Can Subjectivity Be Naturalized?: Considerations after Husserl

The focus of interest in this paper about the naturalization of subjectivity is a distinction between a naturalization in a strong sense and in a weak sense. In the strong sense, naturalizing subjectivity would be tantamount to a structural adjustment of the subjective life of consciousness to the natural, spatio-temporal and causal order of the physical world. In the weak sense, naturalizing subjectivity only amounts to inserting human subjectivity in the natural order of the world. On the basis of methodological considerations as well as concrete analysis of consciousness after Husserl, naturalization of subjectivity in the strong sense is rejected, whereas the possibility of a naturalization in the weak sense is readily conceded. Of methodological relevance for the argument of this paper is the distinction between the naturalistic and the phenomenological attitude. Factually decisive for rejecting a naturalization in the strong sense is the phenomenological analysis of the experiences of consciousness themselves in their essential ownness; for their structures cannot be adjusted to the externality of the spatio-temporal causal reality, as the paper tries to illustrate with a concrete example of an act of remembering something.