Arven fra Husserl: Fænomenologiens legitimitet i psykologisk videnskab - En videnskabshistorisk analyse

Abstract

This paper seeks out to explore the relationship between phenomenological philosophy and psychology in the light of a current debate about the legitimacy of phenomenological psychology, where it has been problematized whether or not the original phenomenological project is compatible with empirical sciences. One of the advocates for the incompatibility is the Husserl expert, Dan Zahavi, who argues, that phenomenology is limited to the domain of philosophy, whereas opponents such as Frederick Wertz argues, that phenomenological psychology and phenomenological philosophy are compatible and can contribute with insights to each other. This paper therefore explores the orignator Edmund Husserl’s philosophy through the lens of philosophy of science, where its potential compatibility with empirical psychology is evaluated according to a hemeneutic interpretation of the coherence and mean- ingfulness of this project. It is argued that, as Husserl struggled throughout his lifetime with the tension between the empirical and the transcendental, which implicitly involves the relation between philoso- phy and psychology, he seems open towards a compatibility between them, and that this seems mean- ingful in several ways. This is supported by the change of focus in Husserls overall project by the introduction of the lifeworld in his late authorship, where more weight is laid upon the empirical con- stitution of conscious meaningproduction, and where to it also is stated, that under any circumstances an empirical starting point is inevitable in phenomenology. The analyses shows that it is hard to dif- ferentiate sharply between a philosophical phenomenology and a psychological phenomenology if one looks thoroughly at Husserls concepts of the transcendental and the empirical and their relation, and the relation between philosophy and science in general. It is also shown, that Husserls overall project seems to take a turn towards a more ethical and existential oriented ideal of science which leads to a discussion of the overall compatibility between phenomenology and psychology in the light of its pur- pose, where it is argued, that their compatibility seems to have a lot of potential, but that it depends on the view of empiri and approach to the subject field. At last it is argued that Husserl, if he is located in the present, is to be regarded as an advocate for a qualitative approach to empirical psychology.

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