Abstract
A phenomenology of self-evidence has to begin with ascertaining the primary locus of self-evidence, which seems to me to be none other than consciousness. While phenomenologists have sufficiently recognised the intentionality of consciousness, the self-evidencing, self-illuminating character of consciousness has not been brought to the forefront. I propose to dwell on this briefly, before moving on to the question of truth and self-evidence.
First read in a symposium at the annual meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy held at the New School for Social Research, New York, 1970. The other symposiasts were Richard Zaner and David Levin. The paper was subsequently published in David Carr and Edward Casey (Eds.), Explorations in Phenomenology (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1973).
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Notes
E. Husserl, Ideen I, Sec. 85. Also P. Ricœur, Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary, trans. Erazim V. Kohak (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966), Pt. III, Chap. 2.
M. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London, 1962), pp. 294–295, 383.
On the stronger version of the self-intimating character of the mental, a mental state p (belonging to A) is self-intimating for A if and only if: (1) p and (2) p logically implies (A believes that p). It has been argued, e.g., by Margolis (The Journal of Philosophy LXVII, No.21, Nov. 5, 1970) that there would always be some nonequi-valent true description d1 of p such that A does not believe, at the time he has p, in d1. I concede this point, but want to suggest a weaker version which may be stated as follows: p is self-intimating for A if and only if: (1) p and (2) there is at least one true description dk of p such that A believes, at the time he has p, in dk. This weaker version of self-intimating nature of mental states does not make one’s mind fully transparent to oneself but also avoids the other extreme of a possible total opacity.
Merleau-Ponty, op. cit., Preface.
For further elaboration of this concept of the given, see my Phenomenology and Ontology (Phaenomenologica No. 37) (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1970).
F. Brentano, The True and the Evident, ed. Oskar Kraus, trans. R.M. Chisholm et al. (New York: 1966), pp. 118, 122.
Ibid., p. 126.
Ibid., p. 55.
E. Husserl, Logical Investigations, II, Sec. 2, p. 127.
I do not wish to suggest that Brentano and Husserl are giving a verbal or nominal definition of “knowledge” in terms of “evidence” and “true.” The definition is intended to be a real definition based on eidetic intuition of the essence of knowledge as exemplified in the paradigmatic case of perceptual knowledge. It is the choice of this instance as paradigmatic which may be regarded as being arbitrary; but again — as in all cases of eidetic intuition — the choice of the paradigm case and the subsequent variation are determined by a prereflective, nascent, vague acquaintance with the essence which eidetic variation and resulting intuition bring to reflective clarity.
P. Ricœur, Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology, trans. E.G. Ballard and L.E. Embree (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1967), pp. 98–99.
E. Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik, p. 106.
Ideen I, Sec. 16.
D.M. Levin, Reason and Evidence in Husserl’s Phenomenology (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1970).
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© 1985 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht
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Mohanty, J.N. (1985). Towards a Phenomenology of Self-Evidence. In: The Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy. Phaenomenologica, vol 98. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5049-8_7
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