On a Blind Spot in the Husserlian Reading of Descartes, and On the Unseen Ultimate Horizon of Both

Abstract

In this paper, I assess Husserl's reading of Descartes. I argue that Husserl's relationship with Descartes was a crucial element in the development of his own idea of transcendental phenomenology. I try to show that Husserl was not sensitive to the Cartesian questioning about the being of the ego sum and, from there, I argue that the ontological drift contained in Descartes does not give in to the Husserlian criticisms of “transcendental realism” and of being the precursor of “psychologism.” I characterize this limitation of the Husserlian reading as the blind spot of his appraisal of Descartes. Next, I try to show how there is an ontological horizon that Descartes only foresees and that Husserl does not see at all, locking himself into his doctrines of the temporal self-constitution of transcendental subjectivity and the ego as “absolute fact.” Finally, I argue that the horizon of being and its expression as a “there is” and not an “I am” remains irreducible to both Cartesian doubt and Husserlian epoche. I draw from this situation some theses about the space of a fundamental ontology above the regional ontic spheres of Husserl's system of a priori, eidetic knowledge.