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ABSTRACT
As phenomenology rose to prominence at the beginning of the 20th century, several aestheticians tried to establish the Husserlian method of “phenomenological reduction” in the field of aesthetics. These ventures were met with resistance from psychological aesthetics, which was the predominant form of aesthetics in the German-speaking world at the time. This paper examines, first, practical attempts to apply the method of “phenomenological reduction” in aesthetics. Using Waldemar Conrad and Moritz Geiger as examples, I try to trace what aestheticians actually did when they applied this method in their investigations. Secondly, I reconstruct the four central objections with which psychological aesthetics reacted to such attempts. I have identified four central counterarguments in the work of Johannes Volkelt and Oswald Külpe, who were among the most eminent critics of phenomenological aesthetics: the transcendental argument, the susceptibility-to-errors argument, the constructivism argument, and the non-normativity argument. Finally, I also discuss the refusal of psychological aesthetics to acknowledge that a genuine phenomenological method even existed and the consequences of this refusal.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Groos, “Ästhetik,” 489.
2. Both within phenomenology and psychological aesthetics, and especially within the aesthetics of empathy, the bulk of the professional debate in the first decades of the 20th century took place in the German-speaking world. In the following, I have used available English translations where possible. The translations of German texts that are not yet available in English are mine. Wherever I was unsure or where I found German expressions particularly difficult to translate, I have included the original German text in parentheses.
3. Lipps, Grundlegung der Ästhetik, 1.
4. Ibid.
5. Hamann, “Zur Begründung der Ästhetik,” 116.
6. Ibid., 118.
7. Ibid.,132.
8. In this historical-systematical understanding of “reconstruction” I follow Rorty, “The Historiography of Philosophy,” 52: “[T]here is indeed a sense in which we can understand what a philosopher says in his own terms before relating his thoughts to ours, but [I would rejoin] that this minimal sort of understanding is like being able to exchange courtesies in a foreign tongue without being able to translate what one is saying into our native language. […] Translation is necessary if ‘understanding’ is to mean something more than engaging in rituals of which we do not see the point.”
9. Husserl had already exerted great influence well before 1907, especially on the Munich Circle of philosophers and psychologists, who had studied and done research in the environment of Theodor Lipps (including such important figures as Alexander Pfänder, Moritz Geiger, Johannes Daubert, Max Scheler, and Dietrich von Hildebrand, as well as Theodor Conrad, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Adolf Reinach, and Gerda Walter). The Munich “Academic Association for Psychology,” founded by Lipps in 1895, to which the above-mentioned names belonged, had invited Husserl to Munich as early as 1904 to give a lecture on his Logical Investigations. The Logical Investigations, whose methodology appealed to many of the Munich students, and Husserl’s lecture on it, led, among other things, to Lipps being accused of psychologism and to Conrad, Conrad-Martius and Reinach moving from Munich to Göttingen to continue working under Husserl instead of Lipps. More detailed information about this is provided in Vendrell Ferran, “Introduction,” 3–5. I am grateful to Íngrid Vendrell Ferran for pointing this out to me and for her helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
10. As Lee Hardy has rightly pointed out in the illuminating introduction to his translation of The Idea of Phenomenology, Husserl does not yet develop a phenomenological critique of reason in his Ideas, he merely seeks “to secure the possibility of a phenomenological critique of reason; that is, he attempts to secure the possibility of the knowledge of the possibility of knowledge, not the possibility of knowledge in general.” Husserl, The Idea of Phenomenology, 3.
11. Some additional explanations are in order here: the method of phenomenological reduction, as Husserl presents it in The Idea of Phenomenology, has not yet reached the degree of sophistication it will reach later in his later works, especially in his Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy (1913). Unlike in the later Ideas, in The Idea of Phenomenology Husserl does not yet distinguish between an eidetic and a transcendental reduction, nor does he describe his method with the famous term epoché. Although it is much less sophisticated, I focus on the early version of the method of phenomenological reduction from The Idea of Phenomenology, because Geiger and Conrad directly respond to it. The objections of the psychological aestheticians, which I discuss in section 4, are also aimed at the earlier version and its application to aesthetics. At least to my knowledge, psychological aesthetics did not explicitly comment on Husserl’s later methodological specifications and their relevance for aesthetics. The general view that Husserl’s 1907 lectures, albeit not as precise and detailed as his later works, are a landmark publication for the discipline of phenomenology is shared in Cogan, “The Phenomenological Reduction.” Cogan also provides a very clear overview of the different stages of the concept of phenomenological reduction in Husserl’s thought.
12. Husserl, The Idea of Phenomenology, 16.
13. Ibid., 26.
14. Ibid., 41.
15. Ibid., 42.
16. Ibid., 43.
17. Husserl, The Idea of Phenomenology, 125. Hardy’s otherwise excellent translation is somewhat unclear here (no wonder, so is the German original). Husserl’s idea that we can “unsere Rede in reiner Anmessung an die geschaute Fülle der Klarheit anschmiegen” should in my opinion be translated a little freer with “[we can] maintain clarity in our language similar to the clarity of our seeing.” As far as I understand Husserl correctly, this is what he means here.
18. Ibid., 43.
19. As explained in footnote 10, Husserl clarifies his not yet fully fleshed out methodological ideas most prominently 6 years later in his Ideas.
20. Conrad, “Der ästhetische Gegenstand,” 71. Another recent analysis of Conrad’s paper is Angelucci, “Waldemar Conrad (1878–1915).”
21. I have translated the German phrase “zu adäquater Anschauung bringe” with the deceptively simple “see” here because I wanted to make it clear that Conrad refers to Husserl’s second lecture of The Idea of Phenomenology (from where also the term „empty opinion“ is taken). In this lecture Husserl explains his idea of “pure seeing,” and it is, I think, precisely this Husserlian understanding of the verb “to see” that Conrad is after.
22. Conrad, “Der ästhetische Gegenstand,” 74.
23. Conrad, “Der ästhetische Gegenstand.”
24. Conrad, “Der ästhetische Gegenstand II.”
25. Conrad, “Der ästhetische Gegenstand III.”
26. See note 22 above.
27. Conrad, “Der ästhetische Gegenstand,” 76.
28. Conrad, “Der ästhetische Gegenstand II,”487–489, 497–498.
29. Ibid., 491.
30. Ibid., 499.
31. Geiger, “Beiträge zur Phänomenologie,” 571.
32. Ibid., 572.
33. Ibid., 578.
34. Ibid., 572.
35. Ibid., 611.
36. Ibid., 595–6.
37. Volkelt, “Objektive Ästhetik,” 408.
38. Külpe, Grundlagen der Ästhetik, 62–63.
39. Witasek, “Über ästhetische Objektivität.”
40. Landmann-Kalischer, “Erkenntniswert ästhetischer Urteile,” 264.
41. Müller-Freienfels, “Psychologie und Kunst,” 162.
42. Volkelt, “Objektive Ästhetik,” 409.
43. Külpe, Grundlagen der Ästhetik, 62.
44. Ibid., 64.
45. Ibid., 62.
46. Ibid., 61.
47. Husserl, The Idea of Phenomenology, 34.
48. Külpe, Grundlagen der Ästhetik, 65.
49. See note 47 above.
50. Volkelt, “Objektive Ästhetik,” 410.
51. Ibid.
52. Husserl, The Idea of Phenomenology, 43.
53. Külpe, Grundlagen der Ästhetik, 48.
54. Ibid., 65.
55. Volkelt, “Objektive Ästhetik,” 406.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Thomas Petraschka
Thomas Petraschka is interim professor of German literature and media science at the University of the Saarland in Saarbrücken, Germany. He has worked at the universities of Regensburg, Prague and Ljubljana before and was — together with Christiana Werner — head of the research network “Feeling and Understanding” (www.fuehlenundverstehen.net). He specializes in theory of literature and aesthetics and has just finished a book titled Einfühlung. Theorie, Kulturgeschichte und künstlerische Verarbeitung einer ästhetischen Denkfigur [Empathy. Theory, Cultural History and Artistic Reactions to an Aesthetic Figure of Thought between 1770 and 1925]. He is also editor of Empathy’s Role in Understanding Persons, Literature, and Art (open access: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003333739), which appeared at Routledge just now (in August 2023).