Husserl on Personal Level Explanation

Abstract

This paper makes a phenomenological contribution to the distinction between personal and subpersonal types of explanation. I expound the little-known fact that Husserl gives an account of personal level explanation via his exposition of our capacity to express the understanding of another’s motivational nexus when we are in the personalistic attitude. I show that Husserl’s unique exposition of the motivational nexus conveys its concrete, internally coherent, and intentional nature, involving relationships amongst the sense contents of acts of consciousness. Moreover, the motivational nexus is a generative space of possibility and choice. I show that, for these reasons, motivational explanation is not causal, nor deductive nomological, nor does it (or should it) reduce to subpersonal explanation. I finish with the comment that the uniqueness of personal level explanation points towards the possibility that the human sciences (including psychology) ought also employ types of explanations not found in natural sciences.