PHILOSOPHY AS A RIGOROUS SCIENCE: TOWARDS THE

ESTABLISHMENT OF A REALISTIC PHENOMENOLOGICAL

METHOD – IN CRITICAL DIALOGUE WITH EDMUND
HUSSERL’S IDEAS CONCERNING PHILOSOPHY AS A
RIGOROUS SCIENCE

Josef Seifert
Translated by Oliver Heydorn

I. Husserl’s Ideal of Philosophy as a Rigorous Science and its Critical

Reformulation

Ten years after writing the Logical Investigations, Edmund Husserl, in his famous
and sole Logos essay, 1 defended the thesis that philosophy ought to be a
‘rigorous science’ and described this goal of philosophy as an “ideal” that ‘has
never been completely abandoned,’ but also as an ideal that has never been even
roughly or partially realized. Husserl considers it as evidently tragic that up until
now philosophy has never lived up to this claim.2 In this regard, Husserl asserts it
is not only philosophy, which is not, yet a perfect or complete science. He rightly
emphasizes this is also true for all the so-called exacts sciences, since they are


Dr. JOSEF SEIFERT, Professor, International Academy of Philosophy Spain–Instituto de
Filosofía Edith Stein Granada, Spain. Email: jseifert@iap.li.
1
This first essay (which was disregarded by some reviews and a short encyclopedic
contribution) that Edmund Husserl, the founder of the phenomenological movement, had
published after the drafting of the Logical Investigations (1900/01), was called
“Philosophy as a Rigorous Science” and appeared in 1911 in the first volume (H 3) of
Logos (Logos I, 1911, S. 289-341), in whose publication Husserl was involved as Henrich
Rickert had promised. Cf. Edmund Husserl, Aufsätze und Vorträge (1911-1921), Editors
Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp, Husserliana Volume XXV
(Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster: M. Hijhoff, 1987), p. 3-62. The essay was drafted between
December 1910 and January 1911, revised in February and appeared in March 1911.
Husserl considered it as a general exposition of his views in a popular style.
2
Ibid., p. 4: So philosophy in its historical disregard for the highest and most rigorous of
sciences, which supports the inevitable claim of mankind to a pure and absolute
knowledge … does not manage to form a real science.

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2 JOSEF SEIFERT

also imperfect and incomplete. Rather, he wants to claim that philosophy has
never even begun to be a science such that it would follow no dogmatic system in
which ‘all things and each thing in particular are controversial’, and is nothing
more than the product of mere individual prejudices and perspectives.3 Now
Husserl claims that philosophy, for the very first time, ought to fulfill this ideal
and become a rigorous science.
In looking at Husserl’s analysis and considering the reasons behind his
devastatingly harsh judgement of the entire history of philosophy (excluding his
apparently less than modest claim that for the first time in the whole history of
philosophy someone has wanted to make philosophy a strict science) one thing in
particular stands out. It is that several of Husserl’s fundamental claims are
sometimes acknowledged as presuppositions, while at other times they are more
implicitly assumed. Some could be defended while others could not be expressly
put forward let alone defended, and as well, others could be easily confused with
one another. Let us consider, in detail, the theses Husserl presupposes and asserts.
In the first place, Husserl openly presupposes that a scientific philosophy must be
preferred over any system, that it not be controversial, and that it possess a broad,
virtually universal consensus, as is the case in physics or mathematics. Secondly,
he emphasizes that it cannot be any kind of ‘Weltanschauung Philosophie’, by
which term he understands at least two radically different things. On the one hand,
a scientific philosophy, which he sharply contrasts with a ‘Weltanschauung
Philosophie’, may not attempt to answer the important questions of metaphysics;
above all it may not claim that it has access to those things that exist in
themselves as they are in themselves or, in particular, to the really existing
world.4 Every transcendent act of cognition that grasps an essence that rules over

3
Ibid., p. 5 also Cf. ibid., p. 53, 55 Cf. the similar explanation of Husserl in “Pure
Phenomenology, its Field of Research and its Methods (Introductory Talk in Freiburg)”,
in: Edmund Husserl, Aufsätze und Vorträge (1911-1921), Editors Thomas Nenon and Hans
Rainer Sepp, Husserliana Volume XXV (Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster: M. Nijhoff, 1987),
p. 68-81, p. 69.
4
Husserl speaks in a similar sense in “Phenomenology and Psychology”, in: Edmund
Husserl, Aufsätze und Vorträge (1911-1921), Editors Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer
Sepp, Husserliana Volume XXV (Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster: M. Nijhoff, 1987), p.
82-124, especially p. 83, where the bracketing of “the naïve belief in the world” and of
“the real existence of the given things” is required from philosophy.

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 PHILOSOPHY AS A RIGOROUS SCIENCE 3

the existing world, as well as every cognition of the real world, lies beyond the
reach of scientific philosophical knowledge. As a result, a rigorously scientific
philosophy must remain expressly within the realm of consciousness, its
intentional acts and its corresponding purely intentional objects, in order for it to
be a rigorous science.5 In addition, a scientific philosophy ought not to entertain
any of the most fundamental and deepest problems, as every metaphysical
question is supposed to lie beyond its competency. 6 On the other hand,
philosophy ought not to find its origin in a mere Weltanschauung or in a religious
faith. This is the case with every kind of fideistic philosophy, which attempts to
answer the most fundamental questions, and in so doing takes as its basis the
personal opinion of a Weltanschauung philosophen. The results in answers, which

5
So writes Husserl in the essay “Philosophy as a Rigorous Science”, in: Edmund Husserl,
Aufsätze und Vorträge (1911-1921), Editors Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp,
Husserliana Volume XXV (Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster: M. Nijhoff, 1987), p. 3-62, p.15:
Whenever a theory of knowledge would nonetheless like to investigate the relation
between consciousness and being, then it can only have being as the correlate of
consciousness as a consciously conditioned “meaning”: as perceptions, remembrances,
expectations, pictured images … etc. Cf. also the clear capturing of this position in “Pure
Phenomenology, its Field of Research and its Methods (Introductory Talk in Freiburg)”,
in: Edmund Husserl, Aufsätze und Vorträge (1911-1921), Editors Thomas Nenon and Hans
Rainer Sepp, Husserliana Volume XXV (Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster: M. Nijhoff,
1987)p. 68-81, p. 72-75, where phenomenology is characterized as a “science of
consciousness as such” and above all where all objects that are foreign to consciousness
(transcendent) objects are excluded from the domain of phenomenological philosophy. On
this cf. also, Josef Seifert, “Critique of Relativism and Immanentism in E. Husserl’s
Cartesian Meditations. The Equivocation in the Expression ‘Transcendental Ego’ as the
Baisis of Every Transcendental Idealism.” – “Kritik am Relativismus und Immanentismus
in E. Husserls Cartesian Meditations. Die Aequivokationen im Ausdruck, transcendentales
Ego’ an der Basis jedes transzendentalen Idealismus.” Salzburger Jahrbuch für
Philosophie XIV, 1970.
6
Ibid., p. 59, where Husserl demands: “…that philosophy takes on the form and
language of a genuine science and recognizes as incompleteness that which in it is often
praised and is quite imitated – depth. Depth is a sign of Chaos, that genuine science wants
to transform in a cosmos, in a simple, fully clear, dissolved order. Genuine science knows,
as far as its real doctrines reach, no depth … depth belongs to essence…”

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4 JOSEF SEIFERT

only have appeal for this or that particular personality. Such a Weltanschauung
Philosophie ought never – in spite of its undisputed value according to Husserl –
to confuse people by appearing to be a science. 7 Genuine science and a
rigorously scientific philosophy must especially not assume anything as a given,
must not validate anything handed down as a starting point, and must not allow us
to be blinded by influential authorities. 8 Behind this stands the unspoken, but in
itself the most important thought of Husserl concerning philosophy as a rigorous
science. In other words, philosophy can only be a science if it does not concern
itself with mere personal opinions. Instead, it should deal with the objective
knowledge of truth and the attainment of the appropriate evidence, as well as if it
seeks a systematic construction based on principles and an inner, logical order of
knowledge. Philosophy in the strict sense must be a “science from its very
beginnings, from the origin” “of all things (pantón rhematón)”.9
Husserl rightly ascertained to achieve this goal (that is in order to arrive at an
objective, evident and from the beginning progressive knowledge) philosophy
must first fight against the kind of naturalism and psychologism, which led him in
his Logical Investigations to the castigation of that relativism and reductionism,
that completely falsify the object and knowledge of philosophy. Since necessarily,
a scientific philosophy is only possible through a return to the ‘Things
Themselves’, it must further overcome Dilthey’s historicism, which makes it
particularly impossible to return to the things and problems themselves by
insisting one be held captive by historical understandings and feel oneself into
past epochs. We are in such perfect agreement concerning this last and third point,
namely that a strict scientific philosophy can be differentiated from theology and
from every system which springs from some Weltanschauungs belief, that we
cannot fail to credit Husserl with being right with respect to the first two theses.
For this reason, I would like to turn towards the establishment of a new
foundation, which will partially constitute a sharp critique of Husserl’s view. In so
doing, I ought to present him as Socrates says in the Phaedo with a veiled face.
Although I do not consider Husserl to be a god, before whom a Socrates must veil

7
Edmund Husserl, “Philosophie als Strenge Wissenschaft”, in Edmund Husserl, Aufsätze
und Vorträge (1911-1921), Editors Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp, Husserliana
Volume XXV (Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster: M. Nijhoff, 1987), p. 3-62, ibid., p. 58ff.
8
Ibid., p. 60.
9
Ibid., p. 61.

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 PHILOSOPHY AS A RIGOROUS SCIENCE 5

his face,10 I am so indebted to him (as is philosophy) that the sharp critique,
which I think necessary, makes me feel ashamed. Nevertheless, for the sake of
truth, I feel a duty to develop such a critique. I present the following claims to
evidence:
1) The first of the four named presuppositions, namely that philosophy has
not yet begun to be a strict science, because “all things and each thing in it is
controversial”,11 is highly doubtful. It springs from a thoughtless application of
the conditions of natural science to those of philosophy, an application that is
taken by Husserl to be self-evident but is in truth an untenable position. Not only,
therefore, must we refuse to give our assent to Husserl’s first thesis, as it is
obviously illusionary to assume the perfection of a philosophy should always be
judged by whether or not it can secure the universal consensus of all philosophers.
Rather, we hold that each consensus that in the natural sciences leads unavoidably
to objective scientific knowledge can, in philosophy, since it requires a particular
talent and philosophical vision, as well as countless further presuppositions in
order to achieve evident knowledge. In whose way obstacles such as sophisms of
all kinds as well as sins against the spirit stand, in no way be interpreted as a
necessary consequence of evident knowledge. It is, therefore, by no means true
that in philosophy a greater or almost universal consensus is a condition of its
scientific character. How is it that Husserl’s own lucid refutation of psychologism
and of that more fundamental relativism and skepticism in the Prolegomena of
the Logical Investigations be considered unscientific? Is it only because not all of
his colleagues shared Husserl’s results? And while one may want to find a partial
ground in a certain incompleteness of Husserl’s analysis for the lack of such a
consensus, the objection is nonetheless valid: even the evident and most lucid
examples of scientific philosophical knowledge has not once produced in
philosophical logic, let alone in ethics, a universal consensus. In fact, even if an
all-knowing and divine version of philosophical science ̶ in its pure and evident
ideal structures ̶ were lucidly explained, it too, without a doubt, would be produce
all kinds of controversies. The claimed and at first glance certainly peculiarly
appearing unrealisability of universal consensus in philosophy has very plausible
grounds that Husserl not once raises let alone refutes. Of course will we, we who

10
Socrates veiled himself before the god Eros, when he relates a speech that another had
written against love.
11
Ibid., p. 5.

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6 JOSEF SEIFERT

claim that a “pure philosophical science” does not require universal consensus,
have to find a new foundation and be able to explain how an evident and
systematically built up scientific knowledge is possible without being able to
have a universal or even a broad consensus12. We will return to this point later.
2) Husserl’s second thesis condemns his own objective position that he held
in the Prolegomena to his Logical Investigations. There he had described the
logical objects of cognition as being equally valid for men, angels, and gods. With
the diametrically opposed claim that a scientific philosophy may only deal with
the noemata of consciousness, Husserl rejects his former objectivism and turns
toward transcendental phenomenology. Accordingly, a rigorously scientific
philosophy may not deal with the existing world, but rather, may only handle pure
essences, and not their being or validity in themselves. Consideration is given to
the noemata of intentional acts as pure and immanent objects of consciousness.
We will hope to show that this position proves itself false for a number of reasons,
and even as the very dissolution of the specifically scientific character of
philosophy. Scientific philosophy can and must reach both the existing world as
well as the recognition of those fully transcendent and for each being decisively
important necessary essences in order to be a rigorous science.
3) The third Husserlian presupposition is in itself unclear and is only in one
of its meanings justified, namely that philosophy may accept no presuppositions
based on faith; in this respect I am in complete agreement. Although I cannot
develop this further in the present context, it neither follows, as Husserl was later
to hold, that all faith-claims are incapable of being rationally grounded.
Additionally, there can be no rigorous science, in a theological sense, which
would take its starting point in rational faith, which could then be systematically
developed and grounded by reason.
4) The fourth thesis, which Husserl defends, is that philosophy must attain to
an evident knowledge that is free of preconceived notions and that it must reject

12
Cf. my extensive defense of this point of view in: Josef Seifert, “Zur Begründung
ethischer Normen. Einwände auf Edgar Morschers Position. Ein Diskussionsbeitrag”; also
cf. “Und dennoch: Ethik ist Episteme, nicht blosse Doxa. Ueber die wissenschaftliche
Begrünbarkeit und Ueberprüfbarkeit ethischer Sätze und Normen. Erwiderung auf Edgar
Morscher’s Antwort” in: Vom Wahren und vom Guten, Festschrift zum achtzigsten
Geburtstag von Balduin Schwarz. (Salzburg: St. Peter Verlag, 1983), Editors, Edgar
Morscher, Josef Seifert and Fritz Wenisch.

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 PHILOSOPHY AS A RIGOROUS SCIENCE 7

every historicism and psychological naturalism; this thesis will also by defended
by us. Husserl, through his critique of psychologism and historicism, has
undoubtedly contributed in a very essential way to the fulfillment of philosophy
as a science in this sense. So impressive and correct is the ideal of an evident,
critical, analytical and preconception-free knowledge which Husserl places before
us, and yet in terms of his own explanation and grounding of this claim
concerning philosophy as a rigorous science, it becomes impossible to really
make or to show how philosophy can be a “pure science.” This is rather only
possible through a renewed extraction and continuation of many classical and
preceding insights (including those of Husserl’s Logical Investigations). It is the
task of realistic phenomenology to provide a new foundation and to enlarge this
classical philosophy. By means of this new foundation for the rigorously
scientific character of genuine philosophy, realistic phenomenology managed to
free it from Husserl’s basic errors concerning philosophical methodology. Freed,
in particular, from his immanentism and his pure essentialism,13 which betray his
own principle of a ‘conditionless’ return to the things themselves.

I. Essential Aspects of Philosophy as a Rigorous A Priori Science. The

Rehabilitation and Critique of Kant’s and Husserl’s Views Concerning
Philosophy as a “Rigorous Science”

Before Husserl, Kant was also occupied with the question of the scientific
character of philosophy. He formulated an additional thesis as a condition of this
‘scientific-ness’: that philosophy or metaphysics can only appear as a science
when it is capable of grounding synthetic a priori propositions. Philosophy and
logic, as well as mathematics, pure physics, etc., as a priori sciences, were
contrasted by both Husserl and Kant with the empirical and experimental sciences.
The kind of knowledge, which we are calling ‘a priori’, allows itself to be
characterized in general by two marks: strict necessity and apodictic certainty 14.

13
On this cf. Edmund Husserl, “Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft”, cit., p. 26, p. 36,
where Husserl says that as a science a pure phenomenology can only be “of essential
research and not existential research at all”; cf. also ibid., 41, where the a priori character is
emphasized, as on p. 62.
14
Under apodictic certainty I understand here an indubitable “absolute” certainty, that
Bonaventure – in an objective and adequate description – also calls ‘infallible certainty’,

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8 JOSEF SEIFERT

Neither of these marks is present in the essential features of a lion, the knowledge
of such facts having to be obtained by biology through observation. With Kant
(and with Husserl), we must add another note to the two marks of philosophical a
priori knowledge: necessity and apodictic certainty. Instead of the probability of
the general forms of empirical knowledge – namely, the note that it has a content
that goes beyond what is contained in mere definitions or tautological formulas
such as “all old men are old”, or “every cause produces an effect”. For the
necessary truth ‘All triangles are triangular’, or ‘All old men are old’ is surely
characterized as well by the two aforementioned marks, but their predicates
follow solely because of the principles of identity and contradiction, simply out of
the definition of the subjects. These truths are most certainly necessary, but empty.
They tell us nothing new in that only general and formal ontological and logical
basic principles, such as that everything is itself (the principle of identity) and
nothing can both be itself and not be itself (the principle of contradiction).
Additionally, the logical laws, which follow from this with respect to the truth
and falsehood of propositions, as applied in a particular case, or better put, the
predicate only claims what was already contained per definitionem in the concept
of the subject.15
Since Kant, these propositions are seen as analytical judgements. The
proposition “Every effect has a cause” tells us nothing new in its predicate: for
“effect” is already defined as a definite result of a cause. Quite different is the
case of those informative propositions, which express something new and are
characterized by necessity and apodictic certainty: “Every change and every
non-necessary being requires an effective cause.” This so-called principle of
causality is in no way tautological or analytic. The predicate of this proposition
adds something new to the subject ‘Every change and every contingent being’.
Kant refers to such a proposition therefore, as synthetic. All of those judgements,
the truths of which are only knowable through empirical observation, are
synthetic. We only need then experience and perception in order to achieve
knowledge of them. Whenever I say something such as that lions in contrast to
hyenas first kill their prey before consuming it, the proposition is synthetic.

and which justifies the positing of the absolutely maintained apodictic judgement in the
logical sense.
15
Cf. for a deeper discussion of this question and for the justification of the fact that this
formulation is not sufficiently precise, Fritz Wenisch, (1988) and J. Seifert (1976, II. Teil).

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 PHILOSOPHY AS A RIGOROUS SCIENCE 9

While there are many propositions of this type, that is, propositions which
can be verified or falsified only through experiments or single observations; in the
same way there are also other amazing propositions, which are synthetic. They
are neither justified through empirical observations, nor do they lack absolute
necessity and apodictic certainty. There appears to be such legitimate and by no
means arbitrary apodictic claims concerning axioms, principles, and other general
states of affairs. Only if such propositions exist can philosophy be grounded as
the rigorous science that Kant emphasized. In keeping with Kant, the question
concerning the rigorously scientific character of philosophy can first be identified
with the question concerning the possibility of synthetic a priori propositions.
How can we know, for example, that every change requires a cause? If
philosophy is supposed to be both possible and justifiable, this kind of
proposition, which can be found in both mathematics and philosophy, must be
capable of being grounded. The problem of the so-called synthetic a priori
knowledge, with whose help we understand for example the Pythagorean theorem,
has belonged since Plato’s dialogue Meno, where the problem of the possibility of
a priori knowledge is first to be formulated, to the most fascinating of all
philosophical problems. How can we explain general knowledge claims that tell
us something new, and which are not dependent on empirical experience but are
rather distinguished through apodictic certainty and necessity? This fundamental
question of Kant, “how are synthetic a priori judgements possible?” is also
fundamental question of philosophy and of phenomenological realism in
particular. The question is simple and yet terribly difficult to answer. How can
one derive from the given temporal objects something timeless? Does it come
from the experience of contingently existing objects’ necessary and unchanging
states of affairs, from uncertain and non-evident sensory perceptions apodictically
certain and evident states of affairs, or from the experience of imperfection
something perfect?
Plato had thought that such a knowledge could only be accounted for in
relation to the eternal ideas, which the soul must have beheld before its birth. St.
Augustine thought that such an astonishing form of knowledge could only be
explained through an immediate divine illumination. This insight would permit us
to have a cognitive share in the eternal and divine ideas. Descartes tried to ground
the same kind of knowledge in innate ideas and Leibniz assumed as an
explanation that God had established a harmony between subjectively held ideas
and the objective nature of things. The first modern philosopher who wishes to do

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10 JOSEF SEIFERT

away with such informative, necessary and experience-independent propositions

is David Hume. He wishes to throw to the flames all those library books that
contain neither mere definitions and tautologies nor empirical propositions.
Kant, who was educated in rationalist post-Cartesian philosophy, is
awakened from his dogmatic slumber by Hume, during which time he believed,
alongside the tradition, in such eternal truths as the object of philosophy. Kant
rightly sees in a position such as David Hume’s the radical dissolution of
philosophy. This is why he tries to save the informative a priori but at the same
time he accepts Hume’s principle that only experience can validate knowledge.
Kant tries, therefore, to answer the question concerning the possibility of
synthetic knowledge a priori through transcendental forms of perception and
thought that are grounded in the subject and are the conditions of the possibility
of experience. There takes place here a revolution that shatters the fundamental
understanding of what philosophy is and gives Kant such names as ‘the
all-crusher’ or ‘the all-destroyer’. Up until Kant, we understood this knowledge
as comprising necessary truths that were grounded in an object, as genuine
knowledge. Afterwards, according to Kant’s famous Copernican turn, such
knowledge is not to be explained through the object but rather through the subject.
With Kant, then, the a priori is concerned with the production and establishment
of principles. This led Nietzsche to speak of the despair of truth, which
accompanies Kantian philosophy, one that would lead to a scepticism that would
destroy everything and that would consider the so-called
a priori as inborn errors of the human race. Admittedly, Kant himself had
assumed that the a priori principles were binding for all men. Moreover, he had
also tried, through the postulate of practical reason (through ethical postulates), to
save certain objective elements, above all in ethics and through this ethical detour
in metaphysics.
In post-Kantian modernity, what Kant thought were universal human
cognitions in the sense of binding forms of thought has often, however, been
reduced to psychological and linguistic compulsions or habits of thought, to
cultural prejudices or to language games or rules made through consensus, which
has lead to a liquidation of philosophy through linguistic analysis 16.
It is clear, that under the proposed accounts of both Kantian and many
post-Kantian philosophies, a genuine a priori knowledge is not possible. Rather,

16
Rudolf Lüthe, 12th of May, 1992 in Schaan (Liechtenstein).

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 PHILOSOPHY AS A RIGOROUS SCIENCE 11

it is according to such theories, concerned with those fundamental principles,

upon which all thinking depends but which are only subjective forms of thought
or language that are used to conceptualize the world and not with objective truth.
A completely new view of the world, which, to be sure, is radically subjectivist
and relativist, follows from such a position. Then the principle, for example, that
every change has a cause is valid not because of the things themselves, because of
reality itself, but rather it is valid because we must think this way or because we
do so de facto.
At this point, we reach the answer of realist phenomenology to the question
concerning how Husserl’s maxim “Back to the Things Themselves” is to be
interpreted. Husserl had interpreted phenomenology soon after the Logical
Investigations in a direction that had much in common with Kant. He found, in
the final analysis, it is the subject who constitutes all meaning and all being, the
world and God. He even regards this as a prerequisite of a “rigorous philosophy”,
i.e., to limit itself exclusively to such immanent intentional objects and to make
no judgement whatsoever concerning its foundational or transcendental validity.
Realist phenomenology, however, which goes back to Husserl’s Logical
Investigations and has, in my opinion, been alone in remaining truly faithful to
Husserl’s maxim, has also in our century found a completely new answer to the
question concerning the synthetic a priori, an answer which is much closer to that
of Plato and Aristotle than to that of Kant 17.

II. The Revolutionary Contributions of Realist Phenomenology Towards

Grounding Philosophy as a Rigorous Science of Objective and Synthetic A Priori
Cognitions

Firstly, the kind of necessity which characterizes the states of affairs in the
Pythagorean Theorem or in the principle of causality, is not just any kind of
necessity. It is rather a necessity of a very particular kind, one whose peculiarity
does not allow us to reduce it to anything else. This necessity is not a mere
linguistic convention, nor a mere language game; it is also not a necessity of
having to think in a certain way. There is no subjective necessity that renders it
impossible, for example, to think differently than in accordance with the principle

17
Cf. Adolf Reinach, “Über Phänomenologie”, p. 531-550. Max Scheler (1966, p. 71, 175).
Cf. further Dietrich von Hildebrand (1991); Josef Seifert (1987).

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12 JOSEF SEIFERT

of causality. We can argue for this based on the facts of experience by pointing
out that there is no necessity of thought here because we can in fact deny it. The
necessity which the philosopher and mathematician investigates lies rather in the
things themselves, it has the character of having to be in a certain way and not
being able to be in a different way. In addition, this a priori necessity is the same
whether men, angels, or gods think about them, as Husserl said. This insight,
which was obtained particularly through Husserl, Reinach, Scheler, and
Hildebrand, that a priori knowledge does not distinguish itself by means of a mere
necessity of thought, as Kant and psychologism held, but rather through an
objective necessity of the things themselves, is perhaps the central contribution of
realist phenomenology. Thus, philosophy discovers again the nature and structure
of the things themselves: the objective world and its structures that since Hume
and Kant were believed to have been lost. In this way, realistic phenomenology,
through a return to that particular necessity of the things themselves, rejects every
subjectivization of the a priori and establishes once again classical philosophy
and metaphysics.
Secondly, this necessity of the objects of philosophy is not blindly posited by
realistic phenomenology but instead is knowable through insight and deduction,
and is thereby linked with the highest form of knowability and intelligibility
(understandability). All talk of mere innate ideas, forms of perception and of
thought that lie ready made in the mind, but also any variation on Plato’s teachings
regarding anamnesis, cannot do justice to the inner knowability and intelligibility
of essential states of affairs that must be a certain way and cannot be otherwise.
Consequently, Husserl’s claim concerning the nature of philosophy as a rigorous
science which limits philosophy to the mere noemata of intentional acts shows
itself as invalid, yes even absurd. For the datum of absolute necessity is in its
absoluteness fully independent from every thinking consciousness, unconstitutable
by God or men and therefore a limitation of the object of philosophy to noemata is
unnecessary. When, of course, one does not see the distinction between contingent
essences (with respect to which we obtain only probable knowledge concerning
their reign over the existing world) and necessary ones, as is the case with Husserl,
then his error is quite understandable. For then a rigorous philosophical science
could only investigate essences as inhabitants of a possible world and could not
know if the existing world is formed according to them.
Thirdly, this necessity is predominately accessible to us in immediate
cognition through the Wesensschau (insight) or indirectly through syllogistic or

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 PHILOSOPHY AS A RIGOROUS SCIENCE 13

other forms of deductive proof. We achieve in both cases that indubitable and
infallible knowledge (spoken of by Augustine and Bonaventure and from which we
can only deviate and fall into error when we begin in our judgements) to bypass the
evident objects of cognition. Instead of their faithful analysis to construct, to
reduce, and in so doing we deviate from the light of the things themselves.
Yet, how can we know such synthetic a priori states of affairs? Are they
simply innate ideas? Do we hold that a priori knowledge must be independent of all
18
experience, as Kant thought? It is precisely on this question that
phenomenological realism manages, as Scheler expresses it, to be more positivistic
than any positivism, more empirical than Hume does, while still defending the a
priori in its strictly objective interpretation. According to empiricism, only the
material for ideas is supplied by experience; the linking of ideas and their
association is a contribution of the subject. The general essence is not itself given in
experience; above all no necessary essence is thus given. Realistic
phenomenology, on the other hand, understands experience in a much more
extensive way than empiricism, whereby it returns to Husserl’s notion of
‘categorical intuition’ as the experience of the general essences of things. At the
same time, it rejects every kind of mere immanentism, conceptualism, or
constructivism. Obviously, we cannot recognize the law that the color purple in the
order of similarity must lie between blue and red without the experience of sight –
and yet the law is necessary19. In the same way the Kantian thesis that the a priori,
because of its necessity, cannot be given in any experience is not to be blindly
accepted. Rather we must make a distinction, as Hildebrand above all has done,20
He posits the distinction between empirical experience, which takes it starting
point in the simple observation of real existing objects and a completely different
pure such-being experience. This experience of ‘essence.’ can have its origin in
‘sense perception,’ in the psychic experience of one’s judgement or cognition, or in
the moral experience, wherever intelligible and necessary essences are

18
Plato assumed a certain experience before birth. Cf. Balduin Schwarz (1970, 33-51). Cf.
also Reale (1993, chapter 6 ff.)
19
Concerning this experience in which the knowledge of essence is given, Husserl wrote
quite beautifully in Edmund Husserl, “Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft,” cit., p. 32 f.,
where he says that the insight into essences is neither a mystical act nor is less of an
experience than sense-perception.
20
Cf. above all Hildebrand (1976, chapter 4).

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14 JOSEF SEIFERT

encountered. Even the concrete experience of an essence is connected with

insights, but in any case, it is above all the purified experience of the philosopher,
which concerns the intellectual grasping of necessary essences and their states of
affairs. Let us consider the case where we see the color red; in this perception, we
become familiar with what red is as such. In understanding the nature of this color
or the continuum of infinite variations of color qualities and tones, we experience
in a pure cognition the pure essence, the eidos21.
The false alternative between empirical sciences of the real, which are
supposed to investigate only non-necessary facts, and a priori sciences that are
independent of any experience, shows itself to be inadequate – in spite of all the
decisively important cognitions that are contained in this alternative. To
de-dogmatize Hume’s concept of experience, that is, to show that the concept of
experience ought not to be restricted to that form of experience in which only
contingent facts are given, is another fundamental contribution of realist
phenomenology.
With this, I come to a third fundamental contribution of realist
phenomenology regarding the nature of philosophy, namely, the clarification of
the difference between empirical and a priori sciences. I see hints of such a
clarification in Husserl’s third Logical Investigation. It was ultimately achieved in
the fullest sense by Hildebrand22. How is it that we may talk of experience in the
sense of observation and the conclusions derived thereof when it comes to the
science of chemical or biological relationships, or historical facts, but not when it
comes to mathematics and philosophy? How can one account for the fact that the
two types of sciences are based on radically different experiences? The answer
lies in two radically different types of essences or such-being unities, which serve
as the objects of the two kinds of knowledge. There are unities whose constitutive
moments tend toward chaos, for example, objects that have been thrown about on
the floor. Here we can only learn about how such unities are put together by a
mere inspection from the outside, through the perception of unintelligible and
brute facts.
Quite different is the case with those species that form the object of the
natural sciences and in another sense those which constitute the objects of the
history of art and of history by itself. Here we encounter meaningful forms, which

21
Cf. Seifert (1977), chapter 1.
22
Cf. Hildebrand (1991, chapter 4)

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 PHILOSOPHY AS A RIGOROUS SCIENCE 15

possess a certain understandability, an inner meaningful structure and form,

relations to a final cause, etc. These can be quite individual, like works of art or
historical personalities, or they may possess the generality of a genuine type,
which allows us to differentiate between individual marks and elements that are
more general. In this case, understanding, methodical observations and
explanations, etc., are possible. However, the unity of the marks of a lion are not
necessary. For in addition to understanding, experience in the sense of the simple
observation of facts that could be different, is also required. The empirical
methods of cognition correspond not only to our limited knowledge but also to
the objective nature of such morphic, meaningful, but non-necessary objects and
natures. Mathematics and philosophy, however, have quite different objects
characterized precisely by their objective essential necessity and their
incomparable intelligibility. Only here, therefore, is it possible that a single
experience of willing is sufficient in order to understand that nihil volitum nisi
praecogitatum (nothing can be willed without first being thought or known) 23,
that the act of promising is in need of being heard and produces a claim on the
side of the addressee, etc. Only because of the potency of the inner necessity of
such essences, can the strict necessity of logical laws and states of affairs,
mathematical and ethical, ontological and other states of affairs, such as those that
concern the nature of colors, be explained.
With this we touch on a fourth contribution of realist phenomenology – and
on this point realistic phenomenology builds on Husserl’s phenomenology –
towards the clarification of the nature of philosophy: namely the overcoming of
the impoverishment of the a priori. It is no longer the twelve categories alone that
possess necessary essences and that are independent of empirical experience as
Kant thought, not only the temporal and spatial forms of perception. Besides
space and time there are numerous geometric and arithmetic objects, also the
sphere of cognition and its various types, sense-perception and its types, as well
as the essences of the objects of the various senses. There is an objective
necessary essence to colors, tones, even smells and the qualities of taste. There
are necessary laws which govern the beautiful, its kinds and its bearers, of the
literary work of art, of art itself, of moral virtues and their acts, of doubting, of

23
With the truth of this proposition we do not wish of course to deny the possibility of a
wishing or willing that in a certain sense is unconscious, in so far as it remains unclear to
the person willing that he wills and what he wills.

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16 JOSEF SEIFERT

questioning, of willing, of freedom, of love, of life and of death. Within all

spheres of being, there is this uncreated world of such necessary essences and
essential connections, such that not only mathematics but also philosophy would
have to research endlessly in order to discover them all. This wealth ought not to
suggest, however, that the sphere of the a priori is co-extensive with that of
philosophy. The laws of the end game in chess, the mereological laws, the
phenomenology of holes and of colors, belong to other fields such as ‘naïve
physics’, mereology, mathematics and so on. Only questions concerning the
fundamental nature of things like the essence of number and of mathematical
objects as such, or questions concerning the centre, the core, and the focus of
being involve objects that are within the domain of philosophy.

III. Insight and Argument: On the Complementarity of Immediate Philosophical

Evidence and Dialectic as Moments of Philosophy as a “Rigorous Science”

It has often been said that the call to return to immediate cognition (a priori
insight) is the most basic form of philosophical and rational cognition. As such, (a
call which incidentally can be traced back to Plato as well as to the Posterior
Analytics and the Metaphysics of Aristotle) for which no proof can be given or
required and of which there can be no higher criterion, implies the neglect of
dialectic and argument and with it rigorous scientific method. That this does not
follow can be seen from the fact that every logical argument presupposes the most
important logical principles. Additionally, the difference between valid and
invalid forms of drawing a conclusion which themselves can only be known
through insights and cannot be grounded by means of other proofs and without
which all other demonstrations would be worthless. No view of rationality that
does not recognize this highest form of rational knowledge that lies in the
intuitive grasping of intelligible and necessary essences and states of affairs is
capable of being conceptualized. This does not indicate a rational deficit, nor a
repudiation of all forms of argument as ways to insight. On the contrary, there is
the dialectic of the question in relation to the answer; there is the uncovering of
the presuppositions of an opponent in which he is shown to presuppose himself
what he is denying and so on. All forms of philosophical argumentation and
platonic dialectics are, in the light of the phenomenological insight, not only
permissible, but also receive from it their ultimate justification. Reinach has also
shown that insight does not mean obviousness or an easy accessibility to every

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 PHILOSOPHY AS A RIGOROUS SCIENCE 17

man. Hard work in responding to diverse objections, in investigating essences and

in making terminological distinctions is necessary in order to bring philosophical
intuitions to evidence. We do so in order to show that they are not vague feelings,
subjective impressions, or imprecise attempts to conceptualize necessary states of
affairs or unclear expressions of them. Rather, that in do so we are in keeping
with a beautiful expression from Husserl’s Logical Investigations, they are indeed
“the experience of truth”.
1. Phenomenological Realism as a new Existentialism and a Critique of
Husserl’s Thesis – Shared by some of the Munich - Göttingen Phenomenological
Realists – that Limiting Philosophy to a Pure Essential Research is a Condition
for Philosophy as a Rigorous Science.
Many philosophers, above all the so-called existentialist Thomist like Etienne
Gilson and his school, have reproached western philosophy in a fashion that is
quite similar to Heidegger’s criticism concerning ‘the forgetfulness of being.’
They criticize a pure essentialism, a philosophy of pure essential research that
would bracket existential questions and would lose sight of being in the sense of
real existence. This reproach is also partially directed against phenomenology,
even Reinach’s realistic phenomenology, and is not completely unwarranted, even
if realistic phenomenologists like Hildebrand have emphasized the indubitable
knowledge of real existence by means of a new examination of the cogito, a point
24
to which we will shortly return . Philosophical dialogue between
phenomenological realists with existential Thomists has undoubtedly contributed
to the decisive turn on the part of Munich phenomenology to a philosophy of real
existence, of the esse.25 The irreducibility of existence, the grasping of that
unique form of the inner actuality (which we will call real existence), and to
differentiate this being from all other categories of being, represents an important
task of philosophy. It was therefore insufficient to equate philosophy with the
analysis of essences. The Husserlian method of bracketing the world of the
natural attitude (epoché), of the real existence of objects is therefore only one
among many philosophical methods, and the phenomenological method must be
thought through anew from its very foundations in order to account for the

24
Cf. Hildebrand, “Das Cogito und die Erkenntnis der realen Welt. Teilveröffentlichung
der Salzburger Vorlesungen Hildebrands: Wesen und Wert menschlicher Erkenntnis”,
Aletheia VI, 1994. Cf. also Seifert, Erkenntnis objektiver Wahrheit, II, chapters 1-2.
25
Cf. Josef Seifert (1977), chapters 1-2.

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18 JOSEF SEIFERT

knowledge of existence which is different from all essences outside of the

absolute being26. In this respect, another important aspect of phenomenological
realism can be pointed out. Philosophy has at least twice before 27, in Augustine
and in René Descartes, taken its starting point in the subject and from the
indubitable knowledge of the really existing I as the refutation of every
skepticism and relativism.
St. Augustine writes in De Trinitate, that every radical skeptical doubt of all
truth presupposes indubitable truths, such as one’s own existence, life, knowledge,
willing, joyfulness, and so on. On the other hand, general laws such as every
doubter presupposes an object of which he doubts, a knowledge of his own not
knowing, a judgement that one ought not to give assent rashly, and many others.
With this St. Augustine has, together with many necessary essential laws, also
proven that one’s real existence and the knowledge of numerous and unique
experiences and acts are the objects of an indubitable knowledge of an existent
being. This dimension of the cogito, which Husserl was later to give a
transcendental turn, is foundational for the realism within phenomenology.28 This
is not simply an existential realism in the sense that it seeks to differentiate
existence from essence. Also because it considers the concrete existence of
objects such as the I and with it ‘one person,’ the real material world and above
all the real existence of God as belonging to the central objects of philosophy.29
The greatest service, which phenomenological realists from Husserl of the
Logical Investigations to Dietrich von Hildebrand and to the present have
performed, is revealed in the ontological presuppositions and the suitable method
for a radically objectivistic and realistic philosophy. Their precepts and

26
I have also tried to show this in Back to Things in Themselves, 1987, chapter 2.
27
There is, already in ancient philosophy, also a kind of cogito to be found in Parmenides
28
Cf. in particular Hildebrand (1964) and Seifert (1987, chapters 3-4). Through his
radically different interpretation of the subject as a transcendental ego, which allows for no
archimedian point for the knowledge of an objectively existing world (no ‘piece of the real
world’, as Husserl in his Cartesian Meditations put it), and which, moreover, is responsible
for the constitution of all meaning and all real being, the phenomenology of the later
Husserl distinguishes itself from phenomenological realism in perhaps almost as radically
a way as through its assumption of the dependency of the eîde and necessary essences on
the subject.
29
Cf. also, Rocco Butiglione (1989, p.9-75); and Josef Seifert (1989, chapters 1-4, 9-15).

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 PHILOSOPHY AS A RIGOROUS SCIENCE 19

observations, developed through precise investigations into the objective and

necessary essences and a priori knowledge has at the same time kept in mind the
meaning of the subject (cogito) for philosophy and has recognized the importance
of philosophical knowledge regarding real existence.
2. Rigorous Science and Intersubjectivity: Critique of Husserl’s Claim that a
Rigorously Scientific Philosophy may not be “Thoroughly Controversial”
A final aspect of phenomenological realism, one that was already mentioned
at the very beginning and given a brief answer, concerns the claim raised by
Husserl that a rigorously scientific philosophy which does not build itself on an
universal consensus and which is not intersubjectivity verifiable cannot be
scientific. Therefore, at the most only pure logic can be a philosophical science.
Only when one prescinds from the philosophical interpretation of logical laws,
which separates psychologism form formalism and Platonism. The scandal of the
contradictions between diverse philosophical systems can only lead to skepticism
or to a new, formalized and purely logical philosophy. Philosophy would then
become pure and applied formal and symbolic logic, perhaps additionally
linguistic analysis. Everything else, which is not an object of consensus, including
this thesis itself, would be unscientific.
In contradistinction, different realist phenomenologists have tried to show
that philosophical knowledge is certainly completely objective, but that it has so
many methodological, intellectual and moral pre-conditions that the
contradictions and prejudices that reign in philosophical circles become all the
more understandable. In the case where knowledge is easier to obtain and does
not have so many ethical and existential implications, it would in fact normally
lead to a consensus concerning objective knowledge and even to the probability
of suppositions. In the situation, however, where many blind spots and hindrances
stand in the way of genuine knowledge, as is the case with philosophical
knowledge, one cannot expect such a consensus. The roots of philosophical errors
have been investigated in Husserl in his Prolegomena as well as by Balduin
Schwarz in his book entitled Der Irrtum in der Philosophie.30 Schwarz examines
the varied intellectual, methodological, psychological and moral hindrances to
knowledge and finds the full rationality and objectivity of philosophical
knowledge seems to concur with the Socratic recognition. This being many
philosophical truths (for example, one is not permitted under any set of

30
Cf Balduin Schwarz (1934).

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20 JOSEF SEIFERT

circumstances to do something unjust) will never be accepted by the majority of

philosophers or by the general populace.31. Hence, the conflict of opinions is to be
explained - not through a lack of evidence regarding the things themselves, nor
through a lack of scientific method in philosophy - but rather by means of the
difficulties and hindrances, which lead to errors in philosophy. More than in any
other science, these common and so fundamental errors arise, since the
knowledge obtained in these other sciences does not require, as Plato says in the
allegory of the cave at the beginning of the seventh book of the Republic, a
metanoia. And this recognition has nothing to do with a “Weltanschauung
philosophy,” as if one could capriciously explain every rational and intuitive
cognition, which does not have just purely intellectual but also moral
preconditions, as depending on a world view; thereby making the possibility of
consensus a condition of the scientific character of philosophy. However, this
would constitute a completely arbitrary and groundless thesis.
Moreover, realist phenomenologists are in agreement with philosophers like
Plato and Augustine who said that no error and no thoroughly skeptical system is
possible without already implying a wealth of cognitions on which every
consensus as well as every meaningful dialogue depends. Every disagreement and
every philosophical argument presupposes a general Logos, that is, a knowable
structure of reality. For without the knowledge of being, all dialogue, all
understanding and all arguments would be meaningless. From this, one can lay
down evidence - not for the unknowability of being - but for its intelligibility.
Along the paths that I have only sketched, a number of thinkers united in the
school of phenomenological realism have tried to give classical realism a new
foundation and in my opinion, they have admirably succeeded.

31
Cf. for example, Plato, Crito. cf. concerning the idea of value-blindness, Hildebrand
(1982).

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