ABSTRACT
Phenomenology focuses on intentional consciousness and the functioning of subjectivity and is well known for its insistence on the primacy of the first-person perspective and its critique of the objectivist stance, or what Merleau-Ponty calls ‘la vue de nulle part’ (‘the view from nowhere’). On the other hand, it should not be forgotten that the founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, placed a huge emphasis on the importance of ‘ideal’ scientific objectivity and the need to establish both philosophy and phenomenology as rigorous science. Husserl’s Logical Investigations (1900/1901) defends objectivity and truth-in-itself of logic and his last work, Crisis of European Sciences, also defends the ideality of geometrical concepts and laws. Many commentators identify a tension between phenomenology’s commitment to scientific rigor in pursuit of objectivity and its concern for first-person subjectivity. Phenomenology always seeks to safeguard the specifically human – the subjective outlook, the human gaze, as long as we are clear that we do not mean here to objectify the human solely as a natural object. It is necessary to distinguish (as Husserl does) between genuine scientific objectivity (which must also understand the processes by which this objectivity is achieved by cooperating subjects) and the ideology often dominant among practitioners of the sciences (and also found in philosophy) of naturalistic objectivism. In this paper, I explicate the nature of the detached, non-participating spectator stance and discuss some ways in which the objectivist stance, suitably qualified, can be seen as enhancing and complementing the first-person subjective point of view.
