It was while reading HusserI's Cartesian Meditations that the subject of the present volume first occurred to me. And in a way I am offering a somewhat oblique commentary on HusserI's Meditations - "oblique" because it is not a systematic elucidation of the entire text. Nonetheless, it is primarily with the task of the Meditations that I am concerned. It is there that the antipathy between natural ãnguage and HusserI's quest for certainty come clearIy into focus. (Other texts are cited insofar as they shed light on this central work or illustrate the fact that HusserI did not significantly alter his position on the problem. ) My purpose here is to further sharpen that focus, showing that the consciousness within the phenomenological reductions is essentially languageยญ using. Working with the Wittgensteinian insight regarding "priยญ vate languages," I attempt to show that a language-using conยญ sciousness cannot effectively divorce itself from its social context and is unable, therefore, to perform the radical phenomenological reductions. Solipsism, then, is never a genuine problem, but neiยญ ther is the elimination of all existential commitments a genuine possibility. Finally, I conclude that language-use bridges the distinction between essence and existence, the transcendental and the transcendent, the ideal and the real-making the phenomenoยญ logical method incapable of providing the apodictic foundations on which all metaphysics and science will be rebuilt
CONTENT
I. Introduction -- Presuppositions -- Cogito -- The Reductions -- II. Language and the Phenomenological Reduction -- Reduction of Transcendencies -- An Unambiguous Language -- Conclusion -- III. Language and the Transcendental Reduction -- Transcendental Ego -- Intentionality and Constitution -- Derivation of a Complete Theory of Constitution -- Conclusion -- IV. Language and the Eidetic Reduction -- Lebenswelt -- Essences and Possibility -- Facts and Meanings -- Meanings and Essences -- Essences in Language -- Conclusion -- V. A Linguistic Alternative -- Early Alternatives -- Linguistic Alternative -- Evidence and Certainty -- Conclusion -- VI. Conclusion -- The Phenomenological Reduction -- The Transcendental Reduction -- The Eidetic Reduction -- Conclusion
