Natural Attitude and Theoretical Attitude

In the *Crisis* an attitude (Einstellung) is "a habitually fixed style of willing life" (Vienna Lecture). The natural attitude is straightforward, world-directed living — "To live is always to live-in-certainty-of-the-world" (§37); the theoretical attitude is the wholly new orientation, born among the Greeks in thaumazein (wonder), in which "man becomes a non-participating spectator, surveyor of the world; he becomes a philosopher" (Vienna Lecture). The transcendental epoché is defined precisely as the "total change of the natural attitude" (§39).

Disambiguation (three senses in this corpus). The Crisis uses "natural attitude" in at least three non-identical ways — a point Carr flags and the new wiki home must hold apart:

  1. The Ideas I sense — the general positing-thesis of the world (a quasi-theoretical "naïve realism") that the phenomenological reduction brackets. Husserl's own footnote concedes this may be less "natural" than historical — the popular face of modern objectivism.
  2. The Vienna "natural primordial attitude" — pre-theoretical, practical, mythical-religious life: a historical-anthropological first stage of humanity, prior to philosophy, from which the theoretical attitude is a reorientation (Umstellung).
  3. The "naturalistic attitude" — not a legitimate direction of gaze at all but "the naturalistic prejudice" (App. III): the assumption that the whole world is thinkable "on the analogy of nature." Husserl's hinge phrase: "a 'natural' attitude which is nevertheless not 'naturalistic'" (App. III).

Key Points

  • The theoretical attitude is the third attitude (after the natural-primordial and its practical/religious reorientation): a "totally unpractical" orientation resting on "a voluntary epochē of all natural praxis" (Vienna). Thaumazein is "a variant of curiosity" converted into an infinite vocational task.
  • It returns as praxis. Theoria does not stay severed from life: it comes back as "the universal critique of all life," a new praxis aiming at "absolute self-responsibility on the basis of absolute theoretical insights" (Vienna) — once "truth-in-itself" becomes the universal norm, it transforms "all traditional norms, those of right, of beauty, of usefulness."
  • The natural attitude is normally invisible. Its certainty is "the constant ground of validity, an ever available source of what is taken for granted" (§33); its pregivenness is "the strongest … most hidden internal bond" (§41) — which is why only a total epoché, not piecemeal doubt, can suspend it.
  • The living body's "holding-sway" (Walten). Within the natural attitude I exist bodily in a unique way: the lived body (Leib, ≠ the physical Körper) is "that through which I exist … quite immediately," the kinesthetic "I do / I can" that "is not itself in space as a spatial movement" (§28, §62) — the Husserlian root of motor-intentionality.

What the Concept Does

The pair frames the whole transcendental turn as a change of attitude, not of doctrine or method. Philosophy does not propose a new hypothesis about the world; it re-orients the gaze. This (i) makes the epoché intelligible as the conversion from the natural attitude rather than as a set of arguments, (ii) historicizes the origin of philosophy (Greek thaumazein) without reducing it to contingency, and (iii) lets Husserl distinguish a legitimate natural attitude from the illegitimate naturalistic one — saving "nature" while indicting "naturalism."

What It Rejects

  • Naturalism / objectivism as the corruption of reason — the "naturalistic prejudice" that treats spirit as "filled-out extension," an "annex to the body" (App. III). The crisis "has its roots in a misguided rationalism," not in rationality as such (Vienna).
  • The conflation of the Ideas natural attitude with pre-theoretical life — they are different (sense 1 is already theoretical; sense 2 is pre-theoretical). Collapsing them obscures what the reduction actually brackets.

Stakes

If the theoretical attitude is a re-formation of humanity (an Umstellung propagated as a "new sort of historicity"), then philosophy is not one cultural product among others but the "archontic" organ of a civilization's self-responsibility — and its corruption into naturalism is the crisis. The cure ("the heroism of reason") is a renewal of the attitude, not new content. (Confidence: high for the exposition; medium for the civilizational stakes, which are Husserl's interpretive claim — and carry the Vienna Lecture's Eurocentrism.)

Connections

  • is suspended by epoche — the transcendental epoché is the "total change of the natural attitude."
  • grounds motor-intentionality — the lived body's Walten/kinesthesis (§62) is the root MP radicalizes.
  • is the pre-theoretical home of lebenswelt — the life-world is the world of the natural attitude, made thematic only after the epoché.
  • originates philosophy in Greek *thaumazein* — the theoretical attitude as the spiritual Urstiftung of Europe (Vienna; see crisis-of-the-european-sciences).
  • must be distinguished from the naturalistic prejudice — "a 'natural' attitude which is nevertheless not 'naturalistic'" (App. III).

Open Questions

  • Eurocentrism. The Vienna Lecture ties the theoretical attitude to a uniquely European telos, excluding non-European "humanities" (the "Gypsies/Eskimos/Indians" passage). Is the attitude-distinction separable from this contestable privilege of Greek theoria?
  • Is the Ideas "natural attitude" really natural, or is it (per Husserl's own footnote and Carr) the historical sediment of modern objectivism — in which case the reduction brackets a historical formation, not a natural one?

Sources

  • husserl-1954-crisis — §§37–40 (the natural attitude and its total change); §28, §62 (the living body / Walten / kinesthesis); Vienna Lecture, App. I (the theoretical attitude, thaumazein, the non-participating spectator, the two attitudes); App. III (the "naturalistic attitude" as prejudice; "natural but not naturalistic").