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Phenomenology and Human Experience

libri nigri 14

Copyright © 2012. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

Edited by Chung-chi Yu and Kwok-ying Lau

Verlag Traugott Bautz GmbH

Phenomenology and Human Experience, Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2012. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

Chung-chi Yu and Kwok-ying Lau (eds.) Phenomenology and Human Experience

Phenomenology and Human Experience, Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,

LIBRI NIGRI

14

Edited by

Hans Rainer Sepp

Editorial Board

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Suzi Adams · Adelaide │ Babette Babich · New York │ Kimberly Baltzer-Jaray · Waterloo, Ontario │ Damir Barbarić · Zagreb │ Marcus Brainard · London │ Martin Cajthaml · Olomouc │ Mauro Carbone · Lyon │ Chan Fai Cheung · Hong Kong │ Cristian Ciocan · Bucureşti │ Ion Copoeru · Cluj-Napoca │ Renato Cristin · Trieste │ Riccardo Dottori · Roma │ Eddo Evink · Groningen │ Matthias Flatscher · Wien │ Dimitri Ginev · Sofia │ Jean-Christophe Goddard · Toulouse │ Andrzej Gniazdowski · Warszawa │ Ludger Hagedorn · Wien │ Terri J. Hennings · Freiburg │ Seongha Hong · Jeollabukdo │ Edmundo Johnson · Santiago de Chile │ René Kaufmann · Dresden │ Vakhtang Kebuladze · Kyjiw │ Dean Komel · Ljubljana │ Pavlos Kontos · Patras │ Kwok-ying Lau · Hong Kong │ Mette Lebech · Maynooth │ Nam-In Lee · Seoul │ Monika Małek · Wrocław │ Balázs Mezei · Budapest │ Viktor Molchanov · Moskwa │ Liangkang Ni · Guanghzou │ Cathrin Nielsen · Frankfurt am Main │ Ashraf Noor · Jerusalem │ Karel Novotný · Praha │ Luis Román Rabanaque · Buenos Aires │ Gian Maria Raimondi · Pisa │ Rosemary Rizo-Patrón de Lerner · Lima │ Kiyoshi Sakai · Tokyo │ Javier San Martín · Madrid │ Alexander Schnell · Paris │ Marcia Schuback · Stockholm │ Agustín Serrano de Haro · Madrid │ Tatiana Shchyttsova · Vilnius │ Olga Shparaga · Minsk │ Michael Staudigl · Wien │ Georg Stenger · Wien │ Silvia Stoller · Wien │ Ananta Sukla · Cuttack │ Toru Tani · Kyoto │ Detlef Thiel · Wiesbaden │ Lubica Ucnik · Perth │ Pol Vandevelde · Milwaukee │ Chung-chi Yu · Kaohsiung │ Antonio Zirion · México City – Morelia.

The libri nigri series will be edited at the Central-European Institute of Philosophy, Prague. www.sif-praha.cz

Phenomenology and Human Experience, Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Phenomenology and Human Experience

Copyright © 2012. Traugott Bautz Verlag. All rights reserved.

Edited by Chung-chi Yu and Kwok-ying Lau

Verlag Traugott Bautz GmbH

Phenomenology and Human Experience, Traugott Bautz Verlag, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die deutsche Bibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie. Detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet abrufbar über http://dnb.ddb.de

The publication of the present volume is made possible by the support of The Institute of Philosophy and the Center for the Humanities, National Sun Yat-Sen University (Taiwan)

The Edwin Cheng Foundation Asian Centre for Phenomenology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

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Verlag Traugott Bautz GmbH D-99734 Nordhausen 2012 Gedruckt auf säurefreiem, alterungsbeständigem Papier Alle Rechte vorbehalten Printed in Germany

ISBN 978-3-88309-722-0

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Contents Editors’ Preface Part I

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Varieties of Human Experience: Contemporary Phenomenological Approaches

1.

Ethics and the Commitment to Truth Jeff MALPAS

2.

Crossing the Boundary of Being Human: Enhancement Technology and the Problem of Free Will Junichi MURATA

3.

Culture, Wilderness, and Homelessness: Eco-Phenomenology 2 Tetsuya KONO

4.

Toward a Phenomenological Reading of Landscape: Bachelard, Merleau-Ponty, and Zong Bing Kuan-min HUANG

5.

Some Phenomenology of Not Retiring Lester EMBREE

Part II

vii

1

15 33

45 65

The Human Genre: Revisiting Attempts of Classical Phenomenologists

6.

A Phenomenological Attempt to Cross the Border: On Husserl’s Meditation on Death in Manuscripts C Xianghong FANG

7.

Heidegger’s Concept of Fore-structure and Textual Interpretation Ka-wing LEUNG

8.

Understanding, Historically Effected Consciousness, and Phenomenology in Gadamer Yiu-hong WONG

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79 93

111

vi

Contents

9.

Reversibility and Its Philosophical Implications: A Phenomenological Explication of a Late Concept of Merleau-Ponty 137 Chon-ip NG

10. The Subjective Movement of Body and World: Observations on the Phenomenology and Metaphysics of Corporeality in the Reflections of Jan Patočka 153 Karel NOVOTNÝ 171

Contributors

193

Editors

197

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11. Edith Stein’s Phenomenology of Education Maybelle Marie O. PADUA

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Editors’ Preface

The present volume of essays is generated from part of the papers presented at “Border-Crossing: The 4th International Conference of P.E.A.CE (Phenomenology for East-Asian CirclE)” held in December 2010 at the National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Inaugurated in 20041 and continued to be a biannual meeting gathering phenomenological philosophers from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan as well as their counterparts from Australia, Europe, and North America, the P.E.A.CE conference has proved itself to be one of the most important platforms for the promotion of phenomenological research and intercultural philosophical exchange in East Asia. Under the general theme of “Border-Crossing,” the 4th P.E.A.CE conference invited reflections on intercultural understanding and interdisciplinary research, as well as on the crossing-over of different experiential genres of humankind from a widely defined phenomenological perspective. This volume, entitled Phenomenology and Human Experience, is comprised of essays related to the latter theme.2 The eleven essays collected in this volume are sub-divided into two parts. All the five essays in Part I are original phenomenological reflections on different aspects of human experience. In “Ethics and the Commitment to Truth,” Jeff Malpas undertakes a close discussion on the relationship between the space of the ethical and the space of truth. Referring to the Heideggerian usage of the term “truth” in the sense of unconcealment, i.e., the opening up of a space that renders possible what is perceptible in speech and in action, Malpas demon1

The proceedings of the 1st P.E.A.CE conference is published as Identity and Alterity: Phenomenology and Cultural Traditions, ed. Kwok-ying Lau, Chan-fai Cheung and Tze-wan Kwan, series “Orbis Phaenomenologicus Perspektiven” (Würzburg: Verlag Königshausen & Neumann, 2010), xii + 379 pp. 2 A separate volume will be published under the title Border-Crossing: Phenomenology, Interculturality and Interdisciplinarity, ed. Kwok-ying Lau and Chung-chi Yu, series “Orbis Phaenomenologicus Perspektiven” (Würzburg: Verlag Königshausen & Neumann, forthcoming, 2012).

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Editors’ Preface

strates with force that while the space of the ethical is a common space opened up in the world between self and other, between self and self, as well as between self and world, it grounds itself upon the space of truth. The space of truth is the very space which renders possible the space of speaking, of action and of decision. It is a primordial space to which our speaking refers and constantly returns in so far as such speaking always bears a truth claim while it tries to articulate meaningful speech acts in view of decisions and actions. Understood in this manner, Malpas draws our attention to the intertwinement of the space of the ethical and the space of truth. In contrast to discourses which undermine the importance of truth in the name of promoting dialogue, Malpas argues that “plurality and conversation, far from being opposed to truth, thus already presuppose it, and far from being a source of danger, truth turns out to be that which guards us and protects the possibility of human sociability and collectivity” (infra, p. 13). In short, it is within the space of truth that ethical life, namely the interactive and responsive modes of engagement with life proper to human existence, is possible. Since the later part of the 20th century, the rapid development of biotechnologies has given rise to new ethical issues. In his essay “Crossing the Boundary of Being Human: Enhancement Technology and the Problem of Free Will,” Junichi Murata takes issue with the impact of advanced biotechnologies on discourses in bioethics and neuroethics. Envisioning the utopian effect of crossing the natural boundaries of human being brought about by the rapid progress of biotechnologies, some of such discourses hail the future arrival of a “transhuman” or “posthuman” era which is a kind of Brave New World. Yet underlying the optimistic outlook of a Brave New World is a technological determinism which, Murata insists, is neither desirable nor probable. A technologically deterministic Brave New World would be governed by a super-powerful world controller who will extinguish people’s desires and wills by all means and leave no room for expression of people’s quest for freedom and happiness. The utopist projection of technological determinism is neither probable according to Murata. Based on the critical insights in some recent trends of philosophy of technology which focus on the multidimensional, ambiguous, and contingent characteristics of technological development, Murata concludes that even in a technologically enhanced world “the concept of a free will that can be achieved without any ambiguity and contingency is nothing but a magical and unrealistic concept” (infra, p. 28). The 20th century has also witnessed an immense growth of world population and the rapid extension of urbanization. These phenomena, while constituting a tremendous threat to the conservation of natural environment, have facilitated the

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spread of ecological consciousness across geographical and cultural borders. Tetsuya Kono’s article “Culture, Wilderness, and Homelessness: Eco-Phenomenology 2” is a courageous attempt to advance deep ecology from a phenomenological perspective. By distinguishing between pastoral nature, which is nature domesticated by human civilization in view of habitation, and nature as wilderness which is a place for passage and nomadic encounter, Kono’s consciousness of deep ecology criticizes home-centrism. He calls for the safeguard of nature from human domestication and exploitation by virtue of the intrinsic value of nature as wilderness, which incarnates a form of value independent of any human utility. In opposition to the homogenization of the humanized environment through extension of pastoral nature and urbanization resulting in the loss of wilderness as otherness, Kono strives “to deepen our eco-phenomenology of place in order to celebrate the wilderness of otherness” (infra, p. 43). While deep ecology calls our attention to nature as wilderness, nature can be approached through a more or less aesthetic attitude, namely by viewing it as landscape. In “Toward a Phenomenological Reading of Landscape: Bachelard, Merleau-Ponty, and Zong Bing,” Kuan-min Huang embarks on the virgin soil of philosophy of landscape from a phenomenological approach. Extending the usage of the ontological term “flesh” coined by the late Merleau-Ponty, Huang tries to understand landscape as concrete illustration of the flesh of the world. Through preliminary discussions of landscape with respect to Bachelard’s poetics of the imaginary and Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the flesh as wild being, Huang arrives at a philosophical determination of landscape as the topos where the perceptual joins the imaginary and the corporeal intertwines with the spiritual. With this in mind, Huang goes on to expound the philosophical significance of traditional Chinese landscape painting. The latter is a creative activity initiated by the experience of landscape as bodily oriented. Joined by imagination which orients the strokes of the painter with a cosmic vision, the act of Chinese landscape painting is the interplay of the kinesthetic and spiritual orders which aims at bodily and spiritual transformation towards fusion with the universe. Traditional Chinese landscape painting is thus a dynamic corporeal and spiritual correspondence with the cosmic order which is never a mere mapping of an ocular vision onto the painting tissue. Viewed under this optic, landscape is neither a mere object of knowledge and design nor a place for construction; “landscape inspires thoughts and living art, it also deploys itself as a way of thinking and living” (infra, p. 62). Human life is punctuated by ups and downs, activity and passivity, actions and reflections. Wisdom is often seen as locating a balance point between the

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extremes. In a profession of faith unique in its genre, Lester Embree reviews his long and rich academic career in “Some Phenomenology of Not Retiring.” Finding himself no longer needed to precipitate the formation of phenomenological organizations as he did in the past, he will continue to do research, especially in interdisciplinary phenomenology. He will foster reflective analyses as a means to train future generations of phenomenologist in the strict sense of the term, and not as mere scholars of phenomenology. The six essays in Part II are devoted to novel discussions of classical phenomenologists’ attempt to confront divergent aspects of human experience. Husserl’s reflections on the transcendental meaning of death caught the attention of Xianghong Fang. In his contribution “A Phenomenological Attempt to Cross the Border: On Husserl’s Meditation on Death in Manuscripts C,” Fang scrutinizes the late Husserl’s attempt to make sense of death, i.e., to constitute death from the standpoint of transcendental phenomenology. In some manuscripts Husserl considers that the death of the transcendental I, which as a pure monad has no psychosomatic existence, does not mean the material decomposition of the individual subject but the loss of consciousness of the world and the stepping out of the transcendental community of subjects. Thus the process of transition from life to death, considered transcendentally, is analogous to the transformation of consciousness to unconsciousness, from awareness to sleep, from action to pause. However, an unconscious constitutive subject is a contradiction in terms from the perspective of transcendental phenomenology. Husserl himself has admitted in another manuscript that it is unthinkable that the I can “cease” in a transcendental sense. This dilemma has driven Husserl to ask the enigmatic question about the ontological status of a non-functioning constitutive subject: Is there such a being, “a not-functioning and still as something functional, a being in the other sense, that plays its role together as underground, as a condition—as a ‘not-being,’ which makes Being possible together through this Not-Being?” (infra, p. 88) Confronted to the human phenomenon of death, Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology can never be as paradoxical as postulating the “existence” of some sort of “not-being” as the condition of the functioning of a transcendental subject. Understanding is the dimension of human existence which underlies all human activities. It is then not surprising to see that hermeneutics as the art of understanding plays a prominent role in both the Eastern and Western traditions of philosophy. Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics is widely accepted as a consequential development of Heidegger’s theory of understanding and interpretation presented in Being and Time. However, Ka-wing Leung contests this

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view in his essay “Heidegger’s Concept of Fore-structure and Textual Interpretation.” Based on a subtle reading of the differences between Heidegger’s own account of Dasein’s fore-structure as one of the basic ontological conditions of the activity of understanding and the extrapolation of this conception by Gadamer in Truth and Method, Leung points out that some well-known elements of Gadamer’s hermeneutics are absent or even contrary to Heidegger’s conception in Being and Time. It is well-known that Gadamer considers prejudice and tradition as conditions of understanding and has presented his famous criticism of “the prejudice against prejudice” ascribed to the Enlightenment by associating two different senses of the German word Vorurteil: prejudice as provisional judgment and prejudice as ungrounded judgment. Leung reminds us that while prejudice as provisional judgment can be assimilated to Heidegger’s concept of fore-structure, the pejorative sense of prejudice as ungrounded judgment never receives rehabilitation in Heidegger. Leung also points out that to the author of Being and Time, tradition in itself not only bears no hermeneutic productivity, it even keeps us from having authentic understanding by blocking our access to the primordial sources of categories and concepts handed down to us through tradition. Thus in contrast to Gadamer who prioritizes tradition as an important form of authority, Heidegger advocates the destruction of tradition in order to release the primordial sources of understanding blocked by it. Leung guards against “those who know Heidegger’s concept of fore-structure only through Gadamer’s account might misunderstand it, especially in regard to its relation with tradition” (infra, p. 93). Gadamer’s hermeneutics is also the focus of Yiu-hong Wong’s contribution. In his article “Understanding, Historically Effected Consciousness, and Phenomenology in Gadamer,” Wong tries to resituate Gadamer within the phenomenological movement understood in the wide sense. While emphasizing Gadamer’s open acknowledgement of his personal and theoretical debt to the young Heidegger and to Being and Time, Wong reiterates Gadamer’s criticism of Husserl’s phenomenology of transcendental subjectivity. Taking Husserl’s idealist version of transcendental phenomenology presented in Ideas I (1913) as his clue, Wong criticizes Husserl’s method of transcendental reflection as inapt to grasp the dimension of pregivenness inherent in the consciousness of historical human life which is a historically effected consciousness. To Wong, Husserl’s method of reflection is based on his mode of understanding of inner time which presents no significant difference from that of external perception. Wong thinks that this mode of understanding purifies radically the dimension of absence in human experience, rendering it impossible to understand historicity. Wong also thinks that

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Husserl’s phenomenology unilaterally favours the selfsameness of the constitutive subject without giving due attention to the constitutive role played by the other in human experience; thus it neglects the ethical dimension of human life. Though Wong credits Husserl’s concept of horizon as providing one of the basic elements of Gadamer’s hermeneutics, he concludes, without referring to Husserl’s later thematization of the life-world and history, that “as Gadamer has clearly demonstrated, the total condition of the historical life and the consciousness of this movement can never be constituted without the pre-reflective life-world and the negativity inextricably embedded in it” (infra, p. 135). Affectivity is another basic dimension of human existence which receives particular attention in the French tradition of phenomenology. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology is well-known for taking the living body and the flesh as clues to the ontological investigation of affective phenomena. Chon-ip Ng revisits Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the flesh in his study “Reversibility and Its Philosophical Implications: A Phenomenological Explication of a Late Concept of Merleau-Ponty.” Proceeding from a patient analysis of the concept of reversibility through a careful reading of the late Merleau-Ponty’s thematization of the phenomena of double sensation exemplified by the senses of touch and vision, Ng is able to articulate the triple meaning of reversibility conferred by the author of The Visible and the Invisible. Reversibility as circulation (may be “circularity” is a better word) is the fold within the sensible Being which liberates a self and thus the subject. Reversibility as reciprocity refers to the interlacement (entrelacs) between the touching and the touched as well as between the sensing and the sensed; such interlacement expresses the equiprimordiality of passivity and activity inherent to the ontological character of the flesh. Reversibility as divergence (écart) or escape pays attention to the fact that coincidence of the touching and the touched is never complete. Thus the flesh is not an ontological order of pure immanence. Exteriority and plurality of the other are preserved. Understood in this manner, reversibility captures the multitude of meaning of the term “chiasm,” which characterizes the phenomenal field as an open space of interplay between different senses and as the interlocking region of in-between among a plurality of subjects never enclosed in their individuality, sovereignty and privacy. Such characterization of the phenomenal field implies that rationality can no longer be understood as the normative and regulative order of things constituted by a sovereign subjectivity from above. To Ng, Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the flesh envisages an embodied rationality which in fact is in plural form as there are always a multiplicity of orders. Contrary to the traditional metaphysical conception of rationality in which the One

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or the Unique prevails, Ng concludes that Merleau-Ponty’s concept of reversibility liberates a new form of rationality in which “the generality of the wild reason of the flesh consists then not of the ultimate synthesis of the all, but of the reversible intertwining of a plurality of orders” (infra, p. 151). The Czech philosopher Jan Patočka had close personal encounter with German phenomenologists (Husserl and Fink), but his philosophical sensibility seems to be closer to French phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty and Lévinas. In his illuminating essay “The Subjective Movement of Body and World: Observations on the Phenomenology and Metaphysics of Corporeality in the Reflections of Jan Patočka,” Karel Novotný demonstrates the originality of Patočka with respect to his thematization of the body in correlation with the world through the mediating concept of subjective movement. Patočka uses this concept to underpin a pre-reflective corporeal subject as a being in the world which, although objectively inapprehensible, is nevertheless the ontological condition of phenomenalization. To Patočka the intentional operation of perception, belief, synthesis or ascertainment can emerge as object of conscious apprehension only on the basis of the subjective movement of the body as a being in the world. Like Merleau-Ponty, Patočka thematizes the subjective movement of the body with regard to her affective and emotional encounter with the world through the senses. The first movement of existence of an embodied subject is not the organizing activity of a free agent (the “I can” emphasized by Husserl), but her being moved in the world. It is through movement in the passive and instinctive sense that a corporeal subject is open to the world by responding to its stimuli by way of feelings and emotional expressions. Thus in contrast to Heidegger the world in which a human subject is immersed is not primarily a goal-oriented and practical milieu, but an all-encompassing sphere of warmth and coldness. To Patočka the world is revealed to the affective corporeal subject both as a warm surrounding which elicits her sympathetic resonance, and as a repellent milieu of alienation and coldness. Novotný concludes that the originality of Patočka’s phenomenology of body consists precisely in disclosing this affectively negative aspect of the world which the early Lévinas had paid attention to in his analysis of the impersonal character of il y a, while Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of carnal existence did not. Education is a constant concern across different cultures, ancient and modern. But in the overwhelmingly technological and market-driven mode of society today, is it possible to reactualize the Greek vision of education as paideia—as human fulfillment and realization of the whole person in view of intellectual and moral excellence, artistic harmony and physical beauty? Is it possible to attain cognitive development, maturity of emotional intelligence and rationality that, at

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the same time, encourage moral perfection? These are the questions underlying Maybelle Marie O. Padua’s article “Edith Stein’s Phenomenology of Education.” Padua finds in the first research assistant of Husserl a philosophical view on the human person which orients her philosophy of education. Against the Enlightenment view that education sets for itself the ideal of attainment of encyclopedic knowledge, Stein insists that education does not aim at external possession of learning, but rather the formation of “a gestalt which the human person assumes under the influence of manifold external forces.” After a great effort of reconstruction from Stein’s dispersed writings with the aid of other theoretical sources, Padua concludes that on the one hand education has the moral aim of helping the person to exercise her freedom in a manner that recognizes the obligatory character of the moral law, on the other that Stein’s philosophy of education emphasizes the need to develop the affective life so that even obedience to moral precepts could be embraced with passion and drive. To Padua these two educational principles together can provide a practical guidance to help educators to face their challenge today: “to bring about a strong desire in the students themselves to attain moral growth and personal reform” (infra, p. 191). The interconnection between ethical space and space of truth, freedom in the biotechnologically enhanced world, wild-nature facing the extension of urbanization, landscape as a way of thinking and living, Husserl’s meditation on death, the subtle difference between Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s hermeneutics, Merleau-Ponty’s reversibility thesis revisited, Patočka’s phenomenology of body and subjective movement, and Edith Stein’s phenomenology of education—these are original contributions or renewed reflections from East-Asian phenomenologists, joined by their Western colleagues, on the most divergent aspects of human experience. This volume is another concrete proof that more than a century since its emergence on German soil, phenomenology has spread across linguistic and geographical borders to become one of the most vibrant global philosophical movements. Last but not least, the editors would like to express their gratitude towards Hans-Rainer Sepp, editor-in-chief of the collection Libri Nigri, who generously accepted this volume to be published in his collection. The editors would like to thank also Esther Tsang, senior editor of the Edwin Cheng Foundation Asian Centre for Phenomenology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, who has taken up gracefully and efficiently the task of coordinating during every stage of the editorial work that leads to this book’s publication. Kwok-ying Lau and Chung-chi Yu February 2012

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Ethics and the Commitment to Truth Jeff MALPAS

University of Tasmania, Australia

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I. To what extent is any properly human engagement possible at all—even the engagement that consists in the leaving open of a space for others—without commitment, at some level and in some form, to an engagement with respect to questions of ethics and of truth? Surely one of the challenges of the contemporary world is to articulate a sense of the ethical, and a sense of truth, that can be seen to make demands on us independently of our cultural or ethnic background, yet is nevertheless sensitive to the inevitable plurality of the world. The force of this challenge is not derived from some merely practical imperative. Instead, it comes from the absolute centrality of notions of ethics and truth in the very possibility of collective forms of life, and, more fundamentally, for the possibility of a human form of life as such. The very concept of the ethical, moreover, is itself closely linked to the idea of truth. Ethics involves commitments that can be formulated as claims about the appropriateness of actions and decisions, as well as about the values that govern and are expressed in them. To make such claims is to assert the truth of what is claimed. This is, after all, in the nature of what it is to make a claim, irrespective of the sort of claim that it is. In addition, the making of such a claim—the very act of speaking—immediately draws us into the realm of the ethical through the role of the commitment to truth in such speaking. To speak is immediately to be implicated in a network of ethical concepts that themselves enable and support such speaking—including, at the most basic level, concepts of honesty, responsibility, and even trust. 

An earlier version of this paper appeared in Trópos. Rivista di ermeneutica e critica filosofica 2 (2009): 15–29.

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Jeff MALPAS

2

The commitment to truth that comes with the very act of speaking thus reflects the commitments we have to others, as well as to ourselves, that are presupposed by our speaking (and are presupposed even when we seek to act in ways that undercut our relations with others, or to act against them). This commitment to truth is surely at the core of ethical life—as well, one might add, as at the heart of the political. In the brief remarks that follow, I aim to do two things: first, to explore the connection between truth and speaking, in order to clarify certain key elements in the character of truth, including the relation between truth and the possibility of plurality; second, to explore the connection between truth and ethics, in order to show the role that truth plays in the very ground of ethics, and, therefore, in any proper response to plurality—including the plurality that is exhibited in the form of conflict or disagreement, as well as the plurality that is manifest in the possibility of conversation.

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II. Truth is a concept that is implicated in our very speaking, and it is this general point that constitutes the essential first step in any examination of the role or nature of truth—or, indeed, in the exploration of the connection between truth and the ethical. To speak is already to take a stand with respect to truth—either through the claim to truth made in the speaking itself (a claim that may be true or false) or through the claim to truth implied by such speaking (so that even to command, to promise, or to plead is an act that takes place against an assumed background of things held true).1 It is the essential relatedness of truth and speaking, more so than the distinction between, for instance, truth and opinion (even justified opinion), that is central to any attempt to inquire into the nature and significance of truth, since it directs attention away from the impossible attempt to provide a definition of truth, and onto the more important matter concerning the role of truth, the way in which it connects with other concepts, and the human practices with which it belongs.2 1

We can thus argue that every non-declarative utterance always stands in relation to some declarative utterance. See Donald Davidson, “Moods and Performance,” in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd rev. ed., 2001), pp. 109–121. The influence of Davidson, as well as Heidegger, will be evident throughout the account developed below. 2 It was characteristic of Davidson’s approach to the question of truth to abjure precisely the attempt to define truth. See his comments in, among other discussions, “The Folly of Trying to Define Truth,” in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, pp. 17–36.

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The necessary tie between truth and speaking underlies the obvious difficulties that afflict certain attempts to speak about truth—a difficulty most clearly evident in the so-called “truth paradoxes.” Such paradoxes usually involve a self-referentiality that requires the same sentence to be apparently both truth and false at the same time. They include not only paradoxes such as that of the liar in its various forms (“All Cretans are Liars, Epimenides the Cretan tells you this”), but also the paradoxes that arise on the basis of attempts to assert the relativity or irrelevance of truth. The relativist, for instance, in asserting the relativity of the truth of a statement to some social or conventional context thereby asserts both the truth and the potential falsity of that very claim, since, by its own account, the claim concerning the relativity of truth will be true in some contexts, but false in others. Similarly, if one attempts to assert the irrelevance or dispensability of truth, one must at the same time assert the irrelevance or dispensability of the truth of that claim. The significance of these paradoxes is not that they provide any “knock-down” argument against opponents of truth (they do not), but rather that they demonstrate the essential interconnection of truth with speaking. The moral is that if one wishes to relativize or to reject truth, one is best advised not to try and state it. The way truth is connected to speaking itself has major implications for how truth must be understood—although they are implications that have often been neglected or ignored. At the most general level, it means that truth is not some “metaphysical” concept that points us to an eternal realm beyond human interests or out of reach of human abilities, but instead refers us back to the very realm in which we speak and in which we act. There is, then, no such thing as “the Truth” against which we measure ourselves or to which we vainly aspire. While we can talk of truth, as Heidegger does, in terms of the unconcealing of things that is also the opening up of world,3 this is not a usage that refers us to a “truth” that goes beyond human speech and action, but is rather intimately connected to it. The Heideggerian account concerns, in fact, that which is the proper ground for the truth that is evident in speech and action.4 3

See Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth,” in Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 136–154. The account of truth set out here is, of course, developed in many other places in Heidegger’s work. 4 In “On the Essence of Truth,” Heidegger argues that it is a mistake to suppose that truth belongs in the first instance or solely to statements (p. 142). Such a claim is quite consistent, however, with the idea that there is nevertheless a sense of truth that does attach to statements. In fact, Heidegger’s argument in “On the Essence of Truth,” and elsewhere, is precisely that the idea of truth as attaching to statements itself presup-

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One way of putting the general point at issue here is to say that there is no body of truths to which “truth” refers that are eternal and unchanging. Inasmuch as it is our speaking that is true and false (at least in the ordinary sense of the term), so whether any particular instance of speaking is true or false is a contingent matter—although it depends on just two things: on what the words as spoken mean (which inevitably involves what others take those words to mean, and not only what we might mean by them), and on the way the world is arranged.5 Thus, as language changes, and as the world also changes, so too may the truth of what we say change along with it. If one wishes to find some relativity in respect of truth, then this is all the relativity one should expect to find—and it is a relativity of a quite innocuous and (mostly) unremarkable sort. “Truth” does not name some mysterious and ineluctable property or entity, but instead refers to the particular form of interconnectedness that obtains between instances of speaking—between particular sentences, utterances, or statements (which themselves express particular attitudes or orientations while also standing in a relation to particular instances of non-linguistic behavior) as they are spoken by individual speakers within a community of speakers, and between such speaking and the world in which that speaking occurs. poses the idea of truth as unconcealment. Heidegger actually proposes two concepts of truth, one of which is a condition for the other, but in so doing cannot be said to eliminate the other. Moreover, while the idea of truth as unconcealment opens up the space in which statements can be both true and false (it opens up the space for the operation of truth as it applies to statement), this does not, pace the claims of Ernst Tugendhat (see Tugendhat, “Heidegger’s Idea of Truth,” in C. McCann, ed., Critical Heidegger [New York: Routledge, 1996], pp. 227–240), invalidate the claim that it is indeed truth that is at issue here. Not only can Heidegger retain both the idea of truth as “unconcealment” alongside the idea that there is a distinction between true and false statements, but one can also show how these two senses are connected, and why the first might indeed be referred to as a form of “truth.” From a Davidsonian perspective, the latter point is evident, although it requires further explication, in the idea that truth inheres in our “beliefs” as a whole, and that this is indeed presupposed by the possibility that any specific belief might be true or false (see the final chapter of Jeff Malpas, Donald Davidson and the Mirror of Meaning: Holism, Truth, Interpretation [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992], pp. 230ff.). For a more detailed discussion of the Tugendhat objection, see Malpas, “The Two-fold Character of Truth: Heidegger, Davidson, Tugendhat,” in Babette Babich and Dimitri Ginev, eds., Essays in Memory of Joseph J. Kockelmans (Dordrecht: Springer, forthcoming, 2012). 5 See Davidson, “A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge,” in Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), p. 139.

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The form of interconnectedness at issue here is one that can be elaborated upon in terms of notions of consistency, coherence, and correctness—although these notions cannot themselves be given content independently of the notion of truth. This reflects the essentially holistic and “externalist” character of content. Meaning thus depends upon truth—just as truth depends upon meaning—in the sense that for some utterance (or any attitude, action, or artefact) to be meaningful is for it to be embedded within a larger context of meaning (a larger body of utterances, attitudes, actions, and artefacts belonging to a community of speakers), as well as within the all-encompassing framework of the world (meaning thus depends upon a level of both rational and causal connectedness).6 The combination of holistic and externalist elements in the formation of meaning is itself reflected in the dual character of truth as encompassing both elements of coherence (the truth of a sentence depends on the way the sentence connects to other sentences—on its meaning) and of correspondence (the truth of a sentence depends on the way the sentence connects to the world—on what it asserts of the world and the way the world is).7 Much of the difficulty that attends discussions of truth derives from a tendency to treat both truth and meaning as transcendent of the actual context of communicative and interpretive practice. Yet truth and meaning arise only in that context—apart from it, neither truth nor meaning can even appear. This is precisely the point behind Heidegger’s claim that “before Newton’s laws were discovered, they were not ‘true’”8: truth is dependent on Dasein9 or, as Davidson put it, “nothing in the world, no object or event, would be true or false if there were not thinking creatures.”10 To understand truth in this way—which is neither to relativize it in the usual way nor to dismiss it—is to understand truth as emerging only in the space that is opened up between interlocutors in their engagement with one another and with the world around them. It is here, of course, that the Heideggerian notion of truth comes back into play, for it is the 6 There is a larger theory of meaning that is implicated here. See, for instance, Malpas, Donald Davidson and the Mirror of Meaning, esp. chapter 2, pp. 28–43. 7 See Donald Davidson and the Mirror of Meaning, esp. pp. 260ff. 8 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), H.226 (note that the numbering here is to the 6th German edition which is given in the margins of the Macquarie and Robinson translation). 9 Heidegger, Being and Time, H.226. 10 Donald Davidson, Truth and Predication (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 7.

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opening up of this essentially plural space that Heidegger calls the happening of the truth of being, aletheia, and that is also the happening and gathering of the world, Ereignis.11 The idea that this opening up of the place of truth is both plural and also unifying reflects the character of truth (and so meaning or content), in its more mundane sense as both holistic and externalist in character (that is, as encompassing both coherence and correspondence). At this point it becomes quite clear that far from being incompatible with a commitment to truth, the idea of a pluralistic society actually depends upon such a commitment. Only within the sort of space that Heidegger describes, and to which Davidson’s work, in a rather different way, also draws attention, can plurality appear as even a possibility. The point can be put quite simply in terms of the idea that conversation, and the engagement that comes with it, cannot occur in a situation in which there is no common space in which to engage—whether because of the absence of such a space or our unwillingness or inability to acknowledge or to participate in it.12 Thus, Paul Ricoeur, while emphasizing both the unity and differentiation that occurs within the concept of truth, also insists that “the spirit of truth is to respect the complexity of the various orders of truth, it is the recognition of plurality.”13 In seeking to relativize truth, then, or in seeking to dispense with the concept, we effectively attempt to deny or to set ourselves apart from that open, and yet common, space in which real engagement and conversation is possible, and in which alone can the fact of plurality appear. It is thus, in hermeneutical terms, that agreement always precedes disagreement as the basis of understanding—although the agreement at issue here is precisely the agreement that consists in our being already given over to the world, and our involvement in it, and so also our being given over to a concern with, and commitment to, truth.14 Our very being in the 11

See my discussion of both of these notions in Heidegger’s Topology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), pp. 186–189, 213–219. 12 It is this space that Arendt also refers to as “the space of appearance.” See The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2nd ed., 1998), pp. 199ff. See also Jeff Malpas and Andrew Brennan, “The Space of Appearance and the Space of Truth,” in Charles Barbour, Anna Yeatman, Magdalena Zolkos-Kavalski, and Phillip Hansen, eds., Action and Appearance: Explorations in Hannah Arendt (London: Continuum, 2011). 13 Paul Ricoeur, “Truth and Falsehood,” in History and Truth, trans. Charles A. Kelbley (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965), p. 189. 14 This means that the agreement at issue here, while typically formulated and articulated in terms of certain sentences that are agreed to be true, does not reside in our

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world is thereby a being in relation to truth at the same time as it is also a being in relation to others. III.

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Is it possible to speak on the assumption that nothing that one says involves a claim to truth, or in which the claim to truth is constantly effaced (whether by relativization or simple denial)? The liar paradox shows that the idea of universally false speech is impossible, since it undermines the grounds of its own saying.15 To speak is indeed to make a claim to truth, or to presuppose such a claim, even though the truth that is claimed is always something finite, limited, and contingent—a truth tied to the circumstances of our own situatedness in the world no less than it is tied to the act of speaking as such. Moreover, in the interconnectedness of truth with speaking, truth is also exhibited as standing in an intimate relation to the ethical—and while this may already be thought to be indicated through the connection between truth and plurality, it is also something worthy of further examination. A key element in the way truth connects to speaking, at the most basic level, is through the idea of speaking as itself involving a claim to truth—a claim that cannot, and does not, carry its own certainty with it. Truth is thus not something over which we have final authority or control, but is rather that in the sway of which we already stand. Truth refers us to the character of the world as going beyond us, as involving more than we ourselves are, more than we can know, more than we can determine. In making a claim to truth we already move out into the world in a way that also opens us to the world, freeing ourselves up in a way that enables our engagement with the world, in a way that makes us vulner-

agreement about any particular set of such truths. It is, in fact, an agreement that consists in our common engagement in and responsiveness to the world. On the nature and role of agreement as it appears here, see my ‘‘What is Common to All: Davidson on Agreement and Understanding,” in Jeff Malpas, ed., Dialogues with Davidson: Acting, Interpreting, Understanding (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), pp. 259–280. 15 Interestingly, this is a point that applies not only to the universal liar, but also to the universal skeptic. Universal skepticism—the idea that all or most of our beliefs could be false—is the epistemological counterpart to the liar paradox. Like the idea of the universal liar, skepticism is itself paradoxical, refusing even the knowledge of its own speaking, and thereby condemning itself either to an inarticulate silence or to a mode of utterance whose own intelligibility remains always uncertain.

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able to the demands of the world, and also, of course, to the demands—to the claims—of others. What appears at this point—and so the domain into which the inquiry into truth moves us—is nothing other than the very ground of the ethical as such. Indeed, the ethical could never take shape without this idea of a relatedness between self and other—and not merely between the self and the other person, the “face,” as in Levinas (although this is clearly an ineradicable element in any fully developed conception of the ethical)—but also the “other” that appears in the form of the world. Ethics is here exhibited as being tied to finitude, and to the recognition of finitude, as well as to respect for, and understanding of, the proper role of truth as itself essentially bound up with that recognition (even though this may not always be given explicit articulation). Indeed, the ethical failure that is evident in the refusal to acknowledge or to respond to the claims of others is often itself accompanied by a refusal to acknowledge or to respond to the claims of the world—a refusal to acknowledge or to respond to the possibility of error, of failure, of limitation. In this respect, Heidegger’s insistence, throughout his work, on the fundamental role of questioning, while not expressed in these terms, can nevertheless be seen as articulating what is an essentially ethical commitment—even if it is an ethical commitment that is so fundamental that it is seldom recognized as such. The idea that there might be such a close and essential connection between truth and ethics is not without precedent, nor is it restricted to the philosophical perspective that derives from a solely European sensibility. It is central, for instance, to Gandhi’s idea of Satyagraha, the way of truth, as both a mode of life, and of political practice, that provides the surest counter to social and political oppression.16 Gandhi’s position might be construed, in fact, as expressing what is actually a quite deep and widespread understanding of the connection between truth and ethics, the widespread character of which may itself be indicative of the fundamental nature of the connection between truth and ethics in the possibility of any properly “human” form of life. The understanding of truth at issue here is one that is evident in such everyday ethical concepts as those of honesty and integrity. It is also evident in the commonplace idea of truth as connected 16

See Ghandi’s discussions of Satyagraha in Raghavan Iyer, ed., The Essential Writings of Mahatma Gandhi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 222–236 and pp. 301–346. Although some have taken issue with aspects of Gandhi’s approach (as they have also taken issue with aspects of Gandhi’s personal life), the essence of the idea that truth is at the heart of any genuine attempt to engage with oppression remains an important one.

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with the notion of “real” or “genuine” appearance—that which is as it appears and appears as it is, that which shows itself in itself. In Gandhi, this is manifest in the fact that the term Satyagraha already contains within it a reference to what is17—the way of truth for Gandhi is thus also the way of being, we might even say, truth is being, although we must be careful as to exactly how this is understood.18 Gandhi provides a salutary instance of the role truth plays in ethical articulation and conduct, and in underpinning resistance to illegitimate authority—the concept of truth is, in fact, essential to being able to make sense of the very notions of legitimacy or illegitimacy. Without a sense of truth, and a commitment to truth, we cannot formulate any notion of resistance other than as purely oppositional, as oppositional without foundation, as oppositional in a way that is itself in danger of becoming authoritarian. Indeed, wherever we find resistance to oppression, the refusal of subjugation, the enacting of dissent, so do we also find the claim to truth inevitably being called upon as the only weapon that can be deployed short of the resort to violence. This is not to say that truth will not also be called upon to legitimize authority, even tyranny, but this is because any authority requires more than just the authority it gives itself—it must look beyond itself for its own authorization. It is in the denial of this requirement or its obfuscation that authority becomes authoritarian.19 There can be no doubt that the claim to truth is itself the claim to or the assertion of a certain authority. Thus, Arendt writes that “from the viewpoint of politics, truth has a despotic character. It is therefore hated by tyrants.”20 Yet the authority possessed by truth is not an authority that first

17 Gandhi writes that “The word satya is derived from sat, which means that which is. Satya means a state of being.” (The Essential Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 231) 18 Gandhi himself declares the truth is God: “Instead of saying that God is Truth, I say that Truth is God.” (The Essential Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 233) 19 This denial is one that George Orwell identified as lying at the heart of totalitarianism. Thus, in the interrogation and torture of Winston by the Party functionary O’Brien that occurs nears the end of Nineteen Eighty-Four, O’Brien asserts the absolute power of the Party to determine even what is true and false. See Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1954), pp. 197–217. See also my discussion in ‘‘Lying, Deceit, and the Commitment to Truth: On Ethics in Contemporary Public Life,” International Journal for Applied Philosophy 22 (2008): 1–12. This essay touches upon many of the issues also addressed in the present discussion, but from a different perspective. 20 Arendt, “Truth and Politics,” in Between Past and Future (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993), p. 241.

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resides in any individual or group. The claim to authority is, indeed, always illegitimate when it attempts to exert power over truth itself. In doing so, the claim to authority attempts to determine that which cannot be determined by it, since truth is not that over which authority can be claimed, but rather that in which authority is founded. Truth always retains its autonomy and its authority with respect to the claims made in relation to it—whether they be everyday claims of factual assertion or claims regarding power and right. The Gandhian emphasis on ethical conduct, and especially the resistance to oppression, as based in the commitment to truth, is a notion that, in its general form, appears in a wide range of contemporary contexts. The Quaker call to “speak truth to power,” first formulated in this way in the 1950s,21 is one that has a continuing resonance in the face of many forms of contemporary injustice, and has been so frequently repeated that its original source is often forgotten. In 2005, the playwright Harold Pinter made an impassioned call for truth in politics, condemning the actions of the United States government (and the United Kingdom) over Iraq as well as in other matters. declaring that “to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all.”22 Whether in Iraq or Guantanamo Bay, in Palestine, Burma or Tibet, the appeal to truth remains a key element in the possibility of critique, of resistance, and also of restitution. Indeed, where the issue is one of responding to past evils in a way that will re-enable communities and societies, the formation of “truth and reconciliation” commissions around the world, both at national and community levels, provides a striking instance of the indispensible role truth plays here.23 Restorative justice practices, of which truth and reconciliation commis21

American Friends Service Committee, Speak Truth to Power: A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence: A Study of International Conflict (Philadelphia: American Friends Service Committee, 1955). While the pamphlet itself suggests that the phrase has a much longer history (a claim that has often been repeated since), there is no clear evidence of the existence of the phrase in Quaker circles, or elsewhere, before its use by AFSC members in the 1950s. 22 Harold Pinter, Art, Truth and Politics: The Nobel Lecture (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p. 23. While Pinter’s address stands out, the sentiments it expresses are not exceptional—Pinter is one of many who have spoken out against the “avoidance of truth” by supposedly democratic governments over recent years. 23 Some twenty-four countries, including South Africa, Peru, and Algeria, have employed such commissions, while they have also been used to address more localized issues in the United States and elsewhere (e.g., the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Com-

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sions are sometimes seen to be an example, also give a central role to truth in addressing and redressing wrongdoing through their emphasis on the need for the acknowledgement of harm or conflict as a necessary first step towards transformation and reconciliation.24 Central to any properly ethical mode of life, as well as to a truly democratic politics, is the keeping open of a space for others. This is just what is at issue in the idea of plurality—a plurality that obtains even within the collectivity of a single community or society. It is such plurality, and with it the possibility of dissent, that is itself one of the main targets of the attacks on truth that have been so common within modern political life. In this respect, while contemporary societies do indeed seem to exhibit an essentially pluralist character, it is a plurality over which governments seem constantly to attempt to exercise control and to restrict. Truth is itself dependent on the keeping open of such a space of plurality, and on holding open the possibility of a multiplicity of voices. It is only within such a space that claims to truth are open to challenge—only within such a space can alternative claims to truth be advanced, can the need for justification arise, can the lie and the falsehood be shown for what they are.25 In its own turn, however, plurality can itself be protected only where there is respect for truth, since only when we take seriously the fact that our speaking is indeed a claim to truth, and yet not a claim over truth—and so already invokes the possibility of other such claims as well as demanding attentiveness to them—is there the open space, the “leeway,” that allows other voices to come forth, and in which they may even be said to be brought forth.26 mission was formed in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 2005, to address issues relating to the 1979 killing of five marchers involved in a rally against the Klu Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party). The way truth and ethics operate in the practice of such commissions is not, however, always straightforward. See, for instance, Robert I. Rotberg and Dennis Thompson, eds., Truth v. Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). 24 There is a burgeoning literature on restorative justice practices, but for a useful overview of issues and approaches see Dennis Sullivan and Larry Tifft, eds., Handbook of Restorative Justice: A Global Perspective (London: Routledge, 2006). 25 It is thus that, within contemporary social epistemology, diversity and dissent are increasingly seen as key elements in deliberation and the development of knowledge. See, for instance, Alison Wylie’s introduction to the special issue of Episteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology on the topic of “Epistemic Diversity and Dissent” (Wylie, “When Difference Makes a Difference,” Episteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology 3.1 [2006]: 1–7). 26 It is worth noting that the dependence of plurality on the commitment to truth (which is, in any case, a reciprocal dependence) does not imply any real limitation to the

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To speak is to take a stand with respect to truth. To attempt to speak in a way that would disregard this, or that would attempt to subvert it, is to act in a way that is destructive of the very preconditions that make the act itself possible, and so threaten to disrupt the entire domain of speaking, as well as of human engagement. This is the basis for the ethical importance of truth-telling (and the practices associated with it—including, for instance, promise-keeping). It is an ethical importance that derives from the central role that truth plays in the possibility of speaking, but also in underpinning human sociability and collectivity. Even the lie or the falsehood is possible only to the degree that it remains nested within a practice of honest assertion, and is located with respect to a body of truths. There is thus, one might say, an ethics of speaking that centers precisely on the concept of truth, and around which are clustered other key ethical concepts such as those of honesty, trust, responsibility, loyalty, and so on.27 Yet truth itself calls upon ethics, is entangled with it, such that rather than understand the commitment to truth as simply a matter of commitment to the utterance of certain sorts of sentences, the commitment to truth should rather be seen as itself the commitment to a certain practice—a certain comportment, a certain mode of life—that both expresses and sustains our commitment to ethics as such. The commitment to truth implies a commitment to the ethical, but the commitment to the ethical is itself a commitment to truth.

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IV. It might be noted—for some it might even be a point of criticism—that nowhere in the above discussion have I attempted to provide a definition of truth. Indeed, I have explicitly asserted the impossibility of such a task. This does not only extent of plurality. Insofar as truth can be said to operate as a limit, then it does so not by marking a line between different kinds of speech (thereby setting a limit within the possibilities of speaking), but rather by opening up the domain within which speaking occurs (establishing speaking in its very possibility). The domain in question here has no “outside,” and there is nothing “beyond” it. It is this same sense of limit that Heidegger refers to in “Building Dwelling Thinking,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), p. 154. 27 The values at issue in this “ethics of speaking”—values that also underpin forms of collectivity more generally—do not admit of variation, although they will inevitably be instantiated in different forms according to differences in the social and cultural contexts in which they are instantiated.

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reflect a view concerning the nature of truth, but also about the nature of philosophical inquiry. Properly understood, philosophy is not the attempt to give univocal definitions to contested terms; it is not about the erecting of some metaphysical certainty that will finally bring our questioning to a halt; and nor is it merely a continuation of scientific practice by other means. Philosophy, or perhaps we should say, the fundamental thinking in which philosophy essentially consists, is nothing other than the constant turn to questioning itself, to its own grounds, and therefore also to the questioning of ourselves. Such questioning itself lies, as should already be evident, at the heart of both the ethical life as well as the concern with truth. It does not aim at the simple uncovering of more truths, but rather at enabling our own capacity to engage with truth, to engage with the world, and to engage with ourselves, both individually and collectively. Philosophy can indeed only function as philosophy when it returns us to the original place out of which the impetus to questioning first arises, in which truth first appears as an issue, in which we first encounter ourselves as well as others. To find oneself situated in this way, which is to find oneself already in the world, is both to be given over to making a claim upon the world—to be given over to action, to decision, and to speech—and to be subject to the demands that the world makes upon oneself. The space of the ethical, which is a space opened up only in the world, is the space between self and other, between self and self, between self and world. It is this very space that is the space of truth, not only in the sense that this is the space that first enables the possibility of speaking—as well as of action and decision—but also in the sense that it is that to which our speaking always returns us through the character of such speaking as itself a claim to truth. Plurality and conversation, far from being opposed to truth, thus already presuppose it, and far from being a source of danger, truth turns out to be that which guards us and protects the possibility of human sociability and collectivity. Without it, there is no properly human mode of life, no properly responsive or ethical mode of engagement; without it, there is only isolation, only silence.

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Crossing the Boundary of Being Human: Enhancement Technology and the Problem of Free Will Junichi MURATA

Rissho University, Japan

I. The Challenge of Biotechnologies to the Nature of Human Beings

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1. Transhumanism and Posthumanity Today, in the fields of bioethics and neuroethics, we sometimes hear curious concepts such as “transhumanism” or “posthumanity.” These concepts suggest that we are now living in an age in which we are talking seriously about the possibility of remodeling the human being using various technologies, and in this way are crossing the essential boundaries of a human being toward a (better) transhuman or posthuman being.1 There is even a society called the World Transhumanist Association (WTA), the main purpose of which is to work towards the minimization of “negative” factors, such as disease, senility, and death, using genetic engineering and nano-technologies, and to achieve better capabilities beyond the limits of the physical and cognitive capacities of present human beings. One might think that such concepts as transhumans or posthumans are bandied about only by people who are full of groundless optimism and enthusiasm about the possibilities of science, and who dream of utopias. Indeed, many things that are talked about in the field of biotechnology are not easily achieved and seem to belong to the world of science fiction. But we

1

Cf. Paul Miller and James Wilsdon, eds., Better Humans? The Politics of Human Enhancement and Life Extension (DEMOS Collections 21) (London: DEMOS, 2006); Bert Gordijn and Ruth Chadwick, Medical Enhancement and Posthumanity (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008).

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cannot ignore the fact that in our everyday lives there are already various manifestations of what could be called a foretaste of the transhuman or posthuman. Rapid developments in the fields of biotechnology and the science of the brain have made possible scientific explanations and medical treatments for various diseases that have long been considered impossible to treat and cure. At the same time, these technologies, which were originally developed to provide therapy for diseases of the body and mind, are now beginning to be used for the purpose of enhancing normal human beings. Today, for example, many babies are conceived not in a “natural” way but in an artificial manner, such as through in vitro fertilization (IVF). IVF technology, which was originally developed as a therapy for sterility, is now recognized, in combination with the development of genetic engineering, as a possible technology by which babies could be designed according to the wishes of their parents. Drugs that were originally developed as therapies for diseases affecting memory or emotional control are now beginning to be used to enhance the cognitive capabilities of “normal” people. It is said that many students in the U.S. now use Ritalin to improve their concentration before taking important examinations. Ritalin was originally developed to treat children suffering from attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

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2. Beyond Therapy Many people, including philosophers and ethicists, have responded in various ways to the above developments. The former president of the U.S., George W. Bush, organized “the President’s Council on Bioethics” to deliberate on and develop “Socratic discussions” about the ethical issues provoked by modern science and technology in a political arena of partisan conflict and moral diversity.2 The Council made public the results of discussions among its members and published a report under the title Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness in 2003. The Report begins with the following diagnosis of the present situation: By all accounts, we have entered upon a golden age of biology, medicine, and biotechnology. With the completion of (the DNA sequencing phase of) the

2

Larry Arnhart, “President’s Council on Bioethics,” in Carl Mitcham, ed., Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics (Florence, KY: Thomson/Gale, 2005), p. 200.

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Human Genome Project and the emergence of stem cell research, we can look forward to major insights into human development, normal and abnormal, as well as novel and more precisely selected treatments for human diseases. Advances in neuroscience hold out the program of powerful new understandings of mental processes and behavior, as well as remedies for devastating mental illness. Ingenious nanotechnological devices implantable into the human body and brain, raise hopes for overcoming blindness and deafness, and, more generally, of enhancing native human capacities of awareness and action. Research on the biology of aging and senescence suggests the possibility of slowing down age-related declines in bodies and minds, and perhaps even expanding the maximum human lifespan. In myriad ways, the discoveries of biologists and the inventions of biotechnologists are steadily increasing our power ever more precisely to intervene into the workings of our bodies and minds to alter them by rational design.3 (emphasis mine)

“Increasing our power ever more precisely to intervene into the workings of our bodies and minds to alter them by rational design.” This is a typical description of the process of technological development, which brings about an increase of human freedom through technologies in our lifeworld. We usually think that it is thanks to the development of technologies that a domain that was once governed by fate has become an arena of free choice. In addition, in the case of enhancement technologies, this enlargement of freedom does not develop the freedom of human beings in a “negative” sense (i.e., by simply expanding freedom of choice). Rather, it does so in a “positive” sense (i.e., by expanding the freedom to achieve good purposes), as these technologies were originally developed to provide therapies for diseases, and the purposes of technological development are exactly what everyone seems to wish to realize, such as health, safety, wealth, enjoyment, peace of mind, and long life. Yet many people do not see only positive factors in a possible future world brought about by the development of enhancement technologies, and are reluctant to approve their development without restrictions. In such a future enhanced world, we could find many good things. For example, there would be no people suffering from hereditary diseases. Parents who want to make their children taller would have their hopes realized. No one would suffer from depression or PTSD. In short, health, safety, enjoyment, peace of mind, and long life would be provided thanks to the development of various technologies, and everyone would be happy and satisfied. 3

Leon R. Kass, ed., Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness (A Report by the President’s Council on Bioethics) (New York: Dana Press, 2003), 5f.

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Yet we feel that something essential to human nature would be radically changed or destroyed in such a world. We are inclined to think that the experiences and freedom of people living in such a world would be unreal and inauthentic compared to ours in this world. The Report repeatedly refers to and stresses “the alleged threat of dehumanization” as well as the alleged promise of “super-humanization.”4 But why are we reluctant to live in a world where all babies are controlled, designed, and enhanced through genetic engineering, and everyone continuously uses various drugs to solve or dissolve personal and interpersonal problems? Why do we feel uneasy about living in such a world, even if people themselves wish to develop these technologies and use them voluntarily, and even if the safety of these technologies and the equality of their use can be guaranteed?

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3. Beyond Therapy and Brave New World It is remarkable that in many places the Report of the President’s Council cites the science fiction Brave New World (1932) written by Aldous Huxley to demonstrate that the freedom and happiness achieved in an enhanced world is superficial and inauthentic, claiming that a world brought about by enhancement technologies would be very similar to the dystopian world described by Huxley. In the world depicted by Huxley, everyone is born through IVF technology, by which everyone’s genetic structure is controlled and designed, and everyone is brought up through careful psychological engineering. In this world, everyone is classified strictly into a certain social class corresponding to their capacities. People belonging to the lowest class are always under the influence of powerful drugs; therefore, they do not think about the things that they cannot have. They can do what they want, and in this sense they always have freedom of action, but their wants are limited and controlled by drugs. One might consider this to be an inappropriate model for a world in which enhancement technologies are widely used. Indeed, in the world that Huxley described, reproductive and other technologies are not being used for the purpose of enhancement in the narrow sense of the word, but rather for controlling and restraining capacities and emotions. In spite of this difference, in critical discussions of the utopian view of human enhancement, the resemblance between a Brave New World and an enhanced world is referred to repeatedly in the Report, as if the resemblance were self-evident. One reference is as follows: 4

Kass, Beyond Therapy, p. 10.

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Not everyone agrees that the prophesized new world will be better than our own. Some suspect it could rather resemble the humanly diminished world portrayed in Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, whose technologically enhanced inhabitants live cheerfully, without disappointment or regret, “enjoying” flat, empty lives devoid of love and longing, filled with only trivial pursuits and shallow attachments.5

On the one hand, a Brave New World is indeed an impressive model that is suitable for indicating the negative characteristics of the enhanced world, as it clearly shows us a possible situation in which all people enjoy their “freedom” and “happiness,” but in which the desires and wills that people can have are strictly controlled from our point of view. In this sense they have no freedom of will and their freedom and happiness seem to be superficial and inauthentic. On the other hand, it is not clear why, through the unlimited development of enhancement technologies, our world would inevitably become a place that essentially resembles a Brave New World. Why have the development and expansion of human freedom led to a situation in which human freedom itself seems to be threatened? To clarify this apparent paradox concerning technologies and human freedom, we must make explicit a tacit understanding of the concepts of technology and human freedom that support this line of thinking. The task is one of clarifying the question of what it means for human beings to be free and what the relation is between human freedom and the development of technologies. In addressing these questions, I first take up Michael Sandel’s view of human freedom. Sandel differentiates between two different kinds of freedom, and gives us a clear view of the seemingly paradoxical situation concerning the concept of human freedom. Second, as I think that a kind of technological determinism is tacitly assumed in these discussions, I take into consideration the critical insights in the philosophy of technology that have recently been raised against technological determinism, and focus on the multidimensional, ambiguous, and contingent characteristics of technological development. Through these discussions, I aim to clarify the point that just as the process of technological development must be considered to be essentially ambiguous and contingent, human freedom must also be understood in the same way. The concept of freedom without ambiguity and contingency would be an empty concept, just as in the case of technologies. 5

Kass, Beyond Therapy, p. 8; cf. pp. 227, 294, 318, 321.

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This is, I think, one of the most important philosophical lessons we must learn from discussions concerning human enhancement. II. Freedoms and Technology

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1. Freedom and Giftedness Michael Sandel, one of the members of the President’s Council, has proposed the view that the factor of giftedness is necessary in human freedom to have human dignity and integrity. According to Sandel, what is essentially problematic in enhancement technologies is not the fact that they bring about a situation in which various efforts to improve one’s capacities would be meaningless and the human agency would be eroded. Rather, what is problematic is the fact that they accelerate “a Promethean aspiration to remake nature, including human nature, to serve our purposes and satisfy our desires.”6 What is neglected in the attitude embodied in the development of genetic engineering is an acknowledgment of the giftedness of life. Therefore, according to Sandel, we must principally differentiate between two kinds of freedom. One is the freedom realized in the form of mastery and domination. It is understood as being unfettered by the given, which consequently leaves us with nothing to affirm and behold outside our own will.7 The other is the freedom that is inseparably connected with “natality” (H. Arendt) or “the contingency of a life’s beginning, which is not at our disposal” (J. Habermas) and the “freedom that consists in a persisting negotiation with the given.”8 If we follow this view of Sandel’s with regard to enhancement technologies and freedom, we can clearly find at which point a Brave New World would be problematic and the reason why it and an enhanced world would appear to resemble each other. What is problematic in a Brave New World is not the fact that human freedom is endangered, but rather that “a Promethean aspiration to remake nature, including human nature, to serve our purposes and satisfy our desires” is fully achieved. The freedom of mastery and domination is enlarged, intensified, and fully achieved, and anything related to the given and contingent, which would 6

Michael Sandel, The Case against Perfectionism: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 26. 7 Sandel, The Case against Perfectionism, p. 100. 8 Sandel, The Case against Perfectionism, p. 83.

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bring about newness and surprise in the world, is carefully controlled and extinguished. In this respect at least, a world in which enhancement technologies are fully realized would be no different from a Brave New World. Just as in a Brave New World, in an enhanced world, a Promethean aspiration is fully realized, and any trace of giftedness and contingency would be completely extinguished. According to Sandel, as long as we understand freedom merely as freedom of will in the sense of freedom of mastery and domination, we would be unable to find the essential problem of the transhumanist view of human enhancement. Nor would we be capable of proposing a persuasive criticism of it. Only when we seriously consider an alternative view of freedom, namely freedom in the sense of accepting giftedness, would we find it possible to criticize the transhumanist view of human enhancement. But why should we worry about the one-sided triumph of willfulness over giftedness? Why should we not shake off our uneasiness with enhancement as so much superstition? What would be lost if biotechnology dissolved our sense of giftedness? Sandel’s answer is as follows: If the genetic revolution erodes our appreciation for the gifted character of human powers and achievements, it will transform three key features of our moral landscape—humility, responsibility, and solidarity.9

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To defend our moral landscape, Sandel proposes the ethics of giftedness instead of the ethics of willfulness and efforts and claims the necessity “to create social and political arrangements more hospitable to the gifts and limitations of imperfect human beings.10 2. Technology as a Black Box In this way, we can find in Sandel’s view a persuasive interpretation of the essential core of contemporary discussions concerning enhancement technologies and a clear diagnosis of the problems brought about by these technologies. On the other hand, in spite of the clear discussions and a certain persuasiveness, we cannot neglect the fact that Sandel’s view nevertheless still lacks clarity.

9 10

Sandel, The Case against Perfectionism, p. 86. Sandel, The Case against Perfectionism, p. 97.

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Sandel’s main point is that we must distinguish between two kinds of freedom. However, while he stresses the difference between two kinds of freedom, he seldom focuses on the relationship between them. Yet as long as the two concepts remain unrelated, the demand of the ethics of giftedness seems to be a demand that is forced externally on the Promethean project of enhancement technologies. It is not clear whether and why human freedom itself needs its boundaries and the other dimension of giftedness. Also unclear is the extent to which human enhancement can be admitted and when it must be stopped by the demands of the ethics of giftedness. Therefore, the debate between the proponents and opponents of enhancements is not easily resolved. One of the reasons for this lack of clarity seems to be that the content of the alleged Promethean project of freedom is seldom discussed and remains a black box. That means that in discussions concerning enhancement technologies we seldom find the question being addressed of how technological development is achieved in relation to society and human beings. In short, the presupposition seems to be that technological development has its own driving force and proceeds independently from other human and social factors. However, this view of technology is typical of technological determinism. Indeed, we find a clearly deterministic view of technological development in a statement by Leon Kass, the chairperson of the President’s Council. In his own book, referring to the resemblance between a Brave New World and an enhanced world, Kass writes: But the likeness between Huxley’s fictional world and ours is disquieting, especially since our technologies of bio-psycho-engineering are still in their infancy, yet vividly reveal what they may look like in their full maturity. … No need for World Controllers. Just give us the technological imperative, liberal democratic society, compassionate humanitarianism, moral pluralism and free markets, and we can take ourselves to a Brave New World all by ourselves—without even deliberately deciding to go. In case you haven’t noticed, the train has already left the station and is gathering speed, although there appear to be no human hands on the throttle.11

According to this citation, there is a definite “technological imperative” that determines the direction and the process of technological development and uni-

11

Leon Kass, Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2002), p. 6.

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laterally influences how human beings are and what kind society we will have, at least, if combined with a liberal and pluralistic idea of a free society. However, we cannot assume the truth of this kind of deterministic view, even if it is sometimes accepted as self-evident. Indeed, technological determinism has long been criticized in the recent philosophy of technology. One of the most important views in the recent philosophy of technology is the argument that technology does not develop as a result of purely technological factors, such as efficacy and rationality, but rather is essentially constituted through various social, cultural, and political factors. Technologies are always embedded in some context and in some situation, in which the people using them have a chance to interpret them in different ways and influence the process of their development. The developmental processes of technologies, therefore, cannot be considered to be predetermined by the intent of the designers, but must be considered to be constituted by multidimensional factors and are inevitably ambiguous, indefinite, and contingent.12 If we take this ambiguous and contingent character of the development of technologies seriously, we can no longer differentiate between the two kinds of freedom as clearly as in the case of Michael Sandel’s discussions. The deterministic process of the Promethean project of technologies and the contingent factor of giftedness must be understood not only as differentiated but also as closely related. III. Technology Embedded in a Situation: Its Ambiguity and Contingency

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1. Technology and Experience When we experience something, we not only experience what an object is but at the same time experience how we experience it. Our experience always has at least two factors: a “what” factor and a “how” factor. When it comes to action, in which we experience a certain process of action to achieve a certain purpose, the “what” factor corresponds to its purpose or its “will” (intention) and the “how” factor is determined by the means used to achieve a purpose or a will. In traditional practical philosophy, the focus is

12

Cf. Wiebe Bijker, Thomas Hughes, and Trevor Pinch, eds., The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1987).

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mainly on the question of what purpose an action has or what we desire or will through actions and not on the question of with which means it is achieved. However, it has already been indicated in various ways that the dimension of means and technologies is closely connected to the dimension of purposes, and cannot be separated easily from an ethical dimension. Indeed, the introduction of a new technology into our lifeworld cannot be reduced to the introduction of a new tool for an old and familiar purpose. The introduction of the telephone, for example, radically transformed the way in which people communicated, and the new form of communication that came into being with it also influenced other ways of communicating. When everyone came to use the telephone, writing a letter acquired a different and new meaning. The same was also found when the car, television, and other technologies were introduced. In these cases, not only were new means introduced, but a new combination of purpose and means was also introduced. In this context, the factor of what we experience and the factor of how we experience are inseparably related. What is important in these cases is that new types of experience were introduced along with the new technologies. Communicating with others using a telephone was a new and different type of experience than communicating through an exchange of letters or a face-to-face conversation. Traveling in a car was a new and different type of experience than traveling on horseback or in a horse-drawn carriage. Undertaking actions with various technologies involve their own intrinsic aspects of experience, which are sometimes regarded as important as or more important than the original purpose of an action. Driving a car itself sometimes becomes an intrinsic purpose independent of the original purpose of reaching some goal within a limited time. The experiential aspect consists of what it is like to experience driving a car. This cannot only be measured with the criteria of how fast and how efficient driving a car is in comparison to riding a horse or traveling on foot. In our lifeworld, this aspect constitutes an essential core of “lived” experience, which is sometimes characterized as a “subjective” character or the so-called “qualia” of experience. In any case, we cannot grasp the meaning of technologies in our lifeworld without considering this experiential aspect of our life. 2. The Ambiguous, Indefinite, and Creative Character of Technologies If we take the experiential aspect of technologies into consideration, various important characteristics of technologies come to the fore.

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First, the change brought about by the introduction and use of new technologies cannot be characterized in one single dimension. For example, when using a car to travel, we can now reach our destination more quickly than when using a horse-drawn carriage or going on foot. However, the experiential dimension of travel cannot be reduced to the increase of speed because it has a multidimensional character. For example, when we use a car, the possibility of enjoying the landscape and encountering people who live in the area through which we drive is in one sense decreased in comparison with using a horse-drawn carriage or going on foot. The change brought about by the introduction of new technologies has multidimensional effects and brings about a trade-off between different dimensions. As this characteristic of trade-off is to be found in every case of technological innovation, we cannot characterize technological innovation simply as progress. In this sense, the ambiguous characteristic of technologies is inevitable. Second, corresponding to the multidimensional character of the experiential aspect, the technological artifacts themselves show their own multiple characters through the interactional relation to users. For example, a hammer can be used not only to build a house but also as a murder weapon, a paper weight, or even an objet d’art. This kind of multidimensionality of an artifact can be found everywhere we use technologies, and the history of technology is full of such cases. The Internet is a famous example. Although originally designed for military use, it has now become a new form of communication in our everyday lives. It is said that the typewriter was originally designed as a prosthetic device to help people with sight deficiencies, but it played a central role in offices, and its original purpose became marginalized.13 In addition to these cases, we can also find historical cases in which technological products are interpreted “negatively”; i.e., contrary to the original intent of the designers. Edward Tenner discusses various cases of such unintended consequences and characterizes the phenomenon as follows: “Things seemed to be fighting back.”14 The common feature of these cases may be called the creativity of technologies, because a new meaning for artifacts is created, whether the new meaning is interpreted positively or negatively. What is characteristic in these cases is that creativity is achieved not in the processes of design and production, but rather in 13

Don Ihde, Ironic Technics (Birkerød, Denmark: Automatic Press, 2008), p. 21. Edward Tenner, Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences (New York: Knopf, 1996), p. ix. 14

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the interactive process between users and artifacts. Kitaro Nishida formulates this creative character with the expressions “from that which is made to that which makes” or “reverse determination.”15 According to this view, only on the basis of something given can a creative process of technologies begin to proceed. If we consider this creative character of technologies, it is clear how narrow and one-sided the traditional way of seeing technological development is. According to the traditional view, technological production begins first with a design that designers conceive, then products are produced following the design, and finally users accept completed products and begin to use them. In contrast to this traditional one-directional view, which could be called “designer fallacy,” I would like to stress that there is no single original or central point from which the creative process emerges. Rather, it is the interactive relation of designers-artifacts-users that makes the creative character possible.16 As long as this interactive process continues, the meaning of technologies in our lifeworld will never be determined by a single factor, but remain indefinite and open to various creative interpretations.

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3. Enhancement Technologies as Magic If we take the ambiguous, indefinite, and creative character of technologies seriously, we cannot simply suppose that enhancement technologies will continue to function in the same way in the realm beyond therapy as in the realm within therapy. There is always a possibility that they will be interpreted and constituted differently due to various social, cultural, and political factors. For example, unintended consequences would bring about a decisive change in the developmental process. In particular, we cannot neglect the possibility of the occurrence of disastrous but unpredictable accidents. While there is a possibility that the experience of having (designer) babies in an artificial way would take on a new and attractive meaning, there is also the reverse possibility that the experience of having babies in a natural way would acquire new value in a new context. If we neglect these possibilities and continue to hold a deterministic view, this would be nothing more than to fall into the “designer fallacy.” Only in the view captured by a “designer fallacy” can we presuppose a deterministic view of 15 Kitaro Nishida, Nishida Kitaro Zenshu (Complete Works), vol. 9 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1949). Cf. Junichi Murata, “Creativity of Technology: An Origin of Modernity?” in Thomas Misa, Philip Brey, and Andrew Feenberg, eds., Modernity and Technology (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003), pp. 227–254. 16 Ihde, Ironic Technics, p. 29.

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technological development. As long as we are held captive by the designer fallacy, we can find no possibility of ambiguous, contingent, and creative factors emerging in the process of technological development. Rather, in this context, technologies are regarded as a kind of magic. Ihde asks: “But, why do I call it magic? Because magic, unlike actual chemistries and technologies, does not have ambiguous or unintended or contingent consequences—trade-offs are lacking, only the paradisiacal results.”17 Magic is a technology that has a “what” dimension but no “how” dimension. In most of the stories supported by both proponents and opponents of enhancement technologies, we can find only possible worlds in which a variety of performance characteristics are fully achieved, but the question of how they are achieved is neglected. In this way, we can find another reason why people are inclined to see a resemblance between a Brave New World and a possible fully enhanced world. In both worlds technologies are considered to function as magic and, in this sense, both form a magical and paradisiacal world, and therefore an unrealistic world. In reality, there cannot be such a fully enhanced world in which, while a Promethean project is fully realized, there is no trace of the sense of giftedness. This is because a Promethean aspiration can be realized only in a certain situation constituted by various other human factors, and the process of its realization becomes inevitably ambiguous, indefinite, and contingent. In the same way, freedom of the will can be realized only in a certain situation constituted by various factors that are related to a sense of contingency and giftedness. Without the latter factors, freedom would be unrealistic and must be regarded as a kind of magic, just as technology without contingency would be a kind of magic. This way of characterizing the concept of technology and free will might cause us to notice the undeniable difference between a Brave New World and an enhanced world. In a Brave New World there is a world controller who is supposed to carefully control and extinguish contingencies and disturbances that would cause the social organization to collapse. In contrast, in an enhanced world there is no guarantee that enhancement technologies can be developed and used without the emergence of any contingent disturbances. In this sense, perhaps it would be easier to imagine a Brave New World than a fully enhanced world. In spite of these circumstances, or rather because of them, we must be careful about the seemingly intuitive claim that there is a resemblance between 17

Ihde, Ironic Technics, p. 47.

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the two worlds. As we have seen, such an intuition is based on problematical (magical) concepts of technological developments and a free will. IV. Provisional Conclusions

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In this way, we can finally find the reason for the seemingly paradoxical situation of human freedom, which is closely related to differences and resemblances between a Brave New World and a fully enhanced world. In the Brave New World depicted by Huxley, it is presupposed that the desires and wills that people can have are strictly controlled; therefore, people can have freedom of action but no freedom of will. In contrast, in an enhanced world it is presupposed that people can choose freely what they want and enjoy freedom of will in addition to freedom of action. However, as we have seen above, the concept of a free will that can be achieved without any ambiguity and contingency is nothing but a magical and unrealistic concept. Therefore, a world that includes this kind of freedom of will and a world that does not include it are not fundamentally different, and we cannot differentiate between the experiences of people in the former world from the experiences of people in the latter world. Both experiences appear fundamentally the same. In this sense, the concept of free will without a sense of contingency and giftedness has no substantial meaning and is empty. This is, I think, one of the most interesting and important philosophical lessons we can learn from discussions concerning enhancement technologies. Appendix: Freedom and Contingency: A Short Excursion into the Philosophy of Contingency of Shuzo Kuki (1888–1941) Freedom without contingency is empty. This is the provisional conclusion from the discussions in this paper. In the above discussions, I tried to explicate this thesis by using various examples and critically discussing various views of other philosophers, but I have not focused on the concepts of freedom and contingency themselves. I did not thematically discuss the following fundamental questions of what freedom is, or what contingency is, and above all, what the relationship between these two concepts is. As I do not have sufficient space here to address these questions, I would like to supplement the discussion by briefly taking up the thoughts of a phi-

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losopher who investigated the concept of contingency deeply and wrote an interesting book on the philosophy of contingency. The philosopher in question is Shuzo Kuki, who was active in prewar Japan and who in 1935 published a book entitled The Problem of Contingency.18 In our context, what is interesting in Kuki’s discussion is his view on the relationship between contingency and possibility. In the field of formal logic we usually use the concepts of necessity and possibility, but we seldom talk about contingency. According to Kuki, contingency means the negation of necessity, but usually the negation of necessity is understood only as a kind of possibility. There is no difference between possibility and contingency in formal logic. In formal logic, there is no conceptual difference between the following two cases, but according to Kuki, in “ontological” logic there is a decisive difference. (1) A is possible: It is possible that A exists. (possible existence) (2) A is contingent: It is possible that A does not exist. (possible nonexistence) Kiki explicates this difference as follows:

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However, in ontological logic, possible existence and possible nonexistence are never the same. In other words, the possibility in the sense of “existence is possible” understood on the horizon of existence, on the one hand, and non-necessity in the sense of “nonexistence is possible” understood on the horizon of nonexistence, on the other, are never the same. The possibility in the sense of “existence is possible” has an onto-logical structure that develops toward necessity in the sense of “existence is necessary.” In contrast, non-necessity in the sense of “nonexistence is possible” has an onto-logical structure that recedes toward impossibility in the sense of “nonexistence is necessary.”19

(1) Possibility of existence ⇒ Necessity of existence (2) Contingency of existence ⇒ Impossibility of existence ∥ ∥ (Possibility of nonexistence ⇒ Necessity of nonexistence)

18

Shuzo Kuki, Guzensei no Mondai (The Problem of Contingency), Complete Works, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1980). 19 Kuki, Guzensei no Mondai, p. 181; translation mine.

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I think we can interpret this difference between possibility and contingency in the way that it corresponds to the difference between freedom and contingency, which we have discussed above. Freedom in the sense of freedom of mastery and domination, which is embodied in technologies, has an inclination toward predicting and controlling everything, and the ultimate pole of this inclination would be the situation in which everything is understood in the necessary way. In contrast, contingency is the character of givenness and giftedness, which we experience as unpredictable, unintended, and new with a feeling of surprise. When we characterize some occurrence as contingent, we implicitly presuppose that it is possible that it has not occurred. The less possible an occurrence appears, the more contingent it appears. Why do we easily overlook this difference between possibility and contingency? Kuki’s answer would be: Because we tend to interpret modal concepts on the horizon of existence and neglect the horizon of nonexistence. According to Kuki, “Contingency means that something happens by chance, and it means that existence has no sufficient reason in itself. Therefore, it means existence that includes a negation or existence that is possible not to exist. In other words, contingency emerges when existence is witnessed in an inseparable relation to nonexistence. It is the existence of a limit that is placed on a plane where ‘being’ and ‘nothing’ touches. Contingency is the situation in which ‘being’ is rooted in ‘nothing,’ and it is the image that ‘nothing’ intrudes into ‘being’.”20 In this way, Kuki stresses that the concept of contingency is inseparably connected to the concept of “nothing.” This is the central thesis of Kuki’s metaphysical view of contingency. It may be thought that Kuki’s way of characterizing contingency is too metaphysical, as he seems to reify the concepts of existence and nonexistence, or being and nothing, and use them to characterize the concept of contingency. Indeed, Kuki differentiates three kinds of contingency: logical, hypothetical, and metaphysical contingency. In the framework of hypothetical contingency, for example, contingency is understood as a characteristic of something that is dependent on various factors. In this case, the contingency (= possibility of nonexistence) of some occurrence is rather considered to be inseparably related to the possibility of existence of some other occurrence, and contingency and possibility are not so strictly differentiated as in the case of the metaphysical framework. However, according to Kuki, only on the presupposition of the 20

Kuki, Guzensei no Mondai, p. 9; translation mine.

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metaphysical meaning of contingency can its hypothetical meaning become understandable. On the other hand, Kuki does not forget to emphasize that the concept of contingency is deeply rooted in our experience. In particular, our experience of encounter has an important role. According to him, at the core of the concept of contingency lies the meaning of encounter. The central meaning of encounter is the possibility that the encounter does not occur, i.e., “the possibility of its nonexistence.” “The fundamental meaning of contingency that determines every way of using its concept is to posit ‘the other’ against the necessity understood as an identity. Necessity is nothing but the modus of identity or ‘the one.’ Contingency emerges only where there is a duality of ‘the one’ and ‘the other’.”21 As long as the logic of necessity dominates, there is no possibility of an encounter with others. Only on the basis of the logic of contingency is the encounter with others possible. We have already seen that Michael Sandel emphasizes the contingent character of giftedness that plays a central role in our moral landscape. According to him, “The more alive we are to the chance nature of our lot, the more reason we have to share our fate with others.”22 In this way, he stresses the essential relation between solidarity and the contingent character of giftedness. Kuki also emphasized this relation between contingency and the basis of our morality. According to Kuki, “The duality that forms contingency opens a place of intersubjectivity everywhere and constitutes a fundamental sociality.”23 Contingency makes possible our encounter with others in our experiences and constitutes the basis of morality and sociality. In this way, we can find another answer to the question that we dealt with in the above sections. Why do a fully enhanced world and a Brave New World look similar, although the enhanced world is the result of the enlargement of human freedom? The answer is as follows: As any trace of contingency is carefully controlled and extinguished, there is no possibility of encountering others in both worlds. Both worlds are dominated by the logic of necessity and identity as the ultimate result of the enhancement of human possibility and the negation of the opposite direction of contingency. 21 22 23

Kuki, Guzensei no Mondai, p. 255; translation mine. Sandel, The Case against Perfectionism, p. 89. Kuki, Guzensei no Mondai, p. 258f.; translation mine.

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Culture, Wilderness, and Homelessness: Eco-Phenomenology 2 Tetsuya KONO

Rikkyo University, Japan

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I. Introduction: A City Called Wilderness Phenomenology has criticized the modern concept of nature for reducing nature to a mass of undistinguishable particles that obey natural laws. The ecological environment is not the world as described by micro-physics. It is the mesoscopic world that we perceive in our everyday lives. It is our dwelling place shaped by ground, mountains, hills, forests, rivers, lakes, and the sea, not the world of mere atoms and particles. It is accordingly the place for actions whereby we interact with various sorts of plants, animals, human-beings, and artifacts. Phenomenology, in asserting the fundamental relatedness between organisms and environments, commits us to treat all environments with equal seriousness. Urban and rural; wilderness and cities; oceans and prairies; housing projects, hospitals, and mountain trails—all are places where experience unfolds. From this point of view, the world is a continuum of various environments. In this paper, I interpret from a phenomenological viewpoint a Japanese writer’s vision of nature, which is often referred to and cited in Japanese eco-criticism literature. Keizo Hino,1 the 72nd winner of the Akutagawa Prize, the most famous Japanese literary award, is well known as a writer whose focus is on the city of Tokyo, especially as an urban physical environment. Hino’s 1

Keizo Hino (1929–2002) was born in Tokyo. He accompanied his parents to Korea, when the country was still under Japanese colonial rule. After the world war, he returned to Japan, graduating from the University of Tokyo and joining the Yomiuri Journal in 1952. He served as a foreign correspondent in South Korea and Vietnam before becoming a novelist. He won the Akutagawa Prize for Ano yūhi (The Evening Sun), and many other literary prizes, and became a committee member of the Akutagawa Prize.

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works are often simultaneously autobiographical, philosophical, and surrealistic. One of the main characteristics of his works is his use of the surrealistic method of “dépaysement” which presents an ordinary, banal, small scene of Tokyo as an unknown landscape on another uninhabited planet. He is recognized as an environmentalist author by literary critics, although the focus of much of his fiction is the urban environment. The following citation from his essay shows how Hino has gained this reputation:

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Some say the city is inhuman. Some appeal for a return to nature. But, rural, pastoral nature is too aggressive for me; rather, I feel stifled, being bound to the meddling familiarity of nature. I feel myself opened even up to space when I am at the heart of the city. It links to a craggy mountain top, to the middle of a sand desert.2

Hino distinguishes “the city” (toshi) from “the town” (tokai) although these two Japanese words are nearly synonymous. The difference that Hino sees between town and city is not that of size and population. He uses the town to signify a humanized place where economic, political, and cultural interactions occur among human beings, while the city represents a physical place made up of skyscrapers, asphalt roads, and monuments. (The words toshi and tokai share the same character to which means “capital city.” Because kai means “meeting” or “gathering,” the word toka evokes a scene of a lively, packed downtown. On the other hand, toshi conjures up a more abstract conception of the capital as a place, since the word shi signifies the city as a municipality.) Hino also asks himself: “In the development from original nature, pastoral nature, town (tokai), and on to the city (toshi), why does the last phase become close to the first?”3 Ever since I read the above statement for first time, I have felt a strong sympathy for the sentiment expressed in it. I intuitively understood what Hino wants to say, and believe that his point of view is very close to that of the philosophy of deep ecology. It is my contention that some kind of relationship must exist between Hino’s thinking and the ideas contained in deep ecology, as ecocritics have claimed. Nevertheless, I have not been able to explain the nature of this relationship, or to answer the following questions: Why does original nature, namely wilderness, reappear at the most developed phase of urbanization? How can Hino see Tokyo as a rocky mountain top, a bleak desert, or an ice field? Hino’s experience 2

Keizo Hino, Toshi To Iu Atarashii Shizen (The City, New Born Nature) (Tokyo: Yomiuri Shinbunsha Publisher, 1988), p. 38. 3 Hino, Toshi To Iu Atarashii Shizen, p. 38.

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of “feeling himself even opened to space” can be called “correspondence,” i.e., the poetic resonance of inner space and outer space, in the terminology of literary critics. What does it mean to have such an experience at the heart of the city/wilderness? I would like to respond to this question from the viewpoint of the phenomenology of place.

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II. Nature and Wilderness What makes wilderness different from pastoral nature? The answer is clear. Pastoral nature is nature transformed by human beings. Here, pastoral nature means not only a cultivated field, but also woods, rivers, or mountains that human beings constantly take care of or make use of. Pastoral nature is the niche where human beings settle down. By contrast, wilderness, for example primeval forests, steppes, or oceans, is nature that is not constantly inhabited by human beings. Human beings sometimes go into the wilderness, live there for a while, and make use of it, as in the case of nomads who lead their life on the move in a vast and boundless plain. There are few traces of human beings in a wilderness; the power of nature obliterates their signs and footprints. We can bring a wasteland under cultivation, but cultivated land can no longer be called wilderness. By definition, a wilderness is a deserted place. Wilderness is nature that nomadic people, foragers, hunters and gatherers, or explorers encounter. People cannot stay long in one place in a wilderness because of the difficulty of getting enough nourishment for themselves and their livestock. In this sense, the oceans are always wild. Therefore, a wilderness is a place through which people pass; it is a place of traffic, while pastoral nature is for permanent residence. The difference between pastoral nature and wilderness corresponds to a difference in the manner of dwelling; that is, a permanent residence in one place or migration from one place to another—an agricultural life or a nomadic life. III. Hermes and Hestia Edward Casey has pointed out the fundamentally twofold nature of dwelling: “hermetic” and “hestial.” On the one hand, Hermes is a Greek god known for his ability to move. He can move so swiftly that he was selected to be a messenger of the gods. He moves in open, public space. Therefore, he is also the god of roads, wayfarers, and intersections, and also the patron of boundaries and of the travelers who

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cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, and of thieves and liars. He is the god of motion, communication, guidance, and barter. Accordingly, the description of Hermes resonates with a mode of dwelling that is “always out there”; that is, dwelling experienced in its very outwardness. Hermetic dwelling is dwelling-as-wandering. Casey writes: “The hermetic represents the far-out view, a view from a moving position, in which the slow motions of the caretaker/homemaker give way to the impatient rapidity of the thief, the trespasser, and the traveler. Under the sign of Hermes, the con-centric becomes ec-cetric.”4 Thus, hermetic dwelling is to move around a built place, to be outside, to be constantly “between”; it is “to dwell in a migratory, unsettled sense in which displacement is much more evident than implacement, homelessness than habitation.”5 On the other hand, Hestia is the Greek goddess of the hearth, the goddess at the center of the home and family life, and of household economy as oikos. It is said that altars to Hestia were once found in every home in Greece, as well as in front of the town hall of capital cities. In Greece, the hearth was located at the center of the house, and also at the center of temples. Hestia is also a symbol of the unity of the nation. The myth of Hestia gives the concept of hestial dwelling its meaning. Hestial dwelling is to dwell in a manner in which delaying, tarrying, and finally inhabiting are prominent characteristics. It is about abiding in a place, in-dwelling, staying on, and being with someone. This dwelling as residing must have a center as home; at the same time, it tends to be self-enclosed. Its implicit directionality is from the center toward the periphery, and extending from inwards to outwards. The external wandering abates as a person settles into a place designed for residing, “[f]or dwelling-as-residing is not necessarily sedentary; not the literal absence of motion but finding a comparatively stable place in the world is what matters in such dwelling. Such finding is possible even when in motion.”6 Casey maintains that these aboriginal modes of dwelling indicate two kinds of bodily behavior. “The centered, long-suffering, and measured movements of Hestia at the hearth epitomize the habitual body motions and memories that are part and parcel of domestic life. […] The intimacy and memorability of domestic space depend on a thorough acquaintance with a residence from within its

4

Edward Casey, Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), p. 138. 5 Casey, Getting Back into Place, p. 132. 6 Casey, Getting Back into Place, p. 133.

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walls.”7 Therefore, “culture” has been considered to be collective memory or habits accumulated and inherited in a hestial place. The activity of cultivation naturally requires a permanent place of residence. By contrast, “the mercurial movements of Hermes […] are suited to the nonhabitual, de-centered actions of traversing open spaces rapidly, and in particular of going around a public square or between houses and outside established limits.”8 We, as human beings, engage in both of these two modes of behavior. The hermetic and hestial modes of dwelling are not contradictory but reciprocal, since we are animals and moving corporeal beings. A tree cannot reside; it can only be planted. Only auto-moving living beings can rest and reside. Only self-moving creatures such as animals and humans can move to another place and can acclimatize themselves to the new land through acquiring new habits. In this sense, I maintain that the ability to engage in hermetic dwelling is a prerequisite for hestial dwelling, although the two modes are reciprocal. We are moving beings before we are anything else. Thank to Casey’s conception, we now understand the distinction between “original nature” (wilderness) and “pastoral nature,” and even between Keizo Hino’s “the town” (tokai) and “the city” (toshi). Pastoral nature is hestial nature; it is the place where people reside, to which people accustom themselves, and of which people make their history. The town (tokai) for Hino is the extension of pastoral nature; it is a hestial residential place where many people lead their domestic life, to which the inhabitants have already acclimatized themselves, and where they are acquainted with each other. Pastoral nature and the town are hestial, domestic, co-centric, habitual, and familiar places. On the other hand, a wilderness is not a place for permanent residence. It is a strange and dangerous place to which people will never become acclimatized. The difference between pastoral nature and wilderness is the same as that between domestic animals and wild beasts. You can interact with wild beasts, and even have a friendly relationship with them. But they still remain wild; and can suddenly turn into be enemies. Finally, you cannot communicate with wild beasts, whereas it is possible to do so with friendly animals such as dogs. The same can be said about everything in the wilderness. The weather on a mountain or at the ocean can change suddenly may kill you. The weather changes also in pastoral nature and in the town, but there you have a house in which you can safely shelter. 7 8

Casey, Getting Back into Place, p. 140. Casey, Getting Back into Place, p. 140.

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For Hino, the city (toshi) must be a wild place. The city always changes; buildings are demolished and rebuilt; and neighbors come and go without ever getting to know one other. The city expands and contracts according to changes in economic conditions, as if it were a living being or a collection of living beings such as an ameba or a coral reef. In particular, the heart of the city, such as Marunouchi or Shinjuku in Tokyo, the city to which Hino is fond of referring in his works, is not a place for residence, but for offices. It is very much uninhabited, and deserted at night. Offices, shops, the restaurants often close and are replaced by new businesses. People in an office area appear and disappear, one after another, much more rapidly than in the residential areas of the city. You yourself might be transferred from this office area to another in a few years. You could even be dismissed in a few months. You are not acclimatized to the city. The city is also hermetic, wild, ec-centric, nonhabitual, and unknown; it is a place of motion, communication, guidance, and barter. It is a place for nomadic people, foragers, and hunters and gatherers, who roam about it with an extraordinary sense of orientation.

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IV. Feminist Phenomenological Criticism of Home-centrism Home is a refuge from the hostile outside. Because a home provides us with safety, rest, recovery, and individuality, to have a home is closely related to the defense of human rights such as human dignity, civil liberty, property, self-determination, and privacy. Some people in a city, called “homeless people,” have no place to dwell. They cannot have a fixed address in a very different sense from traditional nomadic people lacking a fixed residence. Nomadic people have their own portable house, and move with their family. Without a dwelling, the identity of homeless people in the city is certainly at risk. Since dwelling is central to our everyday life and identity, it would seem to be legitimate to emphasize the importance for human existence of dwelling at home. In the phenomenological tradition from Heidegger to Casey, there is a tendency to valorize the condition of dwelling in a stable home. For Heidegger, dwelling is man’s mode of being. Habitual human activity reveals things as meaningful, and it is through dwelling among meaningful things that people have a place for themselves. Human beings create their dwelling only through building. “Building as dwelling, that is, as being on the earth, however, remains for man’s everyday experience that which is from the

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outset ‘habitual’—we inhabit it, as our language says as beautifully: it is the Gewohnte.”9 Casey also writes as follows: “To dwell is to exercise patience-of-place; it requires willingness to cultivate, often seemingly endlessly, the inhabitational possibilities of a particular residence. Such willingness shows that we care about how we live in that residence and that we care about it as a place for living well, not merely as a ‘machine for living’.”10 Casey thinks that to cultivate the interior of a territory or of a house, we must cultivate our interior, namely our mind, our intellect. Casey finally prioritizes hestial dwelling over hermetic dwelling. I, on the contrary, maintain that hermetic dwelling is more fundamental than hestial dwelling. However, feminists have criticized this valorization of home. If to cultivate the interior of a house is to cultivate our mind, those who lack homes, i.e. homeless people, run the risk of having their very humanity placed into question, as Gail Weiss has claimed.11 Feminists also have pointed out that the image of Hestia or Penelope sitting by the hearth and preserving the home while her man roams outside has defined basic cultural ideas of womanhood. As Luce Irigaray has already claimed, the comforts and supports of house and home historically come at the expense of women.12 Man can build and dwell in the world in a patriarchal culture only on the basis of the materiality and nurturance of women. According to Irigaray, women are “fluid,” moving beings.13 In her book, L’oubli de l’air: Chez Martin Heidegger, she argued that Western philosophy, including the thoughts of Heidegger, has conferred a privileged position to earth among the four elements of earth, water, fire, air, and established a metaphysics that is based on the metaphor of earth and soil.14 Masculine metaphysics has neglected the moving beings, especially, air, because air has no shape, no limit, and no boundary. Air is not something to be built or constructed. Masculine metaphysics cannot bring air under control. 9 Martin Heidegger, “Building, Dwelling, Thinking,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), p. 147. 10 Casey, Getting Back into Place, p. 174. 11 Gail Weiss, Refiguring the Ordinary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), p. 138. 12 Luce Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference, trans. Carolyn Burke and Gillian C. Gill (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992). 13 Luce Irigaray, L’oubli de l’air: Chez Martin Heidegger (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1983), pp.135–154. 14 Luce Irigaray, L’oubli de l’air: Chez Martin Heidegger, pp. 9–43.

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Iris Marion Young, a feminist and a specialist on Merleau-Ponty, has criticized the maleness of Heidegger’s allegedly universal ontology and, therefore, has implicitly questioned Casey’s phenomenology of place: “In the idea of ‘home,’ man projects onto woman the nostalgic longing for the lost wholeness of the original mother. To fix and keep hold of his identity man makes a house, puts things in it, and confines there his woman, who reflects his identity to him. The price she pays for supporting his subjectivity, however, is dereliction, having no self of her own.”15 Young claims that a subjectivity of man depends on woman’s objectification and dereliction; he has a home at the expense of her homelessness, as she serves as the ground on which he builds.16 The phenomenologists who place too much importance on the necessity of home for the cultivation of one’s own identity tend to forget the fragility of home and the fact that having a home is only possible on the basis of someone’s dereliction of a home. Having a home involves the appropriation and the monopolization of nature, which originally belonged to no one. That Hermes is the God of thieves, namely the God who neglects ownership, must have deep implications. Now we understand why Hino felt stifled and suppressed in pastoral nature as well as in the town (tokai). Hino comes from a landowning family. However, Hino himself became “homeless” in a twofold sense. His family lost their land because of the economic decline of his part of the country. He accompanied his parents to Korea, when the country was still under Japanese colonial rule, and spent many years of his childhood there. After the war, Hino and his family were driven out of Korea and back to Japan. Hino lost the land and home of his childhood. But his childhood home was a product of colonial exploitation. He was consciously critical of the patriarchal, pre-modern system of landownership, and would unconsciously try to escape from its inner cultural influence. Thus, while admitting the validity of the above-mentioned criticisms of feminists, I pose another question: Is it true to say that habitual human activity reveals things as meaningful, and that it is through dwelling among these meaningful things that people have a place for themselves? If it is, hermetic dwelling (the original meaning of the English word “dwell” is “wander”) cannot reveal things as meaningful, and cannot cause people to have a place for themselves. What, then, do we make of Hino’s experience of feeling himself opened even up 15

Iris Marion Young, Intersecting Voices: Dilemmas of Gender, Political Philosophy, and Policy (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987), p. 135. 16 Young, Intersecting Voices, p. 138.

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to space when he was at the heart of city, and of feeling the city linked to the wilderness?

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V. The Meaningless, the Absolute My question is whether habitual human activity reveals things as meaningful. Habit is the ability to adapt ourselves to certain environments. Acquiring a habit causes our response to the environment to become semiautomatic, easier, and faster. Thus, the semi-automaticity of habit makes possible our second order of attitudes toward the environment. We can distance ourselves from influences from the environment, and organize our habits into more planned, abstract behavior. Although a habit is semi-automatic, it is never a purposeless mechanical response; a certain purpose or intention is already incorporated in a habit. Habit is the intentional action to bring an intended result without making much conscious effort to adapt oneself to the environment. Accordingly, habit is possible only after a stable relationship is established between bodily movement and the environment. Habit needs a stable reaction from the environment. Habit needs some foreseeable, domesticated environment. The characteristic of human adaptation to the environment, in comparison with other animals, is that human beings have collectively changed their environment much more than other animals have done. We make various kinds of tools; raise animals, cultivate fields, construct buildings, villages and cities; make intellectual and communicative tools such as language, calculators, books, art, and mass media; and also construct social systems such as governments, legal systems, economic systems, and so on. The life of human beings strongly depends on these artifacts and the humanized environment that they have produced. The humanization of the environment makes it easier to acquire a habit. Human beings have changed themselves through altering their environment and adapting to it. It can be said that human beings are produced by the environment that they have produced. We adapt ourselves to the already humanized environment changed by our predecessors and contemporaries. Our adaptation is, in this sense, rather to others or to the society than to wild nature. In this sense, human beings are the most self-domesticated animals among all animals. Habitual human activity needs this alteration and rearrangement of the environment. To make things “meaningful,” we change them in order to organize them according to our own purposes or intentions; in other words, we “domes-

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ticate” our environment. Domestication is the opposite of wilderness. What Hino was afraid of was the triumph of the homogeneity of the humanized environment, namely pastoral nature and the town, and the loss of otherness through domestication. In concluding this paper, I refer to another book. This would appear to be a sudden change of theme, but I think that the book offers an important suggestion as to why Hino has been so zealous in his attempt to locate the wilderness in such an artificial place as Tokyo. Yumiko Kawaguchi, whose mother was afflicted with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), wrote an excellent book documenting the advancement of her mother’s disease, the care she took of her, and the attitudes towards her condition. ALS is well known as a disorder that leads to muscle weakness and atrophy throughout the body, caused by degeneration of the motor neurons. Affected persons may ultimately lose the ability to initiate and control all voluntary movements. The book, entitled The Body Dying Hard: Living an Ordinary Life with ALS,17 was the winner of 2011’s Ohya Soichi Documentary Prize. In it, she describes a process in which her mother gradually, but more rapidly than imagined, succumbed to locked-in syndrome. This is a condition in which a patient is alert, but cannot move or communicate verbally due to complete paralysis of nearly all voluntary muscles in the body. Finally, her mother’s condition deteriorated to total locked-in syndrome, in which her eyes became paralyzed as well. Yumiko no longer has any means of communicating with her mother. She then wrote: When I know that my mother has no control, I realize an inestimable, irreplaceable value of the being, which is heterogeneous to me. When giving up the idea of finding meaning in communication, the absoluteness of the being rises up. You, my mother, transcend any intention, personality, any value of life, and even any meaning of existence. You are just what you are there. You are a unique existence, being beyond anyone’s control.18

The wilderness that Keizo Hino has pursued in his literature can be found in Yumiko’s mother. In his autobiographical novel, Dream Island,19 Hino wrote of 17

Yumiko Kawaguchi, Ikanai Shintai: ALS-teki Nichijo wo Ikiru (Tokyo: Igakushoin Publisher, 2010). 18 Cited from Yumiko Kawaguchi, “Brain Machines: Towards Symbiosis and Solidarity,” paper presented at “Phenomenology of Nervous Disorders” conference, November 3, 2010, Rikkyo University. 19 Keizo Hino, Yume no shima (Tokyo: Kodansha Publisher, 1985).

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finding a correspondence with absoluteness when he happened to visit Dream Island, a reclaimed island in Tokyo Bay made completely of trash. It is symbolic that the island made of useless things is connected to the wilderness. A sandy desert, a rocky mountain top, skyscraper offices during holidays, an artificial island of trash, and a person with total locked-in syndrome are all wild beings, since they are out of the realm of so-called “social utility,” out of control, undomesticated, and incommunicable. These things exist independently of our self-centered value system. They are beings to which we cannot and should not assign meanings. To do so would be to domesticate and categorize them. They would no longer be wild. They are pure existents. The correspondence that Hino has experienced is contact with such existents. The correspondence is the experience of the absoluteness of the existence that happens to those who are homeless, possess nothing, and lose the ability to control things and give one’s own meanings to them. In reality, wilderness can be discovered everywhere, even in pastoral nature and towns, because Being is fundamentally wild. What Hino was seeking is otherness: otherness in our contemporary life, that which exists in the artificial, urban environment, and also that which is present in the modernized existence of human beings. The more culture and civilization advance, the more nature is domesticated; so also the natural in human existence. In trying to find the wilderness in Tokyo, Hino also tried to find the absolute otherness in human existence in order to celebrate and praise it. Now we understand why Hino is counted as an environmentalist author. Deep ecology is the thought that claims that nature has its own value in itself, value independent from human utility. The pure existent that Hino found in the heart of the city is precisely what deep ecologists have been pursuing. It is a little odd that Hino should be able to find this pure existent in the city, and even stranger that Dream Island, a symbol of environmental pollution, can be associated with the environmental protectionism of deep ecology. We should continue to deepen our eco-phenomenology of place in order to celebrate the wilderness of otherness.

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Toward a Phenomenological Reading of Landscape: Bachelard, Merleau-Ponty, and Zong Bing Kuan-min HUANG

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Academia Sinica, Taiwan National Chengchi University, Taiwan

Landscape is not usually seen as a philosophical concept, but rather as a common sense description, often accepted in the aesthetic or artistic domain, and including something of tourist or commercial value. In the common understanding, to want to see a landscape indicates a desire to enjoy something extraordinary on earth. In order to fulfill this desire, it is often necessary to start a journey. A real landscape very often exists somewhere beyond the place where the ordinary person lives, which is why we often need to travel a long distance. In this case, landscape refers to splendor, to the sublime. As a spectacle might appear awesome to onlookers, the visual mode dominates in this description and conception of landscape. By contrast, workplaces and dwellings might seem inferior to huge and unfamiliar spectacles. Yet do such ordinary scenes not also belong to the conception of landscape? In recent geographical, artistic, and philosophical studies, ordinary places have not been totally excluded from ideas of landscape. In this short sketch, what appear to be confusing at first sight will be some basic questions concerning the origins, formations, and transformations of landscape. Where and how does landscape start to be meaningful? Who can really appreciate landscape and raise discussions about it? Are landscapes real or imaginary? Is landscape to be counted as a phenomenon of culture or nature? Are there any historical or cultural factors that can influence the understanding of landscape? In a certain sense, one should simply decide to whom these questions should be raised. But some might object that the phenomena of landscape do not belong to any particular science or discipline. In addition to this objection, they might say that nowadays the requisites of interdisciplinary cooperation do not presuppose the closing off of any particular discipline. If such objections can be

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sustained, the questions will remain unanswered, because it will become increasingly difficult to establish an overall interpretation of landscape. The conception of landscape depends on how a specific discipline or theory treats its object. Thus, the questions take us back to the starting point. In this paper, I will try to sketch an approach to landscape, keeping in mind that the phenomena goes beyond the limits of different disciplines in human sciences, even reaching the point of interrogating the worldview and basic presuppositions of the disciplines concerning landscape. I will also keep open the area of discussion by anticipating possibilities for interdisciplinary dialogue. I admit that some concrete resources in the fields of history and culture not only depict landscape as a representation (artistic or geographic) but also offer reflections on the basis of this depiction. These reflections may even lead to a different way of thinking about landscape. I. Terminology and Cultures of Landscape

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In order to emphasize the philosophical implications of landscape, I will start with a very short terminological consideration. The word landscape has various corresponding words in different cultures. We have landscape in English,1 Landschaft in German, landschape in Dutch, paysage in French,2 and fengjing (lit. wind-scene) or shanshui (lit. mountain-water) in Chinese. For the variations between landscape, Landschaft, and paysage in the European expressions, I will refer to the studies of Catherine Franceschi,3 who demonstrates the diverse origins of the lexical group. It would, for example, be erroneous to equate the

1 According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), landscape has two major meanings: (1) “A picture representing natural inland scenery, as distinguished from a sea picture, a portrait, etc.”, (2) “Inland natural scenery, or its representation in painting.” The word comes from Dutch: “a. Du. landschap (= OE. landscipe masc., OS. landscepi neut., OHG. lantscaf, mod.G. landschaft fem., ON. landskap-r masc.), f. land LAND n. + -schap (see -SHIP). The word was introduced as a technical term of painters; the corrupt form in -skip was according to our quots. a few years earlier than the more correct form.” 2 According to Le Petit Robert, the sense of paysage is originally “étendu de pays” and dates from 1549. The word includes at least two meanings: “partie d’un pays que la nature présente à un observateur” and “tableau représentant la nature et où les figures ne sont que des accessoires. ” 3 Catherine Franceschi, “Du mot paysage et de ses équivalents dans cinq langues européennes,” in Michel Collot, ed., Les eujeux du paysage (Bruxelles: Ousia, 1997), pp. 75–111.

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pays-age (pays + suffix -age) referred to in French with the Land-schaft (Land + suffix -schaft) indicated in German. However divergent in the etymological perspective, the meanings of landscape seem to converge today in a view or a vision of the land probably as preserved in its natural form. With regard to the emergence of the words, the European expressions do not go back earlier than the Renaissance, that is, around the fifteenth century.4 The etymology shows also a parallel history between the word and the art of painting. Landscape as a technique of representing the land originated from that period in the history of art when perspective was discovered. In comparison to the European genealogy of landscape, the Chinese ideas of landscape have a much longer history and exerted a strong influence on Japan and Korea. The term “mountain-water” (shanshui) appeared earlier than “wind-scene” (fengjing). The idea of landscape originated in Chinese landscape poetry and painting around the fourth century A.D. But the term “mountain-water” was not unfamiliar before that period and can be traced back to the sixth century B.C. Mountains and waters have a symbolic connotation with regard to ethical virtue. The main idea can be found in Confucius’s words: “The wise find pleasure in water and the virtuous find pleasure in hills” (Analects, 6:235). This observation by Confucius will not be our focus here, but it should be pointed out that the collective expression of nature as mountains and waters indicates an ethical correspondence in the ancient Chinese mind, especially in Confucianism. The term “mountain-water” began to take on aesthetic connections during the fourth to fifth centuries, as a result of the works of painters such as Gu Kaizhi (340–407) and Zong Bing (375–443), or of poets such as Ji Kang (223–262) and Ruan Ji (210–263), or later Tao Yuanming (365–427) and Xie Lingyun (385–433). As a concept, landscape, referring to mountains and waters, became not just a subject for pictorial representation but also for poetical creation. Landscape paintings were paired with landscape poetry. It should be stressed that the emergence of landscape literature and art at that time was a direct product of Daoism. Nature was originally taken as a way of Being, of naturally-being-so (ziran). Thus, its synonym, the landscape as mountain-water, 4

Alain Roger, Court traité du paysage (Paris: Gallimard, 1997), p. 64. Roger holds the opinion that the Western terms for landscape came from the landscape paintings dating from the Flemish school of landscape painting in the fifteenth century, as even Petrarch had written his Ascent of Mont Ventoux in 1636. Roger argues that the experience of mountain climbing has no posterity, i.e., it does not transform a mountain into a landscape (p. 84). 5 James Legge, Confucian Analects, the Great Learning, and the Doctrine of the Mean (The Chinese Classics, Vol. 1) (1893; reprint, Taipei: Southern Materials Center, 1983) p. 192.

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was assumed to have its own power to emerge, live, and create. Nature has its rules independent of artificial observations and manipulations. By drawing contrasts between China and Europe, I will try to sketch some more traits implied in these ideas of landscape that date from an early period in China and that are still influential today. According to Augustin Berque, there could be four criteria to describe a culture of landscape, but not every culture can fulfill the four criteria. Indeed, only two cultures have been able to do so: the Chinese and the European.6 Some cultures do not even have a term for landscape. Besides delicate reflections and representations, the forms of nature can provide the minimum conditions for landscapes, which Berque designated as proto-landscapes (proto-paysage).7 The difference between land and landscape requires some elaboration. Alain Roger refers to this difference as “double artialization”: artialization in situ (on the field) and in visu (in and by the vision).8 The duplicity links the two—land and landscape. Nevertheless it is worth noting that this double artialization requires a different mode of thinking to express it, neither subjective nor objective, but beyond the distinction of objectivity and subjectivity. The double artialization of landscape means a mutual penetration of both the subjective and objective sides. There should be a specific mode for landscape. To explain this situation, I will refer to the function of the imagination, which reveals a different way by which we perceive and form landscapes, an approach proposed by Bachelard. I will also deepen this perception of landscape on the ground of the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, especially his later idea of a new ontology. Besides the modern theoretical concerns, it is worth noting that some ideas implied in the traditional ideas of landscape would be useful nowadays for us to develop. For this aim, I will engage a phenomenological reading of a Chinese text, which offers a vision of landscape painting traditions since an early period in China’s history. In interpreting landscape as a universal phenomenon accessible to everyone in the modern era, my aim is to reach across cultures. The reading I propose here is also one that crosses traditions. It will 6

Augustin Berque, “Paysage, milieu, histoire,” in Cinq propositions pour une théorie du paysage (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1994), p. 16. The four criteria are: (1) The use of one or more words to speak of “landscape”; (2) one medium of literature (oral or writing) to describe landscapes or to praise their beauty; (3) some pictorial representations of landscapes; and (4) some gardens for entertainment. These four criteria distinguish the different levels of landscape culture. 7 Berque, “Paysage, milieu, histoire,” p. 17. 8 Alain Roger, “Histoire d’une passion théorique ou comment on devient un Raboliot du paysage,” in Cinq propositions pour une théorie du paysage, p. 115.

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help us to reflect on the philosophical foundations of landscape in our common experiences. II. Landscape as the Flesh of the World I will not deny that landscape can be taken as a theme for scientific research. But I will not forget the special joy that comes from experiencing landscapes. This sentiment arises not because I am a Chinese and thus conditioned by Chinese landscape culture, but rather comes from a certain intimacy that one feels with nature. Thus, a possible starting point in taking the subject of landscape seriously is the common experience of nature and place.

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1. Bachelard: Topoanalysis, Topophilia, and Cosmic Correspondence It is possible that intimacy with nature is experienced by people in every culture, as Bachelard would express it in his meditations on material images. The four elements of earth, air, fire, and water indicate an immediate and primitive experience of humanity in relation to the material world. Besides material images, Bachelard also proposed the idea of topoanalysis, a term borrowed from the psychoanalyst J. B. Pontalis. Bachelard held that “the house image would appear to have become the topography of our intimate being.”9 Similarly, if the topoanalysis defined by Bachelard is “the systematic psychological study of the sites of our intimate lives,”10 we can develop this idea in two directions. First, the concept of place (topos) implied in this formulation merits deep reflection. Second, the topoanalysis can be connected to a study of landscape. With regard to the second point, one should emphasize that what Bachelard was referring to when he used the phrase “systematic psychological study” was not the typical discipline of psychology but the phenomenological method. Another part of the definition is valuable for us—the idea that the landscape has to do with “the sites of our intimate lives,” with “the topography of our intimate being.” The intimacy that one develops with a dwelling place is expressed as topophilia. One’s well-being or happiness is tightly linked with the experience of the house. Enlarging this emotion to the experience of landscape, we also find topophilia in the landscape in two types of activities: dwelling and travelling.

9 10

Gaston Bachelard, La poétique de l’espace (Paris: PUF, 1957), p. 18. Bachelard, La poétique de l’espace, p. 27.

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With Bachelard, we also find a series of conceptual usages on correspondence. The term “correspondence” is very much present from his earlier work Water and Dreams through to a later work The Poetics of Space. There are several kinds of correspondence: Shelleyean, Balzacean, Swedenborgean, Baudelairean. In general, there are two levels of correspondence: (1) a correspondence of image with speech, and (2) a correspondence between the senses, such as the sense of smell with that of taste, and with touch, and so on.11 In fact, the first level refers to the function of imagination in two aspects: material and dynamic; the Baudelairean correspondence is assimilated to the material imagination, while the Shelleyean to the dynamic imagination.12 For Bachelard, the Baudelairean correspondence was the one with the most immediacy. He described it not as “a simple transposition that would give a code of sensual analogies,” but as “a sum of the sensible being in one instant.”13 The second level is designated as ontological: the odor of menthol can remind one of the life as simple aroma, “the life emanates from the being as an odor emanates from the substance.”14 This idea of correspondence leads to that of reverberation (retentissement), to which was later attributed a phenomenological sense: “Nature reverberates with ontological echoes. Beings respond to each other by imitating the elementary voices.”15 To evoke the “elementary voices” is also to involve cosmic correspondence. In this way, speech (logos), the universe or nature (cosmos), and the bodily senses (soma, aisthesis) are woven in the same network. Through this special theory of ontological and cosmic correspondence, distinguished from epistemological correspondence, we can try to grasp the materialization of a landscape without losing its spiritual effect. With its element of correspondence, a landscape is set in the whole of the universe. For Bachelard, the factor of animation resides in the imagination, material as well as dynamic. However, the connection is cosmic and even ontological. But imagination keeps a distance from perception, just as the unreal can take a certain priority over the real. In spite of this distinction, we should not forget where those odors come from and arrive to. The nose is not just a sense organ attached to the body. Thus, perception cannot be totally exempted from consideration. If we are unable to say that there is a strict correspondence between perception and imagination,

11

Gaston Bachelard, L’eau et les rêves (Paris: José Corti, 1942), p. 261. Gaston Bachelard, L’air et les songes (Paris: José Corti, 1943), p. 63. 13 Gaston Bachelard, Le droit de rêver (Paris: PUF, 1970), p. 231. 14 Bachelard, L’eau et les rêves, p. 10. 15 Bachelard, L’eau et les rêves, p. 258: “La nature retentit d'échos ontologiques. Les êtres se répondent en imitant des voix élémentaires.” 12

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because reality is often distorted by what is not real, then we would like to stress the possibility of the interweaving of imagination and perception. 2. Merleau-Ponty: The Ontology of Cosmic Flesh The idea of element can act as a bridge to the idea of the corporeality of the universe. Merleau-Ponty, in his last “Working Notes,” compiled in The Visible and the Invisible, emphasized the importance of the imaginary:16

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Being and the imaginary are for Sartre “objects,” “entities”— For me they are “elements” (in Bachelard’s sense), that is, not objects, but fields, subdued being, non-thetic being, being before being—and moreover involving their auto-inscription, their “subjective correlate” is a part of them. The Rotempfindung is part of the Rotempfundene—this is not a coincidence, but a dehiscence that knows itself as such.17

The concept of element in the sense of field is related to the idea of the flesh of the world. The flesh is neither matter nor spirit. It is situated in between (“a midway between the spatio-temporal individual and the idea”18) and thus opens up a gap, a spread, or an abyss, just as Merleau-Ponty designates it in the expression of dehiscence. This openness is what renders possible the depth. The flesh is understood as an element of Being,19 which provides the visibility, the dimensionality. By the visibility, what should be understood is the duplicity of the viewer and the visible; i.e., the chiasm that allows the discrepancy between the one who sees and the visible (object). As for the term “element of Being,” we refer to a further development by John Sallis, who argued that the elementals are the multiple encompassings of the landscape.20 The imagination is required by sight to sketch a profile in relation to the absent. The spacing of the imagination brings forth the elemental in the natural sphere. 16 A detailed discussion can be seen in Glen A. Mazis, “La Chair et l’Imaginaire: The Developing Role of the Imagination in Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy,” Philosophy Today 32.1 (Spring 1988): 30–42. 17 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Le visible et l’invisible (1964; Paris: Gallimard, 1986), p. 320; English translation: The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), p. 267. 18 Merleau-Ponty, Le visible et l’invisible, p. 184; The Visible and the Invisible, p. 139. 19 Merleau-Ponty, Le visible et l’invisible, p. 184; The Visible and the Invisible, p. 140. 20 John Sallis, Force of Imagination (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2000), p. 157.

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In this way, what room the unreal makes for the real can be regarded as the spacing of the invisible from and for the visible. Michel Collot states the effect of this idea of the flesh of the world by renewing the traditional correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm.21 For Collot, the paradoxical ubiquity of the human being-there (Dasein, l'être-là) inscribes him in the near here and lets him open to the far. The flesh of the world releases an “ontological overflowing” (débordement ontologique) that renders the thought spatial and causes the body to be one’s own.22 Different from the way in which Collot tries to verify the verbal incarnation of this phenomenology of flesh, I would like to insist on the common interest of the landscape element. The cosmic correspondence found in the flesh of the world is a factor in catching the significance of landscape. What landscape incarnates is the body of the cosmos.

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(1) Depth With regard to dimensionality, the flesh of the world spreads open, which permits depth. As the geographer John Wylie observes, depth is not one dimension among the other two (length and width), but an original factor of the perceived world.23 Wylie connects the experience of landscape to the perspective discussed in the Phenomenology of Perception. For Merleau-Ponty, visual depth comes from an organization of the vision, which involves the perceiving subject. The whole action cannot be reduced to a Cartesian model of subjectivity.24 Wylie takes note of the significance of Merleau-Ponty’s descriptions: visual depth and perspective do not belong to an attempt “to reassert the original status of perspective as an auspicious representation of the real,” but concerns the visible depth, “which forms the medium of embodied perception.”25 In addition, Merleau-Ponty can indicate that there is a primordial depth “which confers upon the other its significance, and which is the thickness of a medium devoid of any thing.”26 As a certain condition for perception, this primordial depth is “an 21

Michel Collot, Le corps cosmos (Paris: La Lettre volée, 2008), p. 32. Collot, Le corps cosmos, p. 33. 23 John Wylie, “Depth and Folds: On Landscape and the Gazing Subject,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24 (2006): 523–524. 24 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, La phénoménologie de la perception (1945; Paris: Gallimard, 1990), p. 305; English translation: Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962), p. 263. 25 Wylie, “Depth and folds,” p. 524. 26 Merleau-Ponty, La phénoménologie de la perception, p. 308; Phenomenology of Perception, p. 266. 22

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opening of perception,” and can define the near and the far. Even the perceiving subject is in a connection and intertwining of the world. The phenomenological effect of depth is in reference to a pre-objective domain of distances and sizes. In short, as Merleau-Ponty has summarized it, “depth cannot be understood as belonging to the thought of an acosmic subject, but as a possibility of a subject involved in the world.”27 To turn this observation into the experience of landscape, one can say that, because the original vision carries with itself the primordial depth, a massive rock is not just a material object in an ordinary sense, but rather a voluminosity that reveals the material condition in space. There is concrete thinking before the conceptual abstraction. In Eye and Mind, Merleau-Ponty developed his thoughts on depth in painting. He investigated the pursuit of depth in Cézanne and affirmed that this primordial dimension (the first dimension instead of the third dimension after length and width) is “the experience of the reversibility of dimensions, of a global ‘locality,’ (…) of a voluminosity we express in a word when we say that a thing is there.”28 The problem here is not a scientific one that aims at measuring the world in order to represent it and even to manipulate it. The voluminosity expresses an original materiality beyond the reductionist version of nature and matter. A painting tries to approach this originality: “In search of depth Cézanne seeks this deflagration of Being, and it is all in the modes of space, in form as much as anything.” 29 Viewed in this ontological dimension, a painting is conatural30 (in French con-naître31, to know, may mean to be born together) or “autofigurative,”32 as the world manifests itself through the hands of the painter, through the texture of painting. The thickness of the water that one intends to see through is an indication of the voluminosity of space. The water is not in 27

Merleau-Ponty, La phénoménologie de la perception, p. 309; Phenomenology of Perception, p. 267. 28 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, L’Œil et l’esprit (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), p. 65; English translation: Eye and Mind, trans. Carleton Dallery, in James Edie, ed., The Primacy of Perception (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), p. 180. 29 Merleau-Ponty, L’Œil et l’esprit, p. 65; Eye and Mind, p. 180. 30 Cf. Merleau-Ponty, La phénoménologie de la perception, p. 251: “je suis capable par connaturalité de trouver un sens à certains aspects de l’être”; Phenomenology of Perception, p. 266. 31 Cf. Merleau-Ponty, La phénoménologie de la perception, p. 245: “le sujet de la sensation ...est une puissance qui co-naît à un certain milieu d’existence ou se synchronise avec lui”; Phenomenology of Perception, p. 211. 32 Merleau-Ponty, L’Œil et l’esprit, p. 69; Eye and Mind, p. 181.

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space, but it inhabits the space and materializes itself there (in space), yet is not contained there.33 The perceived depth reveals rather a connection of water with Being. Through the visible appearance of water, one is given an indication of its living essence. For Merleau-Ponty, the water is vividly situated in the world: “This internal animation, this radiation of the visible is what the painter seeks under the name of depth, of space, of color.”34 (2) Texture of Being From this visibility of depth, the matter is no longer a transition to a universal and abstract knowledge but “a conceptless presentation of universal Being.”35 Instead of having the world before it, the vision is enveloped in the world itself. Likewise, the perceiving I lives in the space “from the inside”; “I am immersed in it.” The circumspection transforms the role of light: “Light is viewed once more as action at a distance.”

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“And since we are told that a bit of ink suffices to make us see forests and storms, light must have its imaginary (son imaginaire).”36

This imaginary is far from the representative mode of thinking; it holds an immediacy that indicates the opening of the world to us, while we are ourselves the flesh of the world. To state it in this way, the landscape finds its new mode of presentation. A vision of the landscape is painted in us, in our bodies: through the vision “we come in contact with the sun and the stars,” “we are everywhere all at once”; “even our power to imagine ourselves elsewhere (…) borrows from vision and employs means that we owe to it.”37 Meanwhile, having depth, the visible has “a layer [doublure] of invisibility.” It incarnates “a dehiscence of Being.”38 To allow a fragment in the world is to let the thickness of Being appear, along with which we have depth, color, form, line, movement, contour, and physiognomy as “branches of Being.”39 If the concavo-convex surfaces of land33

Merleau-Ponty, L’Œil et l’esprit, p. 71; Eye and Mind, p. 182. Merleau-Ponty, L’Œil et l’esprit, p. 71; Eye and Mind, p. 182. 35 Merleau-Ponty, L’Œil et l’esprit, p. 71; Eye and Mind, p. 182. 36 Merleau-Ponty, L’Œil et l’esprit, p. 59; Eye and Mind, p. 178. Translation slightly modified. 37 Merleau-Ponty, L’Œil et l’esprit, pp. 83–84; Eye and Mind, p. 187. 38 Merleau-Ponty, L’Œil et l’esprit, p. 85; Eye and Mind, p. 187. 39 Merleau-Ponty, L’Œil et l’esprit, p. 88; Eye and Mind, p. 188. 34

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scape carry with them all of these branches of Being, then the massiveness of nature or world will also force the experiences to sustain the cursive and curving structure of Being. From this point of view, there would be experiences of walking,40 wandering, tracing, travelling, and so forth. These bodily experiences are tightly connected to the appreciation of landscape, while the reason for this connection is ontological in integrating the cosmic imagination. To continue in this concrete manner of thinking will be to consider the texture of Being. What Merleau-Ponty discovered in the material and carnal massiveness of the perceptive world is related to the auto-manifestation of the world. Visibility refers back to an ontological grounding. A painting is not a secondary phenomenon attached to the mind but signifies something deeper, because “it offers to our sight the inward traces of vision, so that it might join with them, and because it offers to vision its inward tapestries, the imaginary texture of the real.”41 The deeper texture is brought out by the imaginary without being against the visible. In addition, because a painting is far from the banal imitation of reality, it implies a powerful and voracious vision that “opens upon a texture of Being of which the discrete sensorial messages are only the punctuations or the caesurae. The eye lives in this texture as a man lives in his house.”42 This texture has to do with the materiality,43 with the solidarity of Being, which a painter could find in trees, rocks, colors, and curving lines. This colorful materiality corresponds to certain poetic expressions. Merleau-Ponty explained the secret darkness of milk in Valery’s poems, in responding to Proust’s literary experience. The texture is related to the idea of the depth, in so far as the whiteness of milk covers beneath it that blackness. Both colors refer to the colorfulness and, more fundamentally, to the materiality, to the flesh. The invisible (the idea in the context of the discussion) is involved: the “carnal texture” of the colors “presents to us what is absent from all flesh; it is a furrow that traces itself out magically under our eyes without a tracer, a certain hollow, a certain interior, a certain absence, a negativity that is not nothing….”44 The imaginary texture and the carnal texture converge in the visible; these two textures are isomorphic with the texture of Being, which is 40

Claude Reichler, “Le marcheur romantique et la phénoménologie du chemin,” in B. Lévy et A. Gillet, eds., Marche et paysage (Genève: Metropolis, 2007), pp. 31–64; on landscape and the phenomenology of walking, see p. 54. 41 Merleau-Ponty, L’Œil et l’esprit, p. 24; Eye and Mind, p. 165. 42 Merleau-Ponty, L’Œil et l’esprit, p. 27; Eye and Mind, p. 166. 43 Merleau-Ponty, L’Œil et l’esprit, p. 67; Eye and Mind, p. 188. 44 Merleau-Ponty, Le visible et l’invisible, p. 198; The Visible and the Invisible, p. 151.

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Kuan-min HUANG

incarnated in the style as a condition of the visible. The chiasm of the visible and the invisible joins together the ideality and the carnal corporeality, in forming a pair. Again the absence delivers a certain beyond, or a certain imaginary (with “Bachelard saying that each sense has its own imaginary”45). The texture of Being, as the flesh of the world, permits the reversibility that indicates an original coupling of seeing-seen, a reciprocity, a “quasi-reflection (Einfühlung), Ineinander.”46 It is not only that my eyes can see, but that they also can be seen. I see that my eyes are seen, just as I feel that my hand is touched while it touches the other hand or the hand of the other. The major experience is proved not only in my touching and being touched in the handshake, but also in my experience of the seeing of forests. My gazing as being gazed is transported on the gazed landscape’s gazing. It seems that the forest or the landscape can gaze at me. Going back to “a pregnancy of possibles, Weltmöglichkeit,”47 the significance of this texture of Being reveals a pre-objective (and then pre-subjective) experience of originality implied in the flesh of the world. Mountains and waters are seen, not as objects, but as a condition of visibility. The texture of Being finds an ontological incarnation in the massiveness of the lived body. By this brief sketch of some elements of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology through the imaginary, the flesh of the world, the depth, and the texture of Being, we may arrive at a rough ideality of landscape. How is a landscape significant to the spectator and to the painter? Is it not in the sense of Merleau-Ponty that a landscape keeps its wildness to make itself significant? Even in the eyes of Chinese aesthetics, famous for its highly civilized taste, this wildness is as strange as it seems to be. In fact, the wildness cannot be understood as the negation of civilization. The ideality of landscape does not reject its wild nature. In figuring its opposite side (culture), wildness unveils the cosmic dimension. In this manner, Bachelard’s concept of topoanalysis provides a cosmic reading of the imaginary power hidden in the images of space, place, and dwelling. An even deeper dimension is the cosmic depth that offers the wild elements in the landscape. For us, the cosmic texture is just a texture of Being in its materiality. The landscape realizes the topological condition of the flesh of the world. To use a term of Michel Collot, the landscape belongs to the body of the cosmos (le corps cosmos), since the depth constitutes a fundamental dimension of the universe. 45 Merleau-Ponty, Le visible et l’invisible, p. 298; The Visible and the Invisible, p. 245. Cf. Mazis, “La Chair et l’Imaginaire: The Developing Role of the Imagination in Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy,” p. 41. 46 Merleau-Ponty, Le visible et l’invisible, p. 299; The Visible and the Invisible, p. 245. 47 Merleau-Ponty, Le visible et l’invisible, p. 304; The Visible and the Invisible, p. 250.

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We are brought to consider the double play of the ideality and the wildness in the formation of landscape, especially through the practices that we have pondered in Chinese landscape paintings, which may deepen our experiences of landscape.

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III. Formation of Landscape: Reading Zong Bing’s Text In the beginning of this paper, we started with some meaningful Chinese remarks on opening a different dimension, which I call a cosmic dimension. For Chinese painters, the Kunlun mountains are surely a different kind of experience than the Saint Victor mountain was for Cezanne. However we can still wonder if there is anything universal to grasp in this particular experience of landscape paintings in both Chinese and Western traditions. Maybe the key point lies in the term “universal.” If one can drop from consideration the element of universality and go back to interrogating how the universal is related to the universe, it would be possible to get a hint of whether landscapes reflect something universal. One of the earliest texts on landscape painting is the Introduction to Painting Landscapes of Zong Bing (375–443). A traditional saying draws a link between the moral order and the natural order: “Sages, possessing the Tao, respond to things. The virtuous, purifying their thoughts, savor images. As for landscape, it has physical existence, yet tends toward the spiritual.”48 But this link turns out to render the meaning of landscape. The spirituality of landscape reveals this original sense hidden in its physical exterior. The hylomorphical structure seems to work in admitting the spiritual movement in the physical matter, as with the breath blown into the creation of Pygmalion. This mythic or Aristotelian expression is still far from the Chinese idea. The life of a landscape comes from inside and not from outside. To take the “wind-scene” as our metaphor, we may say that the wind blows from within. An original vitality is rooted in the isomorphic structure of the natural order and the spiritual order. The image shows its human side and the natural side at the same time. There must be a profound reason for the existence of a landscape. “Now, sages follow the Tao through their spirits, and the virtuous comprehend this. Landscapes (shanshui) display the beauty of the Tao through their forms, and humane men delight in this. Are these not similar?”49

48

Susan Bush and Hsio-Yen Shih, comp. and ed., Early Chinese Texts on Painting (Cambridge, MA: The Harvard-Yenching Institute, 1995), p. 36. 49 Bush and Shih, Early Chinese Texts on Painting, p. 36.

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At first sight, we have observed the logic of analogy in this discourse: an analogy of nature (Tao), landscape, and humanity. The equation of nature with the Tao is not evident in all cases; for Taoist philosophers, a basic principle of ontological analogy consists in this proposition: humanity models itself on the Earth, the Earth on the Sky, the Sky on the Tao, and the Tao on Nature (Laozi, chap. 25). This analogy forms a big chain of Being. On this ontological principle, we can roughly assume that the Tao, as it assimilates itself to Nature, refers back to a living force of nature. Through this analogy, the landscape is in parallel with the functionality of nature. Even under the scope of the Tao of nature, the landscape nevertheless retains in itself a certain independence: As Zong Bing puts it: “Landscapes (shanshui) display the beauty of the Tao through their forms.” We can see that simply by way of its forms, the landscape is accessible to the structure of Being. However, the path is the bodily experience: travelling into the real mountains and rivers in nature. As Zong Bing describes his reason for painting, after having done a great deal of travelling, he finds himself being drawn away from that energetic life of intimacy with landscapes. He expresses his regret: “Ashamed of being unable to concentrate my vital breath and attune my body, I am afraid of limping among the Stone Gate. Therefore, I paint images and spread colors, constructing cloudy peaks.”50 But we cannot understand these paragraphs as offering a causal explanation for painting. The cause can be found in some other clues beyond the so-called reality. To paint will mean to surpass the ordinary reality and to reach at the spiritual reality. The painted images open a different realm linking the body and the imagination. Another analogy comes to bridge the expression and the intention: If truths that were abandoned before the period of middle antiquity may still be sought by the imagination a thousand years later, and if meaning that is subtler than the images of speech can be grasped by the mind in books and writings, what then of where one’s body has strolled and one’s eyes rested repeatedly when it is described form for form, and color for color?51

The images come after the bodily experience. What is more important is the truth implied in the understanding. The actions of painting images and of spreading colors is far from imitating the seen reality, but rather establish the connection between truth and reality, in reserving a realm of the beyond. This 50 51

Bush and Shih, Early Chinese Texts on Painting, p. 37. Bush and Shih, Early Chinese Texts on Painting, p. 37.

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realm of the beyond can designate an outside of the visible, a metaphorical interest, and further the imaginary scene. In this manner, the image itself is flexible; an image of the mountain can refer to the material form of the mountain seen by the eyes, but also can imply an immanent difference between the image itself and the material mountain that is situated far away from the observing body and amount to a size beyond reach. The reasoning of this “if …then” presupposes two premises. The first premise refers to a historical understanding, through which the truth may be sought by the imagination, which strides across the historical distance. The second premise states an understanding in language that can cross the gap between the vital speech and the writing. The two conditions (expressed by “if”) set down two barriers to understanding. If these barriers can be overcome, then the other obstacle (the possibility of painting) will be easier to overcome. The connection between the historical understanding and the linguistic understanding reveals Zong Bing’s reasoning behind the possibility of engaging in the action of painting. Any technique of drawing and coloring requires a meaning and assumes this possibility, because understanding is the key to painting. The reasoning behind the possibility of engaging in painting shows that there is a detour to be made between understanding and the ability to engage in the action of painting. An artist needs to approach the proximity of painting by way of conquering the remoteness, hidden in the act of understanding. Such remoteness paves the way for the proximate understanding of bodily experience. “What then of where one’s body has strolled and one’s eyes rested repeatedly?”52 The key actions in this sentence are strolling and resting repeatedly. In fact, getting back to its Chinese expressions,53 the action is not a static staying or resting, but a dynamic to-and-fro, a lingering around the place, a strolling about the place where the body is not far, the eyes gazing and playing with the visions. The scene manifests the attachment of the eyes and the body. In short, the proximity is given by the bodily actions. In appearance, there is a presentation of colors and forms, but the very essence of painting for Zong Bing involves a kinesthetic dimension. The bodily actions immanent in the strolling and lingering reveal a tempo, a rhythm playing the near and the far, keeping vital breath in between. To paint the landscape is inevitably to turn the remote to the near. How are a thousand meters of a high mountain to be represented on a piece of paper? Is a skilled imagination not required to shrink something large in scale into a small 52 53

況乎身所盤桓、目所綢繆。 盤桓、綢繆。

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scale? If this technique of shrinking is projected by the imagination, then the presupposition is that the imagination has the power to exchange the far and the near. In this sense, the formation of a landscape painting emerges according to the play of the imagination in drawing together the near and the far. But this imagination is not a pure projection. The kinesthesia of the bodily approach to the landscape requires the use of the imagination. Since shrinkage cannot be just a method to imitate nature, landscape painting opens up a cosmic dimension in which the imagination plays in a double direction: to shrink and to enlarge. To take this skill of proportional painting (“a vertical stroke of three inches will equal a height of thousands of feet, and a horizontal stretch of several feet will form a distance of a hundred miles”) as a representation of reality would be to miss the whole point. Modern Chinese researchers have a tendency to regard this skill as an origin of Chinese perspective. But this opinion is mainly due to an inferiority complex in the face of modern European paintings. Why is it necessary to interpret the problem of near and far simply as a projection of perspective? The impossibility of presenting the whole scale of the landscape is clear. The distortion of the scene on the paper is all too evident. The Chinese tradition of painting takes the path of avoiding scientific representation and political manipulation. Another painter of the same period, Wang Wei (415–443), had also declaimed the view that the aim of painting is “not in order to plan the boundaries of cities or differentiate the locale of provinces, to make mountains and plateaus or delineate watercourses.”54 Rather, the two painters seem to have had similar ideas about the aim of painting: to evoke the movement of the spirit and to find one’s way to nature (the Tao). The purpose in painting, Wang Wei declared, is as follows: “What is found in form is fused with soul, and what activates movements is the mind.”55 We can find in Zong Bing a similar declaration: If response by the eye and accord by the mind [to nature] is considered a universal law, when similitude is skillfully achieved, eyes will also respond completely and the mind be entirely in accord. This response and accord will affect the spirit and, as the spirit soars, the truth will be attained.56

54

Bush and Shih, Early Chinese Texts on Painting, p. 38. Bush and Shih, Early Chinese Texts on Painting, p. 38. Cf. Xu Fuguan, The Spirit of Chinese Art (Zhongguo yishu jingshen) (Taipei: Xuesheng Bookstore, 1966), p. 244. 56 Bush and Shih, Early Chinese Texts on Painting, p. 37. 55

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We will discuss the idea of correspondence later. The citations here are to show the spiritual dimension of painting. For Zong Bing, the conclusion will be a free play of the spirit—“rejoicing in the spirit.”57 But the body is nonetheless important in this model of response. As the eyes respond to the mountain in nature, the spirit is in accord with the truth (Tao, the way to nature, the essence of nature). Therefore, the painting, especially the painting of a landscape, is not intended to represent the land, to view the land in a political perspective, nor in a scientific or practical perspective. It has nothing to do with the modern perspective in painting. What, then, is the purpose of proportion or measurement in the skill of painting? It is primarily a tentative method to release an original distanciation between the real land and the landscape (in painting). The response is both kinesthetic and spiritual. By shrinking the landscape into the paper and enlarging the strokes to represent something huge in scale, the whole action of painting is not limited to a human artistic creation. What is relevant is the cosmic and natural dimension to the action of painting. The real scale is the cosmic scale. The landscape painting amounts to a cosmic fusion, or at least a cosmic correspondence. If there is any practical purpose for painting (to paint and see a painting), it must be a creative transformation between the body and the universe, by way of the cosmic imagination. The following are words of praise for landscape paintings: “Unrolling paintings in solitude, I sit pondering the ends of the earth. Without resisting the multitude of natural promptings, alone I respond to uninhabited wilderness where grottoed peaks tower on high and cloudy forest mass in depth.”58 It is evident that, for Zong Bing, the sentiment of rejoicing comes from the effect of landscape on the spirit. The eyes execute a joyful function to situate anew the spirit and the body. Now, the spirit and the body are not two things; they are furthermore affected by the landscape, a sublime or beautiful pattern of nature. The affectivity here is both bodily and sentimental, due to a double source for the experience of landscape. Based on this brief description of the emergence of landscape painting in Chinese civilization, specially activated by a phenomenological understanding, we emphasize certain meanings useful in further developing our understanding of landscape painting. In summary, the experience of landscape is bodily oriented in the first place, but evokes the imagination to join a cosmic play of 57

Bush and Shih, Early Chinese Texts on Painting, p. 38. “I rejoice in my spirit, and that is all.” (暢神而已) 58 Bush and Shih, Early Chinese Texts on Painting, p. 38.

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breaths and vital forces. This dynamic approach disregards the view that painting is the mere imitation of an ocular vision onto painting paper or tissue, rather urging that it is an art that reveals the kinesthetic training of the body (vision, hearing, smell, touch, etc.). IV. Concluding Remarks

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In this short essay, I have endeavored to give some clues for a discussion of the phenomenology of landscape from an intertwining perspective. The landscape as derived from nature retains its impact for different cultures. But it is quite another matter to express appreciation of landscape. Languages, the skills of (re-)presentation, and artworks are required to fulfill the conditions of landscape thinking (la pensée paysagère59). This is a term coined by Berque to distinguish the process of expressing appreciation of landscape from the thought of landscape. The latter takes landscape as object to know, to design, to construct, while landscape thinking is a term that describes landscape as a configuring factor in thinking. Different thinkers have expressed the same thought, in terms such as “thought landscape (la pensée paysage)” (Michel Collot60) or landscape as a “thinking place (lieu pensant)” (Serge Meitinger) in relation to a “proto-ontic landscape (paysage proto-ontique).”61 Not only does landscape inspire thoughts and living art, but it also deploys itself as a way of thinking and living. The confusion of subjective and objective poles is rooted in the duplication or pairing of the world itself, a view of which Merleau-Ponty would approve. The approach of landscape is at the same time epistemological, aesthetic, and ontological. On the other hand, it is undeniable that Chinese culture has a long tradition concerning landscape. Besides the natural impact of landscapes, people’s eyes 59

Cf. Augustin Berque, La pensée paysagère (Paris: Archibooks, 2008). Michel Collot, “La pensée paysage,” in Françoise Chenet, Michel Collot et Baldine Saint-Girons, eds., Le paysage, états des lieux (Bruxelles: OUSIA, 2001), p. 499: “une relation à double sens et réciproque entre l’homme et le cosmos”; “la pensée paysage peut se lire comme une phrase verbale, mais aussi comme un syntagme nominal, où paysage entre avec pensée dans un rapport d’apposition”; “il permet de suggérer à la fois que le paysage donne à penser, et que la pensée se déploie comme paysage.” 61 Serge Meitinger, “Note sur le paysage comme ‘lieu pensant’,” in Chenet et al., Le paysage, états des lieux, p. 454. One of Meitinger’s sources of reference was Jacques Garelli, who found in Merleau-Ponty the foundation for thinking about the confusion of the sensible and the sensing subject (Meitinger, “Note sur le paysage comme ‘lieu pensant’,” p. 455; Jacques Garelli, Artaud et la question du lieu [Paris: José Corti, 1982], p. 122). 60

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have been trained to appreciate landscapes. Paintings are an obvious instrument and proof of this. However instrumental their appearance may be, landscape paintings are in fact a resource nowadays to reformulate experiences toward the landscape. We cannot neglect the factor of the artificial in the reception of landscape, especially in different cultures. Even now, the ancient traditions are not transferred without modification. Who can deny that after the process of modernization, the landscape culture is no longer the same for the Chinese people? Thus, the process of intertwining is constituted by the weaving of tradition and modernity, of European culture and Chinese culture, of natural landscapes and artificial landscapes. And, therefore, the eyes that view a landscape, and the individuals that are in a landscape, are to be refreshed in new light—light that comes from the depth in nature (sky, sea, rivers, mountains, plains). The problématique of landscape is still open, open to my eyes, to my sense of place, and to my imagination. Conversely, we are also open to the landscape, to its settings and complexes. This reciprocity constitutes a basic condition of the problématique. A certain correspondence is in operation, even in my ignorance, malgré moi. It is a cosmic correspondence constituted by the mutual responses. The wind of the valley blows upon the travelers and animates them to join the concerto played by rocks, waters, trees, insects, and birds. In a general sense, a scene of wind invokes a dynamic correspondence and participation in the landscape. The visible landscape invites the gazer to escape from himself, from his existential bounds. The gazer becomes a traveler who wanders according to the play of his imagination with the scenes. Through cosmic participation, this wandering leads him to a status of forgetting, to a beyond. But the traveler will turn back to the gazer, and even the contemplator; and this time, it will be the landscape that gazes at him. The landscape meditates through the person.

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Some Phenomenology of Not Retiring Lester EMBREE

Florida Atlantic University, U.S.A.

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I. Approach Taken as well as Change of Topic Let me start by explaining my unusual title. Like most good professionals, when I read the theme of “border crossing” for this conference, I wanted to relate to it. The issue of retirement from my university position, which I had started to think about, immediately came to mind. I therefore began collecting my thoughts on the subject. Eventually, I discovered problems with my motivation to retire. One factor was the resources that came with my endowed chair, which I would no longer have if I retired. More interesting, perhaps, is that I found that I was thinking about retiring chiefly because people of my age are just generally expected to retire. Earlier in my life it had occurred to me that I married and had children when I did due to factors of the same sort, and I have come to have some regrets about all that. More generally, even though I do not always remember to do so, I like to think that I have learned to abstract from what others think and then focus exclusively on what the benefits and losses for me would be of an action in my situation. It has now become clear to me that I have no good reason to retire as long as my brain, eyes, ears, voice, and word-processing fingers function adequately. Indeed, I have every reason to continue my work, although perhaps in new ways. My big fear is of losing my wits without recognizing that the process is happening, due to Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia. Unlike the situation in most other countries, it amounts to a civil right in the U.S.A. for tenured professors to go on working until they die in the saddle or, more likely, the wheelchair. I recently read that if an American reaches the age of 60, he can expect to reach 82. That being the case, I wonder whether somebody like me, who is 73, can reach 90!

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However, what I will be talking about here is not entirely contrary to the theme that Professor Yu Chung-chi has set for us. This is because I have finished climbing to the top of the mountain of my career and have already begun to descend on the other side. This is not the sharp change that a “border crossing” seems to involve, but it does involve interesting changes as I progress along what will probably be my last decade. The sign that I have reached my peak is of course the Festschrift that my successor as President of the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, Inc., Tom Nenon, and my doctoral student from my time at Duquesne University, Phil Blosser, honored me with for my 70th birthday.1 If I have said enough to introduce what “not retiring” initially signifies, I still need to address how what I am saying is phenomenological, which it might already seem not to be. Here I am recalling the presentation of Natalie Depraz, at the CARP research symposium in New Orleans in September 2010. She referred to Edmund Husserl’s Ideen, Erstes Buch, §27, “The World of the Natural Attitude: I and My Surrounding World.”2 At least oral tradition has it that this section was originally intended to begin the whole of what has become the founding text of the phenomenological tradition, Part I on the eidetic method being a subsequent addition. Husserl wrote: I am conscious of a world endlessly spread out in space, endlessly becoming and having endlessly become in time. I am conscious of it: that signifies, above all, that intuitively I find it immediately, that I experience it. By my seeing, touching, hearing, and so forth, and in the different modes of sensuous perception, corporeal physical things with some spatial distribution or other are simply there for me, “on hand” in the literal or the figurative sense, whether or not I am particularly heedful of them and busied with them in my considering, thinking, feeling, or willing. Animate beings too—human beings, let us say—are immediately there for me: I look up; I see them; I hear their approach; I grasp their hands; talking with them I understand immediately what they objectivate and think,

1

Advancing Phenomenology: Essays in Honor of Lester Embree (Dordrecht: Springer,

2010). 2

E. Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), p. 49. (Dorion Cairns once told me that on the street after they first met in Husserl’s kitchen, Aron Gurwitsch and he found themselves reciting together from this section!)

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what feelings stir within them, what they wish or will. They are present as actualities in my field of intuition even when I do not heed them.3

During the first intervention after Natalie’s presentation, the complaint was raised that her description of a personal experience was “narcissistic.” What I am saying today might also seem narcissistic. Yet during the discussion of Natalie’s presentation we soon reminded ourselves that in Formale und transzendentale Logik (1929) and Cartesianische Meditationen (1931) Husserl actually recognized four bi-determinate forms of phenomenology:

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Transcendental and Eidetic Phenomenology Transcendental and Empirical (or Factual) Phenomenology Eidetic and Worldly (or in-the-Natural-Attitude) Phenomenology Factual and Worldly Phenomenology The first and the last of these four forms are contrasted in the Ideen in order to show how the new phenomenological philosophy is not psychology. Nevertheless, what I am offering here can be compared to what Natalie and, indeed, what Husserl in §27 offered—factual autobiographical remarks in the last perspective just listed, which is nevertheless phenomenological because it is reflective, descriptive, and culture-appreciative. As I will return to presently, it was when I recently wondered about how phenomenology might be described in general, i.e., prior to disciplinary specification, that I came up with these three general properties. That phenomenology is reflective and descriptive are points that seem to be easily accepted by an audience such as the one here at PeacE, particularly if interpretation is taken as a species of description. However, how phenomenology in general is “culture-appreciative” may be puzzling. The passage just quoted from Ideen shows that the world of the natural attitude, which we have later learned to call the Lebenswelt, can seem naturalistic and thus not to contain cultural objects. But Husserl wrote later in §27 that: [T]his world is there for me not only as a world of mere things but also with the same immediacy as a world of objects with values, a world of goods, a practical world. I simply find the physical things in front of me furnished not only with merely material determinations but also with value-characteristics, as beautiful and ugly, 3

Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book, p. 51.

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pleasant and unpleasant, agreeable and disagreeable, and the like. Immediately, physical things stand there as Objects of use, the “table” with its “books,” the “drinking glass,” the “vase,” the “piano,” etc. These value-characteristics and practical characteristics also belong constitutively to the Objects “on hand” as Objects, regardless of whether or not I turn to such characteristics and the Objects. Naturally this applies not only in the case of the “mere physical things,” but also in the case of humans and brute animals belonging to my surroundings. They are my “friends” or “enemies,” my “servants” or “superiors,” “strangers” or “relatives,” etc.4

Having uses and values make objects cultural; in short, the lifeworld is socio-cultural as well as natural. The phenomena reflected upon in phenomenology are originally cultural, and an abstraction is needed for the biological and physical things of naturalistic science seemingly referred to at the outset of §27. Informed colleagues will recognize that my crude expressions in what follows can be replaced with others in sophisticated noetico-noematic terms. Then again, and against Husserl’s intellectualistic emphasis, the appreciation of the so-called “founded theses” of valuing and willing that has frequently appeared in my investigations can readily be explicated. It will become even more obvious that my emphasis here is on the volitional or practical, as I relate what I am doing instead of retiring.5 In addition, I hope that my factual statements will not be taken as showing who I am, but rather as showing some particular ways in which one phenomenologist understands how he might spend the last decade of his professional life. Eidetic epochē, free phantasy variation, and eidetic evidencing can begin from facts such as these. Indeed, this psychological-phenomenological account can even be raised to the philosophical level through transcendental phenomenological epochē, reduction, and purification. Missing, however, are efforts to justify my efforts. One more methodological remark is in order. Only recently did it become clear to me that the natural attitude in which we begin our theoretical reflections

4

Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book, p. 53. 5 Lester Embree, “Advances Concerning Evaluation and Action in Husserl’s Ideas II,” in Thomas Nenon and Lester Embree, eds., Issues in Husserl’s Ideas II (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996), pp. 173–198; “Some Noetico-Noematic Analyses of Action and Practical Life,” in John Drummond and Lester Embree, eds., The Phenomenology of the Noema (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992), pp. 157–210.

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is not only naïvely world-accepting but also intersubjective.6 It is amusingly modish for colleagues these days to say that phenomenology proceeds in the first-person perspective, but one needs then to add that this is the first-person plural before it is the first-person singular perspective. Husserl did not sufficiently emphasize the role of the egological epochē, reduction, and purification characteristic of the Cartesian approach that he took in the Ideen and Cartesianische Meditationen. I am proceeding egologically here. II. Future Efforts Now, while I have explained how I am not retiring any time soon, let me sketch what I plan to do (and no longer do) regarding scholarship, professional organizing, e-publishing, interdisciplinarity and, above all, reflective analysis.

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1. Scholarship Something we cannot ignore is history, but for me this has been chiefly the history of our tradition. One of the first books about phenomenology that I read, which was in a course with Edward G. Ballard at Tulane University in the fall of 1961 where I became a phenomenologist—so you can see that I have been a phenomenologist for almost 50 years now!—was Herbert Spiegelberg’s The Phenomenological Movement (Nijhoff, 1960). My major contribution to the history of our tradition has been co-editing several reference books, although I have made some other contributions. I did actually live through a border-crossing when I was appointed to the Dietrich Eminent Scholar Chair at Florida Atlantic University in 1990, for then I suddenly taught only two courses a year and could hire a research assistant, travel far and wide, organize conferences and publish conference proceedings, the first being Japanese and Western Phenomenology,7 and also accept the position of lead editor of the Encyclopedia of Phenomenology.8 6

Lester Embree, “Dorion Cairns and Alfred Schutz on the Egological Reduction,” in Hisashi Nasu, Lester Embree, George Psathas, and Ilja Srubar, eds., Alfred Schutz and His Intellectual Partners (Konstanz: UVK Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, 2009), pp. 177–216. 7 Edited by Philip Blosser, Eiichi Shimomisse, Lester Embree, and Hiroshi Kojima (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993). 8 Edited by Lester Embree et al. Other reference works produced in my “workshop” are: John Drummond and Lester Embree, eds., Phenomenological Approaches to Moral Philosophy: A Handbook (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002), and Hans

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Lester EMBREE

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Historically, the work that has been done on our tradition focuses on national sub-traditions, emphasizing the German and French followed by the Spanish. There is probably some work on the Japanese sub-tradition that I do not know about. As intimated, my focus has been on phenomenology in English and especially in the U.S.A., that in the U.K. being late to develop. Many only seek the origins of Husserl’s thought in the psychology of his teacher Franz Brentano, but Husserl has an early diary entry that mentions the “viele Blitzen” he had while studying the Principles of Psychology (1890) of William James that his mentor Carl Stumpf had recommended. Within American phenomenology I have focused specifically on the New School tendency of Dorion Cairns, Aron Gurwitsch, and Alfred Schutz. Besides the essays that I have written or edited about these three people, and my edition of volume five of Schutz’s Collected Papers, which is in press, I have three of what will eventually be six volumes of Gurwitsch’s Collected Works out now, and hope to edit the first of six volumes of Cairns’s Philosophical Papers later this academic year. Having an endowed chair and excellent assistants, particularly Dr. Daniel Marcelle in the past seven years, has made all of this editing of the New Schoolers possible. In this connection, one lesson that I have learned is that our tradition has undergone stages in its development. These include the Realistic, Constitutive, Existential, and Hermeneutical stages. Now, it is going through some sort of a fifth stage that I tend to call “Cultural Phenomenology” or “Lifeworldly Phenomenology,” in the perhaps deluded hope that we are finally getting beyond naturalism and may even be beginning to appreciate the Cultural Sciences. Sadly, another lesson has to do with how many so-called “phenonomenologists” are so immersed in deciphering the undoubtedly difficult texts that have come down from the giants of our past that they overlook how phenomenology is itself not scholarship at all, but is an ongoing investigation of the matters themselves. I will return to this issue with a plea at the end of these remarks. 2. Precipitating As it is cultural, the world has a historical dimension, to which I have just related. However, it is also social and even, in a good sense, political. Beyond my family and close friends, I have several delicious enmities and many warm positive connections with professional colleagues, a number of whom are in this room. These Rainer Sepp and Lester Embree, eds., Handbook of Phenomenological Aesthetics (Dordrecht: Springer, 2010).

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connections are chiefly maintained through e-mail, but were originally formed in my efforts at what some call “organizing,” but which I prefer to call “precipitating.” Let me try to explain this activity. Intellectually, I can trace this activity back to a lecture in ethics by my teacher Cairns, in which he objected to Husserl’s notion, following a tradition since Socrates, of philosophy as a theoretical discipline—a science. Instead, he contended against his teacher that wisdom includes critically justified action.9 Since then, I have considered many of my practical professional activities to be essentially part of philosophy. My first such effort was the Gurwitsch Festschrift.10 There have been many conferences and edited volumes since then in which I attempted to develop the phenomenological problematics to include gender, recognition in the U.S.A. that logic and mathematics are sciences—formal sciences, and some essays on ecophenomenology that I might still work up into a book because they are reflective analyses produced avant la lettre, and so on. I expect the volume on the golden age of phenomenology at the New School and the one on The Continuing Impact of Husserl’s “Ideen” from the recent conference to be the last such conference volumes that I personally initiate, but I must mention that I am also helping my old pal Hwa Jol Jung edit a volume on Political Phenomenology. Beyond these editing efforts that include groups of others, I have helped to precipitate if not found a number of phenomenological organizations, including the Merleau-Ponty Circle, the Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences (SPHS), the Circulo LatinaAmericana de FENomenología (CLAFEN), the Central and Eastern European Conference of Phenomenology (CEECOP), the Nordic Society for Phenomenology (NSP), the Rete Euromediterranea di Fenomenologia per il Dialogo Intercultural (REM), and the Phenomenology in East Asia CirclE (PeacE). As for the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) and the Husserl Circle, I joined them in the second years of their existence. Finally, I have played leadership roles in the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, Inc. (CARP), the Organization of Phenomenological Organizations (OPO), and now the Interdisciplinary Coalition of North American Phenomenologists (ICNAP).

9 Lester Embree, “Wisdom More Than Knowledge and More Than Loved: Dorion Cairns’s Revision of Husserl’s Philosophic Ideal,” Journal of British Society of Phenomenology 41.2 (2010). 10 Lester Embree, Life-World and Consciousness, Essays for Aron Gurwitsch (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972).

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As part of my descent from the other side of my career mountain, however, I have already stepped down from my leadership post at CARP and am delighted with my replacement of Tom Nenon, and with his effort to foster phenomenology in India. I will soon step down from the Executive Committee of OPO and also from the presidency of ICNAP. I do expect, however, to play an ongoing advisory and supportive role in some organizations, where it is welcome and I am able. What I do not recollect clearly is how I recognized something that made all my precipitating possible. I hope it is not offensive for you to hear that I find most phenomenologists to be what Carl Jung called “introverts.” They tend to want to focus on their own work and avoid struggling to achieve wider influence on others. I have found, however, that when phenomenologists are brought face-to-face and start sharing their thoughts, it is like reunions of long-separated siblings and efforts to connect follow regularly thereafter. Thus, I have repeatedly brought colleagues with common interests together and seen them take it from there. The PeacE is my favorite example of this observation. In over a dozen trips to East Asia, and usually over drinks late at night, I asked colleagues why Chinese, Japanese, and Korean phenomenologists were not in closer contact, the geographical distances being so short. What I heard back concerned the long shadow of the World War II and respect for elders who had difficulty moving on. Nevertheless, the mid-career colleagues I was mostly talking with wished to find a way to reduce the chances of such a tragedy happening again. I therefore organized a conference in Delray Beach with colleagues from those countries, took them to dinner (see below), told them what I have just said, and then left to take Professor Shigeto Nuki to the airport. When I returned nearly an hour later, a society had been founded and a plan had been made to meet in Hong Kong in the next year. However, the name of the society, the “Phenomenology in East Asia Circle,” yielded an ugly acronym, “PEAC.” My contribution then was to relate what I had learned in Latin America—namely, that not only initial letters can be included in acronyms—and to suggest that the last letter in “circle” be capitalized. One of my best snap-shot memories was of the delight with which this suggestion was greeted. The next day I reported to the larger group that a baby had been born. I have been invited to the subsequent meetings, but I have had no formal leadership role in PeacE. I have only been the precipitator. The Asian colleagues are the family that has raised this beautiful child.

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The group meeting in Delray Beach, Florida in May 2002 that decided to found PeacE. (From left) Xiping Jin, Kah Kyung Cho, Junichi Murata, Kohji Ishihara, Nam-in Lee, Kwok-ying Lau, Burt Hopkins.

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3. E-Publishing Nevertheless, let this old precipitator make a recommendation for the future of PeacE. This is that you start a yearbook for selected essays from your meetings. Let me further suggest that this work be e-published in multiple languages. For a decade now, I have been promoting the benefits of e-publishing. This is another endeavor that no longer needs my help, but let me say again that e-publishing is fast and that it is more affordable for students, many of whom are poor. Some of you have had experience in producing the East Asia volumes for Phenomenology 2005 and now Phenomenology 2010 with Zeta Books. You could publish a PeacE yearbook in the PS-OPO series there, as CEECOP has done for its Merleau-Ponty issue.11 Alternatively, you might prefer to work with a publisher here in Asia that also produces inexpensive e-books. I mentioned “multiple languages.” It seems that we must accept English as the world language for philosophy, science, and technology, as well as much else. But I bet that most of you teach at least undergraduate courses in your home language, and do not have many texts in phenomenology that beginning students not yet adept in English can easily read. Some of my writings have been trans11

Karel Novotný, Taylor S. Hammer, Anne Gléonec, and Petr Špecián, eds., Thinking in Dialogue with Humanities: Paths into the Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty (Bucharest: Zeta Books, 2010).

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lated into Castilian, Catalan Chinese, French, Galician, Irish, Italian, German, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Romanian, and I am trying to find a way of getting them translated into Arabic and Bulgarian. For a PeacE yearbook I urge that authors not only publish in English for globalizing professionals, but also publish in home languages for students and perhaps also for those in the older generation who were educated before the great wave of “Englishification.” Length means nothing in an e-book, and authors ought to be able to produce versions of their essays in their home languages easily enough. Zeta Books has already found ways to publish in Chinese and Korean at least. This seems to be as good a place as any to mention the electronic Newsletter of Phenomenology that Cristian Ciocan and I started several years ago. He asked me whether I considered it to be a good idea. I said yes, and we quickly decided on its structure. As I recall, he thought that there might be 500 subscribers, while I hoped for 1,000. Astonishingly, there are now almost 4,000 subscribers from well over 50 countries, which suggests that there are at least that many phenomenologists out there. Mostly, the newsletter announces the publication of books, but we have a “Website of the Week” and I hope that we will increasingly make announcements of journal issues. Again, once the opportunity emerged, phenomenologists rose to grasp it. Then there is OPO, which met in Segovia in September 2011. I estimate that there are now 200 phenomenological organizations in existence around the world. Most are small enough to meet in private homes to discuss writings, but the one in Japan has about 500 members. Almost half of these local organizations are formal members of OPO. OPO divides up the planet into five regions (the Asia Pacific, the European-Mediterranean, the Latin American, the North American, and the Northern European areas) and publishes under these headings as well. 4. Interdisciplinarity I expect that my last formal leadership role will be as President of ICNAP. I precipitated this organization chiefly out of two considerations. One was to oppose the rise of so-called “Continental Philosophy,” which I regret naming12 and which seems to be swamping phenomenology in my country at least. The other was out of recognition of the remarkably large number of disciplines beyond philosophy in 12

Lester Embree, “Husserl as Trunk of the American Continental Tree,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 11.2 (2002): 177–190.

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our tradition that have phenomenological tendencies within them. Having long known of phenomenological psychology and phenomenological sociology, and having studied phenomenological nursing until I recognized it was just too huge a field for me to master at this stage of my life, I went Googling one afternoon and, within an hour, found 36 sometimes overlapping tendencies in disciplines beyond philosophy:

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Architecture, Cognitive Science, Communicology, Counseling, Cultural Anthropology, Ecology, Economics, Education, English, Ethnic Studies, Ethnology, Ethnomethodology, Film Studies, French, Geography (Behavioral), Geography (Social), Hermeneutics, History, Linguistics, Law, Literature, Medical Anthropology, Medicine, Musicology, Nursing, Philosophy of Religion, Political Science, Psychiatry, Psychology, Psychopathology, Religious Education, Social Work, Sociology, and Theology. I very much doubt that this is a complete list and hope that somebody else will conduct a more thorough search. My comments are several in number. To begin with, our tradition is definitely multidisciplinary, but philosophy is the largest and most influential among them (indeed, some phenomenological philosophers are disgustingly arrogant about this and look down on other disciplines, or ignore them altogether). While philosophical phenomenology is tending, however, to degenerate into scholarship, the other disciplines are actually doing a great deal of phenomenology on fascinating issues. Here, I remember a philosopher friend at OPO in Hong Kong who had delivered a presentation on the phenomenology of pain being absolutely astonished at my report of how a nurse had reflectively described the condition of pain.13 Thus far, the composition of ICNAP has been about half philosophers and half non-philosophers, all wonderfully interacting. We have phenomenological psychologists, phenomenological communicologists, musicians, phenomenological nurses, phenomenological physicians, physical trainers and, I hope one day, also phenomenological architects, phenomenological economists, phenomenological ecologists, phenomenological sociologists, and who knows who else.14 At the

13

Lester Embree, “Phenomenological Nursing in Schutzian Perspective,” in Osborne P. Wiggins and Annette C. Allen, eds., Clinical Ethics and the Necessity of Stories: Essays in Honor of Richard M. Zaner (Dordretch: Springer Publishers, 2011), pp. 87–97. 14 Visit

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OPO meeting in Lima, I began to urge colleagues to explore the interdisciplinarity of our tradition. I have just published a piece on interdisciplinarity, in an e-journal, naturally.15 The future of interdisciplinarity is promising, and I hope I am precipitating its development.

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5. Reflective Analysis I will now close with what I consider to be our biggest problem as philosophical phenomenologists and with one solution to this that I have recently begun advocating. Simply put, we engage in far too much scholarship and far too little reflective description of the things themselves. Do not get me wrong. Most of my publications have been interpretations, editions, and translations, and I am currently engaged in revising my essays on Alfred Schutz’s theory of the cultural sciences into a book. I love immersing myself in scholarship. As mentioned, the works of the giants in the past of our tradition are often quite difficult to understand, and we should help each other to benefit from them. Also, scholarship is easier to produce and defend, and more easily understood by colleagues from other schools of thought. But when all is said and done, scholarship produces secondary literature. Much more primary literature should be produced using the phenomenological method, rather than by the same techniques that would be employed in scholarship on Kant or Aristotle. A major trouble I see with practically all that we do is that it will do little to help us produce new generations of phenomenologists. Because our past is so rich and complex, I suspect that we may even find it difficult to attract students into engaging in scholarship on phenomenological texts. I myself was fortunate in graduate school to study under Cairns and Gurwitsch, who were disciples of Husserl, who himself of course did practically no scholarship. My teachers were exemplary in chiefly promoting not phenomenological scholarship, some of which they of course did secondarily, but phenomenological investigation. From Cairns I learned not only the revised conception of philosophy that I have mentioned, but also such things as how animism is unavoidable.16 And from Gurwitsch I learned, 15

Lester Embree, “Interdisciplinarity within Phenomenology,” Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology 10.1 (2010); and in Castilian as “La Interdisciplinaridad dentro de la Fenomenología,” Investigaciones Fenomenológicas, vol. monigráfico 3: Fenomenología y política (2011). 16 Lester Embree, “Aufbau to Animism: A Sketch of the Alternate Methodology and Major Discovery in Dorion Cairns’s Revision of Edmund Husserl’s ‘Fifth Cartesian Meditation’,” The Continental Philosophy Review 39.1 (2006): 79–96, and edition with

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as Merleau-Ponty seems also to have done,17 to search for reflective descriptions in other disciplines, e.g., Gestalt theory.18 What I believe we most need to do today in our tradition is to think about how we might teach not scholarship but phenomenological investigation to our students. I call what I have been proposing “reflective analyses.” The text of mine that has been widely translated bears that title.19 I have one collection of such analyses,20 and plan to produce more. I have started a book series for works chiefly devoted to phenomenological investigation, “Phenomenology Workshop Texts.” Looking back, I am delighted to find that my first serious publication was already in this genre, which I had not yet named.21 A reflective analysis is a short essay or chapter, usually of less than 15 pages, with few or preferably no footnotes, no quotations, nor even names of authorities. Rather, it consists entirely of descriptions of such things as how a truck that passes where one is standing has visual and auditory appearances that grow larger Fred Kersten and Richard M. Zaner of Dorion Cairns, “Some Applications of Husserl’s Theory of Sense-Transfer,” The New Yearbook of Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy 7 (2007): 309–335. 17 Maria-Luz Pintos, “Gurwitsch, Goldstein and Merleau-Ponty: An Analysis of a Close Relationship,” in Ion Copoeru and Hans Rainer Sepp, eds., Phenomenology 2005, vol. V: Selected Essays from the Euro-Mediterranean Area (Bucharest: Zeta Books, 2007), pp. 499–539. 18 Lester Embree, “Gestalt Law in Phenomenological Perspective,” Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 10 (1979): 112–127. 19 Análisis reflexivo. Una primera introducción a la Fenomenología / Reflective Analysis. A First Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. into Castelian by Luis Román Rabanaque (Morelia: Editorial Jitanjáfora, 2003). Original English as Reflective Analysis (Bucharest: Zeta Books, 2006); translations: Лестер Эмбри Рефлексивный анализ. Первоначальное введение в феноменологию, trans. Victor Moltchanov (Moscova: Triquadrata, 2005); 使える現象学 (Tokyo, 2007); Analiza refleksyjn (Warsaw, 2007); 反思 性分析：現象學研究入門, trans. Yue Shui and Xiping Jin (Taipei: Azoth Books, 2007; Beijing: Peking University Press, 2007); Analiza Reflexivă (Cluj Napoca: Casa Cărţii de Ştiinţă, 2007); Analyse réflexive, trans. Mathieu Trichet (Bucharest: Zeta Books, 2009); Analisi riflessiva. Una prima introduzione all’investigazione fenomenologica, trans. Angelo Bottone (Roma: Edizioni Studium S.r.l, 2011). 20 Lester Embree, Environment, Technology, Justification (Bucharest: Zeta Books, 2008); Ambient, Technología, y Justificación, trans. Luis Román Rabanaque (Bucharest: Zeta Books, 2010) (Also planned for publication in Chinese and Japanese). 21 Lester Embree, “Towards a Phenomenology of Theoria,” in Lester Embree, ed., Life-World and Consciousness: Essays for Aron Gurwitsch (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972), pp. 191–207.

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and louder and then smaller and quieter.22 Or an investigation of how there might be something in relation to believing that is analogous to ends and means in relation to willing, and also analogous to intrinsic and extrinsic values correlative to valuing.23 The topics can then be modest. I hope that it is not too American of me to then suggest that small groups of students can be expected to study and attempt to verify a reflective analysis the night before, and then to engage in a discussion in class with their teacher as to whether the description is true or not. Where it is found to be false, seek to correct it, otherwise how to possibly extend it further. In this way, I think that we will attract and prepare new generations of phenomenologists. *

*

*

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Therefore, while I find myself no longer needed to precipitate new phenomenological organizations, I will continue to engage in some research. In particular, as I walk down from the top of my career mountain, I will seek to produce and foster reflective analyses as a means to help our tradition recruit and train future generations with many fewer scholars of phenomenology and, instead, many more phenomenologists in the strict sense of the word. This does not seem to constitute retirement to me. I hope these rambling remarks will also help others to reflect on how they will devote the last decades of their careers when the time comes, as it surely will.

22

Lester Embree, “The Where and When of Appearances,” in Embree, Environment, Technology, Justification, pp. 133–142. 23 Lester Embree, “Intrinsic and Extrinsic Existence,” in Embree, Environment, Technology, Justification, pp. 143–153.

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A Phenomenological Attempt to Cross the Border: On Husserl’s Meditation on Death in Manuscripts C Xianghong FANG

Nanjing University, China

Let us begin with two passages concerning death: Den Tod als Tod erfahren wollen, ist dann ein Widersinn. Gleichwohl erwächst die transzendentale Frage nach Geburt und Tod und Generation.1

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Und dazu Geburt und Tod, die zunächst empirisch angesehene Grenzen des Könnens ausdrücken, aber offenbar über das Empirische hinaus Bedeutung haben möchten.2

These two passages cited from Husserl’s Manuscripts C contain a threefold message: first, that death transcends the limits of our capacity—namely, that we cannot experience the post-mortem situation; second, that we are nevertheless permitted to make cautious inquiries about death in the transcendental sense; and, finally, that these inquiries provide us with the possibility of discovering the significance of death beyond experience. It is this threefold message, on which this report is based, that is the main clue in dealing with the late Husserl’s meditation on death. At the end of this paper, I will make a short comment on Husserl’s thoughts and include a preliminary discussion about the new dimensions of thoughts on death that they imply and the theoretically possible conclusions. 1

E. Husserl, Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934): Die C-Manuskripte, ed. Dieter Lohmar (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), S. 438; hereafter cited as Die C-Manuskripte. English translation: “If you want to experience death as death, then it would be a nonsense. Nevertheless, the transcendental question of birth and death is growing.” (translation mine) 2 Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 429. English translation: “And thereto birth and death, which express the border of capacity considered empirically at first, obviously may have a signification beyond the empirical.” (translation mine)

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I. Death as the limit of life does not display itself like an end of a road or a boundary stone between two countries, which can be seen at the first sight. When I live, I live absolutely, death can emerge and disturb me in no way; but when death comes up authentically, I have ceased to be a living individual. Husserl considers this to be a paradox: “It is a paradox that in the living presence I cannot refuse to believe that I will live even if I know that my death lies just before me.”3 Furthermore, at the same time, Husserl demonstrates the inevitability of this paradox: “It is unthinkable to let the flow of the presence stop during my living time; to flow no longer, but to have a past nevertheless, this is totally paradoxical.”4 As we all know, “the living presence” is a flow that never stops changing, in which hyle, sense data, and objects of perception go in proper order through protention, primary impression, and retention. They act as a whole, and flow farther and farther. Consequently, they constitute their own future, now, and past. If we are really able to make the flow of consciousness stop, although the protention, primary impression, and retention as a whole will not disintegrate, yet the future and the past, and even the now, of a concrete object, which is constituted according to the whole, will not come up. If there is a Now at this time, or if we still talk about a past, that would not be a paradox but nonsense. Since we cannot reach a definite limit at one stroke, is it possible for us to approach this limit progressively? In other words, can we explore the farthest limit, at which we experience death by ourselves? Husserl conceives of four possible ways to do so: the death of the other; comparing death with sleep; starting from the present body, retrospecting to our own childhood; or pushing forward to our own time of disease and senescence. Let us see how far those four ways can lead us. As to the possibility of resorting to the death of the other, Husserl points out that for my experience this way cancels out such a possibility; namely, experiencing the other as another I, which exists in the world, as a transcendental subjectivity, which is together with me in my world.5 In fact this means that the “road is blocked.” This situation does not only result from a simple ordinary idea, 3

Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 96. Heidegger expresses the same understanding of death from his fundamental ontology: “Death does not exist”; see M. Heidegger, Der Begriff der Zeit, Gesamtausgabe, Band 64, ed. von Friedrich-Wilhelm v. Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2004), S. 48. 4 Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 96. 5 Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 102.

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that is, when the body of the other disappears, it is impossible for me to experience him. It also acquires confirmation through genetic phenomenology; namely, it is through the co-presentation, apperception, association, and empathy of the body of the other that we obtain the knowledge of him. Therefore, when the body of the other ceases to exist, we lose all possibility of getting to know about the other and his death. Can we regard death as sleep, as the so-called “final sleep,” in order to obtain a knowledge of death? In Manuscript C 8, written in October 1929, Husserl took a tentative step in this direction.6 It is obvious that the great difference between sleep and death lies in that the former is followed by awareness. However, is it not possible that I will “wake up” in the “final sleep,” even if only once? In order to answer this question, let us see what is meant here by “waking up.” I lose the body, but in the “unconsciousness” there are recollections left as sediment. When this transcendental “I” wakes up again, the new presence is combined identically with the old. It seems that this kind of awareness cannot happen in death because, according to the operational method of the “living presence,” once the flow of experiences ceases to run, the future, past, and now no longer exist. When the flow of the “living present” stops, the unity of the worldly time collapses, and the identification of the “I” also becomes impossible. From the viewpoint of birth, when I come into the world a second time, I would receive new psycho-physical condition, possess a new body, and therefore turn out to be a brand-new person. However, from another viewpoint, can we say that the same thing also takes place in sleep? In the actual condition of sleep my body does not stop existing and undergoes decomposition as in death. Rather, I really let my body stand aside. My body does not receive any affection and I prohibit myself from engaging in all activities. Can we now ask the following questions: As sleep is the inverse process of awareness, is death also the inverse process of birth? Namely, birth is accompanied by the constitution of the body and the world, while death is their inverse constitution. At the time of waking up, we are able to identify things and processes experienced before sleeping; is it inevitable that we would lose the deepest layer of our memory in death? As long as this deepest memory is left intact, even if it does not appear, does the birth of “I” then not exactly mean “waking up”? It seems as if Husserl would come to a conclusion opposite to the beginning. However, just at this point, he gives up on the questions mentioned above. This can be clearly seen from the following series of interrogations: “Is this I the ‘I’ at the beginning? Is it ‘waking up’? Or is it not the waking-up I? Does it make sense? 6

Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 157–158.

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Does the essence of ‘I’ contain living-on-something (das Auf-etwas-Hinleben), on this and that (auf dies und jenes), on different things (auf Unterschiedenes)? Is ‘I’ not the polarizing of life?”7 Here, Husserl means that it is unnecessary to raise those questions, not only because the existence of “the deepest layer of memory” needs to be confirmed, but also because of the characteristic of “I.” “I” is no other than a polar of life. There is no sense in talking about the identity or difference between a previous polar and a polar hereafter. In Manuscript C 17, written at the end of 1931, Husserl confirms the conclusion that he came to in 1929 and gives another demonstration of this conclusion.8 My sleep pause as pause is only imaginable from the standpoint of awareness and is therefore connected with awareness. This point always leads us back to the issue of beings in awareness. If this is so, how is the sleep pause constituted? It is “constituted in my originality and intersubjectivity.” However, the Being before birth is not constituted in this way, and neither is the Being of soul after life. Since the first two approaches cannot reach the boundary stone of death, then, can starting from our own body and pushing forward and backward provide us with the possibility of reaching it? Let us set out from the living I in the world and trace back. Where will the retrospection bring us? On the way back we encounter the constant “pauperization” (Verarmung) of experience and memory at the beginning. Along this way, the farthest that we can reach is the stage of childhood. The stage of the infant or embryo lies beyond this way. If we discard the retrospection along the thread of experience and memory and draw near the boundary stone along the road signs based on the “living presence” and the awareness of “I,” then we can approach the stage of the infant, and even of the embryo.9 The reason for Husserl to approach matters in this way is because in the “living present” I am awakened by an instinctive recollection, namely, an intentional tension and fulfillment.10 What comes next is to push forward in a negative direction. Let us see at what limit we can arrive in the end with the emergence of disease and senescence. After a “mature” phase, my body comes to a turning point, at which it will always undergo a decline. This decline appears not only physically, but also spiritually. With the decrease in strength, my surrounding world also becomes smaller. Due to the weakening of my memory, the past seems also to be more restricted. Because of 7

Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 158. Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 445. 9 Cf. respectively, Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 440 and S. 154. 10 Cf. Fang Xianghong, “Recollection and Awareness of I,” Social Sciences Newspaper, July 22, 2010, p. 11. 8

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the reduction in my labor and its products, the practical field of my future also becomes narrower. Various frequent diseases will impose increasing restrictions upon my body and spirit, so that I will no longer be able to do anything in the world and will no longer have recollections and a future.11 It is obvious that those two approaches will at most bring us to the phase of the embryo or to the time of death. It seems that we are at our wit’s end when it comes to dealing with the situations before or after life. Since what these four roads lead to is not the beginning of death but the limit of life—from the following text we will see that the phenomena described through those roads would be of great help to our discussion on death—, do we then have no other alternative but to stay on this side of the boundary stone of death? Is it possible for us to go beyond the boundary stone? Can phenomenology still make any contribution in this respect?

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II. Before further examining whether it is possible to cross this border, a brief introduction to Husserl’s basic ideas about the relationship between the transcendental I, the body, and the world would be helpful. According to Husserl, “I” has its own transcendental time and it is not in the worldly time. It acquires a temporal and spatial location in the world through the body, while the world itself is an intersubjective accomplishment (Leistung). Based on this framework of thinking, the boundary stone of death appears before us at once: “Death for the transcendental I can mean that it loses ‘Leiblichkeit,’ it loses consciousness of the world, and it steps out of the world’s regulation.”12 We can now cross the border and discover with Husserl what takes place behind the boundary stone. First, what we are certain of is that the transcendental I does not perish with the disintegration of the body and that hyle, which cannot be disconnected with “I” at any moment, is not passing away either. This is because “the conditions of Dasein in the world” “are only the ones to make the mundane apperceptions possible, and therefore stand under the title ‘body,’ but not the conditions for the Being of the subjectivity itself and the appearance of hyletical lift-off.”13 Second, from the descriptions provided by the four ways we can see 11 12 13

Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 156–157. Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 102. Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 102.

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that due to the loss of the body, I cannot affect the world or be affected by the world. Due to the interruption of the “living present,” “I” is unable to have any recollection of its own previous behaviors and accomplishments, interests and hobbies, plans and goals, and so forth, or to look into the future. Strictly speaking, it has no world at all.14 Is an I without the world still an I? How would it manifest itself? Husserl thinks that I perform myself as a phenomenon of “depersonalization.” The present conclusion is not yet drawn by Husserl in an explicit way, but is implied in a series of queries in Manuscript C 4:15 the same “Monad” has the same “I-polar.” Is it the case that this “polar” develops itself into various personalities in the process of constitution? Or is the same monad objectified into various persons and correlated with the other monads to constitute a new world? Is all this obviously nonsense? How can I find a way to another I-Being (Ich-Sein) and I-Life (Ich-Leben)? However, is it not from psychiatry that we have come to know about the phenomenon of depersonalization—that is, the emergence of different and changing I’s in the same patient? Here, from the above queries, we must be aware that this last question should be expressed as follows: Is it possible that the soul of this body ceases and is followed by another soul, which goes on in the same body? These queries are mainly raised from the viewpoints of life and constitution. If we start from death, the reverse process of constitution will be entirely exposed. With the disappearance of the world and the body, the personality that is deposited through the accomplishments made by my body in the world also disintegrates and the I, who has lost its personality, returns to its being as a pure “I-Polar.” Is there no difference between the “I-Polar” of this monad and that of the other monad? This question is very important, but it is unanswerable from the standpoint of death. This also explains why Husserl chooses the route of life and constitution. In this route the answer goes without saying: The “I-Polars” of different monads are pure and all lose their own personalities, but they are not identical to each other.16 The following explanation of the phenomenon of the “depersonalization” of a psychopath is aimed at intensifying the above conclusion: In a psychopath, several different I’s may even emerge. However, this does not show that the different I’s as “I-Polars” can be transformed by each other. Considering that the above queries

14

Cf. Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 102–103. Cf. Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 104. 16 Here, what we want to ask Husserl is: By what means can different I’s as “I-Polars” be distinguished from one another? 15

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have not clearly expounded the conclusion that has already been drawn, Husserl expends further thought on this problem. He divides the type of “depersonalization” of psychopaths into two groups, and makes the following analysis:17 An individual in the first group is well adjusted to this world and gets along very well with others. One day, for a particular reason, his personality changes and he loses his memory with respect to work, life experiences, and so forth, and becomes another person in this world. An individual in the second group is now not adapted to this world, thanks to the alteration in his own consciousness and habits. Therefore, he is no longer a person in this world but one who is totally in another world. In the first case, a powerful being of a person has penetrated all of the process of depersonalization, so that the person is still the identical person, although discontinuities have emerged in some layers. As for an individual in the second group, although Husserl has made no further illustration, it is obvious that the personalities do not originate from the identical “I.” By analyzing the two groups Husserl classifies the phenomenon of the “depersonalization” of psychopaths under his theory of death, and refutes the suspicion of the independent and irreplaceable character of I as “I-Polar” and its corresponding monad. Starting from the relationship between monad and body or the world, Husserl comes up with a preliminary definition of death and its phenomenon. However, his thoughts on the subject do not stop here. The introduction of the transcendental intersubjectivity brings about a crucial deepening of the investigation on death. As is known to all, according to Leibniz a monad has no windows for an object to go in and out, and communication between monads is guaranteed by God. Husserl unhesitatingly approves of the first point. Early in Ideen I, he came up with a similar expression on “absolute consciousness”: “As an enclosed relationship of Being for itself, as a relationship of absolute Being, into which nothing can break and out of which nothing can slip, it has no spatial-temporal exterior and it cannot be in any spatial-temporal relations. It cannot experience any causality from anything and exert any causality upon anything.”18 However, in the light of his theory of intentionality, Husserl does not agree to Leibniz’s second point. Communication between monads does not need the guarantee of God. Monads can constitute a body and the world in an intentional way and establish relation-

17

Cf. Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 104. E. Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Erstes Buch (Ideen I), Husserliana III/1, ed. von Karl Schuhmann (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), S. 105. 18

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ships with their help. In Manuscript C 8, Husserl discusses methods of communication in detail. Communication takes place through three “exits”: The first exit is my “present world,” which would include the human community, natural history, and so forth, which comes out in the first person. The second exit is “the synthesis of the surrounding worlds of all monads,” namely the objective world possessed by all persons. The third exit is the “immanent temporality” of each monad, in which one monad begins to associate with another monad by means of the body and the world.19 Let’s dwell more closely on those three exits. The first exit expresses the one-dimensional relationship between an individual monad and the world or the other monads. The correlation and mutual communication between monads has not yet taken place. The second exit indicates that an individual monad has entered the state of intersubjectivity; that is, individual monads communicate with each other with the help of the world and constitute the objective world with the help of communication. As for the third exit, it will be clear only through the introduction of “being-causalized” (Kausiertwerden), which is different from “causality.” According to Husserl, the latter has two dimensions. One refers to the causal relationship of the life and death of “I” or a monad; and the other indicates the causal relationship of my or a monad’s acquiring or exerting influence from or upon the world and life. While the former aims at my or a monad’s potential or tendency to enter or give rise to causal correlations, concretely speaking, every monad has a tendency to “conform to an essential principle” (Wesensgesetzmäßigkeit) and a latent and most general essential form, which determines beforehand what kind of species this monad will constitute itself into (e.g., a plant or an animal, and so forth), and what kind of world it will constitute for itself (i.e., which types of causal effects and causal relations it will enter into).20 “Immanent temporality” and “being-causalized” are carried out synchronously. The flow of immanent time marks the awareness of the transcendental I. From the viewpoint of the actual world, an individual is born. At the same time, the “being-causalized” has already been activated. The causal correlation and effectuation between “I” and the body, “I” and the world, and “I” and the other monads have already begun. The following landscape now appears before us: “Af-

19

Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 172. Husserl admits that this idea originated from Leibniz, and thinks that it can be regarded as a transcendental possibility and raised as a question in a phenomenological way. However, from the context, we can see that Husserl has in fact accepted the idea. Cf. Die C-Manuskripte, S. 176. 20

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ter secularization the transcendental time with the transcendental Being overlaps with the worldly time, with no leak. It is a perfect and enclosed infinity.”21 What overlaps with each other is not only the two kinds of time, but also two worlds: “the world in the natural sense” and “the transcendental and absolute ‘world.’” The latter is the counterpart or “correlate” (Korrelat) of the former.22 Those two worlds are also coupled together perfectly. The time and the world in different fields are integrated together in a parallel manner, without any gaps. In order to distinguish the two concepts, Husserl sometimes adds quotation marks to transcendental “time” and “world,” sometimes referring to them as “quasi-time” and “quasi-world.” Correspondingly, the human community in the world and the transcendental community of monads are also superposed upon one another in the same way. Starting from this phenomenological insight, Husserl’s description of the boundary stone of death has acquired a new perspective, and therefore has greatly pushed forward the knowledge of the phenomenon of death. As is well known to all, the people in the world form such communities as the family, tribe, ethnic group, country, and others through communication. Correspondingly, monads also take the shape of the transcendental community by means of the body’s causal interaction in the world. Those two communities are related to each other in the sense that they are parallel. On the one hand, they belong to two radically different fields: one is the over-temporal or all-temporal “transcendental universe”; the other is the temporal world. However, by intentionality, their spatial movements and temporal alterations take place synchronously. On the other hand, this does not mean that they are two different objects, as if there is something hidden behind the body and the world, not having emerged yet. Monads or I’s do not lie behind the actual body or world. They appear exactly in the causal correlation between body and body, body and the world. Now death does not only mean the loss of the body and the departure from the world, but also “retirement from this all-temporal community.”23 That is to say, death means that the I or monad leaves the transcendental community at the same time. Obviously, a monad is still by itself without body and the world. However, what if it separates from the transcendental community or the “transcendental universe” constituted of many

21 22 23

Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 173. Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 442. Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 442.

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monads while it loses the body and the world? “Beyond this subjectivity is ‘nothing.’”24 Death lets a monad or “I” become nothingness. However, how to understand the nothingness here? In place of an answer, Husserl raises a series of questions:

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Does this not-Being signify an absolute nothingness, or does it signify a being in another sense but out of function? And is the universal transcendental event, temporarily speaking, the event of transcendental birth and transcendental death, a necessary event in the Being of this universe and so in another sense a functioning; [that is,] a not-functioning that fits determination, until its time has come, and a functioning, as long as its time is here? And then again a not-functioning and still as something functional, a being in the other sense, that plays its role together as underground, as condition—as a “not-being,” which makes Being possible together through this Not-Being?25

The answer goes without saying. Elsewhere in Manuscript C, Husserl states more clearly: Although it is possible for my world experience to be modified and even to be lost in death, it is “unthinkable” (undenkbar) to say that I can “cease” in the transcendental sense.26 Now what we are sure of is that, to Husserl, my death implies that the I resigns from the transcendental community and enters nothingness, but this does not mean that the I was wiped out radically and becomes a pure vacancy without some vestige of it being left. On the contrary, the transitional process from birth to death is analogous to the transformation from consciousness to unconsciousness, from awareness to sleep, from action to pause. Husserl points this out when he talks about the relationship between the transcendental world and the waking subject: “Transcendentally, the world is a constitutive product of transcendentally waking subjects as persons standing with each other in waking connection and in a unity of tradition, in which the world itself is a constituting tradition, beyond the ‘pauses,’ birth, and death of individuals.”27 Thus, in this way, at the end of 1931 Husserl denied his considerations of around 1930, when he distinguished death from sleep in a radical way. In a manuscript dated September 14, 1932, he raised the following clear question: “As the

24 25 26 27

Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 442. Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 442. Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 97. Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 438.

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All-Subjectivity of the world’s constitution, has the transcendental subjectivity no ‘pause’ either? Is it analogous to sleep (unconsciousness)?”28 Yes, not only can we make a formal analogy, but we can also compare one with the other with respect to the genetic process, so as to come to a substantial conclusion. If in sleep, especially in “deep sleep,” owing to my basically not lying in the state of affecting or being affected, not lying in the center of various causal correlations, the different functions possessed by “I” during his waking will be reduced in a vast scale, and even be concealed totally; then, in the nothingness caused by death, “I, a spiritual Being, could degenerate. When the synthesis becomes impossible, the relations of I-Actions in the relational unity, which has a centre of ‘I,’ become lost.”29

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III. From intentionality and parallelism, through the description of the relationship between “I,” the body, and the world, by the analogy of death with sleep, Husserl crosses the boundary stone of death and, death itself, to become a clearly visible phenomenon at last: Death is the drop-off from the transcendental community. In death I degenerate and step into nothingness. However, is this all to the phenomenon of death? According to the main framework employed by Husserl in his meditation over this problem, abiding by the descriptive method that he applied, we would put the following questions to him: If the “I” after life is not an absolute vacancy, then is it necessary in some way that it is different from the existential way in the transcendental community? If we do not simply classify it into nothingness or “out of functioning,” and regard its functioning as the background of Being at best, how else can we describe it? In order to expound the questions here, let us return to Husserl’s thoughts on the effect of annulling the world in his phase of Ideen I: “The Being of consciousness, that is, the Being of the flow of experience itself, is necessarily modified owing to the annulment of the world of things, but the Being of itself is not affected.” 30 Translated into the late Husserl’s language and in our context here, this passage signifies that the Being of the monad itself is not eradicated and does not become vacant after it breaks away from the world; rather, only its way of Being has been changed. 28 29 30

Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 23. Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 443. Husserl, Ideen I, S. 104.

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Theoretically speaking, as long as a monad is, even if it is in an extraordinary or abnormal state, it will never stop performing constitutions. The so-called “normal” way of Being is no other than the constitution of the intersubjective world. Husserl even says that it is only a special form of constitution: “The Being of monads is Being in itself and for itself in a never-beginning and never-ceasing self-constitution in immanent temporality. One special form of this constitution, which has a beginning and an end, is the worldly constitution, in which monads become living ones in the surrounding worlds and experience other monads consciously, constitute as worldly reality, and step into relationships with others.”31 How can we describe this new and modified way of Being? Comparing it with the phenomenon of dreaming is likely to give us a clue. In considering Husserl’s investigations into the phenomenon of sleep, we discover an interesting fact: He seldom talks about dreams. When he mentions the subject occasionally, he simply compares dreams to the imagination in reality;32 He often does not distinguish between “sleep” and “sleep without dreams”33 or “deep sleep,” so as to emphasize the character of “affectionlessness” (Affektionslosigkeit). 34 However, dreams in sleep are an undeniable and usual phenomenon. What makes this phenomenon special in character is that, while a dream unfolds, what happens between “I” and the other or the world is a quasi-factual, rather than an imaginary, causality of correlation. Only after awareness can I discover that this kind of causal correlation lacks a real foundation and is no different from imagination. This particular phenomenon of a dreamland being indistinguishable from reality exactly demonstrates what Husserl has insisted and stressed all along: the characteristics of the constitution and the position of consciousness. Of course, it should be admitted that its way of action in dreams is modified, compared with the constitution and the position of consciousness in the intersubjective world. What about the phenomenon in death? After my personality has decomposed, the flow of experience is still running and the hyle in it will not disappear. Nor will such activities as constitution and position cease. However, as a result of the radical modification of its way of action, the “world” brought about by this kind of constitution and position is in many respects something completely other than our real world. For example, it is foreseeable that owing to the shortage of the restric31

Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 173. Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 419. 33 James G. Hart has observed this kind of equivalence in Husserl and followed him, making no distinctions in these expressions. Cf. James G. Hart, Who One Is, Book I (Dordrecht: Springer, 2009), pp. 464–465. 34 Cf. respectively, Husserl, Die C-Manuskripte, S. 157, S. 200, and S. 98. 32

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tions from bodies and objects inside the world of intersubjectivity and, more importantly, from the constant revisions and corrections caused by contact and communication with others, the spatial and temporal appearance of the “objects” in this “world,” the clarity of “perception,” and the intensity of receptivity, and so forth, will be expanded, distorted, and deformed without any limits and prohibitions. In a word, during this new “sleep” I am very likely to “dream,” in another form. Of course, many other significant conclusions might be drawn from this discussion. It is to be hoped that further investigations will be made that will shed more light on the subject.

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Heidegger’s Concept of Fore-structure and Textual Interpretation Ka-wing LEUNG

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Tongji University, China

Heidegger’s conception of interpretation (Auslegung) in Being and Time is decisive for the contemporary development of hermeneutics. As David Couzens Hoy says, the general movement that he calls the “hermeneutic turn” would not have been “imaginable without a dramatic change earlier in this century, the change brought about in philosophy by Martin Heidegger.”1 Central to the change effected by Heidegger in Being and Time is the concept of fore-structure (Vor-struktur). Later, his student Hans-Georg Gadamer, in his book Truth and Method, also puts special emphasis upon this concept, making it the starting point of his own version of philosophical hermeneutics (GW1: 270/265).2 Due to the somewhat enigmatic character of Heidegger’s writing style, it is often through the supposedly more accessible prose of Gadamer that Heidegger’s concept of fore-structure is known to those who are interested in the contemporary theory of interpretation but whose primary profession is not philosophy. However, there are certain significant differences between their accounts of the fore-structure, which might cause those who know Heidegger’s concept of fore-structure only through Gadamer’s account to misunderstand it, especially in regard to its relation with tradition. The aim of this essay is to clarify Heidegger’s concept of fore-structure. It will be divided into four sections. In the first section, we will first fill in some background for our 1

David Couzens Hoy, “Heidegger and the Hermeneutic Turn,” in Charles Guigon, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 170. 2 Wahrheit und Methode, Gesammelte Werke Band 1, 6. Auflage (Tübingen: Mohr, 1990); Truth and Method, 2nd revised edition, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1988). Hereafter cited as “GW1.” References to this work are first to the original German text then to the English translation.

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clarification. Then, in the following sections, we will discuss Heidegger’s account of the fore-structure in Being and Time and its genesis in his earlier lectures, Gadamer’s theory of prejudice and its differences with Heidegger, and some implications of Heidegger’s concept of fore-structure to textual Interpretation (Interpretation). I. Heidegger regards interpretation as the own possibility of the understanding (Verstehen), or as “the working-out of possibilities projected in understanding.” He says in Being and Time:

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The projecting of the understanding has its own possibility—that of developing itself. This development of the understanding we call “interpretation”. In it the understanding appropriates understandingly that which is understood by it. In interpretation, understanding does not become something different. It becomes itself. Such interpretation is grounded existentially in understanding; the latter does not arise from the former. Nor is interpretation the acquiring of information about what is understood; it is rather the working-out of possibilities projected in understanding. (SZ: 148/188–189)3

3 Heidegger’s works are cited with the following abbreviations: GA17: Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung, Gesamtausgabe Band 17, hrsg. von Friedrich-Wilhelm von Hermann (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 1994); Introduction to Phenomenological Research, trans. Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2005). GA18: Grundbegriff der aristotelischen Philosophie, Gesamtausgabe Band 18, hrsg. von Mark Michalski (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 2002) GA20: Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, Gesamtausgabe Band 20, hrsg. von Petra Jaeger, 3., durchgesehene Auflage (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 1994); History of the Concept of Time, trans. Theodore Kisiel (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1985). GA24: Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, Gasamtausgabe Band 24, hrsg. von Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, 3. Auflage (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 1997); The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. Albert Hofstadter, revised edition (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988). GA26: Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz, Gesamtausgabe Band 26, hrsg. von Klaus Held, 2., durchgesehene Auflage (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 1990).

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We have to be cautious against two views as regards the relation between understanding and interpretation in Heidegger: the one that sees interpretation as a derivative mode of understanding,4 and the one that takes understanding and interpretation to be one and the same thing.5 Dreyfus seems to suggest that Heidegger uses the term “interpretation” for “understanding as interpreting in the human sciences,”6 and therefore regards it as a derivative mode of understanding. He quotes the passage:

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If we interpret understanding as a fundamental existentiale, this indicates that this phenomenon is conceived as a basic mode of Dasein’s Being. On the other hand, ‘understanding’ in the sense of one possible kind of cognizing among others (as distinguished, for instance, from ‘explaining’), must, like explaining, be Interpreted as an existential derivative of that primary understanding which is one of the constituents of the Being of the “there” in general. (SZ: 143/182)

GA61: Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles: Einführung in die phänonenologische Forschung, Gesamtausgabe Band 61, hrsg. von Walter Bröcker und Käte Bröcker-Oltmanns, 2., durchgesehene Auflage (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 1994); Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle, trans. Richard Rojcewicz (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001). GA62: Phänomenologische Interpretationen ausgewählter Abhandlungen des Aristoteles zur Ontologie und Logik, Gesamtausgabe Band 62, hrsg. von Günther Neumann (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 2005). GA63: Ontologie (Hermeneutik der Faktizität), Gesamtausgabe Band 63, hrsg. von Käte Bröcker-Oltmanns, 2. Auflage (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 1995); Ontology—The Hermeneutics of Facticity, trans. John van Buren (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999). PIA: “Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles (Anzeige der hermeneutischen Situation),” in GA62, S.345–399. SZ: Sein und Zeit, 17. Auflage (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1993); Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinsion (New York: Harper & Row, 1962). References to English translations are cited after those of the original German texts. 4 Hubert L. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), p. 195. 5 Stanley Rosen, “Horizontverschmelzung,” in Lewis Edwin Hahn, ed., The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer (Chicago/La Salle: Open Court, 1997), pp. 207–218. Against this supposedly Heideggerian view, Rosen tries to “suggest that there is a difference between understanding and interpretation, although the two are unquestionably related. In order to interpret something, we must first understand it” (p. 211). But it seems to me that it is precisely the view of Heidegger that we must have already understood something, in order to interpret it. 6 Dreyfus, Being-in-the-Word, p. 195.

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Ka-wing LEUNG

Heidegger intends to use the term “understanding” in a sense that he supposes to be the original or primary sense (GA20: 357/259), to mean a “fundamental existentiale” which, together with two other existentiales, i.e., state-of-mind (Befindlichkeit) and discourse (Rede), constitute the disclosedness in which the world and Dasein itself are disclosed. In this sense, understanding is “the condition of possibility for all of Dasein’s particular possible manners of comportment” (GA24: 392/276). It is true that Heidegger regards understanding as it is conceived in the human sciences as a derivative mode of understanding in the original sense. The problem in Dreyfus’ suggestion is that Heidegger does not use the term “interpretation” to designate understanding in the derivative sense. As we can see from the above quotation, Heidegger also uses the term “understanding”—or ‘understanding,’ with single quotation marks, if we follow the usual practice of Heidegger as applied to the term “world” (SZ: 65/93)—to designate understanding in the human sciences. What Heidegger calls “interpretation” is, in his own words, understanding’s own possibility, its development (Ausbildung), or the working-out of possibilities projected in it, rather than something else derived from it. Therefore, Heidegger says: “In interpretation, understanding does not become something different. It becomes itself.” If interpretation is understanding’s own possibility, then understanding in the human sciences, as a derivative mode of understanding in the original sense, will also have its own form of interpretation, its own way of developing its own possibility, just as another derivative mode of primary understanding, explaining, also has its own kind of interpretation, which Heidegger calls “assertion” (Aussage), or “judgment” (Urteil), and regards as a derivative form of interpretation in the original sense (SZ: 153–154/195). On the other hand, although Heidegger regards interpretation as the development of understanding’s own possibility, he does not see it as one and the same with understanding; otherwise, he would not have said that one arises from the other. Indeed, it is basic to Heidegger’s concept of understanding that understanding is different from interpretation: on the one hand, what is understood does not necessarily get interpreted, as is evident from his concept of the understanding of being (Seinsverständnis); and on the other hand, every interpretation must be grounded upon something that has already been understood. As we will see in what follows, this is the fundamental idea that underlies Heidegger’s concept of fore-structure. Heidegger characterizes interpretation as the appropriation of what is understood: “In it [interpretation] the understanding appropriates understandingly that which is understood by it.” This means that in interpretation we make into our own, into our property, what is in the first place foreign to us and does not belong

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to us. This character of interpretation is the most obvious in the case of translation, which, in Heidegger’s words, is “making what was presented in a foreign language accessible in our own language and for the sake of it” (GA63: 11/9). In interpretation as appropriation, what is understood comes explicitly into sight. In other words, interpretation is also the making explicit of what is already understood. Heidegger says: To say that “circumspection discovers” means that the ‘world’ which has already been understood comes to be interpreted. The ready-to-hand (das Zuhandene) comes explicitly into the sight which understands. (SZ: 148/189)

While what is understood is not always explicitly understood, explicitness (Ausdrücklichkeit) is the essential character of what is interpreted. Anything that is explicitly understood, or that is interpreted, has the structure that Heidegger calls “as-structure” (Als-Struktur), i.e., “the structure of something as something” (SZ: 149/189). “The ‘as’ makes up the structure of the explicitness of something that is understood. It constitutes the interpretation.” (SZ: 149/189) The interpreting of something as something, or the making explicit of something that is understood, is in turn achieved on the basis of another structure, the structure that Heidegger calls “fore-structure.”7

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II. The fore-structure is composed of three elements: fore-having (Vorhabe), fore-sight (Vorsicht), and fore-conception (Vorgriff). Heidegger thinks that interpretation, as the appropriation of understanding and as the making explicit of what is understood, always operates in “something we have in advance,” something that is “already understood” (SZ: 150/191). This is what Heidegger calls “fore-having.” As something that is already understood, fore-having nevertheless “need not be grasped explicitly by a thematic interpretation.” In addition, “even if it has undergone such an interpretation, it recedes into an understanding which does not stand out from the background” (SZ: 150/191). It is what always remains inexplicit in the process of making something explicit, and what never completely stands out (unabgehoben) in the process of making something stand out (Abhebung). For example, in the case of the understanding of the ready-to-hand, what serves as the fore-having is the totality of involvement 7

“Sinn ist das durch Vorhabe, Vorsicht und Vorgriff strukturierte Woraufhin des Entwurfs, aus dem her etwas als etwas verständlich wird.” (SZ: 151)

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(Bewandtnisganzheit). “The ready-to-hand is always understood in terms of a totality of involvement.” (SZ: 150/191) We have pointed out that Heidegger characterizes interpretation as appropriation; that is, as making into one’s own what is in the first place foreign to one. What is to be interpreted is at first foreign to us. It is through the process of interpretation that we make it our own and transform it into our property. Heidegger also uses another term to characterize interpretation. He characterizes it as “unveiling” (Enthüllung). To speak of “unveiling” only makes sense if what is to be interpreted is veiled before the interpretation. Heidegger thinks that every interpretation is in possession of something that is already understood, but that which is already understood is “still veiled” (noch eingehüllt) (SZ: 150/191). It is through the process of interpretation that “it becomes unveiled.” And this unveiling “is always done under the guidance of a point of view, which fixes that with regard to which what is understood is to be interpreted” (SZ: 150/191). This point of view is what Heidegger calls “fore-sight.” It “‘takes the first cut’ (anschneidet) out of what has been taken into our fore-having, and it does so with a view to a definite way in which this can be interpreted” (SZ: 150/191). In other words, fore-sight guides our approach and directs our sight in the process of making explicit and unveiling what is already understood but is still veiled. Interpretation achieves the appropriation, explicitness, and unveiling, by putting what is held in fore-having and seen in a particular point of view into concepts. It can do this in two possible ways: “The way in which the entity we are interpreting is to be conceived can be drawn from the entity itself, or the interpretation can force the entity into concepts to which it is opposed in its manner of Being.” (SZ: 150/191) In either case, the process involves articulating the entity that we are interpreting with certain concepts and, in thus doing, “the interpretation has already decided for a definite way of conceiving it, either with finality or with reservation” (SZ: 150/191). This is what Heidegger calls “fore-conception.” Heidegger thinks that all interpretation is essentially grounded upon the structure constituted by fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. He says: Whenever something is interpreted as something, the interpretation will be founded essentially upon fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. (SZ: 150/191) All interpretation, moreover, operates in the fore-structure, which we have already characterized. (SZ: 152/194)

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In Being and Time, Heidegger also uses the term “hermeneutical situation” (hermeneutische Situation) to designate the whole structure: Every interpretation has its fore-having, its fore-sight, and its fore-conception. If such an interpretation, as Interpretation, becomes an explicit task for research, then the totality of these ‘presuppositions’ (which we call the “hermeneutical Situation”) needs to be clarified and made secure beforehand, both in a basic experience of the ‘object’ to be disclosed, and in terms of such an experience. (SZ: 232/275)

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Since Heidegger’s discussion of the fore-structure in Being and Time is quite brief, it may be helpful to look into the genesis of this concept. The hermeneutical situation was first said to be composed of fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception in the 1923/24 WS lecture Introduction to Phenomenological Research, although at the time Heidegger did not connect them with the term “fore-structure.” In this lecture, fore-having is characterized as “what is in view from the outset in the entire investigation,” and “what is had from the outset for the investigation, upon which the look constantly rests”; fore-sight as “how what is placed in view from the outset is seen,” and “the sort and manner of seeing what is held onto in the fore-having”; and fore-conception as “how what is seen in a specific way is conceptually explicated on the basis of specific motivation” (GA17: 110/79–80; translation modified).8 In the two preceding lectures, i.e., in the 1922 SS lecture Phenomenological Interpretations of Selected Treatises of Aristotle on Ontology and Logic and the 1923 SS lecture Ontology: The Hermeneutics of Facticity, only two out of the three elements of the fore-structure are mentioned—the fore-sight is missing. Heidegger says in the 1923 SS lecture: It is with respect to this authentic being itself that facticity is placed onto our fore-having when initially engaging it and bringing it into play in our hermeneutical questioning. It is from out of it, on the basis of it, and with a view to it that facticity will be interpretively explicated. The conceptual explicata which grow out of this interpretation are to be designated as existentials. A “concept” is not a scheme but rather a possibility of being, of how matters look in the moment, i.e., is constitutive of the moment—a meaning drawn out of something—points to a fore-having, i.e. transports us into a fundamental experience—points to a fore-conception, i.e., calls for a how of addressing and interrogating. (GA63: 16/12–13) 8

See also GA18: 274f.

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Here, just as in the 1922 SS, “fundamental experience” is the term used in Heidegger’s characterization of fore-having,9 while here fore-conception is said to be a “how of addressing and interrogating,” and in the 1922 SS it is regarded as some sort of “categorial articulation” (GA62: 111). In the 1921/22 WS lecture Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle, although the terms “hermeneutical situation,”10 “fore-having,” and “fore-conception” are found in the present edition issued as volume 61 of the Gesamtausgabe (GA61: 3, 19, 20),11 there is no mention that the hermeneutical situation is constituted by fore-having and fore-conception. The latter two concepts are not even mentioned together as a group.12 Yet we can still detect some early traces of the development of these two concepts, and even that of fore-sight, which would only be added in the 1923/24 WS lecture. In the second part of this lecture, while looking for a definition of philosophy, Heidegger seeks to clarify “the original sense of definition” (GA61: 17/15). It is in this context that Heidegger states that every object “has its mode of genuinely being possessed” (GA61: 18/15), and in the respective modes of possession, “there are immanently co-functioning, according to the character of the possession or, according to the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of the object (its ‘Being’), definite forms of cognitive grasping and determining, specific forms of the clarification of each experience” (GA61: 18/16). The modes of grasping and determining are not something external to the modes of possession. They are not only “extrinsic accompaniments.” Instead, they are “immanently” connected, like the two sides of the same coin: “the mode of possessing the object as such is itself an addressing of the object” (GA61: 18/16; translation altered). What Heidegger here calls the mode of possession clearly anticipates the concept of fore-having, and what he calls the mode of grasping and determining, or addressing, clearly anticipates the concept of fore-conception. From the way in which Heidegger here characterizes the mode of possession, we can also see how the concept of fore-sight arises out of a split in the concept of fore-having. The mode of possession is here characterized as “the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of the object.” In comparison, in the 1923/24 WS lecture, when the concept of fore-sight is introduced, fore-having, as we have seen above, refers only 9

See also SZ: 232/275. Theodore Kisiel suggests that the term “hermeneutische Situation” in fact “postdates the lecture course itself.” See Theodore Kisiel, The Genesis of Heidegger’s Being & Time (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 233, 534 n.5. 11 See also PIA: 346, 348, 351, 364, 373. 12 Hence, Kisiel says: “[the ‘hermeneutic situation’ in] GA 61: 3 is a semester premature,” and “the use of the term [Vorhabe] in GA 61: 19 is a semester too early.” See Kisiel, The Genesis of Heidegger’s Being & Time, pp. 499, 508. 10

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to the “what,” to “what is had from the outset”; while the “how,” “the sort and manner of seeing what is held onto in the fore-having,” is covered by the newly introduced concept of fore-sight. A concrete example may also be helpful in understanding Heidegger’s concept of fore-structure. Being and Time provides us with precisely such an example because this whole book is an attempt at interpretation. It attempts to provide an interpretation of the being of Dasein. If every interpretation is essentially grounded upon fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception, then the interpretation of Dasein in Being and Time must also be grounded upon this structure. In fact, in Being and Time, Heidegger even explicitly points out the hermeneutical situation in his interpretation of the being of Dasein. He states that Dasein is the fore-having, existence is the fore-sight, and existentiality is the fore-conception of his interpretation. Heidegger says:

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In its anticipatory resoluteness, Dasein has now been made phenomenally visible with regard to its possible authenticity and totality. The hermeneutical Situation which was previously inadequate for interpreting the meaning of the Being of care, now has the required primordiality. Dasein has been put into that which we have in advance and this has been done primordially—that is to say, this has been done with regard to its authentic potentiality-for-Being-a-whole; the idea of existence, which guides us as that which we see in advance, has been made definite by the clarification of our ownmost potentiality-for-Being; and, now that we have correctly worked out the structure of Dasein’s Being, its peculiar ontological character has become so plain as compared with everything present-at-hand, that Dasein’s existentiality has been grasped in advance with sufficient Articulation to give sure guidance for working out the existentialia conceptually. (SZ: 310–311/358–359)13

According to Heidegger’s definition, “Dasein” refers to the “entity which each of us is himself” (SZ: 7/27); i.e., the entity which is traditionally called “man” (Mensch) (SZ: 11/32; GA24: 36/28), in contradistinction with those entities “whose character of Being is other than that of Dasein” (das nicht daseinsmäßige Seiende), which Heidegger calls “the present-at-hand” (das Vorhandene) or “the Being-present-at-hand” (Vorhandensein). Meanwhile, “existence” refers to the being of Dasein (SZ: 12/32, 42/67),14 in contrast to the being of the pre13

See also SZ: 232f; GA17: 110. Cf. GA24: 36: “Die Seinsweise des Daseins bestimmen wir terminologisch als Existenz”; GA26: 159: “Existenz ist der Titel für die Seinsart des Seienden, das wir je selbst sind, das menschliche Dasein.” 14

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sent-at-hand, which Heidegger calls “presence-at-hand” (Vorhandenheit) or reality. Finally, “existentiality” refers to the structure of the being of Dasein (SZ: 13/33); in other words, the structure of existence, whose conceptual articulation Heidegger calls “existentiale,” in opposition to the “categories,” which is the conceptual articulation of the being of the present-at-hand (SZ: 44/70). Therefore, generally speaking, what is in the fore-having of an interpretation is some sort of entity—a what that has already been understood but is still somewhat veiled. The fore-sight, or the point of view that guides the interpretation, is a how—the particular kind of being of the entity in question, or the way in which it is seen. As for the fore-conception, it is the particular conceptuality with which the entity in question is articulated or explicitly addressed.

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III. Gadamer in Truth and Method develops a theory of prejudice apparently based upon Heidegger’s concept of fore-structure. Gadamer begins the section on “the hermeneutic circle and the problem of prejudices” with Heidegger and his concept of fore-structure, giving the impression that his theory of prejudice is nothing but the natural consequence of this concept. However, there are certain significant differences between their accounts of the fore-structure, which might cause those who know Heidegger’s concept of fore-structure only through Gadamer’s account to misunderstand it, especially in regard to its relation with tradition. First of all, Gadamer’s choice of the term “Vorurteil” is already puzzling, insofar as it is meant to stand for what Heidegger calls “fore-structure.” The German word “Vorurteil” literally means pre-judgment. For Heidegger, judgment is only a derivative form of interpretation (SZ: 153–154/195). It would be very unlikely that Heidegger would have used this term to refer to the condition of understanding out of a consideration of its etymology. In fact, throughout Being and Time, “Vorurteil” is always used in its usual and pejorative sense, just as the English term “prejudice” is used. For his part, Gadamer’s choice of the term “Vorurteil” is obviously connected with his intention to “rehabilitate the concept of prejudice” and to rehabilitate “authority and tradition” (GW1: 281/277). But the unity of his theory of prejudice, as I will attempt to demonstrate below, is in the main verbal rather than substantial, achieved largely only by the subtle manipulation of the ambiguity of the term “Vorurteil,” through which things of very different nature are connected together in a single account. The term “Vorurteil” is used in Truth and Method in at least three different

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senses: (1) to stand for what Heidegger calls “fore-structure”; (2) to refer to provisional judgment or conjecture; and (3) to mean prejudice, according to the usual sense of the term. Whether Gadamer’s theory is justified depends very much on the question of whether the different senses in which the term “Vorurteil” is used are substantially rather than only verbally connected. The above stated second sense in which the term “Vorurteil” is used derives from its literal meaning: “In itself, ‘Vorurteil’ means a judgment that is rendered before all the elements that determine a situation have been finally (endgültig) examined.” (GW1: 275/270; translation modified) In this sense, it is the opposite of “final judgment” (Endurteil) (GW1: 275/270; translation modified). Therefore, I construe it as provisional judgment. Gadamer uses the term “fore-projection” (Vorentwurf) to explain Heidegger’s concept of fore-structure, as though fore-structure were only some sort of provisional judgment or conjecture in the process of interpretation, which would be in constant need of revision. Gadamer says:

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A person who is trying to understand a text is always projecting. He projects a meaning for the text as a whole as soon as some initial meaning emerges in the text. Again, the initial meaning emerges only because he is reading the text with particular expectations in regard to a certain meaning. Working out this fore-projection, which is constantly revised in terms of what emerges as he penetrates into the meaning, is understanding what is there. (GW1: 271/267)

But whether Heidegger ever uses the term “fore-structure” in this way is very much open to doubt. In our discussion of Heidegger’s account of the concept of fore-structure in Being and Time and its genesis in his early lectures, we do not see Heidegger employing the term “provisional,” or words with a similar meaning, to characterize the fore-structure. On the contrary, we see him explicitly stating that the fore-conception can be final: “The interpretation has already decided for a definite way of conceiving it, either with finality (endgültig) or with reservation.” (SZ: 150/191) The reason that Heidegger employs a term with the prefix “vor-” to designate this structure of understanding is not because it is something provisional in contradistinction with something final. Rather, it is because it is something that we have already had, something that we have already understood, something that belongs to what Heidegger calls “perfect tense a priori” (apriorisches Perfekt) (SZ: 85/117). It is something that we must have already had before the carrying out of explicit interpretation. According to Heidegger, every interpretation must have fore-structure, regardless of whether it is provisional or final. Moreover, insofar as judgment is a derivative form of inter-

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pretation, every judgment must also have fore-structure, whether provisional or final. Gadamer’s first step in delivering his theory of prejudice is to associate the term “Vorurteil” with Heidegger’s concept of fore-structure. The bridge of this association is, on the one hand, to construe Heidegger’s fore-structure as fore-projection, which, in Gadamer’s usage, means some sort of provisional judgment or conjecture in the process of interpretation, which would be in constant need of revision, and on the other hand to use the term “Vorurteil” in the sense of provisional judgment according to its literal meaning. But this is only the first step. It is commonly believed that Gadamer’s theory of prejudice relies on the literal meaning or etymology of the term “Vorurteil.”15 But this is not completely true. Gadamer’s second step in expounding his theory of prejudice is to criticize “the prejudice against prejudice” in the Enlightenment (GW1: 275/270). This second step is no less important than the first step in his theory of prejudice as a whole. But here, in the second step, the term “Vorurteil” cannot possibly be used in the sense of provisional judgment according to its literal meaning; otherwise, there would be no point at all in criticizing the conception of prejudice in the Enlightenment. For the thing against which Enlightenment has prejudice is not provisional judgment but prejudice in the usual sense of this English term. If Gadamer were solely relying upon the literal meaning of the term “Vorurteil,” what he could say against the Enlightenment thinkers would merely be that they misused this term. While the term “Vorurteil” in itself means provisional judgment, it has been “limited in its meaning by the Enlightenment critique of religion simply to the sense of an ‘unfounded judgment’” (GW1: 275/270–271). But this is clearly not the only thing that Gadamer wanted to achieve. Rather, his ultimate aim was to rectify the biased opinion on unfounded judgment. If this was his aim, then the term “Vorurteil” as used by Gadamer in his critique of the Enlightenment cannot be used in the literal sense to refer to provisional judgment. After all, it makes no sense to say that “the fundemental prejudice of the Enlightenment is the prejudice against prejudice itself” (GW1: 275/270), if “prejudice” (Vorurteil) is used by Gadamer to mean provisional judgment according to its literal meaning. What Gadamer’s theory of prejudice really draws on is the ambiguity of the term “Vorurteil” rather than its literal meaning or etymology. 15

For instance, see Robert Sokolowski, “Gadamer’s Theory of Hermeneutics,” in Lewis Edwin Hahn, ed., The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer (Chicago/La Salle: Open Court, 1997), p. 227.

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Of course, if we take notice of the different senses in which Gadamer uses the term “Vorurteil,” we cannot but wonder how those different things referred to by the different senses of this word could possibly be integrated to form a coherent theory; i.e., how could what Heidegger calls fore-structure be associated with the provisional judgment, and how could these two things be integrated with what the Enlightenment called prejudice to form a coherent theory about the condition of understanding? As pointed out above, this is the crucial question as to whether Gadamer’s theory of prejudice is justified. But this is an internal problem of Gadamer’s theory that we will not discuss in detail here. We simply want to point out another salient difference between Heidegger and Gadamer: the difference in their views on tradition. According to Gadamer, in the Enlightenment doctrine, prejudice is divided into “the prejudice due to human authority and that due to overhastiness” (GW1: 276/271). Gadamer is mainly concerned with the former. This focus would be surprising if Gadamer’s intention was to rehabilitate the literal meaning of the term “Vorurteil.” This is because provisional judgment seems to have a closer connection with overhastiness than with authority, especially when we notice that it is one particular form of the prejudice due to human authority that Gadamer is concerned about, i.e., tradition, which is essentially something long-established, persistent, and constantly repeated. The ultimate aim of Gadamer’s consecutive moves from prejudice to authority and from authority to tradition is to demonstrate that tradition, or “belonging to a tradition” (GW1: 296/291), is the condition of understanding. But there are many problems in Gadamer’s account. First, how is Heidegger’s concept of fore-structure of any use to his argument if what Heidegger calls “fore-structure” and what he calls “prejudice” in the sense of provisional judgment are completely different things? We may grant that prejudice in the sense of provisional judgment, no matter what its relation with Heidegger’s concept of fore-structure may be, is in its own way also the condition of understanding. Even so, it is still questionable how this claim can be used to justify the assertion that prejudice in the sense of unfounded judgment is the condition of understanding, insofar as provisional judgment and unfounded judgment are not necessarily one and the same thing. It is only because Gadamer uses one single word to denote two very different things that he seems to be able to easily pass from one point to another. Furthermore, even if we grant, for the sake of argument, that prejudice in the sense of unfounded judgment is the condition of understanding, how this point can be used to support the thesis that tradition is necessarily a condition of understanding is still problematic. For tradition is only

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one form of the prejudice due to authority, and the prejudice due to authority is again only one form of prejudice. Even if we agree that prejudice in the sense of unfounded judgment is the condition of understanding, we are still not obliged to agree that tradition is the condition of understanding. Why do we not say instead that prejudice due to overhastiness is the condition of understanding? Besides, if both prejudice and tradition are the condition of understanding, how are we to understand something like “suspension of our own prejudice” (GW1: 304/299) and “break with the continuity of meaning in tradition” (GW1: 280/275)? There are no such problems in Heidegger’s concept of fore-structure or his theory of interpretation in general. It is true that Heidegger regards the fore-structure as the condition of understanding, but for him prejudice and tradition are not the condition of understanding. In addition, Heidegger does not employ one single word to denote these three different things. It is true that, according to Heidegger, we are “proximally and for the most part” under the influence of the other and the influence of tradition in our understanding, but this is not because they are the condition of understanding. It is rather because “Dasein is inclined to fall back upon its world” and “fall prey to the tradition” (SZ: 21/42). In other words, in Heidegger, the influence of tradition upon our understanding is not explained by the condition of understanding, but by the concept of falling. For Heidegger, contrary to Gadamer, tradition in itself bears no “hermeneutic productivity” (GW1: 287/283) to our understanding. Heidegger not only does not regard tradition as an element of our historicality (Geschichtlichkeit), but even thinks that “tradition uproots the historicality of Dasein” (SZ: 21/43; translation altered). Tradition at first not only does not contribute to our understanding, but even keeps us from having authentic understanding: “Tradition takes what has come down to us and delivers it over to self-evidence; it blocks our access to those primordial ‘sources’ from which the categories and concepts handed down to us have been in part quite genuinely drawn. Indeed it makes us forget that they have such an origin, and makes us suppose that the necessity of going back to these sources is something which we need not even understand.” (SZ: 21/43) The consequence is that we no longer understand “the most elementary conditions which would alone enable it to go back to the past in a positive manner and make it productively its own” (SZ: 21/43). Therefore, if we seek for an understanding of the primordial source, we must destruct the tradition and release what is blocked by it: “If the question of Being is to have its own history made transparent, then this hardened tradition must be loosened up, and the concealments which it has brought about must be

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dissolved. We understand this task as one in which by taking the question of Being as our clue, we are to destroy the traditional content of ancient ontology until we arrive at those primordial experiences in which we achieved our first ways of determining the nature of Being.” (SZ: 22/44) IV.

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For Heidegger, hermeneutics is the carrying out of interpretation rather than the investigation of interpretation (SZ: 37; GA63: 9–14). Therefore, Being and Time is a practice of hermeneutics in the sense that it contains an interpretation of Dasein. Accordingly, Heidegger discovered the fore-structure not because he was in the first place concerned with the method or condition of textual Interpretation. Rather, it was discovered in the course of Heidegger’s investigations into the structure of existence, the structure of the being of Dasein. Although in Being and Time Heidegger is not concerned with textual Interpretation in the first place, what he says about interpretation is also true of textual Interpretation, if textual Interpretation is, as regarded by Heidegger, “a particular concrete kind of interpretation” (SZ: 150/192). This means that textual Interpretation is also an act of appropriation, and the making explicit of what is already understood, and it is essentially grounded upon the fore-structure. The only question that remains is whether there are any implications for the method of textual Interpretation, if what Heidegger says about this structure of interpretation is true. In fact, Heidegger himself indicates some implications of his conception of fore-structure for textual Interpretation. He says in Being and Time: An interpretation is never a presuppositionless apprehending of something presented to us. If, when one is engaged in a particular concrete kind of interpretation, in the sense of exact textual Interpretation, one likes to appeal to what ‘stands there’, then one finds that what ‘stands there’ in the first instance is nothing other than the obvious undiscussed assumption of the person who does the interpreting. In an interpretative approach there lies such an assumption, as that which has been ‘taken for granted’ (gesetzt) with the interpretation as such—that is to say, as that which has been presented in our fore-having, our fore-sight, and our fore-conception. (SZ: 150/192)

Heidegger thinks that every interpretation is grounded upon the fore-structure, which in a certain sense can also be called the “presupposition” of interpretation (SZ: 232/275), provided that it is not taken as the presupposition in the logical sense. Since textual Interpretation is a particular concrete kind of interpretation,

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every textual Interpretation is also essentially grounded upon the fore-structure, which is the presupposition and condition of every single Interpretation put forth. If an Interpretation is proposed by an interpreter who is not conscious of his own fore-structure and only appeals to what supposedly “stands there” in the text in support of his own interpretation, then what supposedly “stands there” is very probably only his own assumption based upon his own fore-structure. In other words, what he appeals to in support of his interpretation is very probably nothing other than his own assumption. If we are not to fall into this kind of mistake, it is important to recognize the fore-structure. Heidegger also gives us some prescription for textual Interpretation according to his conception of fore-structure:

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If the basic conditions which make interpretation possible are to be fulfilled, this must rather be done by not failing to recognize beforehand the essential conditions under which it can be performed. What is decisive is not to get out of the circle but to come into it in the right way. This circle of understanding is not an orbit in which any random kind of knowledge may move; it is the expression of the existential fore-structure of Dasein itself. It is not to be reduced to the level of a vicious circle, or even of a circle which is merely tolerated. In the circle is hidden a positive possibility of the most primordial kind of knowing. To be sure, we genuinely take hold of this possibility only when, in our interpretation, we have understood that our first, last, and constant task is never to allow our fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception to be presented to us by fancies and popular conceptions, but rather to make the scientific theme secure by working out these fore-structures in terms of the things themselves. (SZ: 153/195)

Gadamer devoted some paragraphs of Truth and Method to discussing the meaning of the above quoted passage of Heidegger. However, the first remark that he puts forward is already quite puzzling. He says: “What Heidegger is working out here is not primarily a prescription for the practice of understanding, but a description of the way interpretative understanding is achieved.” (GW1: 271/266) This remark is acceptable for most of what Heidegger says in Being and Time about the fore-structure or understanding in general, but for what is “here,” for what Heidegger says in the above passage, it is simply not correct. Regardless of whether we can or should call it a prescription, what Heidegger says here is surely not only a description of the actual process of understanding. It is obviously normative in nature, in the sense that what he wants to tell us is how an interpretation should be carried out or how an interpretation is carried out in the right way. Only so can it be regarded as the “task” of interpretation. On the contrary, in the Interpretation of those who are not

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conscious of their own fore-structure, interpretation can be achieved in the wrong way, so that the task of interpretation, as stated by Heidegger, may not be fulfilled, although it is still grounded upon the fore-structure. What is even more puzzling about Gadamer’s remark about this passage is that he not only sees it as being about the “correct interpretation” (GW1: 271/266), but himself also uses the word “prescription” (Forderung) to refer to what Heidegger says in the above passage (GW1: 272). It is clear from the context that what Heidegger means here by the “circle” is that “any interpretation, which is to contribute understanding, must already have understood what is to be interpreted” (SZ: 152/194).16 What is the need for interpretation if what is to be interpreted has already been understood? This is the conundrum that Heidegger was referring to in the phrase the “circle of understanding.” Again, Gadamer’s conception is also different from that of Heidegger on this point. What Gadamer means by the circle is that the interpreter “projects a meaning for the text as a whole as soon as some initial meaning emerges in the text” (GW1: 271/267). Obviously, Gadamer has projected what he learned about the “circular relationship between the whole and the parts” (GW1: 179/175) from traditional hermeneutics and rhetoric into what Heidegger calls the “circle of understanding.”17 I am not saying that in the process of Interpretation no such thing occurs as what Gadamer calls “fore-projection,” i.e., the provisional judgment or conjecture about the meaning of a text. This is certainly a correct description of the process of Interpretation, about which “every interpreter who knows what he is about” can agree (GW1: 271/266). The only problem is that it is not what Heidegger calls the circle or the fore-structure of understanding. We have already made clear that Heidegger’s concept of fore-structure involves something that we have already understood—the point of view through which we approach this thing, and the conceptuality with which this thing is articulated. It means that every interpretation must be based upon something that we have already understood, which is the presupposition of interpretation in a certain sense. If this is true, then presuppositionless apprehending is only a myth. And if there is no way to “get out of the circle,” the only thing we should do is “to come into it in the right way.” The condition for this is that we are 16

See also SZ: 7f, 314ff. Cf. Jean Grondin: “Heidegger never speaks of the circle of the whole and its parts, but always of the circle between understanding and its unfolding in the interpretative process.” See Grondin, “Gadamer’s Basic Understanding of Understanding,” in Robert J. Dostal, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 47. 17

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conscious of the essential condition or presupposition under which interpretation is performed, not blinded by our own assumptions on the one hand, and not captured by “fancies and popular conceptions” on the other hand. As regards textual Interpretation, to come into the circle in the right way requires us to step into the presupposition of the author of the text we are interpreting, to step into its particular concrete fore-structure. Since Heidegger thinks that understanding underlies every comportment of Dasein, for him interpretation is at work in everything we think and do, everything we say and write. If we want to understand what someone writes in the right way, we have to work out his particular concrete fore-structure, his presupposition of saying what he says and writing what he writes. Surely, this has to be done “in terms of the things themselves,” and in the case of textual Interpretation, in term of the texts themselves. Unfortunately, in Being and Time, Heidegger does not indicate in further detail how we can work out the fore-structure in terms of the things themselves when we interpret a text. Perhaps, if we would like to get some ideas on this, we should turn to Heidegger’s early lectures, in which he attempts to interpret Aristotle precisely by working out his fore-having and fore-conception.18

18

See GA62: 89, 111, 269; PIA: 372f.

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Understanding, Historically Effected Consciousness, and Phenomenology in Gadamer Yiu-hong WONG

The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

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I. Introduction Since the Enlightenment, philosophers in the Western tradition have proposed the fundamental idea that human beings should attempt to liberate themselves from the bonds of everyday beliefs and search for an independent understanding of the self using one’s own reason. Descartes reestablished the ultimate foundation of knowledge through the indubitable certainty of the notion ego cogito, which is the outcome after the radical doubting of everyday unexamined beliefs and opinions that have been taken for granted. Subsequent philosophers, from Descartes onwards, have tended to understand humans as autonomous and self-conscious subjects.1 In this sense, the Enlightenment can be regarded as having given birth to the idea of subjectivity. The theory of the subject then became the focus of attention in modern philosophy, eventually coming to represent one of the most salient features of Western modernity.2 In the main trends of development in Continental philosophy, phenomenology has achieved an indispensable status and influence. Of this great discipline, Husserl is undoubtedly the founder. As the major concept of Husserl’s entire philosophy, “transcendental subjectivity” is not only heir to the Enlightenment idea of the subject, but is also a great advancement on the origi1

David Carr, The Paradox of Subjectivity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 3–4. 2 Dalia Judovitz, Subjectivity and Representation in Descartes: The Origin of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 1–7; Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987).

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nal notion. According to Husserl, the skills of “intuition,”3 “reflection,” and “reduction” are the most reliable for use in excavating inexplicit intentional experiences and the operation of the ultimate subject. Naturally, Husserl conceived the origin and motivation of these methods as being subordinate to the sphere of the subject’s capacity. However, the phenomenological movement does not consist of a single voice. Husserl’s notion of “transcendental subjectivity” has hardly been uniformly accepted by prominent phenomenologists. From the beginning, several questions were raised that would divide Husserl and his comrades. Can we provide a sufficient account for all original experiences of human life by the conscious activity of the subject? Can the power of reflection allow us to penetrate the historicity of life? Does subjective reflection or reduction arise arbitrarily? What motivates subjective reflection or reduction? Does reduction require further reduction? Is it correct to agree with the following statement by Merleau-Ponty: “The most important lesson which the reduction teaches us is the impossibility of a complete reduction”?4 In this respect, Gadamer does not accept Husserl’s way of resolving these issues. He has more or less adopted Heidegger’s way of thinking in defining the characteristics of individual existence, particularly on the issues of “facticity,” “being thrownness,” and “historicity.” All these notions remind the philosopher of the irrefutable “finite” condition of human life, and this intrinsic human finitude indicates the fact that we are “always already” living within history and the world, which existed long before our initiation or execution of any reflection and reduction.5 Thus, the reflective subject may not be the most appropriate and only available description of our human existence. While retaining much of Heidegger ideas, Gadamer further raised his own conceptions, namely, those of “temporal distance,” “the principle of history of effect,” and “historically effected consciousness,” in pointing out how events that have happened can produce a lasting effect on an individual in the course of his living and being in the world. It is believed that such reconsiderations may eventually bring about a change of perspective in conceiving the experience of historical life and the problem of self-understanding.

3

Eugen Fink, “The Problem of the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl,” in A Priori and World: European Contributions to Husserlian Phenomenology, trans. and ed. William McKenna, R. M. Harlan, and L. E. Winters (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981), p. 42. 4 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge, 1989), p. xiv. 5 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, pp. xiv–xv.

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II. Gadamer’s Hermeneutics and the Phenomenological Movement Some may query whether it is suitable to explicate Gadamer’s hermeneutics under the phenomenological perspective.6 At first glance, it is not obvious how Gadamer’s hermeneutics could be related to phenomenological analysis. As Gadamer himself pointed out, there is a tension between his theory and phenomenology: “It is true that my book is phenomenological in its method. This may seem paradoxical inasmuch as Heidegger’s criticism of transcendental inquiry and his thinking of the turn form the basis of my treatment of the universal hermeneutic problem. But I think that the principle of phenomenological demonstration can be applied to this term of Heidegger’s, which at last reveals the hermeneutic problem. I have therefore retained the term ‘hermeneutics’ not in the sense of methodology but as a theory of the real experience that thinking is.” (TM: xxxvi)7 The quotation indicates that closely following Hei-

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6

Even though Spiegelberg has mentioned Gadamer several times in his renowned work, The Phenomenological Movement, no single section of this work is devoted to evaluating Gadamer’s contributions as a phenomenologist. Since Spiegelberg’s renowned work was published in the same year as Truth and Method (the first edition was 1960), it could be said that Spiegelberg could not have been expected to carry out a correct assessment of Gadamer. However, it should be noted that even after twenty years, when The Phenomenological Movement went through its “Third Revised and Enlarged Edition” in 1982, Spiegelberg’s view of Gadamer’s philosophy had not changed. Still, there is a belief that the contribution of Gadamer’s philosophy to hermeneutics is rather limited. That may also imply that Gadamer’s hermeneutics should be separated from the discipline of phenomenology (and it may explain why we have reserved no place for Gadamer in the entire phenomenological movement). Contrary to this belief, Gadamer provided his “phenomenological” justification in his “Foreword to the Second Edition” (p. xxxvi) and demonstrated his phenomenological analyses throughout his work Truth and Method. Of course, the term “phenomenological” is not being narrowed down merely to Husserl’s definition. Furthermore, the reader may consult Gadamer’s “long” article, “The Phenomenological Movement,” for a general view of Gadamer’s overall understanding of phenomenology and his own version of phenomenology. See Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. and ed. David E. Linge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976). 7 Gadamer’s works are cited with the following abbreviations: TM: Truth and Method, trans. and rev. J. Weinsheimer and D. G. Marshall (New York: Continuum Pub. Company, 1994); German original: Wahrheit und Methode, Gesammelte Werke Band 1 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1960, 1990).

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degger might make it inappropriate for Gadamer to apply phenomenology, especially with reference to Husserl’s study, to hermeneutical thinking. Yet Gadamer has tried to integrate hermeneutics with phenomenology to formulate his own philosophical treatment of the hermeneutic problem. Heidegger’s philosophy has undoubtedly had a pervasive influence on Gadamer’s hermeneutic theory. This can be observed from a group of concepts that Gadamer used to construct the enterprise of Truth and Method, notably understanding, interpretation, facticity, historicity, and being. These have all been learned from the youthful Heidegger, and to a large extent determined the starting point and foundation for the development of Gadamer’s hermeneutic thinking. In this regard, Gadamer certainly refused to accept Husserl’s reduction and reflection as an effective method, or his insistence on transcendental subjectivity as the explanatory hypothesis for the constitution of meaning. However, Husserl’s conceptions of horizon and lifeworld did not go unnoticed by Gadamer. Indeed, Gadamer attempted to integrate Husserl’s ideas into his investigation of the hermeneutic experience. Therefore, regardless of which version of phenomenology Gadamer adopted, whether that of Husserl or the young Heidegger, the phenomenological perspective is the most relevant interpretation to use in exploring his hermeneutic theory.8 SISP: “Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity, Subject and Person,” in Continental Philosophy Review 33 (2000): 275–287; German original: Subjektivität und Intersubjektivität, Subjekt und Person, Gesammelte Werke Band 10 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1995). HRE: “Friendship and Self-knowledge: Reflections on the Role of Friendship in Greek Ethics,” in Hermeneutics, Religion, and Ethics, trans. Joel Weinsheimer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999); German original: Freundschaft und Selbsterkenntnis, Gesammelte Werke Band 7 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1991). All references are to the English translations. 8 It seems fair to say that Gadamer’s philosophy makes no significant departures from Heidegger, and that Gadamer has rather followed and worked under his master’s great legacy. However, it should also be noted that, apart from appropriating Heidegger’s ideas, Gadamer has also consciously attempted to formulate his own way of thinking. One typical expression of his continuous attempts in this regard can be seen in his article, “The Heritage of Hegel,” where Gadamer declared that “the hermeneutics I developed was also based upon finitude and the historical character of Dasein, and it tried to carry forward Heidegger’s turn away from his transcendental account of himself, albeit not in Heidegger’s direction of an inspiration from the poetic mythos of Hölderlin but rather in a return to the open dialectic of Plato.” See Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Science, trans. F. G. Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996). For more ways in which Gadamer differs from Heidegger, one can refer to Gadamer (with R. Dottori), A Century of Philosophy, trans. Rod Coltman (New York:

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III. Understanding and Historicity (Geschichtlichkeit)

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1. Understanding and the Principle of the History of Effect It goes without saying that when Gadamer defends the concept of understanding (Verstehen) in his hermeneutics, he does not intend to provide only a method of interpretation for reading texts. In fact, he does not really touch on the problem of achieving objective validity in interpretation, which is, how a reader can “correctly” grasp the intention or the meaning of the text’s author. Indeed, Gadamer may even have doubted that there is any objective meaning in the process of understanding. Furthermore, following the line of thought of Heidegger’s “Daseinanalytic,” Gadamer similarly locates “understanding” (Verstehen) as one of the basic modes of Dasein’s being-in-the-world. “Understanding,” in fact, discloses the fundamental intentional relation between Dasein and the world. Thus, conceiving “understanding” merely as a method of reading, one must certainly neglect the dimension that “understanding” has designated to the mode of being of human existence in the world. Obviously, all of these evaluations of Dasein have long been established by Heidegger in Being and Time. Indeed, in this monumental work, “understanding” constitutes one of the three modes of Dasein’s “being-in.”9 With the exception of the focus on the idea of “understanding,” Heidegger and Gadamer both ascribe great importance to the concept of historicity, which plays a major role in constituting human existence. This is because the formation of Dasein’s ownmost identity and self-understanding is gradually accumulated from a comprehension of the historical experience of human life. By nature, a human being cannot live in the form of in-temporal being, like an abstract mathematical idea, and his actions are always carried out in a particular context. Therefore, the actual course of a human action and the fulfillment of its meaning have to proceed according to a temporal sequence. Human actions, regardless of their nature, are necessarily conditioned by temporal factors, and should be considered as the response to the effect of history and tradition. In this sense, the world as the largest context for action becomes meaningful only by the movement of the genesis of history.

Continuum, 2004), pp. 20–27, and his article, “Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Metaphysics,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 25.2 (May 1994): 104–110. 9 Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper, 1962), p. 182.

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In fact, Gadamer has certainly learnt much from his forerunners about how to discern the historical experience of human existence. From Dilthey through Heidegger, a generation of discussions on a method for understanding history has led to the formulation of a general rule for explaining the experience of history. The rule prescribes that the effect of historicity is the crucial precondition for the understanding of history. This “method,” if it is to be possible, must by nature differ from that of objective science, and has to take the factor of historicity into consideration. To be sure, historicity is another way of representing the facticity of the temporal being of human life. The historical meaning of our lifeworld is directly constituted by Dasein’s historicity. That is why the topic of historicity has become a priority for study in the humanities. However, in the nineteenth century, advocates of the positivist philosophy of history, mainly represented by Ranke, rigidly required a researcher to observe a “neutral” or “value-free” attitude, in order to achieve an ideal for science. Only by this means, they argued, could “true” historical reality be captured. The basic belief of the positivists was to let the facts speak for themselves without involving subjective interpretations and interruptions. Countering this is the argument that, only if a researcher completely eliminates the validity of historicity, can positivist philosophy successfully reconstruct historical reality without distorting the understanding of the meaning of our past. In short, the concept of historicity shows that, on the one hand, the fact of human existence must in itself imply the effects of time and history, which makes unacceptable the definition of human existence as involving timeless and history-free subjects. On the other hand, the conception of historicity provides the basis by which one should understand the meaning of historical life. Although Gadamer has taken all of the above developments as background for his hermeneutic theory, this does not mean that his theory as a whole merely tells the same old story. Gadamer pointed out that while Dilthey had been continuously shifting his focus between pursuing the ideal of strict objective science and grasping the historicity of human life, he eventually provided no sufficient account of the movement and mechanism of historicity (TM: 231). Heidegger, in the early 1920s, had offered a better solution to the problem. In fact, he regarded the idea of historicity as having particular importance to understanding factical human life, and explained later in Being and Time how historicity could be founded upon Dasein’s temporality.10 But Heidegger did not relate the con10

Heidegger, Being and Time, §§ 74–76. Indeed, the conceptual relation between historicity and temporality cannot be explained in a few words. For a very preliminary

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cept of understanding to historicity as closely as Gadamer was eventually able to do (TM: 265). Relying on the close entwinement between the two conceptions as the necessary premise, Gadamer eventually came to advocate the most significant idea of his own philosophical hermeneutics, the principle of the history of effect. This principle turned out to be the key for disclosing the connection between many vital sections in Truth and Method. This principle both completed the abovementioned general rule and further developed the idea to a new level.

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2. Understanding, History and Horizon “Understanding” seems to be the most appropriate way of approaching Dasein’s historicity. Yet Gadamer unceasingly shows that understanding cannot be ascertained in the sense of the scientific method, as the positivist philosophy expects to accomplish. How, then, can we conceive Gadamer’s notion of “understanding”? Hermeneutic understanding suggests that it is not possible to have a bare description of an object and to grasp the meaning of a text prescribed by the practice of the scientific method, in which the reality can be discovered only by the radical objective method plus the subjective-free attitude. For a scientific frame of mind, prejudgment, prejudice (Vorurteil), and subjective intention are obstacles to obtaining objective reality that should be obliterated. Contrary to the subjective-free belief, Gadamer argues that, from the very beginning, understanding is constituted of the “hermeneutic circle” and “prejudice” (Vorurteil). These pre-determinations for understanding do in fact fully reflect the peculiar structure of the experience of Dasein’s being-in-the-world. As Heidegger once pointed out, the hermeneutic circle is not avoidable, and the task is to find the correct way to enter it. In other words, the factors that are negative to the ideal of the scientific method are precisely the ones that are necessary conditions for achieving all hermeneutic forms of explanation, we could refer to Heidegger’s own account in Being and Time: “In temporality, however, the constitutive totality of care has a possible basis for its unity. Accordingly it is within the horizon of Dasein’s temporal constitution that we must approach the ontological clarification of the ‘connectedness of life’, that is to say, the stretching-along, the movement … The specific movement in which Dasein is stretched along and stretches itself along, we call its ‘historizing’ (Geschehen). The question of Dasein’s ‘connectedness’ is the ontological problem of Dasein’s historizing. To lay bare the structure of historizing, and the existential-temporal conditions of its possibility, signifies that one has achieved an ontological understanding of historicity (Geschichtlichkeit).” (Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, p. 427)

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understanding. This leads us to the recognition that the pre-structure (Vorstruktur) of understanding is indeed the ontological foundation, which could effectively indicate how existential historicity works out its effect on Dasein’s being. Hence, “understanding” does not perform its task like a free conscious act, which is generated voluntarily by the subject. Rather, it must complete its work through a given context. Gadamer describes such a given context for understanding as a “hermeneutic situation” (TM: 300). He summarizes the issue as follows: “The very idea of a situation means that we are not standing outside it and hence are unable to have any objective knowledge of it. We always find ourselves within a situation.” (TM: 301) In the Heideggerian expression, this means that an individual is always already (immer schon)11 being thrown into the world, and has to find her existential characters within a situation. In short, “situation” not only lays the ground for the possibility of understanding, but also signifies the necessity of a given space for our mode of existing. From the viewpoint of phenomenology, the concept of horizon (Horizont) can be used to more effectively explain for our discussion how “situation” functions in the process of understanding. As Gadamer succinctly states that, “every finite present has its limitations. We define the concept of ‘situation’ by saying that it represents a standpoint that limits the possibility of vision. Hence essential to the concept of situation is the concept of ‘horizon.’ The horizon is the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point” (TM: 302). Here, we can see the concept of horizon contributing to the development of Gadamer’s hermeneutics in at least two vital aspects. First, by making use of the concept of horizon, Gadamer is able to incorporate the elements of time and history into the whole structure of his hermeneutics and, at the same time, to enrich and extend the ontological explanation for the problem. Second, the internal connection between the concept of understanding and historicity can be seen obviously enough only by the introduction of the horizon. In this regard, Gadamer tends to emphasize the possibility of the individual action always being limited by the given horizon of history and world, and thus to reject the interpretation of the possibility of understanding as bound only by the unlimited capacity (Vermögen) of the subject, its mighty “Ich-Können,” as Husserl believes. However close a follower of Heidegger Gadamer may seem to

11

This is a typical expression that Heidegger frequently used to describe something that holds an ontological priority. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1972), pp. 134–135; Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996), pp. 127–128.

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be, we should not overlook the influence of Husserl’s philosophy on Gadamer. This influence could be especially evident in the section where he delicately explores the concept of horizon. While paying great attention to the constitution of different conscious acts, Husserl has already introduced the concept of horizon into his entire study program. He develops the concept of “horizon-intentionality” as the always existing background for the appearance of any individual intentional act (the “act-intentionality”).12 The “horizon-intentionality” helps us to thematize the hidden characters of transcendence13 and totality embedded in the correlational intention system, “the correlation a priori.” Analyses of perception have shown that in every single perceptual act the whole object is seen from one single aspect, not in its entirety, so the other possible dimensions of the object will not be exhausted by the act itself. Although not fulfilled by a single act of perception, we would still not perceive the object as consisting of broken pieces; rather, we get the sense of the whole object from the perceptual horizon, as the other possible aspects yet to come are anticipated and referred to. In perception, we always intend an object in the form of one-unit (Einheit) of meaningful experience,14 and do not fall, as Hume believes, into a chaotic condition of simply receiving a bundle of free-floating sensations. In his insightful study of the temporal constitution of timely extended object, Husserl initiates the concept of “temporal horizon” to describe the anonymous operation of consciousness at its deepest level. We cannot afford to go into Husserl’s complicated investigations in detail, but supply only a rough description here. Simply speaking, every now-consciousness, conscious of the now phase of a temporal object, say a musical tone, does not appear just as a discrete individual now point. Rather, it must be accompanied with both the moments of the past as the just-now (which Husserl later designated as “retention”) and the coming new-now (called “protention”). Therefore, the actual given temporal phase always appears in the form of an extended “field,” the “original temporal field (Zeit-

12

Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), § 44 (hereafter Ideas, First Book); Elizabeth Ströker, Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. Lee Hardy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), p. 91. 13 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), pp. 44–49. 14 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, see “Second Meditation,” pp. 39–41.

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feld),”15 in which time presents itself not as a series of different points but as a unity with a total of three moments that constitute a dimension of depth in terms of thickness. To be sure, the discovery of the temporal field reminds us of the concept of horizon. Furthermore, Husserl shows that the whole “temporal flow” of time delineates a situation in which, while every now-consciousness is continuingly replaced by the next new-now and being modified into something running to the dimming darkness, those becoming pasted now do not disappear once and for all. In fact, they are being retained as retention format into the temporal horizon of the next now phase. This fact explains why the development of “horizon-intentionality” could eventually allow us to approach the more original level of the temporal experience itself (die Sache selbst). Here, the crucial point is that the nature and content of the same consciousness will be changed to a certain extent by the continuous modification and sedimentation of the layers of retention. Insofar as we are unceasingly getting a closer and deeper understanding of the object along with the movement of time, our original anticipated (empty) intentions could be refined or refuted. Thus, the whole meaning given to the object may accordingly be transformed. The study on the temporal horizon of the consciousness of a given object implies the fact that the understanding of the meaning of an object and its experience remains an open and on-going process. Husserl’s whole argument helps us to discern the problem in such a way that we can now explain in terms of phenomenological rationality how the horizon that conditions understanding is always already determined by the pasted sedimentation, and how the formation of horizon is affected and constituted by the events that have happened. In short, horizon should be read in the temporal sense, since it is always fused with the constituted factors given by time and history. At the same time, all human consciousness executes and expands their process according to the norm prescribed by the horizon. Every single act could have established itself against the inevitable background of the field of consciousness. With regard to horizon intentionality, the form of objectifying intention is no longer sufficient to cover all performances of consciousness. It also implies that a non-objectifying form of consciousness is to be adopted in dealing with temporal and historical experiences. Of course, while Husserl introduces the concept of horizon in order to further extend the level of discussion on the problem of intentionality, he still intends, as his ultimate concern about founding all things on subjectivity, to 15

Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, trans. John Brough (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991), pp. 239–240.

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highlight the freedom and the mighty capacity of the subject. By taking the investigation of horizon as a reference, Gadamer rather tends to justify how those events that have happened would have shaped our horizon of understanding, and to explore different ways in which those events have set the limitations and the conditions for the process of understanding. In other words, horizon always determines the possibilities of reference to direct the attention of the activity of understanding without necessarily involving the active intervention of the subject. If the conscious acts of subjects, regardless of the kind of objectifying intention they belong to, have to be enclosed in themselves with a hidden horizon, a horizon with a non-objectifying operation must present an unavoidable resistance to the simple extension of the subject’s capacity. That “understanding” must carry in itself a background horizon is an undeniable phenomenological fact. But this does not imply that the horizon is to be limited in a closed and static manner. On this point, Gadamer argues that “the historical movement of human life consists in the fact that it is never absolutely bound to any one standpoint, and hence can never have a truly closed horizon. The horizon is, rather, something into which we move and that moves with us. Horizons change for a person who is moving” (TM: 304). Here, the claim is that, while the horizon poses limitations for the possibility of understanding, it always keeps moving and never stops or becomes fixed in one certain stage. The boundary maintained by the horizon is not enclosed like a fixed wall, but is continuously stretching and contracting within the dynamic tension between two poles; that is, a movement of “to-and-fro,” running between “regression and expansion,” “past and future,” and “familiarity and strangeness.” This is because this movement, this “in-betweenness,” as Gadamer believes, is “the true locus of hermeneutics” (TM: 295). He discussed this kind of movement already in the first part of Truth and Method, in the concept of play (Spiel) (TM: 105). Moreover, under this logic of movement issued by horizon, any individual point of view arising from understanding can be conceived as just one of the possible formations that have emerged from the whole “to-and-fro” movement. Gadamer illustrated the point that, “‘to have a horizon’ means not being limited to what is nearby but being able to see beyond it” (TM: 302). The ability to see beyond implies that a single viewpoint remains at a relativistic and temporary position with reference to the whole horizon, and its meaning in itself also has to be explained in a suitable way without neglecting the context of its own horizon. Then, the present (familiar) horizon and the past (strange) horizon are not two totally different and respectively enclosed circuits, each maintaining a rigid boundary line against the other. Rather, they are two relative parts of a larger

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whole. “The fusion of horizons,” thereby is not achieved by a third invisible hand that breaks up their fence, but results from its own internal movement inside the horizon, and finally makes a boundary change itself possible. The precondition for the possibility of the fusion to take place is a re-opening of the original boundary (TM: 306–307). It should be noted that the movement of the horizon and its transformation are not motivated by the subject, but mostly accomplished by the happening of historical events. In fact, rather than being the accomplishment (Leistung) constituted by the subject’s conscious acts, the historical events have been “always already” affecting the formation of the horizon. As we have discussed so far, horizon is the condition of possibility for the act of understanding. Furthermore, Husserl argues in the study on time consciousness the movement of temporal flow is given in the mode of a peculiar character, in which retention and primal impression always take place “together” (zugleich).16 They are presenting themselves in a special combination—a unity in difference.17 That is to say, the original temporal horizon hence embraces within itself a tension consisting of “retention” and “primal impression.” Nevertheless, all conscious acts can be established only if they have relied upon the self-appearing, self-synthesis, and non-subjective constituting of the internal movement of time given in this horizon. Indeed, the subject could more or less have a preliminary awareness of such a special happening (tension), but this originary differentiating event is never constituted by the attention of the subject as something that is presented by his objectifying act. Simultaneously, the original consciousness (Urbewusstsein) of such a time movement, the preliminary awareness itself, is not designated to constitute something into an object and thus could not be counted as a kind of object-intention. Rather, this time movement never manifests itself in the form of an object. The limitation of the act of subjective constitution is fully reflected in the aspect of this non-egological givenness of the original movement of time. Therefore, a different understanding of this deeper operating level of consciousness has to be provided.

16

Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, p. 345. Nicolas de Warren, Husserl and the Promise of Time (New York: Cambridge University, 2009), p. 118. 17

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IV. The Historically Effected Consciousness as a Different Form of Self-awareness

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1. Reflective “Catching” and the Facticity of Historical Life It is more than obvious that Gadamer does not regard historically effected consciousness (wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein) 18 as a kind of objectifying intention. As far as it belongs to the category of factical life experience,19 it works out its path in a non-objectifying way, and thus is an operative intention.20 Historically effected consciousness, with respect to the investigation of internal time consciousness, could be defined as awareness of the movement of historical effects on life, to which the unthematic background of the movement precisely presents itself as the ultimate horizon to experience factical life. Whereas the internal temporal horizon provides the necessary background for all thematic acts, similarly every object intention must accompany an operative intention. Even if the objectifying intention can be successfully intuited and described by the act of reflection, this still does not imply that the same kind of method could be applied to discern that of operative intention. But it seems that Husserl adopts, throughout his whole phenomenological study, the skill of reflection without recognizing such a limitation in application. In tradition, the reflective philosophy generally holds one basic idea—that the methodology of a “turning back” reflection is the most effective way of catching the hidden lived experience and its consciousness. The following questions therefore arise: If reflective description is just another form of objectifying act, how can one guarantee that the original experience being captured is still the same as it was before the intervention of reflection? Can we still access the subject matter as in itself? If there is an unavoidable modification of the original experience by the execution of reflection or reduction, then will that affect our whole investigation and, if so, to what extent? In addition, is reflection or reduction a completely voluntary act of the subject, a free act without ground, or it is indeed a motivated action? What is the

18

For an appropriate English translation of Gadamer’s technical term wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein, I stick to the standard translations of Joel Weinsheimer, Donald G. Marshall, David E. Linge, and P. Christopher Smith. All of these translators render this term into the phrase “historically effected consciousness,” which tends to emphasize the passive character of human consciousness. 19 Heidegger, Phenomenological Interpretation of Aristotle, trans. Richard Rojcewicz (Bloomington: Indiana University, 2001), part III. 20 Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p. xviii.

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motivation and presupposition behind reflection or reduction? Do we then require a subsequent reduction to this first reduction?21 We may find an echo of the ideas of reflective philosophy on the issue of reflection in Husserl’s entire program of founding the transcendental subjectivity. Ideas I is no doubt the representative work of his transcendental period, in which he argues that reflection is the vision of a mighty ego, which is able to see through any hidden operation of conscious activity.22 In sections 38 and 77, he strongly suggests that reflection affords the possibility that allows the “I” and cogito to become an object for our faithful description. Relying on his long-term skilful practice of reflection and reduction, Husserl even asserts that these actions do not significantly violate the “absolute consciousness.” The reason for this is “while the being of consciousness, of any stream of mental processes whatever, would indeed be necessarily modified by an annihilation of the world of physical things its own existence would not be touched. Modified, to be sure. … Consequently no real being, no being which is presented and legitimated in consciousness by appearances, is necessary to the being of consciousness itself.” 23 In other words, although Husserl admits that the described consciousness has to be modified by the intervention, no harmful effect on its eidetic structure can be detected. In short, for Husserl, such a qualitative change to the absence of the world and real things does not affect the existence of absolute consciousness to any considerable degree. The immanence sphere of the consciousness eventually proves itself to be a totally independent being in the transcendental system, and thus earns its ultimate founding condition. However, can Husserl provide the phenomenological justification for his claim of that absolute status for pure consciousness? Would such a justification really fulfill the criteria of self-givenness (Selbstgegebenheit) with a modified outcome for consciousness, as Husserl himself recognized? Is it justifiable to accord ultimate priority to the immanence sphere?24 How can we be so certain that “reduction” allows one to look at the original phenomenon? At this point, Heidegger challenges the promise of the fulfilment of Husserl’s reflection and 21

Dan Zahavi, Subjectivity and Selfhood (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2005), chapter 4. 22 Husserl, Ideas, First Book, §§ 35–37. 23 Husserl, Ideas, First Book, § 49. 24 Heidegger has provided critical consideration of this justification. See Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time, trans. T. Kisiel (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1992), § 11, “Immanent Critique.”

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reduction, and convinces us that the intervention of reflection must freeze human lived experience into the form of the “unliving” (Entleben) object. 25 Gadamer has worked out a similar assessment of the method of reflection, whereby the original movement of human factical life will be distorted by the intrusion of the subjective reflection.26 Contrary to the belief of the mighty capacity (Vermögen) of subjective constitution, Gadamer tends to accept Heidegger’s facticity (Faktizität) and historicity (Geschichtlichkeit) on the basis that these two concepts can more faithfully describe the original life movement, and exactly indicate the undeniable finite character of Dasein. In Gadamer’s understanding, Dasein cannot, as Husserl believes, direct its reflection and reduction so far as to arbitrarily make free choices, and to as freely execute the method of reflection to look at oneself to achieve self-understanding. Rather, the original lived experience of human factical life indicates that Dasein is always already embedded into history and the world in which it can disclose the mode of existence of its ownmost being in the pre-reflective way. Dasein projects, therefore, its understanding to the world necessarily from a given situation (TM: 301). Taking all of these ideas as his indubitable starting point, Gadamer regards facticity and historicity as the preconditions for the subject’s essential mode of existence. He explicates this sense further with the following Heideggerian expression: “The main point of the hermeneutics of facticity and its contrast with the transcendental constitution research of Husserl’s phenomenology was that no freely chosen relation toward one’s own being can get behind the facticity of this being. Everything that makes possible and limits Dasein’s projection ineluctably precedes it.” (TM: 264) Ontologically speaking, facticity always happens before the attention of a 25

Heidegger points out, “Thus, in reflection we are theoretically orientated. All theoretical comportment, we said, is de-vivifying (Entleben). This now shows itself in the case of life-experiences, for in reflection they are no longer lived but looked at. We set the experiences out before us out of the immediacy of experience. We intrude so to speak into the flowing steam of experiences and pull one or more of them out, which means that we ‘still the stream.’” See Heidegger, The Idea of Philosophy and the Problem of Worldview, trans. Ted Sadler (London: Athlone Press, 2000), pp. 84–85. 26 Sebastian Luft observed that, “What Gadamer battles with this concept is the ideal of reflective philosophy as the philosophical belief that one could reflect one’s way out of history to reach an ideal standpoint. … [T]his was his critique of Hegel and, in the same vein, also Husserl.” See Luft, “The Subjectivity of Effective History and the Suppressed Husserlian Elements in Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics,” Idealistic Studies 37 (2007): 241.

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reflection, and it constitutes the condition for the possibility of executing the act of reflection. This is the reason why Gadamer tends to favor another one of Husserl’s key terms, the concept of lifeworld (Lebenswelt), which explicitly brings about the conception of “pregivenness” (Vorgegebenheit) in dealing with the precondition of consciousness. The problematic of “pregivenness” is very closely aligned with the concept of facticity, insofar as the subject’s finiteness and precondition of self-understanding are being adequately put forth for us. Before the attention of the reflection, the subject already possessed the possibility of self-understanding, a pre-reflective awareness about one’s own being. In contrast to the idea of reflective philosophy, including Husserl assertion, the method of reflection turns out to be not an effective way of capturing the authentic picture of human existential life, the originary lived experience. Here, Gadamer appeals to the concept of facticity to undermine the performance of reflection: “Facticity is obviously that which cannot be clarified, that which resists any attempt to attain transparency of understanding. Thus it becomes clear that in every understanding there remains something unexplained, and that one therefore must ask about what motivates every understanding.” (SISP: 281) That is to say, facticity is the rigid bottom line at which the penetration of reflection comes to its end. He compares two different ways of thinking of his masters, Heidegger’s hermeneutical understanding of factical existence, with that of Husserl’s description of the transcendental constitution by the effort of reflection: “With the concept of ‘self-presence’, that is, the appearing of the stream of consciousness to itself, Husserl meant to grasp the essence of the consciousness of time. Heidegger’s critique shows the narrowness of such a conception of being. He shows that on this conception, the primary, fundamental composition of human Dasein is misjudged. Dasein is not constituted in the always retrospective attempt to recognize oneself in the very act of becoming aware of oneself. It is rather ‘givenness-on-the-way’ (Weggegebenheit), and not only because of its imaginings, but above all because of the non-givenness of the future.” (SISP: 280) To put it differently, if we rely on the “always retrospective attempt,” as the model of operation for reflection, to catch up to the living flow of human life, the original vivifying movement will be probably translated into the objectified object, which is given “always with full presence.” That is to say, the method of reflection has implicitly modelled itself on the act of perception, by which reflecting on life executes in a way that is hardly different from that of perceiving an object. Then, the factical life and historicity would have been objectified in the same way as an object intuited by perception (SISP: 281). The question is whether or not the factical life and the historical consciousness of this life are just

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an “inner” object arising from the flow of consciousness. Is the role of reflection in Husserl’s conception equivalent to a kind of “inner perception” looking at the movement of life? In addition, what is the decisive difference between a spatio-temporal perception of object and the “inner perception” of time? In fact, in his “time lectures” Husserl unhesitatingly regards the inner perception (“look at”) as the model of investigation for time-constituting consciousness.27 But, if we cannot make any precise demarcation between these two forms of perception, how then can we prevent the studied experience from being objectified to the degree that it begins to slide away from the original status? Gadamer argues exactly against this point: “What is alive can never be really known by objective consciousness, by the effort of understanding which seeks to penetrate the law of appearances. What is alive is not such that a person could ever grasp it from outside.” (TM: 253) In short, we have recognized several unresolved issues in the above discussion concerning the possibility of reflection. In the first place, the model of perception does not offer a comprehensive account of all kinds of lived experience. In particular, it does not seem suited for exploring the internal movement of temporal experience and the factical life. The reflective subject cannot “perceive,” or metaphorically “see through,” factical and historical life without a significant modification of the original into the form of perceptual experience. Accordingly, the pre-reflective consciousness of factical life and of historicity would not become objectified as those of the perceptual object. Such a peculiar form of consciousness manifests itself, neither in the mode of “always again” (immer wieder), nor in an idealized form of total “self-presence.” The ever “self-present” and self-identical mode of being does not belong to the origin of human historical life. Rather, a human being, as described by Gadamer and Heidegger, is “being thrown” to live his historical life in the form of transcendence but not in “always again” mode. Thus, rather than being given as the idealized presence (Anwesen), Dasein is already “givenness-on-the-way” (Weggegebenheit); that is, always disclosing itself in the movement of absence and presence. The whole process of such a “flow” of consciousness could not be grasped by an individual attempt at an act of reflection. As Gadamer precisely states: “To be historically means that knowledge of oneself can never be complete.” (TM: 302) In the second place, the reflective philosophy offers no good explanation for the 27

Husserl points out, “I surely do know of the flow of consciousness as flow. I can look at it. I therefore have, in a consciousness that grasps its object ….” See Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, p. 389.

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problem of motivation and the preconditions of the possibility of reflection, reduction and “epoché.” 28 Gadamer points out: “Though it is supposed to bracket all the validity of the world and all the pregivenness of anything else, transcendental reflection must regard itself too as included in the life-world.” (TM: 248) In other words, the act of reduction and “epoché” is not an unmotivated and voluntary intention freely managed by the subject. The historical life in the lifeworld is the region of the abyss that no reflection and reduction could make fully transparent, and that would first have to be “neutralized” so as to re-describe its naked reality. Hence, the reduction and reflection have to carry some inherent preconditions, and thus are always already affected by the historical effect even before their first attempt at “turning back.”29 2. The Historically Effected Consciousness

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As we have demonstrated so far, the model of reflection does not seem to be an appropriate way of approaching the historical human life. Do we have a better 28 Ludwig Landgrebe, “Life-world and the Historicity of Human Existence,” trans. J. C. Evans, in B. Waldenfels and J. M. Broekman et al., eds., Phenomenology and Marxism (London: Routledge, 1984), pp. 167–203. 29 Of course, as the reviewer to this paper suggests, it would be better to distinguish between the reflection on our lived subjective experience and our reflection on historical events, and these should belong to two different levels of thinking. However, even though the first type of reflection does constitute a higher level of reflective intuition, it is still, as long as it is an act of consciousness, constituted and activated from the flow of consciousness in “internal time,” as Husserl has already demonstrated very well. Therefore, both the object-conscious act and the reflective act about inner life cannot appear without involving the internal temporal horizon. In other words, every presenting of a conscious act is not “distorted” by taking time or history as its precondition. Rather, the form of its givenness must be embraced by the horizon of inner temporal movement. Furthermore, the model of turning back, and its hidden presupposition expressed in the metaphor of “free looking,” implies that the subject always has the absolute freedom to grasp the origins of phenomenon by the act of meta-reflection. Thus, the analyses of internal time and temporal horizon can provide a different way of thinking against the assertion of the indubitable role of grounding all meanings played by the subject. Moreover, it is more important to explain that we are not suggesting that reflection be deprived of its significance as a method of thinking, but only to question the form of awareness of this reflection. Must the subject’s awareness be aroused only by “looking at” or “turning back”? How about the awareness by the actions of “hearing” and “touching”? It seems that the latter form of awareness is never achieved by “looking” or “turning back.”

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alternative to this model? How can we assess the historical consciousness without relying again on the model of reflection? The historical consciousness that characterizes the awareness of the movement of the historically lived experience cannot be conceptualized by the intuitive form of reflection. This is because, on the one hand, the method of reflection is an act that is not intrinsically constituted from the original experience. Rather, this act of reflection is, by nature, a second time experience that was generated differently from the original state. Therefore, every product of the reflection must turn out to be a modification of the original experience, i.e., the matter itself has been changed. On the other hand, the act of reflection probably neglects the critical dimension of the historical effects that already constitute the “being affected” character of historical consciousness. The question is, what is the peculiar mode of being of this self-awareness? Denying the method of applying direct intuition on oneself by reflection, Gadamer argues that there is the possibility of an “indirect” way to self-awareness. As Gadamer sees it, “this [way of self-awareness] is a process of foregrounding (abheben). Let us consider what this idea of foregrounding involves. It is always reciprocal. Whatever is being foregrounded must be foregrounded from something else, which, in turn, must be foregrounded from it. Thus all foregrounding also makes visible that from which something is foregrounded” (TM: 305). The manner of foregrounding highlights the condition that allows the awareness of oneself to be obtained in a different way and, eventually, the model of reflection discarded. The experience of “being foregrounded” from the foregrounded thing obviously implies that the consciousness of historically being affected shows itself during the process of confronting something different from itself. This consciousness appears not through a “turning back” of reflection but emerges at the very moment of differentiating something other than itself, and is itself being known from confronting with the other (dem Anderen), which is being foregrounded. In addition, in this form of self-awareness one does not know oneself by repeated self-looking, but by the presence of the other, which helps refer one to oneself. Thus, such a self-awareness certainly necessitates its manifestation under a differentiating relation, a primordial differentiating happened event, and belongs to the category of “relational” consciousness; i.e., a consciousness that recognizes itself only within the relational context, which consists of foregrounding and being foregrounded. In addition, the foregrounding movement constitutes a reciprocal relation or, more precisely, a tension between one’s own and the other, which holds them together but at the same time causes either side to resist assimilation by the other. In short, the priority is no longer on continuously staring at

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oneself to offer an evidential form of self-appearing, but is displaced to the dimension of the other (der Andere) accentuated by foregrounding. By this “mindless” operation, the historically effected consciousness manifests itself not by the conscious act of the reflective subject, the subjective constitution from rational willing, but through the non-subjective (non-egological) movement of contrasting with the other. The “speculative” effect of foregrounding and being foregrounded eventually discloses the unthematic mode of being of the historical consciousness. Gadamer reminds us that one cannot recognize the movement of historicity as long as everything performs in an inconspicuous manner, as the original experience never makes itself known. Only if the present and one’s own horizon come across the past and the alien horizon, can the original horizon unfold itself to us (TM: 304–305). However, no matter how far or how radically one foregrounds the other from itself, it is impossible to achieve the ideal stage of absolute consciousness that Hegel envisioned. Gadamer clearly reminds us not to fall into Hegel’s labyrinth: “That we should become completely aware of effective history is just as hybrid a statement as when Hegel speaks of absolute knowledge, in which history would become completely transparent to itself and hence be raised to the level of a concept.” (TM: 301) Therefore, the relationship between one’s own and the other constitutes an “open dialectic,” along with the infinite process in which the idealized “selfsameness” of a consciousness can no longer be insisted upon, and this dualistic relationship will reject any constitutive attempt at direct intuition by a reflection through the single ray of a conscious act. To be sure, unless the reflective subject initially sacrifices the participation of the other, the selfsameness and the “transparent to itself” cannot be realized, which is to say, the transparent manifestation is established at the expense of eliminating the effect of the other within the original relationship. Since the consciousness of being effected by history becomes self-conscious of itself only within a differentiating relation, the consciousness itself must inherently consist of the other. It is a kind of being that could never reveal itself when sublating the participation of the other. Against the ideal of the model of reflection, Gadamer emphasizes the irrefutable constitutive condition of the other for understanding the historical consciousness, stating that “a truly historical consciousness always sees its own present in such a way that it sees itself, as well as the historically other, within the right relationships. … Thus, it is constantly necessary to guard against overhastily assimilating the past to our own expectations of meaning” (TM: 305). Instead of the attempt to sublate the other to achieve selfsameness, one should maintain a correct balance within the pecu-

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liar dialectical relation, in which the presence of the other will not be excused for a complete presence of consciousness. It is not surprising to learn that Gadamer introduces the “I and Thou” relationship to further illuminate how the aforementioned “right relationships” can operate in the appropriate manner. Tracing back to the tradition of philosophy, including Plato, Hegel, and Collingwood, Gadamer recalls those models of thinking that could provide references to formulate the reciprocal relationship. As we can see from Gadamer’s revision, an irreducible dualistic “I and Thou” relationship undeniably constitutes the condition for a true and meaningful dialogue, as in the situation of mutually interactive conversation. In this sense, the I-Thou relationship is one of the most effective means of guarding against assimilating the participation [voice] of the other to a monolithic voice, and of maintaining a “right” mutual relation that forcefully protects a dynamic tension not to be dominated by any one side (TM: 361). Apart from the dialogical experience of mutual conversation that has displayed an effective means of guarding against assimilation, a true ethical relationship similarly exhibits a properly “right” balance between “I and Thou,” one and the other. From his insightful study of Aristotle’s system of ethics, Gadamer concludes that the high importance of the other in maintaining a good ethical relationship is faithfully delineated by the concept of friendship (philia). In Gadamer’s understanding, the idea of “philia” functions in the same way as the abovementioned “I and Thou” relationship. He points out the irreplaceable function of the other for self-understanding: “Via another, a person becomes one with himself. The other, the friend, means much to the person, not because of the person’s need or lack, but for the sake of his own self-fulfillment. The other is like the mirror of self-knowledge. One recognizes himself in another, whether in the sense of taking him as a model, or, this is more essential, in the sense of the reciprocity in play between friends, such that each sees a model in the other, that is, they understand one another by reference to what they have in common and so succeed in reciprocal co-perception.” (HRE: 138) In other words, the possibility of fulfilling self-awareness is largely dependent on the presence of the other, the friend, and the communication with the other will also keep one’s self-understanding in an on-going process of revision. Viewing Aristotle’s Ethics as a whole, one can find that it is only God who requires nothing from the other, because God must be a totally self-sufficient being. Against the background of an immortal God, a human being needs his friends for his entire ethical living (HRE: 137). Thus, an ethical relationship must sufficiently direct our attention to the sphere of being-with (Mitsein). The facticity of Mitsein fun.

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damentally constitutes human existence in the form of an irreducible, two-sided, reciprocal relation between one and the other. The self-understanding, including the moral consciousness of such an irreducible dual relationship, must itself be found primordially on such factical dualistic ground. It does by nature belong to the form of pre-reflective awareness, and is hardly an afterwards knowing that has first to be grasped by the act of reduction. Nevertheless, it should be noted that, among many philosophers, the model of reflection is closely associated with the idea of searching for an ultimate foundation (Letztbegründung). We have summarized different aspects of the discussion on how to access the historically affected consciousness. Gadamer’s arguments seem to imply a position in contrast with this idea of a foundation instituted by subjective reflection. The search for an ultimate foundation not only persists in Hegel’s dialectical system, in which the absolute consciousness will be fully realized by a process of progressive sublation, but is also carried on throughout Husserl’s whole program of transcendental subjectivity, the aim of which is to defend one indubitable foundation for all philosophies (TM: 256–257). In this regard, Gadamer seems to say that if we cease to adhere to foundationalist thinking, the problematic burden that dogs the method of reflection would be released from our discussion of the originary self-awareness.30 In fact, we may ask, from a phenomenological point of view, whether the idea of searching for a foundation does not already presuppose that there is one ultimate region for the subject matter to be discovered? But could such a presupposition be justified by the matter of the given experience? Would such a presupposition really pass the criterion of the principle of presuppositionless? Or does it fulfill the requirement of the self-givenness (Selbstgegebenheit) of the matter? In contrast, the historically affected experiences and the consciousness of these experiences may not necessarily be disclosed by the subjective act of accentuating and may not involve the subjectivity as the subsisting ground to supply their possibilities. As a form of conscious activity, the act of reflection, regardless of how powerful the “seeing through” capacity of that action may be, owes its ontological possibility to the historical life of human existence. Hence, the act of 30

Through the looking glass of Heidegger, Gadamer succinctly points out the problem: “What constituted the significance of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology was not that it was the solution to the problem of historicism, and certainly not a more original grounding of science, nor even, as with Husserl, philosophy’s ultimate radical grounding of itself; rather, the whole idea of grounding itself underwent a total reversal.” (TM: 257)

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reflection has its own pre-reflective condition that has to be clarified before it is taken for granted. In the same vein, historically effected consciousness will not be given as the consciousness that could be completely grasped as the ultimate foundation. Gadamer would like to insist that the character of historically effected consciousness is, “rather Being than consciousness.” It preserves, by contrast, its being in a dualistic relationship that must embrace oneself and the participation of the other. Only through confronting the presence of the other, can the historical consciousness become aware of its own mode of being. Gadamer once describes how this consciousness could come to the state of self-awareness: “It is the reversal that consciousness undergoes when it recognizes itself in what is alien and different. … Hegel’s dialectical description of experience has some truth.” (TM: 355)

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3. The Negativity of Experience and Self-consciousness There is, as Gadamer has asserted, a close structural connection between historically effected consciousness and the process of experience (Erfahrung). As he stated in Truth and Method, “what we have to keep in mind in analyzing historically effected consciousness: it has the structure of experience” (TM: 346). No less important for us is the insight that “experience in the genuine sense is always negative” (TM: 353). Therefore, Gadamer’s exploration of experience will be our focus of discussion about historically effected consciousness. Scientific truths are successfully established by reliable and methodological procedures, by which scientists emphasize the repeatable and confirming dimension of experience, rejecting all disconfirming and negative aspects. Gadamer states that, “the aim of science is so to objectify experience that it no longer contains any historical element. … [E]xperience is valid only if it is confirmed; hence its dignity depends on its being in principle repeatable. But this means that by its very nature, experience abolishes its history and thus itself” (TM: 346). The radical purification of the negative dimension of experience eventually obliterates the historicity inherently embedded in the constitutive condition of experience. Most important of all for this point is that, contrary to scientific studies on experience, the character of historicity announces itself by way of the negativity of experience. Husserl’s analysis of the intentionality of consciousness has sufficiently demonstrated how science has ignored the precondition of world experience. The condition for the possibility of a scientific understanding of experience is made possible by the operation of intentionality. As Husserl shows in different

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contexts, all scientific activities and the establishment of scientific theories are already founded on the pregivenness of a lifeworld (Lebenswelt).31 This lifeworld ultimately supplies the final and total horizon for the possible accomplishment of human life, of which scientific activity is only one specific type. However fruitful Husserl’s contribution may be, he has still not paid sufficient concern to the intrinsic negativity of the genesis of experience. This might be because he is preoccupied by the regulative ideal of searching for a completeness in intentional fulfillment. That is, in his study of intentionality Husserl does not recognize the productive effect of negativity on arousing awareness of historical life. Husserl finally overlooks how the impact of the “negative” on the process of experience could offer new possibilities for refining the present horizon, and even cause one to achieve self-awareness in a different sense by confronting something unexpected. Husserl even argues that the ultimate conscious experience, that lived experience (Erlebnis) that forms the source of all constitutions of meaning, could certainly acquire evidential certainty as long as it is radically regressed by reduction or reflection. He describes the “reduced” condition of the lived experience as follows: “Over against the positing of the world, which is a ‘contingent’ positing, there stands then the positing of my pure ego and ego-life which is a ‘necessary,’ absolutely indubitable positing. Anything physical which is given ‘in person’ can be non-existent; no mental process which is given ‘in person’ can be non-existent. This is the eidetic law defining this necessity and that contingency.” 32 Here, it is not only the reduced sphere of consciousness that is awarded with the sense of absolute certainty compared with all physical beings, but the world of experience is also proven to be nothing of fundamental value when compared with the constitutive significance of pure consciousness. Husserl declares unambiguously that, although the world is conceived as the correlate to the consciousness, “the actual world [is] one special case among a multitude of possible worlds and surrounding worlds which are nothing else but the correlates of essentially possible variants of the idea, ‘an experiencing consciousness’…” 33 Moreover, equipped with detailed elaborations of absolute consciousness, Husserl convinces us that, “The most important premises from which we shall draw the inferences concerning the essential detachableness of

31

Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. David Carr (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), pp. 48–53. 32 Husserl, Ideas, First Book, § 46. 33 Husserl, Ideas, First Book, § 47.

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the whole natural world [are] from the domains of consciousness, of the sphere of being pertaining to mental process.” All in all, Husserl’s analyses have implied that, consciousness, with its immanent sense of being, has prior validity over the physical sense of existence. Consciousness, as being absolute in the indubitability of immanence, overwhelms the existence of the world, and consequently suppresses the negativity of experience and the participation of the other. The facticity of lived experience is finally reduced to the possibility of the subjective capacity, a possible expression of “I-Can.” But, as Gadamer has clearly demonstrated, the total condition of the movement of the historical life and the consciousness of this movement can never be constituted without the pre-reflective lifeworld and the negativity inextricably embedded in it.

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Reversibility and Its Philosophical Implications: A Phenomenological Explication of a Late Concept of Merleau-Ponty Chon-ip NG National Tsinghua University, Taiwan

Reversibility is generally regarded as one of the key concepts for understanding the later philosophy of Merleau-Ponty. In his last and unfinished manuscript, The Visible and the Invisible (Le visible et l’invisible),1 Merleau-Ponty considered reversibility as expressing “ultimate truth,” and defining the “Flesh” (chair), the corporeal “tissue,” or the “element” of Being.2 It is not difficult to mark the crucial role that this concept plays from within and without. With regard to the development of Merleau-Ponty’s thinking, reversibility provides a concept that furthers the criticism of the traditional dichotomies, especially those stemming

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1

Merleau-Ponty’s works are cited with the following abbreviations: OE: L’Oeil et l’Esprit (Paris: Gallimard, 1964); “Eye and Mind,” trans. Carleton Dallery, improved by Michael B. Smith, in The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, ed. Galen Johnson, translations ed. Michael B. Smith (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1993), pp. 121–149. PP: Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945); Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962). PRI: Primacy of Perception, ed. James M. Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964). VI: Le visible et l’invisible (Paris: Gallimard, 1964); The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968). All references are first to the original French texts then to the English translations. 2 The determination of reversibility as “ultimate truth” (vérité ultime) appears at the end of the main text of The Visible and the Invisible, cf. VI: 201/155. For reversibility as defining what the Flesh is, cf. VI: 187/144. For Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of the Flesh as element, cf. VI: 181–182/139–140, 191/147.

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from the modern philosophy of subjectivity. It goes beyond alternatives such as subject/object, rationality/sensibility, mind/body or inside/outside, but without seeking consolation in a bare state of indeterminacy, being stuck in the “bad ambiguity” of a simple “neither-nor.”3 In view of the large scope of the development of phenomenology, reversibility presents a novel principle explaining the constitution of meaning that substitutes the Husserlian intentionality as well as the Heideggerian hermeneutic circularity. This general pinpointing, however, does not carry us very far. Merleau-Ponty’s scattered elaborations to reversibility are thick with hints and metaphors, so the question remains as to how the insights embodied in this term are to be disentangled. Merleau-Ponty does provide a cluster of analyses of “reversible” phenomena with the aim of illustrating the basic idea—the touching of the left hand by the right hand while the left hand touches a thing, or the painter’s experience of being looked at by what he seeks to paint, or the shaking of hands between one person and another, and so on. However, as was pointed out in M. C. Dillon’s study, the illustrations differ from each other in significant ways; thus, the idea of reversibility that is derived is far from being unequivocal.4 The same degree of obscurity also haunts the whole sequence of new terminologies, from écart, chiasme, and entrelacs to verticalité and être sauvage, which are supposed to explain and to be explained by the idea of reversibility. That philosophical thinking is never a view from nowhere, that it is no less than any other form of original expression a process of living explorations in twilight, sketching out and recasting itself constantly, is a point that Merleau-Ponty often repeated. He would have been the very last person to exempt his own thinking from this constraint. This paper is an endeavor to contribute to the phenomenological clarification of the concept of reversibility and to the explication of the philosophical significance underlying it. We begin with a systematic examination of the phenomena that Merleau-Ponty analyzed and subsumed under the idea of reversibility. Then, in the second section, we will mark out the phe3 Cf. PRI: 11: “The study of perception could only teach us a ‘bad ambiguity,’ a mixture of finitude and universality, of interiority and exteriority.” This statement comes from an unpublished text that Merleau-Ponty provided for his candidacy to the Collège de France, in which he summarizes his past works and outlines the perspectives of his future studies. For a further discussion of the concept of “bad ambiguity” in Merleau-Ponty’s thinking, cf. Bernhard Waldenfels, Phänomenologie in Frankreich (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983), pp. 174–176. 4 Cf. M. C. Dillon, Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988), pp. 157ff. This paper owes much to the subtle analysis of Dillon.

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nomenological significance of reversibility by contrasting it with the concept of intentionality. In the final section, we will pinpoint some significant philosophical implications of reversibility.

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I. Strata of Reversible Phenomena As an alternative to intentionality in the phenomenological sense, reversibility is supposed to be present in each and every phenomenon in principle. It constitutes, so to speak, the transcendental condition of appearance, the phenomenality of phenomena. Therefore, that Merleau-Ponty illustrated his idea with a variety of reversible phenomena can be regarded as legitimate or even obligatory. As might be expected, the phenomenon of perception serves as the paradigm case and as the basic stratum for Merleau-Ponty’s formation of his essential insights. It is a truism that in traditional philosophy, including Husserl’s phenomenology, vision normally serves as the prototype for analyses of perception. However, for the explication of reversibility in the region of perception, it is tactile experience that Merleau-Ponty primarily draws upon. Touching is regarded as the basic model of perceptual reversibility, of which “the palpation of the eye is a remarkable variant” (VI: 173/133). Among tactile perceptions, we can further distinguish between two kinds of reversibility. First, there is the reversibility within one’s own body—the reversibility in the touching between one part of it and another, e.g., my right hand touches my left hand. Then, there is the reversibility between one’s own body and other bodies—the reversibility that takes place when one gets touched by another body while one is touching it. The reversibility within one’s own body is closely related to the problem of the constitution of the body in its unity. The phenomenology of body used to begin with a separation of the living body from the material one, of the “Leib” from the “Körper.” But to prevent the thematization of the living body from being just a simple displacement of the well-known Cartesian dualities to the level of corporeality, one has to explain how the unity of the body constitutes itself despite or, better, precisely because of the difference in its two “leaves” or two aspects. In the phenomenological tradition there are several ways to tackle this problem. Heidegger and Sartre approach it in ways that seem almost contrary, but are in consequence equally sterile. Heidegger dismisses the problem in the same way as he dismisses the intentional problem of transcendence to the world or the epistemological problem of the other minds. By starting with the notion of “Dasein,” Heidegger believes that he is able to overcome the dichotomies

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from the outset.5 “Dasein” is supposed to be prior and more original than the separation between mind and body, the self and the world, as well as the self and the other. It is always already in the world, being with the other Daseins and knowing nothing of the mystery of having a body. In contrast, Sartre dismisses the problem of the unity of the touching body and the touched body or as he would say, the “corps subjet” and “corps objet,” by proclaiming the unity to be unachievable. “My body for me” is set apart from “the body-for-others” by an abyss; they belong, so says Sartre in Being and Nothingness, to “two incommunicable levels.”6 Heidegger and Sartre have no doubt revolutionized many central issues in phenomenology. However, with regard to corporeal unity, one can find clues of a more promising conception by returning to Husserl’s original analysis of the phenomenon of “Leiblichkeit.” Despite the tendency to maintain the purity of consciousness, Husserl offers us in Ideen II and other relevant texts a phenomenological description of corporeality that is instructive for all of the research on the subject that followed. Various determinations from this pioneering work, like “the zero-point of orientation,” “the localization of sensations,” “the organ of experience,” and “the natural medium of expression,” left traces in Merleau-Ponty’s thought. But above all, it is the characterization of the body as an “Umschlagstelle,” as a nexus and transitional place between the orders of intentionality and causality, that effectuates Merleau-Ponty’s most interesting development. It does this by first accentuating the ambiguity of the body, before finally articulating it through the notion of reversibility.7 The main features of this idea, as Dillon points out, are already delineated in the early works of Merleau-Ponty.8 One explicit example is the following passage from The Phenomenology of Perception on the power of double sensations:

5

p. 48.

Cf. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (11th ed.; Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1967),

6

Jean-Paul Sartre, l'être et le néant (Paris: Gallimard, 1943), pp. 343–344; Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Washington Square Press, 1993), pp. 304–305. 7 On the body as Umschlagspunkt (turning point) or Umschlagstelle (turning place), cf. Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution (Husserliana IV), ed. Marly Biemel (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952), pp. 160, 161, 286. 8 Cf. Dillon, Merleu-Ponty’s Ontology, p. 153.

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[W]hen I touch my right hand with my left, my right hand, as an object, has the strange property of being able to feel too. We have just seen that the two hands are never simultaneously in the relationship of touched and touching to each other. When I press my two hands together, it is not a matter of two sensations felt together as one perceives two objects placed side by side, but of an ambiguous set-up in which both hands can alternate the rôles of “touching” and being “touched.” (PP: 109/93)

What Merleau-Ponty characterizes here as capability of alternation, foreshadows plainly the later concept of reversibility. The basic concern is already present: What is at stake is a kind of unity in which the touched and the touching are neither entirely separated nor totally blended. They are not entirely separated because the roles of touching and being touched can be alternated with a simple shift of attention; they are not totally blended because the two never completely coincide. The touching within the different parts of the same body continues to serve as the basic model in the later idea of reversibility. In the case of my left hand touching my right one, that the touching and the touched can exchange their roles is a plain fact; they are, after all, of the same body. Also, Merleau-Ponty agrees on that when he introduces the notion of reversibility.9 Nevertheless, one misses the point of this new term if, tempted by the plain fact, one simply starts with a given unity, taking for granted a conscious “I” as a pole from whence intentional acts are launched, or a body as a material entity with a somatosensory system in which neurons circulate. Instead, one should conceive of the reversibility as the constituting event of the unity itself. The touching hand and the touched hand belong only so far to one sole body, as they are intermingled with the possibilities of the continuous alternation; they are parts of a whole that constitutes itself through reversibility between its parts. In fact, Merleau-Ponty is far from any naïve favoring of the primacy of identity. The reversibility neither begins with a given unity nor aims at it. As Merleau-Ponty puts it in a passage in The Visible and the Invisible, reversibility effects rather “a sort of dehiscence [that] opens my body in two” (VI: 162/123). The reversibility instituted by the touch is not a synthesis unfolding around the axis of my touching hand. It is not just a variation of “passive synthesis,” but a swing between identity and difference, an intertwining of unity and dehiscence. The second form of reversibility in touching takes place between one’s own body and the bodies of others. The most straightforward case of this is the 9

Cf. VI: 183 f./141.

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touching of a physical thing. It concerns the reversibility of the so-called touching subject and the touched object. As in the previous case, the second form of reversibility is also a unity of intertwining differences. The touching subject is not separated from the touched object absolutely—there is a sort of continuity of being between them like a valley that connects two peaks of a saddle. Only when I place myself in the tangible world and participate to a certain extent as a member of tangible things in it, am I capable of touching a thing. My hand “takes its place among the things it touches, is in a sense one of them, opens finally upon a tangible being of which it is also a part” (VI: 176/133). A Cartesian mind is thus incompetent to touch and it is doubtful whether a Heideggerian Dasein can do so with its “Hand”—the “Hand” that vows to grasp the possibility of the “Zuhandenes” almost directly, without the labor of the fingers, free from the entanglement of the skin and the materials, in the absence of the tangible thickness of the flesh. The idea of the touching body as situated in the tangible world suggests a flavor of naturalism, but it is indeed not foreign to the phenomenological tradition. It reminds us of the problem that Husserl identified as “the paradox of subjectivity” and “the equiprimordiality of existence and facticity” that Heidegger worked out in his analysis of Dasein. The difference is that the whole paradox or equiprimordial structure is now embodied and understood as the very structure of the perception. Let us examine the matter in detail. For the touching subject, its belongingness to the tangible world is manifested in the possibility of being touched by the object, and first of all, in the affectivity of the subject. In his explication, Merleau-Ponty tends to shift from the dimension of possibility to that of actuality. Reversibility designates, then, the case that I am actually affected by the thing while I touch it. Corresponding to this shift is the emphasis on a bodily phenomenon that was already analyzed by Husserl, namely, the double sensation. To touch an object, for instance a glass in front of me, is concurrently to be touched by it. I feel not only the smoothness, coolness, and hardness of the glass, but also the corresponding lightness, chillness, and the sense of pressure that it elicits on my skin or on my fingertips. Sensation refers both to the quality of the thing and to the state of my bodily affections. Yet to be touched or affected by a thing is not the same as being touched by my left hand. The conspicuous difference lies in the absence of the possibility of witnessing the actual transformation of the thing into the touching one, and to feel how it touches me actively by just an agile shift of my attention, as in the case the reversibility between my left hand and my right. The glass is

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not a part of my body. Neither is the glass a sentient body like mine. In the case of being “touched” by the glass, we are not inclined at all to see my sensations as corresponding with a sequence of sensations located and organized on the surface of another body. I am not touched by the glass in the same way as I am touched by another person. To what extent is it then something really capable of touching me? Are we not using the term “touching” only metaphorically in this case? Before answering these questions, let us first proceed to another stratum of reversibility that Merleau-Ponty examines almost as thoroughly as that of touching; namely, to the reversibility in vision. In the tactile region, the switch between the touching and the touched seems to be overt and irrefutable. Bare fingers are enough to perform the drama of touching each other. But is this equally the case with vision? It is true that the seeing body presupposes that it is visible by itself. Just as the touching hand is a part of the tangible world, seeing eyes are a part of the visible world. Still, this visibility in principle has its own characteristics that need to be specified phenomenologically. First, the visibility of my seeing body is a possibility that is not completely realizable by me alone. Talk of a blind spot in a field of vision has, besides a physiological sense, a philosophical significance. In general, my vision of myself is rather limited. With my natural vision, I can see my hands and feet, and most parts of my limbs and torso, but none of the organs from my face except a bit of my nose, cheeks, and my tongue. Normally, my eye does not see itself, at least not without artificial aids such as a mirror or a camera. Second, vision does not require a real, physical contact between the subject and the object like that in the case of touch. “To see,” as Merleau-Ponty states, is “to have at a distance” (OE: 26–27/127). The touching must stay in contact with the touched and be affected by it for the perception to take place. There is, however, no phenomenal basis upon which to believe that to see a thing presupposes to be seen by it somehow. By the same token, an actual reversal of this kind does not present in the case of smelling, tasting, and hearing. To conclude, reversibility in the sense of double sensation, i.e., as the actual reversal of subject and object, is an exceptional case that one finds in tactile experience, and not a general structure that is essential for every phenomenon.10 10

I follow here a critique that is already well developed in Dillion’s study. Cf. Dillion, Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology, pp. 160–162. I only have reservations about Dillion’s justification of Merleau-Ponty’s view by referring to Merleau-Ponty’s attempt to

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Hence, a necessary differentiation seems to be missing in Merleau-Ponty’s reflection. The idea of reversibility in vision is, however, not just empty speculation. In “Eye and Mind” Merleau-Ponty draws instead on the extraordinary experience of the painter to legitimate the reversibility between the seeing subject and the seen thing: “In a forest, I have felt many times over that it was not I who looked at the forest. Some days I felt that the trees were looking at me, were speaking to me….” (OE: 31/129) From this anecdote of a painter, Merleau-Ponty concludes: “It becomes impossible to distinguish between who sees and who is seen, who paints and what is painted.” (OE: 32/129) The testimony of the painter is not to be repudiated straight away, but neither should it be taken too literally. Unless we are to tolerate some mysterious sort of anthropomorphism, we have to understand the “see” in a special way if we venture to say that the tree or other visible things see us in return. What can “seeing” in such a reversal possibly mean? In Eye and Mind, the interpretation of the painter’s experience leads to a discussion of mirror images. Perhaps we are thus not unfair to Merleau-Ponty if we understand the “seeing” at stake as a kind of “mirroring.” To regard the tree as “seeing” us back while we are seeing it refers then to the fact that the tree in our vision somehow reflects our gaze. It makes a person aware of his/her own visibility. To see a tree is to encounter the possibility, that I can be seen by myself or by someone else and, should the occasion arise, I would be aware of this through the mediation of the tree. Besides the reversibility within touch and that within vision, there is the intercrossing between touch and vision. In its tactile exploration of things, the touching body is delivered into a tangible world. But what is tangible is visible in principle. To be delivered into the tangible world is to be thrown into the visible one; by being tangible, the touching body becomes visible as well. For Merleau-Ponty, the reverse holds as well: [E]very visible is cut out in the tangible, every tactile being in some manner promised to visibility, […] there is encroachment, infringement, not only between the touched and the touching, but also between the tangible and the visible. (VI: 175/133)

de-center ontology. I simply do not see why treating the talk of “the trees ‘see’ me” as a metaphor necessarily implies endorsing an idealistic ontology with transcendental consciousness as its center.

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What is visible is tangible in principle.11 The seeing body hence becomes tangible by being visible: [E]very movement of my eyes—even more, every displacement of my body—has its place in the same visible universe that I itemize and explore with them, as conversely, every vision takes place somewhere in the tactile space. There is double and crossed situating of the visible in the tangible and of the tangible in the visible; the two maps are complete, and yet they do not merge into one. The two parts are total parts and yet are not superposable. (VI: 175/133)

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As indicated in the cited passage, Merleau-Ponty will in no way mingle vision with touch. In a working note, he even overplays the difference with the remark: “Each ‘sense’ is a ‘world,’ i.e., absolutely incommunicable for the other senses.” (VI: 271/217) Indeed, what Merleau-Ponty has in view is once again an intertwining that keeps the necessary differences vital. Vision is to be distinguished from touch, even though their worlds interweave with each other. To conclude our reconstructive interpretation, Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of reversibility in perceptual phenomena can be divided in three strata: (1) There is the reversibility between touching and the touched—I can touch and can be touched; (2) there is the reversibility between seeing and the seen—I can see and can be seen; (3) and finally, there is the synesthetic reversibility between vision and touch—I can see and can be touched, I can touch and can be seen. We can illustrate these reversibilities in touch and vision by the following diagram:

11

This general claim implied in Merleau-Ponty’s discussion has to meet with certain counterexamples, as the reviewer of the present paper rightly suggested. Not only are there Fata morganas, rainbows, and trompe-l'oeil—visual phenomena that tempt us to mistake them as having tactile properties that they lack. There are also cases like flashes, light, and mist that normally do not lure us into exploring them with our hands at all. They are purely optical events. However, I do not think that Merleau-Ponty has to insist on the strong claim. A more moderate position, namely that the visible is somehow constantly infringed and encroached on by the tangible and by the other aesthetic dimensions, will work just fine for the reversibility thesis to maintain its phenomenological significance. As to the actual way of intertwining, one has to study it case by case and cautiously mark out the essential differences among normally visible things, illusions, the imagination, pictorial representations, and pure visual phenomena.

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Chon-ip NG (1) Touching

Touched (Tangible)

(3) Synergy and Synesthesia (2) Seeing

Seen (Visible)

Obviously, much has to be worked out to finish Merleau-Ponty’s ontological project—reversible phenomena in senses other than touch and vision are to be analyzed; the unification of different senses into an individual body, and their respective worlds into the one sole world, should be elaborated; the validity of reversibility for understanding the world of ideality, the kosmos noetos, has to be demonstrated. But this is not the place for an exhaustive examination of these issues. For the objective of the present paper, our clarification of the concept of reversibility should be sufficient. We proceed in the next sections to the articulation of the phenomenological significance latent in Merleau-Ponty’s discussions of reversibility.

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II. From Intentionality to Reversibility Before exploring the phenomenological significance of the reversibility, let us loosely outline a phenomenological theory of experience as a model for reference and further comparison. Phenomenology aims at the philosophical explication of the origin of meaning, insofar as a phenomenon is the appearance of something as something and thus significant. In carrying out its philosophical project, one of its central insights consists of the discovery of horizon, the field or the world whose openness is presupposed by all appearances of something as something. The openness of horizon is an interlacement of two elements: on the one hand the structured variety of the potential, not yet experienced, aspects of reality; on the other hand the corresponding sequence of possible actions, the actual performance of which would bring those latent aspects of reality to actual appearance. In a nutshell, the openness of horizon includes both the possibilities of the appearance and freedom of our actions. Horizon is an open field of experience, yet its openness is not simply an aggregation of abstract possibilities scattered around, but a structure with a determined form and style. It unfolds itself around the focal point of my current

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action, extending and reorganizing itself with each and every new move of mine—what was previously inaccessible is now within the reach of bare hands, what was barely possible becomes now realizable; what was impossible falls now into the range of possibility. Thus, every current action is directional in a twofold way: it comports itself with the thing or the state of affairs in focus, and it has a bearing on the restructuring of the corresponding horizons. In the traditional terminologies, one may say that every action is empirical and transcendental at the same time, that the experience and its “a priori” conditions of possibility are constituted through the same set of activities. How is this twofold directionality of action to be understood? As one may anticipate, the Husserlian phenomenology copes with this problem by distinguishing between different kinds of intentionality. Action qua intentional action refers not only to the focal point of an action, its intentional object, and intentional content; it also refers to other possible actions that are relevant in the context. Seeing the front of the object right before my eyes refers and thereby inaugurates for me a variety of possible of actions—that I can go behind it to see its back, or come near it to scrutinize it in detail, or attend to it with an altered attitude, and so on. Speaking with Husserl, the intentionality of an act that refers to the object is always intertwined with a coalescence of “lateral, operative intentionalities”; the former determines the focal point of action and the latter, the background from which the thing in focus stands out in relief. Horizon is one of the few Husserlian concepts that earned a favorable reception among the later phenomenologists in general. Even Heidegger inherited this concept and recast it existentially in his earlier thinking. However, if we follow Husserl’s tendency to trace the horizon back to the achievement of the transcendental subjectivity and grasp it as a field of possibility interwoven by the manifold of “I can” and the potential appearances of the object, then the horizon provides only a slanted description of the phenomenality. As the later Heidegger critically remarks, the horizon is only the side with which the world faces us.12 The appearing of a phenomenon refers not just to what can appear but doesn’t yet appear; it refers also to what resists the appearance in an original way, to a dimension of concealment, so that the entering into field of appearance is always accompanied by the countermovement of withdrawal from this field. In the working notes of The Visible and the Invisible, as manifested in the recurrent references to the theme of “Unverborgenheit du Verborgen,” Mer12

Cf. Martin Heidegger, Feldweg-Gespräche, Gesamtausgabe vol. 69, ed. Ingrid Schüßler (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1995), p. 112.

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leau-Ponty shows a great interest in this Heideggerian insight of the concealment in appearance.13 Nevertheless, Merleau-Ponty does not sublimate the concealment and withdrawal straight up to the altitude of the historicity of Being. Instead of tracing the concealment back to the “secret” of Being, Merleau-Ponty sticks with the concrete, corporeal experience and endeavors to explicate from there the radical concealment that is involved in the phenomenality. Reversibility can now be regarded as the concept for the articulation of the phenomenological concealment just mentioned, especially in the sense of divergence. We could illustrate this interpretation by returning to the basic model of reversibility: the case that one of my hands touches the other. In a tactile phenomenon like the touching of my left hand by my right one, reversibility designates the fact that the touching left hand must itself be part of the tangible world in order to touch the right hand and anything else. One may recall here the Heideggerian idea that Dasein is equiprimordially existence and facticity, projection and thrownness. Therefore, to a certain extent, Merleau-Ponty’s analysis seems to be iterating the equiprimordial constitution of Dasein in the concrete somatic level. Reversibility, then, intuitively shows us a way out of the paradox of the subject. It explicates how precisely we are, through our embodiment, subject and object at the same time. Yet it is noteworthy that for Merleau-Ponty, the awareness of our facticity does not need to draw on any limit-experience. Neither nausea nor angst nor the hostile look of the other, but the simple tactile experience of my two hands touching each other is sufficient to remind me that I am a thing capable of being touched, that I am ceaselessly thrown into the tangible world at the same time as I explore it with my touching hands. And what this reversibility reveals is more a divergence from the field of my possible actions than a naked existence abstracted from all of the meaningful orders. Facticity in this sense is not factum brutum, not nakedness per se, but écart and thrownness beyond my own world, an exposure of myself in a world of heterogeneous possibility. My left hand touches my right hand only if the former is also a tangible thing. This possibility of being touched can be grasped and realized by my hand, but it is not bound to it. Rather, it is essentially open to a different person, accessible to the touching hands of another body. Therefore, my actual touching constitutes not only a sequence of possibilities of further tactile experience for

13

VI: 297/249; Cf. also VI: 302/254, 300/251.

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me; it also subjects me to another sequence of possibilities; i.e., the unrestricted possibilities of being touched by another: I become tangible in principle. These two sequences of possibilities are heterogeneous. For the former is a nexus of possibilities that forms around me and stands at my disposal; “Vermöglichkeiten” and “Ich kann” as Husserl would say. The latter, on the contrary, is a sequence that lies within the power of others. But this latter sort of possibilities opened for others and realizable by them indicates in a sense impossibilities for me; they manifest in the fact that I cannot maintain a state of pure touching without being tangible for others. The reversibility delimits therefore the border of my world; it constitutes the shadow of my bodily self. Still, the two nexuses of possibilities intertwine, as if what is beyond my world is just located on a map that is slightly decentered. To adopt a saying of Merleau-Ponty that we have already cited: “[T]he two maps are complete, and yet they do not merge into one. The two parts are total parts and yet are not superposable.” (VI: 175/134) Similar but modified structures of reversibility can be found in regions other than tactile experience: In every vision, the one who sees is exposed to a gaze possible from another viewpoint, he is visible in a horizon that is not his; in every saying, each utterance exposes the speaker to the hazards of twisting and misunderstanding; with every action, the agent finds himself thrown into life projects that are alien to his, and so on. Opening a horizon means delivering oneself to others, the intentionality that constitutes my world is interlaced with a reversibility that disintegrates it and refers me to the worlds of others. In such a way, reversibility constitutes what is essential for being a horizon. It is hence the “Horizonthaftigkeit,” or, in the favorite somatic metaphor of the later Merleau-Ponty, the tissues of the flesh that intertwine between me and what goes beyond (VI: 319/265). III. The Philosophical Significance of Reversibility Let us summarize our interpretation of the phenomenological significance of reversibility in the previous section. We understand reversibility as having the same fundamental status as intentionality or hermeneutic circularity; i.e., we understand it as the constitutive feature of appearance. In this regard, reversibility does not denote the actual reversal between subject and object. Rather, it refers to the essential proliferation of the orders of appearing, the interlocking of one’s field of experience with that of the others, and the permeation of my “Vermöglichkeiten” through the heterogeneous possibilities.

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If the above interpretation is basically on the right track, then we can, with its aid, reexamine the conceptual determinations of reversibility given by Merleau-Ponty and pinpoint some of its philosophical significances. Reversibility is presented in The Visible and the Invisible and other later texts together with a series of interconnected terms. They can be divided into three groups, corresponding to three different conceptions of reversibility: (1) Reversibility as circulation.14 In this sense, reversibility addresses the prereflective self-relation within the sensible experience. As the origin of vision and touch, reversibility is a fold (pli) within the sensible Being. A visible, tangible body abruptly folds onto itself and onto the Being as a whole to become “a sensible for itself” (VI: 176/135). (2) Reversibility as reciprocity. Expressed in figures like “chiasm,” as “interlacement” (entrelacs), it refers to the incessant reversal between seer and seen, touching and touched, sensing and sensed. In this sense, reversibility in vision is not unlike, as Merleau-Ponty once suggested, the mutual-reflection of two mirrors facing each other and multiplying images in each other, so that at the end it is unable to trace back and determine which is active and which is passive in the course of seeing.15 (3) Reversibility as divergence (écart) or escape (dérobade, échappent).16 In this sense, reversibility no longer refers to a simultaneous, actual reversal. The overlapping of the touching and the touched remains an event about to happen but is in fact never complete.17 The self-affectiveness does not close up a circulation totally within my own world; it is rather the manifestation of that which escapes my grasp. Based on our interpretation in the last section, it may be fair to regard reversibility in the last sense as the most stimulating for phenomenological philosophy. For it shows concretely how appearance always takes place in “in-between,” in a place where fields or orders of possibilities encounter each 14

Cf. VI: 185 f./143. Bernhard Waldenfels has conducted a thorough and insightful analysis of the motive of “interweaving” (entrelacement, Verflechtung) in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. Cf. Bernhard Waldenfels, “Verflechtung und Trennung. Wege zwischen Merleau-Ponty und Levinas,” in Bernhard Waldenfels, Deutsch-Französische Gedankengänge (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995), pp. 346–382. The conceptual distinction between symmetrical and asymmetrical interweaving is especially revealing for demarcating the limits of Merleau-Ponty and his position in contrast to Levinas. 16 Cf. VI: 192/148. 17 Cf. VI: 191/146. 15

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other, yet do not conjoin—in Merleau-Ponty’s term, it is the locus of the “incompossibles,” rather than a universal horizon.18 Reversibility means, then, that there is no one all-encompassing order, no field of appearance that has no outside. Body, emerging from and immersed in the flesh of Being, goes beyond a particular field of experience by opening itself up to others. In this reversibility, orders interlock and interlace, without fusing themselves into one; they are neither just scattered around like an unconnected mass, nor are they destined to be unified in a grand synthesis. Perhaps the latent philosophical significance of reversibility lies in the conception of rationality that it implies. It is well known that Merleau-Ponty always has in view a kind of rationality that is not the opposite of experience and nature, but pregnant and nourished in the flesh of my world or, more precisely, in the tissues that connect my world and the worlds of others.19 There is a rationality embodied in our aesthetic universe. Due to its spontaneous ordering, as Merleau-Ponty points out, “[t]he flesh (of the world or my own) is not contingency, chaos, but a texture that returns to itself and conforms it.” It guarantees that “in looking closer I would have had a true vision, and that in any case, whether it be this one or another, there is a true vision” (VI: 146/90). Yet, if reversibility is the Way in which this embodied rationality prevails, then as a supplement we may add that not only is the flesh not chaos, not only is there an order, there are always already a multiplicity of orders, rationalities in plural. The generality of the wild reason of the flesh consists then not of the ultimate synthesis of the all, but of the reversible intertwining of a plurality of orders.

18

Cf. VI: 177/134. For example, as Merleau-Ponty remarks in the celebrated preface of phénoménologie de la perception: “Rationality is precisely proportioned to the experiences in which it is disclosed. To say that there exists rationality is to say that perspectives blend, perceptions confirm each other, a meaning emerges. But it should not be set in a realm apart, transposed into absolute Spirit, or into a world in the realist sense. The phenomenological world is not pure being, but the sense which is revealed where the paths of my various experiences intersect, and also where my own and other people's intersect and engage each other like gears.” (PP: xv/xix–xx) 19

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The Subjective Movement of Body and World: Observations on the Phenomenology and Metaphysics of Corporeality in the Reflections of Jan Patočka Karel NOVOTNÝ

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Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences, the Czech Republic Charles University, the Czech Republic

Jan Patočka’s thinking on corporeality occupies a significant place in his work. The following observations are an attempt to elucidate the status of corporeality in the scheme of his phenomenological philosophy and thus to add to the understanding of how the body influences our experience.1 In his last, culminating phase, beginning in the mid-1960s, Patočka’s philosophy of corporeality was first formulated within the framework of his conception of human existence as a union of three movements corresponding to three temporal ecstasies. Patočka understands these movements as a unified movement that corresponds to a movement through which that movement and the world itself are given. Corporeality is inseparably bound up with the “movement” through which the world is given. Having a body, being a body, and controlling a body means participating in individuation as the fundamental mode of the being of things and of being in the space and time of the world. The body—or, more precisely corporeality—appears to play a role at all levels of man’s relationship with the world: as a lived body in a phenomenological de1

We shall concentrate on a handful of texts by Patočka. By interpreting them, we would like to analyze his thoughts on this matter; at the same time, we believe that these interpretations constitute a way of conducting a philosophical investigation into corporeality. This text was made possible by a grant for the project entitled “Philosophical Investigations of Body Experiences: Trans-Disciplinary Perspectives,” from the Czech Science Foundation, GAP 401/10/1164, within the framework of the grant for the project entitled “The Phenomenological Theory of Corporeality and the Embodied Subject,” from the Grant Agency of the Charles University of Prague, Nr. 75910.

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scription of experience and in the interpretation of the correlation between experience and the givenness of the natural world; as an experiencing body situated in and situating man in a world that is not merely a correlate of consciousness, but wherein the body belongs as a physical body, much as other things. In his idealistic transcendental philosophy of the constitution of the world, Husserl views the world as the correlate of the constitutive life of consciousness. Patočka draws on this view for his philosophical interpretation of movement and the world, which deals with what precedes consciousness as the reflexively inaccessible preconditions for constitution and makes possible, among other things, other correlations between consciousness and its objects—which appear in the common intentional sense. The original relationship between man as a living being and the world as a whole is thus understood and interpreted as the union of the three movements of existence corresponding to a certain cosmological and ontological framework. Within this framework and in the body, man originally understands himself in his finitude. Embodiment and a relatedness to the world go together; being related to the world is impossible without embodiment and embodiment as a relationship with the self is impossible without being related to the world. The “ultimate foundation which can never be brought to reflection” is realized in these relationships, which Patočka grasps by means of a particular conception of movement. That is why phenomenology as a description and reflexive analysis of phenomena might require thinking about those things that may not be apprehended reflexively as given in consciousness—that is, it might require practicing a particular kind of metaphysics. I. Phenomenology and the Metaphysics of Movement as a Framework for Interpreting Corporeality 1. A First Delimitation of Phenomenology and Metaphysics Phenomenology and metaphysics are thus marked in the first instance by a contradiction. Husserl originally tried to establish phenomenology as a metaphysically neutral theory of science. Even in the subsequent context of the transcendental-philosophical foundation of all of consciousness, Husserl’s thought retains the contradiction between phenomenology and metaphysics. Even in his Habilitation thesis, Přirozený svět jako filosofický problem (The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem, 1936), in which Patočka came closest to Husserl’s transcendental-philosophical stance, Patočka confronted the

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constructive approach of speculative idealism and a phenomenological interpretation based on vivid elements of phenomenal givenness. In the text “The Phenomenology and Metaphysics of Movement,” upon which our essay will chiefly be based, Patočka touches again on this opposition between phenomenology and metaphysics. He recalls in the introduction that thanks to phenomenology, which reveals the originality of certain phenomena such as “subjective corporeality and self movement,” deep-rooted, persistently upheld “modern metaphysical positions” fall away—positions that he characterizes as reactions to the Cartesian idea of a self-certain reflexive soul that result in the separation of body and soul, an idea that is current either “insincerely or bashfully to this day.”2 To this day, phenomenology—as opposed to metaphysical constructions—defends itself on the one hand by means of the methodological maxim “accept things as they reveal themselves and do not go beyond the framework of what is presently given.” Thus, more recent phenomenology too, adducing Husserl’s own methodological maxim, confronts Husserl’s philosophical conviction and opposes it by refusing to consider, for example, the phenomenal givenness of things as a “meaning-giving” operation on the part of consciousness. Consciousness, as a result of its absolutely (Cartesian) self-givenness, would be separated from worldly being by a sphere of endless connections of meaning with a pure ego at the center. The appearance of things may also be consistently understood differently alongside a phenomenological analysis of givenness—that is, as Patočka says in this text, in connection to the subject that understands itself in its finitude. “Achieving this fundamental self-understanding is thus a task that precedes a pure investigation into consciousness.”3 This formulation of this task is reminiscent of Heidegger’s analytics of existence, which aims to understand the finitude of being and, on the basis of an overtaking of one’s own death, gain insight into finitude or attain an understanding of finitude through mortality. This, however, is not Patočka’s approach. 2

J. Patočka, “Phänomenologie und Metaphysik der Bewegung” (hereafter PMB), in Archivní soubor spisů Jana Patočky (Archival Collection of the Writings of Jan Patočka, i.e., a samizdat edition of his writings published by I. Chvatík et al.; hereafter ASSJP), volume entitled Přirozený svět a pohyb lidské existence II (The Natural World and the Movement of Human Existence II), pp. 2.4.1–2.4.27. Patočka used this preparation paper for a lecture given in Freiburg in 1967. The French translation of the text was published in J. Patočka, Papiers phénoménologiques, trans. Erika Abrams (Grenoble, 1995), pp. 14–27. 3 PMB: 5.

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Patočka speaks of achieving a fundamental understanding of finitude as a task that precedes an investigation into consciousness in a different sense than Heidegger’s. This is because it is a phenomenology of corporeality that should lead to that understanding of finitude, yet the task in question is to be carried out by going beyond itself toward a particular metaphysics—that is, it transcends the mere description and analysis of that which is reflexively given in consciousness and in experience.

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2. A Contrast between Classical Perspectives of Transcendental Phenomenology and New Perspectives According to the classical perspective of transcendental phenomenology, which Patočka appropriates in his Habilitation thesis, Přirozený svět jako filosofický problem (The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem, 1936), if man is finite in the sense that he is dependent on things and interested in them and knows about this dependence, his very consciousness of things is conditioned by the transcendental function, thanks to which he “has a world.” The consciousness of this dependence, it appears, presupposes a conscious relationship with that which we depend upon—that is, the constitution of thinghood, which in turn refers to its implicit horizons and, in the end, to the world as the horizon of all horizons. Man’s self-understanding in his finitude is not and cannot be the ultimate form of existence; this form is the “world in its most original sense” as a function that makes it possible to “have reality in consciousness.” He argues for the primacy of the transcendental function of the horizon of the world with regard to the situatedness of the body that lays the foundation for finitude in the sense of a dependence on things—that is, as the precedence of a certain “non-finitude” of the world as the horizon of meaning—and with regard to the situation of embodied existence as seen in, for example, the following statement: “Although being in the world is a perspective, it is one in which things can finally be what they are—a perspective which is there both without them and before them.”4 It is a perspective, a form, and a structure that is a world in the most original sense that precedes the individual thing as a transcendental condition for the possibility of its appearing.

4

J. Patočka, Přirozený svět jako filosofický problém (1936; Prague: Lidové noviny, 1992), p. 85.

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Within this framework, corporeality and its corresponding mode of self-understanding were subordinated to what is revealed as transcendental subjectivity in the transcendental-phenomenological reduction. To what extent, however, is the subject of experiences—the “receptor of the external world”—corporeal; in which sense is the subject a body, inasmuch as it is supposed to be identical with the author of acts of understanding as well? The text of the Habilitation thesis gives no unequivocal answer to this question. What is certain, however, is that Patočka explicitly allows that the subject that constitutes the world is a “pure I,” which is—among other things—the identical pole of all experiences. By contrast, in the 1960s he tends toward the thesis that the subject of experience is the body. Thus, for example, in “The Phenomenology and Metaphysics of Movement” (1967), Patočka expressly distances himself from Husserl’s position as a direct result of the issue of the status of corporeality. Although Husserl himself, as Patočka writes here, acknowledges in his writings “that finitude is closely related to corporeality and that the finite subject is always a corporeal subject,” the finite subject is always “corporeal, a body embedded in the world and merged (verschmolzenes) with it.”5 This is not yet a new proposition. However, Patočka—and Husserl too—had already taken this corporeal situatedness quite seriously as a mundane description and as a worldly subjectivity when he first wrote about corporeality; we saw this in the passages from his Habilitation thesis cited above. Thus Patočka himself—based on Husserl’s standpoint of the transcendental self-understanding of subjectivity—apparently did not deem corporeality to be “that last finitude which can never be penetrated by consciousness, which closes itself in principle when illuminated by consciousness and which can thus never be overtaken in reflection either.”6 Only during the period when Patočka turned away from Husserl toward his own version of phenomenological philosophy did the body begin to constitute the frontier of a reflexive phenomenological analysis. We attempt to reconstruct Patočka’s own conception of corporeality based on the frontier formulated in the above quotation. We are thus basing ourselves on the fact that the emphasis that Patočka placed in the 1960s on the irreducibility of such an ultimate finitude to its experience in consciousness, attainable by reflection, is new. This view is formulated repeatedly in Patočka’s texts in connection with a critique of the Cartesianism of 5 6

PMB: 5. PMB: 5.

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Husserl’s phenomenology. In this view, a distinction is made between the classical and the post-classical phenomenological philosophy of corporeality that Patočka espoused in the 1960s. We shall take this as our guidepost in the following methodological reflections.

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3. Remarks on the Method for Approaching Corporeality in “The Phenomenology and Metaphysics of Movement” In order to “understand the mutual interaction of things and freedom, of living life and its surroundings,” it is neither possible, according to Patočka’s lecture, nor even necessary to “betake oneself to the deepest roots of being” and reconstruct its entire structure on the model of the natural sciences. Patočka’s interpretation of the relationship between a living being and its surroundings is humbler; he does not require a descent toward the metaphysical foundations of all being. He characterized his own approach in the following way: It is “only necessary to extend somewhat that which is shown constantly by the phenomenon of the systematic comparison with the environment and in the end with the world. However, this is a certain hypothesis—in this sense a certain construction— which, as such, never fully covers the phenomena. But it is a hypothesis which presupposes no unknown elements; it does not claim for itself anything which cannot be pointed to, anything completely unknown which might thus break through the sphere of our experience.”7 At this point, on our reading, the transcendence of phenomenology is declared. It is not directly or explicitly referred to as “metaphysics,” but it is clear that a certain frontier of classical reflexive philosophy will be transcended.8 What, then, is Patočka’s hypothesis, which we consider to be “metaphysical,” and what does it entail with regard to the status of corporeality? This question is related to the following one: can there be a phenomenology of corporeality different from that which can be corroborated by a description of how one’s own body is experienced—that is, from that which is attainable through reflection based on one’s own experience? It appears possible to answer this question in the affirmative if it is true that the subject of experience is not a consciousness that is transparent to itself and may be grasped reflexively, but a body that is in principle not a completely 7

PMB: 17. When Patočka titled his lecture “The Phenomenology and Metaphysics of Movement,” he was not designating metaphysics as an obsolete form of thought in the modern dualist tradition, which he mentions briefly only at the beginning of his paper. 8

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transparent medium for itself, and which is nonetheless not only a medium, but the very subject of its experience, as Merleau-Ponty, for example, had maintained.9 However, in order to maintain this, he apparently had to transcend the sphere of self-reflexive consciousness and help himself to hypotheses that, as Patočka claimed, depend on phenomena, but do not coincide with them. The body and corporeality led phenomenologists like Merleau-Ponty and Patočka to such hypotheses. “The body as a subject,” wrote Patočka, “this paradox is at the same time a phenomenon without which we would never be able to understand sight, hearing, perception in general or naturally our actions, either.”10 The body is a paradoxical phenomenon, something we are supposed to know as intimately as possible, a phenomenon and a harsh reality. Yet, in the main, we do not even perceive our body thematically as either reality or phenomenon. Nor, for the most part, do we understand how it works, despite all that we know about it. Being a body presents a paradox for philosophical reflection. But it is not only an obstacle. Based on an analysis and interpretation of the workings of corporeality, we can formulate hypotheses regarding the relationship between the body and its environment, the conditions that make such a relationship possible, and the extent to which these conditions are not grounded in consciousness and given to consciousness through reflection. It is thus possible to transcend classical phenomenology, which limits itself to that which is reflexively apprehensible in consciousness. According to Patočka, although we are “always only conscious of a graduated relaxation of the body toward that which the body is referred to in its negotiated movements both on the outside and on the inside, we are never conscious of the way the body works—we ourselves in our corporeal subjectivity would have to become an object for ourselves.” He goes on to state what we might call his own metaphysical hypothesis: “That is why we must, in the end, simply presume a certain original correspondence, a certain conformity on the part of that which does not reveal itself to ourselves, its appropriateness for subjectivity, as something which can never be brought to explicit consciousness. Before any objectivation, an accommodation must take place in being itself to our intentions, to our intentional impetus, and only on the basis of that accommodation does the world render itself to us “objectively” as a counterpart, as observed. In belief and its objectivation this conformity is thus never given, but 9 10

Cf. M. Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), p. 239. PMB: 8.

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all beliefs and objectivations, all human acts take place on the basis of it; they are its expression.”11 This is the hypothesis, the construction, the expansion that Patočka was talking about and that we referred to as transcending phenomenology as a reflexive analysis. A phenomenalization within consciousness—that is, the appearance of phenomena as phenomena of something, an objectivation in the intentional acts of consciousness—is preceded by “a certain accommodation of that which does not reveal itself.” Because it precedes phenomenalization in consciousness, “this accommodation is never given” in consciousness. It cannot be discovered by analyzing that which is given in experience; thus, we are to presume that it is a “prior correspondence.” 4. Notes on the Phenomenological Underpinnings of the Metaphysical Hypothesis

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At this level the body is not an object—it does not reveal itself and yet it is certainly true that an expression of its original relationship with the world is the meaning, given through experience, that phenomenology takes as the starting point of its analysis. Thus, from this mysterious body we can, thanks to a phenomenological analysis, illuminate (at least indirectly) one of its aspects. This aspect is, however, richly structured. Moreover, Patočka refers to this aspect, which Merleau-Ponty might refer to as the “body schema,” as “subjective movement.” The body in this function is a living and lived tendency in the sense of “subjective movement.” Subjective movement—Patočka assumes it to be a relationship of sense12—is a movement appertaining to events in which some meaning is given, a movement that is an indispensable component of such events. However, he in11

We consider this passage to be Patočka’s adoption of the concept of the chiasm, which Merleau-Ponty attempted to express in his later work. It appears that Patočka stands behind it and uses it against Fink: “Gerade deshalb ist aber wohl eine ursprüngliche Entsprechnung, eine Fügung des Nichterscheinenden an uns selbst, seine Eignung für Subjektives, letztlich einfach vorauszusetzen und nie bewusstseinsmäßig einzuholen. Es muss vor jeder Vergegenständlichung im Seienden selbst sein Sich-Fügen unserer Absicht, unserem intentionalen Impetus geben, und erst aufgrund dieses Fügens gibt sich uns die Welt auch „objektiv“ als ein Gegenüber, als angeschaute. In der Anschauung und in der Vergegenständlichung ist diese Fügung also nie gegeben, aber jede Anschauung, Vergegenständlichung und jede menschliche Tat geschieht auf ihrer Grundlage, ist ihr Ausdruck.” PMB: 24–25. 12 PMB: 18.

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terprets it as a relationship of the body that is open to being, open to the world. He comes to it based on an analysis and interpretation of that which is present in experience. Each objectivation, says Patočka, and therefore each phenomenon in the ordinary sense of the intentional object of consciousness, “is an expression” of that antecedent “correspondence” of body and world. The question arises as to how subjective movement is to be defined. It is neither a change of place, nor a relocation in space, nor yet a movement of thought in consciousness. Both the space of positions—which are next to, above, and below one another, and so on—and that of consciousness—with its sequential “befores” and “afters”—develop only out of a subjective movement in order to “anticipate” and “preserve” its possibilities. The subjective movement of the body is a “virtual, anticipated” movement. The first matter requiring definition is the status of corporeal movement as the realization of a correspondence between subject and object: Movement presupposes that the subjective and the objective coincide directly as one.13 Patočka arrives at a further definition of subjective movement: It is an operation of “self-determination through virtuality,” through the realization of a scheme of possibilities where the body not only reacts to the possibilities that offer themselves up, but organizes them independently, whereas “the stimulus to the realisation itself does not come from outside.” That is, it is a tendency that is not blind, but “always” assumes “some scheme of possibilities and in this sense a certain dynamis ... Subjective movement is never, therefore, without a certain understanding; however, it is not understanding itself.”14

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13

The complete passage reads: “I think that subjective movement is characterised by something which is not true of corporeal perception or objectivation in general. Neither perception nor any other form of objectivation ever reaches its goal ... being is never definitive for it, never exhausted ... rather, it persists in its perspectives. Movement sets being directly before it; it realises it or destroys it. Movement also presupposes that the subjective and the objective coincide directly as one. Surely, it is possible only by way of a body (ein Körperliches) which yields to our subjective ‘I can’ or ‘I do’. To be sure, subjective movement is always anchored—as is meaning-giving—within me and is not possible without me; on the other hand, the ‘I can’, which turns into an ‘I do’, and the ‘I do’, which depends on the ‘I can’, cannot be empty belief if subjective movement is really to exist. It may be true that I do not move my body (Körper), but my subjective hand, for example, and in this sense the movement takes place in the sphere of experience. On the other hand, this process is grounded objectively in the corporeal structures (Leibstrukturen) and a certain objective sediment which anyone may co-observe and ascertain .... ” (PMB: 10–11) 14 PMB: 22–23r.

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This is a conclusion that is important for the status of the body’s function, as well: “Movement is thus the basis for understanding, not conversely.”15 What is important is that the basis for understanding be corporeal. Just as an instinct is a tendency that is not blind and is thus already led by a certain meaning—and nevertheless is not the fulfillment of an intention given beforehand in consciousness—subjective movement realizes a meaning that is not given beforehand as the object of a representation.16 Subjective movement is a spontaneous scheme of virtually potential actions, which does not precede, but rather coincides, with the realization of these actions. Even a chess player virtually realizes each of the moves in a series; this is the subjective movement in which the world corresponds to the subject and vice versa. Thereby, the subjective movement, or the virtual organization of movement, corresponds on the one hand to the “world”—to the internal limits that are represented by the structure of the organic body and the external limits represented by material constellations (piano playing, typing, playing chess)—and, on the other hand, is, within these frameworks, a relationship with itself and a self-formation: “Through our movement functions, we construct ourselves... . We are not in ourselves, but in what we do; however, this ‘not being in ourselves’ is not a nothingness, but the presence of the body as a subject, its sensory-motor dealings with things.”17 Nevertheless, this is only possible when such “things” correspond to the spontaneity of subjective movement in the world. A common phenomenon, meaning realizing itself in experience, is thus interpreted as the execution of a subjective movement that is presupposed to be dual, “something defining, a subject which lives in its potentialities ... and something which corresponds to it in the world, in being, something which agrees with that subject’s free choice and obeys it.”18 Patočka’s hypothesis may be formulated in the following terms: The irreplaceable, irreducible role of corporeality lies in the fact that, in its finitude and along with its internal and external limits, it conforms beforehand to the composition of that which will appear in the world and the manner in which it will do 15

PMB: 23r. Nevertheless, nowhere in this text does Patočka speak of subjective movement as instinct. This is a shame, for doing so would clarify the way in which the body and the movement of meaningfulness and affectivity are eventually different from the formation of meaning in experience, which nonetheless cannot do without them. 17 PMB: 23r–23v. 18 PMB: 24. 16

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so. In this sense, the body is the transcendental foundation of intentional objectivation—that is, it conditions how the world is given phenomenally. The conclusion of the surviving part of the lecture manuscript then closes an imaginary circle; it returns to its introductory theme of the “reflexively inapprehensible” basis of finitude: “However, if this is so, then even though ‘subjective’ movement may show itself in the world, it can never be conceptually grasped in that which makes it possible in the world. The basis of that which makes movement possible would then appear to be the same thing which makes life itself possible: objectively inapprehensible, for each objectivity can only emerge on its basis as a belief, a perception, a synthesis, an ascertainment. Life can never be grasped conceptually from the outside—not because it is ‘subjective’, but because it is based in a sphere which makes subjectivity itself possible as a being, an existing entity, and this ultimate foundation can never be brought to reflection.”19 Much as the body can never be brought to reflection as a subject of experience, the very motility of life can never be reflexively attained. Nonetheless, it is the body we are speaking of, the living and lived body, which is alive. And bodily movement is an expression of life. The question is whether Patočka also wanted to say that the body is thus the ultimate foundation—“a sphere which makes subjectivity itself possible as a being, as an existing entity.” It is not affirmed explicitly in these words, so this conclusion need not be made in Patočka’s stead. We need not “go to the very root of being,” we read at one point in Patočka’s lecture. His considerations do not, for the time being, go beyond a reference to the necessity of the transcendental—that is, the objectively inapprehensible foundation of the possibility of life, movement and subjectivity, as he says in the last quotation.20 We can content ourselves with what he affirms explicitly—that is, (1) a thesis on the connection between subjective movement as constituting meaning in experience and the body, a thesis which is valid more generally for Patočka, as it goes beyond sensorial perception, whose relationship to movement was noted by Aristotle and analyzed by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. (2) We find here a hypothesis on the “correspondence” and “conformity” of things to the body’s “pre-conscious” intentionality—that is, to the aims of subjective movement. Closely related to this is (3), the thesis according to which experience and reality are no longer contraposed in the subjective movement of the body. The overcoming of this classical contraposition in one’s own corporeality is also evident 19 20

PMB: 25. PMB: 25.

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in that which thesis (2)—according to which the world as appearance conforms to the body—is meant to elucidate. Patočka’s third thesis sheds phenomenological light on “control by means of one’s own body”: “Ruling or governing in one’s body” (“Walten im Leibe”) is thus not a “merely accessory phenomenon,” but “is movement itself in its performance. In this movement a leap into being is carried out. It is not subjective in the ‘merely subjective’ sense; rather, it is a full act. Movement is not a perspective on something objective: movement brings about that which is objective, it brings it about itself. Tracing a route means tracing it in reality. This entails the following: movement must be a real act, not merely the experience of one.”21 What Patočka is emphasizing is that, in the subjective movement of the body, experience and reality overlap. The main theme here appears to be “that experience and reality coincide as one in subjective movement.”22 Nonetheless, it is a reality given in my experience. Can we also speak of reality different from the one given in our experience? It seems we may not speak of a different one, but we can speak of the same reality differently.

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II. Movement as a Mode of Being of the World? However, those who appreciate speculative thought, as did Patočka, discern other possibilities. Conceiving of existence as bodily movement in which potentialities are realized that are worldly, and at the same time mine, is a starting point that leads to the hypothesis that this subjective movement of the body is a form of participation in a movement that is a mode of being of the world itself. Patočka’s considerations extend beyond the hypothesis of the “correspondence” between the world and the aims of “subjective movement.” He revealed them briefly and frankly in a letter to R. Campbell in which he characterized the basic idea, which he incorporated in his historical book Aristotelés, jeho předchůdci a dědicové (Aristotle, His Forerunners and Heirs): “The basic idea behind my historical considerations is the following: the events and movement in which all of our experiences originate are themselves not possible without deeper and

21

PMB: 11. PMB: 12. Lévinas also notes this potential of the kinesthesia: It is the realized relationship of the experience (vécu) to the other (autre): transitivité kinesthétique. Cf. his article “Intentionalité et métaphysique” (Intentionality and Metaphysics, 1959), in En découvrant l´existence avec Husserl et Heidegger (Paris: Vrin,1988), p. 141 n. 22

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more fundamental events that are not movement in experience and in the world, but events and the movement of the world as such, ontological events … ”23 The question remains whether the hypothesis regarding the “correspondence” or “conformity” of the world with our aims—that is, the tendencies of subjective bodily movement—may be as valid in general terms as is formulated in the conclusion of the text. How should this ultimate foundation, which is more of a relationship with the world (and not one of the links conforming this relationship: the world as a whole, or he/that which relates to it) be defined? The crux of the matter is that the relationship is not a relationship between two already existing substances, such as a body and a thing, but movement, which is not the movement of something or a movement acting on something that existed before the movement was initiated. Movement in the case of the body is the mode of being of that which is not apprehensible by reflection and which is nevertheless “subjective,” experienced on the part of that which is alive. The living, experienced, and experiencing body is always already in movement; it did not exist before movement. As for the world, we have the movement of potentialities rising forth for this bodily life, which organizes itself in movement. These potentialities only rise up for this subjective movement; otherwise, as potentialities, they do not exist. The mode of being of that which is living, which is necessarily corporeal, cannot only transpire virtually, in thought, or it would be apprehensible by reflection. It is movement transpiring in reality as the realization of potentialities that are also in the movement. These potentialities do not await, prepared, ready, but offer themselves up along with the subjective aims of the living body, to which they correspond and which, at the same time, corresponds to them. How does this original relationship that is movement take place and in what medium? It is not a movement in the medium of consciousness, yet it is a lived movement. The body as “that which realizes potentialities” is one component of the relationship; the other is the world, which does not appear, but dawns like a field of potential bodily action. What, then, is this unfolding world addressed to? And does it function as a vehicle of phenomenalization? Is it addressed to the body, thanks to its affectivity, or consciousness, understanding? It is true of consciousness and understanding that they are reflexively apprehensible. How-

23

Letter dated 20 March 1964, cited in F. Karfík, “Odyssea zkonečnělého absolutna” (The Odyssey of the Absolute Become Finite), in I. Chvatík, ed., Myšlení Jana Patočky očima dnešní fenomenologie (The Thought of Jan Patočka through the Eyes of Present-Day Phenomenology) (Prague: Filosofia, 2009), p. 48 n.

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ever, Patočka wants to assume an ultimate foundation, which is, in principle, inapprehensible reflexively. And yet corporeality and affectivity are a relationship with the whole, according to Patočka; the question is whether they are thereby the reflexively inapprehensible foundation of finitude that Patočka found lacking in Husserl.

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III. Embodiment as the First Movement of Existence: Participation in the World and Rootedness within It The most corporeal—that is, the most closely bound up with the body—form of self-understanding lies in what Patočka describes as the “first movement of existence.” Before the threshold of our potentialities, mentioned above, where the body is the defining, organizing, active agent, we may distinguish a field “in which we do not move, move about as free beings, but are moved.”24 It is a field of affective, emotional contact with the world that our form of sensibility shares with animal beings “in a way,” as is particularly evident in child rearing. It is a pre-linguistic relationship with the world, a relationship of pure feeling.25 Because we are moved within this field, it is “also one’s own field of emotionality—‘e-motio’ has movement, agitation, commotion at its etymological root.”26 According to Patočka, this motility “resonates with the world” in “sympathetic experiencing.” “It is as the performer of this instinctive proto-movement that a man is referred, in all his being, to another human being in his function as protector, as a creator of vital warmth and safety, as a provider of unity, closeness and intertwining—that instinctive mutual inclination and unification which is the indispensable compensation for individuation and the individual’s dispersal at his life centre.”27 One thing is an instinctive resonance with the world, which requires being received into a vital warmth; another still is the coldness of the environment in which such a reception is lacking. The relationship is built on reception; it is based on an attraction in which e-motion, or a motility toward the outside, is fulfilled. By contrast, wherever reception is lacking, there is an opposing 24

J. Patočka, “Koncept přednášky o tělesnosti” (Notes for a Lecture on Corporeality), in ASSJP, Přirozený svět a pohyb lidské existence II, p. 2.5.61. A French translation of the text is published in J. Patočka, Papiers phénoménologiques, pp. 53–117. 25 Patočka, “Koncept přednášky o tělesnosti,” p. 2.5.59 n. 26 Patočka, “Koncept přednášky o tělesnosti,” p. 2.5.61. 27 Patočka, “Koncept přednášky o tělesnosti,” p. 2.5.68.

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e-motion; the cold environment is repellent, it horrifies. Life seeks to compensate for this repulsion of the non-living environment in which a living being is situated as a body, an individual thing, separate from others. Individuation is understood here not as a proto-constitution of selfhood on the same level as the experience of pleasure (Lévinas). Individuation is an event that takes place in the world when individual bodies separate. Patočka speaks of this as follows: “A characteristic line is realised in this movement—from the reception of the newborn into the protection of human warmth, which compensates for the primal corporeal individuation, its separation from the maternal body, to the instinctive drama of disengagement and clinging and the spiritual individuation which leads to independence ... on a new level: life will now operate as a striving toward an embrace and the gift of union and warmth, not as a receiving entity, but as a giving entity.”28 The body has a cosmic character—according to Patočka it “is a component of a cosmic process”29—because, like other things in it, it shares in the principle of individuation, the “splitting off of the individual”30 as a body. By splitting off from others, each thing emerges as an individual.31 According to Patočka, however, the relationship with the entirety of this particular feeling of the endowed physical entity, the body, is more important for the realization of life and of human existence. “The role of emotionality, imagination in feeling, in sensory sympathy with the world shows that even though it is not knowledge or understanding in the proper sense which are at issue, this resonance nonetheless has a cosmic character.”32 The relationship with the whole on the vital and instinctive level precedes the understanding of being; it is not the totality of meaningful circumstances of what I “‘can,” what I organize virtually and “do” with my body when the appropriate opportunities arise in the world. This level on which subjective movement 28

Patočka, “Koncept přednášky o tělesnosti,” p. 2.5.68. Patočka, Tělo, společenství, jazyk, svět (Prague: Oikoymenh, 1995), p. 109. English translation: Body, Community, Language, World, trans. Erazim Kohák (Chicago: Open Court, 1998), p. 156. 30 Patočka, Tělo, společenství, jazyk, svět, p. 110; Body, Community, Language, World, p. 156. 31 Patočka, “Koncept přednášky o tělesnosti,” p. 2.5.74. 32 Patočka, “Koncept přednášky o tělesnosti,” p. 2.5.63. A parallel passage, crossed out, speaks of animal life as a “cosmic event”: “Compassion is only possible with those things in the cosmos which themselves do not have the character of closedness in individuality, in a mere disintegration partes extra partes, in res extensa.” (Ibid., 2.5.61 n., note 13) 29

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and the non-appearing horizon of the world as a reservoir of potentiality are correlated precedes a resonance in feeling. It is “an inner, not an outer, relationship, but it does not presuppose a relationship with the self, an understanding of the self, an openness toward possibilities, an unlocking of its being”; we turn in this relationship “toward other things not as beings, but as simply present.”33 The world is thus that which moves us on the level of the sensorial and of affectivity; the world provides stimuli for open subjective movement. This is still far from the thesis that the mode of the world itself is movement. Corporeality as the foundational potential enabling the world to move me, corporeality as the possibility of motion, cannot be explained from the world as an ontological movement of potentialities. Both movements nonetheless come into contact in an actualized potentiality whose preconditions may be further analyzed phenomenologically and thought about in a speculative way. Patočka proposes a phenomenological analysis of the vital significance of movement on the level of the sensorial and of affectivity under the heading “the first movement of existence.” The following quotation summarizes its already well-known characteristics: That is why the first and foundational movement is the one without which any others are not possible, something relatively independent; it is the movement of instinctual life ... man’s being is also—as is an animal’s—an instinctive, feeling and affective being, in passivity and resonance with the opening world and in incited movement responding to the world on its stimuli. In our movement of anchoring or rootedness, which from start to finish constitutes the pedal tone in the polyphony of life, is at the same time a resonance with the global dimension of life, impulse and embrace, vital warmth, connection, bliss and the impulse away from the repellent, cold and alien, an impulse which realises itself in our realised bodily movements... With this dimension of man’s affective movement, he is immersed in the world not as a goal-oriented and practical milieu, but as an all-encompassing sphere of warmth and coldness (let them be understood a vital warmth and coldness); it is here that the world is not a mere correlate of work for him, but something given in itself, extending into the distance and depths of time.34

According to Patočka, man is related to the whole even in this dimension, although he does not coincide with it. He is at a certain distance, but he does belong 33

p. 138.

34

Patočka, Tělo, společenství, jazyk, svět, p. 98; Body, Community, Language, World, Patočka, “Koncept přednášky o tělesnosti,” p. 2.6.67.

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in it as a component part. It could be said that were he not a component of this whole, the body as a human body could not have precisely that relationship to him, a relationship that distinguishes him from animals, which are absorbed in their surroundings. That which is “inexhaustible, that which is cosmic depletes man precisely because,” writes Patočka, “for him the sphere of sensoriality is the world, infinitude.”35 This reflection draws on the speculation about the relationship between corporeality and the world, which we mentioned above. In Patočka’s thought, the phenomenology of corporeality is thus necessarily filled out with metaphysics, with considerations regarding not just the ontological conditions of the possibility of existence in the world, but the world itself. The question of the origins of self-understanding in finitude remains unanswered, but we feel that the very immersion of corporeal feeling in a world that blends into infinity has an alien, cold aspect as well, which repels, and thus offers a certain affective resistance that might constitute a certain basis for a feeling and understanding of finitude on the level of corporeal sensoriality. We do not know if this feeling is a prefiguring of mortality, but it takes place here explicitly underneath the threshold of the understanding of being. Man’s being as a being toward death, something that a living corporeal being is referred to within certain limits, makes manifest its subjection to something that surrounds it not only in a warm manner eliciting a sympathetic resonance, but repellent in its alienness and cold destructiveness. Lévinas, with his early analyses of impersonal being—his il y a—was among the phenomenologists who noted this aspect; in contrast, Merleau-Ponty and his successors did not. Thus, these reflections reveal the originality of Patočka’s phenomenological philosophy, which lies in his distinctive philosophy of corporeality. (Translated from the Czech by Ivan Gutierrez)

35

Patočka, Tělo, společenství, jazyk, svět, p. 100; Body, Community, Language, World, p. 140.

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Edith Stein’s Phenomenology of Education Maybelle Marie O. PADUA

Far Eastern University, Philippines

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I. The Challenge of Education Education is an endeavor that concerns man and his growth towards his fullest development. The Greek term for education is paideia (from the Greek pais, paidos meaning “child”), which referred to the process of educating a man from childhood to the ideal of intellectual and moral excellence, artistic harmony, and physical beauty. The Greeks held the notion that education consisted in creating a higher type of man, of reaching humanism to the extent of perfection of mind, body, and soul. Education is a process of human praxis that takes place in its own milieu: the world of culture. Accordingly, it carries over the historicity that is intrinsic to the realization of culture.1 It may need to be understood and interpreted within the temporal framework of an epoch in dynamic relationship with the system of values, beliefs, ways of life, ideas, and views of reality, but any evaluation of education must return fundamentally to an understanding of the object of its formation: the person. Any process of education must consider what the nature of its object is, its predispositions, and to what telos it is ordained. Thus, to theorize and philosophize on moral education supposes systematic reflection on the human person in his/her totality. This, in turn, requires situating the reflective attempt within the whole context of present day culture and society. It is in this manner that Edith Stein (1891–1942) undertook her analysis of the problems 1 Nicolas Barros, “Moral Education as Human Fulfillment: The Fundamental Challenge of the XXIst Century,” in Luis Ugalde, Nicolas Barros, and George F. McLean, eds., Love as the Foundation of Moral Education and Character Development: A Latin American Contribution for the 21st Century (Washington, D.C.: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1998), pp. 171–190;

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brought about by the educational praxis of her time within the framework of the human person’s individual and social dimensions, with his/her cognitive, affective, and moral aspects. Edith Stein embarked on phenomenology as a tool with which to study and propose solutions to the educational crisis of her epoch, which had at its root the fact that the educational system was essentially a child of the Enlightenment. It had as its ideal the attainment of encyclopedic knowledge and embraced the conception of the mind as a tabula rasa on which should be imprinted as much factual and intellectual material as possible.2 She crossed borders in the existing educational praxis by insisting that “education is not an external possession of learning but rather a gestalt which the human personality assumes under the influence of manifold external forces” (EW: 130). Education is not a filling of minds with encyclopedic knowledge. Rather, it is the “orientation of the whole person towards the goal for which he or she is destined” (EW: 208). Stein pointed out the need to take the predispositions of our human nature into account in any educational process. These predispositions are revealed by the self-evident principles and truths of our individuality and common human experience. These include our human desires for knowledge, goodness, and beautiful action and interaction; our need for the sacred and the noble in our life; our recognition of what is necessary to live a free life; and how such a life should be lived well, with real meaning, values, and authenticity.3 Thus, any educational design geared primarily to the attainment of human fulfillment to the fullest should consider these predispositions. As such, the educational process calls for inquiry into the nature and needs of the person, and serves the person primarily. Society takes on only secondary importance. However, in the time of Edith Stein, societal dictates took precedence over the needs of citizens. In spite of reforms effected after World War I to grant equality and full citizenship to women and to open the way for them to assume positions in government and professional life, adequate programs of preparation at all levels were not made available to achieve these goals. Society manifestly held on to old notions of prejudice against women. We see similar problems today with society dictating the technological and market-driven needs of the world to the educational system. More and more, a liberal and humanistic education is giving way to that brand of education that is

2

Edith Stein, Essays on Woman, trans. Freda Mary Oben (2nd rev. ed.; Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1996), p. 130; henceforth cited as EW. 3 D. Read, “St. Edith Stein: The Prophetic Philosopher for the New Millennium” (2010),

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practical and relevant to the market place. We see a weakening of the humanistic formation, a dimming of the vision of the original meaning of paideia, as the emphasis of many schools now is to prepare students to acquire marketable skills and competencies useful for production and profit-making in the corporate and industrial worlds. The secular university in many countries has become almost an appendage to the world of business and industry. As Gupta has observed, “A social agenda was put before the interests of the individual.”4 Citing Illich’s comment in Deschooling Society, he writes,

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The pupil is thereby “schooled” to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new (Illich 1970, 1). The question becomes, according to Illich, not only what values are taught, but schooling per se becomes a value…. Illich thinks, for instance, that schools perpetuate the values of a consumer, capitalist society by both legitimating the inequalities in the distribution of wealth and reinforcing certain competitive character structures necessary to the running of that economic structure.5

Gupta goes on to describe how the school became a means to serve as a mere servile tool of the owners of the means of production, the elites of societies. As critics maintain, “Schools tend to reinforce and strengthen existing social structures and social stratification.” Furthermore, we can say, education is no longer a technique in the discipline of the self (for instance in schooling in virtues), but a means for technological rule over the earth (italics mine).6 In this scenario, how is it possible to return to the original vision of education (in the sense of the Greek paideia) as human fulfillment and realization of the whole person? How is it possible to respond to the needs of the times (of global development with science and technology at the forefront), while opening ourselves to the “world of values” as construed by Stein? How can we attain cognitive development, maturity of emotional intelligence and rationality that, at the same time, encourage moral perfection? Is reform of our educational systems possible? In this paper, I wish to confront these questions with recourse mainly to Edith Stein’s philosophy of education. Secondarily, I turn to Karol Wojtyla and philosophers whose thoughts on the person and education conjoin with Stein’s. I 4

A. Gupta, “Education: From Telos to Technique?” Educational Philosophy and Theory 40.2 (2008): 272. 5 Gupta, “Education: From Telos to Technique?” p. 272. 6 Gupta, “Education: From Telos to Technique?” p. 273.

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find Stein’s thoughts on education perennially useful for examining educational issues that were already raised in her era, but are resonating anew today, albeit in different forms. At its root, the problems appear to be fundamentally the same: They are moral in essence. Being moral, they touch on man as a moral agent, who cannot be separated from two vital human attributes—the attributes of freedom and responsibility. That man is a being of moral value points to education as a process of the integration of moral being and becoming. This gives education its ethical modality. It stands to reason that any educational reform undertaken by those who have the duty to organize the educational system, whether governments or institutions, would reflect a sense of responsibility and obligation towards the moral order. Certainly, the dynamism of education and the determining of a person’s moral development are connected with our experience of education and with those who have helped to bring about that education. In what follows, I shall examine Stein’s views on how efforts in education, in being aimed at the attainment of human fulfillment, ultimately promote moral excellence as the highest value that man can hope for.

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1. Education and Its Ethical Modality Education introduces itself in the becoming of the human person as a phenomenon of transformation. It constitutes the process by which a person’s potentialities are actualized in the human person. This happens with acting, as Karol Wojtyla elucidates in The Acting Person. The experience of learning and knowing, to start with, belongs to the sphere of acting. The experience that one has of one’s fundamental cognitive process is the starting point for the knowledge of man as a person. In this sense, education is the richest and most complex experience that one has of one’s fundamental cognitive process. As Karol Wojtyla remarks: Man’s experience of anything outside of himself is always associated with the experience of himself, and he never experiences anything external without having at the same time the experience of himself.7

Hence the importance of phenomenology as the study of experience. The term “experience” denotes “experience lived through.” It corresponds to the meaning 7

K. Wojtyla, The Acting Person: A Contribution to Phenomenological Anthropology (Dordrecht: Springer, 1979), p. 3.

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of the German term “erlebnis,” which comes from “erleben” and means “to live”—through a happening, for example. In this regard, H. G. Gadamer says: Insofar as it is a secondary formation on the word erleben . . . the motivation of this linguistic formation should be sought in the meaning of erleben. To start, erleben means “to be still living when something happens.” Henceforth, the word erleben gains a tone of immediate understanding of something real, in opposition to that which one believes to know, but without the certainty of his own experience, either because it is something drawn upon, supposed or imagined. What is lived (das erlebte) is always lived by oneself.8

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Stein renders the German term, erleben as “living through.” I—which is to say, an I (referring to the human person), any i—am surfing along on a current of life. I am the “now” who anticipates each new moment and lets fulfilled moments subside into my past. This is an “i” whose being is to be radically open to the world of matter, the world of value, and the experiences of other i’s, through certain specific structures and within certain thresholds. The current or stream of my consciousness is filled in various ways as various components of it appear to me in their own proper manner. (This is where the term “phenomenology” comes from; “phenomenon” is Greek for “what appears.”)9 Consequently, moral acting in itself constitutes a process of living through. Moral acting is an experience by which man becomes, through his actions, morally good or bad, and in acting, freedom manifests itself most appropriately (not in “being”). To the extent that an act is free, conscious, and responsible, it has moral or ethical valuation. Or, as Jacques Maritain puts it, it is a “moral act,” praxis, or “practical wisdom in the Aristotelian sense.”10 When we search deep into the integral structure of moral conduct and becoming, into the integral structure of man’s becoming morally good or morally bad, we find it in the proper moment of freedom. It is in the structure of man’s becoming, through his actions, morally good or bad, that freedom manifests itself most appropriately. Here, however, freedom is not only a moment; it also 8

H. Gadamer, Verdad y Método (Salamanca: Sígueme, 1977), p. 96; cited in Barros, “Moral Education as Human Fulfillment,” p. 173. 9 M. Sawicki, “Personal Connections: The Phenomenology of Edith Stein,” lecture delivered at St. John’s University in New York on October 15, 1998,

10 J. Maritain, La Educación en este momento crucial (Buenos Aires: Club de Lectores, 1977), p. 13; cited in Barros, “Moral Education as Human Fulfillment,” p. 176.

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forms a real inherent component of the structure, indeed, a component that is decisive for the entire structure of moral becoming: freedom constitutes the root factor of man’s becoming good or bad by his actions; it is the root factor of the becoming as such of human morality.11

In other words, what is immediately given in experience is man’s acting. The immediate human experience (erlebnis) leads us directly to human acting, which is manifest in the dynamic totality of “person-action.”12 But actions have a moral value: They may be good or bad. They are founded on freedom and responsibility, which in many ways may be shaped largely by the formation that we receive. This points to the intrinsic connection between anthropology, ethics, and education. Given the unity of the human experience with the fundamental moral facet of our actions, we see that education, as a way of acting, holds an identical ethical modality. When we look deep into the process of man’s becoming morally good or bad, we see education at the helm of the person’s realization of moral excellence and human fulfillment. As Karol Wojtyla explains:

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. . . it is in connection with his acting (that is action) that man experiences as his own the moral value of good and bad (or as is sometimes wrongly said, of the moral and immoral). He experiences them in the attitude he assumes toward them, an attitude that is at once emotional and appreciative. At any rate, he is not only conscious of the morality of his actions, but actually experiences it, often very deeply. . . .13

Hence, the challenge that educators face is one of designing education to effect the student’s moral formation. To this end, we might ask what arrangements are we then to make for education to be an experience through which our younger generation could be led to refine their moral judgment, assume personality, and own up to the fundamental task of making their own life and constructing their own world? On which basis should we set up the educational process in order to help our young people in the complex task of freely determining their moral behavior, and thereby realizing the highest personal and communitarian values? How can we lend them our support to construe, appreciate, and appropriate these values today and in the near future?

11 12 13

Wojtyla, The Acting Person, p. 99. Barros, “Moral Education as Human Fulfillment,” p. 174. Wojtyla, The Acting Person, p. 48; emphasis mine.

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Certainly, in practice much of the educational challenge falls on the teacher. He/she must be aware that the charge of the teaching profession is a precious one—the minds and lives of our children are at stake. As Plato writes in Laws, “So long as the young generation is, and continues to be, well brought up, our ship of state will have a fair voyage; otherwise the consequences are better left unspoken.”14 2. Education as Total Formation By virtue of her openness to change and her active desire to stir up a revolution in education, Edith Stein is a woman to turn to for insights on educational reform. Stein’s concept of education encompasses the formation of the entire human personality, not just of the mind. For Stein, education cannot be limited to a planned program aimed at the external possession of knowledge. Education is a process by which human personality takes form under various influences from within and without. To undertake this task, “it is thus evident to understand the object which is being formed” (EW: 172). In her Essays on Woman, Stein gives the following further explanation of this process:

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The “material” which is to be formed is the psycho-spiritual predispositions which each person has at birth, as well as the raw materials which are constantly taken from the environment and built into the living being. The body draws on the material world, the soul, on the world of persons and values. (EW: 130)

The need to clarify the goal of education arose from Stein’s attempt to respond to the current desperate situation of German education in her time (before and after World War I), which she described as in shambles, calling for complete demolition and reconstruction from the ground up. There was a deep misunderstanding of the whole concept of education. As mentioned earlier, it was the Enlightenment model that was prevalent in the elementary schools, high schools, and teacher’s colleges. This approach to education focused on imprinting as many facts as possible in the minds of the young, treating them as blank slates (tabula rasa) to be written upon, without regard to the formation of other facets of the human personality. There was insistence on memorization and rote exercises; education meant filling empty minds with information. 14

209.

Quoted from Philip Atkinson, A Study of Our Decline (Lulu Publishers, 2010), p.

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Three concepts dominate Stein’s pedagogical theory: first, a concern for a proper understanding of our human, feminine or masculine, and individual natures; second, the need for a harmonious education that develops our emotional, intellectual, and physical capacities; and, finally, the religious foundation of all formations, by which we come to understand the actions and interactions of the sacred and noble in our lives.15 Stein deeply understands the importance of adopting education to specific gender needs. She recognizes that the life of the mind had a connection with one’s gender. She notes that sexual difference involves the entire structure of the person; thus, intellectual study cannot be indifferent to questions of feminine and masculine natures. Stein then defends the notion that education cannot be neutral about the sex of the child. Moreover, for both men and women, education should have as an aim the development not only of their humanity, but also of their specific masculine or feminine distinctiveness.16 Whereas education organized for a person takes place with external forces helping to bring it about, Stein stresses that the fundamental formation of a person really happens from within. In each human being, there is a unique inner form that all education from outside must respect, as well as its movement toward the determined form, the mature, fully developed personality (EW: 129–133). In every individual there can be distinguished the tripartite complexus of being human, being woman or man, and being an individual person. However, only in the abstract are these considered separately. The single form is the principle of all of a person’s powers and characteristics, human, feminine or masculine, and individual potentialities, of bringing forth a human person to its fullest development. Education must thus consider these characteristics and bank on them to draw out an individual’s potentialities to bring forth the person to his/her fullest development. To do this, Stein claims that only what reaches the soul internally can be part of formation; in contrast, what merely touches the senses or intellect is just a possession. The soul itself is touched by values to which we have access through our emotions. Thus, it is legitimate and even necessary for emotionally formative subjects to play a central role in education.17

15

See Sarah R. Borden, “Woman and Women’s Education,” in Borden, Edith Stein (London: Continuum Press, 2003), pp. 88–115. 16 See Borden, “Woman and Women’s Education.” 17 Sarah R. Borden, “Phenomenology and the Person,” in Edith Stein, p. 86.

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Stein is critical of one-sided intellectual development that fails to form students emotionally. In her Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities,18 Stein stresses the importance of the emotions. She describes the emotions as our affective responses to value. In an analogy that she develops between our perception of physical objects and our emotional perception of value (PPH: 7), she explains how in order to perceive any visual object, one must have eyes to see and well-functioning cones and rods. A blind man cannot see a painting, nor can a deaf woman hear an orchestra. Similarly, Stein argues that an emotionally dead person cannot perceive value. If a particular landscape, for example, leaves me cold, then I have missed its beauty. We might say that just as perceiving a color is to see it, so too is perceiving a value to feel it. Values, she claims, are part of objects in a way analogous to other aspects or qualities. In order to perceive that part of the object, one must have an appropriate receptor. Thus, as the perception of color requires good eyesight, so the perception of value requires a well-developed heart and affective life (PPH: I, §2c; II, §3c). Stein advocates the regular study of literature, art, and history, all of which appeal to our emotional lives. While many values can be introduced in the context of family life, students also need “[a]n adequate introduction to the entire cultural life” and thus the fuller range of values (EW: 217). The primary tasks of a school are to introduce students to that whole range of values available through culture, and to teach students how to be receptive to and participate in the world of values.19 In the following sections, we shall consider how, in the world of values, moral perfection figures as the peak of all values.

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II. Value as Perception of the Good An understanding of the term “value” is needed at this point. “Value” was derived from the economic sphere, where it meant the amount of a commodity required in order to bring a certain price. This is reflected also in the term “axiology,” the root of which means “weighing as much” or “worth as much.” This has objective content, for the good must really “weigh in” or make a real difference.20 The term 18

Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, trans. Marianne Sawicki and Mary Catharine Baseheart (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2000); henceforth cited as PPH. 19 Borden, “Phenomenology and the Person,” p. 86. 20 I. Leclerc, “The Metaphysics of the Good,” Review of Metaphysics 35 (1981): 3–5; cited in G. McLean, The Person and Moral Growth: The Dynamic Interaction of Values and Virtues, Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change, series V, vol. 4. Latin America

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“value” expresses this good, especially as related to a will that actually acknowledges it as a good and responds to it as desirable.21 Stein writes that perceiving values calls for opening ourselves up to them. And the receptor of value is our hearts (not our senses, the receptors for colors and sounds),22 which is closer to who we are as persons. Once more, the analogy of perception applies here. If we cannot see without opening our eyes, neither can we feel without touching. There is a possibility of getting hurt in the process. For example, by looking at particularly bright lights or touching a hot stove, we could be injured. So, too, in the emotional realm is it possible to be hurt if one attends to certain values. And because the pain involved in perceiving certain values is particularly acute and personal, we may (and understandably) desire to avoid that pain and thus refuse to open ourselves to those values.23 On the other hand, the inability to respond to certain values points to a hardness or immaturity of heart—neither of which are desirable qualities—and make us opt to shun the possibility of revealing ourselves as such, thus escaping the need to open ourselves to values. Stein says: The fact that it’s egoic data which constitute values for us, the fact that these values decisively influence our inner life and have an entirely personal meaning for us—this is what makes it understandable that they’re so often made out to be “merely subjective” or “private.” (PPH: 164)

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The way that we feel values reveals most intimately who we are. Thus, like all perception, value perception requires something of the perceiver; it requires a certain level of development, discernment, and attention. But—in contrast to seeing and hearing—the kind of development required to appreciate values necessarily implicates the “I” and who we understand ourselves to be.24 (Washington, D.C.: Council for Research in Value and Philosophy, 1998), p. 198;

21 McLean, The Person and Moral Growth, p. 198. 22 She says, “Sensory pain and sensory pleasure come over the ego from its periphery on down. They seize possession of it so exclusively that nothing else has room besides, but they don’t get into its depths and they never attach to the ego itself.” (PPH: 163) 23 Borden, “Phenomenology and the Person,” p. 40. 24 Borden explains the nuances of Stein’s thinking as follows: Stein describes this slightly differently in the Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities and in her earlier On the Problem of Empathy, in which she says: “In ‘theoretical acts,’ such as acts of perception, imagination, relating or deductive thinking, etc., I am turned to an object in such

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Given this, we thus understand that different individuals or groups, or possibly the same but at different periods, may have distinct sets of values as they become sensitive to, and prize, distinct sets of goods. Over time, people may also shift in the distinctive ranking of the degree to which they attach value to various goods. By so doing, they delineate among the limitless order of objective moral goods a certain pattern of values that, in more stable fashion, mirrors their corporate free choices. This constitutes the basic topology of a culture; as repeatedly reaffirmed through time, it builds a tradition or heritage.25 By giving shape to the culture, McLean explains that values constitute the prime pattern and gradation of goods that persons born into that heritage experience from their earliest years. In these terms, they interpret and shape the development of their relations with other persons and groups. Young persons peer out at the world through cultural lenses that were formed by their family and ancestors and that reflect the pattern of choices made by their community through its long history—often in its most trying circumstances. Like a pair of glasses, values do not create the object, but they do reveal and focus attention upon certain goods and patterns of goods rather than upon others.26 In that moral values have a lasting and enduring value, they must be recognized as universally appealing at all times and are not dependent on traditional or cultural patterns. Thus, young persons must be shown how moral choices forge character and build facility in the practice of the good and, in consequence, have a timeless and permanent value. This is a task to be accomplished in moral education. Thus, values become the basic orienting factor for one’s affective and emotional life. Over time, they encourage certain patterns of action—and even of a way that the ‘i’ and the acts are not there at all. There is always the possibility of throwing a reflecting glance on these, since they are always accomplished and ready for perception. But it is equally possible for this not to happen, for the ‘i’ to be entirely absorbed in considering the object. It is possible to conceive of a subject only living in theoretical acts having an object world facing it without ever becoming aware of itself and its consciousness, without ‘being there’ for itself. But this is no longer possible as soon as this subject not only perceives, thinks, etc., but also feels. For as it feels it not only experiences objects, but it itself. It experiences emotions as coming from the ‘depth of its ‘I’.” (Borden, On the Problem of Empathy [Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1989], p. 98) In contrast, in PPH Stein de-emphasizes the differences between theoretical and emotional acts. This shift may indicate, in addition to a slight change in her view of value constitution, a further shift in her view of the pure versus empirical egos (see Borden, “Phenomenology and the Person,” p. 41). 25 McLean, The Person and Moral Growth, p. 198. 26 McLean, The Person and Moral Growth, p. 199.

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physical growth—which, in turn, reinforce the pattern of values. Through this process we constitute our universe of moral concern in terms of which we struggle to achieve, mourn our failures, and celebrate our successes.27 This is our world of hopes and fears, in terms of which, as Plato wrote in the Laches, our lives have moral meaning and one can properly begin to speak of virtues. McLean explains that an increase in virtues may be seen as the vertical growth of our capabilities towards moral excellence. This happens within the process of gradually shaping relations with others. We may refer to this process as the horizontal opening of ourselves to others, in which we develop values. In essence, moral education consists of bringing about the convergence of these two dynamisms of moral growth in the person.

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III. Moral Good as the Ultimate End of Education Formation is teleological in the sense that it is directed at the perfection of the person in terms of virtue. Becoming a good person is the end of man, wrote Aristotle, and education signified a process of working towards the life-long goal of becoming the excellent man, which is intrinsic to humans as thinking beings. Paideia originally referred to a process of education, with the end of drawing out man’s potentiality to become a fully developed citizen of virtue. Later in Hellenistic times, paideia came to refer to the end itself, and the word came to signify “culture,” the very end to be achieved. The personal culture thus obtained was a man or woman’s paideia, the very thing, according to the Greeks, for which he was born, the sum of intellectual, moral, and aesthetic as well as physical qualities that make one a complete and whole human being. Therefore, to decide on education as a means by which to return to paideia or as a way to liberate man from that which takes him away from his goal, is itself a value decision to be made by man himself. In short, it is to decide on the attainment of the “good.” What is meant by “good”? The “good,” as Aquinas elucidated, is the first object of desire. It is that which first appears in our conscious experience as that which is sought when absent. This implies that the good is basically what completes a being. It is that which is “perfect,” understood in the etymological sense, that which completes or realizes us through and through. Hence, once achieved it is no longer desired or sought, but enjoyed.28

27 28

McLean, The Person and Moral Growth, p. 199. McLean, The Person and Moral Growth, p. 197.

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The work of moral education is to learn how to direct our freedom in the direction of the right choice of the particular goods that constitute our world. The task involves first looking closely into the nature of these goods themselves from an objective stance, and then considering them from a subjective standpoint, in their emergence within our consciousness. The interplay between the two can be subtle and difficult. And this is where the drama of self-realization and the development of moral life take place. 29 Certainly, all goods by themselves are desirable. However, the question is, which good will bring about one’s perfection? It is here that man’s ethical conscience comes to work. Man’s ethical conscience refers to that natural tendency in man to behave morally. It is also referred to as a moral instinct. Jose Maria Sanchez elaborates:

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The ontic conscience discovers a being that is; the ethical conscience discovers a being that is not yet but who should be. This being who is not yet stands before the possibilities of his self-realization as a person. We must not personify this ethical what-ought-to-be as an internalized authority, as this would have negative results for ethics. Instead, ethics as what-ought-to-be, as an aspiration, a goal, or the best option, is understood as the “voice of our total personality that expresses the exigencies of life and growth” (Fromm, 1976, p. 54). It is an autonomous conscience, independent and personal, that executes the good and the valuable not by obeying the voice of authority but as a result of the pleasure and satisfaction that it experiences in so acting. This type of ethical conscience exists in all men; although mitigated, it is always present as the voice that orients the organism towards the end that is latent within one’s being (From[m], 1985).30

Nevertheless, educational, cultural, and historical circumstances may serve to reinforce or soften that “voice” of the ethical conscience. Since one cannot entirely direct one’s existence, one is left with ample room for development and growth, which in large part could be realized by education. Given that the options are numberless in the realm of the objectively good relations that are possible, it becomes necessary to choose. Oftentimes, it is not a matter of simply making a choice between the good and the bad in general, but of determining which of the 29

McLean, The Person and Moral Growth, p. 79. Jose Maria Sanchez, “Education and Moral Excellence: Human Fulfillment as the Fundamental Challenge of the XX1st Century,” in Ugalde, Barros, and McLean, eds., Love as the Foundation of Moral Education and Character Development, pp. 79–80;

30

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many possible goods we will render concrete. In this regard, acts have their moral status in the essential dependence upon our will as dynamic subjects. It is within the educational process that “schooling of the will” can be forged. Early on, we described a human being as a being that is, exists, and acts; and one which, by acting, realizes its own potentialities and creates itself in action. That man’s actions bear the attributes of freedom and responsibility is the distinctive feature for their valuation within the context of morality. Morality and acting are essentially different; at the same time, they are so strictly united with each other that morality has no real existence apart from human acting, apart from actions. Their essential separateness does not obscure their existential relationship.31 Thus, a deeper concept of humanizing the student through education is to bring him/her to the fullness of being through his/her actions in the pursuit of virtue. A first step in the process could be the recognition of the obligatory character of the moral law. Individuals could develop themselves in those areas of development (as specified by the Greeks), but authentic human development could only be reached when the moral needs of a person are addressed. After all, if a person were to be excellent in his intellectual, physical, material, and social growth, but were to falter in his ethical behavior, we cannot speak of that individual as being a truly human person. Man realizes himself through his actions. His moral actions are therefore authentic expressions of his self-determination toward the good. This brings us to the consideration of Stein’s concept of education as a preparation for individuals to make choices in life. While much of what Stein writes about education is in the context of women’s education, she specified ways for both men and women to be educated in both the heart and mind. She writes, “The intellect is the key to the kingdom of the spirit. Thus, the intellect must be pressed into activity. It cannot become bright and sharp enough,” but purely intellectual knowing does not result in real formation of the person unless the knowledge is interiorized. The training of the intellect should not be extended at the expense of the schooling of the heart. The mean should be the target (EW: 136–137). Education specialists concur with Stein in this respect. To bring about a proper moral education involves developing reflective thinking for the cultivation of virtue. The intellect must inform action. Teachers are to use all the means possible—for example, discovery learning, inquiry-oriented discussion—to promote thinking in the classroom. The immediate purpose of reflection is to resolve a 31

Wojtyla, The Acting Person, p. 70.

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problem, but the long-term purpose is perfection of the individual and the growth of culture. If a choice must be made between coverage of content and the fostering of thought, the latter should take precedence.32 With reflectivity, children will achieve at least a minimal level of moral literacy that will enable them discern what is morally right from wrong, so that they will be equipped with the capacity to make the right choices. Then, as they mature, they could be more easily directed to see value in the cultivation of virtue.

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1. Educating for Moral Excellence “Can virtue be taught?” is perhaps the oldest question in moral philosophy. Or is it rather to be acquired by practice? Socrates wrote that until one knows what virtue is, one cannot know how it is (to be) acquired.33 An important aspect of moral education, therefore, is forming the child’s intellect to help the child acquire full knowledge of what he is doing and why he is doing something. Choices can be for good or for ill, depending on the character of the actions. By definition, those choices/actions are morally good that contribute to the development and perfection or fulfillment of oneself as a person and of one’s community. The function of conscience, as the person’s moral judgment, is to discern this moral good in action.34 Knowing the why of a virtue, a person can then be motivated into practicing it. Moral education is a process involving deliberation and search in the pursuit of an end. There is a link between choice and rationality. If we choose an end, we choose it in relation to a yet further end. The constant choice of a good makes it a stable habit that is forged in one’s character as a virtue. In the work of forming the conscience, the project of cognitive development is an inadequate program of moral education, writes Stein. Instruction in that which is theoretical is needed, but the formation of practical judgment is as necessary (EW: 137). Moreover, beyond knowledge, one’s reference to moral truth must constitute also a sense of duty, for actions that are judged truly to be morally good are experienced also as what one ought to do. When these are exercised repeatedly in the process of life, patterns of action develop, such that they become practiced with ease and eventually become “second nature,” much like a stable part of one’s character. 32

V. K. LaBoskey, Development of Reflective Practice (New York: Teachers College Press, 1994), p. 4. 33 Plato, Meno, 71b. 34 McLean, The Person and Moral Growth, p. 191.

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Virtues are habits in the sense of being repeated; they are the modes of activity with which we are familiar, and by exercising them—along with the coordinate bodily and psychic dynamisms they require—we become proficient with them. Thus, to be anchored in virtues, one must know that “every virtuous act involves exercising choice.”35 To be just, for instance, it is not enough to know what a just man would do. One must choose to do the just act. And virtues are acquired primarily through habit and practice, not through discussion. As Aristotle puts it, “A man becomes just by performing just acts, brave by performing brave acts, temperate by performing acts of temperance.”36 Because the Greeks understood virtue in this way, they often compared character formation to athletic training. In its original sense, the word “virtue” meant something like the English word “strength.” Physical strength is something we lose if we did not keep in practice. As with a pianist or violinist, with practice comes facility and spontaneity. As a result, virtues acquired through practice constitute not merely the pattern of the basic, continuing, and pervasive internal influences that shape our life; but, even more, they give us the ability to do what we choose. For this reason in the unity of mind and body, one’s set of virtues has been considered classically to be the basic indicator of what one’s life as a whole will add up to—or even, as is often said, what a person will “amount to.”37 For this reason, Stein stressed the importance of ordaining the passions towards right choices. By educating the emotions, one might learn to pursue the good passionate concern and creative commitment. She writes that feeling-forming is very important in education, since feeling (Gemut) holds a central position in changing personal attitudes and actions, but it cannot carry out its task without the cooperation of intellect and will. Feeling, or emotion, like a drive or energy, could propel a person towards desired goals, but needs the light of the intellect and the discipline of the will to attain moral perfection. If these are lacking, emotional life becomes a compulsion without direction. In this respect, the teacher’s very being and actions give tremendous impetus in the process of forming the students’ feelings, values, and choices (EW: 103). McLean concurs with Stein on the importance of emotions.

35 R. Sorabji, “Aristotle on the Role of Intellect in Virtue,” in Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, ed., Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), p. 201. 36 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, nos. 1117–1119. 37 McLean, The Person and Moral Growth, p. 202.

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The dynamisms of the psyche, in some contrast to the more reactive character of somatic dynamisms, are based within the person and are typified by emotivity. They range from some which are more integral to the physical to others which are moral, religious and aesthetic.

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Such emotions have two important characteristics. First, they are not isolated or compartmentalized, but include and interweave the various dimensions of the person. Hence, they are crucial to the integration of a personal life and play a central role in the proximity one feels to values and to the intensity of one’s response. Secondly, they are relatively spontaneous and contribute to the intensity of a personal life.38

Certainly, the development of the emotions alone would not suffice to make a person fully human in the sense that personal life is not decided on the basis of what I feel or what happens to me, but is shaped at a free level, where I determine what happens. Oftentimes, my actions can even depart from or betray my feelings. As was stressed earlier, “personal actions are carried out through a will which, being open and responsive to the Good, is not determined by any particular good or value; hence in the final analysis it is up to the person to determine him- or herself.”39 In this regard, education should not consist simply of emotional formation to an extreme (which moreover, can only be done indirectly, as our responses to value are centered in the personal realm). Our intellect and rational capacities must be developed. The intellect is the eye of the emotions, but both are needed to compare, discriminate, weigh, and measure. Therefore, right formation requires the development of both our emotional and our intellectual life, and if teachers fail in the latter, we will end up with fanaticism and indiscriminate enthusiasm. Nonetheless, “the development of intellect may not be increased at the expense of the refinement of emotion” (EW: 137). This would be to turn a mere means into an end in itself.40 In considering the “schooling of the will,” referred to above, one may ask how values enter into Stein’s educational schemata. In this regard, her basic principles are revealed in her philosophy of the person, which comprises extensive analyses of affective acts and their relation to cognition and to the valuing activity of the person. On the ground of cognition, there can and may occur the 38 39 40

McLean, The Person and Moral Growth, p. 200. Emphasis mine. McLean, The Person and Moral Growth, p. 200. Borden, “Phenomenology and the Person,” p. 86.

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cognizing of value or non-value without the affective positing of accompanying feeling toward or away from the object. However, for valuing to be completely filled, the value-intuition and response-reaction must be filled. When the lively interest of the ego is lacking, there is no felt value.41 Thus, it is important to motivate students and help them feel enthusiastic about what they are doing. The teacher has the important role of effecting motivation and interest. Stein states realistically that, in all education, natural predispositions and the subject’s freedom set limits to what can be accomplished by external educational efforts, which only provide subject matter and make learning appealing. These can show the way, but cannot force acceptance and imitation (EW: 107). Ultimately, a person must decide for him/herself. In this regard, the person best exercises his freedom when he chooses that which will bring about his moral excellence. It is the person who determines himself through his actions to bring about a choice for the good or for the bad. Summing up, Stein stresses that education should form the whole person, and the right approach requires a clear anthropology: If one does not know how human beings, both men and women, should be, one cannot help them to become that. Thus, education should be for our physical bodies and our intellectual capacities (including both practical and theoretical). The primary aim, however, of all education is the formation of the person and her emotional responsiveness to the world of value.42 We can reiterate once again, that the ultimate value to be aimed for is moral perfection.

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2. The Teacher’s Role The phenomenological interpretation of education describes the teacher as a human being with an extraordinary task to effect formation. Stein develops the image of the educator as sculptor: The teacher begins with a child of certain predispositions (both physical and psychological), just as a sculptor begins with a certain kind of material. Educators cannot assume that children are blank slates to be written upon, but must recognize that each child has a nature and certain potentialities. The task of the educator is to develop and form a child in accordance with his/nature, not to fill an empty mind. Therefore, a child’s development depends in large part upon the degree to which educators furnish the material necessary to

41

M. C. Baseheart, “Edith Stein’s Philosophy of Woman and of Woman’s Education,” Hypatia 4.1 (1989): 129. 42 Borden, “Phenomenology and the Person,” p. 87.

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actualize the potentials already present, and there must be tasks appropriate for the cultivation of the child’s faculties (as “the faculties develop only through application” [EW: 132]). To educate a fellow human being is to provide that person with the means to structure his or her own experiences in ways that keep on expanding what the person knows, has reason to doubt or believe, and understands, as well as the person’s capacity for autonomous and authentic action, and the person’s sense of place in history. It is not a matter of supplying the knowledge, the reasonable beliefs, and so on, but rather of supplying the means to gain access to and continue the enlargement of knowledge, understanding, and so forth.43 The educator must remember that there is not merely a speculative intellect but a practical intellect as well. It is important to train the latter proportionately through concrete tasks. Education comprises also a schooling of the will, acts of which are continually required. Abstract activity and concrete application should go hand in hand (EW: 190–191). Since the ego-data are always present in valuing and since each individual is unique, if education is to function in bringing the student to effective valuing activity and affective response, the teacher must take into account the uniqueness of each student as well as the universal meaning-core detachable from the individual’s mental coloring. This involves an assessment of the total structure of the person and contact with the world of values in which he/she lives, as well as the attitudes, drives, and motives that undergird the individual’s values and guide his/her actions.44 The teacher must respect the individual differences among students, but strive to help students aspire to the excellence that Aristotle found all men capable of attaining. In assisting the student to change faulty values and to rise to higher values, Stein appears to hold the position that the approach is an indirect one, consisting of appealing to reason in order to lead the student to clarify his/her values and apply the law of reason to arrive at feeling-forming, choices, and decisions.45 Stein’s approach is certainly holistic. She sees the teacher as one who will draw out the best in the student, excite his/her sense of adventure, elicit meaning and find value in the lessons, and eventually guide the student in making well-thought-out and wise decisions. 43 44

129. 129.

45

LaBoskey, Development of Reflective Practice, p. 7. Baseheart, “Edith Stein’s Philosophy of Woman and of Woman’s Education,” p. Baseheart, “Edith Stein’s Philosophy of Woman and of Woman’s Education,” p.

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Education is first of all formation, and “all educational work, even that imparted through objective forms, aims at personality formation” (EW: 223; emphasis original). Nonetheless, the training of the intellect is critical, and Stein advocates training both theoretical and practical intelligence. The former is developed through abstract sciences such as mathematics, theoretical sciences, and pure philosophy; the latter, practical intelligence, is formed through concrete tasks. Stein provides at least two reasons for training practical intelligence. First, “only where conviction and intention are successfully translated into action can it be shown whether an enthusiasm is legitimate, whether higher things are actually preferred to lower things” (EW: 137). Therefore, Stein argues that all students—regardless of whether they expect to work in a university or in a factory—need to develop the intelligence and judgment necessary for action, for action is the test of conviction. Second, the talents, predispositions, and interests of many students will be in less academic fields, and the development of practical intelligence can assist in vocational training.46 Her view seems to be that both purely intellectual study and more practical application are necessary for all students. Most students will, however, want to focus on one or the other, and schools should be prepared to offer assessment and career guidance as well as vocational training. The basic curriculum in schools at all levels should include general education and should be adapted to the nature and vocational/professional goals of the student. The college curriculum, she says, should include a strong strain of liberal arts subjects “crowned by the integrating disciplines of philosophy and theology.” The liberal-arts component, she understands as including the humanities, the natural sciences and mathematics, and the social sciences, and she again emphasizes that for the total education of the person, the disciplines should not be taught in a purely abstract way, but should be related to the concrete and the personal as far as possible (EW: 219–220). As we have shown, teachers are key players in students’ learning and moral development. If making society a more just and humane world is a main goal of education, it is clear that this duty is in a special way the task of teachers. Summing up, a good teacher is usually affectionately interested in the cultural development of his students in particular, and concerned for the welfare of human beings in general. He can maintain a reasonably critical view of his students’ performance and demand a great deal from them. However, being genuinely concerned about each of his students, he spontaneously imbues them with a deep sense of value, self-respect, personal worth, self-drive, and motivation. 46

See Borden, “Woman and Women’s Education.”

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From such a teacher, Plato writes, “After much converse about the matter and a life lived together, suddenly a light, as it were, is kindled in one soul by a flame that leaps to it from another, and thereafter sustains itself.”47 As the child, instructed in ethical and moral practice, grows up, his light ignites a spark everywhere he goes. The pure flame of good therefore spreads like fire, increasing its power among men as they build society with wisdom and virtue. Thus, the good teacher is often the tool of something more remarkable than him/herself.

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IV. Conclusion In the field of education, the work of formation is said to refer to the development of competencies. Some might use competencies to refer alone to techniques and skills, and miss out on the fact that competencies include human growth, which include development in virtues. Since education is a basic right of every person and includes therefore the right to self-fulfillment, this right must be protected and promoted by the physical and social realities surrounding the person. For educators, this corresponds to a basic duty, namely, the duty of assisting students in the development of all their competencies. For the state, this points to the obligation to organize society in such a way that this right is guaranteed. Thus, any authentic reform to be undertaken in the educational system ultimately points to attaining the project of man’s moral growth. Certainly, the human project of education cannot be focused on the person alone, such that formation is concentrated exclusively on the self. Growth in virtues by itself prescribes growth in life with others. After all, in the struggle to build one’s life and to build the world, moral choices call for conquering our tendency towards egoism and self-centeredness. As McLean emphasizes, to strive to lessen or altogether rid ourselves of selfishness calls for creating a world shaped by values that are at once personal and communitarian. Moral education concerns itself with helping the person exercise his/her freedom in a manner that recognizes the obligatory character of the moral law. Edith Stein emphasized the need to develop the affective life so that even obedience to moral precepts could be embraced with passion and drive. Today, the challenge for education is to bring about a strong desire in the students themselves to attain moral growth and personal reform. Over time, they will reap the rewards of a moral life and will want to pass on the joys of a moral tradition and 47

p. 25.

A. Montagu, The Cultured Man (Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1958),

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share the meaning of this tradition to those in their homes and communities. With struggle, they will advance in the realization of their moral capabilities and find happiness in living authentically human lives.

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Contributors

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Lester EMBREE (Ph.D., Philosophy, New School for Social Research, 1972) is the William F. Dietrich Eminent Scholar at Florida Atlantic University. He is chiefly interested in the theory of the cultural sciences, archaeology in particular, and has published extensively in and on constitutive phenomenology, including Reflective Analysis (2006), multiple studies of Dorion Cairns, Aron Gurwitsch, and Alfred Schutz, and was general editor of the Encyclopedia of Phenomenology (1997) and co-editor of the Handbook of Phenomenological Aesthetics (2010). He was President of the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, Inc. (1984–2005) and precipitated the founding of various phenomenological organizations, including the Organization of Phenomenological Organizations (O.P.O.) (Prague 2002) and Phenomenology in East Asia CirclE (P.E.A.CE.) (Delray Beach 2004). Xianghong FANG (Ph.D., Philosophy, Nanjing University, 2002) is Professor of Western Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, Nanjing University. His areas of interest are phenomenology and deconstruction theory. His major publications include: (in Chinese) Genesis and Deconstruction: A Textual Criticism of Early Derrida’s Phenomenology (2006), and Ghost Dance: Derrida and Phenomenology (2010). He was Humboldt Scholar of Husserl Archive at Freiburg University from 2007 to 2009. He is the founding member of the Chinese Association of French Philosophy, and a member of the Chinese Association of Phenomenology and Phenomenology in East Asia CirclE (P.E.A.CE.). Kuan-min HUANG was born in Taipei, Taiwan. After earning a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from National Taiwan University, Huang finished a master’s degree at the same university in 1989. He then furthered his post-graduate study in France and received his Ph.D. from the University of Paris-Sorbonne (Paris-IV) in 2001 (title of dissertation: “Schelling et la crise de la métaphysique”). He was teaching at the Department of Philosophy, Huafan

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University in Taipei from 2001 to 2007. He has joined the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica, since 2007, where he is an assistant research fellow. He has also been teaching at the Department of Philosophy, National Chengchi University in Taipei, since 2008. His research interests include: Schelling, Bachelard, contemporary French philosophy, and comparative philosophy, focusing on such themes as imagination, subjectivity, place, and landscape.

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Tetsuya KONO received his D.Lit. in Philosophy from Keio University. His research interests lie in phenomenology, philosophy, and ethics. He has also been conducting collaborative research on the education for children/persons with disability from the phenomenological perspective. He is currently Professor at the Department of Education, Rikkyo University, Tokyo. His major publications include: (books, all in Japanese) Consciousness Doesn’t Exist (2011), The Ecological Self (2011), Questioning Morality: Liberalism and the Future of Education (2011), The Philosophy and the Ethics of Neuroscience (2008), Moral Realism (2007), The Ecological View of Mind (2003); (papers, in English or French) “Personality and Irrationality in Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy,” Chiasmi International 12 (2010): 261–272, “The ‘Extended Mind’ Approach for a New Paradigm of Psychology,” Integrative Psychology and Behavioral Science 44 (2010): 329–339, “Social Affordances and the Possibility of Ecological Linguistics,” Integrative Psychology and Behavioral Science 43 (2009): 356–373, “Qu’y-a-t-il dans le cerveau?: philosophie du mental écologique,” Ebisu, Études japonaises 40/41, numéro spécial, maison Franco-Japonaise (2008–2009) : 175–187. Ka-wing LEUNG is Associate Professor at Tongji University, Shanghai. He has written a book on the moral thought of Confucius and published a number of articles on Heidegger, Husserl, ancient Greek philosophy and ancient Chinese philosophy. Jeff MALPAS is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tasmania and also Distinguished Visiting Professor at La Trobe University, Australia. He has an international reputation for his work on a range of topics including the philosophy of place and space, hermeneutics and the philosophy of language, and the history of philosophy. His work spans Anglo-American “analytic” as well as “European” thought, and is also strongly oriented towards interdisciplinary engagement in fields such as art, architecture, and geography. His recent publications include

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Heidegger’s Topology (2006), as well as edited works such as Consequences of Hermeneutics (2010), and Dialogues with Davidson (2011).

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Junichi MURATA studied at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, the University of Tokyo. He was Research Fellow (DAAD) at the University of Cologne, Germany (1977–1979), Lecturer and Associate Professor at Toyo University, Tokyo (1981–1991), and Associate Professor and Professor at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Tokyo (1991–2011). He conducted research at the Ruhr-University of Bochum, Germany as Humboldt Stipendiat (1988–1889). He is presently Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Rissho University, and Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo. His main research interests range from the philosophy of perception and philosophy of mind to the philosophy of science and technology. His major book publications include: (in Japanese) Perception and the Life-World (1995), Philosophy of Color (2002), The Ethics of Technology (2006), Philosophical Inquiry into Self (2007), Philosophy of Technology (2009); (in English) Perception, Technology, and Life-Worlds (Collection UTCP 1, 2007). Chon-ip NG is Assistant Professor at the Centre of General Education and the Graduate Institute of Philosophy, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. Prior to joining Tsing Hua University in 2006, he was Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Nan Hua University, Taiwan. He has also been a visiting professor at Academia Sinica, Taiwan. He received his doctoral degree from the Wuppertal University in Germany under the supervision of Prof. Klaus Held in 2003. His dissertation Weltoffenheit und Verborgenheit bei Martin Heidegger (Openness of the World and Concealing in the Thinking of Martin Heidegger) was published in book form in the series of New Studies in Phenomenology in 2006. He has also published several research articles on the phenomenology of Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. His research focuses on the problems of concealment, intersubjectivity, corporeality and expression. Among many of his research projects funded by various academic organizations, his recent project that deals with the development of corporeal phenomenology of sociality from Husserl to Sartre and Merleau-Ponty has received the Excellent Young Scholar Grant from the National Science Council, Taiwan. Karel NOVOTNÝ (Ph.D.) studied philosophy, physics and political science in Prague, Eichstätt and Paris. He is Research Fellow at the Department of Contemporary Continental Philosophy, the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of

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the Czech Republic, and Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University of Prague. He is also co-director of the Central-European Institute of Philosophy. His recent publications include: (in Czech) On the Nature of Appearance: Introduction to Contemporary French Phenomenology (2010); edited works include: Ludwig Landgrebe’s Der Begriff des Erlebens. Ein Beitrag zur Kritik unseres Selbstverständnisses und zum Problem der seelischen Ganzheit (2010), Phénoménologie comme philosophie première (co-edited with Alexander Schnell and László Tengelyi; 2011). Maybelle Marie O. PADUA is Associate Professor at the Far Eastern University, Philippines (FEU). She is the author of Contemplating Woman in the Philosophy of Edith Stein (2007). She was conferred an award by the University of the Philippines Center for Women’s Studies in 2006 for her thesis, “The Ethos of Woman in the Philosophy of Edith Stein” (2004). She heads the FEU Women Desk and Development Office and is the editor of Colloquium, the research journal of the FEU Humanities Department. She is a member of the International Association for the Study of the Philosophy of Edith Stein (IASPES). Her research interests include the philosophy of Edith Stein, emotions, ethics, feminism, and metaphysics.

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Yiu-hong WONG is currently Instructor at the Department of Philosophy, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he also received his Ph.D. (title of dissertation: “Praxis and Understanding: Gadamer on Subjectivity and Self-understanding” [in Chinese]). His areas of interest include: phenomenology, hermeneutics, Chinese philosophy, and ancient Greek ethics.

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Editors

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Kwok-ying LAU (Ph.D. Paris, 1993) is currently Professor and Head of Graduate Division at the Department of Philosophy, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Founding editor-in-chief since 2004 of the journal Phenomenology and the Human Sciences (in Chinese), and Director of the Edwin Cheng Foundation Asian Centre for Phenomenology (since 2010), The Chinese University of Hong Kong, he is also one of the co-founders and coordinators of the research network P.E.A.CE (Phenomenology for East-Asian CirclE). He has translated writings of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Lévinas, and Ricoeur into Chinese. He has published Husserl’s Logical Investigations in the New Century: Western and Chinese Perspectives (ed. with J. J. Drummond, 2007), Identity and Alterity: Phenomenology and Cultural Traditions (ed. with C.-F. Cheung and T.-W. Kwan, 2010), and has edited or co-edited 15 other volumes in Chinese. His forthcoming books include Towards a New Cultural Flesh: Phenomenology and Intercultural Understanding (in English, Springer), and Nothingness, the Body-Subject and the Other: Traces of French Phenomenology (in Chinese). Chung-chi YU (Ph.D. Bochum, 1996) is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Institute of Philosophy, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Taiwan. His areas of research include the socio-cultural theory of phenomenology, philosophy of religion, and ethics. In 2007 he published a book in Chinese titled Social World and Cultural Difference: A Phenomenological Inquiry, in which the thoughts of Husserl, Schutz, Sartre, and Waldenfels are explored. Phenomenological psychology counts as his current interest, through which he works on the foundation of human-social sciences.

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LIBRI NIGRI DENKEN ÜBER GRENZEN

Herausgegeben von Hans Rainer Sepp

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Die libri nigri treffen sich bevorzugt an Orten, an denen die Grenzen von Wirklichkeitsbereichen, Standpunkten, Fachrichtungen sowie Kultur- und Wissenstraditionen in den Blick geraten und ihre Voraussetzungen verhandelbar werden. Begründungsabsichten nachzuspüren, gilt hier mehr, als Begründungen zu suchen, das wagende Experiment mehr als die gültige Schablone, die störende Bewegung mehr als der Drang nach Absicherung. Da die Orte für entscheidende Bewegungen meist Ränder und nicht Zentren sind und da Grenzen nicht einfach nur begrenzen, sondern vor allem Potentiale des Anderen und Fremden bergen, wird sich die Reihe auch dem Terrain des Utopischen nicht verweigern. 1

Hans Rainer Sepp Die Grenze denken

2

Yoshiko Oshima Zen – anders denken? Zugleich ein Versuch über Zen und Heidegger 2. Aufl.

3

Max Lorenzen Philosophie der Nachmoderne Die Transformation der Kultur – Virtualität und Globalisierung Herausgegeben von Cathrin Nielsen broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-668-8 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-668-1

4

Hisaki Hashi und Friedrich G. Wallner (Hg.) Globalisierung des Denkens in Ost und West Resultate des Österreichisch-Japanischen Dialogs broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-555-4 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-560-8

5

Aleš Novák Heideggers Bestimmung des Bösen broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-650-6 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-651-3

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André Julien S. E. Faict Philosophische Voraussetzungen des interkulturellen Dialogs Die vergleichende Philosophie von Hajime Nakamura im Dialog mit Anthropologie und Hermeneutik broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-683-4 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-684-1

7

Peter Schwankl Diplomatisches Verhalten Ein phänomenologischer Versuch über das Wesen des Diplomatischen Herausgegeben von Georg Lechner broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-517-2 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-516-5

8

Paul Janssen Vom zersprungenen Weltwerden broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-685-8 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-686-5

9

Constantin Noica De dignitate Europae Übersetzt von Georg Scherg Herausgegeben von Mădălina Diaconu broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-708-4 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-709-1

10

Constantin Noica Briefe zur Logik des Hermes Übersetzt von Christian Ferencz-Flatz und Stefan Moosdorf broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-434-2 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-435-9

11

Ananta Charan Sukla (ed.) Art and Expression Contemporary Perspectives in the Occidental and Oriental Traditions broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-710-7 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-711-4

12

Dean Komel Den Nihilismus verwinden Ein slowenisches Postscript zum 20. Jahrhundert broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-712-1 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-713-8

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Tatiana Shchyttsova (Hg.) In statu nascendi Geborensein und intergenerative Dimension des menschlichen Miteinanderseins broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-716-9 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-688-9

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Chung-Chi Yu and Kwok-ying Lau (eds.) Phenomenology and Human Experience broschiert ISBN 978-3-88309-722-0 gebunden ISBN 978-3-88309-723-7

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13

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