A Phenomenology of World Affairs

[In which Husserl’s idea of phenomenology is discussed as a way to know world affairs.]

What follows is a phenomenology of world affairs, as Edmund Husserl, the

founder of the contemporary philosophical movement, might have construed it. It
provides a particular reading of Husserl’s writings, and applies it to global politics.

Husserl’s work became more radical (and arguably, more esoteric) the older he

became. What follows is more in line with the later Husserl than the earlier one. In short,
what follows sees phenomenology as the exploration of particular phenomena, the
exploration of our consciousness of these phenomena, and of how consciousness and
phenomena inter-relate. This is usually referred to as the “transcendental
phenomenology” of Husserl’s Freiburg period, as manifest in his inaugural lecture at
Freiburg University in 1917.(Husserl,1917) As such, it seeks not only an intuitive
appreciation of things in the world, that is, things experienced as unmediated as possible
by prior ideas. It also seeks an intuitive appreciation of how phenomena are constructed
in our minds, in such a way as to craft things in the world. It seeks, in other words, more
than an enriched perception of what we experience, and a sense of what is “essential” in
this regard, as Husserl promulgated this in his first formal account of phenomenology in
1900-1901.(Husserl,1970 [1900-1901]) It seeks to know by exploring (in Spiegelberg’s
words) “the source … of all object knowledge”, namely, ourselves. It pushes scepticism
to its “utmost limits”, in the attempt to uncover the “hidden achievements of intentional
consciousness in constituting our world”.(Spiegelberg,1975,14,16,57,67,68,70,73,74)

What follows is also best described as having been inspired by Husserl’s ideas,

rather than as faithfully applying his arguments to world affairs. It suspends - or
“brackets off” - belief in pre-existing phenomena, like the belief in rationalism, for
example. Husserl called this “reduction”. It uses the intuition that a socially re-embedded
sense of the self makes possible to ascertain how our most basic mental practices might
craft our awareness of the world, without reverting to rationalism again, or becoming
romantic. Husserl recommended this, too.(Levinas,1973) As noted above, however,
Husserl’s recommendations changed over time. With regard to “bracketing off”, for
example, he originally seemed to want us to be sceptical about the nature of reality, and
to leave it at that. Later on, the “reduction” seemed to become a more complex attempt to
intuit everything in terms of an “irreducible core of absolute consciousness …”, and the
“intentional acts” we use in constructing our sense of the world. Suffice to say that in
following Husserl’s lead, this study does not pretend to be making a contribution to the
philosophic debates about how Husserl should be read. It is the reading of a
“conscientious novice”, and a look at world affairs in the light of that reading. That is
all.(Spiegelberg,1975,22,74)

Following the cycle of knowing that this reading initiates, what follows then goes

on, as Husserl does not, to eschew phenomenology. It discusses the mental practices that
phenomenological intuition highlights, in terms of the various analytical languages that
contemporary rationalists articulate. It also explores some illustrative case studies. It then