TRANSCENDENTALISM AND NATURALISM: A REREADING OF KANT AND HUSSERL

This paper aims to highlight the fact that Kantian philosophy and phenomenology do not only tend to disclose the structures of a priori knowledge. Contrariwise, we suggest that the transcendental may also be understood by a detour towards the empirical. Our first example concerns Kant as he developed a certain prefiguration of the phenomenological considerations and described a way to consider the subject in a naturalistic way by introducing the notion of Selbstsetzung in his latest work. By comparing the way Kant and Husserl thought the need to consider that the subject is embodied in the world, we also point out that Husserl improved the Kantian problematic of the Selbstsetzung as he described a transcendental and scientific method to apprehend the life of the subject. Nevertheless, this method may also be defined as a “phenomenological naturalism” in so far as the questions Husserl brings to light can be seen as the seeds of the current attempt to naturalize phenomenology. In this context, we aim to demonstrate that Kant's first comprehension of the Selbstsetzung prefigures the development of the phenomenological turning point from a static to a genetic method. Furthermore, this genetic method may be conceived as an original form of naturalism which is able to illuminate the current cognitive sciences by focusing on the first-person perspective and on crucial themes like the flesh, consciousness, etc. Eventually, we conclude that this turning point may have been an inspiration for the naturalization of phenomenology.