[Andrzej_Wiercinski_(ed ... - WordPress.com

humankind.” 49 With regard to Husserl’s earlier insistence on the purely formal,performative character of transcendental subjectivity, 50 one is somewhat taken aback byseeing him define philosophy as a knowledge whose infinity refers to both the intrinsicdynamism and the more or less remote object of its teleological movement.The need for actualizing an ideal, transcendental inter-subjectivity proves that, thoughthe phenomenologist has to renounce childhood with regard to a transcendentally unmodifiedworld, he does not have the right to refuse citizenship in the all-encompassing worldhorizonof mankind. In other words: the radical, apparently Manichean separation betweenthe “transcendentally purified” and the “worldly” attitude becomes pointless, whentranscendental philosophers recognize themselves as the first-born of a community ofrational subjects, whose infinite task consists in the asymptotic assimilation of everypossible kind of transcendent phenomenality with a variety of essentially inter-subjective,transcendental constitutions. 51 If transcendental philosophers can be called “functionariesof humanity,” 52 this means that they are the first to realize that there is no need forhuman subjects to separate themselves from the world, provided that they re-assign tothemselves the origin of the phenomenal sense of “nature,” “culture,” “society,” etc. Totranscendental reason (in its historical dimension), the very notion of “alienation” -- andhence the necessity of regaining the original “integrity” by cutting oneself off from theinner-worldly sphere -- becomes not wrong but simply meaningless. Indeed, the infinitelyopen horizon for the development of human reason even allows for the constitution ofthose most universal forms of phenomenality which cannot possibly be derived from thepartial infinity of a single, though transcendentally de-empiricized, subject.Transcendence and Immanence of the Divine with Regard to Human HistoryIn the ancient gnostic tradition, the absolute dichotomy between the pneumatic elementin human beings and the rest of reality is the consequence of a radically transcendent,other-worldly concept of God. 53 The upholders of this conception of radical separationdo not shrink from taking away from God (considered as the principle of the Good) thequality of Creator with respect to the material world, his activity as sovereign Maker beingrestricted to the realm of pure spirits.In truth, Husserl is one of the few philosophers who fully separate the philosophicalnotion of God from the idea of causality. 54 Far more radical than Kant, on this point, hedoes not simply deny to the cosmological argument its coercive quality: the very notionof God as Creator of the natural world is not even mentioned by him as a possibility orby way of an hypothesis. During the “static” period of his transcendental phenomenology,characterized by the radical application of the epoché to every form of positive, “thetic”facticity, the question concerning the “origin” or “ground” of natural, empirical existenceis of course quite meaningless and therefore remains outside his consideration. Yet,without ever analyzing the pre-transcendental mode of natural existence (from theviewpoint of a possible “extra-mental” genesis), Husserl presents the particular structures49“Ich isoliert in meiner Endlichkeit kann in der Erkenntnis der Unendlichkeiten nicht weit kommen.Philosophie ist Aufgabe der unendlichen Erkenntnis in der Unendlichkeit der Menschheit.” EdmundHusserl, Briefwechsel, vol. 9: Familienbriefe, Husserliana-Dokumente III/9 (Dordrecht/Boston/London:Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), 110; the translation is ours.50See Husserl, Ideen zur einer reinen Phänomenologie, 109.51See Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften,154-156.52Ibid., 15.53See Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 42-44.54See Husserl, Ideen zur einer reinen Phänomenologie, 1; 125.231