Introduction
Welcome to your third lesson in our study of Husserl's phenomenology. In our last session, we defined intentionality as the essential "aboutness" of consciousness. We established that every conscious act—perceiving, remembering, judging—is inherently directed toward an object. This insight is the foundation of Husserl's entire project.
However, it also presents a significant methodological challenge. In our everyday lives, we are completely absorbed in the world. Our attention is captured by the objects of our intentional acts (the email we are writing, the car we are driving, the person we are talking to), not by the structure of the conscious acts themselves. If phenomenology is to be a science of consciousness, it needs a way to shift its focus from the "what" of experience to the "how."
This lesson addresses that challenge directly. Our learning outcome is to distinguish between the natural attitude of everyday experience and the phenomenological attitude. This distinction is the gateway to the entire phenomenological method. Understanding it is the first crucial step in learning how to "do" phenomenology.
The Default State: The Natural Attitude
Husserl begins by describing our default mode of existence, the way we experience the world before any philosophical reflection. He calls this the natural attitude (natürliche Einstellung). It's the familiar, taken-for-granted stance you and I adopt in our daily lives, from mundane chores to complex scientific work.
To get a precise definition, please read the following short excerpt from a leading academic resource.
Edmund Husserl - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy provides a concise and authoritative characterization of the natural attitude and contrasts it with the philosophical stance Husserl seeks to establish.
Please read the paragraph that begins 'Husserl kept revising and refining his account...'. Focus on how it defines the natural attitude as a state where we are 'absorbed in the world' and 'simply take its reality for granted'.
As the text explains, the core feature of the natural attitude is that we live as though the world is simply "there"—a stable, independent reality that we exist within. We don't question its existence; we live in it, act on it, and investigate it.
Let's explore the specific characteristics of this attitude in more detail. The following video offers a descriptive breakdown based on Husserl's own analysis in his book Ideas I.
Husserl Ideas I The Natural Attitude
In this video lecture, Dr. Mark Thorsby provides a detailed tour of the natural attitude as described by Husserl.
Watch the segment from 04:46 to 15:26. Don't worry about catching every single detail. Instead, focus on the main themes: the world is presented as an endless field of actualities, it's given intuitively without conceptual thought, it has temporal horizons (past/future), and it's filled not just with objects but with values and other people.
The General Positing
The video you just watched describes the texture of the natural attitude. Now, let's isolate its most important logical feature, what Husserl calls the general positing.
In the natural attitude, every experience comes with an implicit belief in the factual existence of its object. When I see my desk, I don't just see a collection of colours and shapes; I see a real, existing desk. This automatic, non-voluntary belief in the actuality of the world is the "general positing" that characterizes the natural attitude. It's not a conscious judgment we make; it's the operative condition of our everyday experience.
This next clip explains this crucial concept.
Husserl Ideas I The Natural Attitude
Let's return to Dr. Thorsby's lecture to focus specifically on the concept of 'positing'.
Watch the segment from 23:22 to 27:46. Pay attention to how he defines positing as treating everything as 'factually existent' and how this positing persists even when we are proven wrong about a specific fact.
From Natural to Phenomenological: The Need for a Shift
The natural attitude is perfectly suited for living, but it is an obstacle to philosophy. Why? Because the very thing phenomenology wants to study—the way consciousness constitutes the meaning and appearance of objects—is completely invisible from within the natural attitude. By taking the world's existence and meaning for granted, we obscure the subjective processes that make that world available to us in the first place.
To make this clear, consider a distinction Husserl makes within the natural attitude itself.
Edmund Husserl: Phenomenology of Embodiment
This article from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy discusses two different attitudes we can take toward the world, both of which fall under the umbrella of the 'natural attitude'.
Read the first two paragraphs of section 3, 'Embodied Personhood.' Focus on the distinction between the 'naturalistic' attitude of science (which sees bodies as physical objects) and the 'personalistic' attitude of everyday life (which sees embodied persons). Notice the final point: despite their differences, both are part of the 'natural attitude' because they both take their objects as ready-made realities within a pregiven world.
Whether we are a scientist explaining the neurophysiology of perception or a person greeting a friend, we are operating with a set of unexamined assumptions about the reality of the world and the things in it. To do phenomenology, we need to step back from this immersion. We need a new attitude.
The Phenomenological Attitude
The phenomenological attitude is a reflective stance achieved by neutralizing the "general positing" of the natural attitude. It is crucial to understand what this means. It does not mean:
- Denying the world's existence (metaphysical idealism).
- Doubting the world's existence (skepticism).
- Ignoring the world.
Instead, it means we simply refrain from using the belief in the world's existence. We put this belief "out of play." By suspending our automatic commitment to the world's actuality, we can shift our focus from the object as a fact in the world to the object as a phenomenon in consciousness. The question is no longer "What is real?" but "How does this experience of the real come about?"
This deliberate suspension is the entry point into the phenomenological attitude. Husserl gives it a special name, borrowing a term from the ancient Greek Skeptics: the epoché (pronounced ep-okh-AY), which means "suspension of judgment."
Let's watch a final clip that clarifies this move.
Husserl Ideas I The Natural Attitude
Dr. Thorsby now explains this crucial move, which he calls 'parenthesizing' or 'bracketing' the natural positing, and formally introduces the term 'epoché'.
Watch the segment from 34:56 to 38:17. Focus on how Husserl distinguishes the epoché from sophism and skepticism. The key insight is that by suspending judgment about 'spaciotemporal factual being', we are left with consciousness itself as our field of study.
The SEP article you read earlier also makes this point with exceptional clarity.
Edmund Husserl - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Let's revisit the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article to reinforce this vital distinction.
Please read the paragraph beginning 'But for this investigation to be possible...'. The crucial line is: 'The purpose of the epoché is not to doubt, neglect, abandon, or exclude reality from our research; rather its aim is to suspend or neutralize a certain dogmatic attitude towards reality.'
An Analogy for Your Background
Given your mathematical background, we can draw an analogy.
Imagine you are working within Euclidean geometry. You use its axioms (e.g., parallel lines never meet) to prove theorems about figures. This is like the natural attitude: you are operating within a system of belief to understand objects (triangles, circles). You take the axioms for granted.
Now, imagine shifting your focus to study the system of axioms itself. You are no longer trying to prove a theorem about a triangle; you are investigating the logical structure of Euclidean geometry as a whole. You might ask: "What happens if I suspend the parallel postulate?" This move allows you to discover non-Euclidean geometries.
Adopting the phenomenological attitude is analogous to this shift. You suspend the "axiom" of the natural attitude—the belief in the world's independent existence—not to deny it, but to investigate the very structure of experience that this axiom normally governs. You move from using a framework to analyzing the framework.
Conclusion
In this lesson, we have made the crucial distinction between the two fundamental stances that define the starting point of phenomenology.
Key Takeaways:
- The Natural Attitude: Our default, unreflective mode of being. We are directed at objects within the world and implicitly "posit" their factual existence. We take reality for granted.
- The Phenomenological Attitude: A reflective, philosophical mode achieved through the epoché, or the suspension of judgment. We neutralize our belief in the world's existence to shift our focus from objects in the world to the experience of those objects.
- The goal of this shift is not to doubt reality but to make the structures of consciousness, which are normally invisible, available for investigation.
This distinction is not just a theoretical curiosity; it is the methodological key that unlocks the entire phenomenological domain of inquiry.
Preview of the Next Lesson:
We have now introduced the concept of the epoché as the gateway to the phenomenological attitude. In our next lesson, we will explore this procedure in more depth. We will treat the phenomenological reduction (epoché) not just as a shift in attitude, but as a formal method for bracketing out our presuppositions to arrive at the pure data of consciousness.