Husserl’s Phenomenological Reduction And The Exclusion Of God

By Carlos R. Bovell

[Carlos R. Bovell is a graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary and is studying history of philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto.]

It is the distinctive peculiarity of phenomenology to embrace within the sphere of its eidetic universality all cognitions and sciences and, more particularly with respect to everything in them which is an object of immediate insight, or at least would have to be such if they were genuine cognitions.

So writes Husserl in the first book of the Ideas.[1] However, God, the transcendent, is excluded by Husserl in the phenomenological reduction. The experience of God, according to Husserl, is not immediate but rather “highly mediated” and must therefore be excluded. In this article, I consider how a pre-suppositional apologist might argue that the presentation of God to humans as his creatures gives sufficient reason for humans to be unable to exclude God when performing the εποχη.

An obvious predecessor to Husserl’s phenomenology is Descartes. Husserl recognizes him as such when he writes, “The striving toward phenomenology was present already in the wonderfully profound Cartesian fundamental considerations.. . .”[2] Husserl goes on to mention Locke, Hume, and especially Kant as others who came closest to what Husserl himself is attempting to do, but my focus will be upon Descartes and the possible ramifications of his work (and that of his contemporaries) for the possibility of the exclusion of God when undertaking the phenomenological reduction. I will present a few strategies that may help apologists formulate arguments such that any philosopher interested in doing phenomenology will not be able to bracket God in the way Husserl stipulates—that is, to exclude God entirely.[3]

I

During the course of Descartes’ radical exercise in doubting everything that can possibly be doubted, he mentions that “there is an ancient belief somehow fixed in my mind that God can do anything and that I was created by him with the kind of existence I enjoy”[4] He then surmises that there is a choice to be made between deliberately undergoing the sort of radical doubt that he is in the business of pursuing in the Meditations and clinging to the belief in God—an all-powerful, all-benevolent being. Descartes states explicitly that there is a serious problem for the existence of God if all that appears to his (Descartes’) mind’s eye is not in fact what it appears to be, for then this all-benevolent God must have involved himself in deception of some kind (and this is unthinkable). Descartes, for his part, explains that in what follows he will “assume that everything said about God above is fictitious”; yet an astute reader may begin to wonder, as Marion seems to do,[5] if Descartes manages so successfully to disregard God.

Descartes admits that “familiar beliefs return constantly and, almost in spite of me, they seize hold of my judgement as if it were bound to them by established custom and the law of familiarity”[6] To overcome these tendencies, he proposes to turn his “will around in exactly the opposite direction” and “suppose that, not God who is the source of truth but some evil mind, who is all powerful and cunning, has devoted all their energies to deceiving me.”[7] I do not think that this is just a manner of speaking. Descartes seems not to be able to do away with God entirely (since his ideas must come from somewhere) and confesses as much in his first meditation. He supposes instead that if he imagines God’s opposite, he will accomplish the equivalent of theoretically doubting God’s existence.

Toward the beginning of his second meditation, after recapping what the first meditation had achieved, Descartes writes, “Is there not some God, or whatever I might call him, who puts these very thoughts into me?”[8] He continues:

Nonetheless I convinced myself that there is nothing at all in the world, no sky, no earth, no bodies; is it not therefore that I do not exist? However, I certainly did exist, if I convinced myself of something. There is some unidentified deceiver, however, all powerful and cunning who is dedicated to deceiving me constantly. Therefore, it is indubitable that I also exist, if he deceives me.[9]

Descartes here seems to see a fundamental tie between the I that he discovers via his meditation and “God” who puts whatever thoughts he (Descartes) thinks in him. In other words, when he tries to doubt God, he finds that he cannot. Some presuppositional apologists may be willing to begin conversation by adapting Descartes’ meditation, perhaps by drawing existential focus to the human race’s innate sense that there is indeed a very crucial and fundamental relation between the I and its particular (or generic) experience (and notion) of God that simply cannot be circumvented: the possibility of our very thought has something intrinsically to do with the peculiar relationship between the structure of human consciousness and God.

II

Another possibility for linking Descartes’ Meditations to Husserl’s phenomenological reduction might be suggested by the following passage:

But insofar as one idea represents one thing and another represents something else, it is clear that they are very different from each other. For undoubtedly those that represent substances to me are something more and, so to speak, contain more intentional reality than those that represent only modes or non-essential features of substances. Again, the idea by which I understand a supreme God, who is eternal, infinite, all-knowing, omnipotent and the creator of everything that is outside himself, clearly contains more intentional reality than those ideas that represent finite substances.[10]

On the face of it, Husserl would probably grimace at Descartes’ talk of representation. Still, I believe that Descartes’ talk of ideas and intentional reality would ring true for Husserl. I shall, therefore, say a bit about the idea of God and how he might appear as intentional reality to us, his creatures.

Husserl maintains that “the transition to pure consciousness by the method of transcendental reduction leads necessarily to the question about the ground for the now-emerging factualness of the corresponding constitutive consciousness.”[11] He insists that he is not interested in ground as (physical) “cause” but ground as “source” of “value-possibilities” and “value-actualities.” He continues: “We pass over whatever else, from the point of view of religious consciousness, is able, as a rationally grounding motive, to lead to the same principle.” This seems to prohibit the inclusion for investigation of any religious motivations for the wide array of human value-possibilities and value-actualities since “what concerns us here, after merely indicating different groups of such rational grounds for <believing in> the existence of an extra-worldly ‘divine’ being is that this being would obviously transcend not merely the world but ‘absolute’ consciousness.”[12] So not only is the transcendence of God different in kind from the transcendence of the world in which we live, the absoluteness of God is of a different kind than the absoluteness of consciousness.

Programmatically, Husserl is not necessarily concerned with the “fact as such” but with the “fact as source.” It is interesting to note, however, when a similar case arises with respect to universals and essences, he decides to treat these quite differently. The universals/essences are somewhat problematic insofar as they can act as both fact as fact and fact as source in such a way that it can prove increasingly difficult to distinguish meaningfully between the two. I suggest that an analogous selective openness, such as the one Husserl is willing tentatively to extend to universals and essences during the course of transcendental reductions, can (and should) also be extended by presuppositional apologists to presentations of God. Is not the creator God problematically essential to the structure of human consciousness to the effect that this God is ineluctably both fact and source?

Husserl maintains that “we cannot go on excluding transcendencies without limit. .. [since] there would not remain. .. any possibility of a science of pure consciousness.”[13] The presuppositional apologist (and perhaps many others besides) can insist that God’s manner of presentation is such that he sustains the phenomenological reduction in such a way that he is not entirely excluded. For one thing, the idea of God, as Descartes was quick to point out, is not of the same order as the idea of any other object, mathematical objects included. Spinoza puts it this way: once a person understands (as clearly as possible) “that existence belongs to God’s nature, or that the concept of God involves necessary existence. .. no one will be able to doubt whether he has any idea of God (which is certainly the first basis of human happiness).”[14] The point to stress is that this idea of God is fundamentally like no other. The disparity stems not least from the realization that “a created thing can be said to enjoy existence, because its existence is not of its own essence. But God cannot be said to enjoy existence, for the existence of God is God Himself.”[15] The presuppositional apologist can go on to claim here that God is so intricately tied to our innate idea of him (or to any idea really) that he cannot be absolutely excluded in the manner that Husserl suggests.

III

There is an additional strategy that one might adopt when attempting to argue that those undergoing phenomenological reductions will not be able to exclude God. Husserl himself was fully persuaded that “the systematic exploration of all teleologies” can furnish intuitively powerful cosmological and teleological arguments for the existence of God. Apologists should press further and argue that, even prior to this, in the very effort expended in the investigation of the structures of pure consciousness, an existential awareness of God persists that can be said to manifest itself in at least two ways. First, there is the following reflection upon the very idea of God (and here I am quoting from Descartes’ contemporary Eustachius a Sancto Paulo):

Hence the divine nature cannot be conceived except as actually existing; for if it were conceived as not actually existing, there would be something missing in its perfection, which is quite inconsistent with its actual infinity.[16]

Using what is known as the ontological argument, a presuppositional apologist can reason (even though they normally do not) that the sheer possibility that a person can have the idea of God necessarily implies his existence because to deny or suspend his existence would mean precisely that one must deny that the idea of him is possible (which it is). I realize that not many are typically persuaded by this argument, but in the context of Husserl’s epoch this line of thinking seems to carry considerably more force, for surely phenomenologists would not be true to the reorienting integrity of the reduction if they nevertheless insisted that it is necessary to exclude God. I say this because the intended object in this case is nothing other than the concept of God which, on account of the inherence of necessary existence within the concept itself, is not like any other concept. The intentional reality of God is such that, although intentional content and reality might formally be delineated for the purposes of theoretical discussion, the divine necessity inheres, however obliquely, in one’s concept of God such that God cannot be excluded without excluding the concept. Such exclusion would result in a rather arbitrarily truncated field of consciousness, one that the presuppositional apologist could plausibly reject as non-robust. After all, the connection between the I and God proves more fundamental than any other structure within the field of pure consciousness. In fact, to exclude God now would conceivably destroy the possibility of true access to the field of absolute consciousness in the first place.

A related way in which the inclusion of God in the performance of the epoch cannot be denied has to do with the prodding of the Holy Spirit toward a critical inspection of consciousness. True to his Cartesian heritage, Husserl would surely begin the reduction with the positing of the I in some minimal way. From here presuppositional apologists can gently lead their interlocutor to discover his or her own inner knowledge of God in something like the following way (quoting from Suarez, another of Descartes’ contemporaries):

For if a man turns his reflection toward himself, he becomes aware that he does not exist from himself, and is not self-sufficient with respect to his perfection; and that none of the other created things of which he has experience are self-sufficient, but he still recognizes in himself a nature that, though imperfect in its own degree, is more excellent than these other created things.. .. Hence, by a very easy train of thought, a man will persuade himself that he lacks something, and requires a superior nature from which he derives his origin, and by which he is ruled and governed.[17]

In today’s post-Christian world, this may sound like a good example of Husserl’s “marvelous teleology” that must be excluded. Even so, this inward spiritual reflection can providentially discover the most fundamental structure of human consciousness: various imperfections within consciousness the knowledge of which are made possible by an even deeper inner knowledge of the perfections of God. Of course, whether this knowledge is immediate or not is a historically disputed question. Yet even if knowledge of him is not immediate without qualification, God is certainly not mediated in the same way that any other concept is mediated. Unfortunately, we cannot turn our full attention to the question of how the idea of God is mediated to us at this time,[18] but we might be able to say a word about it by briefly returning to comments made above to the effect that Descartes was not ultimately able to doubt his God.

The presentation of God, I have argued, is such that he is present in our idea of him in such a way that the sheer idea of him guarantees not only his intentional reality, but also his objective reality. For an object to exist intentionally is for it to “exist” in the mind, the intellect. God’s intentional existence is thus unique and is not of the same kind that other ideas typically possess. In his reply to the first objection, Descartes explains: “This mode of existing [intentional reality] is evidently much less perfect than that by which things exist outside the intellect but, clearly, it is not nothing as a result, as I have already written.”[19] The intentional reality of God is not nothing simply on account of the fact that it is intentional. Perhaps Caterus would agree with Descartes here; the question seems to be this: if not nothing, then what? Descartes seems well aware of the challenge posed by Caterus’s objections. Even if chastened by them, Descartes seems confident that Caterus’s objections can be met. Of interest to us is the underlying complaint that is seemingly lodged against Descartes by these objections.

By taking seriously the learned breadth of Caterus’s objections, Armogathe keenly observes that “Caterus’s objections are all one and the same: Descartes’ God is a strange one. Or, more exactly, Descartes’ conception has to undergo a metamorphosis in order to become acceptable to Christian theology.”[20] The question is, what shall we say of God?[21] Marion, in an essay on the Meditations, declares that what Descartes says of God is, in fact, incoherent.[22] The strangeness and/or incoherence that is detected by writers like Caterus and Marion in the presentation of God in the Meditations is said by each to involve the confused juxtaposition of necessary existence and infinity. Perhaps there exists a loose parallel between the coordinate juxtaposition of these two problematic divine attributes and the two theistic phenomenological reductions presented above.

Necessary existence plays a pivotal role in the ontological argument, and infinity can be construed precisely as that sense of perfection to which the theist’s poignant consciousness of imperfection directs him.

I think that Descartes was not able to doubt God entirely insofar as necessary existence and infinity impinge upon each other and force themselves upon the cogito. The result that I am groping for here is expressed well by Rodis-Lewis when she observes that for Descartes, “In contrast with ideas that present themselves ‘unexpectedly,’ the idea of God requires my attention in order to conceive it. And yet I do not freely fabricate it: I can neither augment nor diminish it. It is therefore innate.”[23] There is a necessity to the idea of God that, if not accepted as immediate without qualification, is still like no other idea with which human consciousness has to do since it is a unique idea that seems to become immediate once it is presented to consciousness. Presuppositionalists can take advantage here of the fact that God is always already being presented to humans and that they accordingly will not be able to exclude God when redirecting their regard through the εποχη.

It is also in this context that I suggest both that Descartes was not able entirely to doubt God and that Husserl is wrong to say that God should be entirely excluded. For the former, the slippery idea of God proved too resilient (ontological argument) and epistemologically necessary (knowledge of imperfections leads to consideration of the origin of knowledge) for him to doubt entirely as he had initially set out to do. For the latter, the idea of God, although not necessarily wholly immediate (although this position could still be argued for as Descartes did), is nevertheless mediated in such a way that there is an extraordinarily fundamental link between the I and God such that the presup-positionalist can reasonably aver: without knowledge of the I there is no knowledge of God and without knowledge of God there is no knowledge of the I.

IV

I set out in this essay a few theistic strategies that aim to support apologists if they ever find themselves in a position where they feel compelled to argue against the bracketing of God in the performance of the Husserlian epoch. I did not in this essay set out to convince all phenomenologists that they are wrong to exclude God fully as they engage in the phenomenological reduction, but rather proposed to apologists how they might begin arguing for the refusal of the said exclusion. It remains for another occasion to ponder in what ways God might be meaningfully and legitimately incorporated in the redirection of one’s regard toward the structures of absolute consciousness. Precisely because God both transcends and is somehow inextricably involved in the possibility and performance of the natural and theoretical attitudes, I think God poses a very interesting problem for doing phenomenology to which exclusion is not a very good answer.

Notes

1. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book (trans. Fred Kersten; Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1998), 142 (118). Throughout these notes parenthetical pagination refers to Husserl’s original publication.
2. Ibid.
3. By entirely I mean that God must always be attended to by our intentional regard, at least at the presuppositional level.
4. René Descartes, Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings (trans. Desmond M. Clarke; New York: Penguin, 1998), 20.
5. Cf. Jean-Luc Marion, “The Essential Incoherence of Descartes’ Definition of Divinity,” in Essays on Descartes’ “Meditations” (ed. Amélie O. Rorty; trans. Frederick P. Van de Pitte; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 297–338.
6. Descartes, Meditations, 21.
7. Ibid., 21, 22.
8. Ibid., 23.
9. Ibid., 23-24.
10. Ibid., 34-35.
11. Husserl, Ideas, 134 (111).
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., 135 (111-12).
14. Baruch Spinoza, Principles of Cartesian Philosophy (trans. Harry E. Wedeck; New York: Philosophical Library, 1961), 31.
15. Ibid., 149.
16. See “A Compendium of Philosophy in Four Parts [Summa philosophiae quadripartita, 1609],” in Descartes’ Meditations: Background Source Materials (ed. Roger Ariew, John Cottingham, and Tom Sorell; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 95–96.
17. Francisco Suarez, Metaphysical Disputations [Disputationes metaphysicae, 1597], in Descartes’ Meditations: Background Source Materials, 39.
18. Presuppositionalists may or may not already have an opinion on this.
19. Descartes, Meditations, 72.
20. Jean-Robert Armogathe, “Caterus’s Objections to God,” in Descartes and His Contemporaries: Meditations, Objections, and Replies (ed. Roger Ariew and Marjorie Grene; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 37.
21. A question prompted not least by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite’s The Divine Names.
22. See Marion, “The Essential Incoherence.”
23. Genevieve Rodis-Lewis, “On the Complementarity of Meditations III and V: From the ‘General Rule’ of Evidence to ‘Certain Science,’ “ in Essays on Descartes’ “Meditations,” 282.