フッサールにおける本質認識とそのアプリオリ性

抄録

In this paper, I address three main objections to Husserl’s phenomenology understood as an a priori investigation of essences, and try to show that it is not unpromising. According to the first objection, which comes from Schlick, Husserl employs the term ‘a priori’ in a non-Kantian way and thereby neglects Kant’s great achievement; the second objection is that Husserl seems to assume that all necessary truths can be known a priori, but Kripke showed that some necessary truths can be known only a posteriori; the third objection is that Husserl’s method of knowing essences, ‘Free Variation,’ seems to involve empirical elements, so it is not an a priori method. In order to reply to these objections, in Section 1, I look at Kant’s discussion of a priori knowledge in the Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason, and introduce a distinction between the two roles which experience can play in our cognition: the justificatory role and the enabling role. A priori knowledge is thus knowledge whose justification is independent of any experience. In Section 2, replying to the first objection, I argue that no matter how Husserl may use the term, he is committed to the view that knowledge of essences is not dependent for its justification on any experience and therefore is a priori in the standard Kantian sense. In Section 3, I reply to the second objection, arguing that Husserl can evade Kripkean criticism, because his concern is not with all necessary truths, but with only those which can be known non-inferentially. In Section 4, I reply to the third objection, arguing that Husserl’s method of Free Variation can be seen as an a priori method because it can be regarded as relying only on our understanding of concepts.