Michael Gubser's study of the ethical and political aspects of phenomenology in a recent Eastern European context takes the perspective that the task of philosophy is to change the world, rather than to understand human nature or being. His ambition is to display the relevance of phenomenology for social and political change. This eschatological or transcendent view, seeking the value of philosophy outside itself, as ascribed to Marx, is, in view of Gubser's own apparent political approach, slightly unexpected.
Although phenomenology occurs in the title of Hegel's magnum opus, as a philosophical current, it is primarily associated with Edmund Husserl's work in Germany from around 1900, and has influenced European thought in and beyond philosophy in the narrow sense of the word: ethics, the philosophy of law, social philosophy and aesthetics were brought into this current, which acquired a major influence in German and French-speaking Europe. Surveys of phenomenology mostly bypass other parts of Europe, neglecting the philosophical life of the eastern half of Europe. The influence of emigrant East European philosophers is generally recognised – Kojève's lectures on Hegel, and Berdyaev, Frank, Koyré, Lévinas, Gurvitch are studied, just as analytic philosophical emigrants such as Łukasiewicz and Tarski or Roman Jakobson's role as a founder of structuralist thought in philosophy and anthropology is beyond dispute, thus tracing the origins of post-structuralism and deconstructionism to the Moscow circle of formal linguistics and aesthetics, lead by Husserl's student Gustav Špet. Gubser's work certainly fulfils a mission by overcoming a ‘colonial’ attitude arising from the partition of Europe after the Second World War, whereby Russia constructed a kind of colonial empire of satellite regimes. The studies of Maryse Dennes on the influence of Husserl and Heidegger in Russia and my own on Kazimierz Twardowski are exceptions.
Some shortcomings in The far reaches. Phenomenology, ethics, and social renewal in Central Europe are due to the fact that Gubser is a historian, rather than philosopher. For example, the English word ‘experience’ covers two radically different, philosophical senses – (in German Erlebnis and Erfahrung respectively), and the term Noemata is simply the plural form of Noema. Also, the inclusion of Brentano as well as Nicolai Hartmann in the phenomenological school is debatable. A bibliography, supplementing the index and Gubser's extensive endnotes would have been beneficial to the reader. Gubser's preference for ‘realism’ also complicates his task. While Husserl's mature epistemological position of ‘transcendental idealism’, was not shared by all of his students, most notably, Roman Ingarden, such a position is close to that of social constructionism. This is often linked to phenomenological thought – for example, in the social sciences it is associated with Alfred Schütz – or to structuralism, discourse theory, critical theory, and to Marxist theses on philosophy and cultural production as conditioned by material factors. In epistemology and the philosophy of science, realism has a specific sense completely different from realism in the sense of attributing ‘practical and action-oriented’ tasks to philosophy, reproaching a particular current for being academic or esoteric. Furthermore, in analysing the role of phenomenology for political change in Europe, one has to consider the fact that this tradition includes philosophers with radically diverse ethical and political positions. Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, just as the less-known Arnold Metzger, (in the 1920s), and the Polish émigré to Sweden, Karol Martel were associated with Marx. Husserl and Max Scheler were both of Jewish descent but German patriots, whilst phenomenologists like Heidegger and Gehlen became involved in Nazism. Again, Scheler's notion of the person is central in his ‘material ethics’. Only a person is able to act in the proper sense. French ‘personalism’, represented in the 1930s by Mounier and Chevalier, was, just as Scheler, temporarily, linked to Catholic right-wing movements. A European shade arose for Scheler already in 1915: Gubser includes (p. 95) a quotation from Scheler's Europa und der Krieg, where German nationalism was combined with a colonial attitude to other cultures and peoples: the Russians, the ‘yellow’, etc.
Seeing the disaster of the First World War as penance for the lack of moral solidarity in Europe triggered a theme of cultural reconstruction in the interwar period, displayed in Husserl's last publication Krisis, but also exploited by Fascism and the Nazis. And Husserl himself reflects on the need for a revolution in Western society, in a period when he engaged in political reflection, nurtured by his student Arnold Metzger's Phenomenology of Revolution. This practical aspect of phenomenology might be linked to the philosophical anthropology initiated by Max Scheler and Helmut Plessner. But, again, this descendant of phenomenology is linked with political diversity: Carl Schmitt, like Gehlen and Heidegger, was involved with the Nazi regime and defended the Führerprinzip.
Gubser highlights two lesser known interwar phenomenologists engaged in political activism: Dietrich von Hildebrand, a Roman Catholic who resisted Nazism but aligned himself with the Dolfuss corporatist-Catholic regime in Austria, criticised the ‘over-rationality’ of Western societies in ways that anticipate Zygmunt Bauman's recent critique of liberalism; and the Norwegian philosopher, Harald Ofstad, with his analysis of Nazism and of Heidegger's criticism of modernity. The Hungarian Aurel Kolnai was Jewish born, converted to Catholic personalism and among other things, attacked Carl Schmitt's vision of politics as a question of friend or enemy.
Gubser's primary examples for a link between recent political and social transformations and phenomenology are from Czechoslovakia with Husserl and Heidegger's student, Jan Patočka, and Karol Wojtyła, from Poland, who became Pope John Paul II in 1978. Both were philosophers, although Wojtyła's principal fields of action were theology and high offices in the Catholic Church. Patočka was more an inspirer than an activist, while Wojtyła became closely connected to the Polish opposition trade union, Solidarity, the organised democratic force defying, and then replacing, the Communist regime after the semi-free elections in Eastern Europe, in June 1989. Both these cases, again, illustrate complications of relating a philosophical standpoint with specific direct political action. Vaclav Havel's relationship to Patočka certainly inspired his struggle for liberty, still, after his ascendance to the presidency of the Czechoslovak (Czech) Republic, he seemed to have troubles with media criticism and negativism. Likewise, Pope John Paul II became a conservative leader of the Catholic Church. The Polish Catholic Church, although a receptive environment to phenomenology, and a powerful representative of popular resistance to the satellite regime, was never an unambiguous promoter of ideological pluralism.
Patočka has been subject to many studies in later years, and even a phenomenological society is founded in his name, but Gubser's account of Patočka's system and conceptual apparatus is problematic. Buzzwords like humanism, freedom and ‘care for the soul’, as well as a rather confusing presentation of Patočka's criticism of Husserl, obscure more precise philosophical points. ‘Transcendent/al’ is central to Patočka but it seems in a sense different from Husserl's ‘transcendental phenomenology’. Religious uses of ‘transcendence’ are common (cf. p. 205 on Wojtyła), but Patočka it is far from clear about his religious convictions. Wojtyła was a disciple of Ingarden, thus a ‘grandchild’ of phenomenology. He taught philosophy at the Catholic University of Lublin, a centre of Neo-Thomism with an existential flavour. Wojtyła combines phenomenology, Neo-Thomism and the personalist trend in the Catholic tradition. In general, Polish philosophy was not marked by phenomenology. Polish philosophy was diverse, and analytic philosophy was prominent.
The pressure of Marxist philosophy was lower in Poland than in other satellite states. Adam Schaff offered some original contributions to Marxism and, as mentioned, a suggestion to combine phenomenology with Marxism was presented by Karol Martel, first serving in Russian-occupied Lvov University 1939–1941, then at the Party College, and at last in exile in Stockholm. Wojtyła's support for Solidarity was logical, but a direct link to his association to phenomenology is difficult to see. Gubser's proposal to link Pope Wojtyła's resistance to birth control to a ‘natural metaphysics of act and potency’ – actually a Thomistic (i.e. not a phenomenological) scheme, with a reference to Wojtyła's ‘phenomenological stress on the experience of pleasure and the attention to otherness’ (p. 201) appears, at least, strained. Also seeing Wojtyła's texts on personalism (p. 202), as a variety of phenomenology, though referring to Max Scheler seems overdone. Generally, phenomenology is busy combining ‘subjectivity’ in its relation to the Other. This effort is apparent in, for example, Heidegger's emphasis on authenticity (Eigentlichkeit) presupposing a collectivist approach of ‘being-in-the-world’. Finally, Heidegger's ‘personalism’ surrendered to primitive totalitarianism – abundantly documented in his recently published Schwarze Hefte. Wojtyla's friend and close collaborator Józef Tischner, a leader of the Catholic resistance from the 1980s, was also a Cracow-trained, Ingarden influenced philosopher, but his publications mostly fall outside philosophy in the technical sense.
While there is no doubt about the important role played by the individuals cited in the downfall of the Soviet Union, the suggestion to attribute to phenomenology, as a philosophical position, a significant role in this process seems far-fetched. And even more so is the thesis of the concluding chapter of the book that political developments in Eastern and Central Europe were ‘moved by native Central European phenomenology’ rather than general ‘Western liberalism’. In Poland, after Gorbachev's glasnost, the dominance of the Church in conjunction with institutions as Lublin University, the Klub Inteligencji Katolickiej, publications like Znak, and Tygodnik Powszechny played a more important role than phenomenology. Regime-supported Catholic organisations like Pax, with a daily newspaper, periodicals and high schools should also not be underestimated.
In comparison to the post-war situation, the political, social and ethical reconstruction of the Eastern European states after the demise of the Soviet Union looks relatively peaceful. Philosophical reflection may have played a part, in a wider cultural context acknowledging an important role to ideal factors – such as the goodwill of the Russian leadership under Gorbachev, media exposure, intercultural exchange, etc. Phenomenology, in some of its many versions, might be given an indirect, but not a major, role. Gubser is thus not really able to demonstrate the major hypothesis of his study, rather the study should be welcomed as opening up a field of ‘intra-European post-colonial’ studies, also including non-material aspects. A genuine, linguistic, cultural and philosophical pluralism required by such studies is indispensable.