The Paradox of Subjectivity: The Self in the Transcendental Tradition

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Much effort in recent philosophy has been devoted to attacking the metaphysics of the subject. Identified largely with French post-structuralist thought, yet stemming primarily from the influential work of the later Heidegger, this attack has taken the form of a sweeping denunciation of the whole tradition of modern philosophy from Descartes through Nietzsche, Husserl, and Existentialism. In this timely study, David Carr contends that this discussion has overlooked and eventually lost sight of the distinction between modern metaphysics and the tradition of transcendental philosophy inaugurated by Kant and continued by Husserl into the twentieth century. Carr maintains that the transcendental tradition, often misinterpreted as a mere alternative version of the metaphysics of the subject, is in fact itself directed against such a metaphysics.
Challenging prevailing views of the development of modern philosophy, Carr proposes a reinterpretation of the transcendental tradition and counters Heidegger's influential readings of Kant and Husserl. He defends their subtle and complex transcendental investigations of the self and the life of subjectivity. In Carr's interpretation, far from joining the project of metaphysical foundationalism, transcendental philosophy offers epistemological critique and phenomenological description. Its aim is not metaphysical conclusions but rather an appreciation for the rich and sometimes contradictory character of experience. The transcendental approach to the self is skillfully summed up by Husserl as "the paradox of human subjectivity: being a subject for the world and at the same time being an object in the world."

Proposing striking new readings of Kant and Husserl and reviving a sound awareness of the transcendental tradition, Carr's distinctive historical and systematic position will interest a wide range of readers and provoke discussion among philosophers of metaphysics, epistemology, and the history of philosophy.

The Paradox of Subjectivity: The Self in the Transcendental Tradition Review

The author defends a distinction initiated by Kant which was taken up, transformed and further explored by Husserl. The distinction is that between a transcendental and an empirical aspect of subjectivity. It expresses the fact that the subject is at once a subject for the world and an object in the world. The empirical self is accommodated in the objective world very easily: it is just one object among others in the world. Yet, the other aspect of subjectivity, expressed by Kant as the "transcendental unity of apperception": the precondition of experience, and by Husserl as the "meaning bestowing" subject, seems not to fit in the objective world. Hence an aspect of "the paradox of subjectivity", the subject does not seem to be part of the world.

The distinction has been the object of severe criticism as being just another aspect of the `metaphysics of the subject' from different quarters: positivism, French structuralism and Heidegger among others.

Carr counters Heideggers' attack as being based on a misreading of the authors of the transcendental tradition. He argues that both Husserl and Kant were not expounding a theory of a substantive subject instead they were trying to describe a certain point of view of the world. Carr notes that conceiving the subject as such, as a point of view, does not involve a metaphysic of the subject as neither Kant nor Husserl, pace Heidegger's criticism, conceived the subject as an ultimate substance. The analysis of Heideggers' interpretation comprises the first chapter of the book.

In the next two chapters Carr presents Kant's and Husserl's theories on transcendental subjectivity. The analyses here, as in the chapter on Heidegger are really overviews. Being such, it is not going to offer any new insight to the thought of either one of these philosophers. Yet, as it is rare that one could be an expert on all three philosophers, the analyses might be of interest to non specialists.

In chapter four Carr tries to bring together the views of Kant and Husserl, whose unity he traces more to method or approach rather than to doctrine. According to both these thinkers subjectivity has two aspects: being a subject for the world and being an object in the world.

The sole purpose of the distinction between transcendental and empirical subjectivity is to do justice to the fact that the subject can be viewed under two radically different descriptions. This according to Carr is an ineliminable albeit paradoxical phenomenological fact. And philosophies such as positivism which try do away with it cannot be true to the character of experience.

Experience reveals additionally to the empirical self: the self that is the object of knowledge (our body and our mental states), some aspects which must be explained if possible, even described and taken for granted but not done away with. Now these aspects involve the feeling of spontaneity or agency that every human subject feels, which can also be expressed by the fact that we take ourselves to be someone, e.g. a thinker. Yet these facts lead to paradoxes: elusiveness is another, the thinker which thinks can never be the object of its thought. Countering the views which reduce the self to a fictitious entity Carr asks, fiction for whom?

To this question Husserl answers "to the meaning bestowing subject" and Kant "to the precondition of experience". Now the question is whether these answers can really be seen in a non metaphysical manner. Either way, both Kant and Husserl bring to light a problem, the problem of subjectivity, which current philosophies try to do away with in a prejudiced way, metaphysically favoring elliminativism and materialist reductions. Carr's book does not settle the question. Its merit however is that it focuses on a problem which has to be faced -something both Kant and Husserl did- and not be hastily eliminated.

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