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Sixth Cartesian Meditation: The Idea of a Transcendental Theory of Method (Studies in Continental Thought)

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Eugen Finks Sixth Cartesian Meditation was written as the 6th part in addition to Husserls 5 part Cartesian Meditations which Husserl gave as a lecture course in 1929. Fink himself was Husserls editor and a student of his phenomenology. Fink worked so closely with Husserl and with his writtings that he had mastered not only Husserls phenomenology but also the phenomenological method of epoche and reduction. The phenomenological reduction is a technique by which the subject makes a radical psychological shift in his thinking about the world, a total rejection of the cultural, scientific, and natural pressupositions and beliefs that prevent knowledge of and grasping of truth [transcendental reallity]. There are in general two kinds of phenomenologists, outsider phenomenologists (those who exclusively study the phenomenological movement and history, or believe in it's philosophical extractions), and insider phenomenologists (those who live in the reduced state of consciousness, perform the psychical act of phenomenological reduction and hence go beyond philosophy and science). History records that most likely Husserl himself was the only insider phenomenologist, however this book reveals that Fink also was an insider. In my opinion Fink not only did phenomenological science in the same manner as Husserl, I think Fink actually whent beyond Husserl.

The Sixth Meditation not only lays the foundations for the idea of a transcendental theory of method, ie. methods of the "how to" performing the phenomenological reduction of human cosciousness, but also plans to endevour into a phenomenology of phenomenology. Fink was to have written the so-called "Seventh Metaphysic", from which actual metaphysical renderings were to have grounded phenomenology as a metaphysics, as ontology - and hence as a truely accepted rational science. Before this could be completed the Nazi political movement came to power and Fink was exiled from Germany.

This dialectic masterpiece also has textual notations by Husserl contained in the Appendices at the end of the book where Husserl applies Finks groundings of the transcendental methodic. The Appendices discuss actual political extractions for phenomenology.......with such things as "the phenomenological community" Husserl reveals his interest for phenomenology as a globalized state of co-awakening human consciousness.

Here I will sample quotes from Part One of the book:

"Instead of inquiring into the being of the world, as does traditional "philosophy" dominated by the dogmatism of the natural attitude, or, where inquiry is not satisfied with that, instead of soaring up over the world "speculatively", we, in a truly "Copernican revolution", have broken through the confinenment of the natural attitude, as the horizon of all our human possibilities for acting and theorizing, and have thrust forward into the dimension of origin for all being, into the constituitive source of the world, into the sphere of transcendental subjectivity"

"The phenomenological system itself as the architectonic of transcendental philosophy cannot be drawn up ahead of time, but is only to be obtained from the "matters themselves" by passing through concrete phenomenological work"

"transforming himself through the deepest self-reflection, man transcends himself and his natural human being in the world, by producing the transcendental onlooker, who as such, does not go along with the belief in the world, with the theses on being held by the world-experiencing human"

"In the phenomenological reduction there occurs the "awakening" of the transcendental constitution of the world, and the process of coming to transcendental self-consciousness is accomplished. In and by the thematizing of the phenomenological onlooker constituitive cosmogony comes to itself, steps out of darkness and "being-outside-itself" into the luminosity of transcendental "being-for-itself""

What is interesting to note in the development of phenomenology is the effect Heideggers ontology in Being and Time has had on Husserls writtings. For the pressence of a concern for being, and justifications for pure phenomenology, justifications for the subordination of phenomenology over hermeneutic ontology is made clear in Finks book. Both the language and the intent behind the dialectic has changed, for Husserls Cartesian Meditations and this Sixth Meditation by Fink. For me, this book is the cullmination of all phenomenological efforts, the ressolution of the phenomenological movements place in history and the foundation for future institutions of evolutionary thought-science.

Bruzinas translation of Finks manuscript is courageously correct, nothing in this translation has been compromised or dummied down. Not only that but the fonting, bracketing, and italics used complement the cryptic elegance of the text. I reccomend this publication to anyone who seeks the deepest truths and has a likeing for the most advanced systems of knowledge.

The "Sixth Cartesian Meditation" engages with crucial issues of what we might call the place of phenomenology in the human (social, existential, etc.) world, and the place of various aspects of the human world (e.g., science, phenomenology itself...) in phenomenology. The positions stated are generally described as being only beginnings of approaches to issues each of which requires a great deal of work which is beyond the scope of the text. And it seems to me that there is ample room for questioning whether the positions sketched out (or at least translated -- I have no idea what the original is...) are always beyond dispute in all their particulars. But it is a rare book that even *tries* to raise these issues, and I think the general outline presented for phenomenology as offering the [only] way to a radical and universal transformation of human life, such that all human existence hitherto will, in retrospect, be seen to have been naive, limited, etc., is sound. This is an extremely important book (of course there are others, but this one is short, and, for the difficulty of its subject matter, accessible). The task of humanity in our time is to get on with carrying out the detailed path of thinking it outlines, and, thereby, bringing that incommensurably better world into being. At the very least, the book helps us understanding how far our present "culture" falls short of what phenomenology makes possible for us. To adduce a phrase from Hermann Broch's _The Sleepwalkers_: "Raised high above the clamour of the non-existent...."