Pour un réalisme du monde de la vie

The aim of this paper is to provide an outline of a position that, until now, hasn’t been much considered in the debates between idealism and realism, namely the position that is labelled by the author “realism of the life-world”. This realism claims that our experience opens onto the world itself, that is, the world in its independence with respect to our mind – an independence resting on the material a priori structures that govern this world ; but it also claims that this phenomenal world, as the place of our lives, remains nonetheless different from physical reality as it is conceived of and determined by the scientist. Inspired by Husserl’s critique of objectivism in the Krisis, such a realism gives a different status to the life-world than the one it has in Husserl’s view, since it dismisses the transcendental turn and, along with it, the concept of “constitution”. It underscores the tension and even the contradiction taking place between Husserl’s idealism (the claim of a complete dependency of the world with respect to consciousness, based on the hypothesis of a world-annihilation expressed in § 49 of Ideas I) and the claim of material a priori that give to this world its absolutely necessary structures, independently of the subject experiencing it.