Historically, philosophy has been the point of origin of the various sciences. However, once developed, the sciences have increasingly become autonomous, although often taking some paradigm from leading philosophies of the era. As a result, in recent times the relationship of philosophy to the sciences has been more by way of dialogue and critique than a matter of spawning new sciences. This volume of the Selected Studies brings together a series of essays which develop that dialogue and critique with special reference to the insights of phenomenological philosophy.

Natural science, familiarly called “science,” has a pervading presence and influence in our culture because it, more than any other form of knowledge, seems effectively to lay claim to the rigor, objectivity, permanence and universality that the Greeks sought as their emancipatory goal and the search for which, Husserl claims, is the special teleology of the Western community. Natural science, then, developed within the total cultural and philosophical perspective of the West, which gave it impetus and which in turn derived sustenance from its achievements. As an element of our total culture, I shall call this “historical science.” The critique of historical science, then, is a critique of a total cultural milieu.

The mind-body relation or, more particularly, the mind-brain relation 1 has been a perennial puzzle for philosophers—how can things so different be intimately related? Husserl dealt with the mind-brain relation in Section 63 of Ideen II, “Psychophysischer Parallelismus and Wechselwirkung,” 2 where he gave a critique of psychophysical parallelism. For Husserl, the mind-brain relation is to be understood not as a material or metaphysical relation, but as a relation between the presented sense or significance of two varieties of appearances. Husserl’s account in this section will be examined and the following points will be discussed: (1) Husserl’s argument that the significance of brain states is basic to the full sense of a mind operating in an objective world; (2) Husserl’s view that a strict parallelism between the psyche and brain is an eidetic impossibility; (3) Husserl’s treatment of these questions, in so far as he raises but does not adequately resolve the issue, whether states of consciousness precede or follow brain states; (4) Husserl’s somewhat Cartesian failure to distinguish the phenomenological priority of consciousness from the metaphysical question of the possibility of an existent mind apart from a body.

In this paper I would like to consider one of the phenomenological approaches in the social sciences which has developed in recent years, the ethnomethodology of Harold Garfinkel, his students and associates, and analyze some of its characteristics.

My proposal here is to attempt a display of mind turned towards the world for the particulars and pattern of its experience. I want to show how one would broach a conception of wild sociology which only gradually comes to self-possession as it unfolds or “brings into play, beneath what I know, my sensory fields which are my primitive alliance with the world.” 1 From the outset I want to refuse the temptation to be on top of my subject. In particular, although I am drawing from Merleau-Ponty the connection between mind and institution,2 I shall not make the test of these notions my ability to marshall texts, substituting the coherence and logic of their arrangement for the originality of speech and its solicitation of a thought which listens in harmony with its own way and is beholden to its topic as an exemplar of our collective life.

It is perhaps a sign of the impact of the work of Alfred Schutz on recent thought that no detailed exposition of his ideas is necessary for this audience. In Schutz’s own language, it is now possible to “take for granted” at least a general acquaintance with his views on the social sciences, the nature of human action, the structure of typification, and the large tapestry of the everyday world of man and fellow man. With a minimum of exposition, I propose to consider a few central themes in his writings, show their interrelationships in the logic of Schutz’s position, and go on to speculate on their implications for a theory of the social world. Part of the discussion will remain close to Schutz’s formulations; part will move on the periphery of this thought; and part will proceed independently, though mindful of his accomplishment. I do not believe there will be any confusion about where I speak with Schutz and where I speak for myself: the shakier the ground, the greater my autonomy.

The editors of this volume invited former students of Husserl to give not only an account of the influence the thought of this great philosopher had upon their own development and work but also to report their recollections of his ways of teaching and the philosophical contacts they had with him. I should like to follow the editors’ suggestions and re-evoke my fond memories of my meetings with Husserl during the last years of his life, although I am not sure whether I am entitled to call myself his personal student. I met the great thinker for the first time in 1932 when he had long ago ceased to deliver courses at the university and twelve years after I had finished my studies at the University of Vienna.

The beginning of phenomenology is the reassertion of subjectivity. The beginning of Marxism is the attack upon subjectivity. To contrast Marxism and phenomenology is to find, in the first place, the common point of departure for each, the common Problematik to which each addresses itself. Otherwise, we are in the strange position of counter-posing two indifferent world-views, two incommensurable methodologies, without mediation. It is clear, from the history of the subject, that Marxism and phenomenology are not alien to each other: first, phenomenological themes lie at the heart of the origins of Marxism, in Hegel and Feuerbach; second, there is a major current within Marxist theory which engages phenomenology, if it does not in fact adopt its stance. (I refer here to Lukacs, and to an East-European Marxism, usually characterized as revisionism or Marxist Humanism, as well as to contemporary neo-Marxism of the Frankfurt or Italian variety.) Third, a major accommodation, as well as critique of Marxism characterizes the problematic “Marxism” of the French phenomenologists, such as Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. I do not plan to enter into either a reconstruction of the Marxism of the phenomenologists or the phenomenology of the Marxists, or into the specific jargon of the schools. Just as “ordinary language philosophy” had become at one point, a small cottage industry in England (with branches abroad), this Marxism-phenomenology interaction has become a massive production enterprise of the word-mills of Europe and America. The product is recognizable by its union labels: it is stitched with a plethora of philosophical neologisms, sometimes to the extent that the garment is hidden by the labels. These range from Hegelisms of the pour-soi—en-soi sort to Hellenisms of the noema—noesis sort, to plain old teutonisms of the Vorhanden—Verfallen sort. Nor do I mean to be snide with respect to philosophy’s right and need to recreate language and to neologize. We pursue our human inquiry through language and in language, and the shape and forms of expression are not simply images of our thought but its structures as well. Still, I will try not to ignore but to neutralize some of the divergence of expression, in the service of an analysis and critique.

The introduction by Marxism of consciousness as the development of man’s relations with nature and society presented philosophy with a direct contrast to modern philosophy’s claim of understanding life by consciousness. Rather than the individual ego, the types of production and ownership were understood as the determinants of man’s social thought, and freedom, which had been conceived to be man’s essence (although qualified even here in space and time), was now to be seen in reference to the economic. This new view of freedom is most often seen as an attempt to surmount both Kant’s notion of freedom and Hegel’s metaphysics of freedom.

One constant temptation of human thinking in both logic and mathematics is the claim that mathematical objects are in some sense “real”. This temptation surfaces in a number of ways—one is the recurrent metaphysical position of “Platonism”. Another is the language of “discovery” in mathematics; a third is the natural use of visual imagery in talk about mathematics and a fourth is the impersonal “objective” character accorded to mathematical theory.