Hyle der Instinkte: Husserl und Scheler im Vergleich

Abstract

As Manfred S. Frings has pointed out, Husserl has assigned a greater importance to instincts in the transcendental reflection of the subjective experience in his later years. Although his approach is quite different, he thereby gets closer to Scheler’s anthropological position. Actually, there are many expressions in two recent pub­li­ca­tions of Husserl’s works (Die C-Manuskripte and Grenzprobleme der Phä­nom­e­nol­o­gie), which strongly resemble the doctrine of instinct and life-urge in Scheler’s philosophical anthropology. Sticking to the Husserlian concept of “hyle”, the following investigation unfolds in three steps: First, it attempts to elucidate Husserl’s usage of “hyle” in Die C-Manuskripte and Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie. Subsequently, it unveils how the different meanings of “hyle” correspond to the different distinctions between life-forms which Scheler presents in his work Die Stellung des Menschen in Kosmos. Lastly, this clarification and contextualization of the ambiguous concept “hyle” from an anthropological perspective then allows a critical reflection on Husserl’s later conception of life.