WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.560 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. We are doing something 00:00:02.560 --> 00:00:04.320 a little different today. Usually we look at 00:00:04.320 --> 00:00:06.299 things out there, you know, history, technology, 00:00:06.660 --> 00:00:09.759 economics. But today we're kind of turning the 00:00:09.759 --> 00:00:12.220 lens inward. Way inward. Yeah, we are tackling 00:00:12.220 --> 00:00:15.480 a figure who is, I think it's fair to say, one 00:00:15.480 --> 00:00:18.100 of the most important, but maybe also the most 00:00:18.100 --> 00:00:21.699 intimidating thinkers of the 20th century. We 00:00:21.699 --> 00:00:24.649 are talking about Edmund. hustle intimidating 00:00:24.649 --> 00:00:26.769 is definitely the word i mean if you walk into 00:00:26.769 --> 00:00:29.269 a philosophy library and you pull a book like 00:00:29.269 --> 00:00:33.189 logical investigations or god forbid ideas pertaining 00:00:33.189 --> 00:00:36.189 to a pure phenomenology off the shelf right your 00:00:36.189 --> 00:00:38.109 first instinct is probably to just slide it right 00:00:38.109 --> 00:00:40.729 back in the language is so dense the sentences 00:00:40.729 --> 00:00:43.729 go on for like a full page and the concepts feel 00:00:44.399 --> 00:00:46.820 incredibly abstract. I've heard his work described 00:00:46.820 --> 00:00:49.060 as mathematics for the soul, which, you know, 00:00:49.079 --> 00:00:50.899 frankly, sounds like a complete nightmare for 00:00:50.899 --> 00:00:52.539 anyone who struggled with algebra. It really 00:00:52.539 --> 00:00:55.240 can feel that way. But the irony, and this is, 00:00:55.280 --> 00:00:56.840 I think, what we really need to land on today, 00:00:56.960 --> 00:01:00.079 is that Husserl's entire mission, the whole reason 00:01:00.079 --> 00:01:02.219 he wrote thousands of these impossible to read 00:01:02.219 --> 00:01:05.620 pages, was to get us back to simplicity. Simplicity. 00:01:05.719 --> 00:01:09.340 That feels... counterintuitive it does but his 00:01:09.340 --> 00:01:11.799 goal was to strip away all the complex theories 00:01:11.799 --> 00:01:15.019 all the scientific baggage and just look to look 00:01:15.019 --> 00:01:17.900 at the world as it actually appears to us I've 00:01:17.900 --> 00:01:20.299 also seen him described not just as a philosopher, 00:01:20.480 --> 00:01:24.099 but as a radical scientist of the mind. That 00:01:24.099 --> 00:01:26.700 is the perfect description. And radical is the 00:01:26.700 --> 00:01:28.620 key word there. He wasn't just trying to, you 00:01:28.620 --> 00:01:30.900 know, tweak psychology or something. He was trying 00:01:30.900 --> 00:01:33.400 to rebuild all of human knowledge from the ground 00:01:33.400 --> 00:01:35.579 up. Because when we think of science, we usually 00:01:35.579 --> 00:01:39.040 think of test tubes, telescopes, measuring things, 00:01:39.439 --> 00:01:42.340 external things. Objectivity. Right, objectivity. 00:01:42.480 --> 00:01:45.260 But Husserl seemed obsessed with a totally different... 00:01:45.790 --> 00:01:48.109 problem, a problem that sounds really simple, 00:01:48.170 --> 00:01:51.269 but it's actually kind of terrifying when you 00:01:51.269 --> 00:01:53.069 stop and think about it for a second. How do 00:01:53.069 --> 00:01:55.250 we know anything is actually real? Exactly. I 00:01:55.250 --> 00:01:56.709 mean, think about the time he was living in. 00:01:56.750 --> 00:01:59.569 This is a late 19th, early 20th century. You've 00:01:59.569 --> 00:02:02.709 got this massive explosion of scientific objectivity, 00:02:02.829 --> 00:02:05.989 physics, chemistry, biology. They were mapping 00:02:05.989 --> 00:02:08.530 the physical world with this incredible new precision. 00:02:08.729 --> 00:02:12.210 But Husserl looked at all this progress and he 00:02:12.210 --> 00:02:16.020 asked a very, very uncomfortable question. Where 00:02:16.020 --> 00:02:19.620 is the human being in all of this? Right. Like 00:02:19.620 --> 00:02:21.319 you can measure the wavelength of light until 00:02:21.319 --> 00:02:23.139 you're blue in the face, but that doesn't explain 00:02:23.139 --> 00:02:25.259 my actual experience of seeing the color red. 00:02:25.419 --> 00:02:27.759 Precisely. How do we account for the subjective 00:02:27.759 --> 00:02:30.319 experience of the scientist who is doing the 00:02:30.319 --> 00:02:32.740 measuring in the first place? If you strip away 00:02:32.740 --> 00:02:34.879 the conscious mind that's having the experience, 00:02:35.159 --> 00:02:37.939 does the objective world even make sense anymore? 00:02:38.139 --> 00:02:40.800 So he's saying we're building this giant skyscraper 00:02:40.800 --> 00:02:43.939 of science on a foundation that we don't understand 00:02:43.939 --> 00:02:47.060 at all. Which is our own conscious life. That's 00:02:47.060 --> 00:02:49.039 it. It's the classic if a tree falls in the forest 00:02:49.039 --> 00:02:52.680 question, but on steroids. On steroids and with 00:02:52.680 --> 00:02:55.259 rigorous mathematical logic applied to it. You 00:02:55.259 --> 00:02:57.240 got it. And that is what we're going to unpack 00:02:57.240 --> 00:02:59.580 today. We've got a massive stack of sources here, 00:02:59.659 --> 00:03:02.860 extensive biographical records, his major works 00:03:02.860 --> 00:03:06.139 like Logical Investigations, Ideas, and his later 00:03:06.139 --> 00:03:08.780 stuff like The Crisis of European Sciences, plus 00:03:08.780 --> 00:03:11.360 accounts of his very dramatic and frankly tragic 00:03:11.360 --> 00:03:13.580 personal life. And we're going to get into how 00:03:13.580 --> 00:03:16.219 he went from being a mathematician to a philosopher, 00:03:16.419 --> 00:03:19.120 how he founded this whole school of thought called 00:03:19.120 --> 00:03:22.819 phenomenology. And yeah, the incredibly high 00:03:22.819 --> 00:03:25.740 personal stakes of his later years. We have to. 00:03:25.819 --> 00:03:29.439 The drama is a huge part of the story. The rise 00:03:29.439 --> 00:03:33.620 of the Nazis, his, well, his betrayal by his 00:03:33.620 --> 00:03:36.810 star student, Martin Heidegger. It's not just 00:03:36.810 --> 00:03:39.530 abstract theory. It's a tragedy. A Shakespearean 00:03:39.530 --> 00:03:41.650 tragedy, it sounds like. It really is. But let's 00:03:41.650 --> 00:03:43.110 start at the beginning. You mentioned he started 00:03:43.110 --> 00:03:45.229 in math. And I think that's surprising for a 00:03:45.229 --> 00:03:47.710 guy known for studying feelings or consciousness. 00:03:48.050 --> 00:03:50.389 You expect a poet, not a calculator. Well, it 00:03:50.389 --> 00:03:52.409 is absolutely essential to understanding it. 00:03:52.430 --> 00:03:53.990 If you don't get the math part, you don't really 00:03:53.990 --> 00:03:57.370 get hustle. So Edmund Hussle was born in 1859 00:03:57.370 --> 00:03:59.909 in Prusnitz -Moravia, which was part of the Austrian 00:03:59.909 --> 00:04:02.229 Empire back then. Okay. He was born into a Jewish 00:04:02.229 --> 00:04:04.610 family. He was the second of four kids. And his 00:04:04.610 --> 00:04:06.669 father was a milliner. A hat maker. A hat maker. 00:04:06.789 --> 00:04:09.229 Yeah. Or practical trade. And I think that's 00:04:09.229 --> 00:04:11.289 interesting because Husserl wasn't, you know, 00:04:11.289 --> 00:04:14.150 born into the high aristocracy of German academia. 00:04:14.189 --> 00:04:16.529 He came from a background of making things, of 00:04:16.529 --> 00:04:19.889 practical, solid reality. But his mind. His mind 00:04:19.889 --> 00:04:22.089 was somewhere else entirely. It was in the stars. 00:04:22.550 --> 00:04:25.569 His early academic path was strictly hard sciences. 00:04:25.829 --> 00:04:27.850 He went to the University of Leipzig, then Berlin, 00:04:28.029 --> 00:04:30.350 studying mathematics, physics, and astronomy. 00:04:30.759 --> 00:04:32.699 So he wasn't sitting around in cafes discussing 00:04:32.699 --> 00:04:34.720 the meaning of life. He was crunching numbers. 00:04:35.000 --> 00:04:37.319 He was crunching numbers at the highest possible 00:04:37.319 --> 00:04:41.019 level. I mean, look at who his mentor was, Karl 00:04:41.019 --> 00:04:43.639 Weierstrass. I remember that name from the briefing. 00:04:43.720 --> 00:04:45.839 For those of us who haven't touched a calculus 00:04:45.839 --> 00:04:49.360 textbook in, let's say, a decade or two, remind 00:04:49.360 --> 00:04:51.939 us who Weierstrass is. He is essentially the 00:04:51.939 --> 00:04:54.800 father of modern analysis. Before Weierstrass, 00:04:54.860 --> 00:04:57.829 calculus was a bit... Lucy goosey. You know, 00:04:57.829 --> 00:04:59.509 people played fast and loose with concepts like 00:04:59.509 --> 00:05:02.050 infinitesimals. Wierstrass was the guy who came 00:05:02.050 --> 00:05:04.629 in and brought absolute ironclad, rigorous logic 00:05:04.629 --> 00:05:06.910 to calculus. He was all about precision, definition, 00:05:07.209 --> 00:05:10.329 removing any ambiguity whatsoever. So Husserl 00:05:10.329 --> 00:05:12.649 is trained in this environment where there is 00:05:12.649 --> 00:05:15.089 a right answer, a wrong answer, and a logical 00:05:15.089 --> 00:05:17.670 proof for everything. There's no room for, well, 00:05:17.689 --> 00:05:19.949 that's just, you know, your opinion, man. None. 00:05:20.170 --> 00:05:23.050 Zero. He is a logic nerd through and through. 00:05:23.680 --> 00:05:28.800 He gets his PhD in mathematics in 1883. But here's 00:05:28.800 --> 00:05:31.839 the pivot. While he's in Leipzig, he starts wandering 00:05:31.839 --> 00:05:34.540 into some philosophy lectures just for fun. And 00:05:34.540 --> 00:05:36.899 then later in Vienna, he attends lectures by 00:05:36.899 --> 00:05:39.699 a man named Franz Brentano. Brentano. Okay, this 00:05:39.699 --> 00:05:41.480 is a name that keeps popping up in the history 00:05:41.480 --> 00:05:43.920 of psychology and philosophy. He was a force 00:05:43.920 --> 00:05:45.939 of nature. Brentano was this former Catholic 00:05:45.939 --> 00:05:48.300 priest who had left the church because he couldn't 00:05:48.300 --> 00:05:50.680 accept the doctrine of papal infallibility. Wow. 00:05:51.199 --> 00:05:53.759 So he was intense, he was charismatic, and he 00:05:53.759 --> 00:05:56.160 was teaching this new idea of descriptive psychology. 00:05:56.740 --> 00:05:58.860 He believed you could study the mind with scientific 00:05:58.860 --> 00:06:01.160 rigor. So you've got Wierstrass on one shoulder, 00:06:01.339 --> 00:06:03.920 the cold, rigid logician, and then you have Brentano 00:06:03.920 --> 00:06:05.980 on the other, the fiery, passionate psychologist. 00:06:07.079 --> 00:06:09.100 And poor Husserl is stuck right in the middle. 00:06:09.279 --> 00:06:11.279 Brentano is the one who plants the seed in his 00:06:11.279 --> 00:06:14.420 mind. What if we could be just as rigorous about 00:06:14.420 --> 00:06:18.000 consciousness as we are about math? What if we 00:06:18.000 --> 00:06:20.540 could find the fundamental laws of the mind? 00:06:21.439 --> 00:06:25.079 And that attempt to bridge that gap, that leads 00:06:25.079 --> 00:06:27.779 to his first big, well, his first big farrier, 00:06:27.800 --> 00:06:30.000 right? Or at least his first big rethink, his 00:06:30.000 --> 00:06:32.639 book, The Philosophy of Arithmetic. Yes, published 00:06:32.639 --> 00:06:35.879 in 1891. This was his first major attempt to 00:06:35.879 --> 00:06:38.800 square that circle. And frankly, looking back, 00:06:38.899 --> 00:06:41.319 it was a bit of a disaster. He tried to explain 00:06:41.319 --> 00:06:43.560 mathematics psychologically. He wanted to figure 00:06:43.560 --> 00:06:45.759 out how does the mind actually count? OK, let 00:06:45.759 --> 00:06:48.040 me unpack this, because to me, counting just 00:06:48.040 --> 00:06:50.180 seems like something we do. I see three apples 00:06:50.180 --> 00:06:52.980 on the table. I say three. Why is that a deep 00:06:52.980 --> 00:06:55.600 philosophical problem? Because Husserl was fascinated 00:06:55.600 --> 00:06:58.120 by the mechanism of it. He made this distinction 00:06:58.120 --> 00:07:01.459 between what he called proper and improper presentation. 00:07:02.170 --> 00:07:04.230 Proper and improper. It sounds like table manners. 00:07:04.649 --> 00:07:07.310 Don't use the improper fork for your salad. Eh, 00:07:07.430 --> 00:07:09.990 not quite. Think of it more in terms of direct 00:07:09.990 --> 00:07:12.389 versus indirect. Let's say you're standing in 00:07:12.389 --> 00:07:13.870 front of a house. You're looking right at it 00:07:13.870 --> 00:07:16.449 with your own eyes. You have a proper presentation 00:07:16.449 --> 00:07:19.009 of the house. It's there, physically present 00:07:19.009 --> 00:07:21.930 to your senses. You're experiencing houseness 00:07:21.930 --> 00:07:25.490 directly. Okay, got it. Direct experience. But 00:07:25.490 --> 00:07:27.569 now, let's say you're looking for a friend's 00:07:27.569 --> 00:07:29.779 house, and all you have is the address. written 00:07:29.779 --> 00:07:33.500 on a piece of paper, 123 Maple Street. You are 00:07:33.500 --> 00:07:35.120 thinking about the house. You're trying to find 00:07:35.120 --> 00:07:37.959 the house. But the house itself isn't present 00:07:37.959 --> 00:07:41.220 to you. You're using a symbol, signs, words, 00:07:41.500 --> 00:07:44.220 numbers, to point to something that isn't here. 00:07:44.500 --> 00:07:47.019 That is an improper presentation. I see. So the 00:07:47.019 --> 00:07:49.100 address is like a pointer. It's not the thing 00:07:49.100 --> 00:07:51.959 itself. It's just a pointer. And Husserl realized 00:07:51.959 --> 00:07:54.819 that... Most of mathematics is improper in this 00:07:54.819 --> 00:07:57.480 sense. When we talk about the number 1 ,000 or 00:07:57.480 --> 00:08:00.439 1 billion, we aren't actually visualizing 1 billion 00:08:00.439 --> 00:08:03.480 individual dots in our heads. No, of course not. 00:08:03.560 --> 00:08:06.040 Our brains can't hold that. Right. We're using 00:08:06.040 --> 00:08:08.639 a symbol. We're manipulating signs that stand 00:08:08.639 --> 00:08:11.399 in for that quantity. And Husserl tried to read 00:08:11.399 --> 00:08:15.029 all of this in psychology. in how the brain groups 00:08:15.029 --> 00:08:17.910 things together and performs these mental acts 00:08:17.910 --> 00:08:20.730 to create these concepts. So he publishes this 00:08:20.730 --> 00:08:22.850 book. He's feeling pretty good about it. He thinks 00:08:22.850 --> 00:08:25.189 he solved the puzzle of math by explaining it 00:08:25.189 --> 00:08:29.569 through brain processes. And then the sledgehammer 00:08:29.569 --> 00:08:32.129 drops. The sledgehammer named Gottlob Friege. 00:08:32.289 --> 00:08:35.110 I love that name, Gottlob Friege. It sounds like 00:08:35.110 --> 00:08:37.129 a villain in a silent movie or something. To 00:08:37.129 --> 00:08:38.850 Husserl at the time, he probably felt like one. 00:08:38.970 --> 00:08:41.110 Frege was this brilliant logician who wrote a 00:08:41.110 --> 00:08:43.470 review of Husserl's book. And it wasn't just 00:08:43.470 --> 00:08:46.210 a bad review. I mean, it was a complete demolition. 00:08:46.389 --> 00:08:49.149 Ouch. Frege essentially said, Edmund, you are 00:08:49.149 --> 00:08:51.009 a very smart man, but you have made a catastrophic 00:08:51.009 --> 00:08:53.429 error. And what was that error? Psychologism. 00:08:53.450 --> 00:08:55.649 That's the technical term for it. Frege argued 00:08:55.649 --> 00:08:58.769 that if mathematics is just psychology, if it's 00:08:58.769 --> 00:09:02.450 just how the human brain happens to count, then... 00:09:02.960 --> 00:09:05.120 math becomes subjective. It becomes relative. 00:09:05.360 --> 00:09:07.299 Wait, I want to make sure I get this. Because 00:09:07.299 --> 00:09:09.700 my brain works pretty much like your brain. So 00:09:09.700 --> 00:09:11.580 wouldn't our math be the same? It still feels 00:09:11.580 --> 00:09:14.519 objective to me. Maybe. But what if we encountered 00:09:14.519 --> 00:09:18.279 an alien species and their brains were, I don't 00:09:18.279 --> 00:09:20.980 know, silicon -based and wired completely differently? 00:09:21.039 --> 00:09:25.419 Would 2 plus 2 still equal 4 for them? Wow. Yes, 00:09:25.440 --> 00:09:27.620 of course it would. 2 plus 2 is 4. It doesn't 00:09:27.620 --> 00:09:29.659 matter who or what is doing the counting. Exactly. 00:09:29.720 --> 00:09:32.480 That was Frege's entire point. Yeah. But if Husserl 00:09:32.480 --> 00:09:35.720 was right, and math is just a biological process 00:09:35.720 --> 00:09:38.580 of the human brain, then math is contingent on 00:09:38.580 --> 00:09:41.840 our specific biology. If the human species died 00:09:41.840 --> 00:09:45.360 out, the number four would cease to exist, Preach 00:09:45.360 --> 00:09:48.019 said. No, the number five is an objective fact. 00:09:48.179 --> 00:09:50.320 It is an eternal truth. It isn't a brain state 00:09:50.320 --> 00:09:52.379 any more than the planet Jupiter is a brain state. 00:09:52.519 --> 00:09:54.659 That is a heavy, heavy hit. Because if Husserl 00:09:54.659 --> 00:09:56.600 is right, then truth itself is just a matter 00:09:56.600 --> 00:09:59.559 of opinion or, you know, biology. And that leads 00:09:59.559 --> 00:10:03.590 directly to skepticism. If truth is just how 00:10:03.590 --> 00:10:05.970 we happen to think, then there is no absolute 00:10:05.970 --> 00:10:08.809 truth. There's just my truth and your truth and 00:10:08.809 --> 00:10:12.389 the alien's truth. And Hussle, at his core, was 00:10:12.389 --> 00:10:15.370 a man who believed in absolute truth. He took 00:10:15.370 --> 00:10:18.129 this criticism incredibly seriously. So this 00:10:18.129 --> 00:10:20.909 is the crisis point. Most people, I think, would 00:10:20.909 --> 00:10:22.509 probably double down and defend their books. 00:10:22.610 --> 00:10:24.289 They'd write an angry letter back saying, you 00:10:24.289 --> 00:10:26.629 just don't get it, Frege. But Hussle didn't do 00:10:26.629 --> 00:10:29.269 that. No. And that is the mark of his profound 00:10:29.269 --> 00:10:32.019 intellectual honesty. He went silent. He barely 00:10:32.019 --> 00:10:34.399 published anything for nearly a decade. He went 00:10:34.399 --> 00:10:36.679 back to the drawing board entirely. He realized 00:10:36.679 --> 00:10:39.019 he had made a huge mistake. He needed a way to 00:10:39.019 --> 00:10:41.519 save the objectivity of logic but without just 00:10:41.519 --> 00:10:43.779 ignoring the mind that perceives it. Yet to thread 00:10:43.779 --> 00:10:45.899 an impossible needle. He had to invent a completely 00:10:45.899 --> 00:10:49.070 new way of seeing. And this leads to his great 00:10:49.070 --> 00:10:52.070 breakthrough work around 1900, The Logical Investigations. 00:10:52.129 --> 00:10:54.649 He completely reverses his position. He starts 00:10:54.649 --> 00:10:56.830 arguing that logical laws are ideal, they're 00:10:56.830 --> 00:10:58.889 objective, they exist independently of the human 00:10:58.889 --> 00:11:02.509 mind, almost like platonic forms. But wait, if 00:11:02.509 --> 00:11:04.750 they exist outside the mind, then how do we access 00:11:04.750 --> 00:11:08.000 them? Isn't he just back to being a pure mathematician 00:11:08.000 --> 00:11:10.980 again, ignoring the mind? Ah, that's the brilliance 00:11:10.980 --> 00:11:14.120 of his pivot. He decides that we need a new way 00:11:14.120 --> 00:11:16.799 to study the mind itself, not as a biological 00:11:16.799 --> 00:11:19.980 organ that creates fuzzy subjective logic, but 00:11:19.980 --> 00:11:22.200 as the instrument that is capable of grasping 00:11:22.200 --> 00:11:25.419 these ideal objective truths. Oh, he changes 00:11:25.419 --> 00:11:27.259 the question. He completely changes the question. 00:11:27.379 --> 00:11:30.700 He stops asking, how does the brain create logic? 00:11:31.100 --> 00:11:33.580 And he starts asking, how does consciousness 00:11:33.580 --> 00:11:36.830 experience logic? And this, my friend, is the 00:11:36.830 --> 00:11:39.230 birth of phenomenology. Okay, cue the dramatic 00:11:39.230 --> 00:11:41.950 music. This is the big moment. He invents a science 00:11:41.950 --> 00:11:45.730 of essences. A vis and season shaft. I am definitely 00:11:45.730 --> 00:11:47.389 not going to try to pronounce that. But let's 00:11:47.389 --> 00:11:49.169 get into the how, because this is where Husserl 00:11:49.169 --> 00:11:52.190 goes from being a math nerd to a radical scientist. 00:11:52.570 --> 00:11:54.710 He says we have to start by moving beyond something 00:11:54.710 --> 00:11:57.990 he calls the natural attitude. Yes, the natural 00:11:57.990 --> 00:12:00.090 attitude. I love this term. It sounds like something 00:12:00.090 --> 00:12:02.309 a teenager has. You'd better lose that attitude. 00:12:02.690 --> 00:12:04.970 But what did Husserl mean by it? The natural 00:12:04.970 --> 00:12:08.330 attitude is our default mode of existence. It's 00:12:08.330 --> 00:12:10.250 how you and I and everyone listening goes through 00:12:10.250 --> 00:12:14.330 99 .9 % of our day. We just assume the world 00:12:14.330 --> 00:12:16.830 is out there. This microphone is real. The table 00:12:16.830 --> 00:12:19.009 is real. The traffic outside is real. We take 00:12:19.009 --> 00:12:21.809 it for granted. Completely. We assume we are 00:12:21.809 --> 00:12:24.429 just biological entities moving through a pre 00:12:24.429 --> 00:12:26.950 -existing physical space. We assume that our 00:12:26.950 --> 00:12:30.070 perception just passively mirrors reality. We 00:12:30.070 --> 00:12:31.850 don't question how the world is appearing to 00:12:31.850 --> 00:12:34.190 us. We just accept that it is. It's being on 00:12:34.190 --> 00:12:36.350 autopilot. It's like being in the Matrix before 00:12:36.350 --> 00:12:38.889 you take the red pill. You just accept the simulation 00:12:38.889 --> 00:12:40.909 as reality because you don't know anything else. 00:12:41.129 --> 00:12:43.519 That's a great analogy. Husserl says that for 00:12:43.519 --> 00:12:45.759 the practical business of living our lives, the 00:12:45.759 --> 00:12:47.879 natural attitude is fine. You need it to drive 00:12:47.879 --> 00:12:50.600 a car or make a sandwich. But for a philosopher 00:12:50.600 --> 00:12:53.700 or for anyone who wants to find real foundational 00:12:53.700 --> 00:12:56.820 truth, it's fatal. Because it takes everything 00:12:56.820 --> 00:12:59.039 for granted. Exactly. If we want to really know 00:12:59.039 --> 00:13:01.480 what's true, we have to suspend that attitude. 00:13:01.620 --> 00:13:03.740 We have to stop just assuming the world exists 00:13:03.740 --> 00:13:06.740 out there and turn our gaze inward to look at 00:13:06.740 --> 00:13:09.840 the experience itself. And this brings us to 00:13:09.840 --> 00:13:12.159 the famous toolkit. If we're going to do this 00:13:12.159 --> 00:13:14.500 phenomenology, what are the tools we need? The 00:13:14.500 --> 00:13:16.539 first big one is something he got from Brentano, 00:13:16.700 --> 00:13:20.820 right? Intentionality. Yes, intentionality. This 00:13:20.820 --> 00:13:23.860 is the absolute core, the bedrock of all of phenomenology. 00:13:24.039 --> 00:13:26.159 And we have to be really careful here because 00:13:26.159 --> 00:13:29.100 in everyday English, intentionality means doing 00:13:29.100 --> 00:13:31.600 something on purpose. Right. I intended to go 00:13:31.600 --> 00:13:34.320 to the gym, but then I ate a whole pizza instead. 00:13:34.440 --> 00:13:37.679 I had good intentions. Exactly. In phenomenology, 00:13:37.779 --> 00:13:39.759 intentionality has nothing to do with purpose 00:13:39.759 --> 00:13:43.509 or willpower. It means aboutness. It comes from 00:13:43.509 --> 00:13:46.470 the Latin word intender, which means to aim at 00:13:46.470 --> 00:13:49.549 or to stretch toward. Okay. Hustle and Brentano 00:13:49.549 --> 00:13:52.070 before him realized that the single defining 00:13:52.070 --> 00:13:54.570 feature of consciousness is that it is always 00:13:54.570 --> 00:13:57.070 of something or about something. Can you give 00:13:57.070 --> 00:13:59.450 us a concrete example of that? Sure. Try right 00:13:59.450 --> 00:14:01.529 now to just believe. Don't believe in something. 00:14:01.610 --> 00:14:04.350 Just believe. I can't. My brain immediately asks, 00:14:04.529 --> 00:14:07.009 believe what? I have to believe that it's raining 00:14:07.009 --> 00:14:09.070 or believe that you're right about this. Exactly. 00:14:09.190 --> 00:14:12.789 Or try to fear. You can't just have generic objectless 00:14:12.789 --> 00:14:15.370 fear floating in your head. If you're a spider, 00:14:15.490 --> 00:14:18.549 or you fear failure, or you fear the dark, consciousness 00:14:18.549 --> 00:14:21.889 is like a directional arrow. It is always shooting 00:14:21.889 --> 00:14:24.649 out from you towards an object. You cannot have 00:14:24.649 --> 00:14:26.759 a thought without an object of thought. Okay, 00:14:26.799 --> 00:14:28.679 that makes a lot of sense. My mind isn't just 00:14:28.679 --> 00:14:30.820 an empty bucket. It's always actively grabbing 00:14:30.820 --> 00:14:33.419 onto something or pointing at something. And 00:14:33.419 --> 00:14:36.100 this changes everything. Because it means you 00:14:36.100 --> 00:14:38.840 can't study the mind in a vacuum in isolation, 00:14:39.059 --> 00:14:41.460 like the psychologists wanted to. And you can't 00:14:41.460 --> 00:14:44.000 study the world in a vacuum in isolation, like 00:14:44.000 --> 00:14:46.240 the physicists wanted to. You can only study 00:14:46.240 --> 00:14:48.779 the connection, the intentional arc that links 00:14:48.779 --> 00:14:51.710 the two. So if intentionality is the arrow, what 00:14:51.710 --> 00:14:54.210 is the apache? This is another one of those big 00:14:54.210 --> 00:14:57.490 hustle terms, bracketing. The apache is the specific 00:14:57.490 --> 00:14:59.789 method we use to break out of the natural attitude. 00:15:00.029 --> 00:15:02.590 It comes from an ancient Greek skeptic term meaning 00:15:02.590 --> 00:15:05.169 suspension of judgment. So we just stop judging 00:15:05.169 --> 00:15:08.629 things. We stop judging reality. When we perform 00:15:08.629 --> 00:15:12.840 the apache or when we bracket. the world we don't 00:15:12.840 --> 00:15:15.399 deny that the world exists we aren't saying oh 00:15:15.399 --> 00:15:17.639 nothing is real it's all an illusion that's not 00:15:17.639 --> 00:15:19.799 it at all okay so what are we doing we are just 00:15:19.799 --> 00:15:22.659 setting the question of its reality aside we 00:15:22.659 --> 00:15:25.100 are putting it in brackets just like in a math 00:15:25.100 --> 00:15:26.399 equation where you deal with the stuff in the 00:15:26.399 --> 00:15:29.659 brackets first we're temporarily ignoring the 00:15:29.659 --> 00:15:31.850 question of whether it's really there Walk me 00:15:31.850 --> 00:15:33.809 through this. Let's say I'm looking at this coffee 00:15:33.809 --> 00:15:36.370 cup on the desk right now. How do I bracket it? 00:15:36.490 --> 00:15:38.850 Okay. In the natural attitude, you look at it 00:15:38.850 --> 00:15:41.850 and you think, that is a ceramic cup filled with 00:15:41.850 --> 00:15:44.490 coffee. You assume it has mass, it's made of 00:15:44.490 --> 00:15:47.610 atoms, and that it will fall and smash if I push 00:15:47.610 --> 00:15:49.929 it off the desk. Right. Standard cup stuff. Now 00:15:49.929 --> 00:15:52.629 bracket it. Suspend your belief that the cup 00:15:52.629 --> 00:15:55.330 is a physical object made of atoms. Suspend your 00:15:55.330 --> 00:15:57.409 knowledge of ceramics or gravity or the coffee 00:15:57.409 --> 00:16:00.490 trade. Just focus strictly, and I mean strictly, 00:16:00.669 --> 00:16:03.549 on how it appears to you in your consciousness 00:16:03.549 --> 00:16:08.409 right this very second. Okay. I see a curved 00:16:08.409 --> 00:16:11.169 white shape. I see a dark brown circle inside 00:16:11.169 --> 00:16:14.450 it. I see a grip of light from the overhead lamp 00:16:14.450 --> 00:16:17.309 reflecting on the room. I can smell something 00:16:17.309 --> 00:16:20.600 roasted. Good. Now, can you see the back of the 00:16:20.600 --> 00:16:24.200 cup? No. But you assume it's there. You assume 00:16:24.200 --> 00:16:26.159 it has a back. Yes, of course. In the apache, 00:16:26.259 --> 00:16:28.419 you don't just assume it. You notice that you 00:16:28.419 --> 00:16:31.559 are assuming it. You realize, ah, my consciousness 00:16:31.559 --> 00:16:33.840 is presenting this object to me as a complete 00:16:33.840 --> 00:16:37.179 three -dimensional whole, even though I am only 00:16:37.179 --> 00:16:39.200 ever seeing one two -dimensional side of it at 00:16:39.200 --> 00:16:41.279 a time. So I'm watching my own mind construct 00:16:41.279 --> 00:16:43.179 the object. You're watching the construction 00:16:43.179 --> 00:16:45.059 process. You aren't studying the cup anymore. 00:16:45.220 --> 00:16:46.960 You are studying your experience of the cup. 00:16:47.200 --> 00:16:49.580 So it's about becoming hyper -aware of the experience 00:16:49.580 --> 00:16:52.200 itself rather than the object that's supposedly 00:16:52.200 --> 00:16:55.039 causing the experience. It feels a little like 00:16:55.039 --> 00:16:58.440 meditation or mindfulness. It is very, very similar 00:16:58.440 --> 00:17:00.340 to mindfulness. It's a fundamental shift from 00:17:00.340 --> 00:17:02.539 the what to the how. And once you learn to do 00:17:02.539 --> 00:17:04.900 that, Husserl says, you can perform the phenomenological 00:17:04.900 --> 00:17:07.640 reduction. You can start moving from the specific 00:17:07.640 --> 00:17:11.460 messy fact to the general pure essence. And he 00:17:11.460 --> 00:17:14.079 had a very specific way of getting to that essence, 00:17:14.240 --> 00:17:17.119 right? A kind of mental workout he called eidetic 00:17:17.119 --> 00:17:21.099 variation. This is a fascinating exercise. And 00:17:21.099 --> 00:17:23.480 it's his answer to the question of how we can 00:17:23.480 --> 00:17:26.259 know things for sure without running a scientific 00:17:26.259 --> 00:17:31.019 experiment. Let's try it. The classic example 00:17:31.019 --> 00:17:33.359 is always a triangle, which is a bit easy, but 00:17:33.359 --> 00:17:35.980 let's start there. So imagine a triangle. Okay. 00:17:36.039 --> 00:17:38.140 I'm picturing a triangle in my head. It's an 00:17:38.140 --> 00:17:40.140 isosceles triangle, since you asked. Perfect. 00:17:40.240 --> 00:17:42.720 Now, in your mind, I want you to start varying 00:17:42.720 --> 00:17:45.319 its features. This is the variation part. Make 00:17:45.319 --> 00:17:48.579 one of its sides much longer. Is it still a triangle? 00:17:48.779 --> 00:17:50.960 Yes. Just a weirder looking one. Change its color 00:17:50.960 --> 00:17:53.140 to bright blue. Is it still a triangle? Yes. 00:17:53.640 --> 00:17:55.099 Imagine it's made of wood instead of just being 00:17:55.099 --> 00:17:56.960 a line drawing, still a triangle. Yep. Okay. 00:17:57.059 --> 00:17:59.880 Now add a fourth side to it. No. Now it's a square 00:17:59.880 --> 00:18:02.559 or a rectangle or some kind of quadrilateral. 00:18:02.579 --> 00:18:04.819 It is definitely not a triangle anymore. Exactly. 00:18:05.299 --> 00:18:08.420 Through this eidetic variation, just by playing 00:18:08.420 --> 00:18:10.880 with the features in your imagination, you have 00:18:10.880 --> 00:18:13.660 discovered the essence, the eidos. of a triangle 00:18:13.660 --> 00:18:16.420 you found the invariant feature the thing that 00:18:16.420 --> 00:18:18.440 cannot be changed without destroying the object 00:18:18.440 --> 00:18:21.140 which is having three straight sides that connect 00:18:21.140 --> 00:18:23.660 you stripped away all the non -essentials like 00:18:23.660 --> 00:18:26.779 color material size and you found the core truth 00:18:26.779 --> 00:18:29.480 okay that works for geometry but Husserl wanted 00:18:29.480 --> 00:18:31.339 to do this with everything right with perception 00:18:31.339 --> 00:18:35.460 with justice with love yeah that seems a whole 00:18:35.460 --> 00:18:38.579 lot harder it is much much harder but the method 00:18:38.579 --> 00:18:40.750 is the same Let's try it with something more 00:18:40.750 --> 00:18:42.730 complex. Let's try it with the concept of a promise. 00:18:43.250 --> 00:18:45.769 What is the essence of making a promise? Okay. 00:18:46.970 --> 00:18:49.150 A promise is when I say I'll do something in 00:18:49.150 --> 00:18:51.869 the future. Okay, let's vary it. Imagine you 00:18:51.869 --> 00:18:54.430 say, I promise I will fly to the moon tomorrow 00:18:54.430 --> 00:18:57.910 using only my arms. But you know you can't possibly 00:18:57.910 --> 00:19:00.430 do it. Is that a genuine promise? No, that's 00:19:00.430 --> 00:19:03.849 either a lie or a joke. So sincerity or maybe 00:19:03.849 --> 00:19:06.609 capability has to be part of it. Good. Now imagine 00:19:06.609 --> 00:19:08.720 you say to someone, I promise I'm going to rob 00:19:08.720 --> 00:19:10.859 that bank for you. Is that a valid promise in 00:19:10.859 --> 00:19:12.779 the same way? We'd probably call that a threat 00:19:12.779 --> 00:19:15.819 or a conspiracy, not a promise. A promise feels 00:19:15.819 --> 00:19:19.339 like it should be about something good or at 00:19:19.339 --> 00:19:23.380 least neutral. Ah. So maybe a promise implies 00:19:23.380 --> 00:19:26.119 some kind of benefit to the person being promised, 00:19:26.279 --> 00:19:29.079 or at least that it's not a malevolent act. Maybe. 00:19:29.259 --> 00:19:31.720 Or at least it has to be part of a shared moral 00:19:31.720 --> 00:19:35.420 framework. Okay, one more. Imagine you make a 00:19:35.420 --> 00:19:47.509 promise to yourself. It feels less binding. It's 00:19:47.509 --> 00:19:49.829 more like a resolution. A real promise seems 00:19:49.829 --> 00:19:52.609 to involve another person. See what we are doing 00:19:52.609 --> 00:19:54.970 here. We're crashing the concept against all 00:19:54.970 --> 00:19:56.630 these different imaginary scenarios to see where 00:19:56.630 --> 00:19:58.490 it breaks, to see what its essential components 00:19:58.490 --> 00:20:01.210 are. Husserl believed that if we did this rigorously 00:20:01.210 --> 00:20:03.630 enough for everything, we could map out a kind 00:20:03.630 --> 00:20:06.450 of periodic table of human consciousness. We 00:20:06.450 --> 00:20:08.670 could understand the fundamental essence of law, 00:20:08.869 --> 00:20:11.750 of religion, of art, of everything. That is unbelievably 00:20:11.750 --> 00:20:14.130 ambitious. He wanted to create a complete map 00:20:14.130 --> 00:20:16.420 of the geography of the mind. That's a great 00:20:16.420 --> 00:20:18.720 way to put it. And to do that, to make his map 00:20:18.720 --> 00:20:21.660 more precise, he introduced two more key technical 00:20:21.660 --> 00:20:25.200 terms, noesis and noema. These sound like the 00:20:25.200 --> 00:20:27.259 names of Greek gods or something. They're Greek 00:20:27.259 --> 00:20:30.619 terms. Noesis, from the word nos for mind, is 00:20:30.619 --> 00:20:34.380 the act of thinking so, the perceiving, the judging, 00:20:34.539 --> 00:20:36.990 the remembering, the fearing. It's the inking 00:20:36.990 --> 00:20:39.490 part. Noema is the object of thought, the thing 00:20:39.490 --> 00:20:41.990 that is being perceived or remembered or judged. 00:20:42.190 --> 00:20:43.890 Well, wait a minute. Didn't we just say that 00:20:43.890 --> 00:20:46.069 we've bracketed the object? Yeah. We don't care 00:20:46.069 --> 00:20:48.190 if it's really there. This is the crucial distinction, 00:20:48.329 --> 00:20:51.710 and it's a little tricky. The noema is not the 00:20:51.710 --> 00:20:54.230 physical object out there in the world of atoms 00:20:54.230 --> 00:20:57.549 and molecules. It is the object as it is perceived 00:20:57.549 --> 00:21:00.329 by the mind. Okay. So if I remember a favorite 00:21:00.329 --> 00:21:02.890 toy from my childhood, the physical toy might 00:21:02.890 --> 00:21:05.099 be long gone. It could be in a landfill somewhere, 00:21:05.220 --> 00:21:06.880 totally disintegrated, it doesn't exist anymore. 00:21:07.119 --> 00:21:10.200 But the Noema, the toy, as remembered, with all 00:21:10.200 --> 00:21:12.279 its specific colors and the feelings and meanings 00:21:12.279 --> 00:21:14.940 attached to it, exists perfectly in my consciousness 00:21:14.940 --> 00:21:18.349 right now. The Noema is the meaning object. So 00:21:18.349 --> 00:21:20.750 the noema is like the internal avatar of the 00:21:20.750 --> 00:21:23.549 object, the file for it in my head. That is a 00:21:23.549 --> 00:21:25.730 very good way to put it. It holds the sense of 00:21:25.730 --> 00:21:28.269 the object and it includes all the different 00:21:28.269 --> 00:21:31.630 modes like possible or doubtful or existent. 00:21:31.630 --> 00:21:34.890 If I see a vague figure in the fog, the noesis 00:21:34.890 --> 00:21:37.549 is my act of straining to see. The noema might 00:21:37.549 --> 00:21:41.349 be a possibly scary person. Then I get closer 00:21:41.349 --> 00:21:44.089 and I realize, oh, it's just a tree. The physical 00:21:44.089 --> 00:21:46.069 atoms of the tree didn't change, but the noema 00:21:46.069 --> 00:21:48.549 in my mind shifted dramatically from person to 00:21:48.549 --> 00:21:50.690 tree. This is getting really deep. So he's building 00:21:50.690 --> 00:21:53.089 this massive, intricate, almost architectural 00:21:53.089 --> 00:21:55.569 structure of how the mind builds up reality from 00:21:55.569 --> 00:21:58.730 experience. But then around 1913, in his book 00:21:58.730 --> 00:22:01.690 Ideas, he takes a turn that apparently freaks 00:22:01.690 --> 00:22:03.549 some of his own students out. The transcendental 00:22:03.549 --> 00:22:06.250 turn. Yes. In Ideas, I, as it's known, Husserl, 00:22:06.329 --> 00:22:09.470 goes full on transcendental idealism. He starts 00:22:09.470 --> 00:22:11.670 to argue that the world is actually constituted 00:22:11.670 --> 00:22:14.849 by consciousness. Okay, that sounds trippy. Constituted? 00:22:14.930 --> 00:22:16.609 What does that mean? Like we literally create 00:22:16.609 --> 00:22:18.789 the world with our minds. Is this like the secret 00:22:18.789 --> 00:22:22.490 manifest reality? Hey, no, it's not magic. He's 00:22:22.490 --> 00:22:24.130 not saying you can just close your eyes and wish 00:22:24.130 --> 00:22:26.210 for a Ferrari to appear in your driveway. But 00:22:26.210 --> 00:22:28.430 he did argue that the only way the world has 00:22:28.430 --> 00:22:31.529 any meaning, any structure, any objectivity at 00:22:31.529 --> 00:22:34.329 all is through the structuring activity of what 00:22:34.329 --> 00:22:36.710 he called the transcendental ego. The transcendental 00:22:36.710 --> 00:22:38.650 ego. This isn't Edmund Hussle, the guy with the 00:22:38.650 --> 00:22:41.809 big beard. And it's not host, speaker, the podcaster. 00:22:41.990 --> 00:22:45.789 This is the pure, absolute, anonymous self that 00:22:45.789 --> 00:22:48.769 is the ultimate observer of the world. It's the 00:22:48.769 --> 00:22:51.730 eye that is doing the looking, the center point 00:22:51.730 --> 00:22:53.670 of all experience. And this is where it gets 00:22:53.670 --> 00:22:55.630 super controversial, because if the world depends 00:22:55.630 --> 00:22:59.789 on my eye to exist, that sounds dangerously close 00:22:59.789 --> 00:23:02.799 to solipsism. His students, people like Roman 00:23:02.799 --> 00:23:04.859 Ingarden, started getting very, very nervous. 00:23:05.019 --> 00:23:07.000 They thought, wait a minute, is he saying only 00:23:07.000 --> 00:23:10.019 the mind exists? That the physical world is just 00:23:10.019 --> 00:23:12.559 a dream? Is he becoming a solipsist? Solipsism, 00:23:12.680 --> 00:23:15.759 the ultimate philosophical trap. The idea that 00:23:15.759 --> 00:23:18.099 I am the only conscious being that truly exists 00:23:18.099 --> 00:23:20.660 and everyone and everything else is just a figment 00:23:20.660 --> 00:23:23.559 of my imagination. It's the black hole of philosophy. 00:23:23.920 --> 00:23:26.180 Because if I perform the Apoche and I bracket 00:23:26.180 --> 00:23:29.019 the entire world, and I focus only on my consciousness, 00:23:29.279 --> 00:23:32.240 how do I ever prove that you exist? I can see 00:23:32.240 --> 00:23:35.140 your body. I can hear your voice. But those are 00:23:35.140 --> 00:23:37.640 just phenomena happening in my visual field and 00:23:37.640 --> 00:23:39.940 my auditory field. How do I know there's actually 00:23:39.940 --> 00:23:42.630 a light on? inside your head. That seems like 00:23:42.630 --> 00:23:44.849 a pretty gigantic problem for a guy who's trying 00:23:44.849 --> 00:23:47.250 to explain all of reality. If he can't even prove 00:23:47.250 --> 00:23:49.269 that other people exist, his whole system fails. 00:23:49.509 --> 00:23:52.089 It was a huge problem. Yeah. And Hussle spent 00:23:52.089 --> 00:23:54.190 a lot of his later career wrestling with it, 00:23:54.230 --> 00:23:56.190 particularly in a series of lectures called the 00:23:56.190 --> 00:23:58.809 Cartesian Meditations. He tries to solve the 00:23:58.809 --> 00:24:00.890 problem of other minds. So how does he do it? 00:24:00.930 --> 00:24:02.950 How does he prove that I'm not just a sophisticated 00:24:02.950 --> 00:24:05.789 robot in his dream? He starts from within what 00:24:05.789 --> 00:24:08.730 he calls the sphere of onus. That's my private 00:24:09.480 --> 00:24:12.619 reduced first -person experience. He says, okay, 00:24:12.660 --> 00:24:15.740 within my field of vision, I perceive various 00:24:15.740 --> 00:24:18.119 bodies. I perceive my own body, you know, my 00:24:18.119 --> 00:24:20.200 hands, my legs, which I experience from the inside. 00:24:20.519 --> 00:24:23.619 And I also see your body over there. Okay. But 00:24:23.619 --> 00:24:25.559 I perceive your body differently than I perceive 00:24:25.559 --> 00:24:28.359 a mannequin or a stone. Because I move. Because 00:24:28.359 --> 00:24:30.700 I talk. Because of a process he calls pairing 00:24:30.700 --> 00:24:51.869 or analogy. So I basically project my own experience 00:24:51.869 --> 00:24:55.049 of being an ego onto you. Exactly. I recognize 00:24:55.049 --> 00:24:58.410 you as an alter ego, another I. It's a kind of 00:24:58.410 --> 00:25:01.320 empathy, but it's a structural... perceptual 00:25:01.320 --> 00:25:03.400 empathy. It's not just a feeling. It's a fundamental 00:25:03.400 --> 00:25:05.640 way I constitute the world. So he says we recognize 00:25:05.640 --> 00:25:07.519 the other. We recognize the other. And this is 00:25:07.519 --> 00:25:10.119 the absolute key to solving the problem. Once 00:25:10.119 --> 00:25:12.299 I recognize that you are another subject, another 00:25:12.299 --> 00:25:14.559 point of view on the world, I realize that the 00:25:14.559 --> 00:25:16.819 world isn't just my world. It is our world. A 00:25:16.819 --> 00:25:19.059 shared reality. Precisely. This is what he calls 00:25:19.059 --> 00:25:22.369 intersubjectivity. The coffee cup is real and 00:25:22.369 --> 00:25:25.049 objective, not because it's atoms exist in some 00:25:25.049 --> 00:25:26.990 void, but because I know that if you were to 00:25:26.990 --> 00:25:28.769 walk over here and look at it from your angle, 00:25:28.869 --> 00:25:30.829 you would see it too, just from a different perspective. 00:25:31.569 --> 00:25:33.930 We triangulate reality between our different 00:25:33.930 --> 00:25:37.470 consciousnesses. Objectivity for Hustle is actually 00:25:37.470 --> 00:25:39.650 just shared subjectivity. That's actually a really 00:25:39.650 --> 00:25:42.109 beautiful idea. Reality is the thing that we 00:25:42.109 --> 00:25:44.210 all agree on because we experience it together. 00:25:44.609 --> 00:25:47.829 It is. But as beautiful and intricate as these 00:25:47.829 --> 00:25:51.730 ideas were, The real objective historical world 00:25:51.730 --> 00:25:54.569 was about to crash in on Husserl in the most 00:25:54.569 --> 00:25:57.329 devastating way possible. And to understand that, 00:25:57.349 --> 00:25:59.009 we have to talk about the shadow of history. 00:25:59.230 --> 00:26:02.470 Yes. We absolutely cannot talk about Husserl 00:26:02.470 --> 00:26:04.390 without talking about the rise of the Nazis and 00:26:04.390 --> 00:26:06.549 specifically his relationship with Martin Heidegger. 00:26:06.630 --> 00:26:08.450 This part of the story feels like a movie plot. 00:26:08.609 --> 00:26:11.130 The master and the apprentice. It really is. 00:26:11.660 --> 00:26:13.640 And to understand the pain of what happened, 00:26:13.759 --> 00:26:15.720 you have to understand the depth of the initial 00:26:15.720 --> 00:26:18.539 relationship. Martin Heidegger wasn't just another 00:26:18.539 --> 00:26:21.380 student. He was the prince. That's what called 00:26:21.380 --> 00:26:24.400 him his phenomenological child. He was the chosen 00:26:24.400 --> 00:26:26.500 one. I read that Husserl didn't have a great 00:26:26.500 --> 00:26:28.619 relationship with his own biological sons. Is 00:26:28.619 --> 00:26:31.779 that right? It was complicated, yes. But Heidegger, 00:26:31.900 --> 00:26:35.319 Heidegger was the heir apparent. He was Husserl's 00:26:35.319 --> 00:26:39.059 personal assistant from 1920 to 1923. Husserl 00:26:39.059 --> 00:26:41.720 absolutely adored him. When Assur retired from 00:26:41.720 --> 00:26:44.099 his chair at the University of Freiburg, he thought 00:26:44.099 --> 00:26:46.079 to make sure that Heidegger was the one who succeeded 00:26:46.079 --> 00:26:48.460 him. He thought, I have built the foundation, 00:26:48.720 --> 00:26:50.880 and Martin will be the one to build the skyscraper. 00:26:51.079 --> 00:26:53.279 And Heidegger seemed to reciprocate that, at 00:26:53.279 --> 00:26:55.920 least at first. Initially, yes. When Heidegger 00:26:55.920 --> 00:26:57.599 published his own philosophical masterpiece, 00:26:58.019 --> 00:27:01.660 Being and Time, in 1927, he dedicated it to Husserl 00:27:01.660 --> 00:27:04.180 in grateful respect and friendship. It was a 00:27:04.180 --> 00:27:06.460 huge public acknowledgement. So what went wrong? 00:27:06.519 --> 00:27:08.480 Where did it all fall apart? Well, first, the 00:27:08.480 --> 00:27:11.160 philosophy went wrong. And this is important. 00:27:11.339 --> 00:27:14.180 As Husserl read Being and Time more closely, 00:27:14.380 --> 00:27:17.119 he started to realize that Heidegger wasn't actually 00:27:17.119 --> 00:27:19.220 doing phenomenology the way Husserl intended 00:27:19.220 --> 00:27:22.799 it. How so? Husserl was interested in pure consciousness, 00:27:23.119 --> 00:27:26.119 the transcendental ego, the abstract, timeless 00:27:26.119 --> 00:27:29.359 structures of the mind. But Heidegger, he was 00:27:29.359 --> 00:27:33.259 interested in Dasein, which means roughly. being 00:27:33.259 --> 00:27:35.819 there. He was interested in the concrete, messy, 00:27:36.000 --> 00:27:38.319 anxious experience of being a human being thrown 00:27:38.319 --> 00:27:40.599 into the world facing death. So Heidegger made 00:27:40.599 --> 00:27:43.460 it gritty. He took the clean, sterile laboratory 00:27:43.460 --> 00:27:45.700 of phenomenology and dragged it out into the 00:27:45.700 --> 00:27:48.019 mud of real life. He did. And Husserl saw this 00:27:48.019 --> 00:27:51.099 as a profound intellectual betrayal. He thought 00:27:51.099 --> 00:27:53.019 Heidegger was slipping back into what he called 00:27:53.019 --> 00:27:56.140 anthropology, just studying humans as a particular 00:27:56.140 --> 00:27:58.619 species of animal rather than studying the pure 00:27:58.619 --> 00:28:01.700 essence of mind itself. For Husserl, it felt 00:28:01.700 --> 00:28:03.900 like a return to the very psychologism he had 00:28:03.900 --> 00:28:06.400 fought so hard to escape. But that intellectual 00:28:06.400 --> 00:28:09.019 betrayal was, in the end, nothing compared to 00:28:09.019 --> 00:28:13.039 the political one. Nothing. 1933. Hitler comes 00:28:13.039 --> 00:28:15.380 to power. Now, we have to remember, Husserl was 00:28:15.380 --> 00:28:17.779 born into a Jewish family. He had converted to 00:28:17.779 --> 00:28:21.039 Lutheranism way back in 1886, and he considered 00:28:21.039 --> 00:28:24.490 himself a fiercely loyal German patriot. He was 00:28:24.490 --> 00:28:27.089 politically conservative. He loved Germany. His 00:28:27.089 --> 00:28:29.730 son, Wolfgang, had been killed in World War I 00:28:29.730 --> 00:28:32.490 fighting for Germany. Another son, Gerhardt, 00:28:32.490 --> 00:28:35.509 had been badly wounded. So he had paid the ultimate 00:28:35.509 --> 00:28:37.250 price for his country. He had given his country 00:28:37.250 --> 00:28:39.990 a son. He had. But to the Nazis, none of that 00:28:39.990 --> 00:28:43.140 mattered. He was just a Jew. In April 1933, the 00:28:43.140 --> 00:28:46.119 new racial laws began to bite. And this is where 00:28:46.119 --> 00:28:48.400 the story gets just heartbreaking. Husserl is 00:28:48.400 --> 00:28:50.900 living in Freiburg, this quiet university town 00:28:50.900 --> 00:28:53.299 he had helped make world famous. And suddenly, 00:28:53.400 --> 00:28:56.000 overnight, he's a pariah. There's a famous story 00:28:56.000 --> 00:28:58.140 about him being banned from the university library. 00:28:58.519 --> 00:29:00.259 We need to be careful with this because there 00:29:00.259 --> 00:29:02.480 are a lot of rumors and there are facts. Did 00:29:02.480 --> 00:29:04.599 Heidegger, his former student who is now a big 00:29:04.599 --> 00:29:06.720 shot at the university, personally ban him from 00:29:06.720 --> 00:29:09.059 the library? Okay. So the records are clear on 00:29:09.059 --> 00:29:11.059 this. Husserl was banned from using the University 00:29:11.059 --> 00:29:14.759 of Freiburg Library in April of 1933. This was 00:29:14.759 --> 00:29:16.539 done by the university administration applying 00:29:16.539 --> 00:29:19.640 the new state laws. It was a blanket ban on all 00:29:19.640 --> 00:29:23.420 non -Aryan faculty. Right. Now, there was a huge 00:29:23.420 --> 00:29:26.660 public outcry from abroad. Husserl was a global 00:29:26.660 --> 00:29:28.900 figure, and the ban was actually rescinded about 00:29:28.900 --> 00:29:32.599 a week later. But the damage was done. The insult 00:29:32.599 --> 00:29:35.299 was profound. He wrote in a letter that he felt 00:29:35.299 --> 00:29:37.559 he had been struck directly in the heart. And 00:29:37.559 --> 00:29:39.359 where was Heidegger in all of this? What was 00:29:39.359 --> 00:29:41.359 his role? Well, Heidegger was elected rector 00:29:41.359 --> 00:29:43.420 of the university just a few weeks later, at 00:29:43.420 --> 00:29:47.339 the end of April 1933. And on May 1st, Heidegger 00:29:47.339 --> 00:29:50.460 officially joined the Nazi party. Oof. It gets 00:29:50.460 --> 00:29:53.000 worse. While there is no direct evidence that 00:29:53.000 --> 00:29:54.779 Heidegger personally signed the order banning 00:29:54.779 --> 00:29:57.400 Husserl from the library, his silence is damning. 00:29:57.929 --> 00:30:01.029 He was now the rector. He's the boss. He did 00:30:01.029 --> 00:30:02.950 nothing to stop the notsification of the university. 00:30:03.170 --> 00:30:04.829 He didn't visit Husserl. He didn't write a letter 00:30:04.829 --> 00:30:07.089 saying, Edmund, my old friend, I'm sorry, my 00:30:07.089 --> 00:30:09.650 hands are tied. He just goosted him. That's a 00:30:09.650 --> 00:30:12.269 very specific kind of cruelty, isn't it? It's 00:30:12.269 --> 00:30:14.470 the banality of evil right there in the university 00:30:14.470 --> 00:30:16.650 hallway, just looking the other way. And then, 00:30:16.670 --> 00:30:18.430 of course, there's the matter of the book dedication. 00:30:18.710 --> 00:30:22.539 In being in time. Right. The 1927 edition had 00:30:22.539 --> 00:30:25.019 that glowing dedication to Husserl. But in the 00:30:25.019 --> 00:30:27.359 1941 edition, published during the height of 00:30:27.359 --> 00:30:30.680 the war. Let me guess. It's gone. The dedication 00:30:30.680 --> 00:30:33.380 page was removed. It just wasn't there. Now, 00:30:33.400 --> 00:30:35.140 after the war, the publisher claimed this was 00:30:35.140 --> 00:30:37.099 done to avoid the book being banned entirely 00:30:37.099 --> 00:30:39.740 by the Nazi authorities. And it's true that a 00:30:39.740 --> 00:30:41.480 footnote acknowledging Husserl remained deep 00:30:41.480 --> 00:30:45.059 inside the text. But the symbolism is just stark 00:30:45.059 --> 00:30:47.559 and horrifying. The student erasing the teacher 00:30:47.559 --> 00:30:49.500 from the public record. And so Husserl was just. 00:30:50.839 --> 00:30:53.420 Isolated. Completely. He resigned from the Deutsch 00:30:53.420 --> 00:30:57.000 Academy in 1933. He just sat in his home in Freiburg, 00:30:57.099 --> 00:31:00.059 completely ostracized by the very academic community 00:31:00.059 --> 00:31:02.039 he had helped to build. We have letters from 00:31:02.039 --> 00:31:04.500 him during this time. He sounds utterly heartbroken. 00:31:04.559 --> 00:31:07.119 He talks about the complete social vacuum around 00:31:07.119 --> 00:31:09.819 him. Former colleagues and students would literally 00:31:09.819 --> 00:31:11.759 cross the street to avoid having to say hello 00:31:11.759 --> 00:31:13.900 to him. But he didn't stop working. And this 00:31:13.900 --> 00:31:16.259 leads to one of the most incredible stories in 00:31:16.259 --> 00:31:19.000 the entire history of philosophy, the rescue 00:31:19.000 --> 00:31:21.700 of his manuscripts. Because when he died in 1938, 00:31:22.079 --> 00:31:24.900 he left behind a mountain of paper. A literal 00:31:24.900 --> 00:31:28.279 mountain. 40 ,000 pages of unpublished notes, 00:31:28.500 --> 00:31:31.180 manuscripts, and lectures. And it wasn't just 00:31:31.180 --> 00:31:33.759 regular writing. He wrote almost everything in 00:31:33.759 --> 00:31:37.319 Gabelsberger stenography, an obsolete, very difficult 00:31:37.319 --> 00:31:39.539 form of German shorthand. So it was basically 00:31:39.539 --> 00:31:42.420 written in code. To the untrained eye, yes. It 00:31:42.420 --> 00:31:44.539 looks like chicken scratch. And with the Nazis 00:31:44.539 --> 00:31:46.799 in power, these manuscripts were in grave danger 00:31:46.799 --> 00:31:48.960 of being seized and destroyed. They were Jewish 00:31:48.960 --> 00:31:51.279 writings. If the Gestapo ever found them, they 00:31:51.279 --> 00:31:53.859 would have been burned. Enter Herman van Breda. 00:31:53.960 --> 00:31:56.039 The hero of the story. The absolute hero. He 00:31:56.039 --> 00:31:58.200 was a young Franciscan priest from Belgium, a 00:31:58.200 --> 00:32:01.599 PhD student, just 27 years old. He came to Freiburg 00:32:01.599 --> 00:32:04.579 in 1938, hoping to study Husserl's papers for 00:32:04.579 --> 00:32:07.240 his dissertation. When he arrived, he found Husserl's 00:32:07.240 --> 00:32:10.430 widow. Malvin, living in constant fear. He immediately 00:32:10.430 --> 00:32:12.829 realized the danger the papers were in, and he 00:32:12.829 --> 00:32:14.890 decided on the spot, I have to get these out 00:32:14.890 --> 00:32:17.710 of Germany. A Catholic priest smuggling banned 00:32:17.710 --> 00:32:20.549 philosophy papers out of Nazi Germany. That is 00:32:20.549 --> 00:32:23.769 a movie waiting to happen. It truly is. This 00:32:23.769 --> 00:32:27.670 was late 1938, early 1939. War was imminent. 00:32:28.369 --> 00:32:31.009 Van Breda used his status as a priest and a foreigner. 00:32:31.170 --> 00:32:33.509 He got the Belgian embassy involved to create 00:32:33.509 --> 00:32:37.150 a diplomatic pouch. He packed the 40 ,000 pages 00:32:37.150 --> 00:32:39.809 of manuscripts plus Husserl's entire personal 00:32:39.809 --> 00:32:42.529 library into suitcases and trunks and smuggled 00:32:42.529 --> 00:32:44.809 them across the border to Leuven in Belgium. 00:32:45.009 --> 00:32:47.750 He even smuggled Malvin Husserl out to safety 00:32:47.750 --> 00:32:50.750 in a convent. He established the Husserl archives 00:32:50.750 --> 00:32:53.579 in Leuven where they are today. If it were not 00:32:53.579 --> 00:32:55.799 for Father Van Breda, we would have lost the 00:32:55.799 --> 00:32:58.019 vast majority of Husserl's life's work. It would 00:32:58.019 --> 00:32:59.839 have gone up in smoke. That is just incredible. 00:32:59.920 --> 00:33:02.000 And it's a very good thing they were saved. Because 00:33:02.000 --> 00:33:04.119 Husserl's final work, the stuff he was writing 00:33:04.119 --> 00:33:06.259 in those dark, isolated years, was some of his 00:33:06.259 --> 00:33:09.140 most important and influential, The Crisis of 00:33:09.140 --> 00:33:11.839 European Sciences. Yes, published in 1936 in 00:33:11.839 --> 00:33:13.119 Belgrade, because of course he couldn't publish 00:33:13.119 --> 00:33:15.480 in Germany anymore. This is Husserl in his late 00:33:15.480 --> 00:33:18.000 70s, looking at a Europe that is tearing itself 00:33:18.000 --> 00:33:20.720 apart at the seams. And he asks us a fundamental 00:33:20.720 --> 00:33:24.140 question. Why has science failed us? Which is 00:33:24.140 --> 00:33:26.819 a bold question to ask. Considering science was 00:33:26.819 --> 00:33:29.099 advancing more rapidly than ever, we were splitting 00:33:29.099 --> 00:33:31.660 the atom, building airplanes, inventing radio. 00:33:32.119 --> 00:33:34.160 But Husserl argued that science had become too 00:33:34.160 --> 00:33:37.299 abstract. It had lost its way. It had forgotten 00:33:37.299 --> 00:33:40.839 its roots. And this brings us to his final great 00:33:40.839 --> 00:33:45.640 concept, the life world. Lee Levenswelt. Lee 00:33:45.640 --> 00:33:48.099 Levenswelt. Now, this is the concept that feels, 00:33:48.160 --> 00:33:51.359 to me, the most relevant to us today. What is 00:33:51.359 --> 00:33:53.859 it? The life world is the world of immediate 00:33:53.859 --> 00:33:57.480 pre -scientific lived experience. It is the world 00:33:57.480 --> 00:33:59.259 we actually live in before we start applying 00:33:59.259 --> 00:34:01.799 formulas and theories to it. It's the world of 00:34:01.799 --> 00:34:04.259 colors and textures and relationships and hunger 00:34:04.259 --> 00:34:06.299 and love and disappointment. So it's kind of 00:34:06.299 --> 00:34:08.559 like the natural attitude world again. Yes, but 00:34:08.559 --> 00:34:10.889 viewed with a newfound respect. In his early 00:34:10.889 --> 00:34:12.670 work, he wanted to bracket the life world to 00:34:12.670 --> 00:34:15.449 get to the pure essences. In his late work, he 00:34:15.449 --> 00:34:17.650 realized that objective science, physics, chemistry, 00:34:17.849 --> 00:34:20.349 geometry is actually built upon the life world. 00:34:20.409 --> 00:34:22.269 It grows out of it. Well, think about something 00:34:22.269 --> 00:34:25.250 as abstract as geometry. It didn't just fall 00:34:25.250 --> 00:34:27.969 from the sky in a perfect logical form. It started 00:34:27.969 --> 00:34:30.809 with ancient land surveyors in Egypt measuring 00:34:30.809 --> 00:34:33.989 actual fields of mud and grass along the Nile. 00:34:34.380 --> 00:34:37.039 It started with carpenters and builders. It started 00:34:37.039 --> 00:34:40.280 in the messy practical life world. Then over 00:34:40.280 --> 00:34:43.719 centuries, we abstracted it into pure ideal formulas. 00:34:43.980 --> 00:34:46.679 So the abstract formula always comes from the 00:34:46.679 --> 00:34:49.659 messy lived reality. Exactly. But Hussle said 00:34:49.659 --> 00:34:52.039 we've forgotten that. We have started to think 00:34:52.039 --> 00:34:54.480 that the formula is the only reality and that 00:34:54.480 --> 00:34:57.179 our messy lived experience is just a kind of. 00:34:57.960 --> 00:35:00.559 illusion, or a source of error. He called this 00:35:00.559 --> 00:35:03.360 the surreptitious substitution. We have substituted 00:35:03.360 --> 00:35:06.159 the map for the territory. And when you do that, 00:35:06.239 --> 00:35:08.940 science loses its meaning for actual human life. 00:35:09.099 --> 00:35:11.340 Right. Think about modern medicine. You go to 00:35:11.340 --> 00:35:13.420 the doctor because you're in pain. That is your 00:35:13.420 --> 00:35:15.699 life world reality. It hurts when I breathe. 00:35:15.880 --> 00:35:17.719 That's real. That's as real as it gets for me. 00:35:17.860 --> 00:35:21.019 But the doctor looks at the MRI scan, the chart, 00:35:21.159 --> 00:35:23.989 the blood work numbers. If all the numbers on 00:35:23.989 --> 00:35:26.349 the chart say you are fine, the doctor might 00:35:26.349 --> 00:35:28.010 be tempted to say there's nothing wrong with 00:35:28.010 --> 00:35:31.050 you. Gaslighting by science. The data says you're 00:35:31.050 --> 00:35:34.329 fine, so therefore your pain isn't real. Exactly. 00:35:34.889 --> 00:35:37.489 Husserl saw this coming a mile away. He said 00:35:37.489 --> 00:35:39.789 we have let what he called the garment of ideas, 00:35:40.070 --> 00:35:43.190 the math, the charts, the data, completely cover 00:35:43.190 --> 00:35:45.110 up and replace the living body of experience. 00:35:45.489 --> 00:35:48.500 We trust the map more than the territory. And 00:35:48.500 --> 00:35:51.360 in the 1930s, he saw where this leads politically. 00:35:51.760 --> 00:35:54.219 If you start to see human beings as just data 00:35:54.219 --> 00:35:56.639 points, as just biological variables to be managed, 00:35:56.739 --> 00:35:59.519 it becomes very, very easy to manipulate them 00:35:59.519 --> 00:36:02.219 or to delete them if they don't fit the model. 00:36:02.320 --> 00:36:04.880 That is absolutely chilling because if I'm just 00:36:04.880 --> 00:36:06.739 a data set, I don't have rights. I just have 00:36:06.739 --> 00:36:09.039 variables that can be optimized. And that is 00:36:09.039 --> 00:36:11.159 why he wrote The Crisis. He wasn't just trying 00:36:11.159 --> 00:36:13.780 to fix some obscure problem in philosophy. He 00:36:13.780 --> 00:36:15.760 was trying to save European civilization from 00:36:15.760 --> 00:36:19.539 its own cold calculus. objectifying logic. He 00:36:19.539 --> 00:36:21.880 wanted to re -inject the human soul back into 00:36:21.880 --> 00:36:24.440 the scientific machine. He wanted to ground reason 00:36:24.440 --> 00:36:27.099 back in the Levin's world in shared human experience. 00:36:27.719 --> 00:36:30.840 That is a powerful, powerful message. And it 00:36:30.840 --> 00:36:34.099 feels so relevant today with algorithms and big 00:36:34.099 --> 00:36:37.099 data basically running everything. We are constantly 00:36:37.099 --> 00:36:39.599 being told what we like, who we are, and what 00:36:39.599 --> 00:36:42.119 is true by these black box algorithms. Extremely 00:36:42.119 --> 00:36:44.539 relevant. And that is a huge part of his massive 00:36:44.539 --> 00:36:46.440 legacy. Let's talk about that legacy. We still 00:36:46.440 --> 00:36:49.019 got some time left. Who did Husserl influence? 00:36:49.340 --> 00:36:51.380 It seems like pretty much everyone in 20th century 00:36:51.380 --> 00:36:54.099 thought. It is a massive and incredibly diverse 00:36:54.099 --> 00:36:56.699 family tree. I mean, first you have the existentialists. 00:36:57.000 --> 00:36:59.840 Jean -Paul Sartre. Sartre was a young man when 00:36:59.840 --> 00:37:02.639 he read Husserl, and it completely blew his mind. 00:37:02.739 --> 00:37:04.639 There's a famous story of him sitting in a cafe 00:37:04.639 --> 00:37:07.880 in Paris, and his friend Raymond Aron tells him, 00:37:07.940 --> 00:37:10.119 you see, if you are a phenomenologist, you can 00:37:10.119 --> 00:37:13.199 do philosophy about this cocktail. And Sartre 00:37:13.199 --> 00:37:15.460 apparently turned pale with excitement. Because 00:37:15.460 --> 00:37:17.760 he realized he could analyze the experience of 00:37:17.760 --> 00:37:20.679 the cocktail. The cocktail as perceived. Exactly. 00:37:21.320 --> 00:37:24.480 Sartre basically took Husserl's method. described 00:37:24.480 --> 00:37:26.719 the lived experience, and he applied it to freedom, 00:37:26.840 --> 00:37:29.440 to anxiety, to what he called the look of the 00:37:29.440 --> 00:37:32.400 other person. But he stripped out the transcendental 00:37:32.400 --> 00:37:35.719 ego. Sartre didn't believe in some pure, abstract 00:37:35.719 --> 00:37:39.219 self. He famously believed that existence precedes 00:37:39.219 --> 00:37:41.300 essence. And then there's Simone de Beauvoir. 00:37:41.460 --> 00:37:43.500 She took that same method and applied it to gender. 00:37:43.659 --> 00:37:45.860 She asked, what is the lived experience of being 00:37:45.860 --> 00:37:48.000 a woman in this society? Not the biology, not 00:37:48.000 --> 00:37:50.659 the theory, but the experience. And that investigation 00:37:50.659 --> 00:37:53.199 led directly to her monumental book, The Second 00:37:53.199 --> 00:37:56.000 Sex. And what about in ethics? You mentioned 00:37:56.000 --> 00:37:58.460 Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas was actually a student 00:37:58.460 --> 00:38:01.440 of Husserl's in Freiburg. He was deeply influenced 00:38:01.440 --> 00:38:03.739 by that whole idea of recognizing the other and 00:38:03.739 --> 00:38:06.980 intersubjectivity. But Levinas took it in a radical 00:38:06.980 --> 00:38:09.320 new direction. He said, the face of the other 00:38:09.320 --> 00:38:11.780 person makes an absolute ethical demand on us. 00:38:12.300 --> 00:38:14.579 Before we even think, before any philosophy, 00:38:14.860 --> 00:38:17.159 we are fundamentally responsible for the other. 00:38:17.469 --> 00:38:20.409 He shifted the focus of phenomenology from knowledge 00:38:20.409 --> 00:38:23.510 or epistemology to pure ethics. And we can't 00:38:23.510 --> 00:38:25.650 forget the most unlikely one, Pope John Paul 00:38:25.650 --> 00:38:30.730 II. Yes. Before he was pope, he was a serious 00:38:30.730 --> 00:38:33.809 philosopher. He wrote his doctoral thesis and 00:38:33.809 --> 00:38:36.010 a major book called The Acting Person, where 00:38:36.010 --> 00:38:38.650 he tried to synthesize traditional Catholic Thomism 00:38:38.650 --> 00:38:41.809 with Husserlian phenomenology. He was fascinated 00:38:41.809 --> 00:38:44.130 by the subjective experience of the moral agent 00:38:44.130 --> 00:38:46.010 who was making a choice. So you have a direct 00:38:46.010 --> 00:38:48.469 line from Husserl's study in Freiburg right to 00:38:48.469 --> 00:38:50.289 the Vatican. And finally, what about someone 00:38:50.289 --> 00:38:53.409 like Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction? 00:38:53.820 --> 00:38:56.699 Derrida is a fascinating case. He literally started 00:38:56.699 --> 00:38:59.519 his career by translating and writing a long, 00:38:59.559 --> 00:39:01.559 critical introduction to one of Husserl's minor 00:39:01.559 --> 00:39:04.480 works. His entire idea of deconstruction actually 00:39:04.480 --> 00:39:07.179 began as a way of taking apart Husserl's ideas 00:39:07.179 --> 00:39:10.159 about presence and meaning and speech. You really 00:39:10.159 --> 00:39:12.670 cannot understand postmodernism. without understanding 00:39:12.670 --> 00:39:14.869 the hustle that it is constantly reacting against. 00:39:15.150 --> 00:39:17.130 It's just amazing this guy who started out as 00:39:17.130 --> 00:39:19.369 a math nerd in Moravia ended up shaping everything 00:39:19.369 --> 00:39:22.909 from Catholic theology to French atheism to postmodernism. 00:39:23.030 --> 00:39:25.050 And even cognitive science today. The debates 00:39:25.050 --> 00:39:27.110 we are having right now about artificial intelligence. 00:39:27.329 --> 00:39:30.070 Can a computer ever truly be conscious? These 00:39:30.070 --> 00:39:32.349 are fundamentally Husserlian debates. How so? 00:39:32.670 --> 00:39:34.989 Well, look at something like ChatGPT. It can 00:39:34.989 --> 00:39:37.690 process syntax with incredible skill. It can 00:39:37.690 --> 00:39:39.530 manipulate symbols. It can give you a perfect, 00:39:39.610 --> 00:39:42.170 improper presentation of a house. You know, a 00:39:42.170 --> 00:39:45.010 text description. But does it have a proper presentation? 00:39:45.329 --> 00:39:47.550 Does it have a living swell? Yeah. Does it feel 00:39:47.550 --> 00:39:49.829 the warmth of the coffee cup or see the redness 00:39:49.829 --> 00:39:52.730 of the sunset? No. It's just predicting the next 00:39:52.730 --> 00:39:55.190 most probable word in a sequence. Hustle would 00:39:55.190 --> 00:39:58.800 say. If it has no life world, it has no meaning. 00:39:58.900 --> 00:40:01.980 It's just syntax without semantics. It's the 00:40:01.980 --> 00:40:05.019 old Chinese room argument. It can simulate thinking 00:40:05.019 --> 00:40:07.559 perfectly, but it isn't thinking because there 00:40:07.559 --> 00:40:10.900 is no intentionality, no I that is directing 00:40:10.900 --> 00:40:13.340 the arrow of consciousness toward a world. So 00:40:13.340 --> 00:40:16.039 Husserl saves us from the robots, too. Maybe. 00:40:16.239 --> 00:40:18.539 Or at least he gives us the vocabulary to understand 00:40:18.539 --> 00:40:20.239 why we are fundamentally different from them. 00:40:20.340 --> 00:40:22.260 So as we wrap up here, let's try to summarize 00:40:22.260 --> 00:40:24.659 this incredible journey. We went from the rigid 00:40:24.659 --> 00:40:28.159 objective logic of math to the fluid first -person 00:40:28.159 --> 00:40:30.539 exploration of consciousness, from the solitary 00:40:30.539 --> 00:40:33.219 ego to the shared world, from the heights of 00:40:33.219 --> 00:40:35.519 academic fame to the absolute tragedy of the 00:40:35.519 --> 00:40:37.800 Nazi era. It's a journey of trying to find a 00:40:37.800 --> 00:40:39.800 firm footing in a world that was falling apart. 00:40:40.679 --> 00:40:42.539 Husserl lived in a time when everything was being 00:40:42.539 --> 00:40:44.900 thrown into question. Traditional religion was 00:40:44.900 --> 00:40:47.719 fading for many, science was exploding, but also 00:40:47.719 --> 00:40:50.300 becoming dehumanizing, and politics was becoming 00:40:50.300 --> 00:40:53.679 terrifyingly radical. He wanted to find a place 00:40:53.679 --> 00:40:57.500 to stand, a point of absolute certainty. And 00:40:57.500 --> 00:40:59.559 he found it not in the stars or in old books 00:40:59.559 --> 00:41:02.420 or in God, but in the undeniable reality of the 00:41:02.420 --> 00:41:04.880 structure of consciousness itself. To the things 00:41:04.880 --> 00:41:07.000 themselves. That was his famous motto, right? 00:41:08.639 --> 00:41:10.900 Don't rely on theories. Don't rely on assumptions. 00:41:10.980 --> 00:41:13.239 Just look. Look at the experiences it's given 00:41:13.239 --> 00:41:16.289 to you. So what's the so what for our listener 00:41:16.289 --> 00:41:18.889 today? Why should someone driving to work or 00:41:18.889 --> 00:41:21.949 doing the dishes care about transcendental phenomenology? 00:41:22.150 --> 00:41:24.210 I think the so what is about reclaiming your 00:41:24.210 --> 00:41:27.469 own experience. We live in an age of data overload. 00:41:28.150 --> 00:41:30.889 We are constantly being told what is real by 00:41:30.889 --> 00:41:34.389 algorithms, by news feeds, by scientific studies 00:41:34.389 --> 00:41:36.210 that contradict each other every other week. 00:41:36.469 --> 00:41:38.769 We are told our feelings are just chemicals in 00:41:38.769 --> 00:41:40.809 our brain. Our choices are just the result of 00:41:40.809 --> 00:41:42.920 our conditioning. Yeah, it's very easy to feel 00:41:42.920 --> 00:41:45.840 like you are just a cog in a machine, a spectator 00:41:45.840 --> 00:41:47.760 in your own life whose experience doesn't really 00:41:47.760 --> 00:41:50.519 count unless it can be measured. And Hussle's 00:41:50.519 --> 00:41:53.500 work is a powerful reminder that everything starts 00:41:53.500 --> 00:41:55.800 with the subjective experience. The scientific 00:41:55.800 --> 00:41:58.699 data means nothing without a consciousness there 00:41:58.699 --> 00:42:01.360 to interpret it. The algorithm doesn't exist 00:42:01.360 --> 00:42:04.280 without the human mind that built it. Phenomenology 00:42:04.280 --> 00:42:06.380 is a way of saying my first person experience 00:42:06.380 --> 00:42:09.880 matters. It is not an illusion. It is the foundation 00:42:09.880 --> 00:42:13.139 of all truth. It restores a fundamental dignity 00:42:13.139 --> 00:42:16.400 to your perspective on the world. That's a very 00:42:16.400 --> 00:42:19.019 empowering thought. It's a kind of defense of 00:42:19.019 --> 00:42:21.320 humanity in an increasingly mechanical world. 00:42:21.440 --> 00:42:23.679 Absolutely. It's giving yourself permission to 00:42:23.679 --> 00:42:25.300 trust your own eyes again. I want to leave the 00:42:25.300 --> 00:42:27.460 listener with a provocative thought then. We 00:42:27.460 --> 00:42:29.280 talked about the Lebenswelt, the life world, 00:42:29.460 --> 00:42:32.239 the world of walking, talking, touching, smelling. 00:42:33.000 --> 00:42:35.239 Husserl warned that if our science and our culture 00:42:35.239 --> 00:42:37.420 forget the life world, they become hollow and 00:42:37.420 --> 00:42:40.019 dangerous. Today, we spend more and more of our 00:42:40.019 --> 00:42:42.739 time in digital worlds, in metaverses, on social 00:42:42.739 --> 00:42:46.300 media, in remote work environments. We are abstracting 00:42:46.300 --> 00:42:49.199 ourselves from physical reality more than at 00:42:49.199 --> 00:42:51.599 any point in human history. So the question is, 00:42:51.630 --> 00:42:54.590 is, in an age of algorithms and objective data, 00:42:54.769 --> 00:42:56.929 have we already completely lost touch with the 00:42:56.929 --> 00:43:00.130 Lebenswelt? And if we have, if our world is now 00:43:00.130 --> 00:43:02.489 mostly made up of improper presentations and 00:43:02.489 --> 00:43:05.110 symbols on screens, is our knowledge actually 00:43:05.110 --> 00:43:07.670 baseless? Are we building a skyscraper on a cloud? 00:43:07.969 --> 00:43:10.449 That is the question. If we lose the ground of 00:43:10.449 --> 00:43:12.530 lived experience, do we ultimately lose the truth 00:43:12.530 --> 00:43:14.849 itself? Something to chew on. This has been the 00:43:14.849 --> 00:43:16.550 Deep Dive on Edmund Husserl. Thanks for listening. 00:43:16.730 --> 00:43:17.789 Thank you. We'll see you next time.