Page 40 - Contribution To Phenomenology

REFLECTION ON THE CULTURAL DISCIPLINES 33

The trifurcation based on the three types of positing and objects as
posited that has been central to the present essay plainly extends to
philosophy itself. While philosophy before Kant tended to bifurcate into
theoretical and practical philosophy, there has been growing acceptance
of the three parts to philosophy just related to the three species of
cultural disciplines. Sir William Hamilton, for example, introduced it into
English speaking philosophy and it conspicuously structured the thought
of the great Alexander Bain. Husserl clearly recognizes the theory of
value and the theory of practice beside the theory of knowledge, but
these "theories'' are cognitive disciplines and thus parts of philosophy as
a strict science and Gurwitsch and Schutz, for example, follow Husserl in
this intellectualizing respect.
Cairns, however, challenges the adequacy of the view whereby first
philosophy is merely a science, albeit the primal science in which the
positive sciences and the world are grounded.^ That task of grounding
is not itself rejected, but is considered a part of something larger. Beyond
epistemology, there is first of all axiology, but this can be seen as
culminating not in knowledge about correct valuing but in habits of
correct valuing itself. Then one might be better off to speak of the
philosophy of evaluation. Thus the philosopher seeks not merely to have
ultimately justified believing but also ultimately justified valuing, to be a
justified valuer as well as a justified knower. This is still not sufficient,
however, for the philosopher can also go beyond the theory of justified
action to justify her action itself and thus be a justified doer or actor.
Beyond praxiology as theory of practice there would be the philosophy
of action. Then the wisdom ultimately sought is not cognitive, nor even
axiotic, but practical. Ultimately, one must act wisely. Philosophy is then
not only a cultural discipline but also the ultimate specifically practical
cultural discipline, for it culminates in action.
If Cairns's reform of the project of phenomenological philosophy is
accepted, then the phenomenological philosophy of the cultural disciplines
can serve the purposes of wisdom. Reflection on them includes not only
using them to know about the world but also using them to evaluate how
the world may be related to in various ways, reflections that can justify

^ Dorion Cairns, "Philosophy as a Striving toward Universal sophia in the
Integral Sense," in Lester Embree, ed., Essays in Memory of Avon Gurwitsch
(Washington, D.C.: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology & University
Press of America, 1983).