Page 280 - Contribution To Phenomenology

THE STUDY OF RELIGION IN HUSSERL 273

There are several issues here which I wish briefly to mention, a)
Husserl is fully aware that when I place value on a state of affairs, I
disvalue its opposite, I wish it away, I look away from this counter-
possibiUty and the weight it has on the matter; this is clearly harmful to
the truth of the state of affairs, b) But there are other considerations,
recently called attention to by William James, where belief in a certain
state of affairs does not merely make the one having the belief "blessed,"
and where it does not merely irradiate confidence, good will, and a
healing effect, e.g., to a believed-in person; but most important for our
purposes is the (Augustinian) consideration that if I place value in S
being p, I may be empowered to see better than one for whom the
value is missing. Husserl hestitates on this occasion (A V 21, 9b) to
admit this latter possibihty in the case of normal beUefs about finite
states of affairs and he adds that the loving seeing with "rose-colored
glasses" cannot withstand the power of truth and evidence.
c) But what about when we have to do with states of affairs for which
there is no conclusive evidence, therefore with judgments in which there
is no conclusive verification? Here Husserl is thinking surely of the ideals
of science and of an ethical-communal life. But he has especially in mind
the kinds of belief that are connected with what he calls the absolute
ought wherein the blessedness, true self, and fully satisfying life of the
individual person are brought together in a unifying Gestalt. This absolute
ought, wherein the "ought" is inseparable from an "is," has its own
unique kind of evidence. Chiefly this takes the form of the "one thing
necessary" for a person's life, i.e., the loss or renunciation of which
means one cannot live with oneself.^^ Husserl says the demands of the
heart, and, in particular, the disclosure of the absolute ought can
encompass theoretical matters which have great scientific probability.
Should these conflict with the absolute ought of a particular person, it is
clear that this person would not then be able to believe them (A V 21,
9b).
Often enough the absolute ought will function in a hidden way and
the person will not be aware of how the issues in question conflict. It
can also be more explicit and one can make an identifying act in regard
to a particular matter. But such an articulation of the meaning of the
absolute ought might be so informed by the personal experience and

^^ I discuss the "absolute ought" at length in The Person and the Common
Life: Studies in a Hussertian Social Ethics (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992), Chapter IV.