p There are other influential variants of the idealistic solution of the problem of substantiating knowledge in 88 modern bourgeois philosophy. The empirical subject, that is, a special kind of unity of consciousness and corporeality, is regarded as the substantiating instance, rather than the Transcendental Subject interpreted in its isolation from the world of real material objects, from the empirical corporeal individual and the community of other such egos. On this path, an attempt is made to establish the necessary dependences of knowledge and experience.

p These approaches to understanding cognition* are a departure from transcendentalism. They do not, however, constitute a rejection of the interpretation of cognition as determined by the structure of individual consciousness. Consciousness is merely understood not as the “pure” consciousness of a “pure” individual ego but in its organic links with corporeality and its inclusion in the network of interactions with other subjects. The rejection of the ail-too manifest subjectivism of the philosophical conceptions based on “pure” consciousness does not yet signify breaking away from idealism. This last circumstance predetermines the untenability of those attempts to solve the problem of substantiation of knowledge which we shall here consider.

p The interpretation of the subject outlined here is characteristic of the late works of Husserl. Opposing the everyday, pre-scientific and extra-scientific "life world" (Lebens-Welt) to the objectified world of mathematicised science, Husserl endeavours to prove that the scientifictheoretical attitude to life is derivative in its essential dimensions from the immediate, “life-oriented” attitude to the world which is characteristic of the Lebens-Welt.

p At the same time, the philosopher believes, science has a tendency (and it is inalienably inherent in the scientific-theoretical form of cognition itself) to separate itself from the “life” sources, to forget about them, as it were, and to undertake constructions that are rooted in the "life world" and not in the pre-theoretical meaningful givennesses. This path, that is, the path of formalistic objectivism, inevitably leads cognition into cul-de-sacs, to paradoxes, to a crisis in its foundations, and this, in Husserl’s view, is characteristic of the whole of contemporary European science (these statements date from the 1930s). The only way towards substantiation of science (and the crisis of its foundations is at the same time the crisis of the whole of European culture), and towards substantiation of cognition in general, is through finding the real sources of science and recovering the thread that binds the latter to scientific-theoretical cognition. The conditional, restricted, and dependent nature of the scientific 89 spirit of "pure objectiveness" will thus be demonstrated, depriving objectivism and scientism closely associated with it of the status of a universal worldview orientation. The immediate "life world" underlying all human modes of relation to reality, including scientific-theoretical cognition, is, in Husserl’s view, marked by a specific unity of the objective and the subjective, the source of unity lying in the subject, the unity itself being “centred” on the individual empirical ego.

p Indeed, continues Husserl’s argument, what is given to the empirical subject in the first place is the subject itself as the individual ego with the consciousness and unique body inherent in it.

p All the necessary relations of experience are determined precisely through the properties of the individual subject. It is well known, for instance, that objective experience implies the existence of a generally significant network of spatial relations which determines the mutual arrangement of material objects (let us recall that for Kant the forms of spatial dependences, as distinct from temporal ones, are mostly modes of expression of the objective nature of experience). But in what way is the spatial structure of experience formed?—asks Husserl.

p The principal spatial meanings are “here” and “there”. "‘Here’ is the place where I with my body am, or, to be more precise, it is my body. What is ‘there’? ‘There’ defines itself through ‘here’. If there is no ‘here’, there is no ‘there’. ‘There’ is ‘not-here’ that can become ‘here’. ‘There’ is understood as a potential‘here’, it is understood in terms of ‘here’. ‘There’ defines itself relative to ‘here’, that is to my body. ‘There’ defines itself depending on the extent and the manner in which it is transformed into ‘here’. ‘There’ is ‘remote’ if it is hard to transform it into ‘here’; it is ‘close’ when it is easily transformed into ‘here’... What is, in concrete terms, the transformation of ‘not-here’ into ‘here’, that is, the attainment of ‘there’? ‘There’ is the place’ where not-my body is, or rather, it is not-my body. Therefore the transformation of ‘there’ into ‘here’, that is, the attainment of ‘there’, signifies the transformation of not-my body into mine, into a continuation of my body... The transformation of not-my body into a continuation of my body therefore means its transformation into my instrument. But the condition of transforming some body into my instrument is its transformation into a continuation of my body, that is, its attainment in the sense of my body’s simple contact with it. ‘Contact’ is here meant in the broadest sense of the word. Seeing with an eye constitutes a special kind of this contact.”^^82^^

p If we ignore this relation of “here” and “there” to the individual subject, any distinction between them will lose its meaning, states Husserl.

p The relations between "in front" and “behind”, "on the right" and "on the left”, “higher” and “lower”, are defined in a similar way, that is, on the basis of the possibility of transformation of “there” into “here”, he believes.

p “In front" is that which is before my face, “behind” that which is at my back and to which I must turn in order to attain it; “higher” is that which is above my head, “lower”, that which is under my feet, etc. If we ignore the relation of these differences to different parts of my body and the possibilities of attaining them, the differences themselves will disappear. If there were no differences between the parts of my body, there woud be no differences between "in front" and “behind”, "on the right" and "on the left”, etc.

p Further Husserl analyses the stages in the “ objectification” of spatial relations, that is, the stages of abstracting them from those initial dependences of origin which connect them with the individual subject and the subject’s body. One of these stages consists in transferring, as it were, the point of reference, that is, “here”, from my body to some other (which originally emerged as existing “there”), and in defining the spatial relations of other things, starting from the latter (which does not coincide with my own) e.g., we say that the river is not far from the house, that one object is to the right of another, etc. In this case we define the spatial relations between things regardless of our body, as it were, ignoring it. However, it is important to bear in mind, Husserl points out, that it only became possible because we tentatively identified ourselves, our body, with that body which we chose as the starting point of defining spatial relations, putting ourselves in imagination in place of that body, since for the bodies taken as such, that is, outside their relation to the subject with its body, there are no relations like "on the right" or "on the left”, “close” or “far”, etc. But that means, Husserl believes, that “objective” spatial relations between things are ultimately determined through my body, through me as the subject.

p Further steps in the “objectification” of space involve the use of certain universal standards for measuring length, that is, of some special objects which are manufactured specifically for expressing the spatial relations between objects. In this case, we can know, through communication, even distances that we cannot observe directly. Using 91 universal standards can consolidate the illusion of independence of the spatial relations of objects from the subject and its body. However, Husserl continues, the standard of measurement is not only chosen as such by the subject but is constituted in its spatial properties only through its relation to the subject’s body, that is, through the "here/ there" relation.

p The “objectiveness” of space, he explains, "does not lie in the independence of spatial meanings from the subject but in their equal repetitiveness. I can, in principle, repeat the position which I once assumed relative to a definite thing, and then the spatial meaning of the latter will be repeated. I can, in principle, repeat the position occupied by another subject relative to some thing, and then again the spatial meaning of the latter will be repeated. Objectiveness lies precisely in this repetition of meanings; it should be remembered, however, that repetition of meanings depends on the repetition of the positions of the subject.”^^83^^

p As we see, from Husserl’s viewpoint, “objectiveness” of space assumes the existence of other empirical subjects and my definite relation to these subjects. In general, the objectiveness of experience, Husserl indicates, implies its intersubjectivity, that is, its universal significance for all the other subjects.

p But what does "another subject" mean?

p Another subject, Husserl believes, is constituted in the same way as the spatial dependences of experience are constituted by their relation to me. Among the bodies surrounding me there are those that are similar to mine in the mode of their functioning. If I were at the place where such a body is, it might serve me and my conscious intentions. (Thus the subject is for Husserl not just a body of a special kind but a unity of consciousness and corporeality.) In this way, on the analogy with myself, the meaning of "another subject" is formed which, as distinct from myself, is not given me directly but is only constituted by myself.

p The body of another subject, on the one hand, belongs to my world, for it is constituted by myself, while on the other hand it belongs to the world of that other subject. Therefore my world must coincide with his world. This world, common to ourselves and all the other subjects and having a meaning common to all, is the “objective” world. In other words, the objectiveness of the world consists, according to Husserl, in its universal significance, that is, in the universal meaning it has for any subject, rather than in its independence from the subject.

p According to Husserl, scientific-theoretical cognition, concerned with finding and analysing invariants of various measurements, and later of invariants of these invariants, abstracts from the determination of the measurements by the nature of the standards chosen which, in their turn, are constituted by their relation to the individual subject with its body. Identifying the invariants established by science with the objective world, this mathematicised science interprets objectiveness as complete independence from any subject whatever. The fundamental fact is forgotten, Husserl believes, that the meaning of the objectiveness of the world is constituted by the subject and is determined relative to it and to its body. (The universal significance of the world, its intersubjectivity itself, ultimately depends on myself as the individual subject, Husserl states, for the other subject is also constituted by myself, in my experience.) Carried away by the ideal of falsely conceived objectivity, mathematicised science succumbs to the sin of scientism, inevitably ending in a crisis of its own foundations. The only way out of this crisis is establishment of the meaning of the individual subject as the centre of the universe—thus ends Husserl his discussion of this theme.

p Let us try to analyse these arguments and see if they are well grounded. Husserl starts from the fact (which he regards as primary giyenness) that the individual subject is given to itself with its consciousness and body. The primary spatial meaning of “here” is determined, in his view, by its connection with this subject. As for the meaning of “there”, whith belongs to something that lies outside the subject and its body, it is, in Husserl’s opinion, constituted or defined depending on the meaning of “here”, namely as something that can become “here”, that can be attained by the subject coming into direct contact with its body. It is easy to show, however, that this analysis is inadequate even by the criteria of phenomenological description. The point is that “here” already subsumes “there”, these meanings being mutually dependent. It is true that “there” can be transformed into “here”, can become “here”. It is also true that “here” is “not-there”. In other words, the meaning of “here” implies the meaning of “there”. It is just as true that “here” is “there” from the standpoint of another subject or, generally speaking, from another reference point. If there is no dependence of this second kind for the subject, there is no meaning of “here” for it either. The “here/there” relation implies equal role of both of its poles.

p Of course, the elementary “here/there” spatial relation includes a reference to the individual subject, for the 93 “here" meaning has sense only for that subject. At the same time, the meaning of “here” includes from the beginning the’fact that it is “there” from another viewpoint, from another position, while “there” is that which exists outside the subject and its body. Therefore the reference to the individual subject in the “here/there” relation does not mean constituting that relation as depending on the subject and itS body but a realisation (with varying degrees of clarity) of the incorporation of the empirical subject in a certain network of objective spatial relations appearing for it at the given point as the meaning of “here”.

p Husserl shows the dependence of the relations “above/below”, "in front/behind”, "on the left/on the right”, etc. on my body and differences between its parts. It can be conceded that these meanings have a certain anthropomorphic colouring, implying as they do a reference to the subject and the various parts of the subject’s body. However, the subject’s body itself exists as a special type of object for it only if it appears as included in an objective network of relations, including spatial relations, with other bodies, both material things and the bodies of other subjects. For me to realise the various parts of my body (including those which I do not see under ordinary conditions: face, head, back, etc.) as forming a certain unity, belonging to one and the same object, I must possess the faculty of perceiving my body from the outside, as it were, from the standpoint of another subject, that is to say, as spatially localised and existing in certain relations with other bodies. In other words, constituting the "in front/behind" and other meanings already assumes the existence for the subject of a definite network of elementary objective spatial relations and is merely superimposed on this network, so to speak, far from determining the latter, as Husserl insists.

p In other words, the subject may conceive of itself as being in the place of some other object and take this other object as a reference point for determining distance, e.g., for determining the “close/far” relations, only if it is simultaneously capable of conceiving of its body as replaceable by any other body as the determinant of spatial dependences.

p Husserl points to the connection between the objectivity of space and the possibility of repeating the position taken up by the subject relative to a certain thing. But the conception of the possibility of repeating the subject’s spatial position already assumes the existence for the subject of an objective network of spatial relations that lends 94 sense to the taking up of a certain position, just as it implies the objective meaning of the subject’s body and spatial localisation.

p It is of course true that the introduction of universal standards or scales for measuring spatial relations and, later, the establishment of invariants of these relations at the stage of scientific-theoretical cognition, mark the discovery of increasingly more general dependences of the objective world, accompanied by abstraction from those connections which include in these dependences a certain empirical subject or group of such subjects (a sociocultural community). A transition is necessary, however, to the study of more general types of dependences and not stages of “objectification” of the original, purely “ subjective”, meanings, as Husserl would have it. Any experience, however direct and “life-like” it might be, always includes a distinction between my subjective stream of consciousness and the objective system of dependences between material objects, if it lays a claim to cognitive significance. Therefore, however great the differences between scientific-theoretical cognition and those forms of pre-theoretical relation to the world which Husserl calls the "life world" (and these differences undoubtedly do exist and are of fundamental significance in certain aspects), all kinds of the cognitive relation are inevitably aimed at the world of objects existing independently from consciousness, that is, they are inevitably guilty of the "sin of objectivism”, as Husserl puts it, which in the philosopher’s view predetermined the crisis of the foundation of modern European science.

p The attempt to place the subject in the “centre” of the cosmos and to deduce the objectiveness of the world from the characteristics of the individual subject was not a success, for the subject proves to be included in a certain system of objective dependences from the very outset.

Let us consider yet another element of Husserl’s analysis. We may recall that the objectiveness of the world is, for Husserl, identical with its intersubjectivity, that is, universal significance of its meanings for any subject. The latter implies the existence of another subject, apart from myself. But this other subject is originally constituted by myself, that is, it exists as a definite product of my cognitive experience, it exists in my experience and is understood "on the analogy" of myself. That means that when Husserl takes up the standpoint of the other and starts cogitating about the body of this other subject, along with myself and my body, also existing in the experience of that other, it should be remembered that, in the 95 framework of his philosophy, the other subject cannot in principle be equipollent with myself, being ultimately constituted by myself, whereas I with my body am given to myself directly and am the true starting point of constituting all the dependences of experience. And that means that the thesis of Husserl’s philosophy of the intersubjectivity and universal significance of the world actually proves to be fictitious, and that in the final analysis Husserl cannot escape from the circle of solipsism which he himself drew.