Page 299 - Contribution To Phenomenology

292 JAMES G. HART

Husserl himself occasionally refers to der Roman der Geschichte,
Generally the context of these references is the need to nourish the
practical horizon of action and philosophy. The motivational basis for
both theory and practice is the attractivenes and realizability of the
"approximation" of their infinite ideas. Husserl's speculations on the
development of religion out of a prior mythic stage, and the development
of the hberation from religion, i.e., the story of the turn from Mythos to
Logos or to original "authentic" religion, themselves are examples of the
kind of poetic work (Dichtung) which he believes is necessary in order
to create order amidst the infinite manifold of the past and to show how
the telos is functioning, even if in a hidden way, from the start.
But this creative poetics is not limited to the securing of a teleological
history of logos and philosophy. Rather it has its place also in the
realization of action as well as in the practice of theory. The fundamental
consideration for the edifying poetics is its nurturing relationship to logos
and the infinite ideals of the philosophic life and the absolute ought.
Recall that for Husserl life is teleological. As theory it heads, in the form
of a research community, toward the ideal of transcendental phenomenol-
ogy; as a practical community it heads toward a blessed community of
monads constituting a godly person of a higher order. The infinite ideals
are not among the constitutive ingredients of experiences, e.g., the
essences, syncategorematicals, etc. Rather they provide the motor for the
mind's wakefulness in its dealing with bodies. Others, and the self in
relation to these. They provide the mind with ultimate infinite tasks and
an infinity of profiles of this task. As unendliche Aufgaben they are not
given (gegeben) in any action or experience but action and experience
are infinitely delivered up (augegeben) to the direction provided by them
and thereby are set in motion on an infinite journey. The sense in which
the infinite idea is regulative, i.e., provides a rule, is that it invites the
mind to go on indefinitely in its determination and realization of it.^
Neither Kant nor Husserl regarded the infinite task to be the curse of
Sysiphus. Why this is so cannot busy us here. But we may note that
Husserl thought of a divine life as the infinite progress in the realization
of values. And he even thought of the best practical good in terms of

^ See Kant, KRV, B670 ff. and Hermann Cohen's synthesis in his
Kommentar zu Immanuel Kants Kritik der reinen Vemunft (Leipzig: Duerr'schen
Buchhandiung, 1907), 157 ff. Cf. Husserl, e.g., Hua III, §§ 83, 143, and 149; also,
A V 22, 31-38, E III 4, 61; Hua VIII, 10-16, 33, 48-50.