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Volia que m'agradés, perquè m'interessa enormement la intuició husserliana com avantsala a l'empirisme trascendental de Deleuze, però el cert és que el text no està a l'alçada del filòsof. No és ni una introducció ni un estudi d'alguns dels conceptes, sinó un resum de l'obra que, emprant pròpiament el llenguatge husserlià, es fa redundant en tant que per tal de comprendre'l cal haver llegit primer a Husserl. Decebedor.

[Demian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muy buena introducción a lo que viene siendo el propósito intelectual de Husserl: erigir la filosofía como "ciencia suprema". Plot twist: se queda en el intento.

[Thomas Widrich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trotz des Vorlesungscharakters und der Kürze ein schwieriges Buch, wollte man die Argumente, die Kolakowski bringt, nachvollziehen, d.h. wirklich „nachdenken“. Der Text entstand drei Jahre nach Kolakowskis „Gegenwärtigkeit des Mythos“ und spiegelt auch dessen Kernthese wieder, nämlich dass auch die philosophische Frage nach der Gewissheit letzten Endes in den Bereich des Mythos führt, wo es nicht um „wahr“ oder „falsch“ geht, sondern darum, wie ein Bedürfnis (z.B. nach Gewissheit) Befriedigung erfahren kann.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

By far the best introduction to Husserl's philosophy I have read so far, even if the discussion of corporeality is largely missing. That latter ommission would explain the explicitly admitted difficulties that Kołakowski gets into in the concluding pages of the book, which some could take as a glimpse away from rationalism and towards mysticism.