Luft, Husserl's Phenomenological Discovery of the Natural Attitude

Abstract

In this paper I will give a systematic account of Husserl's notion of the natural attitude in the development from its first presentation in Ideas I (1913) until Husserl's last years. The problem of the natural attitude has to be dealt with on two levels. On the thematic level, it is constituted by the correlation of attitude and horizon, both stemming from Husserl's theory of intentionality. On the methodic level, the natural attitude is constituted by three factors: naturalness, naivity and normality. I shall conclude by sketching out a possible motivation for leaving the natural attitude and thus for entering the sphere of phenomenology.

I. Introduction

Among the great themes of Husserl's phenomenology--such as intentionality, the reduction, transcendental subjectivity, intersubjectivity, the life-world--one generally does not consider Husserl's notion of the natural attitude .[2] After all, was it not Husserl's whole intention as a philosopher to overcome the naivity and fallacy of the natural attitude and to move, employing the classical Greek dichotomy, from a naive doxa to an episteme, to a philosophy as ”rigorous science”? [3] However if it is his claim, as it is, that all philosophy before him has failed to perform the phenomenological reduction, in other words, that all pre-phenomenological philosophy has unconsciously remained on the ground of the natural attitude, one can begin to see how central his concept of the natural attitude must be. The natural attitude is pervasive and dominant, as long as the phenomenological reduction, inaugurating phenomenology itself, has not been performed. Hence I want to raise the question: What exactly is this natural attitude? How is it characterized and what does it mean to overcome it? If this natural attitude is so fundamental that all philosophy before Husserl has overlooked it (or at least not fully grasped it, though some philosophers, such as Heracleitus or Descartes have glimpsed rudimentary fragments of it), how does it become explicit in the first place? This paper will argue that the phenomenological discovery of the natural attitude, hence the natural attitude itself, ought to be considered one of the great themes of Husserlian phenomenology. The natural attitude already implicitly belongs to those previously mentioned themes and, even though it is Husserl's project to overcome it, its dominance can be seen by the fact that it ultimately acquires a late recognition and restoration in the Crisis.[4]

Husserl never systematically worked out a full and consistent theory of the natural attitude. This notion is rather, to use Fink's often quoted term [5], an ”operative concept” in Husserl's thinking that serves as an unthematical basis for further thought. The task of this paper is thus to reconstruct a theory of the essential content of this natural attitude, as well as the way it becomes thematic in the first place. This task has two levels, a thematic and a methodic level: in speaking thematically about the natural attitude, describing it in its content (on the thematic level), we are obviously speaking from another standpoint. If the natural attitude is, as the name suggests, a title for our everyday life, then speaking about it means we have, in one way or the other, already superseded its boundaries on a methodic level. To put it as Hegel would: seeing the limit as limit means it has already been surpassed. A description of the natural attitude will therefore nolens volens stand outside of it, occupy or speak in a different attitude. So much is intrinsic to the thematization of this phenomenon.

II. The two levels of description: thematic – methodic

What I have already stated gives us two clues as to how we should proceed. Firstly, we have to differentiate, on the one hand, between a thematical description of the natural attitude in its content, and on the other, our position in describing it. Whereas the description gives us an account of the natural attitude itself (as the theme), the methodic reflection upon this description will give an account of what it means to be in the natural attitude. A phenomenological analysis of the natural attitude will have to make the difference, in other words, between an object-level and a meta-level. The object level will give a description of the natural attitude itself, whereas the meta-level will clarify that which makes this attitude ’natural'. This will become clearer as I proceed. For now we can keep in mind that what makes this phenomenological account of the phenomenon of the natural attitude so interesting and yet curious is the interdependence and inseparability of theme and method.

Let us now see how these two levels of analysis are interwined. If the natural attitude is in one way or another a title for our everyday life, and if thematizing this attitude already means being in another attitude, then it can be said that the natural attitude is constituted precisely by the fact that it is not thematical in or by the natural attitude. In other words, being in the natural attitude, I am unaware of being in this attitude. Hence, this is exactly the reason why this attitude is called natural. The natural attitude is hidden to itself; thematizing this attitude--discovering it, as the title of this paper says--means already being in another attitude, namely, the philosophical attitude, of which we now know nothing. Therefore Fink is perfectly right to call the natural attitude a ”transcendental notion,” [6] because it only ever becomes a philosophical notion, that is, it only becomes thematic, if one stands in the philosophical (read: transcendental) attitude. It only becomes thematizable to the philosopher who is defined precisely by the fact that he stands outside of the natural attitude. This, the first of the three main constitutive factors on the methodic meta-level making up the full concept of the natural attitude I shall call naturalness, alluding to the name Husserl gives to the phenomenon. I want to pin down the term ”natural” to its etymological root from the Latin nasci, to be born, to grow: the natural attitude, speaking generally and very formally, undergirds the everyday life we live, as it were, naturally, i.e. dealing in a ”straight forward” way with other human beings, animals, plants, things, making plans, performing actions, pursuing interests etc. Myself, my surroundings and the people I deal with are all just common and natural. To call this ”situation” natural would be absurd for someone living in the natural attitude, yet making this mode of daily life explicit and thematic requires that we are no longer in it. The term ”natural” thus gives a thematic description of out life as it is carried out ”naturally,” but the fact that this is so can only become explicit in another attitude.

Mentioning these modes of everyday existence--dealing with other beings, acting, planning, etc.--we already have a first thematic account on how life in the natural attitude is performed. In our life we are dealing with certain things, entities. This dealing-with them implies that they are in some way given to us. The structure of givenness and having of the object, as the reader will have noted, is based upon the general structure of intentionality. This, Brentano's great philosophical discovery, was more thoroughly developed in Husserl's Logical Investigations [7] and henceforth remained an essential category in Husserl's thought. The way of givenness as our mode of lived-experiencing ( erleben) any kind of entity is correlative to the manner these entities are given to us in and through our intentional acts. Intentionality is the general structure of human subjectivity that serves as the basic level of any kind of human life. [8] If this is so, it must be possible at least in part to develop a theory of the natural attitude from this doctrine.

III. The extended structure of intentionality: act – situation – attitude and its correlative: the horizon

Intentionality is the structure of acts in which entities are given to me in general, but I can also send out active intentional acts (rays of acts) towards something. I can, as we say ”intentionally,” that is to say, deliberately tune my attention to that which is not seen presently by turning my head. Alternatively I can view something in my surroundings more closely that was merely at the margin of my attention, e.g., I can tune my attention explicitly to the tea cup that before was next to my computer unnoticed. In doing so, I do not just see a three-dimensional x, but this ”thing” is given to me as something from which I can drink. The way of givenness of something to me implies that it is always given to me as something. This structure of something-as-something ( t” katˆ tin—s ) alludes to Heidegger’s notion of the ”hermeneutical as.” [9] It can, I believe, be developed from Husserl's theory of intentionality: Something is always given to our intentional acts in a way of givenness; however, this way of givenness reveals itself already as something in my daily life. For example, this three-dimensional x is given as a cup for drinking, this y as food to eat, this z as a person, more specifically as a friend or stranger, etc. My surroundings are not just a formal system of intentional givenness, but a nexus of meaning.

When realizing this, I also notice that this way of givenness as something is not fixed once and for all, in the sense that I merely passively, receptively receive given entities as fixed. On the contrary, my life is structured by a multiplicity of active interests governing my manner of dealing with things. I am never solely passive, but rather am devoted to certain things, I pursue certain goals, etc. To use another example: If I were a businessman I would not primarily see a house as a place for living (or, for that matter, just a three-dimensional x), but as an object of sale and business. If I were an architect, I would view it under the perspective of its construction, of the order of the rooms, the way the windows allow for the light to come in, etc. Hence, daily life, according to Husserl, is a life of interests. [10] I am never indifferent to the things around me, but rather my view depends on certain interests: e.g. I am hungry, or I am working in my job as a businessman, or I am devoted to my hobbies. Even when I am tired and losing interest in things generally and am thus only ”interested,” if we can call it that, in letting go and giving in to my tiredness, even then I am not indifferent. Interest, in the manner Husserl understands, can also be illustrated by the Latin origin of the word: inter-esse means to be among things, to be within a certain context.

Let us now look more closely at this notion of interest. Different ways of being interested can coincide in one and the same person. I can look at this object x as an aesthetic object, as practical in a general sense, as specifically practical in this or that sense. Correspondingly, nobody is just a businessman, just a... Shifting from one interest to the other lies within my free will. The fact that I always perceive a thing in a certain interest I shall term situation.[11] I am always in a certain situation, in the sense that I always have a certain, specific interest in something. I do not live jumping from one situation to the next as if there were ”gaps” in between. Rather I always live in a certain context within a flow of temporal succession. Also, my interest within a situation is not limited to this certain entity, but can be shifted to any other entity in the same form of interest. It is here that the term attitude comes into play.

My specific interest in a certain entity, my situation in other words, is always embraced or surrounded by an attitude. The attitude is like a halo (or an aura) around a certain act of interest. Being in the attitude of the businessman, let me call it the ”business attitude,” my intentional rays of interest will be carried out according to this attitude. Likewise, I can shift my attitude, as an act of my free will, to the architectural attitude, or I can shift to an aesthetic attitude and view the selfsame thing, the house in my example, as a work of art. Strictly speaking, my active life is always already carried out in a certain attitude of which there are many, some of which may still be unknown to me. More precisely, my daily life consists of many attitudes I live in or live through (” durchleben,” as Husserl would say), alternating with each other, which need not contradict each other but can rather referentially imply each other ( sie verweisen aufeinander [12]). This is why I usually do not notice the shifting from one to the other. Still, yet other attitudes might be in contradiction with others. This calls for a phenomenological description of the phenomenon of attitudes, that we will have to skip here. [13]

One constitutive element (an invariant), however, we can isolate from what it means to be in an attitude. Living through an attitude towards a certain thing in a given situation, this attitude is not limited to a certain entity. I can look at whichever entity I want to in the aesthetic attitude. In principle, there is no limit to that which I can view in the aesthetic attitude. Hence, an attitude is directed towards an open horizon of possible entities. Analogously to the way an act has its correlative intended object, so we can also say that an attitude has a correlative. But if in a certain attitude there is no limit in principle to that which can become an object of this attitude, what could be the correlative of an attitude? This correlative Husserl calls an open horizon or also a world. [14] Thus, we have a correlative to this world-horizon, namely an openness on the side of the experiencing person. In a way this openness can also be called a horizon, albeit on the side of the subject.

However, if there are several attitudes, there must also be a multitude of horizons; for the correlative of an attitude--of which there are many in my living reality--is a specific world, as when we speak of the world of business, the world of sport, of art, etc. My life as carried out in a succession of situations with their acts is hence always already engulfed by, or integrated into, a special attitude which has a horizon or has as its correlation a special world ( Sonderwelt). For example, correlated to the aesthetic attitude is the world of aesthetics (or art) in the sense that there is no limit to that which I can view aesthetically. This horizon or world is not in itself an entity but that which harbours or bears within it all possible entities of a certain attitude in their way of givenness to me. When I speak of world henceforth it shall be understood phenomenologically as horizon [15]; for now however I am still speaking of a special world, e.g., the world of business, sports, etc. In the same way, one can speak of special attitudes: the business attitude, the sports attitude etc. Both correlative parts have their horizonal structure.

Now let us point to one characteristic of this world-horizon. Living in a certain attitude and thus viewing certain things within this horizon that correlates to this attitude, I will see the things, but not the horizon in which they appear. This horizon or special world remains unthematic, because the object that I have thematically is that to which I tune my attention. I shall thus call this correlation of attitude and horizon a schema[16]: All things that are given to me, or that I am attuned to, I have in a certain attitude, which is an attitude not to a single thing, but towards a whole horizon of possible things. That which I view in this attitude is thematic, but the attitude itself will remain for the most part unthematic; I usually do not notice that I am in one attitude and shifting to the next. In the same sense, correlatively, the horizon is also unthematic, as my attention is attuned to a single thing that is given to me through a schema. [17]

IV. The correlative of Homeworld – Home-Attitude and the Alienworld. The notion of naivity.

Returning to the notion of the naturalness of my daily life we can now describe more closely how this life is carried out. I am always in one way or the other dealing with things, people, in a word: entities. Furthermore, I am dealing with them in a situation with a certain attitude that surrounds this situation like a halo. But in my natural life I live through a multiplicity of attitudes, e.g. my job attitude, my leisure attitude that may again be subdivided into the sports attitude, the traffic attitude, etc. The special horizons that correlate these attitudes are not separated worlds, limited within themselves, but they referentially imply each other, ”touch” each other or maybe overlap; they are not separate ”worlds,” but make up my life as a whole and the locus in which it is carried out. The universal notion ( Inbegriff) or field of this structure of attitudanal multiplicity and the correlative horizons in my natural life as a whole Husserl calls homeworld ( Heimwelt).[18] By this he menas the sphere in which we feel ”just natural,” at home and at ease. Hence this homeworld is not one world of a single individual, but an intersubjective world, a world of tradition, culture, religion (myths), collective values, i.e. a phenomenon of generativity. It is the world we are, literally, accustomed to. Therefore, this homeworld is the world of a certain family, society, people, nation with their historical tradition. [19] This homeworld is correlated to a ”home attitude,” as I shall call it, with its multiple subattitudes.

The term naturalness is a pure description of my daily life and bears no negative connotation. However, the structure of naturalness can take on a pejorative connotation. This is just the flip side of naturalness and stems, etymologically speaking, from the same root. This side Husserl calls naivity.[20] Why is this naturalness of the home attitude carried out in the homeworld naive? What does naive mean here and in what respect is it a negative characteristic of the natural attitude? Naturalness was defined on the methodic level as the fact that being in the natural attitude I know nothing of being in it. This we can now elucidate thematically with respect to the above. Being in the home attitude I live through concrete special attitudes which correlate to special concrete horizons and these horizons are essentially open horizons. This means that the horizon of the homeworld is principally not limited, it can be expanded in infinitum . Because this homeworld-horizon is the only horizon to the home-attitude, it is ”absolute.” The horizon might be limitlessly expandable, but it will still be understood in terms of the homeworld of or for the home attitude. Hence, the naivity of the natural attitude not only consists in the fact that being in the natural attitude I do not know of being in it, but also in the fact that, since I do not know of it as an attitude, I live in the belief that it is the only possible ”way of life.”

In fact, my home attitude is only one of many other attitudes constituted in the same manner. Every individual sociality (family, people, nation) has its home attitude, but there are many different socialities, with their own sets of subattitudes, with their own customs, traditions, myths, and rules, etc. This applies to all factual and possible socialities. The home attitude is in principle naive, because it sees itself as absolute. This does not mean that one home attitude perceives itself as the only existing attitude, but as the only home attitude for itself. All other forms of life it will view either as naive, or as primitive, or as simply alien, that is, incomprehensible. To set the home attitude as absolute means that no other attitude will become understandable as a home attitude, but only as an alien attitude correlating to an alienworld.

V. The naivity as pre-philosophical doxa

However, we need not talk of other cultures and their cultural presuppositions in relation to our homeworld to see that the natural home attitude is in itself naive. Daily life consists of a certain ”casualness” concerning its way of carrying itself out; daily life deals with things as artifacts, with human beings as friends, foes or strangers; it is practical and not theoretical (even if the ”daily life” of e.g. a chemist consists of performing laboratory experiments). Daily life in this sense is, as Husserl says alluding to the Greek term, dogmatic. [21] It is made up of certain relative opinions or beliefs, e.g. that my senses tell me the truth, that tomorrow will be Wednesday etc. These beliefs make no claim to be ”absolutely” true. From a theoretical (scientific) perspective, from the attitude of episteme, these beliefs might well be wrong: before Copernicus no one questioned the ”fact” that the world is a plane and not a sphere--which in fact turned out to be a ”pure belief.”

Thus, daily life consists of a set of opinions that do not even make the claim to be exact and absolutely true: to drive a car I need not know the chemical reactions going on inside the motor, etc. These beliefs are mere ”doxai,” they are not, and need not be, subject to an epistemic investigation. The naivity of this daily life, its naivity within its home attitude, thus consists in a limitedness or finitude to its doxic beliefs. Even though the horizon of the home attitude is endless in principle, it at the same time reveals in this structure its own finitude: in extending the horizon this attitude will always understand new, ”incoming” entities in its usual style. The style of understanding entities will be biased or, literally, presumptuous. This style will continue in a (homeworldly) concordance ( Einstimmigkeit) with what is familiar. Thus, the naivity consists in daily life’s setting of its doxic style of understanding entities as absolute. The doxa sets as absolute that which is in fact only relative. It does not realize that its beliefs are pure beliefs that could be wrong or perspectival, inadequate or biased.

Hence we now have introduced the second constitutive element of the natural attitude: its naivity, which is but the flip side of naturalness. Again, the same meta-structure as in naturalness can be employed to clarify this: seeing the natural attitude as naive already means having left it, but in a way that is not naive. The name ”doxa” only makes sense in opposition to ”episteme.” Is this not-naive attitude already the philosophical attitude? I want to suggest that it is not. I will do so by bringing two notions into relation to each other as I strive to understand the full structure of how Husserl views the natural attitude; these two notions are the episteme and the home attitude.

VI. The motivation for the scientific attitude

In the home attitude I live with a certain set of beliefs and opinions. These, however, can be disappointed. The belief that a stick is straight is shaken when being held into water it becomes at first sight ”crooked.” This is a simple example of how my visual perception can be surprised and shows that certain beliefs of my daily life are naive, that is, dogmatic. Here we can see the origin of episteme, of science, in the very basic sense of the desire to find out how things ”really” are. I want to know their ”real” being and not only one aspect of this being according to my opinion, which has been disappointed or has discovered uncertainties or contradictions within it. In other words, I want to understand absolutely as opposed to my relative opinion or belief. I start observing, experimenting, measuring, counting, etc., that is, I abstract from the opinions and beliefs of my naive attitudes, I look away from them, set them aside; in other words, I ”bracket” them.

This ”bracketing” inaugurates the scientific attitude; I position myself explicitly in an attitude that leaves the beliefs of my home attitude behind. I do this because I want to move from mere ”subjective” truths to ”objective” truths, from relativity to absoluteness, from doxa to episteme. This scientific attitude is essentially different from the subattitudes within the home attitude, as the latter only have relative truths: I can see the house as architectural phenomenon or as a work of art. Both attitudes are ”true” within the boundaries of their own ”logic,” but not in contrast to the other. In fact, there is no reason to set them in contrast to each other. However, in the scientific attitude, say the attitude of the physicist, I deliberately bracket these subjective opinions. These have their relative rights. Within an attitude an opinion will never be ”false,” only inadequate or wrong. In this scientific bracketing, however, the physicist will instead view the house as a three-dimensional x with certain attributes, which have nothing to do with relativity. I as a physicist will not see it as an artifact, but as an example of a certain species. This means looking away from certain qualities (house, art-work) and focusing on others that quantify it as a physical entity. This quantification is carried out in the natural sciences at the highest level as a process of mathematization. In doing so, these mathematical formulas are never relatively, but absolutely true, because mathematics, the paradigm of absolute truth, is not limited to any homeworld. On the contrary, any human being, hypothetically speaking, from any homeworld can be taught to understand mathematics. Despite their homeworldly customs, myths and specific ways of thinking, every normal human being of any culture can principally understand mathematics, [22] even though mathematics or formal logic and with this the process of mathematization happened to have occurred in the history of Western thought. [23]

Hence, the scientific attitude stems, or arises, from the home attitude. It is thus an attitude of a higher reflective level ( hšherstufige Einstellung ) that seeks to rectify or replace the relative beliefs of the home attitude with absolute truths by finding objective absolute knowledge as opposed to subjective relative opinions. So this scientific attitude with its sphere of absolute truths, however objective, still rests on the ground of the home attitude. It is an attitude on a higher level, but has its roots and its foundation in the home attitude, because initially it is the individual in his home attitude who realizes the limits and finitude of his relative home attitude and pushes himself away from this very sphere, now discovered to be relative, and strives to reach an absolute viewpoint. Although the process has only occurred in this one way--the mathematization of nature--in the tradition of Western thought, I want to insist on the fact that this scientific attitude has arisen from a specific home attitude and still rests on this homeworld. This is the case even though it is an absolute sphere that no longer has a necessary link to the home attitude it has sprung from. It is exactly this oblivion of its roots Husserl criticizes as ”naturalism” or ”objectivism.” [24]

VII. The General Thesis of the natural and the scientific attitude

In contrast to the home attitude and the scientific attitude arising from it, we are now prepared to fully grasp the entire notion of the natural attitude. The procedure that determines this, namely the eidetic variation, is quite easy to understand and is basic to Husserlian phenomenology. This method involves the sorting out of what a number of phenomena have in common by variating, i.e. considering several possibilities or transformations. Once we perform this we will quickly see its simplicity and we will probably ask why we have not employed this procedure before. However, this is only possible after having introduced the multiplicity of attitudes as a field of possible variation. This will give us the full notion of that what Husserl means by the natural attitude.

Let us recall. Firstly, I introduced the multiplicity of attitudes in the homeworld. These attitudes fall under the title of the home attitude. Arising from this attitude there is the scientific attitude which is not relative as are the homeworld-attitudes, but rather is absolute. What now, we can ask, do all these attitudes have in common? In my devotion to a certain action in a certain attitude, in my working, viewing, contemplating, experimenting etc., I still always believe that the reality or the world I am in, in which I am ”doing” these things, exists. Also, if I am doubting a certain thing, if my perception is disappointed, even completely annulled--if I, say, believe over there in the distance there is something and it turns out to be a mere shadow cast by something else--I still believe that the surrounding world ”around” this annulment exists. Even disappointments in certain things will not cross out the belief that the world itself will continue to exist. This general belief that the world exists Husserl calls the General Thesis of the natural attitude:

If this thesis is inherent in all attitudes it is, of course, never explicit, we are naive towards it. To paraphrase this, we can vary Kant's famous statement by saying: the belief that the world exists must accompany all my attitudes . In this broad sense the natural attitude is a primordial and anonymous passivity ( anonyme UrpassivitŠt ) or passive belief in a ”fact” that nobody has ever set it down as a thesis, as the somewhat incorrect title ”General Thesis” might imply. It is the general belief that all our actions, all our life rests on. The world is absolute facticity. Now we can see why the natural attitude would be too narrowly understood if one said it was simply the title of our everyday life and why I have instead called the form of our everyday life the home attitude. For the scientific attitude, even as distanced from the home attitude--that is, standing outside of this naivity-- also rests on this ground. In the scientific attitude I still believe in the general or absolute fact that the world exists. The scientific attitude might not be naive about the dogmatic claims and beliefs of the home attitude, but it is naive towards its own belief that the world exists. It thus harbours a naivity on a higher level: it does not know that it, too, is naive towards the General Thesis of the existence of the world. [27]

As we have said, the scientific, objective attitude can in principle be understood by all home attitudes. This is because the scientific attitude is merely an extrapolation, or abstraction, from a single home attitude, in this case, the attitude of Western thought, even as all possible home attitudes rest on the ground of the natural attitude as well. The scientific attitude thus stands in the midst of the several home attitudes like an island. The full notion of the natural attitude is hence the universality of an in principle endless number of home attitudes, which in turn break down into subattitudes, all sharing the belief that the world they are resting on as the original arch ( Ur-Arche) exists. This is the reason the home attitude must not be identified with the natural attitude, for it is the latter which undergirds a multiplicity of home attitudes; stated otherwise, from the other side, the natural attitude is built up or constituted by the multiplicity of home attitudes with their multiple subattitudes. However, the natural attitude is not the sum of all these special attitudes, but the totality or universal structure of what it means to be an attitude. Metaphorically speaking, the natural attitude is not the ”roof” under which these attitudes dwell, but rather the ground on which they unconsciously stand. The correlate of this universal natural attitude is nothing but the life-world itself.

VIII. Normality, Abnormality and the possibility of leaving the natural attitude

The multiplicity of home attitudes within the natural attitude leads to the third and ultimate methodic aspect that constitutes the full notion of the natural attitude, which can only be sketched out briefly. Each home attitude has its open horizon of the way entities can appear to and be understood by it. This open horizon is a horizon of understanding. In my home attitude I will understand things as this or that, according to any one of the many subattitudes within this home attitude. That is, in the home attitude I will always understand something in a certain in principle known sense, if not one, then another. The world as my homeworld is to me a harmonious horizon; the style of my living in the world and understanding it is one of concordance ( Einstimmigkeit). Husserl calls this universal style of concordance within my home attitude, without which the world as my homeworld would be simply absurd to me, normality.[28] There might be things unknown to me, but they do not call into question normality as a mode of existence. I will understand what is obscure or strange in the style that has become normal to me in the normality and naturalness of my homeworld. However, do we not have here the risk of fundamentally misunderstanding?

Having left the naivity of the home-attitude, as we have, we have given a description of the natural attitude as bearing a multiplicity of home attitudes. Each of these attitudes has its own style of normality which is gradually, more fundamentally, or even absolutely different from one another. One can move from relative differences of a certain tribe as opposed to its neighboring tribe, go to a certain society, a nation, a whole culture. Thus, the attempt to understand one entity in a home attitude that belongs to another homeworld with its home attitude will never understand this specific, typical thing in its own essence. It will never become understandable to me in the other home attitude. For example, I as a Westerner might understand in my home attitude this thing as a reeking lump of rotten substance, someone from East Asia might understand it as a delicacy, or vice versa. Thus, the normalities of the particular home attitudes collide. To the horizon of the home attitude hence belongs a dark outer horizon. Since this home attitude is constituted by normality, this outer horizon will be the abnormal, that which is principally not integrateable in the normal style of understanding. But we can see that the entity which is abnormal to us in our normality might be normal to the other homeworld. Therefore, it is not an absolute abnormality, rather an other normality that is abnormal to us . The outer horizon of this abnormality, Husserl calls, correlative to the homeworld, the alienworld ( Fremdwelt). In other words: that which is abnormal to our normality is necessarily conceived as alien. However, this alienity has its own, alien normality with its own concordance.

But if the home attitude has as its style of normality a limitlessly open horizon, how can I ever have a knowledge of this alienity? If the home attitude is constituted by concordance, if it is led by a normal style of understanding, how then can we ever experience the alien as alien? Coming out of my home attitude I will only be able to view the alien as abnormal, [29] not as a normality in itself that I do not (yet) understand. Husserl struggled with this paradox throughout his lifetime: How is it possible to leave the home attitude and ultimately the natural attitude? Is this not a paradoxical enterprise much like the legendary figure MŸnchhausen pulling himself out of the swamp by his own hair?

In conclusion, I want to suggest a possible solution. I believe the answer must lie in the concept of normality, which only makes sense as normality in contrast to the abormal that lies outside the horizon of our homeworld. This is the alienworld. How we get there, remains a riddle. The riddle is precisely that does not lie within our power to achieve this. However, is it not rather that the alien and the abnormal offers and opens itself up to us, but as abnormal and thus alien? It is this that awakens and enlightens our interest in the alien as alien.

If this is so, it is not we that question, but rather the alien itself that intrudes our horizon and calls us into question. So the question coming from that which lies beyond our normal, natural home leads right back to ourselves, thus changing us. This is changed into abnormal and alien that which is for us the most normal, well-known and homelike, that which we never know of in the first place: the natural attitude itself . The alien makes us perceive ourselves in our very everyday existence as alien. The alien outside our homeworld awakens the ”stranger in us all.” In experiencing this, we can never go back into our old self-evident knowledge of ourselves and our world. This is what the loss of naivity is all about. It may well be said that in discovering the natural attitude Husserl has taken up the old Greek problem of the doxa, but at the same time has reformulated it in the context of his phenomenology. This, and his late recognition of the natural attitude in the realization that all actions stem from it, is Husserl's contribution to Western philosophy. In this paper, however, I only wish to show the first step to this huge project which starts out--and can only do so--as a discovery of the natural attitude in its two mutually constitutive, methodic and thematical notions.

[2] In most introductions to Husserl's philosophy the Natural Attitude is treated as a mere transitional phase to describe the phenomenological reduction; see Rudolf Bernet/Iso Kern/Eduard Marbach, Edmund Husserl. Darstellung seines Denkens (Hamburg: Meiner, 1989), 58 ff. I know of no work on Husserl that explicitly devotes a chapter or section to it. Waldenfels in his study dwells on the proper right ( Eigenrecht) of the Natural Attitude, but he, too, fails to give a thorough description of it. See Bernhard Waldenfels, Das Zwischenreich des Dialogs. Sozialphilosophische Untersuchungen in Anschluss an Edmund Husserl (Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1971), 67 ff.

[3] See Edmund Husserl, ”Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft” (”Philosophy As Rigorous Science”), in: Edmund Husserl, Aufsätze und Vorträge (1911-1921), mit ergänzenden Texten, ed. by Thomas Nenon and Hans Reiner Sepp, (Husserliana [Hua.] XXV) (Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1987), 3 ff. I would also like to express my special thanks to Donn Welton for his comments on the content and to Talia Welsh and Felix O'Murchadha for their stylistic corrections.

[4] See Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie, Hua. VI, ed. by Walter Biemel (Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1954), ¤ 51, 176-7: ”Die Aufgabe einer 'Ontologie der Lebenswelt'” (”The Task of an 'Ontology of the Life-World'”). Not only is the task of this ontology only feasible going back into the Natural Attitude, but also the founding of all scientific and philosophical efforts on the ground of the relativity of the Life-World can be seen as a recognition of the Natural Attitude as an ” Ur-Doxa” that can never be uplifted or bracketed.

[5] Eugen Fink, Nähe und Distanz. Phänomenologische Vorträge und Aufsätze, ed. by Franz-Anton Schwarz (Alber: Freiburg/Munich, 1976) 190 ff. Fink, however, sees as the central operative concepts the notions of ”phenomenon”, ”Epoch”, ”constitution”, ”achievement” ( Leistung) and ”transcendental logic” (phenomenological language) (see ibid., 203), himself presupposing the Natural Attitude as the basis for the issues he raises. Hence it can be said that to Fink himself the Natural Attitude remains as an operative concept overshadowed by these aforementioned notions above! Moreover, one might suspect that Fink's analysis of the phenomenological predication in ¤ 10 of the Sixth Cartesian Meditation (Eugen Fink: VI. Cartesianische Meditation. Teil 1. Die Idee einer transzendentalen Methodenlehre, ed. by Hans Ebeling, Jann Holl and Guy van Kerckhoven [Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer, 1988a]) implicitly bears a definition of the language of the Natural Attitude. Likewise does his notion of a phenomenological transcendental idealism as a dialectical relation between the Natural and Phenomenologizing Attitude (see ibid., ¤ 12, 170 ff.). However, this ”definition” could only ex negativo be derived from the positive definition of the attitude of the phenomenologizing ego. In other words, in Fink the Natural Attitude only becomes crucial in the enworlding of the transcendental ”truths” into the Natural Attitude in the ”transcendental-pedagogical imlications” of phenomenology.

[8] I use the term ”life” here in order to imply all kinds of human action, not only conscious, i.e. mental acts, but also all human activity, down to physical life on the level of mere instincts which Husserl tries to grasp under the titel ” Triebintentionalität” (see esp. Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Dritter Teil ,ed. by Iso Kern (Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1973) Hua XV, Text No. 34, 593 ff. and appendix XLIII, 597 ff.). As I employ this concept of intentionality as a mere basic framework for the phenomenon of attitude, it is not necessary to go into this issue of intentionality more deeply.

[9] Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993, 17th ed.) ¤ 32, 148 ff., esp. 149. Husserl himself is not blind to these pragmatical interests, as is oftentimes insinuated. To him, these pragmatical usages are a matter of the relative being as opposed to its limes of absolute, optimal appearance, which interests the philosopher. For Husserl, the relative being comes at the very end of the account of the constitution, whereas to Heidegger, it is the pr—teron pr˜s hem‡s . See Edmund Husserl, Analysen zur passiven Synthesis , ed. by Margot Fleischer (Den Haag: Nijhoff,1966) Hua. XI, 23-4. ”Das thematische Interesse, das in Wahrnehmungen sich auslebt, ist in unserem wissenschaftlichen Leben von praktischen Interessen geleitet, und das beruhigt sich, wenn gewisse für das jeweilige Interesse optimale Erscheinungen gewonnen sind, in denen das Ding so viel von seinem letzten Selbst zeigt, als dieses praktische Interesse fordert. Oder vielmehr es zeichnet sich als praktisches Interesse ein relatives Selbst vor: Das, was praktisch genügt, gilt als das Selbst. So ist das Haus selbst und in seinem wahren Sein, und zwar hinsichtlich seiner puren kärperlichen Dinglichkeit, sehr bald optimal gegeben, also vollkommen erfahren von dem, der es als Käufer oder Verkäufer betrachtet. Für den Physiker und Chemiker erschiene solche Erfahrungsweise vällig oberflächlich und vom wahren Sein noch himmelfern.”

[10] See Edmund Husserl, Erste Philosophie (1923/24), ed. by Rudolf Boehm (Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1959), Hua. VIII, 92 ff. ”Interest” here means not only the thematic interest in the pursued object, but also, implicitly, the co-thesis of the existence of that which is intended; interest as a general structure of human life always implies the thesis of the being of the world. See also Edmund Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie , ed. by Walter Biemel (Den Haag: Nijhoff: 1962), Hua. IX, appendix XI, 410 ff., esp. 412-14 and Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität , appendix XXV, 414 f.

[11] This term is not so much used by Husserl in the way I am employing it above, but rather in Fink's stressing of the concrete situation in which I can perform the Epoch. See Eugen Fink, VI. Cartesianische Meditation, Teil 2, 23 ff. and Husserl's critical notations in footnotes 66 (23), 69, 70 (both on 24). In 70, Husserl writes, as a passing remark: ”Natürlich waches Leben ist Akte vollziehen--jeder Akt hat seine Situation, aktives Leben ist ein einheitliches Leben, ein von Situation in Situation †bergehen und in ihr Ziele Haben, also von Ziel zu Ziel und im verwirklichenden Tun (Handeln im weitesten Sinn) von Erzielung, Verwirklichung zu ihren Zielen †bergehen.”

[13] This would be the task of a phenomenological psychology which need not have performed the reduction and thus need not stand in the transcendental sphere. It would be an eidetic account of the attitudes within the Natural Attitude. One of these tasks would be to see if there is a link or necessary connection between a certain attitude and a certain fundamental mood ( Grundstimmung) in Heidegger's sense. Defining the Natural Attitude itself, however, is only possible in and through the Epoch.

[14] See Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, appendix XVII, 459 ff., esp. 460: ”Jede jener 'Welten' [of special interests] hat ihre durch den Berufszweck bestimmte besondere Universalität, jede den unendlichen Horizont einer gewissen 'Allheit'.” On the same page Husserl coins for this phenomenon the often used term ” Sonderwelt,” which I here translate as special world. The notion of the openness of the horizon here also implies that it is an open horizon for my possibilities within an attitude; this is an openness of ” Vermäglichkeiten”, see ibid, 164.

[15] In doing so, I am aware of the fact that this is not the only meaning Husserl attributes to the notion of world. World as Life-World is also the anthropological world with its sedimentations of meaning, tradition, and culture; hence this world is also a historical world. See Edmund Husserl: Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Ergänzungsband, ed. by Reinhold N. Smid (Den Haag: Nijhoff 1993), Hua. XXIX, Text No. 28: ”Die anthropologische Welt,” 321 ff., and ibid., Text No. 34: ”Zur Kritik an den Ideen I,” 424 ff., esp. 425-6. Despite these further differentiations and definitions of the notion of the Life-World, this notion, too, falls under the category of Fink's ”operative concepts.”

[16] In this sense the Kantian notion of schema as schematism of the pure notions of the ’Verstand' ( Schematismus der reinen Verstandesbegriffe ) is embedded in this more universal schematism which pertains not only to objects of perception but to the totality of world appearing for the human being in this world. Whereas the Kantian model is merely epistemological, it is more deeply founded in a schematism that I shall call ontological.

[18] See Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität, appendix XI (214 ff.) as one paradigm text of the many texts of Husserl's late period where he deals with this issue. For a thorough interpretation of this concept and how from it arises the concept of the one world as the full sense of the Life-World or rather, on the contrary, how the full notion of homeworlds with their correlative alienworlds constitute the full sense of the life-world, see Klaus Held, ”Heimwelt, Fremdwelt, die eine Welt,” Phänomenologische Forschungen 24/25 (1991), 305-37. See also the newly published study on Husserl's concept of the homeworld in the framework of a ”generative phenomenology”: Anthony J. Steinbock, Home and Beyond. Generative Phenomenology after Husserl (Evanston/Illinois: Northwestern, 1995).

[19] Concerning the closedness and relative expansion of this homeworld Husserl employs the image of an onion that has several layers concentrically surrounding the core, see Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität, Text No. 27, 429 ff. This metaphor is however tricky, for one should not understand the universality of the world as the universal life world as the ”big onion.” This image only serves to illustrate the layerdness of the homeworld.

[23] This process of science as the mathematization of nature is, of course, intrinsic to Western thought. See Husserl's famous reconstruction of this process in ¤ 9 of the Crisis. But the point above is, quod erit demonstrandum , that the scientific attitude stems from the home attitude and thus stands on the basis of the latter. Husserl saw this process as a specifically European phenomenon which, however, has left its rightful path and has to be brought back to it. He envisions this as the rightful reminiscience of the Greek idea of the Europeisation ( Europäisierung) of mankind – a concept that has been highly critcized as being Euro-centred. For a defence of this idea as a (forgotten) positive category of unity, see Klaus Held, ”Husserls These von der Europäisierung der Menschheit,” Phänomenologie im Widerstreit: Zum 50. Geburtstag Edmund Husserls, ed. by Christoph Jamme and Otto Päggeler (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1989), 13-39.

[27] This fact of the being of the world Husserl also calls an absolute fact in the sense that this original certainty and belief can never be crossed out by doubt or anullment. Analogously as the scientific attitude is naive towards its own participation in the General Thesis and thus its origin in the Natural Attitude, Fink speaks of a philosophical naivity to which the philosopher falls prey if he has not himself, although he might not stand on the ground of the General Thesis, analyzed himself, see Eugen Fink, VI. Cartesianische Meditation, Teil II, 5: ”Wir stehen jetzt nach der †berwindung der Weltnaivität in einer neuen, in einer transzendentalen Naivität.”

[29] This is obviously Fink's understanding of the abnormal, as something that strikes us as something from outside our horizon and thus leads us to the reduction, whereas to Husserl the abnormal is something already constituded within the normality of our homeworld. In the outline to a planned systematic work, Fink writes, as a note: ”Die Anomalität als Motivation der Skepsis an der 'Weltexistenz'.” (Eugen Fink, VI. Cartesianische Meditation. Teil II , 5) In his notation, Husserl replaces the term ”Anomalität” with ”Modalisierbarkeit aller Einzelerfahrung” (ibid., footnote 6) – obviously an action (a variation) within the world as opposed to an absurd or tragic event intruding our world; see ibid., 30 f. In a later text from Husserl, from the year 1931 (Husserl read the above quoted text in 1930), he does make the connection between alienity and abnormality (Edmund Husser, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität, Text No. 10, 139): ”Problem der Erweiterung der Welt durch Besetzung des leeren Welthorizonts mit einer anderen historischen Totalität, einer fremden, total fremdartiger, in diesem Sinn abnormer Menschen einer abnormen Umwelt.” (italics added) To Husserl, it is obviously a problem of our expanding the horizon of our own world. See Anthony J. Steinbock, Home and Beyond , who makes the distinction of ”anomalous” and ”abnormal,” the first being a discordance within our homeworld, the latter being the normality of the alienworld, intruding our own normal homeworld and thus striking us as abnormal: ”When we charaterize something as discordant [...], discordance has merely a descriptive or normatively insignificant quality. It is not qet normatively significant as 'abnormal,' but rather 'anomalous.'” (ibid., 132).

Husserl's Phenomenological Discovery of the Natural Attitude