Maurice Natanson

A Study in Philosophy and the Social Sciences

My intention in this essay is not to survey either the historical or the structural relationships between philosophy and the social sciences, but rather to focus on a basic systematic problem in methodology: the philosophical character and implications of the methods of social-scientific inquiry. By “methodology” I understand the underlying conceptual framework in terms of which concrete studies in history, sociology, economics, and the like are carried out, and in terms of which they receive a general rationale. Therefore I am not concerned here with the nature of specific techniques that social scientists utilize, or with their evaluation. Instead, I am interested in what I take to be a distinctly philosophical task, the analysis of the underlying presuppositions of the conceptual systems employed by social scientists in virtue of which their scientific enterprise is carried out. Methodology in the sense in which I am using it thus implies a certain order of philosophical commitment.

History as a Finite Province of Meaning

The history of civilizations and cultures, and of the monumental deeds of heroes, the history of Hegel, Spengler, and Toynbee, we shall call “Big history”; the history of ordinary people in the everyday, working world, living their lives, involved in the daily web of obscure projects and minor skirmishes, the history of the unknown, the unsung, and the easily forgotten, we shall call “little history.” Our theme is the relationship between the two, and our thesis is that investigating this problem is decisively relevant for the philosophy of history. Indeed, a study of “little history” may lead to the clarification of an entire dimension of the philosophy of history which has generally been overlooked or obscured. A preliminary indication of this dimension will bring whatever we have to say into immediate focus.

Causation as a Structure of the Lebenswelt

Whatever radical insights existentialism and phenomenology have occasioned in philosophy as well as in science, an implicit consequence of their intellectual vitality is the question they raise regarding the nexus between philosophy and science. Nowhere is this question more clearly found than in contemporary psychiatry. The recent stir in many quarters over existential psychoanalysis is only the surface disturbance of a much deeper problem, for underlying the publicity that has attended this movement is the more important, more insistent issue of the relationship between philosophical viewpoints and systems and the role of psychiatric theory in the matrix of knowledge. What is at issue, ultimately, is the very meaning of theory itself. I am interested in exploring theory in terms of a particular perspective, that of a fundamental problem for all science, the problem of causation. In a way, the choice of causation is less than necessary, for I could as well turn to the status of “fact” or “law” or “hypothesis” as a way into the difficulties I wish to engage. But if “causation” is a half-arbitrary choice, it is no less the case that it will do very well for the purposes at hand. Causation, I trust, will prove to be the threshold to the domain of theory as well as a clue to the meaning of the contribution of existential and phenomenological philosophy to science in general and to psychiatry in particular.

Existential Categories In Contemporary Literature

Presenting a paper on existentialism is somewhat like escorting a lady of rather dubious reputation to a party: the half-smiles and half-concealed glances are matched by an absorbing interest in the newcomer, and there is a nervousness in the discussion. Among philosophers the term “existentialism” is unique in this respect: no other term can make philosophers smile. What they are smiling about remains a mystery; that they smile, however, is no less mysterious. Again, there is a nervousness which teases about the subject, and which, in the end, is often all that ever emerges from the discussion. But even where existential philosophy is given a more serious hearing, the sense of mystery never quite vanishes; it transposes itself instead into an almost eschatological expectancy, the awaiting of a resolute answer to the jocular yet desperate question, “Well, what exactly is existentialism ?” Unfortunately, most goodwilled and competent efforts to answer this question are blocked at the outset by misunderstandings, mistaken preconceptions on the part of the questioner. Moreover, the questioner too often falls into one of several patterns. Perhaps the best way of introducing my conception of existential philosophy is by indicating, briefly, some of the typical objections raised against it and then proceeding to a positive statement of what I take to be the “real thing.”

Jean-Paul Sartre’s Philosophy of Freedom

It is now a commonplace in discussions of existentialism to distinguish between existentialism the fad, the darling of the Left Bank and of the sensation seekers, and existentialism the serious philosophical endeavor to explicate the categories and structure of man’s existence in its unique and immediate being. Nevertheless,. any discussion of the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre seems, like a tropistic reaction of a plant, to bend toward a confused admixture of ontology, ethics, psychology, literature, and publicity. It is beyond the scope of my present intentions to determine the reasons for the unclarified status of Sartre’s thought, but that lack of clarification may be taken as a starting point for an examination into the meaning of Sartre’s conception of existential freedom.

Being-in-Reality

In Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,the boy here, we are told, turned to the flyleaf of the geography and read what he had written there: himself, his name and where he was.

The Empirical and Transcendental Ego

Psychologists have often distinguished between the ego and the self, taking ego as subject and self as object of thought. So, for example, George H. Mead’s distinction of the “I” and “me” aspects of the self points, at one level at least, to the “I” as the subject and the “me” as the object of any act. More explicitly, William James in the first volume of his Principles of Psychology distinguishes between the self and the ego. But James is quick to establish a distinction between what he calls the “empirical self” and the “pure ego.” “The Empirical Self of each of us,” he writes, “is all that he is tempted to call by name of me,” 1 but the pure ego refers to a “pure principle of personal identity” and leads ultimately to considerations of transcendental philosophy.

Toward a Phenomenology of the Aesthetic Object

What distinguishes phenomenological philosophizing from other avenues of approach is the central challenge it extends to the knower to hold himself back from, aside from, the “accepted” world of common sense: to hold in abeyance the judgments and decisions and attitudes that are characteristic of thought which begins with the “obvious” facts and existents of reality. If philosophy has a radical and unique core, it is that philosophizing at its finest is unwilling to go along with traditional presuppositions; it seeks the heart of the knowing of things. Philosophy is thus Kantian and Husserlian in so far as it examines the grounds of knowledge and distinguishes between the experienced world and our experience of the world. In the greatest sense philosophy brackets the natural attitude in order to penetrate to that order of knowledge in which distinctions between ground and object are possible. That consciousness, the ego, the cogito should then prove to be central to the entire inquiry is understandable and to be expected, for it is only through bringing our own awareness into the field of analysis that the pre-conditions of knowing can be explored.

Existentialism and the Theory of Literature

Philosophical change, if not progress, may be measured by the nature and frequency of its embarrassments. An earlier age in Anglo-American thought was dominated by a passion for the Absolute. Questions concerning the nature of Man, the Cosmos, Life, and Death were familiar and valid. Even those, like William James, who thumbed their noses with pluralistic fingers were at home with big issues. Today the scene has changed. Anyone who went about the smoker of the American Philosophical Association asking members what their philosophy was would be considered a crank, a fool, or at best, someone who wasn’t interested in a job. If some extraordinarily considerate philosopher were to venture an answer, it would probably be something of this sort: “If you mean by ‘my philosophy’ some grand metaphysical system, I’m afraid I don’t have one. But I can tell you something about the way in which I approach what I take to be the issues of philosophy.” And what would follow would be an inquiry into the rather strange question posed in asking about “your philosophy.” It would not be surprising if the questioner were told that his question was a misformulated one, or even a meaningless one.

Albert Camus: Death At The Meridian

“The great question as to a poet or novelist is,” Henry James once said, “How does he feel about life ? What, in the last analysis, is his philosophy? When vigorous writers have reached maturity, we are at liberty to gather from their works some expression of a total view of the world they have been so actively observing. This is the most interesting thing their works offer us. Details are interesting in proportion as they contribute to make it clear.”1 In the case of philosophical writers, of poets and novelists whose work is centrally directed toward metaphysical questions, the relevance of James’ remark is intensified in several ways, and also rendered strikingly complex. The philosophical novelist is not only concerned with issues generated out of the essential terms of our existence, he is self-consciously committed to creating a work of art whose very character expresses the urgency of his quest. A philosophical novel, let us say, is about itself; it is a meta-literary performance which reveals the triple bond that compels author, characters, and reader to come to terms with themselves and each other. That bond is an existential commitment to self-justification, to engaging impossible questions and to the despair of an enterprise that is destined to perpetual renewal. Philosophy becomes the conscience of art.