Teleology Beyond Metaphysics: Husserlian Phenomenology and the Historical Consciousness of Modernity

Abstract

This article examines the idea of historical teleology in the context of Husserlian phenomenology. Although Husserl derived this notion from the historical thinking of German idealism, the phenomenological concept of teleology differed radically from this current: instead of a deterministic idea signifying the inevitable progress of historical development, the phenomenological concept of teleology was to be understood as a fundamentally critical device of philosophical reflection—something that ought to liberate us from the yoke of the present moment. On the basis of these reformulations, the article defends the phenomenological idea of teleology as an inalienable tool of historical thinking.

Husserl’s Teleologie der «tiefen» Assoziationen as Foundation of the Theory of Judgment in comparison with Millikan’s Teleosemantic Theory

“…By way of contrast, Husserl programmatically acknowledges the limits of human knowledge, emphasising the need to always take into account the possibility of delusion. This radical awareness of human finitude produces a significant tension between the research of absolute cognition and every ordinary practical attempt of gaining such desideratum (see Miettinen [2014]: 6). Consequently, if, on one side, this leads to the constant frustration of the cognitive ambitions aiming at absolute knowledge of things in themselves, on the other hand, this is not meant to doom the meaning of the teleological dimension to irrelevance (see Aldea [2017]: 111).…”