Methodological Individualism

Psychologism in early social science 81thing in common with Dilthey’s epistemology and descriptive psychology, at leastthat is what Dilthey, himself, thought. 33The mature version of phenomenology, however, took shape in the firstdecade of the twentieth century. A first groping attempt to lay a new foundationfor this philosophy was made by Husserl in a series of lectures given in 1907,later published as The Idea of Phenomenology (1950). It is not easy to understandfrom these lectures what phenomenology really is, but it is clear that it has littleto do with psychology, including descriptive psychology ([1950] 1973: 5, 33ff).Phenomenology is a priori (p. 41), but not in the sense of mathematics.‘Phenomenology proceeds by “seeing,” clarifying, and determining meaning, and by distinguishingmeanings’ (p. 46). Husserl’s method is that of Descartes. Like the latter, heseeks absolute certainty and finds it in cognition.A few years later, Husserl made a new attack on psychologism in ‘Philosophyas a Rigorous Science’ (1911), but it is clear that he conceives of psychology as anatural science. The main fault of this naturalistic psychology is ‘to set aside anydirect and pure analysis of consciousness’ (1981: 174). This time Husserl’scritique is extended to include also historicism (pp. 185ff), which ‘if consistentlycarried through, carries over into extreme sceptical subjectivism’ (p. 186). Thetarget is Wilhelm Dilthey’s ‘Weltanschauung philosophy’, which, according toHusserl, is bound to lead to relativism. It is doubtful whether this is really thecase, but what is more interesting is that Husserl makes no recognition ofDilthey’s version of a descriptive and analytic psychology, despite his knowledgeabout it. 34The first comprehensive expression of Husserl’s mature version ofphenomenology is to be found in Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to aPhenomenological Philosophy (First Book 1913). This is not the place to assume thedemanding task of doing justice to Husserl’s pure phenomenology. I will do nomore than indicate some of the ideas, which may help us better to understandphenomenological sociology (see pp. 137–44). In our everyday life, we take theexistence of an external world of physical things and other human individualsfor granted. I suppose this is roughly what is understood by ‘common sense’ or‘naive realism’. Husserl calls it the ‘natural attitude’, but, according to him, itcharacterises not only common sense, but also the empirical, or ‘experiential’sciences. The distinguishing mark of the natural attitude is that it posits a worldof external, or ‘transcendent’, objects in space and time. In addition to cognitionof matters of fact, however, there is something Husserl calls ‘eidetic seeing’, orintuition of essences (Wesensschau), which is about a new sort of ideal universalobjects (Eidos). The idea of a straight line in geometrics would be one example.The sciences about these objects are called the eidetic sciences and they includelogic and mathematics, but also the ‘pure theories of time, space, motion, and soforth’ (p. 16).Pure phenomenology, as created by Husserl, is an eidetic science aboutessences – if different from mathematics and logic – and, like all such sciences, itis also a science about phenomena, or objects of intention, but not about a worldof things beyond them, or things-in-themselves. In order to be able to attend