On the Interrelation between Phenomenology and Externalism

On the Interrelation between Phenomenology and Externalism

1. Introduction During the last century, phenomenology and analytical philosophy polarized into distinct philosophical schools of thought, but their differences have turned out to be more about approaches and methods than topics and areas of research. There has recently been an explosion of interest from both traditions to one another in the field of philosophy of mind which has been traditionally conceived as analytical. It is especially the question of consciousness which has drawn the two schools of thought together due to a growing interest in phenomenality, neuroscience, and the role of embodiment with regards to cognition (Gallagher & Zahavi 2012, 5). As a result, the distinction between internalism and externalism, developed in the analytical tradition, has been applied to phenomenology with altering degrees of faith and success. The distinction has been considered to be improper (see Zahavi 2008; Hansberger 2013), conceptually helpful (see Crowell 2008), and fully proper (see McCulloch 2003; Smith 2008) in phenomenology. I will consider the distinction in the phenomenological context and claim that phenomenology and externalism are compatible. In this paper, I will first define the concepts of internalism and externalism. Next, the reasons for the internalist interpretations of phenomenology will be considered which will be followed by an externalist interpretation of the three most important phenomenologists of the past century: Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This interpretation focuses on their ideas of environmental embeddedness and world-involving intentionality. The discussion is limited to Heidegger s Being and Time (1927), Merleau-Ponty s Phenomenology of Perception (1945), and Husserl s Logical Investigations (1900-1), Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy (1913, later Ideas), and The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (1936, later Crisis). The historical analysis gives rise to a view known as phenomenological externalism. I will end up arguing that externalism and phenomenology seem to be interrelated by nature as they bind the inner and the outer together, giving also a reason to challenge the still more or less prevalent distinction between the two schools of thought in contemporary philosophy. 2. Internalism and Externalism The concepts of internalism and externalism have been used in many ways both in the philosophy of mind and epistemology. In epistemology, the distinction often concerns the question of epistemic justification. In philosophy of mind, it concerns the question of mental content or consciousness. In the latter case, internalism is the view according to which mental content depends solely on internal factors such as neural processes in the brain, whereas externalism holds that mental content cannot 2

depend solely on internal but also external factors such as environmental objects and states of affairs. Hilary Putnam is famous for claiming that meanings aren t in the head (Putnam 1989, 227). This summarizes the externalist thesis, while the antithesis that meanings are in the head summarizes internalism. In Putnam s thought experiment, we are asked to imagine another earth which corresponds to our Earth in all terms (there is also an atom-by-atom Doppelgänger for all of us in this Twin Earth) with the exception that the chemical structure of water in Twin Earth is not H 2 O but XYZ. The water in Twin Earth tastes and looks the same as in Earth, and the inhabitants of Twin Earth also use the word water to refer to it, but the sentence water is wet as uttered by an inhabitant of Twin Earth does not mean the same thing when uttered by an earthling. This is due to the fact that the inhabitant of Twin Earth has not been in causal interaction with the same substance as the earthling. Internal factors are not sufficient in determining the differences in meaning of their sentences. Therefore, meanings are not in the head. (See ibid. 223-7; see also Putnam 1981, 22-4.) According to Putnam, words do not refer to external objects internally but only on the basis of causal interaction (Putnam 1981, 16). Internal brain states cannot alone determine whether the word elm refers to elms or beaches since this is determined not only by the speaker s relations to other speakers and the environment where these expressions are uttered but also the fact which trees really exist in that environment (ibid. 18-9; Putnam 1999, 119-20). Putnam s thesis is an attempt to extend the mind and thus allow mental content to concern the external world as well. According to externalism, how things are in the world matter for how things are in the mind. Mark Rowlands has characterized internalism with two theses which are the location claim and the possession claim. The former argues that mental phenomena are located inside the subject, that is, in the head, while the latter argues that the subject having mental properties is independent of external factors (Rowlands 2003, 3). The view known as content externalism abandons the possession claim but not the location claim, claiming that the content of mental states depends on factors which are external to the subject, but those mental states can be located within the subject (ibid. 5). To Rowlands, the weakness of content externalism lies in the fact that it cannot be applied to cognitive processes or mechanisms in which the mental processes so essential to it are realized (ibid. 155). The view known as vehicle externalism, however, extends further. It claims that different vehicles, or mechanisms and structures, enabling the subject to have mental states, are such that they extend beyond the subject (ibid. 5-6). Abandoning both theses of internalism, vehicle externalism is radical externalism and compatible with Husserlian phenomenology (Zahavi 2008, 356-7). In addition, Anthony Rudd has distinguished between realist and Kantian externalism, using 3

the concept specifically in the epistemological sense. In realist externalism, knowledge depends on causal connections between the mind and a mind-independent world, whereas Kantian externalism adds that not only is the mind bound to the world but so is the world to the mind (Rudd 2003, 5, 44). Both vehicle externalism and Kantian externalism are close to phenomenology. Before studying the compatibility between externalism and phenomenology, however, it is important to look at the reasons why phenomenology has been understood as internalist. 3. The Internalist Interpretations of Phenomenology Phenomenology has been grasped as the study of the subjective which has resulted in idealist and internalist interpretations. However, phenomenology is not interested in subjectivity in the sense that phenomenologists would study how person X experiences matters Y but rather how it is possible for anyone to experience anything (see Gallagher et al. 2012, 28). Thus phenomenology is closely related to transcendental philosophy as it studies the conditions of possibility for experience. Although phenomenology has been falsely associated with introspective psychology, this is a mistake because phenomenology does not locate the phenomenal dimension into the mind (see ibid. 21-3). While introspective psychology is limited to studying consciousness as one area of being, phenomenology demands a transcendental clarification with regards to consciousness (ibid. 25-6). These misunderstandings have influenced internalist interpretations of phenomenology, but there are other reasons, too. In this section, I will consider these reasons for internalist interpretations of phenomenology with the help of David Smith s paper where he argues that Husserl has been interpreted as an internalist because of three reasons which are idealism, epoché, and phenomenological content (Smith 2008, 317-9). First, there is the idea of phenomenology as idealist. This is generally due to the phenomenological concept of constitution. Following Kant, phenomenologists claim that the subject constitutes reality. The vital tenet in the phenomenological notion of constitution is that objects are not understood in themselves but in relation to subjective acts which disclose them (see Husserl 1970a, 159, 165-6). In this idea of constitution, one can see the influence of Kant who claimed that the subject places the categories to the world. Kant thinks that consciousness does not merely reflect the world but contributes to it when constitution is grasped as a process enabling the manifestation of things as meaningful (Gallagher et al. 2012, 26). The phenomenological conception of constitution means that the manifestation of things enables our access to the world which cannot be separated from that manifestation. More specifically, the idealist misconception of phenomenology is based on an idealist interpretation of Husserl. Husserl is undeniably responsible for these interpretations since he 4

often writes in a strikingly idealist fashion. Husserl writes that no real thing ( ) is necessary for the Being of consciousness itself 1 (Husserl 1976, 152). In a contrary fashion to the Putnamian claim about meanings lying outside the subject s head, Husserl claims that we must locate no part of the meaning in the percept itself (Husserl 2001, 199). Husserl even goes as far as claiming that consciousness is a self-contained system ( ) into which nothing can penetrate (Husserl 1976, 153). Despite these claims about the independence of consciousness from the external world, Husserl can be interpreted as an externalist. Smith emphasizes that this requires a new understanding of externalism which is an externalism not associated with physical realism but an externalism concerning something external to individual consciousness. Even if reality were reduced to consciousness, the consciousness of one would not be reduced to the consciousness of another which would remain external to someone else s consciousness (Smith 2008, 317). Second, Husserl s notion of the epoché has been understood as idealist, leading to internalist interpretations of phenomenology (ibid. 318). It is vital to notice that the epoché is not just one philosophical method among others but rather a fundamental move behind all philosophical inquiry. The epoché is about the suspension of judgment, meaning that one does not take a stand regarding the existence of the world, for example. Husserl writes that the epoché uncovers a new way of experiencing, of thinking to the philosopher who situated above his own natural being and above the natural world, ( ) loses nothing of their being and their objective truths, but he forbids himself to ask questions which rest upon the ground of the world at hand (Husserl 1970a, 152). As Husserl describes how the real object is bracketed in the epoché, halting the relations between perception and the perceived object (see Husserl 1976, 259), it is easily misunderstood as an annihilation of the world to consciousness. Husserl, however, emphasizes that although the relation is halted, a relation of some kind remains (ibid. 259), and even if the external world corresponding to the perception did not exist, since it had been bracketed, things would still remain as they were (ibid. 260). The epoché does not, therefore, imply an inward turn or a denial of the external world but a change of attitude toward reality (Gallagher et al. 2012, 25). The epoché allows us to focus on how the world appears. Thus the epoché does not lead to internalism if the epoché is not understood from a naturalist or an introspective but a phenomenological perspective as transcendental reflection. Third, phenomenology has been interpreted as internalist because phenomenology has been misconceived as concerning nothing but phenomenological content. According to Smith, 1 All italics are the cited writers own, unless otherwise stated. 5

phenomenological content has been grasped as qualitative content determined by the introspection of experiences, thus leading further away from externalism because content could not be determined by any external object (Smith 2008, 316). Smith claims that phenomenological content is wider than assumed, extending beyond mere qualitative content since to Husserl each intentional mental state directed to the world contains implicit intentionality (ibid. 316). Implicit intentionality is Husserl s idea that every perception always contains more than is at first perceived. It includes implicit perceptions of the non-perceived sides of the perceived object as well as potential perceptions of the same object in different circumstances (see Husserl 1970a, 170-1). Thus implicit intentionality constitutes a horizon for every experience, and those experiences belong to an infinite system of perceptions (Smith 2008, 323-5). The issue over phenomenological content is related to Husserl s famous concepts of noema and noesis which have triggered a wide discussion. In brief, noesis refers to the mental act and noema to its content. Noesis instantiates noema. The real problem is what kind of an entity the noema is. Criticizing conventional conceptions of the noema, Crowell claims that the noema is not a mental entity but rather a node of intentional implications (Crowell 2008, 344). To Crowell, noematic meaning determines reference because the referent is indistinguishable from meaning which leads to a new notion of representation in phenomenology (ibid. 344). Representation is understood as a way of taking the world, and these ways are normatively determined (ibid. 338-9). This attachment of meaning to object, and this new understanding of representation are essential to phenomenological externalism which I will outline after the historical analysis which will implicitly establish it. 4. An Externalist Interpretation of Phenomenology For a long time, the general opinion has been this: Husserl is an internalist, but Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty are externalists (see O Murchadha 2008; Rowlands 2003, 5; Dreyfus 1991, 2-3, 46-54). It has been displayed, however, that Husserl has some externalist ideas, while Heidegger has ideas which can be understood from an internalist viewpoint, too (Gallagher et al. 2012, 139; see also Lafont 2005). In this section, I will present an externalist interpretation of three phenomenological philosophers through themes of intentionality, environmental embeddedness, and intersubjectivity. I will first present Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger after which I shall move to deal with Husserl. Merleau-Ponty developed the phenomenological philosophy of Husserl and Heidegger and is furthest from idealism approaching embodiment and environmental embeddedness in a distinctly realist fashion (see Merleau-Ponty 2012, 209). Correspondingly, Merleau-Ponty can be seen as the 6

clearest case when it comes to externalism. The body plays an integral role in Merleau-Ponty s philosophy. It is not only a body in the traditional sense, containing our consciousness, but something that essentially constitutes our primordial experience of the world. In Merleau-Ponty s philosophy, the body and perception are entangled because perception is grasped as something bodily (see ibid. 209-13). Given this, Merleau-Ponty s ideas about the body s causal relations seem to imply externalism (see ibid. 246). If the body is embedded to the world, and material objects can have a causal effect on the body, and the body and perception belong together, meaning that the body and the mind belong together, then it seems that the material objects can have a causal effect on the mental structures as well. Therefore, Merleau-Ponty can be grasped as a vehicle externalist according to whom the vehicles extend beyond the subject (see also ibid. 57-8). Following Husserl, Merleau-Ponty grasps the mind as intentional (see ibid. 396-7, 264-7). Intentionality is defined by Brentano as the reference or directedness to the object which characterizes all mental but no physical phenomena (Brentano 1997, 88-9). To Merleau-Ponty, intentionality is not only mental but also constituted by corporeality which means that intentionality is not solely an internally structured affair. Intentionality is bodily engagement to the world. It is being in and toward the world (être au monde). There is no inner man since one is always already in and toward the world (Merleau- Ponty 2012, lxxiv). To Merleau-Ponty, the subject is embedded to the world as a living, bodily entity, directing itself to that world (see ibid. 483). Instead of naturalism, which reduces experience to physical nature (ibid. 55-6), Merleau-Ponty demands that philosophy returns to the lived dimension of the world beneath the objective world (ibid. 57). This notion, originating from Husserl, gives phenomenology its externalist ethos: the lifeworld, where we primarily exist as practically and bodily engaged, is not an inner world, but we are embedded in it and it determines our consciousness escaping its alleged inner sphere. If Merleau-Ponty s externalist position is relatively clear, Heidegger represents a less clear case which is due to an idealist interpretation of Heidegger s philosophy. This idealist interpretation seems to stem from Heidegger s ambivalent ontological statements such as only as long as Dasein is ( ) is there Being (Heidegger 1962, 255). Statements like these make one think that Heidegger would conceive entities as dependent on the existence of the subject or Dasein. This is not the case, however. The misconception derives from the lack of understanding of the ontological difference which Heidegger outlines between Being (Sein) and being (Seiendem). The latter means all that exists while the former indicates the Being of being, that is, the existence of all that exists. In more precise terms, Being can be understood as a horizon where things always appear and which makes their appearance meaningful (see Westerlund 2014, 226). Thus Heidegger s ambivalent 7

statement simply claims that things could not appear as meaningful if there were no Dasein and its Being-in-the-world (in-der-welt-sein). Then we would not be able to say whether entities existed or not because those entities could not have entered the world or the horizon of Being which is a condition for the understanding of entities (Cerbone 1995, 410-8; see also McCulloch 2003, 17). To Heidegger, statements about entities (say, water is wet ) are possible because we are always already among entities. This is not far from Putnam s externalism which claims that the meanings of the subjects sentences are determined by external factors. Both Heidegger and Putnam emphasize the interaction between the subject and her environment and its objects, enabling speech and reference. The way I see it, Lafont s criticism misfires precisely because of this. To Lafont, Heidegger s idea that Dasein s pre-understanding of Being determines reference to entities is internalist (ibid. 523-4), but in the light of the foregoing discussion this particular idea of Heidegger s simply means that statements about entities can only be made on the basis of our Being-in-the-world. To Heidegger, Dasein is not in the world as the water is in the glass, or the garment is in the cupboard (ibid. 79), but rather Dasein s Being is Being alongside the world in the sense of being absorbed in the world (ibid. 80). As intentional, Dasein does not somehow first get out of an inner sphere in which it has been proximally encapsulated, but its primary kind of Being is such that it is always outside alongside entities which it encounters and which belong to a world already discovered (ibid. 89). Heidegger goes further in grounding language on Being-inthe-world as he writes that discourse ( ) must have essentially a kind of Being which is specifically worldly (ibid. 204) and that [i]n talking, Dasein expresses itself {spricth sich aus] not because it has, in the first instance, been encapsulated as something internal over against something outside, but because as Being-in-the-world it is already outside when it understands. What is expressed is precisely this Being-outside (ibid. 205). This emphasis on the engagement of Dasein to the world, intentionality as world-involving, and speech as something determined by being outside sets Heidegger apart from internalism. Hubert Dreyfus has appropriately understood Heidegger as an externalist whose point of departure does not lie in a self-enclosed subject but in Dasein s interaction with entities (Dreyfus 1991, 46-54) and its ways of understanding Being (ibid. 73). On the contrary, Dreyfus conceives Husserl as an internalist whose point of departure lies in the self-enclosed subject (ibid. 2-3). I believe it is precisely this emphasis on Being-in-the-world which allows us to see Heidegger as an externalist, but it is not clear that Dreyfus interpretation of Husserl would hold as true. Although Husserl s account of intentionality in Logical Investigations is internalist, he moves into a more externalist direction already in Ideas which, however, still includes many internalist nuances. 8

One of the most significant changes is that Husserl replaces the different concepts of acts with the concepts of noema and noesis. Noema has been interpreted from an internalist perspective, but Crowell s interpretation of the noema as a node of intentional implications contains an idea of the referent belonging to the meaning and representation as a way of taking the world. When it comes to an externalist understanding of the noema, Husserl s distinction between the description of the noema and the pure X (see Husserl 1976, 363-8) becomes essential. According to Smith, Husserl can be understood as an externalist to whom experiences are always about an object (Smith 2008, 314-5). Smith argues that to Husserl all experiences directed toward the same object have an identical component which is the pure X belonging to the noema (ibid. 321). Smith s interpretation seems plausible because Husserl emphasizes that even if the bracketing resulted in an intentional object belonging to the noema, perception would still be consciousness of the real world (Husserl 1976, 261-5). To Husserl, all noemata are united by something objective, and this something is the pure X, the unity which determines the meaning of the noema (ibid. 365-8). This gives rise to the question whether the objective pure X is a really existing object to Husserl or not. Referring to Husserl s notion of the horizon, Smith argues that it is. To Husserl, every object includes a horizon which contains the potential perceptions of the object. The object points to this system of perceptions which is related to the object. Unlike hallucinations, authentic perceptions of really existing objects have systems of perceptions which have a really existing object as their correlate. Therefore, there is a really existing object of perception which belongs to the system. (Smith 2008, 328-31.) To Husserl, intentional acts always imply an infinite horizon (Husserl 1970a, 149) and perception always has a horizon belonging to its object (ibid. 158). In other words, perception attaches to the horizon which contains potential perceptions of the same object, and this leads, according to Smith s interpretation, in that the horizon (and its perception) must have a really existing object of perception. Husserl never explicitly states this, but Smith believes that Husserl would be willing to accept this implication since Husserl characterizes transcendental subjects as being determined from outside (Smith 2008, 332). Interpreted as such, Husserl can be associated with Heidegger s idea that the subject is outside itself. Thomas Hansberger has criticized Smith s interpretation since it falsely associates Husserl with metaphysical realism (Hansberger 2013, 2-4), but even Hansberger admits that Husserl is closer to externalism than internalism (ibid. 11-2). Considering the whole of Husserl's thought, Zahavi conceives Husserl as an anti-representationalist which connects Husserl to the externalism of Putnam and McDowell, who grasp the objects of consciousness as external and that which appears to the subject not as a picture or sign of 9

something else (Zahavi 2008, 359-60). For example, Putnam criticizes how consciousness is sometimes conceived as a matter of the occurrence of qualia (Putnam 1999, 151). Husserl opposes representationalism writing that no inner image is given in perception, but rather one perceives the object as the only real object (Husserl 1976, 263). According to Zahavi, Husserl s transcendental idealism is not internalist, and Zahavi claims that a relation obtains between it and phenomenological externalism (Zahavi 2008, 356) which grasps the world and the mind as constitutively belonging together (ibid. 364). It seems that one can see a slight transition from internalism to externalism in Husserl s thought. At the latest, Husserl s views on intersubjectivity give up internalism. In Crisis, Husserl writes that the world exists not only for isolated men but for the community of men (Husserl 1970a, 163), the subjectivity in question ( ) is not that of the isolated subject (ibid. 167), and subjectivity is what it is an ego functioning constitutively only within intersubjectivity (ibid. 172). Husserl deals with intersubjectivity earlier in his work as well (see Husserl 1970b, 276-7; 1976, 375), but he does not develop the idea as far as in Crisis. Husserl s theme of intersubjectivity is essential when it comes to externalism because it is intersubjectivity which can be used to show Husserl s noninternalism. In the lifeworld, the subject is always engaged to the world, embedded to it, and deals with other people. All this has an impact on the subject s consciousness and constitutes the world. This constitution ought to be understood as it has been presented above: the subject does not construct the world while perceiving it nor does her consciousness simply reflect it, but rather the subject s consciousness contributes significantly to reality, enabling the appearance of things and their signification. 5. Phenomenological externalism In the foregoing discussion, it has been shown that phenomenology can be grasped as externalist. The philosophical viewpoint which this study has implied can be called phenomenological externalism. It bears close connections to transcendental idealism, Kantian externalism, and vehicle externalism. What is essential to all these is their notion of an interrelation between the inner and the outer which seems to be implicitly contained in externalism itself (see Gallagher et al 2012, 141; McCulloch 2003, 11). If externalism claims that how things are in the world matters for how things are in the mind, then phenomenological externalism emphasizes the other side of the coin as well: how things are in the mind matter for how things are in the world. Phenomenological externalism not only conceives intentionality as mental but also understands intentionality through world-involvingness (McCulloch 2003, 11). According to its three tenets, 10

meanings are mental, mental content is determined by external factors, and the environment is integral to consciousness (see ibid. 11-2). Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty grasp the subject as being outside itself in the sense that the subject is always already embedded to the environment and practically engaged to the world whose objects determine the subject s consciousness. Although phenomenological externalism emphasizes constitution and that we cannot be aware of objects independent of their appearance, it does not imply representationalist indirectness but rather that intersubjective experience constitutes our access to the objects. Thus phenomenological externalism argues that meaning and mentality are filtered through experiencing, worldly directed, and bodily engaged subjects. Mental states are not purely mental in the traditional sense of the word but also contain bodily practices (see Gallagher et al 2012, 167). Gallagher and Zahavi claim that if externalism denied that intentionality was determined by meaning and subjectivity, phenomenology could not be conceived as externalist, but they add that externalism can be alternatively defined through the notion that meaning determines reference if meaning is world-involving and embedded (ibid. 140; see also Zahavi 2008, 370). In other words, intentionality can contain both the mind and the world which are interrelated. As stated above, phenomenological externalism is close to vehicle and Kantian externalism. In the former, mental phenomena are not internal processes but occur between the subject and the world (Zahavi 2008, 357), and in the latter, the mind and the world are not distinct (Rudd 2003, 49). In phenomenological externalism, embracing both of the views, the relation between the mind and the world is such that the relation constitutes the relata which are constitutively interrelated (see Zahavi 2008, 364; see also Rudd 2003, 53, 60). This is one of the ways to understand Heidegger s ambivalent statements about the relation between Being and Dasein. Although experience is determined by meaning and conditioned by (inter)subjectivity, phenomenological externalism is still externalism. It claims that embodiment, embeddedness, and intentionality are requirements for having a mind which is worldly by nature. 6. Conclusion I have argued that phenomenology and externalism belong together. This was done by avoiding idealism and internalist interpretations of phenomenology. Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty were argued to be plausibly grasped as externalist thinkers since they emphasize embodiment and environmental embeddedness, intentional directedness to the world and the expansion of consciousness beyond the inner sphere, intersubjectivity and horizontal consciousness. The historical analysis led to a view known as phenomenological externalism which can be 11

characterized as a conception of the constitutive interrelation between the mind and the world according to which meanings are not in the head and the mind is not something solely internal. Although I have conceived phenomenology as transcendental philosophy, this does not have to imply an abandonment of externalism because externalism seems to imply going beyond too. The notion of externalism obviously derives from an idea of something external, but it would nonetheless strike one as odd to conceive externalism as a doctrine according to which consciousness were enclosed to its inner sphere from where it would occasionally step outside into the external sphere where external things could be in a causal relation to mental states. Alternatively, externalism can be understood as a view according to which the subject is thought to be already outside where external things can influence her consciousness. Not only is the concept of externalism thus useful for phenomenology in guiding one to characterize the phenomenological notion of being outside but phenomenology is also useful for externalism in disclosing that externalism contains an entanglement between the inner and the outer. It is precisely Putnam whose thought displays this kind of externalism. The reason for this connection might be that Putnam bases his thought on Kant s philosophy, which Putnam cites as a historically significant challenge to philosophical dichotomies (see Putnam 1981, ix-x, 60-4, 74). Putnam tries to characterize perceptual experience without making it into an interface between us and the world (see Putnam 1999, 169), writing that talk of our minds is talk of world-involving capabilities that we have and activities that we engage in (ibid. 169-70). In the spirit of phenomenological externalism, Putnam claims that the mind and the world jointly make up the mind and the world (Putnam 1981, xi). This hardly uncovers any direct historical influence and such a conclusion has not been the purpose of this paper, but the entanglement between phenomenology and externalism, or their interrelation analogous to that between the mind and the world, gives reason to question the still prevalent distinction between the analytical and continental schools of thought in contemporary philosophy. It seems that the real problem between the two schools of thought lies in the analytical demand for objectivity and its opposition towards subjectivity and idealism both of which have been seen to characterize phenomenology. Hopefully, this paper has showed that the conflict is not this simple. Although a certain distinction between the two schools of thought seems plausible, one should find courage to challenge the distinction in its most dominant form by stepping beyond it to richer, pluralist philosophy where incompatible yet internally coherent systems can work side by side and exchange dialogue. 12

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