FOUNDATIONS OF MORALITY, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND THE HUMAN SCIENCES

Transcription

1 FOUNDATIONS OF MORALITY, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND THE HUMAN SCIENCES

2 ANALECTA HUSSERLIANA THE YEARBOOK OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH VOLUME XV Editor-in-Chief ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning Belmont, Massachusetts

3 FOUNDATIONS OF MORALITY, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND THE HUMAN SCIENCES Phenomenology in a Foundational Dialogue with the Human Sciences Edited by ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA The World Phenomenology Institute and CALVIN O. SCHRAG Purdue University Published under the auspices of The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning A-T. Tymieniecka, President D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY DORDRECHT: HOLLAND I BOSTON: U.S.A. LONDON: ENGLAND

4 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: Foundations of morality, human rights, and the human sciences. (Analecta Husserliana ; v. 15) "Published under the auspices of the World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning." Includes index. 1. Social sciences and ethics-addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Science and ethics-addresses, essays, lectures. I. Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa. II. Schrag, Calvin O. III. World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning. IV. Series. B3279.H94A129 vol. 15 [BJ5l] l42'.7s [170] ISBN-13: e-isbn-13: DOl: / Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, Holland. Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada by Kluwer Boston Inc., 190 Old Derby Street, Hingham, MA 02043, U.S.A. In all other countries, sold and distributed by Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, Holland. D. Reidel Publishing Company is a member of the Kluwer Group All Rights Reserved Copyright 1983 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland Softcover Reprint of the hardcover I st edition 1983 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any informational storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner

5 T ABLE OF CONTENTS ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA / The Theme: The Human Being - Individual and Moral - as the Articulating Factor of the Human Sciences CALVIN O. SCHRAG /Introduction ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix xv xvii INAUGURAL ESSAY ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA I The Moral Sense: A Discourse on the Phenomenological Foundation of the Social World and of lli~ 3 PART I PHENOMENOLOGY IN AN INTERDISCIPLINARY COMMUNICATION WITH THE HUMAN SCIENCES: QUESTIONS OF THE METHOD A. THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL CHALLENGE IN SOCIOLOGY ILJ A M ASO / Phenomenological Methods in Sociological Research 83 HUGH P. GALLACHER / On the Meaning of 'Adequacy' in the Sociology of Alfred Schutz 91 LAWRENCE GROSSBERG / Contribution to the Debate: On the Phenomenological Challenge in Sociology 99 MICHAEL A. WEINSTEIN / Twentieth-century Realism and the Autonomy of the Human Sciences: The Case of George Santayana 119 GEORGE G. HAYDU / Method in Integrative Transformism 131 STEPHEN A. ERICKSON / Methodological Neutrality in Pragmatism and Phenomenology 145

6 vi T ABLE OF CONTENTS MICHAEL 1. HYDE / Contribution to the Debate: Heideggef on Rhetoric 165 B. HUMAN BEING, WORLD, COGNITION HANS K()CHLER / The Problem of Reality as Seen from the Viewpoint of Existential Phenomenology 175 RODERICK M. STEWART / Heidegger's Transcendental-Phenomenological "Justification" of Science 189 CRAIG R. SMITH / Contribution to the Debate: Heidegger's Theory of Authentic Discourse 209 JOHN SCANLON / A Descriptive Science of the Pretheoretical World: A Husserlian Theme in Its Historical Context 219 ERLING ENG / Darwin's Phenomenological Embarrassment and Freud's Solution 231 JOSEPH F. RYCHLAK / Contribution to the Debate: Phenomenology and Empiricism 241 JERALD W ALLULIS / The Relationship of Theory and Emancipation in Husserl and Habermas 249 HANS SEIGFRIED / Contribution to the Debate: Professor Wallulis on Theory and Emancipation 275 C. SOME ISSUES FOR PHENOMENOLOGY IN EPISTEMOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION DONALD E. POLKINGHORNE / The Reductions and Existence: Bases for Epistemology 283 JAMES J. V ALONE / Intersubjectivity and Accessibility 293 JAMES J. DAGENAIS / Once More into the lion's Mouth: Another Look at van def Leeuw's Phenomenology of Religion 319 PART II THE FOUNDATIONS OF MORALITY AND THE HUMAN SCIENCES A. FOUNDATIONS OF MORALITY AND NATURE DANIEL BREAZEALE / Aground on the Ground of Values: Friedrich Nietzsche 335

7 T ABLE OF CONTENTS vii SANTOSH KUMAR I Man as the Focal Point of Human Science 351 GODWIN SOGOLO I On Biologicized Ethics: A Critique of the Biological Approach to the Human Sciences 355 B. FOUNDATIONS OF MORALITY AND THE LIFE-WORLD JOSEPH J. KOCKELMANS I The Foundations of Morality and the Human Sciences 369 ROBER T SWEENEY I Value and Ideology 387 HUGH P. GALLACHER I Schutz's Thesis and the Moral Basis for Humanistic Sociology 403 ILJA MASO I The Moral Crisis of Explanation in the Social Sciences 413 C. SCIENCE AND MORALITY DA YID APPELBAUM I Medicine and the Moral Basis of the Human Sciences 421 EYEL YN M. BARKER I Heidegger's Existential Conception of Science 431 FRANCO BOSIO I Philosophy and Psychology Confronted with the Need for a Moral Significance of Life 441 SIL YANO CHIARI I Contribution to the Debate: Scientific Psychology and Moral Philosophy in the Knowledge of Human Nature: Two Lines of Research 447 DOMENICO ANTONINO CONCI I Contribution to thedebate: Some Remarks on the Role of Psychology in Man's Ethical World View 457 RICK ELLROD I Emotion and the Good in Moral Development 465 M. J. LARRABEE I The Genesis of Moral Judgment 483 D. MORALITY: FROM LIFE-EXPERIENCE TO MORAL CONCEPTS KURT H. WOLFF I Surrender to Morality as the Morality of Surrender 495 JONATHAN B. IMBER I The Socio-philosophical Conception of Kurt H. Wolff 501 RICHARD M. MARTIN I On Purpose, Obligation, and Transcendental Semantics 505

8 viii T ABLE OF CONTENTS PART III PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE HUMAN SCIENCES IN A COMMON APPROACH TO "HUMAN RIGHTS" LUIS FLORES H. / Le Prim at du theorique a l'egard du normatif chez Hussed 521 HIPOLITO RODRIGUEZ PINEIRO / La Intersubjetividad absoluta en Hussed y el ideal de una sociedad racional 527 ROBER TO VICHOT / On Some Contributions of Existential Phenomenology to Sociology of Law: Formalism and Historicism 539 M. R. BARRAL / Rights, Responsibilities, and Existentialist Ethics 553 MIGUEL CARLOS JARQUIN MARIN / Elementos para una teoria de 1a transubjetividad - A la fenomenologfa de los derechos humanos 561 MARCELINO DE CISNEROS / The Person, Basis for Human Rights 571 INDEX OF NAMES 577

9 ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA The Theme THE HUMAN BEING - INDIVIDUAL AND MORAL - AS THE ARTICULATING FACTOR OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES What is more obvious than the statement that "Man is the object of inquiry in the human sciences"? or the statement that "The sense of eihics is to be found in the societal dispositions of the human condition"? And yet most truths inherent in human endeavors are so covered by the sedimentations of scholars' infmitely varied interests, each with their distinctive biases and points of view, that there is repeated need for the philosopher to "rediscover" them. And, each time, the discovery of the infmitely simple necessitates an intellectual apparatus infmitely complex. There is, however, the peculiarity that in the vastly ramified methodologies, approaches, assumptions, questions, and objectives of human science the human being fails to remain at the center of attention. Indeed, the diversification of human science is due, first, to the fact that the human being originates, evolves, and maintains his existence at the cross-currents of innumerable forces of nature and life; and, second, that he delineates his own course and establishes his individuality in the midst of a complex game of vitally significant social currents and cross-currents. Contemporary psychology, anthropology, and sociology have made us aware of the extraordinary precariousness of man's life and social situation - a situation precarious to the point that, in investigating the innumerable contingencies of the individual's course, the line of pursuit loses track of the crucial factors which direct his differentiation from the rest of life. When viewed within his multiple existential ramifications, the human being seems to dissolve in the fabric of both natural life and societal existence. On the one hand, in the face of the vital forces which constitute the unbroken network of existential conditions, the very reality of man's "autonomy" appears questionable. On the other hand, the precariousness of man's autonomy - whatever preliminary meaning we may attribute to it - would have to be wrung out by him from such an absorbing tissue of essential dependencies and interdependencies within this fabric of life, that the traditional ontologies and philosophies of human nature, in their anthropocentric emphasis, offer little more than ideal speculation. Indeed, in view of the innumerable factors shaping the individual life-course, and man's decisions ix

10 x ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA and actions, we cannot assume without examination that any of his societal manifestations, his likes and dislikes, aims and ambitions, even his will, are his "own." That is, concurrently with seeking whether he has any say about his course, we must discover what his "own" course would mean. And yet, the same fabric of life and of the world, which seems to absorb the human being without rest, is not chaotic. Existence means order. And strangely - but significantly - in the attempts to grasp this order, attempts in which we oscillate between the "infinitely great" and the "infinitely small" as the starting point, the greatest emphasis falls upon the individual as the cornerstone of universal world-order. The human individual is the core of the preoccupations of human science, morality, and the socio-civic laws, regulations, and structures and, paradoxically, they are all founded on the assumption of the very same thing which they puzzle about in their investigations: man's autonomy with respect to his circumambient conditions. That is, all human interests and endeavors which are objects of inquiry (practical, philosophical, scientific) - and which ultimately reveal the nature of man - are distributed around the axis of this paradoxical nature of man: his existential selfhood measured over against the power of forces which keep him in existence. In fact, our renewed phenomenological inquiry into the nature of man and the human condition shows that, in spite of the fact that the human individual might be "thrown" into the life-world (as Heidegger points out) without having a choice, he "individualizes" himself nevertheless in various phases of unfolding his faculties within the circumambient life-conditions. In contradistinction to all other types of living beings, the human individual appears, in fact, as the only one who takes into his own hand the individualizing course and balances out his tendencies toward selfhood and the conditioning determinants. Moreover, he turns the second to the advantage of the first. Lastly, he deploys his virtualities for existential connectedness into the intersubjective commerce with other human beings from which, in a common effort, he elicits the personal significance of his own existence.1 It is at this juncture that the foundation of morality - morality operative in the intersubjective circuit of man's self-individualization - is to be found. In the present stage of Occidental culture, in which man's "selfhood" attempts to exercise an inventive control, even over intersubjective, that is, social conditions, we witness a striking and absurd phenomenon. On the one hand, there is great progress in recognizing human individuality; a stress upon and call for the highest possible autonomy and independence of the self (in freedom of choice, direction, respect for individual needs, etc.) in the

11 THE THEME xi intersubjective, social life-world. This concern with the individual is expressed by recognition of man's rights and of the need for conditions in which to exercise them. Further, these rights are being protected by elaborate, rationally formulated, legal measures: principles, laws, rules, regulations, and precepts support their recognition. These rights form the operative "nervous system" of the social life: individual transactions, corporations, societal institutions (educational, practical, political, religious) have pledged to honor them, and pride themselves on their attempts to incarnate their validity. These rationally devised measures designed to protect man's individualized selfhood - which is proclaimed to be an inalienable right - has been increasingly corroborated and developed. Again, paradoxically, as if to challenge the moral validity of this specifically human prerogative, the inventive meaningbestowing in the actual praxis of modem Occidental culture characterizes itself by a well-founded suspicion by the individual toward those social institutions which, while pretending to implement these laws, are in fact intent on ignoring, abusing, and violating them; that is, there is a widespread effort to neglect the moral axis upon which the very essence of intersubjective sociability is suspended. A few decades ago, HusserI diagnosed the crisis of Occidental culture as involving the estrangement of the Occidental human being and of his lived world from his existential soil - which he called the "life-world" of natural human deployment. Husserl attributed this estrangement to the excessive, and inadequately interpreted development of human reason (intellect). Can it be that HusserI meant to defend an unadumbrated and automatically assumed sovereignty of reason, which is in a specific way responsible for this seemingly insoluble paradox? Certainly, in modem culture - in the objective regulations of the social order, the sphere of the implementation of law and of the distribution of social justice and morality, etc. - it is held to be reason (intellect) which is the sole arbiter of "objective" understanding, deliberating, decision making, and the implementing of law. This law, which is rooted in morality, is meant to enable the human being to delineate his own life route in the midst of social "conditioning" and to diminish as much as possible the impact of this "conditioning" upon the unfolding selfhood. In practice, however, the social institutions which implement laws jeopardize this selfhood and violate man's sense of justice, his rights, and his very conscience by submitting it to the unyielding "conditioning" of social forces. Is the intellect alone, which interprets social laws in their implementation, responsible for this unfortunate development? Does this not confound the proper moral postulate of objectivity - to "give everyone his own" - with

12 xii ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA the false assumption that moral significance is the fruit of a morally neutral "objectivity" of things and of a life-survival system? Indeed, we entrust to reason the differentiation, discrimination, and appreciation of social situations in which moral significance is at stake. The logical conclusion is clear concerning the social appropriateness of this moral significance. Yet, since it is the faculty of the intellect, infinitely dissecting, adumbrating, inductively or speculatively concluding, and projecting new possibilities, which is recognized as the arbiter, then the understanding and appreciation of the social situation and the final decision depend upon the sharpness with which the intellect is exercised. In its infinite possibilities, the abstracting intellect is always capable of turning things to its own advantage. Short of logical contradiction, everything can be plausibly established and justified by reason. That is, there are an infinity of ways and means for achieving the social "conditioning" of the individual. These briefly sketched points underlie the investigations presented in this volume. We first scan, from a variety of approaches, the various issues and ways in which, ultimately, the human being is investigated by human science at large. Second, it is the foundation of morality as the specifically human meaningfulness of existence, which is the form in which intersubjectivity as such, and consequently the social world, emerges. We conclude this spectrum by approaching "human rights" as one ofits crowning forms. What is most significant, however, for this project is the search for the origin of moral meaningfulness in human feelings and actions. The fact that communication within human life and the social world is suffused with a "moral language" (concepts, judgments, values, etc.) is obvious. It is equally obvious that this language is not the "language of objects." Currently in philosophy it is assumed to be the "language of values." In my own contributions I am challenging this priority of values. I submit that this priority is the real culprit in the current moral disarray: the discrepancy between the striving for freedom of the human conscience (against social conditioning), as the guarantee of the highest accomplishment of human beingness (guaranteed by laws), on th~ one side, and the cunningly subversive coercion of this very individual into submission to their practical ineffectiveness, on the other side. This submission deprives man even of the "freedom of conscience." Its effects impinge even upon the self-interpretative meaningfulness of his life, his very selfhood! Indeed, 'the moral significance of our intersubjective relations with other beings neither stems from, nor remains protected by, the sole jurisdiction of reason. We have to seek the origin of the moral significance of man's selfinterpretation in existence in the autonomous faculty of the Moral Sense! 2 Purdue, July 1979

13 THE THEME xiii NOTES 1 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, 'Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing, Prolegomena to Phenomenology of Cosmic Creation' (Royal Van Gorcum, 1967); Analecta Husserliana, vol Cf. my 'The Moral Sense,' below, p. 1.

14 CALVIN O. SCHRAG INTRODUCTION The essays in this volume constitute a portion of the research program being carried out by the International Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences. Established as an affiliate society of the World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning in 1976, in Arezzo, Italy, by the president of the Institute, Dr Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, this particular society is devoted to an exploration of the relevance of phenomenological methods and insights for an understanding of the origins and goals of the specialised human sciences. The essays printed in the first part of the book were originally presented at the Second Congress of this society held at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, July The second part of the volume consists of selected essays from the third convention (the Eleventh International Congress of Phenomenology of the World Phenomenology Institute) held in Cambridge, Massachusetts in With the third part of this book we pass into the "Human Rights" issue as treated by the World Phenomenology Institute at the Interamerican Philosophy Congress held in Tallahassee, Florida, also in The volume opens with a monograph by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka on the foundations of ethics in the moral practice within the life-world and the social world shown as clearly distinct. The main ideas of this work had been presented by Tymieniecka as lead lectures to the three conferences giving them a tight research-project consistency. The general theme for the Purdue Congress was: 'The Question of the Foundation of the Human Sciences Revisited'. This general theme was chosen because it expresses the increasing concern on the part of both professional philosophers and social scientists about the evident crisis that pervades both the theory and practice of the sciences of man. A crisis of self-understanding infects each of the special disciplines which have been developed to further our knowledge of the behavior of man. Psychology, psychoanalysis, sociology, anthropology, ethnology, and political science all purport to enrich our comprehension of individual and social behavior, but it is not at all apparent that the investigators in these areas have a clear sense of the goals of their disciplines, and much less a comprehension of the bond that unites them with their sister disciplines. It is as though each discipline speaks with its own xv

15 xvi CALVIN O. SCHRAG tongue, contributing mortar and bricks for a tottering Tower of Babel that threatens our present age with a widespread conceptual confusion about the nature and destiny of man. There are competing methodologies, often leading to outright hostility; conflicting conceptual schemes producing a proliferation of images and models of man; and widespread uncertainty as to the goals which are to be achieved. The putative purpose of the human sciences is to yield information, knowledge, and understanding of human behavior and human institutions. The centralizing epistemological space of the human sciences is humanitas, but a perceptive observer of the scene is quickly led to the conclusion that this center has been displaced and that our understanding of man has become pulverized into peripheral bits of information. We hope that by addressing the topic of the foundations of the human sciences some of the critical issues surrounding the contemporary crisis in the sciences of man could be clarified and explored. It will be up to the reader to judge to what extent this hope has been fulfilled by the following essays. The contributions in this volume encompass a rather broad spectrum of cognate disciplines, including psychology, sociology, political science, communication science, history of religion, and philosophy. Not only, however, is there a diversity of disciplines represented: there is also a colorful variety of points of view expressed. The contributed essays do not congeal into a monolithic philosophical and scientific program. Some of the contributors find in phenomenology an explicit program, well-designed to address the current crisis in the sciences of man. Others appeal to phenomenology principally as a method, and still others fmd the main contribution of phenomenology to reside in a cognitive attitude through which issues in the human sciences can be reformulated afresh. There are those who are professedly Husserlian in their approach; others consult the more existential reflections of Heidegger; and still others appeal to Alfred Schutz's phenomenology of the social world. The reader will detect throughout recurring influences of the hermeneutical phenomenology of Paul Ricoeur and Hans-Georg Gadamer. The critical theory of Habermas and the psychoanalysis of Freud are examined with regard to their more indirect and oblique bearing upon a phenomenology of the human sciences. And in some cases the approach taken by the author cannot be considered to be phenomenological at all. This diversity of approaches and perspectives far from being a negative feature of the format is rather to be seen as a vitalization of that radical reflection that is required in coming to grips with the central problems in our knowledge of man. This diversity yields a dialogical format of critical exchange, through which alone the original task of philosophy is accomplished time and again. Purdue University CAL VIN O. SCHRAG Secretary General of the I.S.P.HS.

16 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This volume contains a selection of papers from three congresses of the International Society for Phenomenology and Human Sciences, an affiliate of the World Phenomenology Institute. Thanks are due to Professor Calvin O. Schrag, coeditor of this volume, who as secretary general of our society organized its first congress at Purdue University (phenomenology and the Human Sciences, July 1979). Gratitude is expressed to Professors Joseph Kockelmans and Donal Polkinghorn for their cooperation in organizing the second congress of ISPHS in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the premisses of the WPI (Foundations of Morality and the Human Sciences, August 1981). Professors David Gruender and Eugene Kaelin facilitated the program of the Society at the Interamerican Philosophy Congress in Tallahassee (phenomenology and Human Rights, October 1981). We thank them sincerely. The dedicated help and cooperation of my assistants Peter Dorfmann and Rebecca Ramsay during the Cambridge conference cannot be forgotten. The research in the foundations of morality which led to the formulation of the above programs has been conducted over a period of three years in the American Phenomenology Seminar held every year at the summer headquarters of the WPI in North Pomfret, Vermont. Scholars from various countries took part in our investigations, which were moderated by Professor Dallas Laskey. The Machette Foundation has repeatedly given us financial support. Its director, Dr. Eeckles, deserves special recognition for his understanding of our work. We are also grateful to the De Rance Foundation for supporting one of the seminars. I would like to emphasize that in the present volume the dialogue between phenomenology and human sciences, initiated by the International Husserl and Phenomenological Research Society in 1974 (paris Conference 1975), and carried out further by the World Phenomenology Institute through its affiliated International Society for Phenomenology and Literature (1974), International Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences (1976), as well as through the Institute's annual two-semester program of research seminars and symposia, The Boston Forum for the Interdisciplinary Phenomenology of Man, is brought to fruition. It is an opportune occasion xvii

17 xviii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS to express my warm appreciation to the "Harvard Friends of the World Phenomenology Institute" - John Kenneth Galbraith, Otto Eckstein and James Duesenberry - for their precious support and encouragement. A-T. T.