The Clarification of the Sense of Existence as an Aim of Husserl’s Phenomenology

Abstract

In analogy to Kant, Husserl argues that existence is not a real predicate, that is to say that existence of an object consists in not its reference to objective reality, but rather in the specific manner of givenness in consciousness. As a consequence, the concept of existence is understood with regard to the different ways of presentation (Gegenwärtigung) of reality and it can only be clarified in pure phenomenological description of intuitive modes of its givenness. The aim of phenomenological investigation is to clarify the sense of real existence of transcendent things, in particular, the legitimacy of the general thesis of the natural attitude as universal belief in which is realized the existence of the world. This clarification presupposes the constituting consciousness as an original place of the demonstration of the sense of the existence so that existence of the transcendent things always refers to the actually experiencing consciousness in which such things are given. Thus, the existence of real world is relative to the existence of world-constituting consciousness that is understood as a sphere of absolute self-givenness, because it does not refer in its existence to a higher consciousness in which it would be given. This implies that existence of the real world has presumptive character, as it is a correlate of the general thesis of the natural attitude which requires the confirmation in the further course of the experience, whereas the actually experiencing consciousness is an absolute sphere of being that is given in apodictic evidence and it posits itself through itself in existence.