Ⅲ．History of Phenomenology: Kant's Influence on Husserl

In Critique of Pure Reason and Introduction to Future Metaphysics ,Kant denied the authority of rationalism and empiricism, and put forward a new theory: transcendental idealism. Kant believes that even though people can't know the “thing-in-itself” with certainty, we must assume its existence and know it in a rational way. Here's a brief supplement to Kant's terminology explanation. Thing-in-itself is the original appearance of an object. For example, people see a pencil that is named and perceived as a pencil, but we are not sure that this is the real appearance of a pencil.We name this real appearance “thing-in-itself”. Because if we admit that what human beings are thinking about is something that does not exist, we are not thinking about anything, which is not allowed for cognition. Think about it. When we are speaking a sentence, we must include an object,even an imaginary object. “I saw a unicorn.” In this sentence, the unicorn is assumed to be a meaningful object. In people's language, “I see X.” we are not told any useful information, because this sentence only has formal structure, but it doesn't have complete practical meaning.

Kant thought, on the one hand, I admit the unknowability of the pure object (the appearance of the thing itself), because my knowledge will always be limited to my hypothesis, but I can't say that my knowledge is the appearance of the world of thing-in-itself, that is, I draw a line between the scope of people's cognition and limit cognition to the world of experience. On the other hand, for a truly meaningful cognition, we must go beyond the ego as the cognitive subject to go beyond the application scope of experience and go to the world of things-in-itself. These two coexisting requirements seem to inevitably lead to contradictions. To solve this problem, Kant pointed out:

If we combine the prohibition of avoiding all transcendental judgments of pure reason with the seemingly opposite will to transcend the concepts outside the internal application scope, then we will realize co-existence between the two, but this can only happen to be on the boundary of all permitted rational applications, because this boundary belongs to both the field of experience and the field of thought beings... However, this requires us to limit our judgment to the world that the concept itself is in this world that we can obtain in this world, and we adhere to this boundary.

The word “transcendental” in medieval philosophy and “transcendence(with theological meaning)” are both “transzendental” . In Kant's philosophy, transcendental means something beyond experience, which our experience can't get. We can also talk about the world of thing-in-itself and the absolute law of pure reason. Now, let's try to simplify these two famous sentences. Kant roughly means that there is a middle ground between the impossibility of transcendental knowledge and the need for transcendental knowledge. This middle ground should contain both rationality and experience.

In other words, people are given rational application at this time,or“symbolically” projecting the attributes of our thinking objects into our lives, thus avoiding Kant's skepticism and dogmatism. But at the same time, it should be noted that there are two implied conclusions here: First, Kant thinks that the world of thing-in-itself, which is the world we care about, and the world of thing-in-itself, which exists as an object, cannot be surpassed, and what we do is only to reduce the harm of transcendental illusion, Second, Kant pointed out that “symbolic analogy involves only language”, not the study of the object itself. This“language” turn has a profound influence not only on phenomenology, but also on modern analytical philosophy. As a summary of this linguistic turn,Kant said,

So, what I'm actually saying is: the relationship between a clock, a ship, an army and a watchmaker, a shipbuilder, and a commander... This is an analogy science... Therefore, although I don't know this unknown according to what it is for myself, I know it according to what it is for me,that is, as far as the world is concerned, and I am a part of the world.

Every analogy reveals its meaning to people, and the contents of the analogy are connected with each other in a rational way and conform to rational laws. Therefore, although people don't know the appearance of thing-in-itself, they can know the meaningful connection of thing-in-itself to people, which Kant said is meaningful. In other words, Kant showed a kind of analogy relationship according to language as a rational one,and this is true. Language itself already contains the logical projection of thinking and empirical facts. If a sentence is meaningful to us, it should contain both logical syntax and realistic objects. Because, if a sentence lacks logic, it will become meaningless nonsense, and if it lacks objects, it will have no practical significance. Because of this sentence, metaphysical scholars have to return to the world to find answers from the transcendental rational field. In Husserl's view, Kant's reductive bias, though extremely breakthrough, is still the product or residue of the dualism of subject and object in essence. In another bolder sense, Kant's analogical science,or understanding in the world, can essentially be extended to “science of phenomena”. This new science should be completely independent of metaphysics, general “psychologism” or general “materialism”.