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Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Part I Phenomenology and the history of philosophy
Chapter 1 The history of the phenomenological movement
1.1. The lives and deaths of phenomenology
1.2. The birth of phenomenology and its foundation as a philosophical method
1.3. The shifts
Notes
References
Chapter 2 Phenomenology and Greek philosophy
Introduction
Part I: Heidegger
Part II: Husserl
Part III: Klein
Notes
References
Chapter 3 Phenomenology and medieval philosophy
3.1. Phenomenology and Neo-Scholasticism
3.2. Franz Brentano
3.3. Max Scheler
3.4. Edith Stein
3.5. Martin Heidegger
3.6. The rapprochement between Neo-Scholasticism and Phenomenology
3.7. The “tournant théologique” of French Phenomenology and Jean-Luc Marion
References
Chapter 4 Phenomenology and the Cartesian tradition
I – Evidence and truth: the absolute foundation of knowledge
II – Descartes’s failure to grasp the transcendental point of view and the misunderstandings of modern “rationalism”
III – The monadological ego and the overcoming of the Solipsismus-Streit
Notes
References
Chapter 5 Phenomenology and British empiricism
Notes
References
Chapter 6 Phenomenology and German idealism
6.1 Preliminary orientation in the structure of the historical contexts of German idealism and phenomenology
6.2 Systematic reflections
Notes
References
Chapter 7 Phenomenology and Austrian philosophy
Austrian philosophy
Phenomenology
The phenomenological movement and Austrian philosophy
Notes
References
Part II Issues and concepts in phenomenology
Chapter 8 Aesthetics and art
The dawn of phenomenological aesthetics in the work of Edmund Husserl
References
Chapter 9 Body
Introduction
9.1. Husserl
9.2. Merleau-Ponty
9.3. Enactivism
Notes
References
Chapter 10 Consciousness
10.1. Some essential features of consciousness
10.2. Consciousness and intentionality
10.3. Consciousness and knowledge
10.4. Consciousness and being
10.5. The mystery of consciousness
10.6. Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 11 Crisis
Notes
References
Chapter 12 Dasein
12.1. Being-here and fundamental ontology
12.2. Being-here and thinking being historically determined
Notes
References
Chapter 13 Ego
13.1. Empirical ego
13.2. Pure ego
13.3. Transcendental ego
13.4. Monad
Note
References
Chapter 14 Eidetic method
14.1. The structure of eidetic knowledge: some basic notions
14.2. A Socratic procedure
14.3. Hic sunt phantasmata: phantasy (variation) and the method of eidetic knowledge
Notes
References
Chapter 15 Ethics
15.1 Axiology and ethics
15.2. An ethics of freedom
15.3. An ethics of obligation
15.4. Other developments
Notes
References
Chapter 16 Existence
Existence’s modes of being
Historical background
Objective existence, real existence, intentional in-existence
The several senses of existence
Existence, existentiell, existential and existentiality
Existence and existentialism
Concluding remarks
References
Chapter 17 Genesis
17.1. The first characterizations of phenomenology: descriptive psychology and transcendental philosophy
17.2. The move toward a genetic phenomenology: the concept and the program
17.3. Pondering the novelties: the reference to Brentano
17.4. Still pondering the novelties: the monad has “windows”
17.5. By way of a conclusion: Husserl’s contribution and some glimpses beyond
Notes
References
Chapter 18 Horizon
The philosophical background: the history of the concept
The psychological background: William James’ Principles of Psychology
Husserl’s static phenomenology of the horizons
Husserl’s genetic phenomenology of the horizons: the horizons of subjectivity
Husserl’s genetic phenomenology of the horizons: the world-horizon
Post-Husserlian phenomenology of the horizons
Notes
References
Chapter 19 Imagination and phantasy
19.1. Imagination, image consciousness, and representation
19.2. Imagination, being, and freedom
Conclusion: imagination, phenomenology, and phenomenological philosophy
Notes
References
Chapter 20 Instinct
Two concepts of instinct: instinct as instinctive behavior and as innate drive
The phenomenological concept of instinct
Phenomenological psychology of instincts
Transcendental phenomenology of instincts
Phenomenology of instincts in post-Husserlian phenomenology and future tasks
Notes
References
Chapter 21 Intentionality
Introduction: phenomenological origin of the problem of intentionality
Three aspects of the original problem of intentionality overlooked in contemporary discourse
Husserl’s psychological account of intentionality
Husserl’s transcendental phenomenological account of the intentionality of pure consciousness
Husserl’s genetic-historical account of intentionality
Heidegger’s ontological critique of the phenomenological originality of Husserl’s account of intentionality
References
Chapter 22 Intersubjectivity and sociality
22.1. Experiencing the other (intersubjectivity)
22.2. Being with others (sociality)
22.3. Beyond the distinction of intersubjectivity and sociality: the group
Acknowledgments
References
Chapter 23 Life-world
23.1. The project of a phenomenological science of the life-world
23.2. The life-world as a perceived, intuited world
23.3. The life-world as the world of everyday life
23.4. The life-world between subjectivity and intersubjectivity
23.5. Ontological and transcendental approaches to the life-world
23.6. Beyond Husserl
References
Chapter 24 Mathematics
24.1 Husserl: formal mathematics and material mathematics (1927)
24.2. Hilbert and the axiomatic method (1922)
24.3. Dietrich Mahnke and the phenomenological elucidation of the axiomatic method (1923)
24.4. Oskar Becker and the criticism of Hilbert’s axiomatic formalism (1927)
24.5. Felix Kaufmann: phenomenology and logical empiricism (1930)
Notes
References
Chapter 25 Monad
25.0. Introduction
25.1. The (phenomenological) birth of a monad
25.2. The adolescence of a “phenomenological” monad
25.3. The adulthood of the monad
25.4. Conclusions: the monadological contract
Notes
References
Chapter 26 Moods and emotions
Affective disclosure of meaning and value
The phenomenological primacy of affectivity
Moods as a pre-intentional background of emotions
Embodiment as ontological basis of affectivity
Emotional conducts
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Chapter 27 Nothingness
Heidegger’s rehabilitation of nothing
Humanization of nothingness in Sartre21
Notes
References
Chapter 28 Ontology, metaphysics, first philosophy
28.1. The primacy of philosophy
28.2. What kind of primacy?
References
Chapter 29 Perception
29.1. Perception and intentionality
29.2. The foundational roles of perception
29.3. The Myth of the Given?
29.4. Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 30 Phenomenon
30.1. Phenomenology of true phenomena: Brentano
30.2. Phenomenology without phenomena? Husserl (I)
30.3. Phenomenology of correlative phenomena: Husserl (II)
30.4. Phenomenology of transcendental phenomena: Husserl (III)
30.5. Phenomenology, phenomena and the “realism” of essences: Reinach
30.6. Genetic phenomenology of phenomena “in an absolutely unique sense”: Husserl (IV)
30.7. Phenomenology of the world as transcendental phenomenon: Fink
30.8. Hermeneutic phenomenology and the exceptional phenomenon of being: Heidegger
30.9. Varieties of exceptional phenomena: French phenomenology
30.10 Two phenomenologies, two phenomena: Sartre and Merleau-Ponty
References
Chapter 31 Reduction
References
Chapter 32 Synthesis
32.1. Historical precursors
32.2. Husserl
32.3. Synthesis in Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty
Notes
References
Chapter 33 Transcendental
Introduction
Medieval origins
From Kant to Neo-Kantianism
Edmund Husserl
Heidegger and post-Husserlian phenomenology
References
Chapter 34 Theory of knowledge
Notes
References
Chapter 35 Time
Introduction
Husserl
Heidegger
Chapter 36 Truth and evidence
36.1. Essential distinctions
36.2. Before Husserl: rationalism, empiricism, psychologism
36.3. Phenomenological description of evidence and truth
36.4. Development of Husserl’s phenomenology of evidence and truth
36.5. Evidence and truth in the later Husserl
36.6. Phenomenology of evidence and truth after Husserl
36.7. “Limit problems” of phenomenology of evidence and truth
References
Chapter 37 Variation
37.1. Eidetic variation and τόδε τι
37.2. Co-variation and transcendental co-relation(s)
37.3. Self-variation and the monad
Notes
References
Chapter 38 World
38.1 Husserl
38.2. The cosmological turn
38.3 Back to the world as the “thing itself” of Husserlian phenomenology
38.4 Conclusion
Notes
References
Part III Major figures in phenomenology
Chapter 39 Hannah Arendt
39.1. Arendt—a phenomenologist?
39.2. How phenomenology operates in Arendt’s work
39.3. Arendt’s phenomenological concepts, methods, and concerns: a short overview
39.4. Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 40 Simone de Beauvoir
Notes
References
Chapter 41 Franz Brentano
41.1. Intentionality
41.2. Classification of mental phenomena
41.3. Inner perception
41.4. Truth and value
41.5. General ontology
Notes
References
Chapter 42 Eugen Fink
Notes
References
Chapter 43 Aron Gurwitsch1
43.1. Phenomenology and the perceptual noema
43.2. Gestalt theory and mereology
43.3. Wider discussions: consciousness, ontology, science
Notes
References
Chapter 44 Martin Heidegger
44.1. From one hiddenness to the other: intentionality and being-in-the-world
44.2. The scientific promise
44.3. Phenomenological reduction
44.4. The three basic components of the phenomenological method
44.5. The ontological ambition of existential phenomenology
44.6. Affectivity and authenticity
Notes
References
Chapter 45 Michel Henry
45.1. Radical phenomenology
45.2. Phenomenology of life
45.3. Material phenomenology
Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 46 Edmund Husserl
Introduction
Epochê and bracketing of natural attitude
Transcendental phenomenological reduction
Methodically reflective appearance of consciousness as an object
Transcendental reflection
The reductive context of transcendental reflection
Intentionality as the essential being of consciousness
Essential seeing of the intentional structure of the infinite being of consciousness
Regional ontology of the natural, human, and formal sciences
Phenomenology of transcendental consciousness as transcendental idealism
The three phases of transcendental phenomenology
References
Chapter 47 Roman Ingarden
47.1. Short biographical note
47.2. Ontology and existential ontology
47.3. The pure intentional object
47.4. Being and relative being
47.5. The mode of being and essence of the literary work of art
47.6. The different strata and the aesthetic value of the literary work of art
47.7. Ingarden’s legacy and the artifactual theory of literary fictions
Notes
References
Chapter 48 Jacob Klein
Klein’s Research’s Contribution to the Need to Rewrite the History of Greek Mathematics
Context of Klein’s Research’s Relevance to Phenomenology: Formalization as the Whence of Husserl’s and Heidegger’s Return to the Things Themselves
Klein’s Research’s Critical Impact on Husserl’s and Heidegger’s Accounts of the Origin of Formalization
Klein’s Research and the Phenomenological Possibility of the Methodological Naivete of the Symbols of Symbolic Mathematics
Klein’s Account of the Origin of Formalization and the Constitution of Formalized Objects
Notes
References
Chapter 49 Ludwig Landgrebe
References
Chapter 50 Emmanuel Levinas
Summary
Levinas and the deformalization of phenomenology
50.1. The deduction of entities in the early Levinas
50.2. Events behind the subject–object relationship: the path to “Totality and Infinity”
Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 51 Merleau-Ponty
The transcendental reduction
The aesthetic reduction
The eidetic reduction
The historical reduction
Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 52 Enzo Paci
52.1. The Platonic background and the interpretation of the “Parmenides”.
52.2. Encountering Existentialism: the problem of nothingness
52.3. Encountering phenomenology: rime and relation
52.4. Phenomenology and relationalism
52.5. Building bridges between phenomenology, science, and literature: relations and significations
52.6. Husserl meets Marx: a new interpretation of the life-world
Notes
References
Chapter 53 Jan Patočka
53.1. The crisis of the Lebenswelt: the Husserlian roots of asubjective phenomenology
53.2. Embodied existence
53.3. Human existence in motion
53.4. The natural world
Notes
References
Chapter 54 Adolf Reinach
54.1. A short biographical note
54.2. What Reinach’s realistic phenomenology is
54.3. The theory of judgment and the concept of intentionality
54.4. Knowledge and states of affairs
54.5. Husserl revised: Adolf Reinach’s revision of phenomenology
54.6. A phenomenological account of social acts: the paradigm of promising
54.7. The phenomenological theory of law: a new material a priori field
54.8. Phenomenology of premonitions
54.9. First attempts toward a phenomenological description of religious experience
Note
References
Chapter 55 Jean-Paul Sartre
55.1. Diving into phenomenology: a first but decisive step
55.2. Recasting the ego: a vagrant story
55.3. From images to imagination: on the way to nothingness
55.4. A new variety of phenomenology: the project of a phenomenological ontology
55.5. Beyond ontology, still phenomenology? Questions of (phenomenological) method
55.6. Idios and idioi
Conclusion
References
Chapter 56 Max Scheler
56.1. Life and personality
56.2. Overview of his thought, work, and influence
56.3. Themes and characteristics of his work
56.4. The context of Scheler’s thought and work
56.5. The core theory of his philosophical remedy
56.6. The formation of the ethos in a turbulent reality
56.7. The ideal, the real, the becoming of God and of the world
56.8. The future and the prospect of a salvation from evil
Notes
References
Chapter 57 Alfred Schutz
57.1. The locus of Schutz’s phenomenological investigations
57.2. The phenomenology of the natural attitude
57.3. The social world and the social sciences
57.4. Conclusion: specific disagreements and creative deployments of phenomenology
Notes
References
Chapter 58 Edith Stein
58.1. Setting the stage: a brief biography
58.2. Stein’s phenomenology and empathy
58.3. Psychology
58.4. Social ontology
Notes
References
Chapter 59 Trân duc Thao
59.1. French colonialism and the French philosophical tradition
59.2. Phenomenology, dialectical materialism, and Paris
59.3. Consciousness, language, and Vietnam
59.4. Renovation in Vietnam, The Formation of Man, and the return to Paris
59.5. Conclusion
Notes
References
Part IV Intersections
Chapter 60 Phenomenology and analytic philosophy
60.1. Two traditions
60.2. The story of a mutual contempt
60.3. Realism and anti-realism
60.4. Realist convergences
60.5. Anti-realist convergences
60.6. Phenomenology and philosophy of mind
Notes
References
Chapter 61 Phenomenology and cognitive sciences
61.1. Consciousness studies in 19th-century psychology
61.2. Husserl on psychology
61.3. Husserl’s successors
61.4. 1950s through early 1990s
61.5. Contemporary naturalized phenomenology and consciousness studies
References
Chapter 62 Phenomenology and critical theory
Overview of Frankfurt School critical theory
Adorno and phenomenology
Habermas and phenomenology
Phenomenology and critical theory – wedges and commonalities
References
Chapter 63 Phenomenology and deconstruction
Notes
References
Chapter 64 Phenomenology and hermeneutics
64.1. From phenomenology to hermeneutics: Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology
64.2. Hermeneutics in relation to phenomenology: Paul Ricoeur and Hans-Georg Gadamer
Notes
References
Chapter 65 Phenomenology and medicine
Ontology of the body and epistemology of medicine
The “phenomenological body”: from disease to illness
The clinical relationship: an empathic understanding
Conclusions
Notes
References
Chapter 66 Phenomenology and philosophy of science
Notes
References
Chapter 67 Phenomenology and political theory
Introduction
Political phenomenology as a method
Interpreting the nature of political life
Political attitude as a phenomenological experience
Notes
References
Chapter 68 Psychoanalysis and phenomenology
Psychoanalysis as a therapy
Paul Ricœur’s phenomenological approach to the psychoanalytic experience2
Psychoanalysis and phenomenology overlap on the attention to phenomena rather than to the texts
Further remarks on the psychoanalytic technique
Psychoanalytic knowledge from the “third-person” perspective
Notes
References
Chapter 69 Phenomenology and religion
Notes
References
Chapter 70 Phenomenology and structuralism
70.1. Two senses of structuralism
70.2. Phenomenology as ally of the structural method
70.3. Phenomenology faced to structuralism in its polemical usage
Notes
References
Part V Phenomenology in the world
Chapter 71 Africa
71.1. The idea of philosophy
71.2. Lebenswelt and the basis of sciences
71.3. Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 72 Australia and New Zealand
Phenomenology in Australia and New Zealand before World War II
Phenomenology in Australia and New Zealand after World War II
Contemporary scene
Notes
References
Chapter 73 Eastern Asia
The acceptance and spread of phenomenology in China
The research status of phenomenology in China since 2000
Beginning of phenomenological studies in Korea (1920s–1945)
Incubation period of phenomenology in South Korea (1945–1960s)
Breakthrough of phenomenology in South Korea by academic societies (1970s)
Development and perspective of phenomenological studies in South Korea (1980s to date)
Notes
References
Chapter 74 Latin America
74.1. Preamble
74.2. The introduction of phenomenology in Latin America: an overview
74.3. Latin American phenomenology in the twenty-first century: regional initiatives
74.4. Building on the work of previous generations
74.5. Some future prospects
Notes
References
Chapter 75 North America
75.1. Introduction
75.2. The early reception of Husserl’s thought (1902–1950)
75.3. The “University in Exile”: phenomenology as an “exotic transplant”
75.4. The Age of Societies: the Americanization of phenomenology
75.5. The path of “analytic” phenomenology
Notes
References
Appendix
Chapter 76 Synoptic scheme of the phenomenological movement
References and further reading
Index
THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF PHENOMENOLOGY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY
Phenomenology was one of the twentieth century’s major philosophical movements, and it continues to be a vibrant and widely studied subject today with relevance beyond philosophy in areas such as medicine and cognitive sciences. The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy is an outstanding guide to this important and fascinating topic. Its focus on phenomenology’s historical and systematic dimensions makes it a unique and valuable reference source. Moreover, its innovative approach includes entries that don’t simply refect the state of the art but in many cases advance it. Comprising seventy-fve chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook offers unparalleled coverage and discussion of the subject, and is divided into fve clear parts: • • • • •
Phenomenology and the history of philosophy Issues and concepts in phenomenology Major fgures in phenomenology Intersections Phenomenology in the world.
Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy studying phenomenology, The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy is also suitable for those in related disciplines such as psychology, religion, literature, sociology and anthropology. Daniele De Santis is Assistant Professor at Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic. Burt C. Hopkins is Associate Research Fellow at the University of Lille (UMR-CNRS 8163 STL), France. Claudio Majolino is Associate Professor at the University of Lille (UMR-CNRS 8163 STL), France.
Routledge Handbooks in Philosophy Routledge Handbooks in Philosophy are state-of-the-art surveys of emerging, newly refreshed, and important felds in philosophy, providing accessible yet thorough assessments of key problems, themes, thinkers, and recent developments in research. All chapters for each volume are specially commissioned, and written by leading scholars in the feld. Carefully edited and organized, Routledge Handbooks in Philosophy provides indispensable reference tools for students and researchers seeking a comprehensive overview of new and exciting topics in philosophy. They are also valuable teaching resources as accompaniments to textbooks, anthologies, and research-orientated publications. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Colour Edited by Derek H. Brown and Fiona Macpherson The Routledge Handbook of Collective Responsibility Edited by Saba Bazargan-Forward and Deborah Tollefsen The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Emotion Edited by Thomas Szanto and Hilge Landweer The Routledge Handbook of Hellenistic Philosophy Edited by Kelly Arenson The Routledge Handbook of Trust and Philosophy Edited by Judith Simon The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Humility Edited by Mark Alfano, Michael P. Lynch and Alessandra Tanesini The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics Edited by Ricki Bliss and J.T.M. Miller The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Skill and Expertise Edited by Ellen Fridland and Carlotta Pavese The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy Edited by Daniele De Santis, Burt C. Hopkins and Claudio Majolino The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy and Science of Punishment Edited by Farah Focquaert, Elizabeth Shaw, and Bruce N.Waller For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Handbooks-in-Philosophy/book-series/RHP
THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF PHENOMENOLOGY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY
Edited by Daniele De Santis, Burt C. Hopkins and Claudio Majolino
First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park,Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Daniele De Santis, Burt C. Hopkins and Claudio Majolino; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Daniele De Santis, Burt C. Hopkins and Claudio Majolino to be identifed as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-53999-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-08401-3 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
CONTENTS
Notes on Contributors
xi
Introduction Daniele De Santis, Burt C. Hopkins, Claudio Majolino
1
PART I
Phenomenology and the history of philosophy
9
1 The history of the phenomenological movement Pierre-Jean Renaudie
11
2 Phenomenology and Greek philosophy Burt C. Hopkins
37
3 Phenomenology and medieval philosophy Francesco Valerio Tommasi
50
4 Phenomenology and the Cartesian tradition Édouard Mehl
64
5 Phenomenology and British empiricism Vittorio De Palma
73
6 Phenomenology and German idealism Thomas M. Seebohm (1934–2014), edited by Robert Dostal
87
7 Phenomenology and Austrian philosophy Carlo Ierna
98
v
Contents PART II
Issues and concepts in phenomenology
111
8 Aesthetics and art Fotini Vassiliou
113
9 Body Maxime Doyon and Maren Wehrle
123
10 Consciousness Walter Hopp
138
11 Crisis Emiliano Trizio
151
12 Dasein Daniel O. Dahlstrom
160
13 Ego Michael K. Shim
167
14 Eidetic method Daniele De Santis
175
15 Ethics John J. Drummond
187
16 Existence Emanuele Mariani
198
17 Genesis Pedro M. S.Alves
207
18 Horizon Saulius Geniusas
221
19 Imagination and phantasy Julia Jansen
231
20 Instinct Nam-In Lee
241
21 Intentionality Burt C. Hopkins
250
vi
Contents
22 Intersubjectivity and sociality Jakub Čapek and Tereza Matějčková
259
23 Life-world Laurent Perreau
271
24 Mathematics Vincent Gérard
278
25 Monad Andrea Altobrando
292
26 Moods and emotions Ondřej Švec
304
27 Nothingness Kwok-ying Lau
316
28 Ontology, metaphysics, frst philosophy Vincent Gérard
324
29 Perception Walter Hopp
339
30 Phenomenon Aurélien Djian and Claudio Majolino
352
31 Reduction Andrea Staiti
368
32 Synthesis Jacob Rump
376
33 Transcendental James Dodd
389
34 Theory of knowledge Emiliano Trizio
397
35 Time Nicolas de Warren
403
36 Truth and evidence George Heffernan
412
vii
Contents
37 Variation Daniele De Santis
425
38 World Karel Novotný
435
PART III
Major fgures in phenomenology
443
39 Hannah Arendt Sophie Loidolt
445
40 Simone de Beauvoir Christine Daigle
454
41 Franz Brentano Arkadiusz Chrudzimski
461
42 Eugen Fink Riccardo Lazzari
470
43 Aron Gurwitsch Michael D. Barber and Olav K.Wiegand
479
44 Martin Heidegger Daniel O. Dahlstrom
487
45 Michel Henry Paula Lorelle
499
46 Edmund Husserl Burt C. Hopkins
509
47 Roman Ingarden Giuliano Bacigalupo
522
48 Jacob Klein Burt C. Hopkins
533
49 Ludwig Landgrebe Ignacio Quepons and Noé Expósito
543
50 Emmanuel Levinas Raoul Moati
549 viii
Contents
51 Merleau-Ponty Patrick Burke
556
52 Enzo Paci Michela Beatrice Ferri
565
53 Jan Patočka Riccardo Paparusso
573
54 Adolf Reinach Marco Tedeschini
582
55 Jean-Paul Sartre Nathanaël Masselot
592
56 Max Scheler Panos Theodorou
606
57 Alfred Schutz Michael D. Barber
616
58 Edith Stein Antonio Calcagno
625
59 Trân duc Thao Jérôme Melançon
636
PART IV
Intersections
647
60 Phenomenology and analytic philosophy Guillaume Fréchette
649
61 Phenomenology and cognitive sciences Jeff Yoshimi
662
62 Phenomenology and critical theory Alexei Procyshyn
670
63 Phenomenology and deconstruction Mauro Senatore
684
64 Phenomenology and hermeneutics James Risser
690 ix
Contents
65 Phenomenology and medicine Valeria Bizzari
699
66 Phenomenology and philosophy of science Emiliano Trizio
705
67 Phenomenology and political theory Edouard Jolly
711
68 Psychoanalysis and phenomenology Patrizia Giampieri-Deutsch
718
69 Phenomenology and religion Stefano Bancalari
731
70 Phenomenology and structuralism Kwok-ying Lau
738
PART V
Phenomenology in the world
747
71 Africa Bado Ndoye
749
72 Australia and New Zealand Erol Copelj and Jack Reynolds
757
73 Eastern Asia 768 Simon Ebersolt,Tae-hee Kim, Choong-su Han, Ni Liangkang, and Fang Xianghong 74 Latin America Rosemary R.P. Lerner
776
75 North America Steven Crowell and Rodney Parker
789
Appendix
807
76 Synoptic scheme of the phenomenological movement Carlo Ierna
809
Index
813 x
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Andrea Altobrando is Assistant Professor at the University of Parma, Italy Pedro M. S. Alves is Associate Professor at the University of Lisbon, Portugal Giuliano Bacigalupo is Post-Doc Researcher at University of Geneva, Switzerland Stefano Bancalari is Associate Professor at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Italy Michael D. Barber is Full Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University, USA Valeria Bizzari is Post-Doc Researcher at Heidelberg University, Germany Patrick Burke is Full Professor of Philosophy at Gonzaga University, Florence, Italy Antonio Calcagno is Full Professor at King’s Western University, Ontario, Canada Jakub Čapek is Associate Professor at Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic Arkadiusz Chrudzimski is Full Professor of Philosophy at Szczecin University, Poland Erol Copelj is Graduate Student at Monash University,Australia Steven Crowell is Full Professor of Philosophy at Rice University, USA Vittorio de Palma is Research Fellow at the Istituto italiano per gli studi flosofci (Naples), Italy Daniele De Santis is Assistant Professor at Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic Nicolas de Warren is Full Professor at Penn State University, USA Daniel O. Dahlstrom is Full Professor at Boston University, USA Christine Daigle is Full Professor of Philosophy at Brock University, Ontario, Canada Aurélien Djian is Post-Doc Researcher at the University of Lille, France James Dodd is Full Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research, New York City, USA xi
Notes on Contributors
Robert Dostal is Full Professor of Philosophy at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania Maxime Doyon is Associate Professor at the University of Montreal, Canada John J. Drummond is Full Professor at Fordham University, New York, USA Simon Ebersolt is Researcher at IFRAE, France Noé Expósito is Post-Doctoral Researcher at the National Distance Education University, Madrid Michela Beatrice Ferri is Faculty Member at the Holy Apostles College, Connecticut, USA Guillaume Fréchette is Post-Doc Researcher at the University of Geneva, Switzerland Saulius Geniusas is Associate Professor at the Chinese University of Hong-Kong Vincent Gérard is Full Professor at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, France Patrizia Giampieri-Deutsch is Professor at the University of Vienna,Austria Choong-Su Han is Full Professor at Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea George Heffernan is Full Professor of Philosophy at Merrimack College, Massachusetts, USA Walter Hopp is Associate Professor at Boston University, USA Burt C. Hopkins is Associate Research Fellow at the UMR STL University of Lille, France Carlo Ierna is Lecturer at Radboud University and at the Free University Amsterdam, The Netherlands Julia Jansen is Full Professor of Philosophy at KU, Leuven, Belgium Édouard Jolly is Full-Time Researcher at IRSEM, France Tae-Hee Kim is Full Professor at Konkuk University, Seoul, South Korea Kwok-ying Lau is Full Professor of Philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong-Kong Riccardo Lazzari is Full Professor of Philosophy at the Liceo “G. Parini”, Milan, Italy Nam-In Lee is Full Professor of Philosophy at Seoul National University, South Korea Ni Liangkang is Full Professor of Philosophy at Zhejiang University, China Sophie Loidolt is Associate Professor at TU Darmstadt, Germany Paula Lorelle is Researcher at UC Louvain, France Claudio Majolino is Associate Professor at the University of Lille, France Emanuele Mariani is Researcher at the University of Lisbon, Portugal Nathanaël Masselot is Associate Research Fellow at UMR STL University of Lille, France Tereza Matějčková is Assistant Professor at Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic Edouard Mehl is Full Professor at Strasbourg University, France Jérôme Melançon is Assistant Professor at the University of Regina, Canada xii
Notes on Contributors
Raoul Moati is Associate Professor at the University of Chicago, USA Bado Ndoye is Full Professor of Philosophy at Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar, Senegal Karel Novotný is Full Professor at Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic Riccardo Paparusso is Lecturer at the Pontifcal University Saint Thomas Aquinas, Rome, Italy Rodney Parker is Assistant Professor at the Dominican University College, Ottawa, Canada Laurent Perreau is Full Professor at the University of Franche-Comté, Besançon, France Alexei Procyshyn is Research Fellow at Sun Yat-Sen University, Zhuhai, China Ignacio Quepons is Full-Time Researcher at the University of Veracruz, Mexico Pierre-Jean Renaudie is Associate Professor at the University of Lyon, France Jack Reynolds is Full Professor of Philosophy at Deakin University,Victoria,Australia James Risser is Full Professor at Seattle University, USA Rosemary R. P. Lerner is Full Professor of Philosophy at the Pontifcal Catholic University of Peru Jacob Rump is Assistant Professor at Creighton University, USA Thomas M. Seebohm (†) was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Mainz, Germany Mauro Senatore is Faculty Member at the Adolfo Ibáñez University, Santiago, Chile Michael K. Shim is Full Professor of Philosophy at the California State University, Los Angeles, USA Andrea Staiti is Associate Professor at the University of Parma, Italy Ondřej Švec is Assistant Professor at Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic Marco Tedeschini is Research Fellow at the Italian Institute for German Studies, Rome, Italy Panos Theodorou is Associate Professor at the University of Crete, Greece Francesco Valerio Tommasi is Assistant Professor at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Italy Emiliano Trizio is Senior Lecturer at UWE, Bristol, UK Fotini Vassiliou is Post-Doc Researcher at the School of Fine Arts,Athens, Greece Olav K. Wiegand, PhD, Johannes-Guttenberg-Universität, Mainz, Germany Maren Wehrle is Assistant Professor at the Erasmus University, Rotterdam,The Netherlands Fang Xianghong is Full Professor of Philosophy at Sun Yat-sen University, China Jeffrey Yoshimi is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, USA
xiii
INTRODUCTION Daniele De Santis, Burt C. Hopkins, Claudio Majolino
Paul Ricœur famously suggested, “phenomenology in the broad sense is the sum of Husserl’s work plus the heresies stemming from Husserl”. If this is correct, at least at frst sight, there is an obvious two-way strategy to measure the full extent of phenomenology’s contribution to philosophy. On the one hand, each phenomenological “heresy” should be measured against the backdrop of a thorough understanding of Husserl’s published and unpublished work; on the other hand, Husserl’s specifc variety of phenomenology should, in turn, be contrasted with the conceptual transformations and innovations of its “heretic” offspring, such as Heidegger, Reinach, Fink, Langrebe, Ingarden, Patočka, Sartre or Merleau-Ponty—to name only a few. But there is obviously more. The relevance of “phenomenology in the broad sense”, as Ricœur puts it, should also be assessed within a much larger scope.To begin, its own peculiar and variegated conceptuality still needs to be fully examined regarding its actual power both to recast and renew the understanding of traditional philosophical problems and notions, and its ability to discover new ones. As a matter of fact, since the beginning of the 20th century, issues as old as philosophy itself—time, space, world, being, existence and essence, human contingency, etc.—as well as whole philosophical areas—epistemology, ethics, esthetics, ontology and metaphysics—have singly and together been straightforwardly addressed and profoundly modifed in their structural features and defning terms by countless undertakings going under the heading of “phenomenology”.And more than a century later, scholars are still struggling to understand and evaluate the exact meaning and scope of this massive attempt to rethink philosophy as a whole. On the other hand, in order to properly spell out its relative novelty, putative breakthroughs and alleged openings, “phenomenology in the broad sense” also needs be studied within the wider context of the history of philosophy itself, and its many lines of development. Platonism and Aristotelianism, Thomism and Scotism, Cartesianism and British Empiricism, German Idealism and Austrian Realism, all merge and converge within a very complex and hardly homogeneous “movement”, as Herbert Spiegelberg once called it. A movement that, despite its constant call for “radicality”, has never ceased to explicitly problematize its relationship with the philosophical tradition.Then again, one might be tempted to ask: are we now in a better position to have a clearer view of the different ways in which such a tradition has been re-enacted and modifed such that it could be labeled, in some unifed way,“phenomenological”? But “phenomenology” is also the name for one family of positions that are engaged in contemporary philosophical debates. Thus, the value—if any—of its conceptual resources should 1
Daniele De Santis, Burt C. Hopkins, Claudio Majolino
also be compared with some of the most signifcant and relevant present-day non-phenomenological alternatives and trends.This is an urgent task. Often hastily put under the misleading and poorly defned heading “continental philosophy”, phenomenology is frequently lumped together with existentialism or hermeneutics and opposed to analytic philosophy, without the legitimacy of such a classifcation being questioned.And yet, a closer look at the contemporary discussion shows a more complex landscape.A landscape where some varieties of phenomenology are indeed very far removed from and somehow indifferent—if not hostile—to analytic philosophy; others are part and parcel of analytic philosophy itself or appear to be more keen on establishing a fruitful dialogue with it; and others tend to move beyond analytic philosophy and criticize, locally or globally, many of its defning features and distinctive methodological or theoretical claims. And the same holds with respect to other leading strands of contemporary “continental” philosophy: be it deconstruction, hermeneutics or post-structuralism. Finally, if “phenomenology in the broad sense” is not a “tradition”—as often claimed—but a “living movement”, as it were, then one should also be able to show that Husserl’s thought is still able to foster and generate from both within and thus without—all over the world—new “heresies”. Heresies of heresies, that sometimes turn phenomenology into something entirely different: adding new standpoints and conceptual needs coming from non-European cultural traditions; heresies that sometimes end up leading either to the rediscovery of the inner potential of Husserl’s original insights or move away even farther from his intrinsic limitations or putative shortcomings. Thus, phenomenology has a past, a present and—it is certainly the editors’ conviction—a future. It harbors a wide array of concepts capable of tackling an immense variety of problems (virtually all the so-called “philosophical problems”); it displays an impressive constellation of key fgures; it interacts and enters into discussions with, criticizes and is criticized by, borrows from and contributes to all the major trends of contemporary philosophy; it also attempts to engage critically with the recent theoretical challenges of science, art, religion, politics and human existence; it constantly makes its presence felt all over the world, within and beyond the Western “tradition”. In short,“phenomenology in the broad sense” is nothing but the living portrait of philosophy in the strictest sense. Is it even possible, then, to imagine drawing a tentative and incomplete portrait of such an ongoing cluster of heresies of heresies? Perhaps not—but the attempt has to be made. Without being able to fulfll the daunting and complex tasks suggested by this description of phenomenology, the Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy aims, minimally, to set the stage for the reckoning suggested by Ricœur. It is meant to be an attempt to portray—literally—phenomenology as a movement. Accordingly, the book is divided into fve parts: (I) Phenomenology and the history of philosophy (II) Issues and concepts in phenomenology (III) Major fgures in phenomenology (IV) Intersections (V) Phenomenology in the world In order to present the idea of phenomenological philosophy—i.e. how philosophy is transformed after the historical and conceptual emergence of phenomenology—in accord with its historical becoming, Part I provides the reader with a comprehensive overview of the multifarious relations between phenomenology and the Western philosophical tradition. It explores both its relation to Ancient, Medieval and Modern philosophy (entries 2–6) and the way in which it unfolds historically and engages with some of its contemporary alternatives (entries 1, 7). 2
Introduction
Part II has a twofold ambition. On the one hand, it gathers contributions exploring the depth with which phenomenology deals with traditional philosophical questions from a triadic point of view: their appropriation, their distortion and fnally also their development. Many of the entries are therefore designed to show both the continuity and the discontinuity of the phenomenological approach(es) vis-à-vis some of the fundamental issues of philosophy (entries 8–20).Yet, on the other hand, it also includes several essays devoted to the most important technical concepts that are proper to phenomenology as a philosophical tradition per se, in such a manner that a useful “dictionary” is offered to the reader (entries 21–38). Together, these two groups of entries are meant to provide a phenomenological “tool case”, so to speak, including not only their origin but also possible and future applications. Indeed, and although the notions analyzed are certainly technical ones, the main goal of each entry consists in translating—as much as possible—the technicality of the phenomenological jargon into a non-technical terminology, so as to help the reader relate phenomenology to philosophical questions in general. The path outlined in the frst two sections (Parts I and II) therefore aims to show the progressive detachment of phenomenology from the tradition(s) from out of which it stems and to which it relates, as well as its own conceptual contribution (as a tradition of thought per se) to the history of Western philosophy and its specifc problems. Part III focuses, on the contrary, upon the different confgurations of themes that can be found in some of the most important authors and fgures of the phenomenological movement (entries 39–59). From Brentano to Husserl, from Reinach to Heidegger, from Hannah Arendt to Simone de Beauvoir, each entry is meant to provide not only a synopsis of the general approach developed by the author in question, but also, more generally, a cartography of the some of the most relevant phenomenological “heresies”. This brings us to Part IV. As already pointed out, although phenomenology is undoubtedly one of the major philosophical movements of the 20th century, it is certainly not the only one. However, as Michel Henry once famously claimed, “phenomenology is to 20th century philosophy what German idealism was to 19th century, empiricism to 18th century, Cartesianism to 17th century,Aquinas or Scotus to the scholastics and Plato and Aristotle to antiquity”. How could such a bold claim be justifed? How is it even possible to imagine that such is actually the case? The only way to tackle this issue and not to dismiss from the outset Henry’s allegation is to consider not only phenomenology per se, but also the effects of its presence in contemporary debates. Indeed, it is certainly true that, over the course of both the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, phenomenology has been appropriated and criticized, modifed and applied in many different ways by a different array of philosophical traditions and disciplines other than philosophy. One could certainly distinguish between phenomenological, post-phenomenological, as well as anti-phenomenological trends—but no one in the last century, and even today, can afford to ignore phenomenology as a whole.Accordingly, it is to the multifarious, and sometimes critical, encounters between phenomenology and its “others” that the fourth section is devoted. In so doing, and to the extent that it gestures towards the manner in which other philosophical traditions (entries 60–64, 70) or other disciplines (entries 65–69) responded and continue to respond to phenomenology, this new section completes the historical trend begun in Part I and moves beyond the technicalities of Part II. PartV contributes to what could be called “geo-phenomenology”. In fact, phenomenology’s contemporary trends and prospects are now discussed by thematizing its variations as related to different geographic areas or regions of the world (entries 71–75).The individual phenomenologists that are behind these trends are thus identifed and the philosophical insights of their contributions at both the local and the global level directly assessed. 3
Daniele De Santis, Burt C. Hopkins, Claudio Majolino
The methodological guiding thread of all these sections is again the following: each contribution discusses its topic in a way that explains the technical terms, clarifes the basic concepts, employs accessible examples and unpacks critically the relevant philosophical claims. Since putative common phenomenological truths and mainstream interpretative views and trends will not be assumed by the authors as self-evident, readers from any discipline or feld, including of course philosophy, will be able to rely upon the present Handbook to situate themselves, their views or disciplinary approach to knowledge within the framework of the phenomenological tradition. Thus, the overall aspiration of the project consists not only in elucidating systematically all the basic concepts and terms, methods and claims of phenomenology in a manner that will be accessible to any reader; it also strives to gesture towards the past, the present and also the future of a philosophical research frst established by Edmund Husserl and subsequently variously modifed by his many “heretic” disciples and followers. *** It should be readily apparent now that the structure of the Handbook has been conceived and designed in such a manner that the “unitary” stance upon the history of phenomenology, as well as its relation to the history of philosophy that it proposes to the reader, does not rule out its many and diverse possible approaches.This is also a point that needs to be stressed. As a matter of fact, the attentive reader will immediately notice not only that the different parts are generally characterized by a different structure, but also that each entry mirrors and refects the specifc view, interpretation and even tradition of the author or authors behind it. The editors have in fact deliberately decided not to commit the authors to a single viewpoint or a specifc account of “phenomenology”. The best manner to provide a map of heresies is to let the heretics present themselves as the only true believers. Thus, the need for an overall and unitary, yet not homogenous, presentation of what goes by the name of “phenomenological movement”, which guided our effort as general editors of the volume, does not and cannot exclude the existence of radically different views on the same matters, problems and ideas. As a matter of fact, our task as editors consisted mostly in providing the general framework within which many different perspectives could be proposed and divergent paths taken, without the unitary horizon being broken and scattered in a multiplicity of unrecognizable pieces (just like the many different adumbrations do not exclude the dynamic unity of what is experienced through them).Thus each entry could have been written in an entirely different manner, if only conceived by another author taking his or her own “heresy” for granted, as the focal point from which the issues at stake should be discussed. Sometimes, this strategy proved to involve little risk; at other times the outcome has been less a reference entry than a truly original essay. This being said, the position of Husserl in all of this also needs to be clarifed and explained. For, if it is true that without Husserl there would be no phenomenology “in the broad sense”, it is equally true that without the many “heresies” that stemmed out of his work—to keep recalling Ricœur— there would be no “phenomenological movement.”Accordingly, if we were asked to more precisely and directly characterize our stance or perspective, we would reply by pointing out that what guided our choices, decisions and general effort was not what could be called The School of Athenssort of paradigm, but rather that of the Mosaic of the Philosophers (Archeological Museum, Naples). In the former case a few fgures (Husserl or Husserl and Heidegger) would completely dominate the scene in such a manner that all the others would be ascribed only a secondary role (supporting actors in a drama to which they would contribute only partially and superfcially). But in the case of the Mosaic of the Philosophers it is the discussion between the many members (of Plato’s Academy, here: of the phenomenological tradition itself) that is and represents the 4
Introduction
very center of the scene. As a consequence, if Husserl or perhaps Heidegger were to be given any privileged position, this would be exclusively that of the primus inter pares. Unlike the Shakespearean Caesar, this Husserl or Heidegger would not dare so much as to compare himself to “the northern star / Of whose true-fx’d and resting quality / There is no fellow in the frmament” (3, I).This is why, whereas the historic-philosophical entries of the frst part are presented chronologically from Greek philosophy to the tradition of Austrian philosophy, the third part is arranged alphabetically (so that no systematic priority of one thinker over another, or of one conception over another, would be established). Of course, as the reader will soon realize, this does not rule out that Edmund Husserl, notably, his conception of phenomenology and stance on both the history of phenomenology and that of philosophy itself, is de facto often present (sometimes explicitly, sometimes only implicitly) in the background of many entries. Husserl seems then to play the role of a reference point constantly in motion, in opposition to which the many heresies can present and defne themselves and even critically legitimize their tenets—in such a manner, however, that Husserl’s own doctrine assumes a constantly new aspect and shape as it is looked at from such and such an angle. As a consequence, the history of the phenomenological movement is also and primarily to be described as a “self-differentiating” history, a series of more or less dramatic (theoretical and even spatial) departures from Husserl, or even as the sum total of all the one-way train and air tickets away from him. The task of the future historian of the phenomenological movement will consist in describing and reconstructing a (modern) history (of philosophy) that is like no others; for, it resembles neither the allegedly circular movement of someone like Ulysses (it does not include any possible nostos back to the origin) nor any sort of diaspora (for, at stake is the very interpretation and conception of the alleged “origin” or original locus out of which the phenomenological movement sprang). The reader could also be surprised at the absence of a relevant entry on “Europe” in the last part of the text.The reason for not having any entry specifcally devoted to the geographic area in which phenomenology frst was born is not due to some sort of Eurocentric assumption upon our part. We do not at all think that there was no need to specifcally address “Europe” because de facto most of the thinkers present in the Handbook were of “European” origin. Rather, our decision derives from the urgent need for rethinking the history of phenomenology as a whole based on a pluralistic view: hopefully, one will no longer speak of European phenomenology (as if this phrase could go without saying), but rather of a European history of phenomenology. A history among many others, which might have played a factually important and crucial role in a certain moment of the development of the phenomenological tradition, i.e., at its very beginning, but which is now in need for a radical re-interpretation in light of what happened and is still happening elsewhere (as is clearly the case, for example, with entries 71 and 74). It is necessary fnally to realize that phenomenology very soon started speaking other (natural and philosophical) languages; it soon started to mingle with other and different schools of thought; it very soon began to be incorporated into cultures that were and are far different from the ones that originally harbored and nurtured it. The present Handbook wants to give expression to this deep and urgent need for rediscovering the simple fact that phenomenology was and can still be pursued in many different languages. The editors want to express their deep gratitude to Andrea Cimino, Aurélien Djian and Guilherme Riscali, without whose help this volume would have never seen the light of day. This work was supported by the European Regional Development Fund-Project “Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions of the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World” (No. CZ.02. 1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000734). *** 5
Daniele De Santis, Burt C. Hopkins, Claudio Majolino
Given the high number of quotations from the German edition of Husserl’s works, and in order to avoid unnecessary repetitions in the reference lists at the end of each entry, below the reader will fnd the full list of the Husserliana volumes (M. Nijhoff; Kluwer Academic Publishers; Springer). Hua I: Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge Hua II: Die Idee der Phänomenologie. Fünf Vorlesungen Hua III/1: Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch:Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie Hua III/2: Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch:Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. Ergänzende Texte Hua IV: Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution Hua V: Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Drittes Buch: Die Phänomenologie und die Fundamente der Wissenschaften Hua VI: Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie Hua VII: Erste Philosophie (1923/24). Erster Teil: Kritische Ideengeschichte Hua VIII: Erste Philosophie (1923/24). Zweiter Teil: Theorie der phänomenologischen Reduktion Hua IX: Phänomenologische Psychologie.Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1925 Hua X: Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893–1917) Hua XI: Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten (1918–1926) Hua XII: Philosophie der Arithmetik. Mit ergänzenden Texten (1890–1901) Hua XIII: Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Erster Teil: 1905–1920 Hua XIV: Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität.Texte aus dem Nachlass. Zweiter Teil: 1921–1928 Hua XV: Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität.Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter Teil: 1929–1935 Hua XVI: Ding und Raum.Vorlesungen 1907 Hua XVII: Formale und transzendentale Logik.Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft. Mit ergänzenden Texten Hua XVIII: Logische Untersuchungen. Erster Band: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik.Text der 1. und 2.Aufage Hua XIX/1: Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Band. Erster Teil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis Hua XIX/2: Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Band. Zweiter Teil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis Hua XX/1: Logische Untersuchungen. Ergänzungsband. Erster Teil.Entwürfe zur Umarbeitung der VI. Untersuchung und zur Vorrede für die Neuafulage der Logischen Untersuchungen (Sommer 1913) Hua XX/2: Logische Untersuchungen. Ergänzungsband.Zweiter Teil.Texte für die Neufassung der VI. Untersuchung: Zur Phänomenologie des Ausdrucks und der Erkenntnis (1893/94– 1921) Hua XXI: Studien zur Arithmetik und Geometrie.Texte aus dem Nachlass (1886–1901)
6
Introduction
Hua XXII: Aufsätze und Rezensionen (1890–1910) Hua XXIII: Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung. Zur Phänomenologie der anschaulichen Vergegenwärtigungen.Texte aus dem Nachlass (1898–1925) Hua XXIV: Einleitung in die Logik und Erkenntnistheorie.Vorlesungen 1906/07 Hua XXV: Aufsätze und Vorträge (1911–1921) Hua XXVI: Vorlesungen über Bedeutungslehre. Sommersemester 1908 Hua XXVII: Aufsätze und Vorträge (1922–1937) Hua XXVIII: Vorlesungen über Ethik und Wertlehre (1908–1914) Hua XXIX: Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Ergänzungsband.Texte aus dem Nachlass 1934–1937 Hua XXX: Logik und allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie.Vorlesungen Wintersemester 1917/18. Mit ergänzenden Texten aus der ersten Fassung von 1910/11 Hua XXXI: Aktive Synthesen. Aus der Vorlesung “Transzendentale Logik” 1920/21. Ergänzungsband zu “Analysen zur passiven Synthesis” Hua XXXII: Natur und Geist.Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1927 Hua XXXIII: Bernauer Manuskripte über das Zeitbewusstsein (1917/18) Hua XXXIV: Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion.Texte aus dem Nachlass (1926–1935) Hua XXXV: Einleitung in die Philosophie.Vorlesungen 1922/23 Hua XXXVI: Transzendentaler Idealismus.Texte aus dem Nachlass (1908–1921) Hua XXXVII: Einleitung in die Ethik.Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1920 und 1924 Hua XXXVIII: Wahrnehmung und Aufmerksamkeit.Texte aus dem Nachlass (1893–1912) Hua XXXIX: Die Lebenswelt. Auslegungen der vorgegebenen Welt und ihrer Konstitution. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1916–1937) Hua XL: Untersuchungen zur Urteilstheorie.Texte aus dem Nachlass (1893–1918) Hua XLI: Zur Lehre vom Wesen und zur Methode der eidetischen Variation. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1891–1935) Hua XLII: Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie. Analysen des Unbewusstseins und der Instinkte. Metaphysik. Späte Ethik.Texte aus dem Nachlass (1908–1937) Hua-Mat I: Logik.Vorlesung 1896 Hua-Mat II: Logik.Vorlesung 1902/03 Hua-Mat III: Allgemeine Erkenntnistheorie.Vorlesung 1902/03 Hua-Mat IV: Natur und Geist.Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1919 Hua-Mat V: Urteilstheorie.Vorlesung 1905 Hua-Mat VI: Alte und neue Logik.Vorlesung 1908/09 Hua-Mat VII: Einführung in die Phänomenologie der Erkenntnis.Vorlesung 1909 Hua-Mat VIII: Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934): Die C-Manuskripte Hua-Mat IX: Einleitung in die Philosophie.Vorlesungen 1916–1920 Hua-Dok I: Husserl-Chronik. Denk- und Lebensweg Edmund Husserls Hua-Dok II/1:VI.Cartesianische Meditation.I:Die Idee einer transzendentalen Methodenlehre Hua-Dok II/2: VI. Cartesianische Meditation. II: Ergänzungsband Hua-Dok III: Briefwechsel 1. Die Brentanoschule 2. Die Münchener Phänomenologen 3. Die Göttinger Schule 4. Die Freiburger Schüler
7
Daniele De Santis, Burt C. Hopkins, Claudio Majolino
5. Die Neukantianer 6. Philosophenbriefe 7. Wissenschaftlerkorrespondenz 8. Institutionelle Schreiben 9. Familienbriefe 10. Einführung und Register Hua-Dok IV: Bibliography
8
PART I
Phenomenology and the history of philosophy
1 THE HISTORY OF THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL MOVEMENT Pierre-Jean Renaudie
1.1. The lives and deaths of phenomenology Since its offcial and self-proclaimed birth in Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations, published at the very beginning of the 20th century, phenomenology has been following such different paths and has undergone so many transformations that one would hardly be able to provide a harmoniously unifed account of its history. Born from an original attempt to combine the resources of Brentano’s psychology with the logical expectations inherited from Bolzano’s philosophy, phenomenology has taken many faces and endorsed substantially different philosophical claims all throughout the 20th century.As Hans-Georg Gadamer came to refect on his relation with the other members of the phenomenological tradition he had met since he was Martin Heidegger’s student, he relates that “each phenomenologist had their own understanding of what phenomenology was really about” (Gadamer 1987, 116). But Gadamer also adds an important remark, as he immediately notes: “Only one thing remained clear, which is that the phenomenological method could not be learnt from books”. Indeed, the most basic and least controversial conception of phenomenology that can be provided is that it consists in a radical way of dealing with philosophical questions, which takes philosophy as a descriptive practice rather than a systematic approach to knowledge.While philosophical systems can be suspected to rely on interpretations unable to critically interrogate the validity of the concepts they project onto reality, phenomenology as a practical description of the specifc ways in which phenomena appear or manifest themselves seeks to avoid all misconstructions and impositions placed on experience in advance. This practical aspect of phenomenological description is characteristic of its own original philosophical ‘style’, and constitutes a fundamental aspect of phenomenology throughout the historical development of this philosophical tradition, pointed out by Heidegger as he declares that phenomenology cannot be learnt “through the reading of phenomenological literature” (Heidegger 1992, 9).The most compelling evidence of this practical dimension of phenomenological philosophy is perhaps the strong lack of interest in publication manifested by Edmund Husserl himself, the undisputed founding father of phenomenological philosophy, who proved to be particularly reluctant to publish the results of his ongoing research, while he considered his lectures and his daily writing activity as quintessential to the new kind of philosophy to which he gave rise. Husserl himself frst considered phenomenology as a wide philosophical project that would not only require his absolute dedication, but also the continuing efforts of his community of 11
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students, extending phenomenology in directions that a single and isolated philosopher would not be able to explore. However, Husserl soon realized that the paths followed by his best students (in particular Martin Heidegger and Max Scheler) were leading them to philosophical positions in which Husserl would not readily recognize the results of his own methodology, and he came subsequently – though not without experiencing some bitter disappointment – to see himself more and more as a lone and secluded ‘leader without followers’ (Hua-Dok III/2, 182), eventually considering himself ironically “the greatest enemy [Feind] to the famous ‘Husserlian phenomenological movement’”(Hua-Dok III/9, 79). Such considerations allowed French phenomenologist Paul Ricœur to declare that the history of phenomenology broadly construed must include, in addition to Husserl’s works, the long and complex history of Husserlian heresies (Ricoeur 1986, 9). However, insofar as phenomenology, whether ‘orthodox’ or ‘heretic’, is based on a descriptive practice that aims at displaying the structures of experience, constantly attempting to defne its own rules and to extend its scope, one should not underestimate the strength and depth of the philosophical commitments shared by the members of the phenomenological tradition, in spite of the variety of their methods and goals.As Emmanuel Levinas notes in his remarks on the phenomenological ‘technique’, “phenomenology unites philosophers” and does not do so because of a certain number of fundamental theses that phenomenologists would be committed to and would need to uncritically accept, but only because of “a way of proceeding that [phenomenologists] have in common”. Instead of being bound to the main theses and principles formulated by Husserl, phenomenologists “agree on approaching questions in a certain way” (Levinas 1998, 91).The philosophical commitment to experience that they share unites the members of the phenomenological movement in a way loose enough to let them spread their wings and to embrace Husserl’s famous claim to bring philosophy “back to the things themselves” without being prevented from opening new paths and discovering original ways of accounting for the richness of lived experience. Consequently, rather than a school of thought, phenomenology needs to be understood as a broader philosophical movement (Dastur 2004, 208), whose nature essentially involves its transformations and constant redefnitions. Comparing the phenomenological movement to a river giving rise to various different streams, Spiegelberg emphasizes several characteristic features of the phenomenological tradition, which sprang from a common source but gave birth to several parallel currents that do not necessarily join in their fnal destination, and which is fundamentally characterized by its intrinsic dynamics and its moving and exploratory dimension (Spiegelberg 1965, 2). Spiegelberg’s metaphor stresses that, far from jeopardizing the unity and coherence of the movement, the plurality of these currents demonstrates the vitality of the phenomenological tradition, as long as the different currents do not annihilate but complement each other.The purpose of this chapter is to draw a cartography of the phenomenological movement that presents the dynamic specifc to each of its main currents as well as their systematic and historical relation to each other. In order to provide a general overview of the phenomenological tradition, this chapter will stress the constitutive role of the successive shifts that contributed to transforming the methods and redefning the scope of phenomenology throughout its historical development, manifesting an ever-reiterated attempt to recast the limits of phenomenological description (either by narrowing down or extending its boundaries) and overcome its shortcomings. Not only did these shifts take a signifcant part in the development of the phenomenological movement, but they mostly established phenomenology as a philosophical tradition of its own by constantly interrogating its legitimacy as a method and questioning its intellectual heritage.Accordingly, the two main assignments of this overview and the outline of this chapter will be the following: frst, presenting the philosophical framework within which the ‘breakthrough of a newly grounded philosophy’, namely phenomenology, was made possible, and analysing the fundamental features that characterize this philosophical breakthrough (Section 1.2.); second, examining the different 12
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shifts that contributed to renewing the meaning and scope of phenomenology and constituted it as the tradition of thought that became the cornerstone of continental philosophy throughout the 20th century (Section 1.3.).
1.2. The birth of phenomenology and its foundation as a philosophical method 1.2.1. Phenomenology and descriptive psychology (from Brentano to Husserl) The word ‘phenomenology’ has a long history that goes back through Hegel and Kant to the philosophy of Lambert.1 However, it was used in the second part of the 19th century in an intellectual context that was particularly far from the roots of German idealism, and in the wake of an attempt to bring the empirical psychology inherited from the British tradition to a higher form of completion and to give psychology its autonomy and signifcance with respect to other sciences. The word ‘phenomenology’, in this context, became associated with the work and school of Franz Brentano, who published his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint in 1874 and who appeared as the leading fgure of this renewal of psychology as he attempted to provide it with its own criteria of scientifc legitimacy. If it is not directly from Brentano that Edmund Husserl borrowed the word ‘phenomenology’, it is nevertheless in Brentano’s descriptive psychology that the term must fnd its conceptual origin. The originality and novelty of Brentano’s psychology arises from the unexpected marriage between, on the one hand, his strong Aristotelian and neo-scholastic infuence and, on the other hand, his original attempt to defne a form of scientifc inquiry especially suited for the description of psychological phenomena. In his 1874 Psychology, Brentano establishes a strong division between psychological or ‘mental’ phenomena (Psychische Phänomene) on the one hand and physical phenomena on the other, arguing that physiological explanations cannot account satisfyingly for the ontological specifcity of the former.The famous ‘intentionality thesis’, widely regarded as Brentano’s most substantial contribution to philosophy, addresses this need to keep physical and mental phenomena strictly separated by providing a criterium of the latter that the former are unable to match. Mental phenomena, Brentano writes, are directed towards an object in a specifc way that cannot be described as a physical relation between two different things.The object towards which a mental phenomenon is oriented is not a transcendent but an immanent object, an object that exists frst and foremost within this mental phenomenon rather than an external object whose existence would be logically independent of any kind of mental activity. Being irreducible to a physical relation, this form of inclusion of the object within the mental phenomenon that is directed towards it is to be characterized as ‘intentional’, according to the scholastic terminology. Every mental phenomenon, Brentano famously writes, is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) in-existence of an object, and what we might call, though not wholly unambiguously, reference to a content, direction towards an object (which is not to be understood here as meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity. (Brentano 1924, 124/68) This intentional property of mental phenomena allows Brentano to stress their irreducibility, insofar as the intentional in-existence constitutes an exclusive characteristic of mental phenomena, making intentionality the key to the defnition of psychology’s scientifc autonomy: the intentional relation between the act of perceiving and the object perceived is of a totally different kind than the causal relation between the physical object external to the mental phenom13
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enon and the eyeball.This exclusive intentional character justifes Brentano’s claim that mental phenomena require their own scientifc treatment, grounded in a methodological approach that acknowledges their irreducibility to physical phenomena.While causal explanations of physical phenomena constitute the scientifc framework of physiological approaches to the mental falling under the jurisdiction of genetic psychology, the study of the intentional character of mental phenomena demands a specifc method, which would, a few years later, be labelled ‘Psychognosie’ in Brentano’s lectures in Vienna. Drawing on Lotze’s distinction between ‘genetic’ and ‘descriptive’ science (Milkov 2018), Brentano stresses the strictly descriptive and analytic character of this new sort of psychology: whereas genetic psychology studies the development of mental phenomena and their causal relations on the basis of inductive generalizations, ‘Psychognosie’ describes the components the articulation of which is constitutive of the unity of mental phenomena and establishes on that ground the exact laws showing the necessary relations between different phenomena. This descriptive psychology provides the methodological framework for the development of the so-called ‘Brentano school’, which gathered Brentano’s best students such as Kazimierz Twardowski, Anton Marty, Carl Stumpf, Christian Von Ehrenfels, Alexius Meinong and, of course, Edmund Husserl. In the context of the intense discussions that arose between Brentano’s former students throughout their attempts to apply descriptive psychology to various domains of knowledge, the word ‘phenomenology’ acquired a technical meaning, culminating in the publication of Husserl’s Logical Investigations and their ‘phenomenological breakthrough’. The term ‘phenomenology’ was rather commonly and loosely used at the end of the 19th century, both in philosophical and scientifc discourses. Ludwig Boltzmann, for instance, used it profusely in reference to the interpretation of sensation and observation in thermodynamics, and Ernst Mach coined the phrase ‘general physical phenomenology’ to describe his attempt to purge physics of all metaphysical elements (Berg 2016, 3). After Brentano started to use the term around 1889, it became associated with descriptive psychology, and was applied in particular to psychological studies focusing on the qualitative aspects of conscious experience, such as Stumpf and Von Ehrenfels’ investigations on ‘Gestalt qualities’, which Husserl knew well.When Husserl frst published his Logical Investigations in 1900–01, it seemed consequently quite natural and uncontroversial to defne phenomenology as a kind of descriptive psychology,2 focusing specifcally upon cognitive activities and designed to account for the experiences through which knowledge is performed. At this stage of development of his philosophical ideas, Husserl still conceived phenomenology as strongly connected both to psychology understood as an empirical science and to pure logic, describing his overall philosophical project as based on a “purely descriptive phenomenology of the lived experiences concerned with thinking and knowing”.3
1.2.2. De-psychologising psychology (Husserl’s Logical Investigations) However, while Husserl did not coin the term ‘phenomenology’ but borrowed it from the scientifc and psychological studies of his time, his understanding of the relation between phenomenology and psychology diverges from his predecessors on a fundamental point. Indeed, claiming that phenomenology is a kind of descriptive psychology does not mean that they are strictly equivalent, and that phenomenology is, in its turn, tantamount to some kind of psychology. Phenomenology, in the sentence quoted above, is not merely said to be descriptive, but purely descriptive, which makes a signifcant difference between them according to Husserl, since the purity that characterizes phenomenological description is intended to grant phenomenology some methodological primacy over psychology. Phenomenology and psychology share a descriptive purpose that make them akin to each other in some respect: they both 14
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take conscious experiences (Erlebnisse) as their starting point and as the ultimate ground of their descriptions. However, the kind of description involved in descriptive psychology is not purely descriptive insofar as it presupposes the empirical nature of the conscious experiences that express mental phenomena. The phenomena described are already determined as psychological and interpreted on the basis of an ontological distinction between mental and physical phenomena that phenomenological description does not need to presuppose:“pure description, Husserl writes, is only a preliminary step to theory, and is not itself a theory” (Hua XIX/1, 24).4 Phenomenological description, insofar as it is pure, must be metaphysically neutral and faithful to the absence of presupposition that Husserl introduces in 1901 as the fundamental principle of phenomenology.5 Unlike psychology, which focuses exclusively upon mental phenomena, phenomenology is not a ‘regional’ science, whose specifc domain of objects or phenomena can be a priori delimited: it consists in the description of phenomena in general, without presupposing any ontological region to which phenomenology would be essentially bounded and committed as a science. This fundamental distinction allows Husserl to understand phenomenology as a brand new and original philosophical method that does not need to rely on any kind of psychological presuppositions. Husserl’s analysis of the relation between phenomenology and descriptive psychology is consequently particularly ambiguous and sensitive, paving the way to so many potential misinterpretations and misunderstandings that Husserl decided to completely rewrite this paragraph in the second edition of the Logical Investigations in 1913. Claiming that phenomenology is descriptive psychology would be quite paradoxical if it meant that they could simply be held to be synonymous. Indeed, the Prolegomena to Pure Logic, which constitute the frst volume of the Logical Investigations as well as the pathway to phenomenology, were devoted to the criticism and rejection of the various forms of psychologism, in response to Frege’s harsh criticisms against the Philosophy of Arithmetic, which Husserl published in 1891 and in which he defended an approach to mathematical thinking based on a descriptive psychology directly inspired by Brentano. Taking into account Frege’s highly infuential critique, the frst volume of the Logical Investigations rejects under the label ‘psychologism’ the varieties of theories that attempt to reduce logical truths to psychological laws by showing that the former rely on the activity of thinking and must consequently be grounded in psychological mechanisms. Against such psychologistic theories, Husserl’s phenomenological project is built upon the demonstration that logical and psychological laws are strictly independent from each other.The very purpose of phenomenology is to provide a description of cognitive experiences that constitutes the basic ground for any theoretical research, whether psychological or logical: One and the same sphere of description can accordingly serve to prepare for very different theoretical sciences. It is not the full science of psychology that serves as a foundation for pure logic, but certain classes of descriptions which, insofar as they constitute the step preparatory to the theoretical researches of psychology […] also form the substrate (Unterlage) for those fundamental abstractions in which logicians seize the essence of their ideal objects and connections with evidence. (Hua XIX/1, 24/176)6 Consequently, if phenomenology and descriptive psychology are strongly connected to each other, the methodology of the former entails a radicalization of the descriptive approach of the latter that maintains a fundamental difference between them. Phenomenology and descriptive psychology are still strongly related for Husserl, insofar as they both consist in the description of lived experiences. But saying this does not mean that they are strictly identical, and this is 15
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why, in response to the diffculties raised by the introduction of the 1901 edition of the Logical Investigations, Husserl strikingly takes in 1913 the exact opposite stance to his previous statement, as he decides to rewrite this paragraph for the second edition: If psychology is given its old meaning, phenomenology is precisely not descriptive psychology, its peculiar ‘pure’ description, its contemplation of pure essences on the basis of exemplary individual intuitions of experiences […] and its descriptive fxation of the contemplated essences into pure concepts, is no empirical description (as in natural sciences). (Hua XIX/1, 23/175)7 These two opposite statements are not as opposed as they seem; they only require that we understand phenomenology as a critical deepening of Brentano’s psychology, inspired by Brentano’s description of intentional consciousness, but radical enough to reject the ontological division between mental (psychischen) and physical phenomena that constituted the main goal of Brentano’s intentionality thesis. If phenomenology is descriptive psychology, as Husserl claimed in 1901, it consists frst and foremost in a philosophical attempt to ‘depsychologise psychology’8 and to describe the structures of lived experiences without being committed to any kind of presupposition regarding the ontological status of mental phenomena.9
1.2.3. The phenomenological transformation of intentionality This critical relation to Brentano’s descriptive psychology entails an in-depth reinterpretation and reassessment of the intentionality thesis that is crucial to the defnition of phenomenology. By refusing that the intentionality of conscious acts be intrinsically contingent on the delimitation of the sphere of mental (or psychic) phenomena, Husserl deeply modifes the meaning of the main concept he inherited from Brentano. Husserl retains his master’s fundamental idea that the intentionality of conscious experiences characterizes their orientation towards an object and that each mental act is directed towards its intentional object in its own specifc way.10 However, if the phenomenological (and metaphysically neutral) description of intentional lived experiences is insensitive to the ontological distinction between physical and mental phenomena, then the object of an intentional act can no longer be treated in terms of ‘mental in-existence’ or ‘immanent objectivity’, and intentionality cannot be understood as a form of mental “‘containment’ of objects in acts”.11 Instead of treating intentionality as an immanent characteristic of psychical phenomena that encloses objects within consciousness as if mental contents were to be understood as a “sort of box-within-box structure” (ibid., 98), Husserl understands intentionality as a relation that expresses the fundamental openness of lived experiences to the different domains of objectivity (existing, fctional, ideal objects …). In order to understand the depth of this reinterpretation of intentionality, one needs to stress the radical specifcity of the intentional relation as Husserl describes it: it is not and cannot be a relation in the usual sense of the word, i.e. an external relation that logically presupposes two things that enter into relation with each other.As Husserl makes immediately clear, the intentional relation is not a relation between a conscious experience on the one hand, and an object on the other hand, which would be connected together in virtue of the intentional relation: There are not two things present in experience, we do not experience the object and beside it the intentional experience directed upon it, there are not even two things 16
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present in the sense of a part and a whole which contains it: only one thing is present, the intentional experience, whose essential descriptive character is the intention in question. (Hua XIX/2, 386/98) This is the reason why, rather than a mere relation, intentionality needs to be understood as a form of ‘correlation’ (Korrelation) that ties together in a much deeper sense the lived experience and the object it is intrinsically oriented towards, as Husserl stresses much later, at the other end of his philosophical career, in the Crisis of European Sciences – the last philosophical text Husserl wrote. Emphasizing the unity of his philosophical project since the publication of the Logical Investigations, Husserl then claims that “the correlation between world (the world of which we always spoke) and its subjective manners of givenness [Gegebenheitsweisen]” constitutes the main discovery and the fundamental ground of the phenomenological breakthrough, which was able to identify for the frst time the intentional correlation as a “philosophical wonder” and to recognize that everything stands in correlation with its own manners of givenness (Hua VI, 168/165–166). Phenomenology is born from the careful examination of “the how of the appearance of a thing in its actual and possible alteration” and the description of “the correlation it involves between appearance and that which appears as such”. Consequently, instead of a psychological description consisting in an analysis of the actual contents and empirical elements that constitute mental phenomena, phenomenological description examines the structures of consciousness, i.e. the various manners in which objects are experienced by us and given to us in a way that constitutes our world and defnes the horizon of human life. This task – accounting for the how of the appearance of the things that constitute the coordinates of our world – does not only establish the specifc aim of Husserl’s philosophy. It constitutes the overarching goal of a wider philosophical purpose, giving rise to a movement rather than a school of thought: it defnes the main direction of the phenomenological movement, and sets the diffculties that the later proponents of the phenomenological tradition inherit from Husserl. Consequently, the history of the phenomenological movement can be understood and described as the history of the various ways philosophers have attempted to address the diffculties and insuffciencies of Husserl’s early breakthrough, bringing signifcant shifts in the phenomenological method while nevertheless maintaining the necessity of fulflling the original philosophical task identifed by Husserl.
1.3. The shifts 1.3.1. The transcendental shift (Husserl, Fink) Even before his inheritors would contemplate the possibility of bringing phenomenological descriptions beyond the scope that phenomenology was assigned by its founding father, Husserl himself pointed out the necessity of a radical transformation of the phenomenological method that provoked its frst fundamental shift. One of the main questions that the Logical Investigations left unanswered, and that Husserl came to consider as highly problematic only a couple of years after the publication of his ground-breaking work, was the question of the relation between the phenomenological method and the empirical ground upon which descriptions are based.The strong connexions between Husserl’s descriptive analysis of lived experiences and Brentano’s own method in psychology cast a doubt on the Logical Investigations’ claim to metaphysical neutrality. In Formal and Transcendental Logic, published much later in 1929, Husserl stresses the issues that the psychological ground upon which phenomenological descriptions are built entails: 17
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many enthusiastic readers of the Logical Investigations felt that the phenomenological analyses of the second volume, which includes the six investigations that introduce and apply for the frst time the proper method that Husserl specifcally called phenomenology, betrayed the anti-psychologist commitments of the Prolegomena to Pure Logic and signifed “a relapse into psychologism” (Hua XVII, §56, 136/152). By that stage, Husserl was indeed considering that the Logical Investigations are located at the crossroads between a sophisticated form of descriptive psychology that he had not yet entirely managed to overcome, and a properly transcendental phenomenology that required moving one step further away from psychology in order to avoid the threat of such ‘transcendental psychologism’ (ibid.). In order to radicalize the opposition between psychology and phenomenology, Husserl consequently needed a method that would guarantee the purity of phenomenological descriptions and seal their irreducibility to psychological analyses.Around 1902–03, Husserl began to make a sharp distinction between phenomenology as an eidetic science of ‘pure’ consciousness studied in ‘immanence’ and psychology as an empirical, factual science of mental states. He soon came to consider that the descriptive method set up in this second volume of the Logical Investigations was not radical enough to purify phenomenology from the ontological presuppositions inherent in psychological sciences in general and in Brentano’s empirical psychology in particular. Husserl had made a major discovery by putting forward an intuitive and nevertheless rigorous method allowing him to describe lived experiences in a way that displays the essential structures of consciousness, i.e. in terms of intentional acts, their contents and intentional objects. However, this method seemed to presuppose some kind of naïve commitment to the reality of the mental phenomena described: the psychological background of Husserl’s method in the 1901 opus is unable to stress the radicality of the phenomenological analysis of lived experiences, and the intentional structures of consciousness are only described in the Logical Investigations under the presupposition of a world within which and in relation to which such consciousness must fnd its meaning. As he was trying to strengthen the analyses developed in the Logical Investigations and struggling with such diffculties, Husserl realized that a ‘pure’ phenomenology would require a method that clarifes and emphasizes the opposition between the phenomenological and psychological approaches to intentional consciousness. In a manuscript from 1905, Husserl famously labelled this original method, specifcally designed to avoid the kind of diffculties that makes psychological descriptions dependent on the presupposition of a world within which consciousness is taken to be empirically encountered, as the ‘phenomenological reduction’. Putting aside all scientifc, philosophical, cultural and everyday assumptions that jeopardize our purely intuitive access to lived experiences, reduction operates a deactivation of the ‘natural’ attitude that constantly presupposes the world as the ultimate horizon of every intentional act of consciousness. Insofar as this bracketing of the natural attitude is expected to free phenomenological descriptions of lived experiences from the empirical background upon which psychological analyses drew, it lays the ground for a transcendental phenomenology that no longer carries the ontological implications of psychological descriptions. Suspending our naïve commitments to reality and excluding every position of transcendent existence, the method of reduction allows description to focus on the purely immanent structures and components of lived experiences, attending only to phenomena’s specifc modes of givenness.This is the reason why, after introducing reduction as the key to phenomenological methodology in the lectures he gave at Göttingen University around 1906–07 (Hua XXIV, Hua II), Husserl came to characterize phenomenology exclusively in transcendental terms, claiming ultimately that the essential structures of consciousness previously described thanks to eidetic intuition in the Logical Investigations can only fnd their proper – transcendental – meaning once they come to be uncovered by transcendental reduction. 18
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This transcendental turn in Husserl’s trajectory contributed to considerably extending the scope of phenomenological analyses, allowing Husserl to address wider philosophical questions that were left aside in his previous works, where the phenomenological method was especially devoted to epistemological investigations regarding the essential features of our acts of knowing. The transcendental radicalization of the phenomenological method made legitimate its application to any kind of lived experiences once the bracketing of every transcendence has uncovered their purely immanent components and structures. Amongst the original new perspectives that this transcendental shift opened up, the most signifcant are related to the analysis of the temporal, spatial, embodied, normative, subjective and intersubjective structures of consciousness. Although Husserl’s move towards a transcendental form of phenomenology was harshly criticized by an important number of his students, the broadening of the phenomenological themes that it made possible was greatly instrumental in demonstrating phenomenology’s ability to apply to any feld of philosophical knowledge, including ethical, social, historical, aesthetic and kinaesthetic domains. The possibility of widening the scope of phenomenological inquiry contributed greatly to making phenomenology much more than a mere theory of consciousness exclusively focused on the structures of knowledge, and to initiating a philosophical movement bound to spread way beyond the ambitions of its founding father. However, one fundamental aspect of this reinterpretation of phenomenological analysis in transcendental terms that Husserl’s students were most critical of is its strong emphasis on the egological structure of intentional consciousness and the particular kind of transcendental idealism that Husserl eventually recognized as a necessary consequence of his phenomenology. Both features contravened the realist and non-subjective orientation of the analyses Husserl had developed in the Logical Investigations, and entailed a radical transformation of the kind of phenomenology he frst introduced in his 1901 masterpiece. Instead of understanding phenomenology as a mere development of Brentano’s psychology, which originally consisted mostly in extending the boundaries of his master’s school, the transcendental dimension of phenomenological analyses allowed Husserl to place phenomenology within a much wider philosophical tradition, in which Descartes and Kant constitute the most important fgures. Discarding the criticisms of Natorp’s neo-Kantian emphasis on the ego initially expressed in the ffth Logical Investigation,12 Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology goes hand in hand with a reinterpretation of Descartes’ cogito, which stresses both the subjective character of conscious experience and the limits of Descartes’ substantial interpretation of the Ego, leading to ‘transcendental realism’ (Hua 1, §11, 63/24). In the Logical Investigations, Husserl was still following the Humean tradition that inspired Brentano’s empirical psychology, and he considered that the description of the intentional structure of the acts of consciousness and the analysis of their real and ideal contents required bracketing the ego as the source of psychic acts. However, Husserl soon came to realize that the ego played a crucial role not only as the source of the syntheses that perform the unifcation of intentional acts, but as the ‘pure’ and ‘transcendental’ origin that constitutes the meaning of conscious experience. After the transcendental turn, Husserl constantly stresses the subjective dimension of intentional experience, interpreting intentionality as a constitutive relation, thanks to which the object receives its meaning from its relation to the transcendental ego. Taking the opposite stance to that defended in 1901, Husserl takes up Kant’s famous conception of the transcendental ego as accompanying every representation in the general introduction to transcendental phenomenology he publishes in 1913 to clarify his position under the title Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology (Hua III/1, §57, 123/133). For Husserl as for Kant, a ‘transcendental’ philosophy is expected to demonstrate the necessity of asking for the conditions for the possibility of objectivity and of recognizing the essential correlation between 19
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the objective world and constituting subjectivity. Drawing on this fundamental idea, Husserl proposes from 1913 on a new kind of transcendental constitutive phenomenology that studies how objects are constituted in pure consciousness, setting aside thanks to transcendental reduction any questions regarding the natural world.This characterization of the philosophical purpose that phenomenology is to achieve allowed Eugen Fink, Husserl’s faithful and trustworthy secretary at the end of his life, to propose in his own sixth Meditation to understand Husserl’s phenomenology as a continuation of Kant’s transcendental philosophy (Fink 1995). Later, in the Crisis of European Sciences, the last book Husserl intended for publication as he was nearing his death, he goes as far as to claim that phenomenology is the only philosophical way of uncovering the subjective meaning of the relation between man and world, using transcendental reduction in order to reveal the ‘functioning subjectivity’ (leistende Subjektivität) (HuaVI, 68/67) that operates everywhere ‘in hiddenness’, a subjectivity that is no longer to be understood as enclosed within the boundaries of the psychological ego.
1.3.2. The realist shift (Reinach, Daubert, Scheler, Stein, Ingarden …) For a number of reasons, not many of the students Husserl managed to gather around him in Göttingen were at frst convinced by the transformations that phenomenology underwent after Husserl gave a transcendental orientation to his research. Husserl’s most gifted students had come to Göttingen from Munich, where they had initially been studying philosophy and psychology with Theodor Lipps, whose theory was criticized by Husserl in the Prolegomena as a form of psychologism. Confronted with the lack of academic interest in the phenomenological considerations developed in the second volume of his Logical Investigations and in search of a wider audience, Husserl started soon after their publication to look for students who would be suffciently open-minded to follow him, while having a solid and rigorous training in psychology. Under the impulsion of Johannes Daubert, a group of students of Lipps (later known as the ‘Munich Circle’), including Adolf Reinach, Moritz Geiger and Alexander Pfänder, decided to align themselves with Husserl’s phenomenological method against the psychology of their former teacher, and left Munich for Göttingen around 1905 to study directly with Husserl.The circle expanded as they were soon joined by new prominent members such as Max Scheler, then Edith Stein and Roman Ingarden, giving rise to the ‘Göttingen Circle’. It is mainly within this circle that the idea of phenomenology as a ‘movement’ frst started to make sense, as phenomenology appeared for the frst time as a methodology able to gather philosophers and psychologists belonging to diverse horizons and heading towards different directions. Indeed, the differences regarding the orientation that phenomenology was to follow appeared immediately as the circle was growing. Most of the members of the circle, whose strong interest in the descriptive phenomenology sketched in the Logical Investigations had urged them to join Husserl at Göttingen University, could only be reluctant to align with the transcendental turn offcialized by their master only a couple of years after their arrival. Paradoxically, the move towards transcendental phenomenology that Husserl expected to strengthen and improve the position he advocated in 1901 ended up provoking sharp dissent between Husserl and his best students, who became quite critical of the idealist reassessment of phenomenology to which Husserl’s transcendental claims committed him. In spite of their diverging ways of practising phenomenology, all the scholars belonging to the Göttingen Circle shared a strong scepticism regarding the method of transcendental reduction and rejected the idealistic turn phenomenology was beginning to undergo. Consequently, this disagreement with their master contributed to the reinforcement of the circle’s philo20
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sophical unity, based on an attempt to maintain the realist (versus idealist) orientation of phenomenological research and to prioritize the objective (rather than subjective) orientation of phenomenological description expressed in its original motto,“to the things themselves”.Against the pervasive kind of psychologism that most members of the group had been acquainted with while studying with Lipps in Munich, phenomenology represented the opportunity to develop a logical yet nevertheless rigorously descriptive analysis of the objective structures of reality, through a universal philosophy of essences. It is Husserl himself who described the phenomenological investigations of his students as ‘realist’. If the kind of realism to which the members of the circle subscribed was the result of their anti-idealism, it is frst and foremost a phenomenological realism of essences, which draws on Husserl’s eidetic method. Under the growing infuence of Reinach, the only one of his students for whom Husserl always and only expressed his admiration until his premature death on the front in 1917, the group sought to use phenomenological descriptions in order to extend the domain of our a priori knowledge. Reinach stressed in his work the ontological signifcance of the discovery Husserl had made in his ground-breaking 1901 masterpiece when he uncovered the existence of a material form of a priori. One of the most philosophically signifcant achievements that phenomenology deserves to be granted is its ability to reveal the essential and necessary connections that occur not only in the formal structures of logic, but also in the structures of concrete material phenomena, such as the connection between the colouration of a surface and its spatial extension. Radicalizing an insight borrowed from the third Logical Investigation, Reinach showed that such essential connections (Wesenszummenhänge) are a priori properties carried by states of affairs (Sachverhalte), which in turn constitute the objects of our intentional acts. This phenomenological conception of the a priori was deeply original insofar as it allowed an ontological (rather than epistemological) interpretation of a concept that was traditionally tied, since Kant, to the subjective conditions of knowledge. If anything, realist phenomenology understands a priori knowledge as a non-inductive knowledge of the objective connections between the elements of the states of affairs judged, so that the a priori determines the ontological properties of the object (rather than the subject) of knowledge, or of any act of consciousness. This realist claim goes hand in hand with a reassessment of Brentano’s intentionality thesis, interpreted in the spirit of the Logical Investigations less as a correlation than as a relation to an object in which consciousness, so to say, absorbs and exhausts itself. Daubert dedicated a lot of effort to the analysis of this entanglement of intentional consciousness with reality, describing it in a way that makes transcendental reduction appear to be an artifcial and detrimental attempt to withdraw consciousness from reality in order to substantivize the ego. The members of the Munich and Göttingen circles extended this realist analysis of our a priori knowledge to various kinds of entities and domains, applying it in particular to the psychology of willing and motivation (Pfänder 1900), the analysis of ‘social acts’ such as speech acts (Reinach 1989),13 the ontology of communities (Stein 1922), works of art and aesthetic phenomena (Ingarden 1931) or to ethical values (Scheler 1980). Even though their investigations were broadly critical of the transcendental reassessment that phenomenology was undergoing at that time, they contributed to demonstrating the vitality and widening the scope of phenomenological studies. As evidence of this vitality, it must be recalled how infuential this anti-idealist interpretation of phenomenology was on later generations of phenomenologists such as Heidegger, Sartre or Merleau-Ponty, who shared these realist concerns with respect to the transcendental radicalization of phenomenology, as well as contemporary philosophers such as Roderick Chisholm, J.N. Findlay, R. Sokolowski, B. Smith, P. Simons or K. Mulligan amongst others, who drew on the realist tradition in order to build some interesting bridges between phenomenology and certain tendencies in Anglo-American analytic philosophy. 21
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One might argue that this realist approach to phenomenology consisted less in a transformative shift than in a conservative backwards move, returning to the early conception of phenomenology that Husserl presented in the Logical Investigations. However, the works of the Göttingen Circle contributed to the raising of a fundamental question about the nature of phenomenology that was certainly not absent from the Logical Investigations but was left problematically unanswered. Husserl’s transcendental turn urged phenomenologists to choose between idealism and realism for the frst time, giving rise to an alternative that would defne the philosophical spectrum of phenomenological thought for the generations to come.The realist reaction against their master that most of Husserl’s early students shared contributed to making phenomenology less of a doctrine, or even a methodology, than a broader philosophical movement encompassing different trends, and involving some unavoidable but fruitful disagreements about the metaphysical stakes and signifcance of phenomenology.
1.3.3. The hermeneutic shift (Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricœur) Like the members of the Munich Circle, though independently from them, Martin Heidegger’s attention was frst drawn to phenomenology when he discovered Husserl’s Logical Investigations. And, like the proponents of phenomenological realism, the originality of Heidegger’s personal contribution to phenomenology derives from his criticism of the transcendental method developed by Husserl from 1905 on. However, Heidegger cannot be counted as one of Husserl’s students, strictly speaking. Indeed, he and Heidegger never met before Husserl moved in 1916 from Göttingen to Freiburg, where Heidegger was already lecturing as a Privatdozent, and consequently his interest in Husserl’s phenomenology grew on a quite different ground than the students Husserl had gathered around him prior to his new appointment. Heidegger came to read the Logical Investigations while he was studying Catholic theology in Freiburg, where he soon switched to philosophy with the prospect of writing his dissertation with Heinrich Rickert, who had become by that stage a major fgure of the neo-Kantian tradition in Germany. Not only was Heidegger’s philosophical thought framed within a philosophical context strongly determined by neo-Kantianism, it must be noted that his particular interest in Husserl’s phenomenology arose through the reading of another important neo-Kantian philosopher whom Heidegger was under the infuence of during these years, Emil Lask. Lask was the only one amongst the neo-Kantians who took Husserl’s 1901 groundwork seriously enough to propose a theory of categories that acknowledges explicitly the decisive breakthrough accomplished in the Logical Investigation. Although they belong to the horizon of neo-Kantianism, Lask’s works integrate some of Husserl’s fundamental insights in an attempt to renew the neo-Kantian’s theory of knowledge and interpretation of logic.14 Lask’s positive appraisal of Husserl impressed Heidegger enough to convince him that phenomenology was able to address the questions left unanswered by his neo-Kantian training. In particular, Lask brought Heidegger’s attention to the novelty of the theory of categorial intuition developed in the sixth Logical Investigation, which eventually provided, according to Heidegger’s own words, the ground (Boden) upon which his philosophical investigation could only be established (Heidegger 1986, 378). From this moment on, phenomenology played a fundamental role in the development of Heidegger’s philosophical thought, even though Heidegger had already completed his philosophical training under the direction of Rickert and established himself as a respected scholar by the time Husserl arrived in Freiburg. Even if Heidegger was initially rather critical of Husserl’s appointment at the university where he was lecturing,15 Lask’s reading of Husserl convinced him that an in-depth appropriation of the phenomenological method would provide him with 22
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the tools he needed in order to overcome the philosophical shortcomings of the neo-Kantian framework in which his thought had emerged.16 In the years following Husserl’s arrival in Freiburg, Heidegger engaged with him in an intense philosophical relationship, leading him to become Husserl’s assistant after the end of the war, in 1919. Heidegger’s brilliant and unique ability to mould his own powerful thinking and way of questioning into the phenomenological cast fascinated Husserl to such an extent that he would eventually consider him the best candidate to succeed him as a full Professor at Freiburg University in 1928. Only a few years after he started to work as Husserl’s assistant, Heidegger had gained such recognition in the German philosophical landscape that he obviously needed to be counted as one of the leading fgures of the phenomenological movement, bringing Husserl himself to declare in the early twenties: “phenomenology is me and Heidegger” (Gadamer 1994, 18). However signifcant the differences in their philosophical perspectives were, Husserl trusted that their commitment to phenomenology made them close enough to embrace a common philosophical objective, and he consequently offered to publish Sein und Zeit (Being and Time), Heidegger’s main philosophical manifesto, in his Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung in 1927. The publication of Being and Time made manifest the substantial and signifcant differences that opposed the philosophical views of Husserl and Heidegger since the beginning, and which were responsible for Heidegger’s ambivalent attitude towards his old master. To be sure, from the dedication of Being and Time17 to his last seminars (Heidegger 1986), Heidegger always recognized and even claimed explicitly the decisive infuence that the ‘phenomenological seeing’ (phänomenologische Sehen) he learnt from Husserl when he was his assistant exerted upon his own approach to philosophy (Heidegger 2007, 98/78).Yet Heidegger, who remained widely sceptical about the philosophical depth of his master’s doctrine18 and was not afraid to be at odds with the old-fashioned metaphysical framework of ‘the old man’ (der Alte),19 was an “entirely original personality […] labouring to forge his own solidly grounded approach”, as Husserl himself claimed in the letter of recommendation he wrote to Paul Natorp on Heidegger’s behalf.20 Heidegger was bound to become a phenomenologist of his own kind – one whose deeply original insights opened a new and prolifc trend within the phenomenological movement. Amongst the substantial differences that separate Husserl and Heidegger’s philosophical conceptions, three main points of disagreement need to be highlighted, as they proved to be particularly instrumental in renewing the phenomenological movement from within. 1/ It must frst be stressed that Heidegger’s questioning was, from the start, foreign to Husserl’s phenomenological perspective.True, both Heidegger and Husserl underwent the decisive infuence of Franz Brentano’s pioneering investigations. However, the Brentano in which Heidegger discovered the philosophical question that would become the most fundamental for him – namely, the question of being – was not the charismatic professor who taught Husserl in Vienna and convinced him to switch from mathematics to philosophy. Heidegger’s interest in the multiple meanings of being arose from his reading of the dissertation on Aristotle that Brentano published in 1862 (Brentano 1862), at a time when he had not yet begun to develop his psychological analysis of intentionality. The discovery of Brentano’s renewed approach to the Aristotelian question about the equivocity of being set the ultimate goal of Heidegger’s philosophical thought, and he came to consider from this moment on that the ultimate task of philosophy was to elucidate “the wonder of all wonders: that there is being (daß Seiendes ist)” (Heidegger 1976). It is in this context that Heidegger frst read Husserl – mistakenly, by his own account – hoping that the Logical Investigations would help him solve his question about the meanings of being (Heidegger 2007, 75). Heidegger’s subsequent interest in the phenomenological call to “the thing itself ” is entirely determined by and reoriented towards his focus on a question that was never Husserl’s but his 23
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own – a question that Heidegger credits himself with being the frst to raise explicitly, and that presupposes a philosophical sensitivity to the general forgetfulness of being that Heidegger claims to be the only thinker to account for. Whence and how is it determined what is to be experienced as ‘the thing itself ’ (die Sache selbst) in accordance with the principle of phenomenology? Is it consciousness and its objectivity or is it the being of entities in its unconcealedness and concealment? (Heidegger 2007, 87/79) According to Heidegger, the fundamental breakthrough operated by Husserl’s phenomenology consists less in the description of the essential structures of intentional consciousness than in the discovery of the preconceptual understanding of being, which Husserl’s analysis of categorial intuition made possible but failed to recognize as the main achievement of his phenomenology. Consequently, far from turning him against phenomenology, Heidegger’s critical reading of Husserl brought him to reinterpret phenomenology within the horizon of his own problematic. While Husserl’s transcendental turn made him vulnerable to the shortcomings of the idealist tradition that includes Descartes, Kant and Fichte, Heidegger claims that “the question of being developed in Being and Time set itself against this philosophical position” and grew on the basis of “a more faithful adherence to the principle of phenomenology” (Heidegger 1977, 363/498).21 2/ The philosophical investigation into the question of being that motivates the writing of Being and Time is consequently to be described as intrinsically phenomenological, although in an original sense. Committed to the practice of the ‘phenomenological seeing’, Heidegger reaffrms the need for an intuitive method, which guarantees, according to him, the philosophical ‘radicality’ of the phenomenological approach and demonstrates subsequently its superiority over non-phenomenological methodologies, such as dialectics (Heidegger 1988, 45–46/36). However, Heidegger rejects the theoretical approach to intuition that Husserl was never able to overcome, and emphasizes in Being and Time the temporal presuppositions at work in the famous ‘principle of all principles’ thanks to which Husserl identifes intuition as the ultimate source of indubitable evidence and legitimacy for scientifc knowledge (Hua III/1, §24). As Heidegger notes,“the thesis that all cognition has its goal in ‘intuition’ has the temporal meaning that all cognition is a making present (Gegenwartigen)”, leading Husserl to grant absolute (but phenomenologically unjustifed, according to Heidegger) priority to the present over the other temporal modes in the characterization of phenomena (Heidegger 1977, 363/498). Against the metaphysical presuppositions upon which this conception of intuition draws, Heidegger claims that intentionality of ‘consciousness’ is grounded in a temporal orientation towards the future that is fundamental, and which Heidegger calls “the ecstatic temporality of Dasein” (ibid.). Instead of understanding intuition as a privileged mode of presentation of objects to a subject in a theoretical framework, Heidegger’s philosophical project consists in showing that such intuition is always derived from a practical and more originary relation to the world that guides and orients an agent’s activity. This primordial orientation towards the world, more fundamental than any other intentional mode of consciousness, is identifed by Heidegger as Verstehen, i.e. the act of understanding (Verständnis), and is described as a future-directed projection into practical possibilities (Carman 2003, 67). 3/ This temporal reorientation of phenomenological analysis for the sake of the prioritization of the question about being is bound to overthrow the privilege granted to pure intuition in Husserl’s phenomenology, so as to highlight the concrete existential ground and hermeneutic conditions of any act of intuiting:
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By showing how all sight is primarily grounded in understanding […] we have robbed pure intuition of its privilege, which corresponds noetically to the privileging of objective presence in traditional ontology. ‘Intuition’ (Anschauung) and ‘thought’ are both already remote derivatives of understanding. Even the phenomenological ‘intuition of essences’ (Wesensschau) is grounded in existential understanding (existenzialen Verstehen). (Heidegger 1977, 147/187, modifed) Heidegger here draws the consequences of his careful reading of the sixth Logical Investigation in the light of his own interrogation of the meaning of being and his reinterpretation of categorial intuition in hermeneutic terms.This decisive shift was operated as early as 1919, when Heidegger frst coined the phrase ‘hermeneutical intuition’22 to express the experiential and pre-theoretical access to being that categorial intuition makes possible, and to encapsulate what he considered the most fundamental insight of Husserl’s analysis. Heidegger goes as far as to speak of ‘understanding intuition’ (verstehende Intuition)23 so as to stress the fundamental permeability between these two concepts, arguing that intuition always presupposes a hermeneutic situation on the only basis of which it can take place. This articulation between intuition and understanding brings Heidegger to propose a renewed conception of the phenomenological method, now understood as a hermeneutic practice in which description is not merely grounded on intuition, but is frst and foremost guided “by the understanding intention” (durch die Absicht des Verstehens) (Heidegger 1993, 240).This transformation of the phenomenological method can thus be described as a hermeneutic shift, insofar as it allows Heidegger to emphasize the hermeneutic conditions of phenomenological inquiry. Indeed, the description of lived experiences presupposes their essential permeability to our understanding: Lived experiences in the broadest sense are through and through expressed experiences; even if they are not uttered in words, they are nonetheless expressed in a defnite articulation by an understanding I have of them as I simply live in them without regarding them thematically. (Heidegger 1979, 65/48) Consequently, far from the purely descriptive discipline Husserl envisioned, Heidegger contends that phenomenology is irreducibly interpretive and hermeneutic,24 going as far as to claim that the phenomenological inquiry itself belongs to a particular hermeneutic context that needs to be accounted for.The phenomenological description of lived experiences is now to be understood as the self-interpreting process through which a factic existence comes to describe from within its own movement (Dastur 2020).This ‘hermeneutics of facticity’ that replaces phenomenological description in Heidegger’s analysis is less the job of a meditating ego taking an external stance on its own existence and functioning as the ‘impartial spectator’ of itself25 than the fundamental task taken on by a being whose relation to its very being is constitutive of its defnition – a being which Heidegger from now on calls Dasein. Dasein, i.e. the being that is in its being “concerned about its very being” (Heidegger 2007, 12), is such that it is always already related to what is sought in the question regarding the meaning of being, and must be consequently characterized by its “pre-ontological understanding of being” (ibid., 14).The ultimate task of Heidegger’s hermeneutical phenomenology is to propose a systematic analysis of the existential modes of Dasein that characterize its ‘being-in-the-world’ (In-der-Welt-Sein). Opening the way to Heidegger’s ‘fundamental ontology’, the ‘existential analysis’ of Dasein is substituted in Being and Time to phenomenological description and lays the ground for the ‘turn’ (die Kehre)
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that would bring Heidegger to abandon the term ‘phenomenology’ promptly after he obtained Husserl’s Professorship in Freiburg in 1929.26 The hermeneutic shift initiated by Heidegger gave rise to a new and original conception of hermeneutics developed by phenomenologists such as Hans-Georg Gadamer in Germany and Paul Ricœur in France. As Ricœur notes, hermeneutics became with Heidegger fundamentally oriented towards the ontological problem of the relation to being insofar as it is intrinsically related to the experience of understanding (Heidegger 2007, 10).27 Deeply infuenced by Heidegger’s analysis of the Verstehen, Gadamer tried to provide a systematic structure to such philosophical hermeneutics, stressing that the phenomenon of understanding must be described as a structural feature of human experience rather than a local practice exclusively focused on the interpretation of texts. Instead of dealing with the formulation of the right principles for interpretation, hermeneutics seeks to bring the phenomenon of understanding itself to light.The purpose of philosophical hermeneutics is consequently less to establish a scientifc method for investigating the meaning of texts than to account for “human experience of the world in general” (Gadamer 2013, xx).This renewal of hermeneutics constitutes the leading thread of Gadamer’s interpretation of history and aesthetics, and of Ricœur’s analysis of symbols in religion, in psychoanalysis and in literature.
1.3.4. The existential shift (Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty) The impact of Heidegger’s hermeneutic shift on the phenomenological movement was strong enough to deeply modify the meaning, the scope and the goals of phenomenology. Phenomenology, after Heidegger, would never look the same. However, the aspect of this renewal that infuenced the most next generations of phenomenologists is maybe less the original articulation between phenomenology and hermeneutics that Being and Time brought forth than the specifc focus on human existence that Heidegger’s phenomenology had made possible.The shift accomplished by Heidegger’s subtle but powerful critique of the “neglect of the being of man”, which is, according to him, pervasive in Husserl’s phenomenology, contributed strongly to opening up new expectations for phenomenological practice, allowing phenomenology to move back from the ‘abstract’ study of the structures of intentional consciousness to a concrete description of human existence.28 The existential analytics of Dasein gave phenomenology, so to say, a second birth by shifting its epicentre so as to make existence the ultimate ground of phenomenological description. This is the reason why the renewal of the phenomenological style of analysis that Heidegger’s hermeneutics of facticity made possible opened up the space for subsequent articulations of ‘existential phenomenology’ (Ricoeur 1957), for which it became the central inspiration, even though Heidegger always vehemently resisted the label of existentialism. Indeed, not only did his approach seem to offer a greater fexibility and plasticity than Husserl’s rigorous method for grasping the meaning of our belonging to the world, it also provided a phenomenological basis for a renewed understanding of the philosophical stakes of human existence. Describing Dasein as “the being who is in its being concerned about its very being” fundamentally means that the whatness (essentia) of this being must, frst and foremost, be understood in relation to its modes of existing (existentia) (Heidegger 2007, 42). Dasein, Heidegger writes,“always understands itself in terms of existence” (ibid., 12); its essence “lies in its existence” (ibid., 42). The priority granted by Heidegger to existence over essence as well as the corollary emphasis on the ontological horizon of phenomenological description constituted the framework within which some major French philosophical fgures of the mid-20th century such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty developed a phenomenological approach to human fnitude and freedom, bringing phenomenology to an existential shift.29 26
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Overtly describing themselves as phenomenologists, both Sartre and Merleau-Ponty stressed the decisive infuence of Husserl’s works over their own approach to philosophical inquiry. “I was ‘Husserlian’ and long to remain so”, Sartre writes, describing the context of maturation of his own thought (Sartre 1984, 183). Indeed, Sartre’s discovery of phenomenology and his frst phenomenological essays were written under the infuence of Husserl a few years before Sartre would complete his reading of Being and Time, at Easter 1939. The reason was, according to Sartre himself, that he could only come to Heidegger after he had ‘exhausted’ Husserl, which took him four years, during which he wrote La transcendence de l’Ego (Sartre 1936), L’imaginaire (Sartre 1940) and his never published book La Psyché, where Sartre developed his own realist interpretation of the concept of intentionality. However, the impossibility of providing a ‘realist solution’ to the diffculties raised by Husserl’s transcendental philosophy and to solve the impasses of his idealism turned Sartre towards Heidegger, whose infuence he described as ‘providential’, “since it supervened to teach [him] authenticity and historicity just at the very moment when war was about to make these notions indispensable to [him]” (Sartre 1984, 182). In this context, Sartre’s early hope that phenomenology would bring philosophy closer to life as it is commonly experienced30 and his anti-idealistic orientation towards reality combined into a phenomenological description of human fnitude deeply infuenced by Heidegger’s conceptuality, which led to the publication of Sartre’s “essay on phenomenological ontology”, Being and Nothingness, in 1943. Stressing the tension between the fundamental and categorical freedom that characterizes human existence and the limiting conditions that determine its necessary situation, Sartre’s account of human fnitude led him famously to endorse a few years later an atheistic form of existentialism, whose key principle states that “man is nothing other than what he makes of himself ” (Sartre 2007, 22). Merleau-Ponty, who shared Sartre’s main claims regarding the contingency of human existence and its fundamentally situated freedom, developed over the same years a phenomenological perspective on perception and embodiment grounded in a similarly ambiguous relationship to Husserl’s and Heidegger’s philosophical heritage. Stressing the importance of Husserl’s last writings, the Phenomenology of Perception (1945) proposes an ontologically oriented account of the lifeworld (the Lebenswelt introduced by Husserl in The Crisis of European Sciences) that MerleauPonty interprets in the horizon of a constant dialogue with Heidegger’s description of our Being-in-the-world. Just as much as for Sartre, the surge of interest that brought Merleau-Ponty to phenomenology resulted from the feeling of the obsolescence of French philosophy (its “perte de substance”, as J.-T. Desanti put it) (Desanti 2005, 572) and a need to rejuvenate it with concrete descriptions inspired by the reading of Jean Wahl’s book Vers le concret (Wahl 1932).31 For Merleau-Ponty as for Sartre, the ultimately ontological horizon of phenomenological description entails that the analysis of the eidetic structures of consciousness can only be accomplished through a phenomenological description of existence in its contingency. However, MerleauPonty emphasizes more specifcally the intrinsic connection between this contingent character attached to the experience of human fnitude and our necessarily incarnate existence. Refusing to separate intentional consciousness from the bodily processes that constitute our pre-objective orientation towards the world, Merleau-Ponty describes the situation of human existence as ‘being-toward-the-world’ through the body, and develops a phenomenology of perception that constantly stresses the embodied dimension of intentionality and the essential articulation between subjectivity and the body.As Merleau-Ponty puts it: If I fnd, while refecting upon the essence of subjectivity, that it is tied with the essence of the body and that of the world, this is because my existence as subjectivity is identical with my existence as a body and with the existence of the world, and because, ulti27
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mately, the subject that I am, understood concretely, is inseparable from this particular body and this particular world. (Merleau-Ponty 2005, 467/431, modifed) This phenomenological reassessment of the relation between subjectivity and the body goes hand in hand with a sharp critique of the intellectualist versions of the cogito, and brings an original contribution to the critical arguments against idealism developed in Heidegger and Sartre’s analyses of existence: The true cogito does not defne the existence of the subject through the thought that the subject has of existing, does not convert the certainty of the world into a certainty of the thought about the world, and fnally, does not replace the world itself with the signifcation ‘world.’ Rather, it recognizes my thought as an inalienable fact and it eliminates all forms of idealism by revealing me as ‘being in the world.’ (ibid., viii/xxvii) This embodied approach to the cogito entails an anti-idealist and rather critical reinterpretation of Husserl’s transcendental method, which accounts for reduction in existential terms and claims its solubility in the horizon of Heidegger’s In-der-Welt-Sein.32 On behalf of a greater fdelity to experience, Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology refuses to presuppose that lived experiences are fully transparent to refection and contends that a faithful description of human existence demonstrates the “impossibility of a complete reduction” (ibid., viii). Our existence “is too tightly caught in the world in order to know itself as such at the moment when it is thrown into the world”. On this basis, Merleau-Ponty attempts to reconcile the eidetic orientation of Husserl’s phenomenology with the existential commitments of Heidegger’s hermeneutics: We cannot bring our perception of the world before the philosophical gaze without ceasing to be identical with that thesis about the world or with that interest for the world that defnes us, without stepping back to this side of our commitment in order to make it itself appear as a spectacle, or without passing over from the fact of our existence to the nature of our existence, that is from Dasein [existence] to Wesen [essence]. […] The necessity of passing through essences does not signify that philosophy takes them as an object, but rather […] that our existence needs the feld of ideality in order to know and conquer its facticity. (Merleau-Ponty 2005, ix/xxviii) This analysis of the relations between essence and existence allows Merleau-Ponty to combine Husserl and Heidegger’s insights into a description of the originary embodied forms of intentionality that lays the ground for a phenomenological analysis of the pre-cognitive connection to the world that perception establishes.
1.3.5. The counter-intentional shift (Levinas, Henry, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, Marion …) The inner transformations of the phenomenological movement and the shifts that resulted from the anti-idealist critiques of Husserl’s transcendental method developed successively by the Munich Circle, by Heidegger and by the French existential phenomenologists, paved the way for a thorough redefnition of the limits and extent of phenomenological inquiry. Pushing this 28
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critical reconfguration of phenomenology one step further, a new approach to the phenomenological practice inherited from Husserl and Heidegger emerged in France in the second half of the 20th century, giving rise to what has been described as a ‘French moment of phenomenology’ (Marion 2002b), less characterized by its specifcally French (as opposed to German) philosophical style than by the fertile intellectual context in which it developed.33 Although this French reappropriation of phenomenology may have started as early as 1930, with the publication of Emmanuel Levinas’ thesis (Levinas 1930), followed one year later by his translation of the Cartesian Meditations, which drew some signifcant attention to Husserl’s phenomenology and introduced it to a wider philosophical audience in France, this ‘moment’ of phenomenology must nevertheless be distinguished from the rise of existential phenomenology that was due to the works of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. Even though these two trends of the phenomenological movement overlap temporally, geographically and sometimes even conceptually, they fundamentally differ with respect to their relation to the phenomenological tradition. Even when Sartre and the early Merleau-Ponty (until the publication of his Phenomenology of Perception) discuss the legitimacy of the phenomenological analyses of Husserl and Heidegger, their critical relation to their predecessors remains inside the framework and within the boundaries of the phenomenological description of intentionality they owe to Husserl and Heidegger. If anything, such criticisms belong less to a negative assessment than to a positive diagnosis expected to strengthen and reinforce phenomenology.The ultimate horizon of Sartre’s and Merleau-Ponty’s analyses is to provide a ‘phenomenological ontology’ of existence that expands the phenomenological approaches of Husserl and Heidegger and combines them so as to overcome their shortcomings.34 On the contrary, the ‘French moment of phenomenology’ initiated by Levinas and carried on successively by the later Merleau-Ponty, Michel Henry, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion (to quote a few main fgures only) takes its point of departure from a much more radical critique of Husserl and Heidegger’s main philosophical concepts, leading eventually to their dismantling, their abandonment or their complete redefnition.35 The originality and the unity of this ‘French moment’ may precisely arise from the aforementioned philosophers’ ability to base their somewhat paradoxical use of the phenomenological method on an in-depth critique and transformation of its concepts.Already in 1935, Emmanuel Levinas’ frst thematic essay “De l’évasion” (On escape) (Levinas 1935) interrogates the possibility of transcending the horizon of Being that dominates Heidegger’s phenomenology, as well as initiating Levinas’ criticism of “the primacy of theory in Husserl’s philosophy” (Levinas 1930, 1935, 1998). On this ground, Levinas started to develop a very personal approach to phenomenological description that proceeds from a powerful critique of both Husserl and Heidegger, bringing phenomenology to a signifcant new shift, which deeply impacted the practice of phenomenology in France for the following decades. For the frst time, Heidegger’s thought was no longer seen as a legitimate way to overcome the diffculties raised by the shortcomings of Husserl’s phenomenology. Moving away from existential phenomenology, Levinas proclaims the need to think beyond ontology in a way that reverses the orientation of Heidegger’s hermeneutics so as to bring phenomenological description back “from existence to the existent” (Levinas 1986), and eventually from ontology to ethics understood as frst philosophy. Although Levinas’ both extremely careful and deeply critical reading of Heidegger and Husserl attracted relatively little attention prior to the publication of his ‘thèse d’état’ (Totalité et infni, published in 1961), the shift that his reassessment of their phenomenology operated had a decisive impact on the young generations of French phenomenologists as soon as the infuence of existential phenomenology decreased.The unprecedented sharpness of Levinas’ critique had paved the way for a renewed approach to phenomenology, engaging it in a confrontation with 29
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certain phenomena that put up a resistance to the application of the methods and techniques of description inherited from Husserl and Heidegger. Not that Levinas attempted to abandon the phenomenological concepts and methods forged by his masters purely and simply, but his critical analyses made it possible to confront them – somewhat paradoxically – with experiences that exceed the boundaries of phenomenological description and seem to contradict its scope. This original gesture, characteristic of Levinas’‘unfaithful fdelity’ to phenomenology accurately described by Derrida in his tribute to Levinas as a way of being “unfaithful out of [his] fdelity to intentional analysis” (Derrida 1999, 52), contributed to initiating a new style of phenomenological investigations that widened the scope and extent of phenomenological description far beyond a strict and narrow understanding of phenomenality. Following the direction opened by Levinas from the beginning of the sixties, French phenomenologists, while working in different directions, engaged in an effort to push back the limits of phenomenological description and to redefne the concept of phenomenon on new grounds. Moving away from the existential orientation of his earlier phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty led the way with the analysis of modern painting he frst published in 1961, and through his attempt to describe in The Visible and the Invisible the ‘fesh’ of the world in its interrelation with the embodied self.36 The same year, Levinas devoted a signifcant part of Totality and Infnity to a lengthy analysis of the appearing of the ‘face’ (visage) of the other, which Levinas describes as an ethical form of manifestation of the other that cannot be accounted for in objective or ontological terms and demonstrates the primacy of ethics. Michel Henry, whose masterpiece The Essence of Manifestation was published only a couple of years later, in 1963, considers how selfaffectivity constitutes the principle of the revelation of ‘life’ through the experience of the fesh (Henry 1963). Finally, rejecting the metaphysical primacy of presence in Husserl’s phenomenology, Jacques Derrida published three major books in 1967, in which he critically interrogates the notion of phenomenality through an analysis of writing that puts forward the almost absent visibility of the ‘trace’ (Speech and Phenomena, Writing and Difference, Of Grammatology) (Derrida 1967a, 1967b, 1967c). In spite of their differences, these publications, which constituted decisive milestones in the feld of phenomenology, share a specifc focus on phenomena that substantially challenge the potentialities of phenomenological description.The face of the other, the trace, the experience of the fesh or the self-revelation of life, are not simply new phenomena likely to meet the expectancies and comply with the methods of Husserl and Heidegger’s phenomenology without entailing some major transformations.They are hardly phenomena at all in the Husserlian sense of the word, insofar as they refuse to be constituted by intentional consciousness and prove to be essentially indescribable, ‘inapparent’ and deprived of phenomenalization. If even possible, their description is intrinsically problematic, and necessarily negative (as in negative theology), since it is frst and foremost the indescribable character of such quasi-phenomena, located at the margins of phenomenality, that constitute their essence. Levinas’ analyses of the ‘face’ are symptomatic of this negative use of phenomenological method, as they constantly draw on the limits of the intentional framework of phenomenological description in order to account for the paradoxical modes in which the human other is revealed to me, transcending all phenomenality and beingness. However, it must be noted that this operation needs, quite ironically, to maintain the intentional framework in order to reverse it, and to exhibit the specifcity of phenomena that do not ft into the framework of phenomenological description and that cannot be accounted for in terms of their intentional or ontological constitution. In order to describe the paradigmatic reversal of the intentional analysis operated by Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion coined the term ‘counter-intentionality’ (Marion 2002, 78), which he later
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The history of the phenomenological movement
appropriated as a keystone of his own phenomenology of givenness.This phrase seems rightly to encapsulate the philosophical gesture that motivated the signifcant shift from which arose the so-called French ‘moment’ of phenomenology, insofar as this shift made possible a new kind of relation with the phenomenological tradition, both radically critical and nevertheless somehow faithful to the ‘spirit’ (in Montesquieu’s sense of the word) of phenomenology: the counter-intentional shift initiated by Levinas allowed the new generations of phenomenologists to focus on phenomena (or ‘quasi phenomena’) (Marion 2002a, 53) such as the face, the fesh of the world, the trace, life’s self-affection … , which only come to appear in experiences that reverse the intentional correlation. Such a radical reorientation of phenomenology entails a new defnition of phenomenality that acknowledges its irreducibility to the objective horizon of intentional constitution (Husserl) as well as to the ontological horizon of being (Heidegger) and problematizes the intentional relation.This ‘quasi-phenomenology’ oriented towards the non-objective and non-ontological dimension of phenomenality and situated at the extreme margins of visibility engages, according to Marion, a ‘third reduction’, beyond Husserl’s transcendental reduction to objectivity and Heidegger’s ontological reduction to being.37 In order to denounce the transformations that resulted from this counter-intentional shift and the detrimental consequences of this expansion of phenomenological inquiry beyond the domain of visibility, Dominique Janicaud famously characterized this shift as the ‘theological turn of French phenomenology’ (Janicaud 1992). For Janicaud, the reorientation of phenomenological studies that followed the publication of Totality and Infnity draws heavily on metaphysical and dogmatic forms of transcendence (ibid., 46), leading French phenomenology to embrace, whether implicitly or explicitly, a theological (rather than phenomenological) discourse. However, this normative and strongly polemical characterization, designed to assess the legitimacy of the phenomenological shift that motivated French phenomenologists, hardly encapsulates the variety of their approaches and seems to do justice neither to their philosophical originality nor to their singular relation to the phenomenological tradition. As Jean-François Courtine notes, the origins of the phenomenological orientation towards the ‘inapparent’ that Janicaud castigates can be traced back to the decisive section of Being and Time in which Heidegger describes the scope of phenomenological inquiry (Courtine 2016, 30).38 The French ‘moment’ of phenomenology that arose from Levinas’ reassessment of the limits of the intentional framework maintains a strong – though complex and sometimes almost paradoxical – connection with the phenomenological tradition (as well as with the development of Heidegger’s thought of the Ereignis after the Kehre, even though Heidegger refrained from characterizing his thought as phenomenological over that period). In a discerning attempt to capture the specifcity of the phenomenological studies produced in France in the wake of Levinas’ counter-intentional shift, Jocelyn Benoist insists that their originality consists frst and foremost in their emphasis on the ‘event-character’ (caractère événementiel) of phenomena and their decision to focus on the event of appearing itself rather than the horizonal structure of phenomenality (Benoist 2001). From Levinas’ ethical account of the face to Marion’s phenomenology of self-givenness and beyond, French phenomenology drew the consequences of this redefnition of the phenomenon as “an event of spontaneous phenomenalization, which makes its irruption by itself into the intentional consciousness” (Tengelyi 2012, 302).39 Interestingly, this characterization of phenomenality echoes the terms in which Levinas interpreted Husserl’s theory of categorial intuition in a presentation published in 1940, as he came to examine the aspect of Husserl’s phenomenology that Heidegger considered fundamental for the development of his own interrogation of being.According to Levinas, Husserl’s
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analysis of categorial intuition entails that “the presence of being to thought is not an event that breaks in upon the play of thought. It is rational, that is, it has meaning” (Levinas 1998, 62, my emphasis). It is precisely this very aspect of Husserl’s phenomenology that Levinas and the French phenomenologists after him came to reject, stressing on the contrary, on behalf of the event-character of appearing, that the sense or meaning of a phenomenon cannot be reduced to a sense-bestowal by intentional consciousness (Husserl), nor be interpreted in the horizon of the ontological difference (Heidegger).
1.3.6. Contemporary developments of the phenomenological tradition Inevitably, the expansion of the scope of phenomenological studies that resulted from the successive shifts of the phenomenological movement gave rise to a split between the two main tendencies or directions that they gradually revealed.These two opposite ways of understanding the goals of phenomenology were implicitly already at play in the tensions inherent in Husserl’s rigorous defnition of the phenomenological method and the diffculties that arose from its criticisms. The frst direction consists in a radicalization of the distance that separates phenomenological inquiry on the one hand, and on the other hand the rational ideal of a rigorous science that constituted its original frame according to Husserl, opening up the space for a discussion between phenomenology and post-modern philosophy.40 The other orientation of phenomenological studies stresses, on the contrary, the logico-scientifc roots of phenomenology, and emphasizes its relation with formal and empirical sciences, giving rise to interesting confrontations between phenomenology and analytic philosophy in a broad sense.41 These two tendencies of recent phenomenologically oriented research constitute the opposite extremes of a spectrum that covers a very wide range and variety of phenomenological approaches, which occupy different strategic positions between these two ends of the spectrum. The tension between these two dimensions justifes the use of phenomenology in different contexts and its application to radically opposed domains of investigation, such as theology, cognitive sciences, social psychology or analytic philosophy of mind. Interestingly, the so-called ‘continental divide’, in the name of which phenomenology used to be labelled as strictly continental and was kept separate from analytic philosophy for most of the 20th century,42 now operates within the phenomenological movement, as a divergence between different tendencies inherent to phenomenology. The constant reassessment of the extent of phenomenological inquiry and the great variety of its uses and applications do not only illustrate its plasticity, but demonstrate its vitality as a philosophical tradition giving rise to the kind of reactions, inner transformations and external criticisms that only a strong and fertile philosophical movement is likely to provoke. If phenomenology deserves this title, it is frst and foremost because the philosophical tradition it gave rise to does not rely on the repeated and uncritical application of a narrowly defned method, but on the creative perpetuation and ever-changing reiteration of an impulse to ground philosophy in the description of experience and to maintain this phenomenological heritage. For this reason, in order to complete and refne Spiegelberg’s analogy between the phenomenological movement and a stream of water, the phenomenological tradition can be compared to a plant, the wilting of which does not necessarily prevent its growing back under a new and rejuvenated shape. Likewise, far from threatening the coherence and signifying ultimately the death of the phenomenological tradition, the many different shifts that constitute its history, though always critical and sometimes radically non-orthodox, have contributed to providing the phenomenological movement with a fexibility that has prevented its exhaustion and made possible its rebirth under new forms. 32
The history of the phenomenological movement
Notes 1 The word appeared for the frst time in 1736 in an unpublished essay from Christoph Friedrich Oetinger, Philosophie der Alten (Ritter and Gründer 1989, 486). 2 (Hua XIX/1, 24):“Phänomenologie ist deskriptive Psychologie”. 3 (Hua XIX/1, 6):“Einer rein deskriptiven Phänomenologie der Denk- und Erkenntniserlebnisse”. 4 The text quoted is from the frst edition. 5 See section 7 of the Introduction to the Logical Investigations. 6 Text quoted from the frst edition. Findlay’s translation, modifed. 7 Translation slightly modifed. 8 The expression is borrowed from Stanley Cavell, who comments on Wittgenstein’s attempt to “undo the psychologizing of psychology” (Cavell 1969, 91), and was more recently applied to Husserl’s phenomenology by J. Benoist. See Benoist 2006, 422. 9 As will be seen further, Husserl radicalized even further this aspect of his phenomenology later in his career, by stressing its relation to a transcendental psychology that leaves aside the ontological naivety of psychological studies. 10 See §10 of the 5th Logical Investigation: (Hua XIX/2,379–2,380/95–96). 11 A detailed criticism and rejection of these phrases is presented in §11 of the ffth Logical Investigation, (Hua XIX/2, 384–388/98–100). 12 See §8. 13 In particular Die apriorischen Grundlagen des bürgerlichen Rechtes and Wesen und Systematik des Urteils. 14 On this point, see Schuhmann and Smith 1993, 454, and Heidegger’s own analysis in 1977, §44b, note 1, 219. Lask often refers to the Logical Investigations and acknowledges his infuence in a note of Lask 1923, 37. On Lask’s decisive infuence on Heidegger, see Kisiel 1993. 15 Letter to Ernst Laslowski, January 1916. Quoted in Ott 1993, 90. 16 Martin Heidegger, “A Recollection (1957)” trans. Hans Seigfried in Sheehan 2011, 21–22 (German text in Heidegger 1972, 56); see also Heidegger, “My way into phenomenology” in Heidegger 2007 and Carman 2003, 65. 17 See also the footnote Heidegger added to Being and Time’s introduction (1997, 38n) 18 Letter to Löwith, 20 February 1923, quoted in Sheehan 1997, 17: “Looking back from this vantage point to the Logical Investigations, I am now convinced that Husserl was never a philosopher, not even for one second in his life. He becomes ever more ludicrous.” 19 Letter to Löwith, 8 May 1923; see Heidegger’s letter to Jaspers, 26 December 1926: “If the treatise is written ‘against’ anyone, it’s against Husserl”. 20 Husserl, letter to Natorp, 1 February 1922 (Hua-Dok III/5, 150), quoted in Kisiel and Sheehan 2007, 369. 21 Letter to Richardson, in Heidegger 2013, xiv. 22 Heidegger 1987, 117/98–99. 23 Heidegger 1987, 117/99. 24 See the 1919 lecture-course on “phenomenology and transcendental philosophy of value”, where Heidegger speaks of “phenomenological hermeneutics” (Heidegger 1987, 131/112). 25 Husserl famously used this phrase in the Paris Lectures, (Hua I, 30). 26 For a detailed analysis of the specifc meaning of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology, see Daniel Dahlstrom’s contributions to this volume. 27 Quoted by Ricoeur 1986, 90. 28 See the criticism of Husserl’s abstraction in Heidegger’s 1925 lectures (Heidegger 1979, sections 12 and 13). 29 The pertinence and legitimacy of the label ‘existential phenomenology’ can be critically discussed, insofar as the attempt to describe our actual involvement with existing reality arguably constitutes an intrinsic feature of phenomenology that was already part of Husserl’s project (see for instance Zahavi 2003, 18). Notwithstanding this discussion about the nature of the ‘turn’ operated by Sartre and Merleau-Ponty with respect to Husserl’s phenomenology, it seems uncontroversial to claim that the specifc emphasis on human fnitude and freedom that characterizes their philosophical thought was responsible for a ‘shift’ of orientation of phenomenological inquiry. 30 See the text Sartre wrote in 1933–34 as he was studying in Berlin,“Une idée fondamentale de la phénoménologie de Husserl: l’intentionnalité” (Sartre 1939). 31 See Sartre 1986, 23. 32 “Heidegger’s ‘In-der-Welt-Sein’ [being-in-the-world] only appears against the background of the phenomenological reduction” (Merleau-Ponty 2005, ix/xxviii).
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Pierre-Jean Renaudie 33 This is the reason why, rather than speaking of ‘French phenomenology’, Bernard Waldenfels prefers to understand this phase of the history of the phenomenological movement as a moment of “phenomenology in France” (Waldenfels 1983). 34 In an introductory article from 1934, Levinas identifes Martin Heidegger’s philosophy as a “phenomenology of existence”, which in retrospect appears much closer to Sartre and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological investigations than to his own philosophical thought (Levinas 1998, 39). 35 See for instance Raoul Moati’s contribution in this volume on Levinas’“de-formalization” of phenomenology. 36 Eye and Mind was published in January 1961 as an article in the journal Art de France, then reprinted as a book (Merleau-Ponty 1964a). The Visible and the Iinvisible was posthumously published in 1964 (Merleau-Ponty 1964b). 37 See the conclusion of Marion 1998, 204. 38 See Heidegger’s analysis of the “covering up” character of phenomena in (Heidegger 1977, §7, 39). 39 In their review of the recent transformations in French phenomenology,Tengelyi and Gondek widely draw on Benoist’s analysis to stress the philosophical signifcance of this original emphasis on the ‘event-character’ of phenomenality (Gondek and Tengelyi 2011). 40 Some of the works of Jacques Derrida, John Caputo and Jean-Yves Lacoste – as different as their perspective may be – can for instance be seen as representative of this approach. 41 See for instance the works of Dan Zahavi and Shaun Gallagher, Jean Petitot, Francisco Varela or Alva Noë. 42 See for instance the proceedings of the Colloque de Royaumont in 1958, which gathered philosophical personalities as diametrically opposed as Willard Van Orman Quine and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Cahiers de Royaumont 1962).
References Benoist, Jocelyn. 2001. “Sur l’état présent de la phénoménologie.” In: J. Benoist, L’idée de phénoménologie. Paris: Beauchesne, pp. 123–159. ———. 2006. “Phénoménologie ou pragmatisme? Deux psychologies descriptives.” Archives de Philosophie 69, pp. 415–441. Berg, Adam. 2016. Phenomenology, Phenomenalism and the Question of Time. Lanham: Lexington Books. Brentano, Franz. 1862. Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles. Freiburg: Herder. English translation: On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle. Trans: R. George. 1975. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1924. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt. Leipzig: F. Meiner Verlag. English translation: Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. Trans: A. C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell, and L. McAlister. 1973. London: Routledge. Carman, Taylor. 2003. Heidegger’s Analytic: Interpretation, Discourse and Authenticity in Being and Time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cavell, Stanley. 1969. Must We Mean What We Say? A Book of Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Courtine, Jean-François. 2016. “French phenomenology in historical context.” In: Quiet Powers of the Possible, Interviews in Contemporary French Phenomenology. Eds. T. Dika and W. Hackett. New York: Fordham University Press. Dastur, Françoise. 2004. La phénomenologie en questions. Paris:Vrin. ———. 2020. “Phénoménologie herméneutique versus phénoménologie hylétique: Heidegger et la question de la matière.” In: Phénoménologies de la matière. Eds. P.-J. Renaudie and V. Spaak. Paris: CNRS éditions. Derrida, Jacques. 1967a. La voix et le phénomène. Paris: PUF. ———. 1967b. L’écriture et la différence. Paris: Le Seuil. ———. 1967c. De la grammatologie. Paris: Minuit. ———. 1999. Adieu, to Emmanuel Levinas. Trans: P.-A. Brault and M. Naas. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Desanti, Jean-Toussaint. 2005.“Sartre et Husserl ou les trois culs-de-sac de la phénoménologie transcendantale.” Les temps modernes, 4. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1987. Gesammelte Werke,Vol III.Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
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The history of the phenomenological movement ———. 1994. Heidegger’s Way.Trans: J.W. Stanley. State University of New York. ———. 2013. Truth and Method.Trans: Glen-Doepel revised by J.Weinsheimer and D.G. Marshall. London: Bloomsbury. Gondek, Hans-Dieter and Tengelyi, Lázló. 2011. Neue Phänomenologie in Frankreich. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Heidegger, Martin. 1972. Frühe Schriften. Frankfurt am Main:Vittorio Klostermann. ———. 1976. Wegmarken (1919–58), in GA 9. Frankfurt am Main:Vittorio Klostermann. ———. 1977. Sein und Zeit, GA 2. Frankfurt am Main:Vittorio Klostermann. English translation: Being and Time.Trans: J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. 1962. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 1979. Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, GA 20. Frankfurt am Main:Vittorio Klostermann. English translation: History of the Concept of Time. Trans: Theodore Kisiel. 1985. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 1986. Seminare (1951–73), in GA 15. Frankfurt am Main:Vittorio Klostermann. English translation: Four Seminars.Trans:A. Mitchell and F. Raffoul. 2004. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 1987. Zur Bestimmung der Philosophie, GA 56/57. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann. English translation: Towards the Defnition of Philosophy.Trans:Ted Sadler. 2008. London: Bloomsbury. ———. 1988. Ontologie (Hermeneutik der Faktizität), GA 63. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. English translation: Ontology, the Hermeneutics of Facticity. Trans: J.Van Buren. 1999. Indiana University Press. ———. 1992. Platon: Sophistes (Wintersemester 1924/5), in GA 19. Frankfurt am Main:Vittorio Klostermann. ———. 1993. Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie [1919/1920], GA 58. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann. ———. 2007. Zur Sache des Denkens, GA 14. Frankfurt am Main:Vittorio Klostermann. English translation: On Time and Being.Trans: J. Stambaugh. New York: Harper and Row. ———. 2013.“Letter to Richardson.” In: Preface to William Richardson, Heidegger:Through Phenomenology to Thought. Dordrecht: Springer. Henry, Michel. 1963. L’essence de la manifestation. Paris: PUF. Ingarden, Roman. 1931. Das literarische Kunstwerk. Eine Untersuchung aus dem Grenzgebiet der Ontologie, Logik und Literaturwissenschaft. Halle: Max Niemeyer. English translation: The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art.Trans: Ruth Ann Crowley and Kenneth R. Olson. 1973. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Janicaud, Dominique. 1992. Le tournant théologique de la phénoménologie française. Paris: L’éclat, 1992. English translation: Phenomenology and the Theological Turn, the French Debate. Trans: B. Prusak. 2000. New York: Fordham University Press. Kisiel, Theodore. 1993. “Why students of Heidegger will have to read Emil Lask.” In: Emil Lask and the Search for Concreteness. Ed. D.G. Chaffn.Athens: Ohio University Press. Kisiel,Theodore and Sheehan,Thomas (Eds). 2007. Becoming Heidegger. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Lask, Emil. 1923. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2.Tubingen: Mohr. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1930. Théorie de l’intuition dans la phénoménologie de Husserl. Paris:Vrin. English translation: Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology.Trans:Andre Orianne. 1995. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. 1935.“De l’évasion.” Recherches Philosophiques. English translation: On Escape.Trans: B. Bergo. 2003. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. 1961. Totalité et Infni. Essai sur l'Extériorité.The Hague: M. Nijhoff. ———. 1986. De l’existence à l’existant. Paris:Vrin. ———. 1998. Discovering Existence with Husserl. Trans: R. Cohen and M. Smith. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Marion, Jean-Luc. 1998. Reduction and Givenness, Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger and Phenomenology. Trans: T. Carlson. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. 2002a. Being Given, Towards a Phenomenology of Givenness. Trans: J. Kosky. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. 2002b.“Un moment Français de la phénoménologie.” Rue Descartes 35. ———. 2002c. In Excess, Studies of Saturated Phenomena. Trans: R. Horner and V. Berraud. New York: Fordham University Press. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1964a. L’œil et l’esprit. Paris: Gallimard. ———. 1964b. Le visible et l’invisible. Paris: Gallimard. ———. 2005. Phénoménologie de la perception. Paris: Gallimard. English translation: Phenomenology of Perception. Trans: D. Landes. 2012. New York: Routledge. Milkov, Nicolay. 2018.“Hermann Lotze and Franz Brentano.” Philosophical Readings 10 (2), pp. 115–122.
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Pierre-Jean Renaudie Ott, Hugo. 1993. Martin Heidegger:A Political Life.Trans:A. Blunden. New York: Basic. Pfänder, Alexander. 1900. Phänomenologie des Wollens: Eine psychologische Analyse. Leipzig: Barth. Reinach, Adolf. 1989. Sämtliche Werke. Textkritische Ausgabe. Eds. K. Schuhmann and B. Smith. Munich: Philosophia Verlag. Ricoeur, Paul. 1957. “Phénoménologie existentielle.” In: Encyclopédie française. XIX. Philosophie et religion. Paris: Larousse. ———. 1986. Du texte à l’action, essais d’herméneutique II. Paris: Seuil. Ritter, J. and Gründer, K. 1989. Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie. Basel: Schwabe. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1936. “La Transcendance de l'Ego: Esquisse d'une description phenoménologique.” Les Recherches philosophiques 6. ———. 1939. “Une idée fondamentale de la phénoménologie de Husserl: l'intentionnalité.” La Nouvelle Revue française 304, janvier 1939, p. 129-131. ———. 1940. L 'Imaginaire: Psychologie phenomenologique de I'imagination. Paris: Gallimard. ———. 1943. L’être et le néant. Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique. Paris: Gallimard. ———. 1984. War Diaries. Notebook from a Phoney War.Trans: Q. Hoare. London:Verso. ———. 1986. Questions de méthode. Paris: Gallimard. Scheler, Max. 1980. Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die matierale Wertethik. Neuer Versuch der Grundlegung eines ethischen Personalismus. Bern: Francke Verlag. English translation: Formalism in Ethics and NonFormal Ethics of Values.Trans:Tr. Manfred, S. Frings, and Roger L. Funk. 1973. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Schuhmann, Karl and Smith, Barry. 1993.“Two idealisms: Lask and Husserl.” Kant-Studien 84, 448-466. Sheehan,Thomas. 1997.“Husserl and Heidegger, the making and unmaking of a relationship.” In: Edmund Husserl, Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology. Eds. T. Sheehan and R. Palmer. Dordrecht: Springer, p. 1-32. ———. 2011. Heidegger:The Man and the Thinker. New Brunswick,Transaction Publishers. Stein, Edith. 1922. “Beiträge zur philosophischen Begründung der Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften.” Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung 5. English translation: Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities.The Collected Works of Edith Stein,Vol. 7.Trans: M. C. Baseheart and M. Sawicki. 2000.Washington: ICS Publications. Spiegelberg, Herbert. 1965. The Phenomenological Movement, vol. 2, Second Edition.The Hague: M. Nijhoff. Tengelyi, Laszlo. 2012.“New phenomenology in France.” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 50 (2). Wahl, Jean. 1932. Vers le concret. Paris:Vrin. Waldenfels, Bernhard. 1983. Phänomenologie in Frankreich. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Zahavi, Dan. 2003.“Phenomenology and metaphysics.” In: Metaphysics, Facticity, Interpretation. Contributions to Phenomenology. Eds. D. Zahavi, S. Heinämaa, and H. Ruin. Dordrecht-Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, p. 3-22. 1962. Cahiers de Royaumont. La philosophie analytique. Paris: Minuit.
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2 PHENOMENOLOGY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY Burt C. Hopkins
Introduction Phenomenology and Greek philosophy have been framed largely in terms of the discussion of the relationship between the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle and the method and most basic phenomenon uncovered in Husserl and Heidegger’s phenomenological research.The terms of this discussion were originally set by Heidegger in the 1920s and remain in effect today. Heidegger’s framing of the discussion involves the following suppositions: 1) the most fundamental philosophical question for Greek metaphysics and phenomenology is the question of the meaning of Being; 2) Aristotle’s metaphysics has hermeneutical priority over Plato’s, for reasons of intrinsic philosophical clarity; 3) Husserl’s phenomenological concept of intentionality and the related concept of categorial intuition amount to a rediscovery of what was sought in ontologies of Plato and Aristotle and is therefore a suitable guiding clue for interpreting those ontologies on the basis of their original, phenomenological intention; and 4) the ontologies of Plato and Aristotle and Husserl’s concepts of intentionality and categorial intuition privilege the cognition of beings over their radical disclosure, and they do so because the meaning of Being that governs that cognition, namely, its being present to speech (λόγος), is a derivative phenomenon. The discussion to follow frst will present and critically assess the major suppositions behind Heidegger’s formulation of the relationship between Plato and Aristotle and phenomenology (Part I). Next, it will present Husserl’s account of the historical importance of the Socratic response to sophistical skepticism for the origin of philosophy, and the systematic importance of that response for the transcendental phenomenological problem of the transcendence of the world (Part II). Finally, Jacob Klein’s phenomenological interpretation of Plato’s theory of eidetic numbers, as a theory of the possibility of the most basic structures of philosophical intelligibility, will be presented together with a discussion of its implications for Heidegger’s framing of the terms of the discussion of Greek philosophy and phenomenology.
Part I: Heidegger Heidegger credits Husserl’s phenomenological discovery of categorial intuition with breaking through to what is truly objective in entities in a manner that “arrives at the form of research sought by ancient ontology” (Heidegger 1979, 1985, 72/98). For Heidegger, “[t]here is no 37
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ontology alongside a phenomenology. Rather, scientifc ontology is nothing but phenomenology” (ibid.). Moreover, Heidegger credits Husserl’s account of pure categorial intuition, ideation, with discovering the original meaning of the a priori, a discovery that “stands in connection with or is actually identical to the discovery of the concept of Being in Parmenides or Plato” (75/102). According to Heidegger, Husserl’s “thesis that everything categorial ultimately rests upon sense intuition is but a restatement of the Aristotelian proposition: οὐδέποτε νοεῖ ἄνευ ϕαντάσματ ος ἡ ψυχή:‘the soul can intend nothing, grasp nothing objective in its objectivity, if beforehand something as such has not been shown to it’” (69/94).1 Equally signifcant is Heidegger’s also crediting Husserl, with “his concept of intentionality” (Heidegger 1992/1997, 598/413–14), as being the frst to discover again Plato’s “fundamental insight into λόγος … that λόγος is λόγος τινός [speech about something]” (ibid.). Finally, and most signifcantly, Heidegger claims that Plato “does not yet possess a real understanding of the structure and concept of the γένος [Kind]” (524/362), while Aristotle does.Thus “Plato uses γένος [Kind] and εἶδος [Form] promiscuously” (ibid.) and thereby does not achieve Aristotle’s level and clarity of understanding of γένος (Kind), as something that “refers to an entity in its Being, thus that which an entity, as this entity, always already was” (ibid.). Plato’s “term for entities in their Being is εἶδος [Form]” (ibid.) according to Heidegger, which “in its structural sense is not oriented toward the provenance of entities, toward the structure lying in them themselves, but instead concerns the way the Being of entities may be grasped” (ibid.). Hence, Heidegger maintains that “[t]he εἶδος [Form] is relative to pure perceiving, νοεῖν; it is what is sighted in pure perceiving” (ibid.). As such, Heidegger concludes that “[ε]ἶδος [Form], as a concept pertaining to the givenness of entities, basically says nothing about the Being of these entities, beyond expressing the one directive that entities are to be grasped primarily in their outward look, i.e., in their presence, and specifcally in their presence to a straightforward looking upon them” (ibid., 363/524). Heidegger’s interpretation of the act of ideation in Husserl’s phenomenology characterizes what is at stake therein as categorial acts that give their object, understood as the “species” (Heidegger 1979/1985, 91/66)—the latter merely being the Latin translation of “εἶδος [Form], the outward appearance of something” (ibid.). Heidegger’s interpretation appeals both to Husserl’s account of the “founded” (ibid., 91/67) character of ideation, its necessary givenness on the basis of a “manifold” (ibid.) of individual perceptual acts, and its abstractive character, in the precise sense that “the founding objectivity is not taken up into the content of what is intended in ideation” (ibid.). Heidegger therefore holds that, for Husserl, ideating abstraction involves “comparative considerations” (ibid.) such that “[t]hat toward which I see in comparing, with respect to the comparable, can in its own right be isolated in its pure state of affairs, and therewith I acquire the idea” (ibid.). Heidegger’s claims about the relationship of Husserl’s discovery of categorial intuition to the ontology of Aristotle and Plato, together with his critique of both the general limits of this ontology and those specifcally tied to Plato’s account of the εἶδος (Form), however, cannot withstand critical scrutiny. Moreover, it really is not the case that Husserl’s thesis about categorial intuition “is but a restatement” of a statement of Aristotle’s about the impossibility of the soul thinking without the showing to it beforehand of something. When they are compared, two very obvious inconsistencies emerge in Husserl’s account of categorial intuition and Aristotle’s account of νόνσις (intellection).
The impossibility of harmonizing Husserl’s and Aristotle’s accounts of εἴδη (forms) For Aristotle, the εἶδος (Form) cognized by the direct activity of thought (νοῦς) is emphatically not a one over many, nothing apart from the things that share in them, but a common 38
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thing.Thus, despite its being shared in (μέθεξειν) by many individuals, the conclusion Aristotle draws from this is that the soul knows the εἶδος by becoming the same as it, in the precise sense that the potency (δύναμις) of νοῦς (the direct activity of thought) to become an εἶδος (Form) of εἴδη (Forms) (ibid., 65/48) is actualized, and νοῦς (the direct activity of thought), literally, becomes one with the being-at-work (ἐνέργεία) of the εἶδος (Form) acting on it.This unity of the εἶδος (Form) and νοῦς (the direct activity of thought) in knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) composes the common thing (κιονόν) proper to the manner of being of the εἶδος (Form) for Aristotle.Thus, in the most radical contrast possible to Husserl’s account of categorial ideation, for Aristotle the apprehension of the unity of the εἶδος (Form) excludes—in principle—that unity’s relation to a multiplicity. In addition, for Aristotle, abstraction has nothing to do with the soul’s knowledge of an εἶδος (Form), which is again in marked contrast to Husserl’s account of ideating abstraction. And, while it could be argued that Husserl’s account of ideating abstraction is akin to the one context where Aristotle talks of abstraction, namely, mathematical abstraction, Aristotle presents his account of the abstracted manner of being of mathematical objects in the context of his pointed critique of the Platonic account of their one over many manner of being.This makes it impossible to harmonize Husserl’s account of precisely this mode of being proper to the εἶδος (Form) and Aristotle’s account of the abstracted manner of being of mathematical objects. Moreover, Husserl’s account of the pure categorial intuition involved in the grasping of the εἶδος (Form) both characterizes the intuiting regard as a mode of seeing and the grasped εἶδος (Form) as something that appears to this regard and is therefore something seen. For Aristotle, however, strictly speaking the cognized εἶδος (Form) is not even an appearance.What appear for him are ϕάνασματα (images), and it is through their appearances that νοῦς (the direct activity of thinking)—admittedly, somehow, since Aristotle’s texts are none too clear on this point—cognizes the indivisible and uncombined intelligible things, the εἴδη (Forms). Once cognized, as mentioned, the unity of νοῦς (the direct activity of thinking) and εἶδος (Form) can hardly be said to appear, as the thinking and what is thought—νοήσεως νόησις—are one and the same. Heidegger’s claim about the harmonious nature of the relationship between Husserl’s categorial intuition and Aristotle’s ontology is therefore problematic. What, then, about his claim that situates Husserl’s concept of intentionality within the rediscovery of Plato’s insight into the λόγος τινός (speech about something)? Husserl’s concept of intentionality emerges from his initial psychological investigations of symbolic presentations in Philosophy of Arithmetic, that is, of cognitive presentations in mathematics that do not intuitively present their object but only indirectly, if at all, refer to it. Precisely Husserl’s attempt to come to terms with the descriptive psychological status of the “symbolic” character of (what he then called) a “symbolic presentation” (later calling it a “symbolic representation”) is behind his formulation of the concept of an “empty intention,” which is arguably the most important aspect of his phenomenological account of intentionality. Heidegger’s interpretation of these matters characterizes the concept of intentionality that grows out of Husserl’s concerns mentioned here as involving “the interrelation of the modes of presentation manifested in a distinct sequence of levels ranging from mere empty intending (signitive acts) to originally giving perception (intuitive acts in the narrowest sense)” (ibid., 65/48). Heidegger goes on to characterize empty intending as “being unflled in its meaning; what is presumed in it is there in the how of its non-fulfllment” (ibid.). Addressing the functional interrelation between the modes of intentional presentation, Heidegger stresses that the intentional relation between the unfulflled intention and the fulflling intention “is always predelineated in their intentionality” (ibid., 66/49) and that “the fulfllment itself is of an intentional character” (ibid.). 39
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The question before us is whether Heidegger’s claim that Husserl’s concept of intentionality amounts to a rediscovery of Plato’s insight into the λόγος τινός (speech about something) is a claim that can withstand critical scrutiny. Both Plato’s Socrates (Phdo, 99E ff.) and the Eleatic Stranger (Soph, 260C) characterize λόγος (speech) as a kind of image (εἰδώλων) with an ἀρχή (beginning) and τέλος (end) that are inseparable from intelligible beings (νοντά), from εἴδη (Forms). And the Stranger’s account of λόγος (speech) makes it patent that the γένος (Kind) (Soph, 260A) proper to the being of λόγος (speech) is such that it is impossible for it to be and not to be about something (Soph, 262E). Hence the λόγος τινός (speech about something) Heidegger characterizes as Plato’s great insight. For Husserl’s concept of intentionality to amount to a rediscovery of Plato’s insight, the relation between the image and original characteristic of λόγος (speech) and εἴδη (Forms) would have to exhibit intentionality’s main structural features summarized by Heidegger. Not only, then, would λόγος (speech) have to exhibit the direction toward an object that is the most intrinsic aspect of Husserl’s concept of intentionality, but the character of this directedness would also have to exhibit the functional interrelation between empty and fulflled meaning intentions.
Husserl’s concept of intentionality cannot be viewed (per Heidegger) as the rediscovery of Plato’s insight into λόγος τινός (speech about something) To be sure, if by “intentionality” all that is meant is the intentional relation in the sense of its being about something, then Husserl’s concept and Plato’s λόγος τινός (speech about something) are in accord. However, if something more than this is meant, if the character of Husserl’s empty intention, its predelineation in the how of the emptiness of its meaning of the conditions for its fulfllment, is meant, then such an accord becomes very problematic. To begin with, both Plato’s Socrates as well as his Stranger understand λόγος’ (speech’s) manner of being as a kind of image. For Plato, then, the images (εἴδωλα) of things that refect the εἴδη (Forms) are somehow inseparable from what the Stranger refers to as the γένος (Kind) proper to λόγος (speech). Indeed, because of this, these images are likewise inseparable from these things’ appearances as being what they are. Moreover, because their refection in λογοι (speeches) is inseparable from the very appearances of the εἴδη (Forms), Socrates (Phdo, (99E–100A) distinguishes the image–original relationship characteristic of λόγος’ (speech’s) function to refect εἴδη (Forms) from the natural image–original relationship characteristic of perception.Whereas the relationship between image and original in perception makes it possible to bypass the original’s refected image and to therefore apprehend it directly in a perceptual apprehension, in the case of λόγος (speech) the original—the εἶδος (Form)—cannot be apprehended in any other manner than through its images refected by λόγος (speech). The Stranger’s account of λόγος (speech) (Soph, 260C) as a kind of image presupposes the Socratic account, adding to it the distinction between images whose appearance function as likenesses (εἰκόνες) and those whose images only seem like something but are really not and are therefore apparitions (ϕαντάσματα). In addition, and this is decisive for assessing Heidegger’s claim about the relationship between λόγος (speech) in Plato and Husserl’s concept of intentionality, the Stranger’s account maintains that once falsehood has been shown to mix with λόγος (speech), the very distinction between likeness and apparition cannot be established exclusively at the level of λόγος (speech).That is, the criterion for distinguishing true and false λογοι (speeches) cannot be established on the basis of an exclusive appeal to the way things look to λόγος (speech), to how they appear through its images. But, rather, the criterion for this distinction must be sought dialectically, through λόγος (speech) and therefore beyond its images in a manner that confronts the manner of appearing of the originals of these images: the 40
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εἴδη (Forms) in community with themselves, and, especially, the manner of appearance of the greatest γένη (Kinds) (Being, Motion, Rest, Same, and Other) responsible for any multiplicity of beings—sensible or intelligible—whatsoever. The question on the table, then, is whether for Plato λόγος (speech), in the sense of its functioning as an image that refers to something more original that it’s like but is not, is appropriately characterized along the lines of Husserl’s empty intention; that is, as a signitive or otherwise non-intuitively given representation of a meaning that predelineates the conditions for its fulfllment in the thing or object signifed or otherwise meant (vermeint) and therefore intended by its empty meaning intention.The answer to this question would certainly have to be “no,” if Husserl’s phenomenological characterization of an image were attributed to Plato’s account of its being.The reason for this is that Husserl’s account of the phenomenon of image leaves no doubt that its essence is intuitive, not signitive or empty. For Husserl, then, the phenomenon of image is characterized by the structural distinction between the imaged object and the image, a distinction that he maintains is immediately and therefore intuitively evident.This structural distinction, in turn, is established by the essential distinction Husserl draws between the image proper and the sensible basis required for an image to appear at all as such.Thus, the sensible basis for the appearance of the image is structurally distinct from the image itself, as the image is what appears when the sensible basis is looked at.This, in turn, guarantees that the subject of the image, that which appears through the image’s sensible basis, is structurally distinguishable from the image itself. For Husserl, therefore, the image is directly presented in what he calls “image-consciousness” (Husserl 2005, 21), and the imaged object is represented mediately, and therefore indirectly, through the medium of its perceptual basis.The image for Husserl is therefore not a sign that signifes or otherwise refers to the imaged object, but the intuitively given—albeit indirect—appearance of this very object. For Plato, in contrast, the being of an image is characterized by its manner of not being what it appears to be, not by the structural distinction between image and its original (i.e., the “subject” [ibid., 23] in Husserl’s idiom). Of the two possible modes of an image’s not being, likeness and apparition, only likeness, properly speaking, can be characterized as being structurally distinct from its original.This is the case because the not being of an apparition is characterized precisely by the inability of the soul to which it appears to distinguish between image and original.This distinction, therefore, is manifestly not something that is given with the appearance per se of an image, as it is for Husserl, but, rather, it is something that can only be made subsequently to the dialectical inquiry into the truth of the appearance of that which appears. Moreover, Plato’s characterization of λόγος (speech) as a kind of image is no more merely signitive (and therefore an empty intention) than the image is in Husserl’s phenomenological account. For in the Stranger’s account (Soph, 262A ff.) of the interweaving (συμπλοκή) and therefore community (κοινωνία) of verbs and names and therefore the whole that is irreducible to the functioning of the latter as vocal marks (σημεῖον), λόγος (speech) is likewise in community with Being—and it is so in a manner that is responsible for the manifestation of Being’s very appearance as Being.
Plato’s account of the εἴδη (forms) is guided by neither λόγος (speech) nor the meaning of Being as presence Notwithstanding the fact that Plato’s understanding of the being of an image and therefore account of the being of λόγος (speech) cannot be legitimately tied to Husserl’s concept of empty intention, it nevertheless might seem to confrm Heidegger’s ontological criticism of Plato and indeed Aristotle and therefore Greek ontology in general. Namely, that for Plato as 41
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for Aristotle, the questioning of entities with regard to their Being is guided by λόγος (speech). According to Heidegger, the explication of a given theme—even if only the sheer something in general [Etwas überhaupt]—speech is the guiding thread.This irruption of λόγος [speech], of the logical in this rigorously Greek sense, in the question of ὄν [Being], is motivated by the fact that ὄν [Being], the Being of entities, is primarily interpreted as presence, and λόγος [speech] is the primary way in which one makes something present, namely that which is under discussion. (Heidegger 1992/1997, 225/155) Precisely this understanding of Being is what Heidegger maintains is intrinsic to the natural meaning of the phenomenon of intentionality and, therefore, to Husserl’s formulation of its phenomenal structure. For the understanding of Being here to function as the basis for a criticism of both Greek ontology and Husserl’s phenomenology, Heidegger must presuppose two things. One, not only that such an understanding of Being is intrinsically defcient, but also, two, that so long as it is unquestionably assumed to present the true meaning of Being, both the meaning of Being that it presumes, as well as the meaning of Being as such, will remain unquestioned. Before addressing whether Heidegger’s presuppositions are warranted, the question has to be asked and answered whether Heidegger’s claim that the εἶδος (Form) for Plato is relative to pure perceiving (νοεῖν), that it is what is seen when the multiplicity of entities are reduced to one look in common, is Plato’s defnitive word on the εἶδος (Form). We need look no further than the Stranger and Theaetetus’ account of the community of εἴδη (Forms) in the Sophist (Soph, 255A–256E) to see the limits of the account of the εἶδος (Form) that Heidegger attributes to Plato.The two most salient distinctions of their account are suffcient to render untenable Heidegger’s claims about both the role of λόγος (speech) as the guiding clue for the explication of any given theme in Plato and the meaning of Being operative in Plato’s ontology being limited to what is sighted by νοεῖν (pure seeing) as present in the εἶδος (Form). Regarding the frst, it is precisely λόγος’ (speech’s) character of being about something, and, therefore, being about one thing (Soph, 237D), that is responsible for it being an unsuitable guide for the account of the manner of being of the εἴδη (Forms) or γένη (Kinds) in their community with one another. Specifcally, the one presupposed by λόγος is a homogenous unit (the kind used in counting) and therefore is unsuitable for accounting for the unity of the fve greatest γένη (Kinds) in their community, as the latter is characterized above all by the necessary opposition of the heterogenous units of γένη (Kinds) composing it.The appearances of the latter in a philosophical dialogue therefore in no way represent the fulfllment of homogeneous unity of meaning intentions, signitive or otherwise, predelineated in λόγος (speech). On the contrary, it is only with the dialectical abandonment of λόγος’ (speech’s) most basic presupposition—about the homogenous unity necessary for speech to be meaningful—that the most original γένη (Kinds) appear. They appear in community with one another notwithstanding their lack of common qualities. Their paradoxical appearance, which mixes the opposites of Motion and Rest in the appearance of Being, and the Same and Other in the appearance of Being’s sources, explodes once and for all what can now be recognized as the Heideggerian myth not only of Plato’s philosophy being limited by a prior understanding of the meaning of Being as presence, but also of it being fundamentally driven by an ontology. For if by “ontology” is understood, with Heidegger, an investigation that supposes that the most fundamental philosophical question or problem is that of the meaning of Being of entities, 42
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Plato’s account of the greatest γένη (Kinds) can be seen to be guided by the supposition of a more fundamental philosophical problem than that of the question of Being. Rather than being concerned or being guided by the presupposition that the meaning of Being is the presence responsible for entities being present, the most fundamental problem in Plato’s thought concerns the origin of the unity that is inseparable from the appearance of all multiplicities, including motion. That this problem can be reduced to neither the question of Being, nor to that of its basic meaning as presence, is apparent from both Socrates’ presentation of the idea of the Good in terms of a multiplicity of images and the Stranger and Theaetetus’ account of the γένος (Kind) proper to Being together with its ἀρχαί (beginnings).The multiplicity of images Socrates presents of the idea of the Good rules out its determination in terms of any one of them or all of them being present to the seeing that guides νόησις (intellection). Moreover, the γένος (Kind) proper to Being, as the unstable whole that encompasses the γένη (Kinds) proper to Motion and Rest, is no more capable of being present than the γένη (Kinds) the Same and the Other that, beyond Being, are responsible for the mixing of the opposites that compose Being.That is, the most encompassing opposites of the Same and the Other neither appear as present to νόησις (intellection), nor is the meaning of their appearance determined by Being.
Part II: Husserl Husserl’s phenomenological engagement with Greek philosophy is driven by his account of what can be characterized as his account of the interrelated double origin of philosophy (see Majolino 2017, 2018). This account provides an important pre-modern historical context for Husserl’s understanding of the philosophical motive behind his transcendental philosophy. Husserl articulates these origins in terms of 1) the pre-Socratic cosmologies and 2) the sophistical skeptical challenges to the rational cogency of those cosmologies, together with Socrates’ critically rational response to those challenges, especially to those of Protagoras and Gorgias. Husserl includes in 2) Plato’s theoretical extension of Socrates’ rational method that, together with Aristotle’s philosophical extension of Plato’s theoretical philosophy, expands the historical horizon of the transcendental motive behind Husserl’s phenomenology beyond that of modern philosophy, especially the philosophies of Descartes and Hume.
Sophistical skepticism and the origin of rational philosophy In Husserl’s view, sophistical skepticism is extremely important for understanding both the origins of rational philosophy and the role those origins play in his transcendental phenomenology. In Husserl’s telling, sophistical skepticism had as its target philosophy’s frst origin the collective theoretical thematization of the cosmos—and the attitude that is behind that thematization—by the men traditionally called the pre-Socratics. In Husserl’s view, however, the term pre-Socratic is, in effect, a misnomer for characterizing philosophy prior to Socratic philosophy, given that philosophy’s origin in the critique of sophistical skepticism. Socrates’ response to the threat to rationality posed by the Sophists’ attacks on both the theories of the cosmologists and the latent rationality driving the theoretical attitude behind those theories is thus what is crucial for Husserl’s understanding of Socrates’ originality as a philosopher. Husserl’s account of the Sophists’ attack on philosophy’s frst origin is as follows. On the one hand, the possibility of an objectively valid truth is challenged (Protagoras). On the other hand, and more radically, the actual existence of transcendent being as such, of external objectivities, in principle accessible to knowledge, is challenged (Gorgias) (Hua XXV, 137). For Husserl, Socrates’ response (see De Santis 2019) to this twin attack was to institute a philosophy based 43
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on critical self-refection and the Delphic injunction to “know thyself.” In the process, Husserl attributes to Socrates the thematization of the fundamental contradiction between unclear opinion and evidence, which leads him to develop a method whose fundamental meaning is a clarifying self-refection accomplished in apodictic evidence, which, in turn, implicitly discovers the intuition of essences.The latter is discovered insofar as the scope of the evidence presented by Socrates’ method exceeds that which has its basis in the subject’s refection on contingent opinions, thereby achieving general and exemplary value. The salient character of Socrates’ method, according to Husserl, is a critique of reason (ibid.). As such, it represents a response to the problems posed to reason per se by the Sophists’ attack. This response involves both concept clarifcation—in the Socratic method’s movement from empty word intentions to their meanings—and the bringing to evidence of the objects meant in these intentions on the noematic side of intuition.The latter, then, is what raises to prominence the essential characteristics of the exemplars that fulfll the noematic intuition. Husserl’s account of Socrates’ anticipatory critique of reason focuses on its exclusively practical nature.
Plato’s theoretical extension of Socrates’ practical method Husserl’s account of philosophy’s second origin supplements Socrates’ practical method with an account of Plato’s theoretical extension of that method. Included in this account is the crucial distinction that Husserl draws between Plato’s philosophical doctrines and the way of Platonic philosophy. The doctrines include, on Husserl’s telling, the separation thesis of intuitive forms, participation, and recollection.The Platonic way, in turn, is characterized by Husserl as its drive, intention to be fulflled, which is to say, its teleological idea to be followed.This way boils down to Plato’s great achievement of instituting the idea of a philosophical science, embodied by an “‘infnite academy’” (Majolino 2018, 178), as it were, in which Plato’s way, and not his doctrines, defne Platonic philosophy for Husserl. Thus, not only is there no need to return to Plato to further Plato’s philosophy, but, also, there is substantial room to criticize his thought while still remaining Platonic. On the one hand,Aristotle is presented by Husserl as thoroughly Platonic in this sense, despite his criticisms of aspects of Plato’s doctrines or even the doctrines themselves. On the other hand, there’s room for Husserl to criticize Plato while still remaining Platonic. Specifcally, Husserl criticizes Plato’s failure to appreciate the positive aspect of the Sophists’ skeptical attacks on reason, and Plato’s consequent inability to see the radical problem of reason that they thematized; the problem, namely, of the conscious constitution—in accordance with the rational structure of the subjectivity of consciousness—of transcendent objects. Thus, in Husserl’s view, despite Plato’s restoration of the objectivity of knowledge in the wake of the Sophists’ critical onslaught, his philosophy remains powerless to deal with the problem of transcendence. And it does so, because Plato failed to see that implicit in the Sophists’ attacks is the transcendental problem of the correlation between consciousness and the transcendent world.
Part III: Klein Jacob Klein (Klein 1969) effectively challenges both of the presuppositions behind Heidegger’s phenomenological interpretation of Plato and Aristotle; namely, (1) that Husserl’s notion of categorial intentionality is capable of providing the hermeneutical key for interpreting Plato and Aristotle’s philosophy, and (2) that Aristotle’s account of the mode of being of the Kinds (γένη) and Forms (εἴδη) is both clearer and philosophically superior to Plato’s. Klein takes issue with the suitability of Husserl’s concept of intentionality as an appropriate guiding clue for interpreting Greek philosophy generally and Plato’s thought in particular. The 44
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problem with Husserl’s concept in this regard is twofold. On the one hand, the empty intention’s rule-governed predelineation of the objective conditions for its fulfllment brings with it the semantic presupposition of the Etwas überhaupt (something in general), the formalized mathematical object that is formal ontology’s proper subject matter. This presupposition is rooted in the symbolic mathematics that is the sine qua non for the modern project of a mathesis universalis. Because both this presupposition and its mathematical basis are characteristic of a conceptuality— symbolic mathematics—whose historical inception cannot have occurred before the 16th century, the extent to which they are inseparable from Husserl’s concept of intentionality is precisely the extent to which this concept is an unsuitable guiding clue for interpreting Greek philosophy in general. On the other hand, Husserl’s concept of intentionality, as it functions in his account of categorial intuition, presupposes the Aristotelian logic of predication, and with that a whole-part structure grounded in individual objects conceived of as ontologically independent. Because the whole-part structure of Plato’s logic is grounded in an ontology whose basis is a multitude of objects, that is, a multiplicity of objects foundationally inseparable from one another, each one of which is accordingly not independent of the others, categorial intentionality is conceptually blind to both Plato’s logic and the ontology underlying it. The frst problem with Heidegger’s hermeneutical employment of Husserl’s concept of intentionality thus concerns the modern philosophical presuppositions that are sedimented in it. These presuppositions are a problem for Klein because the notion of an intuitively empty, rule-governed conceptual reference, which is determinative of the “consciousness of ” constitutive of intentional directedness, as well as the notion of a formal, materially indeterminate intentional object, are foreign to the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. The second problem concerns the logical structure of the Aristotelian predication behind Husserl’s concept of categorial intentionality, which cannot but privilege Aristotle’s logic over Plato’s dialectical method. These historical and systematic presuppositions behind Heidegger’s interpretation of Plato and Aristotle are addressed in Klein’s interpretation of their philosophies. Klein does so in a manner that endeavors to neutralize them, by striving to interpret the formality proper to Plato and Aristotle’s accounts of the Kinds (γένη) and Forms (εἴδη) from its own conceptual level in each of their philosophies, rather than from the conceptual level of the formality constitutive of modern philosophy and mathematics. To accomplish this, Klein adopts a twofold strategy. First, he rejects the argument behind Heidegger’s privileging of Aristotle’s philosophy over Plato’s, that it is clearer and more scientifc, and maintains instead that Aristotle’s thought is most appropriately presented as emerging from out of its Platonic context. Second, rather than employ categorial intentionality as the guiding clue to interpret both Aristotle and Plato, and therewith—like Heidegger—to privilege in his interpretation of their thought the whole-part structure of predicative λόγος (speech), Klein employs as his guiding thread the whole-part structure of what Husserl called in his frst work the “authentic” or “proper” (eigentlich) structure of number (Hua XII/2003, ch. 1), in order to interpret both the concept and being of number in Plato and Aristotle.
The non-predicative whole-part structure of Husserl’s authentic (eigentlich) number as guiding clue for Klein’s interpretation of ancient Greek ἀριθμός (number) Number (Anzahl) in its proper sense for Husserl is not characterized by the association of a concept with a sign or by a sense-perceptible numeral, but by the immediate and “collective” unifcation of a concrete multitude—that composes its parts—by the number in question, which composes its whole.This mode of unifcation is such that the numerical unity that encompasses 45
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those parts as their whole is something that nevertheless cannot be predicated of each of the parts individually. For instance, the whole of the unity of the number two, which encompasses and therefore collectively unifes each one of the items belonging to the (smallest) multitude that compose its parts, cannot be predicated of either of these parts taken singly. Only when both are taken together can these parts be said to belong to the whole of the number that unifes them. Precisely this state of affairs, then, is behind this whole-part structure exceeding the limits of the intelligibility that is made possible by the whole-part structure of predicative λόγος (speech). For, in accordance with whole-part structure of predication, the part is a part of the whole in the sense that the whole can be predicated of it, e.g., the horse is an animal, the dog is an animal.This state of affairs is unlike the relation of the parts of a number to its structural whole, about which it cannot be said, for instance, that “one is a two,” or that “one is a three.” Moreover, from the perspective of predicative λόγος (speech), when the “being one” of the structural unity of the numerical whole that collectively encompasses the multitude of its parts is stressed, it cannot but seem to predicate mistakenly unity to something that by defnition is more than one, namely the multitude that belongs most properly to number. The non-predicative whole-part structure characteristic of Husserl’s account of the proper structure of number, which is to say with both Husserl and Klein, the structure of non-symbolic numbers, is exhibited according to Klein by the concept and being of number (ἀριθμός) in ancient Greek arithmetic and logistic. Klein’s interpretation of ancient Greek philosophy hinges on precisely this structure (Klein 1969, ch. 6), which he argues presents the key to interpreting Plato’s philosophy,Aristotle’s critical response to that philosophy, as well as the fundamental difference in concept formation in ancient Greek and early modern philosophy. Methodologically, the latter point is the crucial one, because so long as the modern, symbolic concept of number (Zahl) guides any interpretation of ancient Greek philosophy, let alone any interpretation with phenomenological aspirations, not just the problematic behind the meaning of mathematical unity and multiplicity in ancient Greek mathematics will remain inaccessible, but likewise also the problematic behind the meaning of the unity and multiplicity of being in ancient Greek philosophy. Once these problematics come into view, the entire axis not only of Plato’s philosophy but of Aristotle’s critical departure from it shifts from the standard view. Regarding the former, the real locus of the participation (μέθεξις) problem turns out to be accounting for the one and the many structure exhibited by the community of forms (κοινωνία τῶν εἰδῶν), the structure of which the participation of many sensible beings in the unity of a single form is but a derivative refection (ibid., 99).With respect to the latter, the real target of Aristotle’s critique of the Platonic separation (χωρισμός) thesis emerges to be not the one form’s putative separation from the many sensible beings but the irreducibility of the common (κοινόν) unity of the Kinds (γένη) and Forms (εἴδη) to the Kinds and Forms that they encompass and therefore with which they are in community (ibid., ch. 8). Crucial to Klein’s interpretation are the portions of Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Books Alpha, Mu, and Nu) that zero in on the whole-part structure of number behind Plato’s account of the common unity responsible for the unity of a multitude that is constitutive of the participation problem. On Klein’s view, the zeal with which Aristotle criticizes what he reports is the Platonic thesis that the forms are in some sense numbers signals both the importance of the whole-part structure of number in Plato’s philosophy and Aristotle’s rejection of it as a suitable account of the mode of being proper to the Forms (ibid., 91–92). Klein’s account of the important structural difference between the unity intrinsic to the parts of a mathematical number and those of an eidetic number is the focal point of his interpretation of Plato (ibid.).This difference plays a crucial role in Klein’s interpretation of λόγος (speech) in Plato’s philosophy, or, better, his interpretation of the philosophical signifcance of the appearance 46
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of λόγος (speech) in Plato’s dialogues.And this interpretation, in turn, has profound implications for his interpretation of the relationship between the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle in general as well as for the assessment of the philosophical signifcance of Aristotle’s critical departure from Plato. Klein’s interpretation of the difference between the unity of the parts of eidetic and mathematical numbers, that is, of the difference between an eidetic and a mathematical monad (μονάς), focuses on Aristotle’s report that the unity of eidetic monads is incomparable (ἀσύμβλ ητοι) (Aristotle, Met. M, 1080a 20; Klein 1969, 89), in the sense that the intrinsic intelligibility of each Form as a singular unit is unique to that Form, and thus cannot be compared with other Forms.The unity of each singular mathematical monad, in contrast, is reported by Aristotle to be identical with that of any other, such that any mathematical monad is homogeneous—which is to say, comparable—with any other. The peculiar phenomenological character of the collective unity characteristic of the whole of the Greek ἀριθμὸς (number) that Klein uncovered manifests the structure that both λόγος (speech) and the community of Forms have in common.This focus is what is behind his argument for number’s paradigmatic function in Plato (Klein 1969, 92). For Klein, however, despite the commonality of this aspect of the arithmos-structure to λόγος (speech) and the community of Kinds, that is, despite the irreducibility of the unity of the whole in relation to its parts, the difference between the parts of eidetic and mathematical numbers is also signifcant for interpreting Plato’s philosophy. Klein’s interpretation maintains that the difference between the units in eidetic and mathematical numbers accounts for both the eidetic number’s foundational function in relation to mathematical numbers and λόγος’s (speech’s) limited ability to give an account of eidetic unity, that is, of the unity proper to the community of Forms (κοινωνία τῶν εἰδῶν) (ibid., 93–95). Regarding the mathematically foundational role of eidetic numbers, or more precisely, of the ten eidetic numbers Plato reportedly limited them to according to Aristotle, Klein (again following Aristotle’s reports about Plato) maintains that for Plato, “[o]nly because there are eide which belong together, whose community in each case forms a ‘kinship’ which must, due to the ‘arithmetical’ tie [i.e., the whole-part structure proper to ἀριθμός (number)] among its ‘members’ as eidetic numbers, be designated as the six or the ten, can there be arbitrarily many numbers, such as hexads or decads, in the realm of ‘pure’ units as well as in the realm of sensibles” (ibid., 92). Regarding λόγος’s (speech’s) limited ability to account for the eidetic unity of the forms in community, Klein maintains that for Plato there is a tight connection between the units of mathematical numbers and the limits of what λόγος (speech) can make intelligible in the following sense: inseparable from the signifying power of λόγος (speech) is the being one, two, or many of that which it discloses (Soph, 237 D).That is, behind the capacity of λόγος (speech) to disclose what it discloses and to give an account of that disclosure, is the following supposition: that the homogeneity of the unity of the referent to which it refers is inseparable from its disclosing power, such that more than one referent can be distinguished and therefore counted (ibid., 85). Because it is the non-homogeneous unity proper to the incomparably singular forms that are united in their eidetic kinship that is responsible for both mathematical numbers and for the Kinds (γένη) and Forms (εἴδη) that render intelligible the unlimited multitude of things in the sensible world, the beinghood (οὐσία) of λόγος (speech) is intrinsically limited in its capacity to render an account “with complete clarity” (Soph, 217 A–B, cf. 254 B) of their intelligibility.This is the case because of the fundamental presupposition that lies behind the capacity of λόγος (speech) to give an account of anything, namely, that it signifes the unity of what it discloses as a something that is comparable (homogeneous) with the unity of the other things it discloses.This presupposition, however, precludes precisely what is the case in the intelligibility of unities that belong to the Kinds (γένη) and Forms (εἴδη), to wit, their incomparability.To cite 47
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Klein’s primary example, in the Sophist, the Kinds of Being, Motion, and Rest, when counted by λόγος (speech), appear to signify—each one—a separate Kind, while all together they appear to signify three Kinds.Yet, because the unity of each is not comparable with the others, it turns out that the Being as a Kind does not count as a third Kind, apart from Motion and Rest, but rather it (Being) can only appear to thought precisely as Motion and Rest, both together (Klein 1969, 87). (While distinguished members of the phenomenological tradition Oskar Becker,2 Jan Patočka,3 and Hans Georg Gadamer4 appreciated early on the signifcance of Klein’s interpretation of Plato for phenomenology, until recently both Klein’s work and its phenomenological signifcance have not been recognized in phenomenological discourse.5)
Notes 1 See On the Soul, 431a16f. A more standard translation runs:“the soul never thinks without an appearance of things.” 2 Oskar Becker, whose article “The Theory of Odd and Even in the Ninth Book of Euclid’s Elements” appeared in the same volume of the journal that Klein’s two articles composing his “Die griechische Logistik und die Entstehung der Algebra” appeared in, refers therein to Klein’s article as “a very important work” (Becker 1934, 545). 3 Jan Patočka writes: “Klein’s work is an attempt to clearly interpret the Platonic doctrine of ideal numbers.While the interpretation is not complete, nevertheless in the main points it does so well in clarifying the issues that it is possible to say that any further research must seriously take this interpretation into account. If we compare the many obscurities in a book like Brunschvig’s Etapes de philosophie mathematique about the character of ideas-numbers, we see how poorly justifed such statements are like the claim that Platonic dialogues literally do not provide any information concerning this doctrine. (In this respect, Klein’s thorough and deep interpretation of the dialogue Sophist is completely new and provides startling evidence of the philosophical wealth of this dialogue).The theory of ideas numbers is precisely not a mathematical theory, but rather an ontological, philosophical interpretation of the possibility of something such as διάνοια [thinking]” (Patočka 1934, 232/307). 4 Gadamer reports in 1968 that “J. Klein in his investigations concerning ‘Greek Logistic and the Origin of Algebra’ (Gadamer 1985, 133/129) … had pointed my own research in new directions at the time I was with him in Marburg.” Gadamer identifes the source of these directions with “the thesis which I have been advocating for more than 30 years now … that from very early on in the dialogues there are references to what in a word might be called the arithmos structure of the logos,” and he maintains, “this idea was frst elaborated by J. Klein.” By the “arithmos structure of the logos” Gadamer understands the whole-part structure of number in the proper sense, whereby the unity of λόγος as a whole makes manifest an intelligibility that exceeds the multitude of words that compose its parts. 5 See Hopkins 2011.
References Becker, Oskar. 1934. “Die griechische Logistik und die Entstehung der Algebra.” Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Mathematik,Astronomie und Physik,Abteilung B: Studien, vol. 3, no. 1: pp. 533–553. De Santis, Daniele. 2019.“The Practical Reformer: On Husserl’s Socrates.” Husserl Studies (35): pp. 131–148. Hans-Georg, Gadamer. 1985. Gesammelte Werke. Band 6.Tübingen: J.C.B Mohr (Paul Siebeck). Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical Studies on Plato. Trans. P. C. Smith. New Haven/London:Yale University Press, 1980. Heidegger, Martin. 1979.Prologomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs. Frankfurt am Main:Vittorio Klostermann. History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena.Trans.T. Kisiel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. ———. 1992. Platon: Sophistes. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. Plato’s Sophist. Trans. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. Hopkins, Burt. 2011. The Origin of the Logic of Symbolic Mathematics. Edmund Husserl and Jacob Klein. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Husserl, Edmund. 2003. The Philosophy of Arithmetic.Trans. D.Willard. Dordrecht: Kluwer. ———. 2005Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory.Trans. J. Brough (Dordrecht: Springer
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Phenomenology and Greek philosophy Klein, Jacob. 1934–1936. “Die griechische Logistik und die Entstehung der Algebra.” Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Mathematik, Astronomie und Physik, Abteilung B: Studien, vol. 3, no. 1: pp. 18–105 (Part I); no. II: pp. 122–235 (Part II). Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra. Trans. E. Brann. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969. Reprint: New York: Dover, 1992. Majolino, Claudio. 2017.“The Infnite Academy.” The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, vol. XV: pp. 164–221. ———. 2018. “Husserl and the ‘Origins’ of Philosophy,” 49th Annual Meeting of the Husserl Circle, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Unpublished conference paper). Patočka, Jan. 1934. “Review of Jacob Klein, Die griechische Logistik und die Entstehung der Algebra I.” Ceská mysl, vol. 30: pp. 232–233. English translation by E. Manton: The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, 2006, vol. 6: p. 307.
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3 PHENOMENOLOGY AND MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY Francesco Valerio Tommasi
3.1. Phenomenology and Neo-Scholasticism The history of the relationship between Phenomenology and medieval philosophy is, for the most part, the history of the relationship between Phenomenology and Neo-Scholasticism. It was indeed Neo-Scholasticism that rediscovered medieval philosophy – and, to some extent, even created it as an object of the history of philosophy – in the 19th century (see MaierùImbach 1991). It is, therefore,“in”,“through”, and to some extent “against” Neo-Scholasticism that Phenomenology encounters medieval philosophy. To all initial appearances, however, enormous differences separate Phenomenology and Neo-Scholasticism, even though each of the two did come to count among the most impressive movements in philosophical thought in the 20th century. Phenomenology takes as its starting point a concern of a radically theoretical nature basically devoid of all historical points of reference; it asserts the need for a philosophical thinking without presuppositions and involves a rejection of all metaphysics. Neo-Scholasticism, by contrast, has a very precise privileged point of historical reference (namely medieval philosophical thinking, especially that of Thomas Aquinas); it is inspired above all by a religious-denominational allegiance (namely to Roman Catholicism); and it sets as its goal the re-establishment of a substantial and cogent metaphysics. It remains a fact, however, that many and diverse points of contact existed, and exist, between Phenomenology and Neo-Scholasticism which have so far been the object only of the most casual and occasional investigation by scholars and largely only with reference to fgures and aspects of the two schools of thought which possess a macroscopic relevance. One such under-considered aspect is the fact that, where Phenomenology took account of the achievements of medieval philosophy, this occurred principally through the former’s contact with Neo-Scholasticism. It is not by chance that Phenomenology’s relation to medieval philosophy is one which very often passes via Christian – and particularly Roman Catholic – theology. We fnd this, for example, in the “pre-history” of phenomenology in the work of Franz Brentano. But it is also to be found in the recent so-called “tournant théologique” of French Phenomenology; and also in the work of those principal fgures of Phenomenology in whose thinking medieval philosophy enjoys a degree of presence: from Max Scheler, through Martin Heidegger, to Edith Stein. 50
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Moreover, there is not to be found in Phenomenology – or at least there is to be found there only in a very marginal and secondary position and in a derivative form – any neutral interest in the history of philosophical thought. Phenomenology’s relationship with the history of philosophy is a relationship above all of the theoretical and speculative kind: that part alone of the past is studied that might possibly be of use in establishing philosophy “as a rigorous science”. The history of philosophy, that is to say, is not useful to the Phenomenologist as a topic in its own right.There goes to confrm this reading a particularly perspicuous testimony offered by a student and eventual academic assistant of Husserl, the founder of the Phenomenological school, namely, Edith Stein:“Husserl was not much interested in [confronting and comparing his work with that of other authors]. He was too taken up with his own thoughts to be able to devote his energies to probing into other eras […]. He used to say, laughing:‘I educate my students to become systematic philosophers and then I’m surprised when they don’t want to write works on the history of philosophy’” (Stein 2002, 219). But, looked at a little more closely, this is an orientation which partly characterizes NeoScholasticism as well, since this latter looks to the medieval past as a supposed “Golden Age”, the theoretical cogency of which is energetically deployed against the crises and the alleged directionlessness of modernity. It is on this level, then, that we might examine the possibility of a frst point of contact between the two movements. A second point of encounter, which has led in turn to at least a potential dialogue between these two currents of thought, can be frmly identifed in the approach to basic philosophical questions that is introduced by Husserl in his Logische Untersuchungen. In this work, in fact, Husserl argues for a philosophical stance that can be understood – and was in fact understood by his frst disciples – as a “realist” one in the epistemological sense of this term. Husserl propounds in this early work a vigorous critique of all psychologism and many of his students and followers have considered the more “idealist” approach displayed in Husserl’s work from the Ideen on to be a “turn” that ought not to have occurred. For Neo-Scholasticism it was precisely psychologism – and “subjectivism” in general – that represented one of the principal errors committed by modern thought as a whole, beginning with Descartes and followed by Kant. Neo-Scholasticism, therefore, advocated a return to the metaphysical realism that had characterized the medieval era. This said, however, it must be noted that some of the frst foundations of the Phenomenological project had been laid by an approach which – at least in a general sense – might be defned as “psychologistic”: namely, in the work of that thinker who inspired Husserl more than any other, Franz Brentano.
3.2. Franz Brentano It is well known that Brentano was one of the main sources of Husserl’s thinking. Having undergone a philosophical training and formation very much within the context of that rediscovery of medieval thought which stands at the origin of Neo-Scholasticism, it was highly characteristic of Brentano that he should have gone on to author a treatise which was to play a fundamental role in this latter movement’s reappraisal and renewal of metaphysics – namely, Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles (1862) – at the very same time as he was developing that theory of intentionality which was to become so decisive for Phenomenology (see Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, 1874). In the former of these two works Brentano undertakes an analysis of that subdivision of “being” into four fundamental modes which is famously developed in Aristotle’s Metaphysics: namely, 1) accidental being (ὂν κατὰ συμβεβηκός) and being in itself (ὂν καθ’ αύτό), 2) being as true (ἀληθές) or false (ψεῦδος), 3) being as potentiality (δυνάμει) and actuality (ἐνεργεία), 51
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4) the being of the categories (τὰ σχήματα τῆς κατηγορίας). Brentano addresses his efforts to analysing whether it is possible to make out a more fundamental and original sense of being and to distinguish this sense in terms of the Aristotelian categories. The categories, in their turn, are traced back by Brentano to the most fundamental of all categories, which is substance (οὐσία). Brentano’s discussion here, and the position that he arrives at, re-open, in the modern era, a question that had been lengthily discussed in that medieval era when philosophy had been dominated by Scholasticism: namely, the question – perhaps the fundamental question of medieval thought – of the analogia entis. The Aristotelian project of constructing a science of beings qua beings is based on a delicate equilibrium between mutually opposed requirements: that, on the one hand, of escaping the conception of being as something of a single type or mode, preserving the irreducible multiplicity of this latter notion’s meanings; but at the same time, on the other hand, maintaining that continuity and univocity of sense that is a necessary presupposition of any discourse which claims to be scientifc. In order for a syllogism to be valid, one and the same term must be assumed to be being used in one and the same sense – i.e. with the same defnition – in both of the syllogism’s premises. But to claim that being is something that can be predicated of a thing entirely univocally tends indeed to make of being something of a single type or mode and to lead to ontological monism. To contend, moreover, that the predicates that apply to created things can be legitimately stated to hold true also of God Himself tends to deny all transcendence. The question of “the several senses of being”, then, has a direct theological implication. The analogia entis, or “analogy of being”, was the fragile architrave around which there came to be constructed the various edifces that attempted to establish metaphysics as the science of being: the characteristic common to these two intellectual enterprises consisted in the aspiration to maintain both that constancy and univocity of meaning that is necessary to the construction of syllogisms (and thus of science in general) and, at the same time, a recognition of the real diversity of the beings that make up the universe. In a similar way the attempt was made to establish theology as a science: one might indeed legitimately predicate something of God, while maintaining nonetheless – according to the dogmatic defnition laid down by the fourth Lateran Council – that the imperfection of any such predication must always be of a greater order than its perfection.The question was eventually to be passed down to 20th-century Phenomenology and Martin Heidegger was to state:“[The] frst philosophical writing through which I worked again and again from 1907 on was Franz Brentano’s dissertation: Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles” (Heidegger 1962, xi. Brentano was, for Heidegger,“[his] frst guide through the philosophy of the Greeks during the years at secondary school” (Heidegger 1959, 93). In 1874, however, as we have also noted, Franz Brentano published his Psychology from an Empirical Viewpoint. Here, Brentano takes issue with the approach founded on mathematics that was preponderant among the psychologists of his day and which derived principally from a rapprochement of the psychological with the physical. Psychology, at this time, was looked on as a kind of physiology of the human mind. Brentano pushed for a shift in philosophers’ attention away from that which was contained in consciousness toward the acts of this consciousness: that is to say, toward the mode in which consciousness referred to that which it contained.The operation of distinguishing the observation of the individual acts of consciousness from the passive registration of the content(s) of this consciousness is defned by Brentano as “internal perception”. Psychical phenomena differ from physical or physiological ones in being always directed to a content immanent to them: this peculiar quality of the psychical was, famously, defned by Brentano using the term “intentionality” and was, needless to say, to exert a decisive infuence on Edmund Husserl. But this apparent invention of intentionality on the part of Brentano seems, 52
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in fact, rather to have been a discovery – one which was perhaps infuenced also by his studies in the thought and philosophy of the Middle Ages (see Perler 2004). Beyond and aside, then, from the possible direct medieval infuence on the origin of this theory and on the use of the term “intentionality”, it seems certain that the reaction against the reduction of psychology to a sub-sphere of physiology treatable entirely by the mathematical method was infuenced by an approach which derived from Brentano’s broader vision of the world.
3.3. Max Scheler The anti-psychologistic arguments of the Logische Untersuchungen clearly represent an especially signifcant point of contact between Husserl’s early Phenomenology and Neo-Scholasticism. The programmatic formula: “back to the things themselves” and, more generally, the method of research based on the description of the essences intended in cognitive acts initiated a philosophical current that took precisely a certain realism as its fundamental theoretical motif and found expression above all in the work of the so-called “Göttinger Circle” among Husserl’s students and disciples: i.e. in the writings of such thinkers as Adolf Reinach, Hedwig ConradMartius, Alexander Pfänder,Theodor Haering and Dietrich von Hildebrand. Not a few among these philosophers who devoted their efforts to exploring and expanding this frst form of Phenomenology – which was not yet of a “transcendental” character – were to develop a phenomenology of religion wherein investigative attention was directed specifcally to the peculiar eidetic structure of religious experience and of its correspondent noema. This was certainly true, frst and foremost, of Max Scheler. We may say, then, that the original form of Phenomenology is characterized by a strong interest in religious questions. Although we do see in various individual cases a rapprochement with the Roman Catholic church, it is by no means always the case that these early Phenomenologists, even where they address themselves to religious questions, refer directly to medieval or Scholastic thought, since it is also a key concern of theirs to maintain the autonomy of the Phenomenological method. This fact not only provides a general point of reference by which to compare and contrast Phenomenology and Neo-Scholasticism; it also clearly brings out what is perhaps one of the most fundamental dichotomies that need to be taken into account in any analysis of the relation between the two currents of thought: if, on the one hand, the common aspiration toward understanding consciousness in terms of a certain philosophical realism opens up remarkable possibilities of rapprochement between these two schools of philosophy, a no less remarkable line of division is drawn between them by that anti-metaphysical tendency that is inherent in Phenomenology’s emphasis on precisely the “phenomenal” aspect of its method (a tendency which, not by chance, was later to lead Phenomenology to develop in a “transcendental” direction). Surely paradigmatic in this regard is Max Scheler’s book Liebe und Erkenntnis (1915). According to Scheler, in Christianity, the human state of being is the object of a love that precedes all theory, all knowledge and therefore all philosophy.The Christian lives in this love and embraces it.The spiritual revolution that Christianity represented was not, Scheler argues, followed by a theoretical elaboration truly adequate to this revolution; Greek philosophical thought immediately advened to contaminate the intuition forming the Christian message. It is only with Augustine that a frst attempt is made to give adequate expression to the utter novelty and the complete existential upheaval that the Christian experience had brought into the world.Thomas Aquinas, however, signifes for Scheler a regression into intellectualism: although he distinguishes between the vis appetitiva and the vis intellectiva, he maintains that knowledge precedes will. 53
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In the essay Ordo Amoris, published posthumously, Scheler develops these refections further, emphasizing the importance of the emotions in the process of cognition. The axiological signifcance attributed by Scheler to the ordo amoris makes it possible to found a material value-ethics upon an objective order conforming with the subjective order of human affectivity. Scheler’s descriptions of love here were clearly a source of inspiration for other thinkers of Phenomenological orientation, some of whom, as we have noted, eventually drew close to Christian theology, such as, for example, Dietrich von Hildebrand. Furthermore, in the famous text Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos (1928) Scheler seeks to develop a new metaphysics and, in particular, a “metaphysics of the human”.The perspective outlined here, however, is neither a Scholastic nor an ontological one but rather one of a general opening to transcendence counterposed to the immanentism typical of the natural sciences. In particular, Scheler attempts to identify what specifcally differentiates human being from the being of other animals by reference to such essential human characteristics as love, will, freedom and the openness to the Absolute. In the essay Vom ewigen im Menschen (1921), Scheler explicitly describes Phenomenology as an approach capable of freeing the essential core of Augustine’s Christianity from those Greek ontological categories and Scholastic categories that had accreted around it. Scheler describes the various possible relationships that have been proposed, throughout the history of thought, as existing between religion and philosophy, and distinguishes systems of identity (be it total or partial) from dualistic systems recognizing the two to be diverse things. Thomas Aquinas is described by Scheler as an advocate of a partial identity between the two. And indeed, we do fnd in Thomas Aquinas a partial identifcation of the object of religion with the object of metaphysics or natural theology.Through philosophical reason, contends Thomas, Man can arrive at a certain knowledge of God’s existence on which it is possible to found a “natural religion”; he cannot, however, ever know the intimate essence of God except through His revelation in Christ. In Scheler’s view, both the systems advocating an identity of philosophy with religion and those advocating an absolute difference between the two are insuffcient. Philosophy and religion must be autonomous from one another but can communicate; Scheler advocates, therefore, the system that suggests a conformity without identity. A signifcant infuence on this, Scheler’s reading of the matter appears to have been exerted also by the thought of Erich Pryzwara, the frst exponent of Neo-Scholasticism to enter into a profound and important dialogue with Phenomenology.
3.4. Edith Stein Erich Przywara also undoubtedly exerted a decisive infuence on the philosophy of Edith Stein, Husserl’s frst academic Assistentin in Freiburg, who followed a path that was entirely her own, leading from Phenomenology to Neo-Scholasticism, making the explicit attempt thereby to bring Thomas Aquinas and Husserl into relation with one another. Stein, who had attended Max Scheler’s lectures during her years as a student in Freiburg and had also entered into contact with Adolf Reinach, Hedwig Conrad-Martius and Dietrich von Hildebrand (all thinkers who embraced a Christian perspective) converted to Roman Catholicism and decided to undergo baptism in 1922 following her reading of the works of Teresa of Avila. After her conversion she entered into contact with Erich Przywara, who urged her to engage also with the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Stein decided to begin this engagement at the point where Phenomenology and Thomism are usually perceived to stand at the farthest distance from one another: namely, in the sphere of epistemology, or the theory of knowledge. For this reason Stein set about translating the 54
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Quaestiones disputatatae de veritate. Initially, indeed, this engagement was a diffcult and laborious one for Stein. She had great diffculty in grasping the structure, the form and the method of medieval Scholastic thought. That this frst encounter with the thought of Thomas Aquinas was an extremely irritating experience for this philosopher whose own thought had become so closely entwined with the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl is testifed to by the remarks with which she prefaces, in the manuscript of her translation, her own rendering of the frst Quaestio. It is worth citing the passage in its entirety because it is highly indicative of the enormous distance that had opened up between Phenomenological thought and medieval philosophy (and this, indeed, precisely in the work of a thinker whose thought was later to mark the point of the two currents’ greatest proximity to one another!): If one approaches it from the direction of modern epistemology it is extraordinarily diffcult to arrive even at a simple understanding, let alone at a full critical appreciation, of the epistemology propounded by Saint Thomas. Those questions which occupy for the modern epistemologist an absolutely central position – such as the Phenomenologist’s “what is knowledge, essentially?” or the Kantian’s “How is knowledge possible?” – are not, by Thomas, posed ex professo at all; one must laboriously seek out an answer to them – assuming that it is possible to answer them at all – from various remarks scattered throughout Thomas’s writings. On the other hand, questions are addressed in these writings which lie entirely outside of the horizon of the modern philosopher and appear, at frst glance, to be inconsequential […]. But I believe that one cannot rest content with such conclusions. Even if just kernels of truth are to be found here respectively on one side and the other, there must also be a bridge between these two sides. Certainly, we must follow Saint Thomas down the paths which he himself took if we are to acquire from his work something that relates to our problems. But this goal of gaining something that can indeed be applied to our present-day problems is one that we must never lose sight of.We must endeavour to discover whether, in what we fnd in Saint Thomas, there is also to be found an answer specifcally to our questions – or, if not that, then a basis for rejecting the very manner in which, in modernity, these questions have been posed.Thus, it is imperative that we examine the Quaestiones from beginning to end in terms of the guiding theme:“What is knowledge?” (Stein 2008, XI) In any case, Stein did succeed in drawing progressively intellectually closer to Aquinas and to Scholasticism and in assimilating the forma mentis of medieval thought. She undertook many other translations of Aquinas and contributed greatly to enriching the studies carried out by Neo-Scholasticism. Edith Stein’s researches into Scholasticism culminate in the lengthy 1931 draft of Potenz und Akt. It was this manuscript that she submitted, unsuccessfully, in the same year in Freiburg, as her qualifcation for a professorial position (Habilitierung) but it also went on to form the basis and point of departure for Endliches und ewiges Sein, the systematic magnum opus of this period of her thought. Very informative as regards the encounter between the two philosophical worlds is an essay that Stein submitted for a 1929 Festschrift dedicated to Husserl (Husserls Phänomenologie und die Philosophie des hl. Thomas von Aquino. Versuch einer Gegenüberstellung). A frst version of this essay, written in the form of a dialogue between the two philosophers, has been preserved but was rejected by the Festschrift’s editor, Martin Heidegger. Heidegger insisted that the piece be 55
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reworked into the traditional essay form. But quite aside from the charming “framing narrative” that she gave to the original version – Thomas Aquinas, in his Dominican habit, pays a visit to the Professor emeritus Husserl in his study – both texts treat in much the same way the six topics that counted, for Edith Stein, as decisive areas of encounter and confrontation between the two “philosophical worlds”, namely: 1. Philosophy as rigorous science; 2. Natural and supernatural reason; faith and knowledge; 3. Critical and dogmatic philosophy; 4.Theocentric and egocentric philosophy; 5. Ontology and metaphysics, empirical and eidetic method; 6.The question of “intuition” – the Phenomenological and the Scholastic method. The form of presentation of the argument here refects the thorough reading of Aquinas which had underlain Stein’s work as his translator. At the same time, we recognize the basic outlines of Stein’s own interpretation of Aquinas, the specifc character and content of which is owed, to a signifcant extent, to the comparison and confrontation with Phenomenology, which is always implicitly present in Stein’s mind. This shows forth especially in the emphasis placed on epistemological problems and on problems of phenomenological constitution, as well as on methodological questions. Likewise highly characteristic of Edith Stein’s interpretation of Aquinas’s work is the way in which this latter is read by her in strictly and consistently philosophical terms. For Stein, the necessity of reading Aquinas’s work in this way is never in doubt. Quite rightly, she emphasizes the fact that for Aquinas, no less than for Husserl, philosophy needed to be a “rigorous science”: a demand going hand in hand with the claim that it is possible to develop a philosophical worldview purely out of the resources of natural reason alone. Quite correctly, she stresses the fact that, in Aquinas, faith somehow refers to rational knowledge, which can refect on and about these acts of faith as it can about all other possible acts.The extremely nuanced treatment given to the theme of abstract and intuitive knowledge reveals the epistemological interest that had also been clearly evident in her elucidations of the epistemology-related Quaestiones in her De veritate translation.As regards, however, the questions of the substantial and formal dependence of philosophy on faith and of the necessarily theocentric foundation also of the former, she broadens the notion of a specifcally and peculiarly philosophical knowledge-claim in such a way that the thought of Aquinas himself would have thereby to be assigned not to the properly philosophical realm but rather to the theological. What Edith Stein is primarily concerned to do, however, is to sketch a general outline of Aquinas’s philosophy vis-à-vis that of Husserl, so as to be better able to bring out the differences between the two. Edith Stein maintained an original and personal approach even in her summaries and syntheses of broad bodies of thought.This is the case, for example, of Potenz und Akt, which represents an original Phenomenological re-reading of the essential categories of Thomism in the sense of a dynamic ontology, inspired by teleology and by the metaphysics of Hedwig ConradMartius. It is also the case of Endliches und ewiges Sein, which displays clear traces of her contact with Étienne Gilson and, above all, with Jacques Maritain at the conferences held in Juvisy by the Societé Thomiste on the topic of Phenomenology. The orientation that Stein gave to her thought was that of a Christian philosophy in a strong sense of both these terms: i.e. a thought in which philosophy and theology are not at all separable from one another and need both to make their contribution to the search for truth. Stein’s magnum opus opens with an intellectual exercise strongly recalling a key theme of Augustine’s: namely, that of the search for the existence of God in what we experience of the depths of our own human soul – and in particular in our inward consciousness of time in its phenomenological process of appearing. It then proceeds to an “ascent to the meaning of being”, before fnally concluding with a re-descent back into the realm of the created world, read as a model and image of the divine Trinity. In these writings, then, a Thomistic metaphysics and a certain “exemplarism” of Franciscan inspiration and tradi56
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tion are maintained side by side.There are even to be noted – for example as regards the principio individuationis – certain infuences of Scotist origin. Stein’s knowledge of medieval thought has clearly, by this point, grown and matured to an impressive extent and was later to deepen and enrich itself still further through an engagement with mystical theology and with the negative theology of Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagiticus.
3.5. Martin Heidegger A trajectory which might be seen as, in a sense, the “reverse” of that taken by Edith Stein was followed by Martin Heidegger, whose path of development took him from an initial intellectual formation in medieval and Scholastic studies to a thinking situated within the framework of Phenomenology. It is well known that the thesis which Heidegger submitted for his own Habilitierung was a work on Die Kategorien und Bedeutungslehre des Duns Scotus (1916), although it was later discovered that the text that Heidegger addressed himself to here, and that he took for the work of Duns Scotus, was actually authored by Thomas of Erfurt) and also that his work depended in some degree on the thought of Roman Catholic theologians like Carl Braig. Heidegger uses as an epigraph for the concluding section of this Habilitierung essay a quotation from Novalis that reads: “Everywhere we seek the Unconditioned (Das Unbedingte) but always fnd only things (Dinge)”. Clearly, a theme like this can be considered as paradigmatic for Heidegger’s later thought: a search for “Being” that, starting out from a fnite perspective, inevitably fnds always only fnite “beings”. But this theme also clearly recalls the problem addressed by Brentano of the multiple senses of being.The theme of “the categories” is plainly the theme of how the single and absolute sense of “being” tends to dissolve into multiplicity in reality; and of how it is possible to hold these now-multiple meanings of “being” together into a kind of unity after all.We are dealing here, on closer examination, with the medieval and Scholastic theme of the analogia entis, which can thus be seen as the original path or groove of thought upon which Heidegger’s speculations elaborated and built. The young Martin Heidegger was intellectually formed and moulded by a cultural context of Neo-Scholastic type and his later insistence on “the question of Being” and on ontology most likely have their deepest roots here. There has, in fact, often been noted the relationship existing between Heidegger’s thought and Roman Catholicism as well as with Christian theology as a whole. It is not by chance that the young Heidegger, at the time when he was just approaching a Phenomenological position, was also interested in certain religious themes and that, indeed, his frst courses in Freiburg were devoted to just such themes. Heidegger sought to develop a phenomenology of the religious life of the very earliest Christian congregations, something he believed could be achieved through an analysis of the Pauline corpus. He also, however, came to pay special attention to Christian mysticism, above all in the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux, Meister Eckhart and Luther. Heidegger appears, then, to adopt, very early on, an “intimistic” and mystical line in these matters and to reject the Scholastic tradition. Also for Heidegger, then, as already for Scheler, it is Augustine’s thought that seems to constitute an important point of reference in the elaboration of a relation to theology and religion that no longer depends upon the ontological categories of Scholasticism. In particular, the infuence of Eckhart on Heidegger appears to be very relevant here, both as regards the description of the experience of fear as a “limit experience” and as regards the fundamental tendency toward a transcending of merely representational thinking. Eckhart’s distinction, too, between God and “the divine” may have exerted an infuence on Heidegger’s critique of ontotheology. But the example of Luther too seems to have played an important role in the 57
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thought of the young Heidegger inasmuch as Luther’s writing is paradigmatic of the hermeneutics of facticity. In Heidegger’s later work, however, Luther features only as just another element in the story of occidental metaphysics’ decline into a “forgetfulness of Being”. In Heidegger’s lectures on the Grundprobleme der Phaenomenologie (1927), medieval thought was to be treated as just one of the four theses proposed regarding Being in the history of philosophy: in particular, so Heidegger claimed, what characterized this thesis was the division between essence and existence and the dichotomy between the being of the Creator and that of created beings. Nonetheless, Heidegger was to devote a specifc lecture course to the history of philosophy von Thomas von Aquin bis Kant (1926/27) and in many of his writings he was to pay special attention to the Middle Ages and to the so-called “Second Scholasticism” (to Scotism, for example, or to the role played by the thought of Suárez in the formation of the modern concept of ontology and of general metaphysics as science of the ens inquantum ens). Heidegger’s fundamental theses regarding the Middle Ages – although their evaluation of this epoch is a substantially negative one – tend to oscillate around the notion that Scholasticism and medieval thought in general did not bring any really relevant alteration to those understandings of Being, truth and metaphysics that dated back to the age of Plato and Aristotle, merely adding to these the notion of God conceived of as the Supreme Being.The technical philosophical terminology of the Latin-speaking Middle Ages seemed, in its turn, to Heidegger to be merely a kind of vulgarization of the philosophical vocabulary of the Greeks. Regarding the question of truth, as has often been noted, Heidegger took progressively greater and greater distance from the Thomist understanding of this notion, following a line which – even if, in the early phases of the German thinker’s thought, it prompted him to share the theory whereby the intellect (and thus Man in general) represents the principal locus of truth – led him, later, to place more and more sharply in opposition to one another “veritas”, considered as adaequatio and objectivization, and “alétheia”, the Greek notion of truth on which Heidegger built a theory of “unveiling” or “unforgetting” (see Esposito-Porro 2001). It is noteworthy, then, above all how Heidegger’s mature thought was to play a decisive role in prompting a thorough crisis of Neo-Scholastic thought, despite a series of authors – beginning with Karl Rahner – having sought to synthesize with one another the Thomist and the Heideggerian perspectives. In particular, it was Heidegger’s critique of so-called “ontotheology” – i.e. thought founded on the nexus between God and Being – that dealt a very heavy blow to the Neo-Thomist model.The Scholastic metaphysical tradition had, in fact, postulated “being” as a primary term – inasmuch it was the most general conceivable term, applicable to all that exists – while at the same time also referring to “God” as just such a primary term, inasmuch as God must be conceived of as eminent over all beings: it was the ambition of Scholastic metaphysics to frmly maintain both the identity of these two orders with one another (God is the being par excellence, and indeed, in a sense, the only entity really worthy to bear this denomination “being”) and, at the same time, their difference (the distance between the Creator and His creatures is unbridgeable; were it not, one would inevitably lapse into monism or pantheism) (see Vv.Aa. 1995). It can immediately be seen how – underneath the specifc terms “being” and “God” that are used here – this discourse on “ontotheology” strongly evokes that on the analogia entis. In this model, too, a fragile architrave must support a massive and ponderous structure: it is asserted that there exists a continuity and a communication between the immanent order of the world and divine transcendence, but at the same time it is claimed that there is also an unbridgeable separation and distance between the two.This, it might be argued, is to claim both too much and too little. And Heidegger, with his critique of the ontotheological constitution of metaphysics, does indeed deal a decisive blow to this model, thus throwing Neo-Scholasticism defnitively into crisis. 58
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3.6. The rapprochement between Neo-Scholasticism and Phenomenology Neo-Scholasticism, on the other hand, only very slowly discovers an interest in Phenomenology. Although, as we have noted, there is to be observed already in the course of the 19th century a blossoming of studies contributing to the rediscovery of the legacy of the medieval and Scholastic tradition, this movement really begins to gain impetus only with the promulgation of the papal encyclical Aeterni Patris in 1879. Early Neo-Scholasticism was sometimes characterized by an “ideological” attitude: that is to say, by (in many respects) a closed-off attitude to, and even an outright rejection, of modernity.Very rare, at frst, were speculatively original attempts at entering into a real encounter with other intellectual currents. Among the few exceptions here were Joseph Maréchal, who set about looking for a starting point that Neo-Scholasticism might share with those thinkers who adopted a transcendental stance of the Kantian type (see Le point de départ de la métaphysique: leçons sur le développement historique et théorique de la connaissance, 1922–6) and Erich Przywara, who believed there could be made out in the question of the “analogy of being” a metaphysical principle that might unite the modern transcendentalist approach and the Scholastic one, an hypothesis in the course of the investigation of which he entered explicitly into dialogue also with Phenomenology (see Analogia entis. Metaphysik, 1932). It is only in the 1920s and 1930s that we see a change of direction in Neo-Scholasticism in which these bolder attempts acquire a greater weight within the movement and there can be seen to develop a marked interest among Neo-Scholastics also, and indeed precisely, in Phenomenology.Testimony to this are the early works of Sofa Vanni Rovighi, a pioneer of the reception of Phenomenology within the Italian Neo-Scholastic milieu (see La flosofa di Edmund Husserl, 1939), initiatives like that of the Société Thomiste, which chose precisely Phenomenology as the theme for its frst Journée d’études in Juvisy in 1932 (see La phénoménologie. Journée d’études de la Societé thomiste, 1932). This encounter, in which various prominent fgures of the NeoScholasticism of the day participated – including Jacques Maritain, Daniel Feuling, Gottlieb Söhngen, Marie-Dominique Roland-Gosselin and also Edith Stein – is highly representative. The report on the proceedings of the journée reveals both the great interest in Phenomenology that had developed among Neo-Scholastics and their caution regarding contact and rapprochement with the younger movement. The usefulness of Phenomenology for Thomism is perceived to lie rather in the new movement’s methodology than in the concrete results to which Phenomenological analysis had hitherto led. Around the same time, various developments occur that are decisive for any consideration of the relations between Neo-Scholasticism and Phenomenology. One of these is the incipient separation between, on the one hand, the systematic approach to the thought of Thomas Aquinas and, on the other, the historical-philological approach to medieval thought generally. Although these approaches were initially present side by side in many authors of the period, they were, in the course of time, to prove more and more diffcult to reconcile with one another. While historical research into medieval thought has developed into a fourishing branch of studies that manages now to do without the ideological and speculative inspiration that characterized, at least in part, Neo-Scholasticism in its early stages, the purely theoretical approach to the works of Aquinas seems to be at home now either, on the one hand, in intellectual milieus characterized by a traditionalist allegiance to certain specifc religious denominations or, on the other, in the circles of so-called analytical philosophy. Both these latter cases are instances of milieus whose approach is tendentially ahistorical. This dichotomy begins to emerge in the 1920s and 1930s. On the one hand, the debate regarding just how the theoretical value of Aquinas’s philosophy is to be interpreted enters a 59
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new and decisive phase; we see a transition from a predominance of the view that Aquinas’s understanding of “being” was basically identical with that propounded by Aristotle to an evergreater emphasis on the originality of Aquinas’s doctrine of the actus essendi. Whereas fgures such as Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Francesco Olgiati, Antonin-Gilbert Sertillanges, Gallus Manser, Joseph Gredt and Aimé Forest continue to defend the former thesis, the latter thesis, to the effect that Aquinas’s doctrine of the actus essendi – according to which “being” constitutes the highest perfection and consummation, the act which realizes essence – was a philosophically innovative one, is defended above all by Étienne Gilson (with his thesis of a “metaphysics of Exodus”), Jacques Maritain and Cornelio Fabro. Likewise belonging to this latter current are Joseph de Finance, Louis-Bertrand Geiger, Louis De Raeymaeker and the more speculative writings of Gustav Siewerth, Heinrich Beck and Bernhard Lakebrink. There also arose in this period a whole series of institutions, research centres and collections of publications that were to contribute signifcantly to forming and shaping the study of the history of medieval philosophy: the Albertus-Magnus-Institut in Bonn, the Pontifcal Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto, the Mediaeval Academy of America with its journal Speculum; then the Commissio Scotistica, the critical editions of Eckhart and of Nicholas of Cusa, the Bibliothèque Thomiste and the Bulletin Thomiste published by the Dominicans of Le Saulchoir, the Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge and the Études de philosophie médiévale published under the editorship of Étienne Gilson. Building on that concern for intellectual rigour that had characterized it from the start, Neo-Scholasticism developed, with time, in such centres as these a predominantly historical-philological manner of approaching its object of study. Finally, in the 1920s and 1930s, the thought of Martin Heidegger acquired a role of the frst rank. Heidegger’s recreation of Phenomenology in terms of his own project of ontology appeared, from the perspective of Neo-Scholasticism, to be a project of decidedly ambiguous value and beneft. On the one hand it seemed to open up unexpected perspectives for a thought that had always aspired to place the question of the validity of the “question of being” once again on the philosophical agenda without becoming entangled in the “transcendental question” in the sense in which it had been raised by Kant (i.e. the need to pose, before any question of knowledge, that of the conditions of possibility of knowledge). On the other hand, this new Heideggerian philosophy of Being decidedly rejected the possibility of addressing the “question of being” using the concepts of classical (and thus also of Scholastic) metaphysics. The interaction of these various tendencies with one another produces different effects. The relationship between Neo-Scholasticism and Phenomenology, which was, as we have said, just beginning to come to maturity in this period, becomes, as it were, twisted into an almost exclusive relationship between Neo-Scholasticism and the thought of Heidegger, with the original Husserlian inspiration being left out of account. A large number of authors aligned with the Neo-Scholastic current now, directly or indirectly infuenced by Heidegger, set about achieving some form of reconciliation between Aquinas’s understanding of being as actus essendi (this latter interpreted after the manner of Gilson and of other Neo-Thomists of this period) and the “ontology” of Heidegger. These include Karl Rahner, Emmerich Coreth, Bernhard Welte, Theodor Steinbüchel, Bernhard Lakebrink, Gustav Siewerth, Max Müller and Johann Baptist Lotz. The possible forms of thought opened up by this infuence are highly various and original. This group of authors, admittedly, who played an important role in Roman Catholic thought in the years around the time of Vatican II, were mostly soon forgotten. Not only did the historical-philological approach – represented above all by Cornelia de Vogel, Werner Beierwaltes, Klaus Kremer and Pierre Hadot – bring to light, in the next generation of scholarship, the degree to which Aquinas’s understanding of being had already been that of the Neo-Platonists (particularly of Porphyry, Proclus, the Pseudo60
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Dionysius and the Liber de causis), so that it was no longer possible to ascribe this understanding to him as entirely original. Heidegger’s own critique of Scholasticism’s understanding of metaphysics also became much harsher in these years, culminating in his famous critique of the ontotheological constitution of metaphysics (see Heidegger 1957, 51–79).The thesis that Heidegger advances in this essay represents a watershed in respect of relations between NeoScholasticism and a Phenomenology to which Heidegger had given an “ontological” (in all the various senses that can be ascribed here to the term “ontology”) twist.
3.7. The “tournant théologique” of French Phenomenology and Jean-Luc Marion The following generation of authors, then, appear to renounce from the very start the aspiration to reconcile Aquinas’s understanding of being with Heidegger’s and to probe even more deeply the question of how far categories like “ontotheology” can lay claim to historical validity. Highly signifcant in this sense are the writings of François Courtine and Olivier Boulnois. Those writers, on the other hand, who choose to inherit and take over this earlier problematic attempt to think it through in a manner that goes beyond both Aquinas and Heidegger: Marco Maria Olivetti runs through the “analogical” question in a manner which conceives of it as an “analogy of the subject” (see Analogia del soggetto, 1992), Bernhard Casper attempts to develop a philosophical-religious thinking that draws on the Neues Denken of Franz Rosenzweig and on the philosophy of Levinas (Casper 1981), and Jean-Luc Marion makes an explicit attempt to conceive of “God without being” (see Marion 1982) It has been, above all, this form of thought developed by Jean-Luc Marion that has proven highly controversial and given rise to passionate debates and discussions. Marion, together with Levinas, Ricoeur and Henry, is assigned the role of the “accused” in Dominique Janicaud’s polemical critique of a supposed “theological turn” in recent Phenomenology (Janicaud 1991) – an accusation, however, that only goes to confrm the importance and the interest of Marion’s work in contemporary philosophical debate.Already in L’idole et la distance. Cinque études (Marion 1977) Heidegger’s ontotheological critique – and thus that whole tradition that is conceived of by Heidegger as running from Hölderlin through Nietzsche – is used to develop an approach whereby the “theological question”, in its narrower sense, can be rethought.“The death of God” means, for Marion, rather the death of that idolatrous idea of God formed by the metaphysical tradition.The true biblical God, he argues, reveals Himself rather through a withdrawing and a distance, as a father does.This is why God can, and indeed must, be thought of without recourse to the concept of being; God reveals Himself hereby, however, as not “one” God; this is the dual meaning expressed by the title Dieu sans l’être. For Marion, it is rather only through the idea of love that the theological question can be once again taken up at all. Love, however, is also proposed by him as a philosophical theme in its own right and he explores love’s phenomenology even beyond its theological background (see Prolégomènes à la charité, 1986 and Le phénomène érotique, 2003). In this sphere, what above all characterizes and distinguishes Marion’s project is that he attempts to conceive of a singular, univocal notion of love, one which transcends and replaces the multiple and connotatively distinct forms (caritas, agape, eros) in which the tradition has attempted to think this concept. Marion does not, however, deny the dialectic of these forms but rather describes it in great detail. For Marion, the logic of love is incomprehensible; but this is not to say that it does not exist. It is simply that this logic is not the logic of the world and not the logic that the philosophical tradition, and metaphysics, have tried to think. His very recent work on Augustine (Marion 2008) confrms this theoretical line with a reading of the work of the great Church Father. If the “I” is there, where it loves, then this locus of love becomes, 61
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for the “I”, something more intimate than the “I” itself. This, on Marion’s interpretation, is the key theme of Augustine.The book can also be read as a Phenomenological reading of the Confessions. For Augustine, God is not an object of discussion but the locus itself of the discussion; he speaks always to God, never about Him, so that, even if our present epoch is just in the course of withdrawing from metaphysical discourse, Augustine, for his part, had never entered into it; this is why he can be so contemporary. A confessio is a discourse received through love, which is given back, likewise through love, to the confessing subject.That is to say, the dialectic of giving and of love is here rediscovered.This work thus constitutes a masterful synthesis of the three lines of research followed by Marcion: the philosophical-historical, the Phenomenological and the theological. To what extent is Marion – and to what extent are Casper and Olivetti – authors who can still be considered Neo-Scholastics? And to what extent are they Phenomenologists? The speculative scope and breadth of these attempts, and the long periods of time comprised by both the currents that these writers have behind them, certainly make it diffcult to classify them in terms of these categories.The aspect of the Neo-Scholastic tradition, in particular, appears to be less vital in these writers. Precisely, however, because they are freed of the burden of “defending” the speculative validity of Scholastic thinking, there is often to be observed in these authors a reference to and reliance on this thinking as something that continues to be an effervescent source of inspiration. Phenomenology, then, to which they tend to make more direct and explicit reference, is really used here as a means by which to draw out into the light a, as it were,“hidden” meaning to be found in the texts and in the thought of the Scholastic tradition. Certain recent efforts of Emmanuel Falque move in this direction, inasmuch as he exercises himself in the practice of reading also Scholastic motifs in a Phenomenological manner (see Falque 2008). Likewise, the overcoming of the tendency to accord a privileged attention to the work of Heidegger allows a rediscovery of, and a throwing of new light on, the entire heritage of Phenomenology, including its Husserlian origins. Once again it is Marion who, with his “Phenomenology of giving”, seeks a synthesis of the approaches of both thinkers (see Marion 1989). Thus if, on the one hand, Phenomenology was accused, already in the era of its frst emergence, of being an attempt to found a “new Scholasticism” and has undergone, in more recent years, what has been polemically described as a “theological turn”, (Neo-)Scholasticism itself, on the other hand, has undergone – and this above all in respect of that which remains most alive and vital in it of its speculative side – what we might, in parallel to the younger movement’s “theological turn”, call a “Phenomenological turn”.
References Vv.Aa. 1932.“La Phénoménologie. Juvisy 12 septembre 1932,” in Journées d’études de la Société Thomiste,Vol. I, Kain-Juvisy: La Saulchoir-Cerf. Vv.Aa. 1995.“Saint Thomas et l’onto-théologie.Actes du colloque tenu à l’Institut catholique de Toulouse les 3 et 4 juin 1994.” Revue Thomiste, XCV. Brentano, Franz. 1862. Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles. Freiburg i.B: Herder. ———. 1874. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. Casper, Bernhard. 1981. Gott Nennen. Phänomenologische Zugänge. München:Alber Verlag. Esposito, Costantino and Porro, Pasquale. (Eds.). 2001.“Heidegger e i medievali”. Quaestio. Annali di storia della metafsica, vol. 1.Turnhout: Brepols. Falque, Emmanuel. 2008. Dieu, la chair et l’autre. Paris: P.U.F. Heidegger, Martin. 1916 Die Kategorien und Bedeutungslehre des Duns Scotus. Tübingen: Mohr. ———. 1957. Identität und Differenz. Frankfurt am Main:V. Klostermann. ———. 1959. Unterwegs zur Sprache. Pfullingen: Neske.
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Phenomenology and medieval philosophy ———. 1962.“Letter to Father Richardson.” In: Through Phenomenology to Thought.Trans.W. S. J. Richardson. The Hague: M. Nijhoff. ———. 1997 Die Grundprobleme der Phaenomenologie. GA 24. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann. ———. 2006. Geschichte der Philosophie von Thomas von Aquin bis Kant. GA 23. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann. Janicaud, Dominique. 1991. Le tournant théologique de la phénoménologie française. Combas: Éditions de l’Éclat. Maierù,Alfonso and Imbach, Ruedi. (Eds.). 1991. Gli studi di flosofa medievale tra Otto e Novecento. Contributo a un bilancio storiografco. Roma: Edizioni di Storia e letteratura. Maréchal, Joseph. 1922–1926 Le point de départ de la métaphysique: leçons sur le développement historique et théorique de la connaissance. 5 vols. Louvain: Museum Lessianum. Marion, Jean-Luc. 1977. L’idole et la distance. Cinque études. Paris: Grasset. ———. 1982. Dieu sans l’être. Paris: Fayard. ———. 1986. Prolégomènes à la charité. Paris: Éditions de la Différence. ———. 1989. Réduction et donation. Recherches sûr Husserl, Heidegger et la phénoménologie. Paris: P.U.F. ———. 2003: Le phénomène érotique. Paris, Grasset. ———. 2008. Au lieu de soi. L’approche de Saint Augustin. Paris: P.U.F. Olivetti, Marco Maria. 1992. Analogia del soggetto. Roma-Bari: Laterza. Perler, Dominik. 2004. Theorien der Intentionalität im Mittelalter. Frankfurt am Main:V. Klostermann. Przywara, Erich. 1932. Analogia entis. Metaphysik. München: Kösel & Pustet. Scheler, Max. 1915.“Liebe und Erkenntnis.” Die Weißen Blätter II/8: pp. 991–1016. ———. 1921. Vom ewigen im Menschen. Leipzig: Der neue Geist. ———. 1928. Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos. Darmstadt: Reichl. Stein, Edith. 2002. Gesamtausgabe 1.Aus dem Leben einer jüdischen Familie. Ed. Maria Amata Neyer. FreiburgBasel-Wien: Herder. ———. 2005. Gesamtausgabe 10. Potenz und Akt. Studien zu einer Philosophie des Sein. Ed. Hans Rainer Sepp. Freiburg-Basel-Wien: Herder. ———. 2006. Gesamtausgabe 11/12. Endliches und ewiges Sein. Ed. Andreas Uwe Müller. Freiburg-BaselWien: Herder. ———. 2008. Gesamtausgabe 23–24. Übersetzeungen III:Thomas von Aquin. Über die Wahrheit, Bd. I-II. Eds. Andreas Speer and Francesco Valerio Tommasi. Freiburg-Basel-Wien: Herder. ———. 2014. “Was ist Philosophie? Ein Gespräch zwischen Edmund Husserl und Thomas von Aquino” in Gesamtausgabe 9. Eds. Beate Beckmann-Zöller und Hans-Rainer Sepp. Freiburg-Basel-Wien: Herder. Vanni Rovighi, Sofa. 1939. La flosofa di Edmund Husserl. Milano:Vita e Pensiero. .
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4 PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE CARTESIAN TRADITION Édouard Mehl
Included in the Cartesian tradition is not only the actual corpus of Descartes but also its critical reception. The philosophical debate in the 17th and 18th centuries was decisively shaped by fgures such as Antoine Arnauld (1612–1694), Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715), Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), John Locke (1632–1704) and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716). And, in addition to these major fgures, one should still mention those minores, some of whom (e.g. Johann Clauberg, 1622–1665) tried to combine the newfangled Cartesianism with a certain kind of Schulmetaphysik. In its long tradition – from Francisco Suárez to Christian Wolff, at least – this Schulmetaphysik struggled to ground philosophy in a general doctrine of being; independently of the Cartesian project of a “frst philosophy”, and even before it, this doctrine – that would come to be called “ontology” at the beginning of the 17th century – defned its object, the ens, as the universality of the conceivable: ens ut cogitabile, omne intelligibile; πᾶν το νοητόν (Courtine 1990, especially part 4; Carraud 1999; Mehl 2019, ch. I, §3).This is the tradition that sustains the history of Western metaphysics as well as its onto-theological constitution and which, according to Heidegger, runs in a straight line from Spinoza’s Ethics, passing through the Leibnizian constitution of the principle of suffcient reason, all the way to Hegel’s Science of Logic (Heidegger 1969, 1991). On the one hand, then, at the crossroads between the Cartesian legacy and scholastic ontology, we would fnd the core of modern “rationalism”, ascribing to subjectivity both the task of securing knowledge and the challenges involved in its foundation. On the other hand – and already in the 1930s – a completely different path of Cartesianism would arise that consisted in regarding subjectivity as free will.This path, considered by some to be more authentically Cartesian, is the one that would be followed by post-Sartrean phenomenology in its opposition to Husserl’s emphasis on theoretical reason. If, bringing the discussion back to Husserl, one wanted to assess his position in regard to the philosophical project of Descartes, the most reliable sources would be: frst, the Cartesian Meditations, a work consisting of a series of conferences delivered by Husserl in Paris and Strasbourg in 1929; and, secondly, the great historical fresco in §§16–21 of the Krisis. This relationship, nevertheless, remains inescapably ambiguous. In fact, Husserl only seems able to overcome Descartes by repeating the latter’s own gesture, i.e., by reproducing it on that strictly transcendental level that Descartes himself would not have been able to grasp. Now, since a thorough treatment of such a fundamental theme cannot be carried out here, however, this entry will focus on three specifc questions that revolve around the confrontation between phenom64
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enology and what could be deemed its modern starting point (Ausgangspunkt), i.e., Cartesian move of a beginning a primis fundamentis (AT VII, 17,6).1
I – Evidence and truth: the absolute foundation of knowledge Husserl was acquainted with Descartes since much before the 1907 “turn” and the project of a transcendental phenomenology.There are notes dating from before 1900 (Majolino 2003)2 that show an early reading of the Regulae ad directionem ingenii.This text was, for the Neo-Kantians, despite being an unpublished, unfnished manuscript, the best expression – maybe even the birthplace – of modern philosophy, as well as the cornerstone of its later criticism. Now, the origin and the consolidation of this Neo-Kantian tradition took place with the works of Paul Natorp3 (1882), Ernst Cassirer4 (1899), and, later, Heinz Heimsoeth.5 And, at least according to Natorp’s reading, the goal of the Regulae is to argue for an equivalence between evidence and truth. “All knowledge is certain and evident cognition” (Regulae, II, AT X, 362/ vol. 1, 10), as Descartes put it in that work.6 This introductory remark, as obvious or tautological as it may sound, would disclose the fundamental turning point in modern science: certitude is not in the object of knowledge – the object does not even appear in this formulation. Certitude is a modality of knowledge itself, one that we could call “subjective”, even if Descartes himself never used the term in this specifc sense.The frst consequence of this Copernican turn is that epistemic certainty does not vary according to the domain of object but is built solely on the evidence of a “clear and distinct” perception. Hence, the privilege that mathematics – or rather its two fundamental disciplines: arithmetic and geometry – has frequently enjoyed vis-à-vis the other sciences is not due to its objects having a special ontic dignity or their being abstracted from matter. It is due only to the fact that its formal object – that is, quantity, and its two species: continuous and discrete – are “so simple and easy to conceive” that it poses no resistance to our mental apprehension of it (II,AT X, 365, 14–22).This privilege, therefore, is not a monopoly; it does not have to be restricted to this specifc domain. Indeed, the Regulae claim that the subject can fnd the same character of evidence in any objectual knowledge, and this evidence will not differentiate between one and another type of knowledge:“Thus everyone can mentally intuit that he exists, that he is thinking, that a triangle is bounded by just three lines…” (AT X, 368, 21–23/vol. 1, 14). Evidence and certainty are gained in and through the exercise of doubt, whose function is to distinguish and to discriminate what is certain from what is doubtful.This equivalence between esse verum and esse certum provides the outlines of a general science that will be defned as mathesis universalis (Rule IV). Accordingly, the Regulae dictate that, before getting to know any of the objects to which the intellect is related, one must know the intellect itself (Rule VIII).And they also demand that knowledge be limited according to the representability of those objects that are “imaginable”, instead of being extended all the way to pure noumena – as one can never know whether there really are objects in experience that correspond to the latter (Rule XIV). Natorp’s work of 1882, dealing essentially with the Regulae, includes a polemic appendix against Julius Baumann (1837–1916) who, in a book published a few years before (Baumann 1868),7 had defended a purely metaphysical reading of that text and had presented his own view of Descartes’s ontology of mathematics. According to Natorp, the fundamental concepts of Cartesian philosophy, starting from space, time, and number, do not have, as Baumann suggested, a metaphysical justifcation – the famous “divine veracity” to which Baumann subjects a posteriori, so to speak, the theory of evidence in the Regulae. Natorp shows that Baumann incurs in a “countersense” when he attributes to Descartes the idea that mathematical objects must be “real” because, as they are clearly and distinctly perceived, they must be “something” instead of 65
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“nothing”. By following this faulty reasoning, Baumann would thus be misled into affrming that mathematical idealities prove the existence of their object – an assertion deemed absurd by Natorp. His objection to Baumann is, reasonably enough, that mathematical objects are expressly devoid of any existential claim and that imagination, in so far as it is a clear and distinct perception, both suffces as a criterion of reality and dispenses with any divine assurance. This is in accordance with (Princ. Phil. II, 21, AT VIII-1, 52), where it is applied to indefnite spaces; these spaces are not only “imaginary” but also “perceived as really imaginable and, therefore, real”: “vere imaginabilia, hoc est realia esse percipimus”. It is then the “theory of pure knowledge”, i.e. purifed of any metaphysical presupposition not open to intuitive verifcation, that constitutes the ground and the basis on which rests the edifce of Cartesian knowledge, including metaphysics itself. Much later, Husserl, by his turn, would make a similar move and, with surgical precision, would deliberately “purify” Leibnizian monadology, getting rid of the useless and wavering hypothesis of a creative and conservative cause of the harmony of the monads. All things considered, one of the remarkable strengths of the Neo-Kantian reading of Descartes is that it lays out the plan and the task of frst philosophy: namely, the search for and the establishing of a general criterion of truth8 – the same research, that is, as the one that guides Husserl’s Third Cartesian Meditation.9 In refusing formal logic and the usefulness of the syllogism, Descartes had excluded dialectics from “true logic”.The latter, meanwhile, had been brought down to its simplest form: a theory of the perception clara et distincta. On this point, then, Husserl was less infuenced by the discussions of the Marburgians than by the works of Kasimir Twardowski (1866–1936) – see Twardowski (1892)10 – who, like Husserl himself, had been a student of Brentano. In 1892,Twardowski had presented the basis for a general theory of evidence conspicuously exemplifed in the cogito, and it seems that Husserl’s frst appeal to the “phenomenologically grasped” pure ego, in the Logical Investigations, deliberately follows Twardowski’s reliance on evidence in opposition to Natorp’s Kantian views, according to which a “pure I” cannot be grasped (for it could not be apprehended except as this object that, by defnition, it is not) (Hua XIX/1, 372–376/91–94).11 Husserl – taking note of Kant’s radical critique toward the entire metaphysical tradition that preceded him12 – frmly refuses the argument of the “veracitas dei”, regarded as nothing more than a useless and wavering metaphysical trick.13 And in doing so, he also refuses, as a corruption of their inaugural discovery, the psychologism that, latent but inherent in their innatism, affected the Cartesians.14 In Allgemeine Erkenntnistheorie, a text from 1903, Husserl had already drawn the outlines of a theory of knowledge grounded in originary evidence, while also challenging the Cartesian distinction between the subject, the object, and the mental act itself in the intuitus mentis.15 Husserl understands this mental act of the intuitus mentis rather as the “presentifcation of an intuitive sense”, and he shows how this can be referred back to a form of ante-predicative or “originary” evidence that is mixed with the absolute givenness of this object: “every sort of object has its own mode of being given according to their ipseity – they have, that is, their own evidence”. With Husserl, the phenomenological gaze will focus on the evidence of the pre-given objects as it consists in the soil or the substrate presupposed in every predicative judgment (Experience and Judgment, §4) but which is out of the narrow visual range of formal logic.This is what Husserl meant by his own endeavor of coming back “to the frst foundations” (“a primis fundamentis”) or to what he calls sometimes – in a reference to Goethe’s Faust – the “kingdom of mothers”. At the time of the Allgemeine Erkenntnistheorie and the Logical Investigations,Husserl’s Cartesianism is deployed to defend the possibility of true knowledge and, working against all kinds of skepticism, relativism, or frivolous subjectivism, to provide it with foundations.The Regulae, thus, are still read and understood in a neo-critical, transcendental perspective.There is no intention here of fnding in them the traces of an unacknowledged, irresolute ontology. This will only come about with 66
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Heidegger, in his later portrayal of the Cartesian project of the Regulae as that of a “kind of formal ontology” where we could identify “something like a doctrine of the most common determinations of being in general …” – in such a way, however, that the relation between “the mathesis universalis – as the project of a formal ontology – and the rest of his work” remains, to Descartes himself,“unclear and undecided” (Heidegger 2012, 423–428).16
II – Descartes’s failure to grasp the transcendental point of view and the misunderstandings of modern “rationalism” In 1903, at this early, developing stage of Husserlian phenomenology, the philosophy of Descartes appears as an effort to provide Galilean science with stable foundations – in the sense of the opening statement of the Meditationes: “aliquid frmum et mansurum in scientiis stabilire”. Now, this Galilean or Cartesian–Galilean science17 gets rid of sensible qualities and operates only under the parameters of quantity (magnitude, fgura et motus). As such, it would constitute both the model and the intrinsic goal of all philosophical activity, even if, at this stage, the metaphysical – or, rather, meta-theoretical – interlude of the Meditationes is meant only to establish the science of nature or of bodily being in its defnite and ultimate truth. As Descartes himself had put it: my Meditations contain “all the foundations of my physics” (Descartes to Mersenne, January 28th 1641, AT III, 298, 1–2).Therefore, says Husserl: “The new and much-admired science of nature had become the prototype of authentic science in general, and that can be seen in the way we now take for granted the type of reality of spatial things as the prototype of every type of reality – including psychic reality” (Hua VII, 101). Descartes, in spite of all his efforts, cannot break free from this presupposition of the omni-validity of Galilean science:“Is Descartes here not dominated in advance by the Galilean certainty of a universal and absolutely pure world of physical bodies?” (Hua VI, §18, 81/79). In this sense, the discovery of the ego, unlike the phenomenological disclosure and exploration of a “realm of subjective phenomena which have remained ‘anonymous’ so far” (ibid., §29, 114/111), is not a goal in itself. On the contrary, it is merely a means to an end, a moment to be overcome in the task of establishing Galilean science in all its certitude and in its omni-validity. The mathematization of the science of nature stems from an act of idealization and, at the same time, of a covering up of the world of experience with that of mathematical idealities: “The mathematization of nature […] has become so much a matter of course that, already in its Galilean conception, the exact world was from the frst substituted for the world of our experience” (Husserl 1973, §10, 44). Mathematization – and, more generally, idealization – operates then as a “veil of ideas”, covering the primitive layer of sense givenness. It is a “veil” or “garment” that phenomenology must “destruct”, says Husserl, in an implicit but clear reference to the Parmenidean critique of the theory of forms. Moreover, this “substitution” (“Unterschiebung”), for its part, induces another one: Descartes would have been led to cloak transcendental subjectivity, at the very moment of its discovery, with an analogous and, indeed, perfectly symmetrical cover-up. Barely glimpsed at, the pure transcendental ego would become itself an intra-worldly theme. One can see it in Descartes’s passing from the claim that “ego sum, ego existo” to that other, different claim:“sum […] res cogitans” (AT VII, 25, 12;AT VII, 27, 18; Hua I, §10). Implicitly, and unaware of what he was doing, Descartes would lend to the reality of this res cogitans the same constitutive traits of the res extensa – even though the latter was already, at that point, suspended by doubt. Now, of course it would be a blunt paradox to accuse Descartes of being fascinated by the object of Galilean physics. All the work of the Meditations is obviously an attempt to develop, with the cogito and with the idea entis infniti, a (proto)type of reality that is not only incommen67
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surate with the reality of bodies, but also completely independent from it – and one on which the reality of bodies itself would be founded, not the contrary.18 Nevertheless – and Husserl’s opinion on this is increasingly clear throughout his texts – Descartes’s lack of radicality is due to his understanding of the ego merely as a mirror, as a counterpoint to objectivity.19 This is, in fact, the fundamental meaning of what Husserl calls “rationalism”: when Descartes defnes the ego as “mens, sive animus, sive intellectus, sive ratio” (AT VII, 27, 14), it is already the sign of having overlooked the universal transcendental ego and of having failed to see in it anything but the simple refection of the rationality of the real.
III – The monadological ego and the overcoming of the Solipsismus-Streit More than any other of Descartes’s successors, it was Leibniz20 who managed to challenge Cartesian objectivism and the pernicious way in which philosophy was made a servant of the science of the material world. This remains true even if Leibniz himself, just like Spinoza, Descartes, and Malebranche before him, would ultimately succumb to the senseless illusion of the possibility of a universal objective knowledge of the world “more geometrico” – a knowledge that would encompass both the science of bodily nature and a rational psychology.21 Moreover, and indeed as all of Descartes’s successors, Leibniz frmly disputes the thesis and the procedure of the Sixth Meditation, which intends to prove the existence of bodies and the real distinction between thinking and extended substances.22 The bewilderment that plagues “Cartesian dualism” would be the effect, rather than the cause, of a problem that was even more radically metaphysical: namely, solipsism. Leibniz thus writes, in a fragment from 1679, that “we cannot know the reality of those objects that affect our senses in any other way but a priori, insofar as we cannot be alone in the world”.23 This point defnes very precisely the program of Husserl’s Fifth Cartesian Meditation: it shows the Other to be absolutely necessary to the constitution of an “objective” world.To be objective and to be true means through and through to be there for everyone (für-jedermann-da). Now, this is not the same idea, or at least not specifcally the same, as Descartes’s objectum purae matheseos. The latter, indeed, was the object of an understanding indifferent both to the existence of the Other and to the existence of a world that would be objectively valid only to the extent that it were valid for everyone. In the Fifth Meditation, however, having reestablished the others’ being present for me as a transcendental condition, even if implicit, of every kind of objective validity,24 Husserl managed to bridge a signifcant gap created in metaphysics by solipsism – which was, as we have seen, the cause and, at the same time, the symptom of the failure of metaphysics. From now on, if the objectivity of the world is still to be understood on the basis of a predication of universality, this predication itself is not to be taken in the merely logical sense of that which is true in every case, of that which is true by means of some internal necessity, proper to the combination of its terms. It is universal, instead, in that it is the same for everyone – for me as for any other “I”. All that is shared and common “for everyone” is universal in this second sense.25 The very idea of an “objective” world has no meaning if not within a transcendental community of egos related to the same world, while the characteristic unity of this world, unifying the indefnite multiplicity of the Umwelten, is founded upon the unity of the unique community, universal and necessary, of all coexisting monads.The ego cogito would not, therefore, be enough to found objectivity, as the latter requires, aside from representation – no matter how constant – the agreeing co-representation of a common, unique nature. Hence the passage, in the Cartesian Meditations, from a transcendental egology to a transcendental monadology, and from a “Cartesian” paradigm to a Leibnizian one, where both the possibility and the sense of being of the objective world depend on transcendental intersubjectivity as its necessary precursor.26 68
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And yet, in conclusion, it must be added that Husserl’s monadological turn is not a refutation of Cartesian egology: it is a delving further into it, a course correction after the misleading interpretation that replaced the universal ego with an intra-worldly being, clad in the pseudoconsistency of a thing – an interpretation whose frst victim was Descartes himself.To put it in other words, a monadology, for Husserl, is the necessary consequence of this frst philosophy whose program and method were established by the Meditationes de prima philosophia. Husserl did not take distance from Descartes so that he could turn toward Leibniz, just as his longstanding interest for Leibnizian monadology never implied the abandoning of the Cartesian path. On the contrary, Husserl found in Leibniz, and in his defnition of the ego as monad, precisely the only way to carry out the Cartesian undertaking of a frst philosophy.27 That is the reason, despite the seeming paradox, for the crucial part assumed by the doctrine of Leibniz in these (nevertheless) Cartesian Meditations!
Notes 1 We refer to the works of Descartes in Charles Adam’s and Paul Tannery’s edition as presented by Bernard Rochot and Pierre Costabel.The volumes are indicated in Roman numerals, followed by page and line numbers. 2 Also, Husserl dedicated two seminars to Descartes in the 1890s (Sommersemester 1892 and Wintersemester 1896). 3 On the evolution of Natorp’s own interpretation of Descartes, see Dufour 2006. See also the valuable remarks in Calan 2013. 4 Following his breakthrough work,Descartes Kritik der mathematischen und naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis (1899), Cassirer will hold a more speculative, more comprehensive interpretation than that of Natorp: instead of considering the “erkenntnistheoretisch rationalism” of the Regulae as a form of ascetism, a sort of abstinence from any metaphysical position, Cassirer reads the metaphor of the sun, in the First Rule, as a “new form of relation between thinking and being, necessarily shaping both the possibility and the value of objective knowledge”. 5 Heinz Heimsoeth was the author of Die Methode der Erkenntnis bei Descartes und Leibniz (1912). This work had a very cold reception in France, as one can see from a review in Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale (1912), whose conclusion reads:“It is regrettable […] that the author, a disciple of Natorp, only keeps from Descartes that which can forecast Kant […] Mr. Heimsoeth’s book is marked by a systematic ignorance of everything that was not published by the Marburg masters.” 6 Reference, respectively, to the AT edition and to the English translation: Descartes 1985. 7 In 1905, J. Baumann, then a student of Hermann Lotze working in Göttingen, would oppose the appointment of Husserl as Professor at the university. 8 See Discours de la Méthode: “and I always had an extreme desire to learn how to distinguish true from false” (DM I,AT VI, 10, 9–11). 9 “Die konstitutive Problematik. Wahrheit und Wirklichkeit”. To put it more precisely, the expression “criterion” is not from Descartes. He speaks only of the search for a rule of truth (regula veritatis/regula generalis).The expression “criterion” is more likely established following (Lambert 1915). On the nonpsychological theory of the criterion of truth as the core of “rationalism”, see Couturat an Husserl, 26. VII. 1899, (Hua-Dok III/6, 28):“we realize that what constitutes the logical kernel of thought, that is, the criterion of true and false, eludes introspection and psychological analysis”. 10 On this work, see the instigating study in Starzyński 2017. 11 See also the note of the Second Edition to §6 of the Fifth Investigation (Hua XIX/1, 368/352). 12 See Kant 1999, 134:“However, the deus ex machina is the greatest absurdity one could hit upon in the determination of the origin and validity of our cognitions. It has – besides its vicious circularity in drawing conclusions concerning our cognitions – also this additional disadvantage: it encourages all sorts of wild notions and every pious and speculative brainstorm.” 13 In his Cartesian Meditations, Husserl uses the Latin expression “veracitas” two times: §1 (Hua I, 45) and §40 (Hua I, 116). It is worth mentioning that Étienne Gilson dedicated a study specifcally to this question: “La véracité divine et l’existence du monde extérieur”, collected in Gilson 1930. On the actual role of the “divine veracity” in Cartesian metaphysics (strongly contested by J.-L. Marion, according to
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14 15 16
17
18 19
20 21
22
23
24
whom the rule of evidence is never really founded, but is always – and from the start – operational), see the presentation of the debate in Olivo 2005, especially 165–210. A psychologism that is also that of Kant in his 1770 Dissertation. On this point, see Pradelle 2012, 114–121. See Schäfer 2012. On Cartesian and Husserlian evidence, see the valuable pages written by JeanChristophe Devynck in Devynck 2000, First Part, §4. On the relation between the mathesis universalis and formal ontology, see also Hua XXV, 132–135.The important text of Heidegger was not yet known when Jean-Luc Marion put forth his interpretation of the Regulae (Marion 1975) that follows along the same line of Heidegger’s commentary and sketches the outlines of this “ontology” of the ens qua objectum. Both Heidegger and Marion go against the idea of a somewhat sterile notion of evidence, such as it was understood by the Neo-Kantians and by A. de Waehlens after them, according to whom “The author of the Discourse on the Method carefully avoids any ontological problem” (de Waehlens 1938). By the time he was writing the Krisis, Husserl found out about the work his disciple and friend Alexandre Koyré had devoted to Copernicus, Galileo and Descartes (from the 1930s, there are: the frst French translation of the frst book of De Revolutionibus orbium coelestium copernicien [1934]; Trois Conférences sur Descartes delivered at the University of Cairo in 1937 [1938]; and the Études Galiléennes, which build on an essay published in 1935 – before the Krisis – Koyré 1935). On this point, see the issues of the Second Meditation: “De mente humana. Quam notior sit quam corpus.” See, for instance, how Husserl intelligently frames the problem in the project of a letter to Helmut Kuhn. In the passage, Husserl intended to warn Kuhn about the risk of understanding the reduction in a contradictory way, which would amount to “falling prey to the same mistake as Descartes, even if in a more elevated fashion”: “in this conception of epoché you mention, the I – which would have to be the transcendental I – is still the other pole of the correlation of intraworldly experience: it is the pole opposite to objects but it is, nevertheless, itself and for itself an object”. In opposition to this unfnished, fruitless epoché, Husserl insists that “the really universal bracketing of the world in its totality goes hand in hand with the opening of a new universum of ‘being’: and indeed with the opening of the dimension of transcendental subjectivity as the original location of the constitutive sense-givings of the universal sense ‘world’” (Hua-Dok III/6, 244–245). On Leibniz, see Mahnke 1917; Rabouin 2006; Pradelle 2006. Hua VI, §72: “this idea which led even Leibniz astray – is a nonsense”. On the idea of a universal science and of a pure mathematics of lived experiences, such as Spinoza considers to have developed in the third book of his Ethics, see already Hua I, §72, when Husserl poses the question of “whether a phenomenology would have to be constituted or even could be constituted as a ‘geometry’ of experiences” (the answer is negative, of course, since phenomenology can only be a descriptive science). It is also worth noting that Descartes despised geometrical order, only having employed it in the Secundae Responsiones to satisfy the pressing request of Father Mersenne. This is the double thesis of the Sixth Meditation, contested both by Spinoza and, from a different perspective, by Pascal. Husserl was not acquainted enough with the historical development of the Cartesian tradition to know exactly what in Leibniz was due to one or the other: to Spinoza, markedly, a metaphysical theory of expression – see, on this point, Deleuze 1968; to Pascal, the reading of Disproportion de l’Homme, and the theory of double infnity, that Leibniz himself considered to be the introduction to monadology. See de Buzon 2010. Quoted in Fichant 2004, 285.The diffculty and the interest of this note come from the fact that, even more than a critique of what Descartes writes in the Sixth Meditation, it is a literal reiteration of what he had written in the Third: (MM III,AT IX-1, 33). On Husserl’s relying on Leibniz to overcome the “Solipsismus-Streit”, see Gérard 2006, 35. On this point, Husserl is preceded, or maybe accompanied, by Mahnke 1917. On the notion of “objective” world as “world for everyone” – universality conquered by renouncing every form of realism – see §26, p. 24: “Only the logical form of the world is ‘objectively valid’, even if we do not want to describe it as an exterior, really existing transcendent world, but rather as a transcendental concept of the world”. For Mahnke, the sense of being of what is “really there” is grasped as a modality of the intentional lived experience. The lived character of what is really there (“den Erlebnischarakter des ‘wirklich da’”) presupposes a community of monads (or ‘living beings’) of the same species, both having the same perceptions and being conscious of this identity. On the immanence of the sense of the world – and even of the world as “really being” – in conscious life, see Hua I, §28, 97.
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Phenomenology and the Cartesian tradition 25 With a brief linguistic maneuver – the superposition of two adjectives formed by the same radical (allgemein and gemeinsam) – one could say: die allgemeinsame objektive Welt. 26 The conclusion of §55 suggests the constitution of the world and that of the intersubjective community to be concomitant and interdependent: they are, indeed, both sides of the same constitution (Hua I, 156). 27 See the exchange between Husserl and Mahnke, which deals largely with these questions (Pradelle 2016).
References Baumann, Julius. 1868. Die Lehren von Raum, Zeit und Mathematik in der neueren Philosophie nach ihrem Ganzen Einfuss dargestellt und beurtheilt. Band 1 (Suarez, Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, Newton). Berlin: G. Reimer. Carraud,Vincent. 1999. “L’ontologie peut-elle être cartésienne? L’exemple de l’Ontosophia de Clauberg, de 1647 à 1664: de l’Ens à la Mens”. In: Johannes Clauberg (1622–1665) and Cartesian Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century. Ed. Theo Verbeek. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 13–36. Cassirer, Ersnt. 1899. Descartes’ Kritik der mathematischen und wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis. Diss. Marburg. Courtine, Jean-François. 1990. Suárez et le système de la métaphysique. Paris: PUF. de Buzon, Frédéric. 2010. “Que lire dans les deux infnis? Remarque sur une lecture leibnizienne”; “Double infnité chez Pascal et Monade. Essai de reconstitution des deux états du texte”. In: Les Etudes Philosophiques, 4, n° 95: pp. 535–548. de Calan, Ronan. 2013.“Husserl ‘néocartésien’? La phénoménologie, le néokantisme et le motif ‘transcendantal’ dans la philosophie cartésienne”. In: Qu’est-ce qu’être cartésien? Delphine Kolesnik-Antoine (dir). Lyon: ENS Éditions, pp. 581–594. de Waelhens, Alphonse. 1938. “Descartes et la pensée phénoménologique”. In: Revue néo-scolastique de philosophie, n° 60: pp. 571–589. Deleuze, Gilles. 1968. Spinoza et le problème de l’expression. Paris: Editions de Minuit. Descartes, René. 1964–1974. Oeuvres. 11 vols. Charles Adam’s and Paul Tannery’s edition as presented by Bernard Rochot and Pierre Costabel. Paris:Vrin-CNRS. ———. 1985. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes.Trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Devynck, Jean-Christophe. 2000. Logique du phénomène. Étude sur les Recherches Logiques de Husserl. Sèvres: Presses Académiques Diakom. Dufour, Éric. 2006. “Descartes à Marbourg”. In: Descartes en Kant. Eds. Michel Fichant and Jean-Luc Marion. Paris: PUF, pp. 471–493. Fichant, Michel. 2004. Discours de métaphysique / Monadologie. Paris: Folio. Gérard,Vincent. 2006.“Leibniz et la mathématique formelle”. In: Philosophie, n° 92: pp. 29–55. Gilson, Étienne. 1930.“La véracité divine et l’existence du monde extérieur”. In: Études sur le rôle de la pensée médiévale dans la formation du système cartésien. Paris:Vrin, pp. 234–244. Heidegger, Martin. 1969. Identity and Difference.Trans. Joan Stambaugh. New York: Harper and Row. ———. 1991. The Principle of Reason.Trans. Reginald Lilly. Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. ———. 2012. Sommersemester 1944 – Seminare: Platon – Aristoteles – Augustinus, GA 83. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. Heimsoeth, Heinz. 1912. Die Methode der Erkenntnis bei Descartes und Leibniz. Gießen: Töpelmann. Husserl, Edmund. 1973. Experience and Judgment. Trans. James S. Churchill and K. Ameriks. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Kant, Immanuel. 1999. Correspondence.Trans.Arnulf Zweig. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Koyré, Alexandre. 1935. “À l’aurore de la science moderne: la jeunesse de Galilée (I)”. In: Annales de l’Université de Paris, t. X, n° 6: pp. 540–55. Lambert, Johann Heinrich. 1915. Abhandlung vom Criterium Veritatis (1728). Ed. Karl Bopp. Berlin:Verlag vom Reuther und Reichard. Mahnke, Dietrich. 1917. Eine neue Monadologie. Berlin:Verlag von Reuther & Reichard. Majolino, Claudio. 2003. “Un inedito del primo Husserl su Cartesio”. In: Nouvelles de la République des Lettres (I-II): pp. 181–189.
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Édouard Mehl Marion, Jean-Luc. 1975. Sur l’ontologie grise de Descartes. Science cartésienne et savoir aristotéicien dans les Regulae. Paris:Vrin. Mehl, Édouard. 2019. Descartes en Allemagne, 1619–1620. Le contexte allemand de l’élaboration de la science cartésienne. Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires. Natorp, Paul. 1882. Descartes’ Erkenntnistheorie. Eine Studie zur Vorgeschichte des Kriticismus, Marburg: N. G. Elwert’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung. Olivo, Gilles. 2005. Descartes et l’essence de la vérité. Paris: PUF. Pradelle, Dominique. 2006.“Monadologie et Phénoménologie”. In: Philosophie, n° 92: pp. 56–85. ———. 2012. Par-delà la révolution copernicienne. Sujet transcendantal et facultés chez Kant et Husserl. Paris: PUF. ———. 2016.“Husserl/Mahnke. Correspondance (1917–1933)”. In: Philosophie, 2, n° 129: pp. 16–54. Rabouin, David. 2006.“Husserl et le projet leibnizien d’une mathesis universalis”. In: Philosophie, 2006, n° 92: pp. 13–28. Schäfer, Rainer. 2012.“ Les transformations de l’Erkenntnishteorie dans la critique husserlienne de Descartes ”. Les Cahiers philosophiques de Strasbourg, [En ligne], 32 | 2012, mis en ligne le 15 mai 2019, consulté le 18 mai 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/cps/2121 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/ cps.2121. Starzyński,Wojciech. 2017.“La perception et l’idée. Une double direction du cartésianisme de Twardowski”. In: Les Études Philosophiques, 2: pp. 197–204. Twardowski, Kasimir. 1892. Idee und Perception. Eine erkenntnistheoretische Untersuchung aus Descartes. Wien: Carl Konegen.
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5 PHENOMENOLOGY AND BRITISH EMPIRICISM Vittorio De Palma
1. Phenomenology is a resumption of the project of Locke and Hume, which – as Hegel writes – “have driven out metaphysics through the analysis of sensuous experience” (Hegel 1969–1971-II, 377). To the apparent evidences of formal constructions, Husserl opposes the phenomenological foundation, which goes back to the intuitive origins of abstractions (Hua XXXII, 90). For “all concepts stem from intuition and have a sense that refers to intuition” (Ms. A VII 20/20b–21a).To speculation, characterized as a bottomless thinking in mere word-meanings, he opposes his intuitionism; yet this intuitionism has nothing to do with supernatural enlightenments or mystical intellectual intuitions, but simply means that I only judge reliably when I can also exhibit what I mean, and ultimate exhibition is seeing or something exactly analogous to ordinary seeing (Hua XXXV, 288–91; Hua IX, 345; Hua XLII, 271n1). As Husserl writes to Spranger in September 1918, in phenomenology “one does not speculate about things, […] but he/she sees things”, for “speculation cannot become rectifed, one can rectify only in a domain of given things”. Phenomenology arises precisely from a radicalization of Ernst Mach’s and Ewald Hering’s method, which was a reaction against the bottomlessness of theorizing in the exact sciences by means of mathematical speculations and of concepts remote from intuition (Hua IX, 302). Whereas rationalism does not grasp the signifcant core lying behind the skeptical absurdities of empiricism and proceeds in a purely conceptual way by constructing conditions of possibility of objective validity from the top down, the empiricist method of returning to the intuitive origins of knowledge is an anticipation of the phenomenological method, which is alien to transcendentalism (Hua VII, 146, 182, 187, 382; Hua XXXVII, 197–8). British empiricism is nevertheless “an unclear and half-way intuitionism” (Hua XXXV, 290–1), insofar as it does not adhere to its own principle, according to which one must always go back to the experience, viz. to the grasping of something itself, and refrain from stating anything that is not drawn from intuition (Hua VII, 136). Phenomenology aims at realizing the empiricist program by defending empiricist intuitionism against itself and carving out genuine empiricism from the apparent one (Hua VII, 148).This amounts to liberating empiricism from its naturalistic and sensualistic limitations.
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Naturalism is inconsistent. If the assertion “there are no reasons, but only causes” were true, it should apply even to itself and it could not claim to be well founded. If all seemingly insightful ascertainments are reducible to psychophysical processes, even this seemingly insightful ascertainment is reducible to such processes. A theory that denies any primacy of evident judgment over blind judgment annuls what distinguishes itself from an arbitrary assertion (Hua XVIII, 119). “Without insight, no knowledge” (Hua XVIII, 156). Because an insight can only be questioned by another insight, the validity of evidence is presupposed, even when it is denied: the claim that seeing is reducible to a psychic feeling presupposes that one reliably sees that this is the case (Hua XXXVI, 10). For example, since “we” designates a plurality of egos, Hume’s statement that “the identity, which we ascribe to the mind of man, is only a fctitious one” (Hume 1888, 259) signifes that the identity, which I ascribe to the mind, is only a fctitious one; since only an identical ego can ascribe or revoke to the mind an identity, such an ego is presupposed by its denial. 2. Husserl proposes to unite the rationalistic tendency to ground knowledge in eidetic laws with the empiricist one to ground knowledge in factual experience (Hua XXXV, 288–9), but on the terrain of experience itself: material necessity is immanent to experience, because it derives from the sensuous stuff, hence the a priori form of experience depends upon the essence of the factually given contents. Consequently, phenomenology is an eidetic empiricism. Like the British empiricists, Husserl regards experience as the ground of knowledge; yet, unlike them, he claims that it has an objective structure determined by the nature of its contents, because relations of ideas govern experience as well. Thus, he desubjectivizes the structure of experience by conceiving it as the structure of real being. Reality is sensuous, since both real contents and their real connections are sensuous. Accordingly, the inquiry into reality and its a priori structures is a descriptive one, and only sensuous or material concepts have real signifcance, i.e., ontological bearing. By arguing that philosophy can uncover, but not alter, the sense the world has for us and gets solely from our experience (Hua I, 177), Husserl embraces Avenarius’ idea of an explication of the “natural concept of world” via a description of the given exactly as it is given: since all theories refer to the world given prior to them and are legitimate only if they do not violate the sense of the immediate givenness, it is necessary to bring out the “universal sense-frame of the world in immediate experience”, by describing “the world as it gives itself to me immediately”, namely “experience with respect to the experienced as such” (Hua XIII, 196–7). It is a matter, therefore, of what is presupposed by theories (Hua III/1, 45; Hua XXXV, 476). Although the description of what is encountered in preconceptual experience can only be carried out through concepts, the material or sensuous concepts, which are drawn from experience and can be grasped in it, are quite different from exact and formal concepts. And, although sediments arising from thought-activities adhere to what is experienced, one can always distinguish what is passively given from the thinking exercised upon it and the thoughts formed therein, in order to take what is experienced just as it gives itself (Hua IX, 57–8, 95–6). It is a matter of “a most fundamental difference” (Hua XI, 291). Whereas the grasping of real objects is “a mere receiving of a pre-constituted sense” (Hua XXXI, 41), in the case of ideal objects “a pre-constituting activity precedes the objectivating grasp” (Hua XXXI, 53); things present themselves in subjective experiencing “as objects already existent beforehand”, for they are “pregiven to active living as ego-foreign, are given from outside”, while thought-formations “are given exclusively from inside, exclusively by means of spontaneous activities and in them” (Hua XVII, 85–6). 74
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3. Husserl argues that experience with its demands precedes conceptual thinking and its demands (Hua V, 34; Hua XXXII, 233). He takes up the view which Hegel, in §40 of the Encyclopedia, argues is the shortcoming of both Kant and empiricism: experience is the only ground of knowledge. For cognition draws its legitimacy exclusively from experience (Hua XXXV, 289; Hua XXXII, 142), which leads back to sensuous perception (Hua III/1, 81; Hua XV, 502; Hua IX, 193). Experience is the “access to the being itself ” (Hua XXXIX, 207) and the “measure of all other opinions” (Hua XXXIX, 685); insofar as experience uncovers the illusion and settles the doubt on whether something is or is not, it is “the source of confrmation and disconfrmation,” viz. “the self-testimony of the existent”, although it can be refuted by further self-testimonies (Ms. A VII 20/38b). “What the things are, […] they are as things of experience” (Hua III/1, 100). Since, therefore,“experience can be confrmed and annulled only by experience” (Hua XXXIX, 231), whatever questioning of an experience presupposes trust in experience. Insofar as any sensuous phenomenon can be questioned only on the basis of other phenomena conficting with it, one can doubt every single phenomenon, but not all phenomena together, i.e., the sensuous as such, otherwise the basis of validity enabling the doubt is removed (De Palma 2012, 211–6).We see the things themselves, and not images or signs of them.We can also be deceived, but it proves to be a deception on the basis of a seeing of real things themselves.To say that all seeing is a deception annuls the sense of talking about deception (Hua XXXV, 22–3). By taking up Descartes’ view, in Book IV, Ch. I, §1 of the Essay Locke writes that the mind knows things only mediately, since it has “no other immediate object but its own ideas” (Locke 1999, 515). Likewise, Hume claims that “every thing, which appears to the mind, is nothing but a perception”, for “no external object can make itself known to the mind immediately, and without the interposition of an image or perception.That table, which just now appears to me, is only a perception, and all its qualities are qualities of perception” (Hume 1888, 193, 239). Now, perception is an act, in which an object immediately appears, while an image is an object, which immediately appears and by means of which another object mediately appears. Perceived things can serve as images of things not perceived, but they do not appear via the interposition of images.There is no “veil of perception”, for immediate objects are not ideas, i.e., acts or mindimmanent contents serving as representatives of things, but things.That table is a perceived thing, and all its qualities are qualities of thing. Because external experience is “that mode of the having of something itself which pertains to natural objects” (Hua XVII, 170), “the thing perceived in perception is the thing itself in its own existence” and, “when perceptions are deceptive, that signifes that they are in confict with new perceptions, which show with certainty what is actual in the place of the illusory” (Hua XVII, 287). “Only perception unseats perception” (Hua XXXVI, 40). Since, therefore, perception is nothing to be grounded, but it is itself grounds providing (Hua XXIV, 8), it is “the ultimate measure of reality” (Hua XL, 314) and thus the source of justifcation of knowledge, although it can deceive. By embracing the world-view of modern science, Brentano claims that sensuous contents are “an illusion”, for they “are not things which really and truly exist”, but “signs of something real […]. In and of itself, that which truly exists does not come to appear, and that which appears does not truly exist” (Brentano 1924, 250, 28). By rejecting the world-view of modern science, Husserl overthrows Brentano’s antiempiricist view: the scientifc world is an ideal world constructed by the subject, whereas the real world is the world of experience, which is given prior to every theory and functions as ground of validity for every theory.The dismissal of the inferential theory of perception makes the problem of the external world senseless; sensuous phenomena 75
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are not indications of the real, but the real itself, whose modes of givenness are grounded in its ontological nature. Against the Platonic, Christian, and rationalistic “degradation of sensuousness”, Husserl claims that sensuousness is not a “misty medium, which, instead of the things in themselves, gives mere appearances of the same” (Hua-Mat III, 170, 172).Against the prejudice according to which the sensuous world does not truly exist, he argues that the sensuous world just as it gives itself in experience is the only real world (Hua VI, 397, 360, 49). For the true being of things is their itself-givenness, and not something lying beyond possible experience. Unexperienceable entities are substructions of a bottomless thinking and differ from the ghosts only in that they cannot be refuted by experience (Hua XXXII, 216). Reality is the correlate of concordant experience and can prove to be an illusion only on the basis of further experience, for illusion signifes that the course of concordant experience is other than was predelineated by the up-tonow experience (Hua XV, 49). 4. Husserl argues that Hume “indicated the way of all inquiry into origins” with the “principle of tracing back every cognition to ‘impressions’” (Hua XXXVII, 224), and understands the return to the origins just as a return from ideas to impressions (Ricoeur 2004, 301–2). Accordingly, Husserl refuses Kant’s method of transcendental deduction as a “masterpiece of top-down transcendental proving” (Hua XXXVII, 212), and adopts Locke’s empirical deduction of categories (Hua VII, 97–9; Hua XXXV, 289), which he however reinterprets in an eidetic sense: categories are neither to be traced back to the adventitious causes of their production in experience nor to the judgment forms of logic, but to sensuous what-contents. Because they can only be grasped insofar as their singularizations are sensuously pregiven, real categories are not to be deduced from a principle, but to be found in experience via a bottom-up procedure (Hua V, 25). The conditions of possibility of experience are its “ontic-a priori essential structures” obtainable through the “method of eidetic variation” (Hua XXXII, 118) and lie not in the subject, but “immanently in the essence of experience” (Hua XVI, 141).This empiricist denial of the constructive procedure in favor of the descriptive method entails a refusal of the transcendental approach (cf. De Palma 2015; De Palma 2016). If the a priori didn’t lie within experience, the latter would have no objective structure. The sensuous given can only be intellectually grasped and determined insofar as it has a lawfulness independently of thinking.The structure of experience is given in experience itself, because it is due to sensuous forms of being, which arise from contents, and not to logical forms of thinking, which are “additions of the activity of judgment and of the syntheses that arise from it” (Hua XVII, 398) and cannot bestow upon contents a material shape. As James remarks in “A World of Pure Experience”, for a radical empiricism the relations that connect experiences must themselves be experienced and any kind of relation experienced must be accounted for as real. Phenomenology, which Husserl defnes as “radical empiricism” (Hua XXXV, 513), is the realization of this approach. Against the view that all relations are produced by the subject, Husserl takes sensuous contents and sensuous relations (fusions, confgurations, similarities, etc.) to the same extent to be real, for both are given independently of the subject’s intervention. He distinguishes between formal relations or categorial forms produced by intellectual activities and contentual relations or material forms, which depend upon the particular nature of the contents and, just like these, are given in experience prior to every connecting act (Hua XIX/1, 288–91; Hua XIX/2, 665–7, 714–16; Husserl 1972, 214–23). In the former case, we have a “subjective interrelating and forming of a relation”, in the latter a “real ‘relation’” 76
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(Hua XLI, 262), which yields a “material or real unity” (Hua XIX/1, 291; Hua XXXI, 105). Whereas the formal unity of a categorial set is established by thought, the real unity of a sensuous whole arises from the material contents and constitutes itself in the unity of a sensuous intuition (Hua XXXI, 101; Husserl 1972, 223, 296–7). Categorial intuition is not a genuine intuition, because formal essences are “not intuitively seizable”: properly speaking, there is intuition only of individuals and of material or sensuous essences, to which alone individual presentational contents correspond (Hua XLI, 160). The possibility of analytic judgments is more diffcult to understand than that of synthetic judgments a priori, precisely because exemplary intuition plays no role in their grasping (Hua XXXV, 445–6, 449, 452, 467). 5. The abstraction theories of British empiricism dissolve the general concept in its extension by regarding it as a representing function that we bestow proftably upon an individual moment.This is wrong, inasmuch as (1) the intuition of general objects is grounded indeed in the intuition of individual objects, but these are the foundation of abstraction, and not what is intended in it; (2) the talk of similar or equal individual objects presupposes something identical, i.e., a species, under which the compared objects come; now, if the general is dissolved in its extension, viz. in the corresponding individuals, one cannot explain what gives unity to the extension. Nevertheless, the general exists exclusively in the individual: Husserl argues not only against the psychological hypostatization of the general, namely the assumption of a real existence of the species in thought, but also against its metaphysical hypostatization, namely the assumption of a real existence of the species outside thought. Moreover, general concepts have a genesis from preconceptual experience: the sensuous similarity, which is passively pregiven and connects the contents prior to every comparison, is the condition of comparison and abstraction (Hua XXXV, 437; Hua XXXII, 153; Hua XXXIX, 457). Since there is a “consciousness of similarity without active relating” (Hua XI, 406), before any conceptual apprehension everything perceived is typically apperceived due to its similarity with other things perceived (Hua XXXII, 200; Hua XLI, 273). Husserl claims that intellect cannot exist without sensuousness (Hua XIX/2, 712–3; HuaMat III, 170–4) and rejects the Platonic conception of the general (Hua IX, 73; Husserl 1972, 397). He explains that the talk of ideal objects does not imply their equalization with real objects, because “reality has an ontological primacy over whichever irreality, since all irrealities relate back essentially to an actual or possible reality” (Hua XVII, 177) and have “manners of possible participation in reality” (Hua XVII, 163).Therefore, as he acknowledges in his later years, reality precedes possibility (Hua XV, 519; Hua XXIX, 85–6). Ideal essences exist only as structures of a factual reality. Consequently, phenomenology accomplishes an empiricist overthrow of Platonism: “Every conceptual truth presupposes experience, every conceptual content presupposes experienceable being, every being presupposes individual being” (Hua VIII, 408). 6. In Husserl’s view, a priori truths are relations of ideas, since they are grounded purely in the essence of their respective contents. Because of the “ontological turn of the concept of evidence”, the necessity of a priori laws is not a subjective incapacity to conceive otherwise, but an objective impossibility to be otherwise (Hua XIX/1, 242–3). Depending on whether essences are formal or material, the a priori is formal-analytic or material-synthetic and its negation yields a logical contradiction or a material incompatibility. Eidetic laws govern even in sensuousness (Hua XXXVII, 220–6), for there are truths of reason “based 77
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on sensuous presentations” (Hua XXVIII, 403). Not only thought, but also experience has therefore an a priori lawfulness (Hua XXVIII, 243); beside the logical laws valid for thoughtconnections there are ontological laws valid for sensuous reality (Hua XXIV, 333, 293). The material a priori is “contingent” (Hua XVII, 33) or “affective”, because “only such subjects can acquire it who have the relevant examples, and these stem from affection” (Hua XLI, 101). For material laws are grounded in the particularity of sensuous essences and these (e.g., the eidos color) can only be grasped insofar as their singularizations (e.g., an individual color) are passively pregiven (Hua XXXVI, 147–8). Accordingly, eidetic knowledge has a factual ground: everyone can grasp only those material essences whose singularizations occur actually in his/her sensuous experience, and can know only the material laws concerning such essences. Experience has a material structure presupposed by every induction, for the given is always predelineated in its ontological type, e.g., as a spatial thing. But if experience had not given me things, the word “thing” would have no sense for me (Hua XXXV, 474–5). Consequently, the material a priori depends not upon experience qua induction, but upon experience qua givenness of material essences (Hua XLI, 282–3). At the basis of Husserl’s concept of material a priori are Hume’s notions of relation of ideas and of tracing ideas back to impressions (Hua XXXVII, 224). Kant didn’t grasp the authentic concept of the a priori as an eidetic necessity: by remaining bound to the rationalistic prejudice according to which sensuousness is lawless and the true a priori is the analytic one, he misunderstood Hume’s concept of relation of ideas, which designates the synthetic a priori too, and explained the latter by resorting to subjective forms, whereas it stems from sensuous whatcontents.1 The world of experience determines the forms, in which it can be known, because it is not a conglomeration of formless contents, which would acquire a different shape depending on the conceptual scheme adopted by the subject, but has “structures, which bind us” and “place demands upon our predicative thought” (Hua XXXII, 101).Accordingly, experience is already method (Hua XV, 98; Hua XXXIX, 81–3; Ms. B I 13/37a; Ms.A VII 20/19a) and can only be rationally known insofar as “rationality” already lies in its givennesses (Hua-Mat IX, 439). If there were no steady things, logic and mathematics wouldn’t be applicable to experience. For anything can be conceptually determined, connected, and enumerated independently of its particularity, but determination, connection, and enumeration presuppose that what is determined, connected, and enumerated is identifable as the same (Ms.AVII 20/43a). Only material connections can bestow upon experience a material shape that enables the application of formal thought-determinations: one can lend to the world of experience a thought-form only insofar as it possesses an a priori structure prior to thinking. Scientifc knowledge presupposes that the sensuous world is “capable of bearing the scientifc thinking”, has “possibilities and tendencies toward idealization”, and is therefore an “anticipation” of an exact world (Hua XXXII, 97, 100–2). Consequently, contrary to what Hegel claims in the note to §442 of the Encyclopedia, the sensuous given is not “merely the empirical frst”, but “the truly substantial foundation”. 7. Husserl retrieves a classical issue of empiricism by recognizing that the laws of association underlie the formation of objectual apperceptions.2 The world is “an associative nexus” (Hua XXXIX, 9) and world-experience is “a universal synthesis of association” (Hua XXXIX, 462). Accordingly, as Hume claims at the end of the Abstract, the laws of association are “the cement of the universe”. Hume’s fctionalism, particularly in his doctrine of the origin of thing, persisting existence, and causality, contains anticipatory discoveries shrouded in absurd theories and the task of the eidetic phenomenology of association 78
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is the rehabilitation of such discoveries, by showing the a priori genesis thanks to which a real world constitutes itself for a soul in habitual validity (Hua IX, 301, 286). Hume demonstrates that the lawfulness of experience is a lawfulness of expectation, since the anticipation of future experience, grounded in past experience, goes through present experience. The induction of the non-given from the given belongs from the start to the structure of perception, in which the present feld functions as “down-payment” for a future feld (Hua XXXII, 144).Yet, there is no warrant that the course of experience will be the same as it has been until now.What kind of legitimizing ground, therefore, do the inferences of future events have? The weight of belief is determined by a priori laws, which Hume saw, but misunderstood in psychological sense: the force of expectation grows with the number of instances, and therefore with habit, but “it is not at all a question of the human mind and of the effects it experiences due to empirico-psychological laws” (Hua XXIV, 354), for “presumptions based on experience stand under principles themselves having the characteristic of relations of ideas” (Hua XXIV, 352). Accordingly, the originary form of motivation, in which the similar is reminiscent of the similar and motivates its positing, is “an originary form of reason”: since expectations arise in virtue of an analogical apprehension tracing back the ground of the propter to a post, they have a rational ground in the previous experience (Hua XIII, 356–7). Husserl thus takes up the empiricist problem of genesis from an eidetic standpoint: experience arises from experience, yet not according to empirical laws, but rather to a priori laws. If there were no material lawfulness in the factual course of appearances, no expectation, no apperception, no world could become constituted. Habit as induction is, as Hume correctly argues, the originary source of every bestowal of objective sense, but precisely for this reason it is not, as he wrongly argues, a mechanism of blind association (Hua XXXII, 146). Hume falls into a circle by explaining habit through similarity and similarity in turn through habit. It is not habit, which gives rise to lawfulness, but it is lawfulness, which enables habit.The principles legitimizing all inductions cannot be justifed in turn through inductions (HuaVII, 172). Induction can only occur insofar as experience is homogeneous and the future appearances are predelineated by the past ones (Hua XXXII, 60–6, 249–50). Not only the constitution of the object, but also that of the subject as a substrate of habitualities rests on association (Hua XI, 386). For “the ego has unity in virtue of the world, if it is an actual world, if it is the title of a realm of truths-in-themselves” (Ms. A VI 30/38b), because I preserve my personal ego only “if a world of objects remains constantly preserved for me” (Ms. A VI 30/54b). “Without object, I am not an ego” (Ms. A VI 30/54a). If things and their determinations changed lawlessly, I would be not the identical subject of my acts, but a “‘variegated’ self ”, namely a “worldless”“ego-pole” with “no personal habitual sense”, although I would preserve “the unity of my life, the multiplicity of my sensation-data in the unity of the immanent time” (Ms.A VI 30/52b). Husserl accomplishes a depsychologization of association by showing that it depends upon the “pre-affective peculiarity of the elements” and has therefore “material conditions” (Hua XI, 165). Associative syntheses occur passively, viz. independently of the subject’s intervention, because they rest on similarity, which is a relation of ideas, i.e., a nexus grounded purely in the contents (Hua XI, 185, 285, 399–400; Husserl 1972, 215). Accordingly, sensuousness has its own eidetic structure entailing the performance of acts: it is not the subjective acts that determine the material articulations of experience, but the latter that make the former possible.“What is one ‘materially’, so to speak without the ego’s participation […], also exercises an affection” (Hua-Mat VIII, 195), that motivates the turning-toward of the ego and gives rise to the intentio (Hua XI, 84–5; Hua IX, 131, 209). Since, therefore, intentional 79
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acts are a “response” of the ego to an affection (Hua XI, 166–7; Hua-Mat VIII, 184, 189, 191) and the occurring of affections depends upon homogeneity and contrast among sensuous contents, sensuous similarity and sensuous contrast are “conditions of the possibility of intention and affection” (Hua XI, 285) and constitute “the resonance which grounds all which is once constituted” (Hua XI, 406). 8. Since the actual world is the correlate of the concordant and in infnitum concordantly ongoing experience (Hua VIII, 457), its dissolution consists in the dissolution of the concordance of experience, namely in the falling away of anticipation (Hua VIII, 48–9). The legitimacy of world-belief coincides with the legitimacy of anticipation, because the world exists “only in the continually predelineated presumption that experience will go on continually in the same constitutional style” (Hua XVII, 258). Husserl’s world-annihilation hypothesis is inspired by Hume and is due to the circumstance that the validity of experience depends upon further experience, hence only evidence of anticipation can secure the becoming confrmed in infnitum (Hua XXXIX, 214): were the anticipation of future concordance constantly disappointed, there would be a conscious succession of appearances, but no objectual apperception.The world-annihilation is nothing else but the dissolution of the objective ground of association.That consciousness can exist without there being a transcendent reality means just that we can fll arbitrarily immanent time, so that a nature would be not constituted (Hua XXXVI, 78–9); since formal-temporal syntheses independent of contents can be carried out irrespective of material-associative syntheses produced by contents, consciousness would persist, even if appearances were materially unconnected and their course didn’t allow any thing-apperception. Consequently, the formal unity of consciousness is a necessary, yet not a suffcient condition for the material unity of object.A real world can become constituted only through contentual syntheses, which depend upon the particularity of the given stuff and can be performed only if “contentual conditions of association” are fulflled, i.e., if there occurs “a continuity of similarity” in the content (Hua-Mat VIII, 9).The constitution of an objective world is therefore contingent: consciousness could be completely equipped to be able to cognize rationally, but its factual content might not be rationalizable, because “a ‘senseless chaos’ is there, which in itself does not allow for a cognition of nature” (Ms. D 13 II/200b), i.e., because “conficts irresolvable not only for us but in themselves” make it impossible to maintain the positing of things (Hua III/1, 103). Since each material category “prescribes rules for manifolds of appearances” (Hua III/1, 350), constitution rests on the nature of sensuous contents: the objective peculiarity of the content determines the objective connections between it and further contents. Subjectivity is not the principle of constitution, but only the place of legitimation: whatever has to be accepted by the ego as rightful, must legitimate itself in the ego’s acts, but its existence and essence do not have their explanatory ground in the ego (cf. De Palma 2016, 316–9). Accordingly, only in a formal respect is every existent relative to transcendental subjectivity, which is nothing else but the empirical subjectivity itself, insofar as it becomes conscious of being for itself the ultimate site of any validity and legitimation (cf. Hua I, 103; Hua V, 147; Hua VI, 205;Tugendhat 1967, 198–9). 9. Husserl endorses the empiricist thesis that one can single out a purely sensuous and therefore unhistorical core of the world-experience. Sensuous fusions are indeed “unhistorical” (Hua-Mat VIII, 338). The “eidetic doctrine” or “ontology of the life-world purely as world of experience” (Hua VI, 144, 176), which aims to grasp the a priori structure of the “world of pre-scientifc intuition” 80
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(Hua IX, 56), is nothing else but the “transcendental aesthetic” (Hua XXXIX, 268, 692), in which one excludes all judicative knowing and restricts oneself to perception (Hua XI, 295), in order to bring out “the ontic in its ontic essential sort, as it is included in experience itself ” (Hua XLI, 346). At the basis of the many culturally determined surrounding worlds is a unique cultureless world of experience (Hua XXXIX, 28), which is endowed with a spatio-temporal and causal “‘aesthetic’ essential form” (Hua XXXIX, 685).What gives to the world “its identity and actuality in front of the changing manners of apperception” (Hua XV, 167) is such “absolutely identical objective structure” functioning as “substratum of all realities” (Hua XXXIX, 297–8):“material reality ultimately underlies all other realities” (Hua III/1, 354). Because the givenness of spiritual senses is grounded in that of physical bodies, the world of things is prior in itself to the world of culture (Hua IX, 119), which has a restricted objectivity and an accessibility that is not unconditional (Hua I, 160–2). For whereas cultural determinations don’t have the same content for everyone and are something “relatively objective” that changes depending on the world-view, sensuous determinations are something “absolutely objective” and enable the identifcation of the real (Hua XXXIX, 297, 295). It is the same sun, the same moon, etc., that are differently mythologized by the different peoples (Hua XXIX, 387). Everyone is aware that every particular community apprehends differently the one identical world (Hua XV, 217), and thereby presupposes that a world in itself manifests itself in the surrounding world relative to the subject.“That presupposition is not a theoretical, historical-factual prejudice, but belongs to the essential sense of world-experience of everyone” (Hua XXXIX, 684). Sensuous experience is not an accidental starting point, from which one can free oneself, as if it were a ladder that one can throw away after one has climbed up on it, because its legitimacy is presupposed, even when it becomes delimited (Hua XXXV, 475). For even the scientist uses the sensuous given “not as something irrelevant that must be passed through, but as that which ultimately grounds the theoretical-logical ontic validity for all objective verifcation […]. The seen measuring scales, scales-markings, etc., are used as actually existing things, not as illusions” (Hua VI, 129). Every scientifc formation refers back to the prescientifc world and every verifcation leads back to sensuous evidences: experience is “the source of evidence for the objective ascertainments of the sciences, which are never themselves experiences of the objective”, because the latter – just as something metaphysically transcendent – is “never experienceable as it itself ” (Hua VI, 130–1).The grounding of scientifc truths leads back to everyday truths: one can read the result of an experiment only through a perception that can become rectifed only through other perceptions. Perception is therefore the ultimate court of appeal of every theory. Sensuous objects with their sensuous structures are given before every subjective intervention, do not depend upon theoretical assumptions, and are the ground for theoretical assumptions. Since perception does not presuppose the acceptance of scientifc theories, whereas scientifc theories presuppose the acceptance of perception, the sensuous world in its sensuous givenness is epistemically uncircumventable and the alleged overcoming of sensuous relativity by objective theory is deceptive (Hua VI, 135). Science does not alter the world of experience, which “remains unchanged as what it is, in its own eidetic structure and its own concrete causal style, whatever we may do with or without artifces” (HuaVI, 51). Since theoretical entities are at the time (depending on the theory) useful to explain invariant (theory-independent) sensuous phenomena, their epistemological and ontological status cannot be higher than that of such phenomena.3 If one regards theoretical entities as real, he/she takes “the dangerous road of double truth” (Hua VI, 179) by turning empirical objects into images or signs of alleged objects causing them.Yet causal inferences presuppose a homogeneous basis of experience and cannot lead from what is experienced to what is in 81
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principle unexperienceable (Hua XXXVI, 178). Otherwise, Aquinas’ proofs of God’s existence would be well founded. Moreover, if an unknown cause of the appearances existed at all, then it would have to be possible in principle for it to be perceived via appearances, if not by us, at least by superior subjects, and so on in infnitum (Hua III/1, 111). Such a recursive character makes the explanation of the observable through the unobservable inane, as Hume already remarks in his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, where he comes to the conclusion that the present material world contains the principle of its order within itself and is therefore God. 10. Husserl relates his “idealism” to British empiricism (Patočka 1999, 275–6). He ascribes the introduction of the transcendental question to both Locke and Hume (Hua VII, 279, 348; Hua XVII, 263), whose Treatise he regards as a draft of transcendental philosophy (HuaVII, 226, 241), and speaks, when referring to Mill, Schuppe, and Avenarius, of “a transcendental philosophy basically determined by English empiricism” (Hua VI, 198). The backbone of phenomenology is the empiricist equalization of the real with the sensuous, i.e., with the correlate of possible perception (Hua XIX/2, 679, 703; Hua-Mat III, 168–71; Hua XVII, 457). Precisely because the real world is sensuous, its constitution presupposes a bodily subject (Hua XXXVI, 132–45). Since things exist even if nobody experiences them, they are transcendent and in themselves, but yet constantly experienceable (Hua XXXVI, 191, 152). For they are independent of single factual appearances, but not of possible appearing (Hua II, 12): every object “is what it is whether it is known or not”, but is “in principle knowable even if it has factually never been known or will be known” (Hua II, 25), and when it comes to real objects, “knowable” means “experienceable”.An in principle unexperienceable reality is therefore a countersense. The concept of thing-transcendence is to be gathered from the essential content of perception (Hua III/1, 101).“In itself ” or “transcendent” is that which can be perceived as the same in several perceptions and whose esse does not exhaust itself in the percipi, i.e., in the momentary givenness. Consequently, being is not the actually perceived, as Berkeley claims, but the perceivable, which yet can be determined only on the basis of the actually perceived. A real but unexperienced or even factually unexperienceable thing lies in principle in the domain of possible experience, because the actual perceptual feld is a member of a continuity of perceptual felds that leads eventually to the one in which the thing would be experienced; a real possibility or nexus of experience permits the justifcation of the being of the thing starting from the actual experience.An empty or ideal possibility, which is not predelineated by the actually experienced, is a groundless fction,“just as much as the existence of satyrs or nymphs is” (Hua XXXVI, 119). The existence of things signifes the existence of real possibilities of experience. A world without subjects can exist, although its legitimation presupposes an actual subject (Hua XXXVI, 19, 141).Accordingly, the dependence of reality on the subject concerns only the legitimation of something independent of the subject. This argument entails no idealism; for the subjective legitimation of the existence-positing is uncircumventable, since even the positing of things in themselves becomes legitimated in subjective acts. And the equalization of real and experienceable denies not that things have a being in itself, but that such being is unexperienceable (Hua XXXVI, 32). It is indeed actually realistic, since if one refuses to consider the real as the given, he/she cannot help considering it as the thought and embracing idealism. Realism is nothing else than empiricism, because it argues “that things, as they immediately are, have a real existence”, whereas “idealism attributes reality to the ideas alone, by asserting that things, as they singly appear, are not something truthful” (Hegel 1969–1971-XIX, 571–2). 82
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11. Husserl’s idealism stems from Brentano’s psychologism. Despite all criticism, Husserl adheres to Brentano’s thesis that only what is psychic is properly given; he includes the sensuous contents into phenomenological research, just because he considers them immanent to consciousness in the same way as acts are (Hua XIX/2, 767–75).The sensuous object thus originates from two immanent elements: the sensation-contents, which are the formless stuff of apprehension, and the apprehension-act, which bestows upon sensation-contents the intentional form by animating them, i.e., interpreting them as appearances of a transcendent object. Consequently, constitution is governed by the psychological lawfulness of form-giving. This clashes with Husserl’s doctrine that sensuous forms stem not from the acts of the subject, but from the nature of contents. Against the view that only properties are given and things are thought-constructions or fctions, Husserl claims that things are grounded in the nature of properties and sensuously given with them: a thing consists only of properties – as Hume rightly claims – yet they form not a bundle – as he wrongly claims – but rather a whole.Therefore, substance neither lies beyond appearances nor is dissolvable into qualities, but it is the “unity of the real” (Hua XLI, 276), namely a material nexus of sensuous qualities. But, since Husserl considers the immanent sensation-contents as the properly given and the transcendent thing as a product of their interpretation, he falls back into the sensualistic approach. By adopting the content/apprehension scheme, Husserl also falls back into the inferential theory of perception. Since only immanent contents are immediately given, they are the foundations of apprehension (Hua XIX/1, 399; Hua XI, 17): they can either be merely present or – due to an interpretative act – function as images or signs of the object (cf. Hua XIX/1, 80–1; Hua XIX/2, 769–70; Melle 1983, 40–51). Contradicting his own thesis that transcendent objects are immediately given through external experience (Hua XXXVI, 178), Husserl refers to external perception as “a mediate consciousness, provided that only one apperception is had immediately, a store of sensory data […] and an apperceptive apprehension, through which an exhibiting appearance is constituted” (Hua XI, 18). Spatial objects are constituted “mediately, through ‘apperception’ of sensational objects”, which are “immediate sensuous objects” and serve as “representatives” (Hua XXXIII, 319). Husserl regards external perception as a representation, because he presumes, like Brentano, that only what is psychic has actual existence and that inner perception – in which the content is really included in the act, hence esse and percipi coincide – is the only true perception (Brentano 1924, 14, 28, 128–9; Hua XIX/1, 365–6; Hua XIX/2, 646–50, 769–71; Hua XXXVI, 21–42, 62–72; Hua XI, 16–24). Since the elements from which things arise really lie in consciousness, things are the result of a projection or inference from what is immanent (cf. Melle 1983, 50–1; Philipse 1995, 262–7), and nature is created by consciousness (Hua XLII, 170). Properly speaking, there is nothing else than minds (Hua XLII, 157–8), because everything physical is but a connection of consciousness (Hua XIII, 7). Accordingly, the transcendental attitude consists in an “introspection” (Hua XV, 23) by means of which one directs the regard to sensation and apprehension (Hua XXXVI, 129), and the method of phenomenology is the same as that of eidetic psychology (Hua XVII, 261); transcendental psychology and transcendental phenomenology are identical, for both are concerned with transcendental internality (Hua VI, 261–9), and, as psychologism claims, psychology is the place of decisions (Hua VI, 212, 218). What leads Husserl to idealism is the view that only what is immanent is truly given and actually exists. For him, idealism consists just in the reduction to absolute consciousness or dissolution of world into connections of consciousness (Ms. B I 4/15a; Hua XLII, 577; Hua XXXVI, 27, 32, 138).4 However, this characterizes Berkeley’s and Hume’s psychological or subjective 83
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idealism rejected by Husserl (Hua III/1, 120–1; Hua VII, 246–7; Hua I, 118), namely psychologism. For the latter is distinguished by the circumstance that, because objects are constituted in consciousness, “their sense as a species of objects having a peculiar essence is denied in favor of the subjective occurrences” (Hua XVII, 177–8).5 Every reduction of given objects to giving acts, viz. to consciousness, rests on a psychologistic fallacy. Hume regards difference as equivalent to separation and claims that, because I never can catch myself without a perception, I never can observe anything but the perception (Hume 1888, 10, 252). But, although we cannot grasp objects without acts, objects are distinguishable from acts, just like sounds are distinguishable from volumes, although they cannot be given apart from volume. The properties of the experienced (such as extension) are cognizable only via experiencing, but are neither properties of the experiencing (which doesn’t have extension) nor projections or fctions produced by it. 12. The ambiguity of phenomenology is connected with that of the word “appearance” or “phenomenon”, which can be understood in noetic sense as cogitatio or in noematic sense as cogitatum and therefore referred to both the appearing, namely to immanent occurrences, and to that which appears, namely to transcendent objects (cf. Hua XXIV, 405–12; Hua II, 11–14; Hua-Mat VII, 64–5; Kern 1975, 432–7). The ambiguity of reduction, which consists in a “phenomenalization” (Hua XXIV, 211) or reduction of being to phenomenon, depends thereon. If “phenomenon” is understood as that which appears, real objects are reduced to what they are in themselves, namely, regarded as sensuous objects, and what is eliminated are only the explanatory entities posited behind by the subject. Accordingly, reduction does not abandon the world, but discloses its sense (Hua VIII, 457), by enabling the grasp of “the essential connection between the idea of an existent world and the system of possible experiences” (HuaVIII, 400). If, instead,“phenomenon” is understood as appearing, real objects are reduced to consciousness, and what is eliminated is that which appears. By presenting reduction as an exclusion of the world and consciousness as a residuum, the Cartesian way makes reduction to be understood just as a reduction to the stream of consciousness, whose concern is not the world, but only the subjective acts and modes of appearance related to world (Hua VIII, 432–4). Husserl’s introspective conception of phenomenology is affected – via Brentano – by Locke’s psychological interpretation of refection as internal perception and rests upon the incorrect presumption that acts and sensations belong to sensuousness, hence immanent perception is sensuous perception (cf. Hua XIX/2, 706–9; Kern 1975, 248–54). However, immanent sensation-contents are not sensuously given and thus actual, but postulated. By dissolving the given in theoretical constructs, phenomenology falls back into the explanatory approach, from whose rejection it arises.6 If consciousness is not a box, as Husserl repeatedly asserts, it contains nothing. Sensuous contents are therefore not immanent to consciousness. When Husserl says that colors are extended or spread out and join together to make up sensuous felds, he is not speaking of really immanent contents, for these do not have extension or spreading out and do not join together to make up sensuous felds.That of which there is consciousness is not really included in consciousness, because it is “what I myself am not, but what I am conscious of in my being as a non-ego” (Hua-Mat VIII, 361). Constitution has precisely a “non-subjective core” (HuaMat VIII, 361) that consists in ego-foreign contents lying in sensuous felds (Hua-Mat VIII, 188–9, 199, 295). Accordingly, what is immediately given and functions as the empirical basis of knowledge are not immanent refection-contents and sensation-contents, but transcend84
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ent perception-contents, which are provided with an objective structure grounded in their nature. Only in this way does one get rid of psychologism, image-theory, and the problem of the external world. Like all empiricists, Husserl is – to use the terminology of Plato’s Sophist – a “son of earth”, but he is not consistent and takes ideas for truthful being.7
Notes 1 On Husserl’s conception of the a priori and his critique to the Kantian one, cf. De Palma 2014. On Kant’s misunderstanding of Hume’s conception, cf. Reinach 1989. 2 On Husserl’s theory of association, cf. De Palma 2011. 3 On Husserl’s rejection of scientifc realism, cf. Rang 1990, 373–96;Wiltsche 2012. 4 Already in the Logical Investigations Husserl suggests that the objective grounds of every speaking of physical things lie merely in lawful correlations among psychic occurrences (Hua XIX/1, 371) and that things are constituted out of the same stuff as sensations (Hua XIX/2, 764). 5 On the affnities between Berkeley’s and Husserl’s thinking, cf. Philipse 1995, 285–7. In a dissertation written under Husserl’s direction Salmon claims that Hume’s method is introspective, but he didn’t consistently carry through the phenomenological subjectivization (cf. Salmon 1929). Yet, although Husserl distinguishes between his transcendental and Hume’s bad subjectivization (Hua XVII, 263), subjectivization is undistinguishable from psychologization. 6 “In order to overcome naturalism radically, one also has to reject the principle of immanence and the epistemological problem of the external world which is implied by it” (Philipse 1995, 300). In the frst formulation of 1902–3, the transcendental question concerns precisely “sense and warrant of the assumption of an ‘external world’” (Hua-Mat III, 79). 7 I am indebted to Mario Alai, Burt Hopkins, Wolfgang Kaltenbacher, Michela Summa, and especially Daniele De Santis for their help with grammar and style. I also thank Professor Julia Jansen for permission to quote from Husserl’s unpublished manuscripts.
References Brentano, Franz. 1924. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt.Vol. I. Ed. Oskar Kraus. Leipzig: Meiner. De Palma,Vittorio. 2011. “Ist Husserls Assoziationstheorie transzendental?” Phänomenologische Forschungen: pp. 91–115. ———. 2012.“Die Welt und die Evidenz. Zu Husserls Erledigung des Cartesianismus.” Husserl Studies 28: pp. 201–24. ———. 2014. “Die Fakta leiten alle Eidetik. Zu Husserls Begriff des materialen Apriori.” Husserl Studies 30: pp. 195–223. ———. 2015. “Eine peinliche Verwechselung. Zu Husserls Transzendentalismus.” Metodo. International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy, Special Issue n. 1, ch. 1: pp. 13–45. ———. 2016. “Subjekt und Erfahrung. Grundlagen und Implikationen von Husserls Kritik an die transzendentale Methode Kants.” Meta: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy 8: pp. 304–325. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 1969–1971. Werke in zwanzig Bänden. Eds. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Hume, David. 1888. A Treatise of Human Nature. Ed. Lewis Amherst Selby-Bigge. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Husserl, Edmund. 1972. Erfahrung und Urteil. Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik. Ed. Ludwig Landgrebe. Hamburg: Meiner. Kern, Iso. 1975. Idee und Methode der Philosophie. Leitgedanken für eine Theorie der Vernunft. Berlin: De Gruyter. Locke, John. 1999. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. State College, Pennsylvania:The Pennsylvania State University. Melle, Ullrich. 1983. Das Wahrnehmungsproblem und seine Verwandlung in phänomenologischer Einstellung. Untersuchungen zu den phänomenologischen Wahrnehmungstheorien von Husserl, Gurwitsch und Merleau-Ponty. Den Haag: Martin Nijhoff. Patočka, Jan. 1999. Texte – Dokumente – Bibliographie. Eds. Ludger Hagedorn and Hans Rainer Sepp. Freiburg/München: Alber.
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Vittorio De Palma Philipse, Herman. 1995. “Transcendental idealism.” In: The Cambridge Companion to Husserl. Eds. Barry Smith and David Woodruff Smith. Cambridge: CUP, pp. 239–322. Rang, Bernhard. 1990. Husserls Phänomenologie der materiellen Natur. Frankfurt: Klostermann. Reinach, Adolf. 1989. “Kants Auffassung des Humeschen Problems.” In: Sämtliche Werke. Vol I. Eds. Karl Schuhmann and Barry Smith. München: Philosophia, pp. 67–93. Ricoeur, Paul. 2004.“Kant et Husserl.” In: A l’école de la phénoménologie. Paris:Vrin, pp. 273–313. Salmon, Christopher Verney. 1929. “The central problem of David Hume’s philosophy.” Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung 10: pp. 299–449. Tugendhat, Ernst. 1967. Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger. Berlin: De Gruyter. Wiltsche, Harald. 2012.“What is wrong with Husserl’s scientifc anti-realism?” Inquiry 55: pp. 105–30.
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6 PHENOMENOLOGY AND GERMAN IDEALISM Thomas M. Seebohm (1934–2014), edited by Robert Dostal
6.1 Preliminary orientation in the structure of the historical contexts of German idealism and phenomenology The main task for any investigation with a title composed of a conjunction of two philosophical positions is either to fnd an historical affliation or to establish analogies between the positions. The simple case is the case of affliations or analogies between two systematic positions. The complex case is the case in which the names mentioned in the conjuncts refer to complex historical sequences in the development of philosophical positions.This is the case not only for “German idealism” but also for “phenomenology.” Systematic refections on possible historical affliations or systematic analogies (Section 6.2) presuppose frst a suffciently precise survey (Section 6.1.1) of the periods of the development of the systems of German idealism and (Section 6.1.2) of the periods of the development of the phenomenological movement in the frst half of the last century. Systematic refections presuppose secondly an approximately complete list of the explicit (Section 6.1.3) references in the different periods of the development.
6.1.1 The periods of the development of the systems of German idealism “German idealism” is a name for the historical development of a sequence of philosophical systems. Beginning with the frst edition of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781), the frst phase of this development ends with Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre (1794), followed by Schelling’s Philosophie der Natur (1797) and his System des transzendentalen Idealismus of 1800.1 The third phase starts with Hegel’s Differenz des Fichteschen und Schellingschen Systems der Philosophie (1801) and the introduction to his system in the Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807).2 The fnal steps are his Logik (1812) and the Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (1817).3 6.1.1.1 The different meanings of “absolute” in these periods
Though Fichte claims to propose an understanding of the spirit and not of the letter of Kant’s philosophy, the Doctrine of Science implies the rejection of Kant’s thesis that metaphysics must be restricted to a transcendental doctrine of the a priori structures of experience and has no access to knowledge about things in themselves. The claim is that intellectual intuition and speculative
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thinking is able to transcend the limits of experience and to discover the Absolute that appears frst in Fichte’s system as absolute Ego. The Absolute given in intellectual intuition was for the German idealists not given as absolute indifference. Already Fichte proposed a method for the systematic explication of the Absolute.4 His outline is a frst sketch of the basic structures of the method used later by Schelling and Hegel. Schelling was the frst who used the term “dialectics” for the method of the explication of the Absolute in speculative thinking. It is suffcient for these preliminary remarks to emphasize that the foundation for these analyses, e.g., of terms like “dialectical opposition” or “dialectical contradiction” in Fichte and in Hegel can be understood as an application of what can be found in Kant’s transcendental dialectic and the logic of concepts in his lectures on logic.5 What is added is the principle of synthesis, i.e., the ability of speculative reason to determine the synthesis beyond the oppositions and the contradiction that plague the explication of the absolute as a Kantian ens realissimum. 6.1.1.2 The different meanings of “phenomena” in the periods of German idealism
According to the section “Phenomena and Noumena” of the Critique of Pure Reason, “phenomena” are objects given in experience a posteriori in sensory intuition.6 Objects given as appearances are objects of understanding only if they are given as determined by the principles of pure understanding.7 The main task of the Critique is to reject the claim of traditional metaphysics that noumena, as objects of pure understanding, are of objective validity for transcendent things in themselves. “Phenomenology” is of systematic signifcance in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, i.e., the introduction to Hegel’s system.Any consideration of the question as to what “phenomenology” means in the context of this phase of the development of German idealism should consult the section in the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences titled “Phenomenology.”8 It is the phase in the development of the Absolute as the self-movement of the concept (Selbstbewegung des Begriffs) in which the Absolute appears in consciousness on the level of refection. Kant’s philosophy is, hence, a philosophy of refection and contains, therefore, only the phenomenology, not the philosophy of spirit.
6.1.2. Periods in the development of the phenomenological movement 6.1.2.1 The period of the frst edition of the Logical Investigations
In the frst edition of the Logical Investigations (LI) Husserl adopted the term “phenomenology” as a term for the method of descriptive psychology from Carl Stumpf. The phenomena of a descriptive phenomenology are, according to Stumpf, not only phenomena of psychological functions but also phenomena of the objects given in psychological functions. In the context of Brentano’s psychology, psychological functions are intentional acts and the objects of intentional acts are intentional objects. Husserl accepted Brentano’s terminology in the frst edition of the LI and Stumpf had no diffculties with this shift in the terminology. It was, in general, a welcome thesis for 19th-century positivism that research in descriptive psychology for itself is able to solve epistemological problems. 6.1.2.2. From “Ideas I” to “Formal and Transcendental Logic”
The frst step in the development of the second period of the phenomenological movement was Husserl’s distinction between positivistic psychologism and transcendental psychologism. The second step is the rejection of any type of psychologism in Philosophy as a Rigorous Science 88
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(1910) because all of them end in relativism and skepticism. Husserl provided a positive answer in Ideas I (1913), the lecture on First Philosophy (1923–24), and Formal and Transcendental Logic (1929, henceforth FTL). The new meaning of “phenomena” in this period is determined in the theory of the phenomenological reduction requiring the bracketing of the natural attitude in which the existence of the natural surrounding world together with its real and ideal objects is held in suspension.9 This bracketing or suspension implies neither a denial nor skeptical doubts about the existence of the world.The world as the sum total of objects is, after the reduction, given as the correlate of the synthetic activity of intentional acts.Therefore, the phenomenological reduction brackets also the assumption of affecting “metaphysical” entities behind the phenomena. 6.1.2.3 The period of the “Cartesian Meditations,” the “Crisis,” and the discussions in the Freiburg circle
The third period begins in 1928 with the work on the Cartesian Meditations and the cooperation with Eugen Fink and the Freiburg phenomenological circle. The new task of this period was the problem of an ultimate foundation or grounding of phenomenological research.The search for an ultimate foundation required an extension of phenomenology that was understood as a “metaphysical” extension that presupposes the earlier analyses of passive synthesis, inner temporality, the constitution of intersubjectivity, and fnally the ontological region of the “spiritual world” as the region of the human sciences.
6.1.3 References 6.1.3.1 References to Kant in periods 6.1.2.1 and 6.1.2.2
Of signifcance for the frst period are only the above-mentioned critique of Transzendentalpsychologismus and some fragments of drafts for lectures from 1903. Of signifcance for the beginnings of the second period are fragments of drafts from 1908–1914. But most important for this period is Husserl’s adoption of Kantian terms in Ideas I—terms that are of substantial importance in the Critique of Pure Reason. In his adoption of these terms in Ideas I Husserl either gives no indication of possible differences in meaning of his usage, e.g., “transcendental,” “synthesis,” and “constitution,” or he simply mentions that it is left open whether he uses the term in Kant’s sense, e.g., in the case of the adoption of the “transcendental ego” and “idea in the Kantian sense.” Husserl does emphasize, however, that there are radical differences between his phenomenology and Kant’s critical philosophy.The root of these differences is Kant’s transcendental psychologism, because the method of the metaphysical constructions in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason has its foundation in Kant’s transcendental psychologism. The frst comprehensive refections on Kant’s transcendental philosophy can be found in First Philosophy I (lecture 27), at the end of extensive critical evaluations of the philosophical systems in the pre-history of transcendental phenomenology in modern philosophy.10 Further critical evaluations of Kant’s transcendental philosophy can be found in supplementary texts: a treatise on Kant’s Copernican turn of 1924, and the treatise “Kant and the Idea of Transcendental Philosophy,” also of 1924.11 There are also three lectures on Fichte from 1917 and some short remarks about post-Kantian German idealism from 1914.12 We should notice that Husserl’s source for his remarks on Hegel are not Hegel’s writings themselves but the Logical Investigations of Adolf Trendelenburg, who had no sympathy for Hegel’s Logic as a method of speculative thinking.13 Husserl shares Trendelenburg’s rejection of Hegel’s transition from consciousness to absolute knowledge in the Phenomenology. 89
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No references to intellectual intuition and other concepts that are of signifcance for German idealism in the narrower sense and their possible signifcance for transcendental phenomenology can be found in Husserl’s writings of the frst two periods of the history of the phenomenological movement. The frst passage in Husserl’s work in which the German idealists, as followers of Kant, are also recognized as predecessors of transcendental phenomenology can be found in §27 of the Crisis.14 Husserl has more to say about Fichte and Hegel and their relations to Kant’s transcendental philosophy and to transcendental phenomenology in sections §55 and §57 of the Crisis.15 Of interest for a fnal evaluation of these references are adaptations of the terminology of German idealism in the Vienna lectures of 1935, in which Husserl uses the terms “spirit” and “absolute spirit” as a designator for his transcendental absolute ground, i.e., the primal ego (Ur-Ich).16
6.2 Systematic refections There are no references with positive evaluations of German idealism in the frst period of the phenomenological movement.There are positive but also critical references to Kant in the second period.The presupposition of an interest in post-Kantian German idealism in the third period is Husserl’s transition from what Fink called the “naïve” phenomenological reduction of Ideas I to an ultimate grounding of phenomenology in “metaphysical”—perhaps better,“ontological”—speculations about the primal ego, the Ur-Ich, as “absolute Being.” Disregarding the problems connected with Husserl’s later adaptation of the term “absolute spirit” in the Vienna lectures, Husserl’s transition from “naïve” phenomenology to “metaphysics” can be understood as an analogy of the transition from Kant to Fichte’s absolute Ego.
6.2.1 Husserl’s critique of the methods of the constructions of German idealism An analysis of the analogy between the transition from a “naïve” phenomenology to a metaphysical phenomenology and the transition from Kant to Fichte and German idealism in general (Section 6.2.2) must be postponed, because not only Husserl’s but also Fink’s critique of the constructions of the German idealists implies serious consequences for determining the scope and the limits of the analogy. Answers to questions concerning the reasons behind the phenomenological critique of the constructions of post-Kantian German idealism presuppose an account of Husserl’s critique of the constructions in Kant’s transcendental philosophy. 6.2.1.1 Husserl’s critique of Kant
According to the references mentioned in Section 6.1.3.1, Husserl, in the frst edition of LI, criticized logical psychologism and psychologizing ideal objects in general as Transzendentalpsychologismus. The psychologism of empiricism recognizes only empirical universals of real objects. Kant’s Transzendentalpsychologismus is, according to the second edition of the LI, a transzendentalen Psychologismus or transzendentaler Anthropologismus. Transcendental psychologism or anthropologism recognizes a priori structures but reduces these structures to a priori structures of human understanding and reason. This understanding of the a priori presupposes the metaphysical constructions of a nonempirical “rational” psychology. Kant’s analysis of the “presuppositions of the possibility of experience” presupposes frstly, by way of general metaphysical constructions, the powers of sensible sensory intuition, imagination, understanding, and reason. It also presupposes, secondly, the con90
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structions of a metaphysical “in itself ” as the “cause” of sensory affections and then the in itself of the spontaneity of the unity of transcendental apperception in its synthetic activities. The method of phenomenology in the frst two periods presupposes strictly descriptive accounts of eidetic intuitions. It is incompatible with constructions that presuppose the formal and material structures of modern dogmatic rationalism or other types of theoretical constructions. Modern philosophical traditions can be considered as predecessors of transcendental phenomenology only to the extent to which they offer descriptions of structures of consciousness that are evident with additional applications of constructive methods. Such descriptive contents can be found in Kant after eliminating his transcendental psychologism and its presuppositions in the metaphysical constructions of dogmatic rationalism. 6.2.1.2 The Kantian background of the speculative constructions of post-Kantian German idealism
Formal logic in Kant’s sense and, hence, also metaphysical constructions presupposing this logic, was for the post-Kantian idealists not acceptable for conceptual explications of the Absolute given in intellectual intuition in speculative thinking.Their account of the method of speculative thinking presupposes, nevertheless, basic elements of conceptual structures of the Kantian doctrine of the concept (Lehre vom Begriff) because the contradiction that emerges in the assumption of the highest genus is precisely the logical foundation of the contradiction in the ens realissimum that Kant discovers in the “Transcendental Dialectic” of the Critique of Pure Reason. This “most real being” of Kant can be found in Fichte’s philosophy, i.e., the frst period in the development of the post-Kantian idealism, the absolute ego. Of basic signifcance for the development of post-Kantian ontological and metaphysical idealism—not transcendental but absolute—are the concepts of identity, as opposed to non-identity, and indifference, as opposed to difference.The absolute indifference in the identity of the absolute I and together with it the absolute difference of non-identity of the absolute Not-I is given in intellectual intuition.This opposition is understood as contradiction. Fichte recognizes explicitly that his “deductions” of the acts, the Tathandlungen, of the absolute I imply the “laws of refection,” i.e., the basic principles of formal logic.17 These “laws of refection” are frstly relevant in their application to the logic of concepts.They are secondly relevant in their application to the categories, frst of all of reality, negation, and limitation, and only in last place as laws of refections for empirical judgmental syntheses.18 The laws of refection are also the determining ground for the third principle, guiding the third step, i.e., the deductions of speculative syntheses. The strict disjunction between analytic judgments and synthetic judgments based on experience does not hold for the deductions of speculative thinking in “intellectual intuition.” Fichte did not use the term “dialectic” for the method of the “deductions” of the Doctrine of Science. The term was introduced by Schelling, but there are no changes in the refections on the origins of the basic concepts that applied in his account of the dialectical method before 1809. Schelling’s merits are only the adaptation of the term “dialectic” from contemporary interpretations of Plato and then the consideration of the Absolute not as absolute Ego but as Subject–Object/Object–Subject, i.e., as the identity of difference and indifference. Hegel’s Logic starts with thinking the dialectical opposition of Being and Nothing, and considering Becoming as the synthesis in the transition from Being to Nothing and vice versa. To think the Absolute in intellectual intuition in the beginning as the dialectical contradiction of Being and Nothing means, however, according to Hegel, only to think it as immediately given in itself and not in and for itself in the form of refection and the laws of refection. Intellectual intuition does not think in concepts; it is rather the immediate result of the elevation of the 91
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representations of empirical consciousness to the level of speculative thinking.The next defnition of the Absolute uses the concepts of qualitative infnity, of dialectical oppositions and contradictions and the principles of synthesis as the principle of synthetic dialectical “deductions.” The fnal step of the methodologically signifcant steps of the Science of Logic begins with the explication of indifference and difference.19 6.2.1.3 The signifcance of Husserl’s mathesis universalis for his rejection of the dialectical constructions of German idealism
Research interested in analogies between phenomenology and German idealism must keep in mind that Husserl’s conception of logic and Kant’s conception of logic (and with it the conception of logic of post-Kantian idealists) are different. Husserl understood his system of formal logic and ontology as a realization of the Leibnizean program of a mathesis universalis, i.e., as the sum total of deductive systems and the principles of consistency and completeness.20 Kant tolerated the frst steps of Leibniz and others in the development of modern logic as interesting without being bothered by the differences between his conception of logic and the new type of logic. Hegel, however, condemned the conception of logic of Leibniz, Plouquet, Euler, and Lambert as talk about concepts without concepts (begriffose Weise über den Begriff zu reden). Such talk, for Hegel, is empty calculating thinking and is utterly useless in philosophical refections in general and especially for attempts to explicate the method of speculative thinking and its task to think the self-movement of the concept, the Selbstbewegung des Begriffs.21 Crucial differences between logic as mathesis universalis and basic logical structures that are implicitly presupposed in the method of dialectical constructions are the concepts of opposition and contradiction, of identity and non-identity, and of indifference and difference. The reason behind the principal consistency, i.e., of non-contradiction, for deductive systems in mathematical logic for Hilbert as well as for a Husserlian mathesis universalis is the possibility of deducing all other possible propositions and their negations according to the laws of logical deduction from pre-given contradictory propositions. It is a gross misinterpretation of the meaning of “contradiction” in post-Kantian idealism and especially in Hegel to use this modern understanding of contradiction in investigations asking “What is dialectic?”22 It is, however, also obvious that the reason for Husserl’s “inability” to understand Hegel has its roots in Husserl’s inability to give a meaningful explication of the concepts “contradiction” and “opposition” that are presupposed in the explication of Hegel’s dialectical method.
6.2.2 Phenomenological ultimate grounding and the Absolute of German idealism Critical refections (Section 6.2.2.3) on analogies between Husserl’s transition from the phenomenological reduction of Ideas I to a metaphysical understanding of ultimate grounding between 1930 and 1937 on the one hand, and the transition from Kant’s critical transcendental philosophy to the Absolute in post-Kantian idealism on the other, presuppose frstly (Section 6.2.2.1) an interpretation of a phenomenological transition to metaphysics and secondly (Section 6.2.2.2) an interpretation of the transition from Kant to post-Kantian German idealism. 6.2.2.1 The “metaphysical” turn in phenomenology
Though the term “metaphysical” does not occur in §53 of the Crisis, Husserl’s refections on the paradox of subjectivity and its solution can be called “metaphysical.” What is said there marks the transition to a phenomenology as the science of Being qua Being. Subjectivity (Subjektsein) is 92
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given in oblique intention as being a subject of the world and also as being an object (Objektsein) in the world.The emphasis on being in the frst part of the formula implies that subjective consciousness, as a necessary being, is the subject of the contingent being of the world as the totality of objects.The second part says that subjective consciousness has itself and its objective correlates as being only because it is given to itself as a contingent being among other contingent beings in the world. Husserl’s way out of this paradox is his ontological interpretation of the paradox in the Crisis, i.e., the interpretation of the frst horn as referring to the primal ego and the interpretation of the second horn as referring to the mundane ego.The problem is whether the subject behind the paradox that experiences the paradox can be the ego as pole of the synthetic activity of intentional acts as the ego of Ideas I. In the last instance are presupposed two abstractive phenomenological reductions, the egological and the primordial reduction, within the residuum of the frst “naïve” phenomenological reduction. Of signifcance for the development leading to these abstractive reductions are the reductions determining the distinction between the natural world as the world of the natural sciences given in the naturalistic attitude and the life-world or the “spiritual world,” i.e., the cultural world given in the attitude of the human sciences, i.e., spiritual sciences (Geisteswissenschaften) in Ideas II.23 The constitution of the world of the natural sciences presupposes an abstractive reduction. Left in the residuum of this reduction is only the givenness of the world in intersensory, i.e., intersubjective, perceptions. The cultural and intercultural spiritual world is constituted as the cultural life-world of concrete intersubjective communities. Intersubjectivity is, in this case, pre-given as a necessary structure of the world given in the natural attitude as life-world, i.e., the transcendent that is the foundation for all further methodological reductions.The spiritual world has, therefore, priority over the natural world. The phenomenological analysis of the constitution of intersubjectivity requires the reduction to the givenness of the Other as living body in the passive syntheses of the egological sphere.A phenomenological analysis of passive syntheses requires, in turn, the primordial reduction to the primordial sphere of passive syntheses and its temporal structures, i.e., the temporal structures of the living present.The transcendental ego in the residuum of the “naïve” phenomenological reduction is only given as the identical pole of the active syntheses in the process of intentional acts.This ego is an abstract moment in the region of the immanence of active syntheses as the pole of these syntheses and their intentional correlates in the life-world as intersubjectively given intentional objects in the world. Phenomenological refections of these structures end in the paradox of subjectivity. The analysis of this paradox and its solution has to re-trace the ultimate ground, the primal ego (Ur-Ich), as the “absolute” activity behind the emergence of the contents and the passive syntheses of the structures in which contents are given in the actual now and its horizon of passive retentions in the living present. It follows that the primal ego is the phenomenological ultimate metaphysical ground. 6.2.2.2 The transition from Kant to post-Kantian German idealism
According to Fichte’s interpretation of Kant’s transcendental deduction, consciousness (as the experience of objects) has its ultimate condition of any possible experience in the unity of transcendental apperception, the transcendental ego, an ultimate condition that is itself not given as an object of experience.24 The other necessary condition and ground for the experience of objects in consciousness, i.e., the experience of the objects that are given for consciousness and as such outside consciousness, is for Kant the thing in itself. According to Fichte, Kant’s transcendental ego qua unity of transcendental apperception goes beyond Kant’s claim that transcendental unity of apperception is merely the “I think that must 93
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be able to accompany all of my thoughts.” For Fichte, the transcendental unity of apperception of the frst Critique is identical with the transcendental ego of the Critique of Practical Reason and can be understood as an indicator of the absolute Ego given in intellectual intuition. Further, for Fichte, Kant’s thing in itself as the transcendent condition of the experience of objects in sensory intuition is the non-Ego.The non-Ego is given in an op-positing, that is, the logically necessary correlate of the self-positing of the absolute Ego.This contradictory opposition of positing and op-positing given in intellectual intuition is the ultimate ground for the chain of the deductions of syntheses and the further contradiction of speculative thinking in the Doctrine of Science. The absolute Ego was, as mentioned in Section 6.2.1.2, replaced by Schelling’s absolute subject–object and then by Hegel’s absolute spirit.The method of Fichte’s deductions was transformed and refned frst in Schelling’s dialectic and then in the explications and applications of the dialectical method of German idealism in Hegel’s Science of Logic. 6.2.2.3 The signifcance of German idealism for understanding the idea of ultimate grounding in Husserl’s phenomenology
The frst task for a search for such analogies is to determine which period in the development of German idealism is of central signifcance for the analogy. Reading the Vienna lectures of 1935 tempts one to assume that Husserl recognized in his last years something like a Hegelian interpretation of the phenomenological solution for the problem of an ultimate grounding (Letztbegründung). Of interest in this respect are the adoptions of such terms as “spirit” and “absolute spirit revealing itself ” in “absolute history.” However, closer considerations indicate clearly that the immediate source for these terms in the Vienna lectures is not Hegel but Dilthey and Windelband and their respective accounts of the human sciences, i.e., the Geisteswissenschaften (sciences of the spirit).25 The fnal word in Husserl in this regard is what he says about German idealism in the Crisis.26 Hegel, though he represents a weaker version of the original power of Kant’s project, can be recognized as a predecessor of transcendental phenomenology according to the references in the texts of Husserl’s last decade only because he is the last follower of Kant. No references to Schelling that are relevant for the basic problem (Section 6.2.2) can be found in the writings of Husserl. What is left according to Husserl is that the writings of Schelling and Hegel may include descriptive contents that can be of interest for phenomenological analyses. According to Fink, Husserl’s position can be compared with the late philosophy of Fichte, but Husserl was not able to grasp Hegel’s thought.27 Thus, only Fichte’s transition from Kant’s transcendental ego as the ultimate “condition of the possibility of experience and self-conscious experience” to an absolute ego is of interest for any critical evaluation of the analogy between the transition of German idealism to the Absolute and the phenomenological transition to ultimate grounding presupposing a primal ego. However, the descriptive phenomenological elements of Fichte’s attempt to restore the aims of traditional metaphysics on the level of intellectual intuition and speculative thinking beyond Kant’s critical deconstruction of traditional metaphysics are not acceptable.The descriptive basis of Fichte’s constructive account of the transition from Kant’s transcendental ego to the absolute positing and op-positing Ego has its descriptive foundation in refections on “Fichte’s own empirical ego.” Fichte’s explication of the self-positing, op-positing, and synthetic positing of the absolute Ego as the underlying pattern of the construction of the deductive sequences of speculative thinking is, seen from the viewpoint of phenomenology, only the indicator of his hopeless entanglement in the dilemmas of the paradox of subjectivity. Fichte’s transition is, seen from the viewpoint of Husserl, the general foundation for the step beyond Kant toward a metaphysical explication of the Absolute in intellectual intuition and 94
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speculative thinking of German idealism.This step beyond Kant’s critique of metaphysics leads to the highest level in the development of the methods for metaphysical constructions because it presupposes as its foundation the method of “dialectical” deductions in the explication of the self-movement of the Absolute in German idealism after Fichte. 6.2.2.4 The signifcance of Hegel for members of the Freiburg circle
Before Fink developed his interpretation of the “metaphysical” turn in Husserl’s thought in the Cartesian Meditations and the Crisis, French existential phenomenology showed an interest in Hegel, but this interest was restricted to applications of Hegel’s early theological writings and his Phenomenology for phenomenological descriptions of practical existential engagements in human experience.28 Hegel’s Phenomenology was not of interest as an introduction to his system and the explication of the self-movement of the concept in the Science of Logic. Fink was not interested in work in the feld of phenomenological refective analyses. He was frst of all interested in the problems of a transcendental phenomenological critique of the method of such refective analyses, i.e., the ultimate grounding of phenomenology that was considered by Husserl already in 1924 in his First Philosophy. Fink’s solution for these problems requires that one go beyond phenomenological analyses to speculative constructions. Such methods are already required for a phenomenology of primal temporality, Urzeitigung, because primal temporality is prior to and the ground of the subjective inner temporality that is still accessible for naïve refective phenomenological analyses. It is with this phenomenological speculation about primal temporality that one is confronted with the “question of Being” and discovers beyond this question the absolute ground of primal temporality in the me-on.29 An essential aspect of Fink’s interpretation of German idealism was his interest in Hegel, which was originally infuenced by lectures of Heidegger.30 The absolute spirit is, for Fink, an absolute extramundane “consciousness” that has no being at all.31 Of basic signifcance for Fink’s position is his interpretation and critique of Hegel’s conception of the absolute spirit in the Phenomenology of Spirit. The Phenomenology considers the stages of the development of the appearance of the Absolute in the human mind.The reader is left with the impression that the Absolute can still be understood as absolute subject.That the Absolute is beyond any difference of fnite beings and of subject/object can only be seen in the beginning of the Science of Logic. But on this point the analogy between Hegel and Fink’s idealism breaks down.The Absolute is for Fink the Absolute as being Other, the Nothing in which all ground falls away, and it can be thought only in the “via negationis” of a “me-ontology.”32 Though Fink characterizes his own speculative approach as “constructive,” he rejects Hegel’s dialectical construction of the Absolute and ends in the me-on, the negation of being. Urzeitigung (primal temporality) could perhaps be understood as Hegel’s “Becoming”, but there are no dialectical constructions in new dialectical oppositions and syntheses in the self-movement of the concept in Hegel’s Logic.
Notes 1 Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre is referred to in this paper under the title Doctrine of Science (Fichte 1970). For the translation of these two works by Schelling, see Schelling 1978 and 1988. 2 Hegel 1977 and 1978. 3 Hegel 1969 and 2010. 4 Doctrine of Science, Parts I and II, especially §§1–4. 5 Critique of Pure Reason, Book II, Chapter III,The Ideal of pure reason, Section I,The Ideal in general. For Kant’s logic lectures, see Kant, Logic 1974. 6 Critique of Pure Reason, B 211.
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Thomas M. Seebohm 7 Critique of Pure Reason, B 298; see also B 33. 8 Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, §§413–439 (Hegel 2010). 9 Ideas I, Second Section, Chapters 1 and 2. Ideas I was frst published in 1913 (Hua III/1).There have been three English translations of Ideas I; the most recent is Husserl 2014. 10 Hua VII, Section I, Chapter 4 and Section II, Chapters 1–3. 11 Hua VII, 208f; and sections VI–VII. 12 For the Fichte lectures, see Hua XXV, 267–293.The short remarks on German idealism from 1914 can be found in Hua VII, Supplement XXII. 13 Trendelenburg’s anti-Hegelian Logische Untersuchungen from 1840 is a defense of Aristotelian logic against Hegel’s Logic. 14 Hua VI, §27; See Husserl 1970. 15 On Hegel, see §56; on Fichte §57. 16 The Vienna lectures of 1935 can be found as a supplement to the Crisis, Hua VI, 314–348/269–299. 17 Wissenschaftslehre, Part I, §§1–3. 18 See the end of §3, and §8. The laws of refection appear only on this level as judgmental, i.e., in the context of modern logic as “propositional” opposition, contradiction, and consistency. For a comprehensive account see Seebohm 1994, 17–42. 19 See the retrospective considerations in the Logic: Book II, Section One—Essence as Refection Within Itself, especially Remark 3,“The Law of Contradiction” (Hegel 1969, 439–443). For a comprehensive account, see Seebohm 2004, 333–352. 20 Hua XVII, §31. 21 See, for example, in the Logic, Volume Two: Subjective Logic or The Doctrine of the Notion, the “Remark” in Chapter 1 on “The Common Classes of Notions” (Hegel 1969, 612–618) and also the Remark in Chapter 3,“The Common View of the Syllogism,” 681–686. 22 Popper 1963, 312–335; Popper 1965, 257 ff. 23 Hua IV, Part III. See Seebohm 2013, 125–140. 24 See Seebohm 1994, 21ff. and especially the references there. 25 Seebohm 2013, 125–140. 26 See section 6.1.3.2. 27 See Fink’s comments on a lecture by A. Schutz (1957) with references to the late Fichte (Schutz 1966, 84–87). 28 See Courtine 1997 and Kirkland 1997. 29 Bruzina 1997, 253f; and the extensive interpretations of Fink’s VI Cartesian Meditation and other writings in Bruzina 2004, especially Chapters 5–7. 30 Bruzina 2004, 147ff. and 570 footnote 110. 31 Bruzina 2004, 152. 32 Bruzina 2004, 405ff, 450.
References Bruzina, Ronald. 1997. “Eugen Fink.” In: Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. Eds. L. Embree et al. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 232–237. ———. 2004. Edmund Husserl & Eugen Fink: Beginnings and Ends in Phenomenology 1925–1939. New Haven:Yale University Press. Courtine, Jean-François. 1997.“France.” In: Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. Eds. L. Embree et al. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 246–250. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb. 1970. The Science of Knowledge.Trans. P. Heath and J. Lachs. New York: AppletonCentury Crofts. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 1969. Hegel’s Science of Logic. Trans. A.V. Miller. New York: Humanities Press. ———. 1977. The Phenomenology of Spirit.Trans.A.V. Miller. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 1978. The Difference Between the Fichtean and Schellingian Systems of Philosophy. Trans. J. Surber. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview. ———. 2010. Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline: Part One, Science of Logic. Trans. K. Brinkman and D. Dahlstrom. New York: Cambridge University Press.
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Phenomenology and German idealism Husserl, Edmund. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Trans. D. Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. 2014. Ideas I.Trans. D. Dahlstrom. Indianapolis: Hackett. Kant, Immanuel. 1974. Logic.Trans. R. S. Hartman and W. Schwarz. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. Kirkland, Frank M. 1997.“Hegel.” In: Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. Eds. L. Embree et al. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 292–298. Popper, Karl. 1963. Conjectures and Refutations. New York: Harper & Row. ———. 1965. Logik der Sozialwissenschaften. Ed. E.Topitsch. Köln/Berlin: Kiepenheuer & Witsch. Schelling, Friedrich. 1978. System of Transcendental Idealism.Trans. P. Heath. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. ———. 1988. Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature.Trans. E. Harris and P. Heath. New York: Cambridge University Press. Schutz, Alfred. 1966. Collected Papers III: Studies in Phenomenological Philosophy.The Hague: M. Nijhoff. Seebohm, Thomas. 1994. “Fichte’s Discovery of Dialectic.” In: Fichte: Historical Contexts/Contemporary Controversies. Eds. D. Breazeale and T. Rockmore. Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, pp. 17–42. ———. 2004. “Die logische Struktur der Hegelschen Dialektik.” In: Metaphysik und Kritik. Eds. S. Doye, M. Heinz, and U. Rameil. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, pp. 333–352. ———. 2013. “Husserl on the Human Sciences in Ideen II.” In: Husserl’s “Ideen.” Eds. L. Embree and T. Nenon. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 125–140.
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7 PHENOMENOLOGY AND AUSTRIAN PHILOSOPHY Carlo Ierna
Neither phenomenology nor Austrian philosophy have clearly defned boundaries,1 hence it is somewhat futile to try to assess how these two movements are related, historically and systematically, without at least some preliminary, pragmatic defnitions.The idea of an “Austrian philosophy” as a distinct historiographical category in the history of 19th- and 20th-century philosophy has been advanced and formulated in increasing detail since the 1970s.While it makes little sense to defne “Austrian” philosophy purely on the base of geographical notions,2 neither as “philosophy in Austria” nor as “philosophy by Austrians”, it can nevertheless serve as a starting point.3
Austrian philosophy Rudolf Haller has tried in his works to establish both the historical as well as the systematical coherence of Austrian philosophy as a “more or less homogenous development”, providing a list of “essential traits” (Haller 1979, 7).The frst main trait that Haller brings to the fore is the opposition to Kantianism, since Austrian philosophy did not follow Kant’s “Copernican revolution”.4 By aligning itself with pre-Kantian thinkers, it is an anti-idealistic, and specifcally antiHegelian, current.5 Haller points to Herbart and Bolzano as early representatives of Austrian philosophy that exemplify such traits. One of the most infuential groups, and the frst actual school in Austrian philosophy, however, was born in the wake of Franz Brentano’s program of doing philosophy as science.6 Haller identifes a set of core rules of Brentano’s method, which at the same time picks out central traits of Austrian philosophy: First, to pursue philosophy as a scientifc discipline, second, to acknowledge experience as a source of knowledge about facts [Tatsachenerkenntnis], and accordingly to consider the evidence of inner perception as foundation for the perception of facts [Tatsachenwahrnehmung]. Finally, in accordance with the Aristotelian goal of clarity, the application of methods of linguistic analysis and critique [sprachanalytischer und sprachkritischer Methoden] to discover and overcome illusory problems [Scheinproblemen]. (Haller 1979, 12)7 Not only would the School of Brentano then count as the school of Austrian philosophy, it also mediated between the earlier representatives and later movements. Indeed, Zimmermann, both 98
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a student of Bolzano as well as infuenced by Herbart, was the other professor of philosophy in Vienna during Brentano’s time there and taught several of his students.8 With Brentano and his students it becomes clear that one of the defning characteristics of Austrian philosophy is a specifc form of empiricism, inspired by (Neo-)Aristotelianism, British empiricism, and (Comtean) positivism, entailing a strong opposition to the speculative “degenerations” of rationalism (Haller 1979, 16–17; 1986, 36). After the caesura of WWI, in which many philosophical currents found their end through the death or displacement of their representatives, this tendency would morph into something much more extreme, i.e. the complete rejection of any metaphysics at all in the context of the Vienna Circle. Nevertheless, according to Haller, the Vienna Circle still stands in a suffciently continuous connection to the earlier Austrian philosophy that it can be viewed as part of the same tradition (Haller 1986, 39; 1991, 41). As Barry Smith claimed, in an even more encompassing sense: The most important and typical Austrian thinkers, from Bolzano to Wittgenstein, were not advocates for a big system-building “philosophy from above” of the Fichtean of Hegelian stamp, but for an empirical, concrete, and anti-systemic “philosophy from below”, a philosophy rooted in examples and painstaking description and analysis of individual cases. (Smith 1993, 95) Smith also proposed a similar set of criteria to classify philosophers as “Austrian”: a continuity of philosophy with the natural sciences, empiricism, a concern with (ordinary) language, a decided rejection of the Kantian “revolution” understood as a source of relativism and historicism, a special relation to the a priori, a concern with ontology and mereology, and with the relation of macro- to micro-phenomena without reductionism (think e.g. of the notion of Gestalt). This is accompanied by the caveats that, on the one hand, of course none of the Austrians shared all of these features, and on the other that many shared a majority of them without being in any relevant sense “Austrian”. Beyond loose geographical and historical constraints, a defning characteristic is the opposition to what is considered as “German” philosophy In sum, while there are gray areas and debates about which individual philosophers should or shouldn’t be included, there is a general consensus about the central characteristics of Austrian philosophy, following Haller:“the emphasis on psychology, language, science, analysis and empiricism”.These would then pick out “Brentano, Meinong, the great Vienna Circle of this century, and the enigmatic fgure of Wittgenstein” as some of the main fgures (Lehrer and Marek 1997, ix). This broad description would put Austrian philosophy in opposition to “the tradition of Kant, Hegel and Heidegger in Germany characterized by metaphysical extravagance”.Yet such an approach might be too simplistic to accommodate the great diversity of authors and positions that have been associated with Austrian philosophy. One cannot straightforwardly take Austrianborn authors or trending philosophies in Austria in a specifc historical period as a yardstick. After all, Brentano was born in Germany and worked in Vienna for just two decades, Bolzano had limited infuence in his own time,Wittgenstein’s philosophy developed and had its fortune mostly outside of Austria, etc. Hence, if we take the criteria of Austrian philosophy as just being “scientifc, analytic, and empirical”, it becomes nearly co-extensive with theoretical philosophy at large. Moreover, with the possible exception of the School of Brentano, there is little actual historical and systematical unity to be found in such a broadly defned Austrian philosophy. What we can fnd, however, is a relatively clear-cut list of candidates that could be categorized as German or Austrian philosophers respectively.According to Smith: 99
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The main line of the frst consists in a list of personages beginning with Kant, Fichte, Hegel and Schelling and ending with Heidegger, Adorno and Bloch. The main line of the second may be picked out similarly by means of a list beginning with Bolzano, Mach and Meinong, and ending with Wittgenstein, Neurath and Popper. (Smith 1994, 1) Also, for Smith, the “central axis” of Austrian philosophy is the School of Brentano (Rollinger 2008). Indeed, having been receptive to a broad spectrum of authors, including the British empiricists and Bolzano, and having been infuential in a variety of contexts, from early analytic philosophy to Gestalt psychology, Prague linguistics, and Polish logic, it is easy to see how the School of Brentano, and in particular Brentano himself, could function as the glue that holds Austrian philosophy together. Smith argues that there are both historical as well as systematical reasons for this choice: Brentano and his pupils occupied the most important chairs in philosophy in the Austro-Hungarian empire, founded lasting schools and institutions, and spread their theories far and wide (Smith 1994, 21). Moreover, by and large they ticked all the boxes of the main features of Austrian philosophy (of course with some exceptions and changes over time). Yet, this is a narrow basis for such broad claims. Brentano, after all, besides being German, had a host of problems politically and institutionally in Austria, including being denied funding for a psychological laboratory (which would have anticipated Wundt’s by fve years) and being denied re-appointment to his chair (Albertazzi 2006, 23–24). In part due to such a strained relationship with the authorities, he left Vienna and Austria after barely two decades. Of his more prominent students, only Marty, Meinong, and Von Ehrenfels had lasting academic careers in the Habsburg empire. In particular, Marty spread Brentanism for three decades in Prague, originating the second generation of orthodox Brentanists, including Kraus and Kastil. However, Stumpf, Twardowski, and Husserl found their fortune and had their infuence mostly outside of Austria. In particular, turning to Husserl and his phenomenology, we can see how this leads to a very distinct problem of categorization. In what sense could he be considered an Austrian philosopher? Even if we would agree that his phenomenology developed at frst in the context of Austrian philosophy, did it later maintain (some of) its typical features? Husserl was active as a philosopher in Vienna for much less time than Brentano: barely two years. While he did complete his dissertation in mathematics in Vienna before that and then gained a second layer of Brentanism under the supervision of Stumpf in Halle, his categorization as an Austrian philosopher on these grounds (or on birthright alone) would be tenuous at best. Yet, if we take into account that through Brentano he also came into contact with Bolzano’s thought and that through Zimmermann he acquired some familiarity with Herbart, he starts to look more embedded in the context of the typical Austrian thinkers listed above. Moreover, thanks to his technical background in mathematics, he was perhaps best equipped to investigate the connections between the a priori and empiricism in the context of the philosophy of mathematics (although nearly all the members of the School of Brentano worked on this (Ierna 2011, 2017a)). Indeed, it was the issue of the link between “the subjectivity of knowing and the objectivity of knowledge” (Hua XVIII, 7) that pushed him further and further in his research and ultimately to positions that would seem quite distant from those of Brentano’s particular strand of Austrian philosophy. Indeed, if we look at the later developments of phenomenology, we cannot but notice that Heidegger, Husserl’s most prominent heir, is classifed as a representative of precisely the opposite orientation: German philosophy.9 We must not forget, however, that the term “phenomenology” itself did not originate with Husserl.10 Indeed, the core of Brentano’s approach lay in his “descriptive psychology”,11 on which he lectured in Vienna in 1887–88 while Husserl was studying with him. The next 100
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year, Brentano changed the title to “Descriptive psychology or descriptive phenomenology” (Brentano PS 77). Up to 1903 Husserl would still regard his own phenomenology as a kind of descriptive psychology.12 Famously,Alexander Pfänder wrote his habilitation on Phänomenologie des Wollens (The Phenomenology of Willing) in 1900, independently from Husserl, but partially infuenced by his reading of Brentano (Schuhmann 1988, 99).
Phenomenology Independently from the term itself, in what sense would Husserl’s phenomenology be a part or a continuation of Austrian philosophy? We are now confronted again with the same problem: the lack of a clear defnition of what phenomenology is. Can we give a comprehensive, unambiguous, and useful defnition?13 Are we even entitled to speak of the one and only universally agreed upon phenomenology, or should we rather say that we can speak of phenomenology in various senses, e.g. a broad and a narrow sense? In the narrowest sense it would be a very specifc discipline, as elaborated by Husserl in a select few works: Husserl is the founding father of phenomenology but it has often been claimed that virtually all post-Husserlian phenomenologists ended up distancing themselves from most aspects of his original program.Thus, according to [one] view, phenomenology is a tradition by name only. It has no common method and research program. It has even been suggested that Husserl was not only the founder of phenomenology, but also its sole true practitioner. (Zahavi 2008, 661) In the broadest possible sense, the phenomenological movement would include most of the School of Brentano, Munich phenomenology, all of Husserl’s phenomenology, French phenomenology, and perhaps even some analytical philosophers. a future historian of ideas might perhaps maintain that there cannot have been any single philosophical movement called phenomenology, for too many different and even contradictory things are said in the documents about it.There might seem to be as many phenomenologies as there are phenomenologists. (Hintikka 2010, 91) There is not just one phenomenology, but rather many phenomenologies.14 Even if we would restrict ourselves purely to the doctrines elaborated by Husserl himself, we can distinguish at least two: before and after the transcendental turn. Updating Merleau-Ponty’s remark in the preface to his Phénoménologie de la perception, more than a century after the publication of Husserl’s core works a univocal defnition of phenomenology is still missing (Zahavi 2008, 663). How should we deal with this? One option would be to avoid biographical and historical references and to confate any variations into a unifed picture (Crowell 2002, 419–420). Volens nolens this would lead to defending one distinctive position within the wider feld of phenomenology and hence becoming part of the problem rather than solving it.The other option would be to provide detailed analyses in the style of e.g. Spiegelberg’s Phenomenological Movement, presenting the history of phenomenology in a certain sense as “the history of Husserlian heresies” (Ricoeur 1987, 9), acknowledging biographical and historical relationships as well as philosophical conficts, working as an impartial historian. Ideally we would like to gain a comprehensive defnition of phenomenology based on an evaluation of the many phenomenologies: “Even if there 101
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were as many phenomenologies as phenomenologists, there should be at least a common core in all of them to justify the use of the common term” (Spiegelberg 1982, 677). In Husserl’s time as well as today, in both the primary as well as the secondary literature, there is no clear agreement about what phenomenology is. Given the plurality of phenomenologies, “the major need is that for providing historical background, especially when the texts no longer appear in their contexts” (Spiegelberg 1975, 21). How did this plurality come about? Phenomenology does not only have an endless task, but also many beginnings, or, using another metaphor, besides splitting into many branches, it also has many roots.15 At various stages there are signifcant changes in Husserl’s position, leading to repeated attempts to “introduce” phenomenology anew. Consider also that the two major works introducing phenomenology, the Logical Investigations and the Ideas, were unfnished. The Logical Investigations were not originally meant to be published in their current form (as Husserl himself stated in a letter to Natorp) (Hua-Dok III/5, 76; Hua XIX/2, 783), and were actually intended just as the frst of two series (as Husserl remarked in a letter to Meinong) (Meinong 1965, 105; Hua-Dok I, 63), while the 1913 Ideas was originally meant as just the frst book of three, of which the second and third never appeared during his lifetime. Hence, his works cannot be taken simply and straightforwardly as “adumbrations” of the same coherent doctrinal whole.16 Unsurprisingly, those who were infuenced by Husserl at one stage did not always follow him uncritically to the next (Moran 2000, xiii). No wonder that there is still a need of scholarly works analyzing Husserl’s relationship to his teachers, colleagues, and students.17 Before any attempt to fnd the origin and unity of phenomenology could conceivably be made, all these phenomenologies and phenomenologists have to be put in context. This does not imply a mere catalog of infuences or a side-by-side comparison of almost randomly picked philosophers, but the search for a red thread.What is it that ties these phenomenologies together and that even makes them into phenomenologies and not rather other kinds of philosophies?18 Such a search for a comprehensive defnition and systematic unity could be articulated as a kind of “phenomenology of phenomenology”19 (at this point still an obscurum per obscurius), since it would be certainly too reductive to defne phenomenology as a unitary whole just on the base of a historical, contingent relation to Husserl and his works, as this would indeed be a quite extrinsic and inessential criterion. Phenomenology cannot be defned just as “Husserlism”; returning to the earlier metaphor, the trunk is not the tree. For some Husserl scholars it has become too much of a habit “to view Husserl as a highly original philosopher who blazed his own trail” (Rollinger 1999, 7),20 as if he had been operating in isolation. Both the relations to his predecessors and peers as well as to his own former positions are often neglected. The opposite excesses are just as silly, e.g. portraying Husserl as being converted to anti-psychologism overnight by Frege or merely as a (bad) copy of Brentano; Husserl was neither an isolated, solitary pioneer, nor a purely passive victim of circumstances. When comparing two positions, both have to be taken seriously, and we should not make the analysis of one functional to the explanation of the other.When comparing early and late Husserl, we should neither dismiss early stages as immature, nor consider them interesting only as precursors of later stages. Such reverse chronological interpretations of Husserl tend to produce an equally unbalanced assessment of those that infuenced him or were infuenced by him at various stages, leading rather to excluding them from phenomenology in the narrow sense than to including them in phenomenology in the broad sense. Such teleological tendencies are made obvious in labels such as “pre-phenomenological” or “pre-transcendental” to indicate periods in Husserl’s development, which show that who applies them has already a clear criterion to decide what qualifes as “real” phenomenology, a criterion that Husserl himself did not 102
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have or could likewise only apply retrospectively. Later positions depend on earlier positions, not the other way around; hence we might as well (and perhaps even more appropriately) label him as “post-realist” after the transcendental turn. What qualifes as phenomenology is certainly not arbitrary, but the historical authors that contributed to establish the phenomenological movement were entitled to provide their own defnitions, as opposed to current interpreters and historians trying to defne what they were doing.When Husserl at one stage called “phenomenology” a kind of “descriptive psychology”, we should take that just as seriously as his later dismissal of such terminology. And if some of his students after that still kept doing “phenomenology” as “descriptive psychology”, this cannot be simply dismissed as an aberration or misunderstanding. If we were to do so, then we would indeed deny that there is something like a “phenomenological movement” as phenomenology would be restricted to Husserlian phenomenology at a specifc stage.We cannot therefore choose one single defnition as historically given by one single phenomenologist as the true and only criterion, but must perforce look at the broader context of the phenomenological movement.21 If we were defning in the systematical sense, we would have to articulate and stress differences in methods and topics to arrive at a delimitation of phenomenology (Spiegelberg 1982, 2–3). However, in this way we risk making arbitrary choices. We could e.g. arrive at a separation based on the scientifc dignity of phenomenology, with the School of Brentano, Munich phenomenology,22 and most of Husserl on one side and the “geniale Unwissenschaftlichkeit” of Heidegger (Hua-Dok III/2, 184)23 and many French phenomenologists on the other. What additional criteria could we possibly cite to make our choice, if choosing is at all meaningful or possible? A historical-genealogical examination of the context in which phenomenology developed would rather preserve a neutrality and objectivity not unlike those advocated by phenomenology itself. This can yield a quite detailed periodization and consequent delimitation that is not quite as arbitrary. Various phenomenologies can be defned and separated without value judgments or pretensions of having found the one true criterion to defne all phenomenology. Coherent with its endless task and its character of a work-philosophy, we can then also defne phenomenology, among other things, as being still a work-in-progress.
The phenomenological movement and Austrian philosophy Having sketched the problems and possibilities of defning or at least circumscribing phenomenology and Austrian philosophy, we can now approach the issue of the connection between the two. Besides Husserl himself belonging to both groups (Ierna 2017b, 25 ff.), it is not only the case that the other Austrian philosophers from the School of Brentano infuenced him, but also infuenced his students. Indeed, what would become “Munich phenomenology” started out as a reading group in which many works from the School of Brentano were prominently discussed, particularly Anton Marty’s (Schuhmann 1990, 198, 209, 214; Smith 1990; Schuhmann and Smith 1991, 313). Hence, one prominent reason for the development of Munich phenomenology is that Brentano’s Austrian philosophy had already paved the way for Husserl’s, as Schuhmann points out: One of the reasons for the fertile ground in Munich and for the origination of the phenomenological movement precisely there, was that here there was a generally congenial atmosphere. Throughout the years the people in Munich, more than at any 103
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other German university, had engaged very positively with Brentano and his School; i.e. with that circle of thinkers to which Husserl himself also belonged. (Schuhmann 1988, 97) Following Spiegelberg (Spiegelberg 1982, 165), while there might not be a precise date for the foundation of the “phenomenological movement”, it is only with the physical movement of the Munich invasion of Göttingen that we can speak of a broader philosophical movement beyond the circle of Husserl’s direct students (Schuhmann and Smith 1991, 304). Moreover, beyond constituting the “frst branch” of phenomenology (Schuhmann 2004b, 82), the Munich phenomenologists played an important role in its early development. It was during the historical encounter with the Munich phenomenologists Alexander Pfänder and Johannes Daubert in Seefeld in 1905 (Schuhmann 1973, 23, 131–132) that Husserl began at frst to develop the notion of the transcendental ego, which, ironically, would then lead also to the ultimate break with the more realist Munich phenomenology (Spiegelberg 1981, 72). It is also together with the Munich phenomenologists Daubert, Geiger, Pfänder, Reinach, and Scheler that Husserl would come to found the main publishing organ of the phenomenological movement: the Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung. It is in the joint editorial statement preceding the frst volume in 1913 that we fnd clear indications of shared views and ambitions between the School of Brentano and the Phenomenological Movement, which, moreover, place them squarely in the feld of Austrian philosophy: Increasingly we are pushed towards phenomenological clarifcations and analyses of essence, not just for the sake of properly philosophical problems, but also with the aim of a foundation for the non-philosophical sciences. […] This journal is meant to serve such needs. It shall frst and foremost unite in shared work those who hope that the pure and rigorous application of the phenomenological method will enact a fundamental reform of philosophy – setting it on the road to a securely founded, progressively developing science. […] It is not a school-system that unites the editors and that is to be required from all future collaborators; what unites them is rather the shared conviction that only through a return to the originary sources of intuition, and to the essential insights to be drawn from it, can the concepts and the problems of the great traditions of philosophy be appraised, that only on this path can concepts be intuitively clarifed and problems framed anew on an intuitive basis and then solved in principle. They have the shared conviction that to phenomenology belongs an unlimited feld of strictly scientifc and highly consequential research, which, as for philosophy itself, has to be made to bear fruit also for all other sciences – wherever questions of principle are at stake in them. Hence, this journal shall not be a playground for vague reformatory ideas [nicht ein Tummelplatz vager reformatorischer Einfälle], but a place for serious scientifc work. (Hua XXV, 63–64)24 The connections to the earlier project of doing philosophy as science in the School of Brentano are unmistakable.25 A new foundation is needed to reform both philosophy as well as the other sciences, enabling “strict” and “earnest” scientifc research, but not by imposing a new system from above.The focus is on a rigorous method, capable of founding and reforming all sciences, philosophy included.26 The materia prima is to be found by returning to intuition as “original source”. The same ideas and wordings appear in multiple programmatic writings by Brentano and his students. Famously, Brentano had advanced his idea of philosophy as science, based on 104
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commonality of method, already in his habilitation theses in 1866: “Vera philosophiae methodus nulla alia nisi scientiae naturalis est” (Brentano 1929, 136–137). He aimed at “the renewal of philosophy as science”, not by conjuring up “proud systems” out of thin air, but by humbly “cultivating fallow scientifc ground”. In such a project there was no room for “taumelnde heroen” like the speculative philosophers of German Idealism (Brentano 1929, 130–131).27 Brentano considered only one source of knowledge to be indubitably evident: inner perception, sharply distinguished from introspection (Brentano 1874, 35, 119). Moreover, even though Brentano did try (and fail) to enforce orthodoxy from his students, nevertheless the school as such fts the modernist idea of scientifc progress as a collaborative achievement (Richardson 1997, 434). The phenomenological side of the story is slightly more complex.We have seen above that one of the characteristics of Austrian philosophy is its anti-Kantian and anti-idealistic tendency, which can easily be found in many of Brentano’s works, lectures, and manuscripts. Husserl, however, came progressively closer to Kant,28 famously re-defning his phenomenology from a kind of descriptive psychology into a transcendental idealism (with the caveat not to read other theories into his terminology). Despite important critiques, Husserl ultimately reserves a central role for Kant in discovering a new sense of scientifcity: The Kantian system is the frst attempt, and one carried out with impressive scientifc seriousness, at a truly universal transcendental philosophy meant to be a rigorous science in a sense of scientifc rigor which has only now been discovered and which is the only genuine sense. (Hua VI, 102/99) Husserl still credits Brentano with important contributions to the study of consciousness and intentionality, but considers him, retrospectively, as still working under naturalistic presuppositions (ibid., 236, 346). Indeed, Brentano accepted the existence of external causes of sensation29 (the most fundamental psychic phenomena and the prime source for all others), denying only their knowability (in a quite Lockean and Comtean fashion). Where Brentano was aiming at the same kind of scientifcity for psychology and philosophy as the one of the natural sciences, later Husserl endorses a wholly new kind of scientifcity, much more in line with Kant’s “Copernican revolution”. Brentano assigned an epistemic privilege to internal perception, but did not make the limited validity of the sciences based on external perception completely and directly dependent upon it. Husserl, however, makes all knowledge and validity ultimately dependent on the constitutional activity of the transcendental ego: no object without subject.30 The encompassing project of doing philosophy as science is present both in the School of Brentano as well as in phenomenology.Where Brentano aimed at establishing philosophy and psychology along the natural sciences, as primus inter pares, sharing the same empirical method (broadly understood), Husserl is much more radical. As we can read in Fink’s notes of Husserl’s lectures on Natur und Geist: All sciences obtain their ultimate meaning and apriorical foundation in the universal foundational science of transcendental philosophy, whose most important forerunners are Descartes and Kant, and whose current representative is phenomenology. (Hua XXXII, 267) It is not Husserl’s aim to merely establish one new scientifc discipline alongside the other sciences, but as he says in the Crisis, “[to subject] the scientifc character of all sciences to a serious and quite necessary critique” (Hua VI, 3/5). From the initial aim in Brentano’s Austrian 105
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philosophy of rendering philosophy and psychology scientifc through the empirical method of the natural sciences, in Husserl we move to the foundation of philosophy as rigorous science on ideal, apriorical grounds.31 This makes it problematic to include “post-realist phenomenology” among Austrian philosophy.32 Husserl’s later position is perhaps most succinctly and emphatically stated in his inaugural lecture in Freiburg, immediately after WWI, where he underscores the radically new nature of his approach: “A new philosophical foundational science has arisen, pure phenomenology. … It has a methodological rigor that is not inferior to any of the modern sciences. … It makes philosophy as rigorous science at all possible” (Hua XXV, 69).With his fundamental distinction between pure phenomenology and descriptive psychology, Husserl is clearly moving beyond Brentano (ibid., 74–75). In the transcendental-idealist phase, pure phenomenology is defned as an apriorical science of consciousness in the sense of being concerned with the possibility rather than with the facticity of experience (ibid., 79). Instead of the inductive method of the natural sciences as Erfahrungswissenschaften, Husserl looks to the deductive and pure arithmetic and geometry as inspiration. If we abstract from the themes of transcendental constitution and the pure ego, the metaphysical questions of solipsism and the reality of the external world, we nevertheless could still see how, with respect to the ideal of philosophy as science, Brentano’s and Husserl’s aims can be considered as part of a cohesive and central current within Austrian philosophy.
Notes 1 “Austrian philosophers are an assorted bunch” (Simons 2006, 180). 2 “The independence of Austrian philosophy did not come from the soil it grew on, but the combination of infuences that shaped it” (Uebel 2000, 107).All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are my own. 3 Compare the “extensional” approach in Binder, Fabian, Höfer and Valent 2005, 54: “For the IBÖP, ‘Austrian Philosophy’ is defned through a list of names.These names represent the Austrian philosophers, where we count as ‘Austrian’ the following persons: (1) those born within the current borders of Austria, except when they work(ed) exclusively abroad; (2) those born within the borders of Austria before 1918, under the condition that their philosophical activities belong to Austrian philosophy (compare the preface to IBÖP 74/75); (3) foreign nationals, only if they have worked and gained infuence during longer periods as philosophers in Austria. Of course, there still remains a series of open cases that is neither simple not straightforward to determine.”This approach is essentially unchanged since the early publications in the series. 4 Also see Haller 1991, 50.Also consider the critical account in Morscher 2006, 261. 5 Haller 1979, 8; Haller 1986, 38, considers as hallmarks of Austrian philosophy its Anti-Kantianism, Anti-Idealism, and Anti-Irrationalism. 6 “In him we see the actual founder of Austrian philosophy” (Haller 1979, 10) and Haller 1986, 36: “if we wanted to exaggerate, we could indicate the year 1874 [the publication of Brentano’s Psychologie vom Empirischen Standpunkte] as the year in which Austrian philosophy was born.” 7 Compare Haller 1986, 38: “First, the requirement of scientifcity of philosophy and the recognition of the natural scientifc ideal of science [naturwissenschaftlichen Wissenschaftsideals], second, empiricism as epistemological and methodological heuristic, third, the language-critical attitude [sprachkritische Einstellung], that aids an analytical method of philosophizing and avoids a metaphysics that operates with postulates.” 8 See especially the excellent Varga 2015 on Zimmermann’s infuence on Husserl. 9 This is not just a result of recent historiography, but an assessment made by his contemporaries as well, see e.g. Conrad Martius 1959a, 175: “Heidegger and his large following have in the end, even though not in the beginning, distanced themselves the most from Husserl’s intentions.” I’d like to thank Kimberly Baltzer Jaray for helping me fnd the relevant texts of Conrad Martius. 10 See the extensive analysis in Schuhmann 2004a.
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Phenomenology and Austrian philosophy 11 (Brentano PS 76). In the Husserl-Archives Leuven a copy of the lecture notes by Hans Schmidkunz is preserved with the signature Q 10. 12 In 1903 he clearly denied it in his review of Elsenhans:“All natural scientifc or metaphysical objectivations remain completely excluded. Phenomenology therefore should not be designated as “descriptive psychology” without further qualifcation. It is not, in the strict and proper sense. Its descriptions do not concern lived experiences or classes of experiences of empirical persons; because it does not know or presume anything about persons, about me and others, about mine and others’ experiences; regarding these it does not pose any questions, attempts no defnitions, makes no hypotheses. Phenomenological description looks at what is given in the strictest sense, at the lived experience as it is in itself.” (Hua XXII, 206–207/251). 13 Compare Spiegelberg 1982, 1, and the sources quoted at footnote 1 therein. 14 Consider Conrad Martius 1959a, 175: “It surely is a unique situation in the history of ideas [geistesgeschichtliche Situation], that from a great philosophical teacher have sprung not only such varied, even almost opposite, philosophical movements […], but that these movements each have obtained for themselves a quite conspicuous weight in the history of ideas.” However, given the immediately preceding example of Brentano and his school, the situation does appear slightly less “unique”. 15 Compare the picture in Spiegelberg 1982, 2, point 3. 16 This problem was already noticed by his students, see e.g. Conrad Martius 1959a, 177: “It has often been understood as if it [the opposition between the transcendental and the ontological] were simply different phases in Husserl’s own philosophy. Indeed: already the second volume of the Logical Investigations, but all the more the Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy appeared to us direct students as an incomprehensible return of Husserl to transcendentalism, subjectivism, and even psychologism.” 17 See Spiegelberg 1982, 149 on the need for works on “Husserl and …”. 18 See Spiegelberg 1975, 10: “Considering the variety of phenomenologies which have thus issued directly or indirectly from Husserl’s inspiration, it is not easy to fnd a common denominator for such a movement beside its origin.” 19 Which could contribute to mitigate the problem “that philosophical ideas are deformed […], particularly when they are interpreted from the outside” (Wolenski 1997, 46). 20 Compare Moran 2000, 2. 21 See also Spiegelberg 1982, 3–4; 1975, xxii. 22 As well as the work of many Göttingen phenomenologists, e.g. those of the Bergzabern circle. Indeed, the term “München-Göttinger Schule” has been used as well, see e.g. Conrad Martius 1959a, 175. 23 Also Smith 1997, 1: “Heidegger […] all but terminated the previously healthy scientifc line in phenomenology”. 24 Facsimile in Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, facing p. 110. Based on a partial translation in Moran 2005, 28. 25 As well as the continuity with earlier representatives, e.g. for Reinach and Bolzano see Jaray 2006. 26 Also see Ierna 2014a; 2014b. 27 The expression (literally “tumbling heroes”), is clearly meant in a disparaging manner, i.e. dismissing convoluted metaphysical speculation as overblown antics. 28 Consider Conrad Martius 1959b, 43: “With this starting proposition of Husserl [that for pure consciousness nulla re indiget ad existendum] transcendental idealism, which had been riding high since Kant, surely reached its crest.” 29 Compare Conrad Martius 1959b, 50: “What is meant by realistic? It is the blending of the two functions, of which the frst task is to go beyond empirical relationships to real, fully valid causes that are not included in the immediate data. […] To real, fully valid causes!” 30 This was criticized by many of his earlier students, who pursued “phenomenology pure and simple, investigation of essence without exclusion or limitation” (Conrad Martius 1959b, 47) and accepted “an ‘absolute’ world, one standing all by itself and for itself ” in a “pre-Kantian, and above all pre-existentialist” sense (ibid., 45–46). 31 This approach was not shared by all his students:“What can philosophy do here? Are we trying to go back to a priori methods […]? Are we again conjuring up the spectre of falsifying speculation […]? Certainly not.Who would dare do so today? […] It is impossible for the results of phenomenology to contradict those of natural science or vice versa” (Conrad Martius 1959b, 48–49). 32 Or among Austrian phenomenology (Rollinger 2008, 12).
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References Albertazzi, Liliana. 2006. Immanent Realism.An Introduction to Brentano. Dordrecht: Springer. Binder, Thomas, Fabian, Reinhard, Höfer, Ulf, and Valent, Jutta (Eds). 2005. International Bibliography of Austrian Philosophy. IBÖP 1991–1992. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Brentano, Franz. PS 76, Deskriptive Psychologie. (unpublished manuscript from the Houghton Library, Harvard University, Franz Clemens Brentano Compositions, 1870–1917, MS Ger 230). ———. PS 77, Deskriptive Psychologie oder beschreibende Phänomenologie.(unpublished manuscript from the Houghton Library, Harvard University, Franz Clemens Brentano Compositions, 1870–1917, MS Ger 230). ———. 1874. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. ———. 1929.“Thesen” (1866). In: Über die Zukunft der Philosophie. Ed. Oskar Kraus. Leipzig: Felix Meiner. 133-141. Conrad Martius, Hedwig. 1959a.“Die transzendentale und die ontologische Phänomenologie”. In: Edmund Husserl 1859-1959. Ed. Herman Leo van Breda and Jacques Taminiaux Den Haag: Nijhoff, pp. 175–184. ———. 1959b.“Phenomenology and Speculation”. In: Philosophy Today 3/1, pp. 43–51. Crowell, Steven Galt. 2002. “Is there a Phenomenological Research Program?”. In: Synthese 131/3, pp. 419–444. Haller, Rudolf. 1979. Studien zur österreichischen Philosophie. Variationen über ein Thema. Amsterdam: Rodopi. ———. 1986.“Gibt es eine Österreichische Philosophie?”. In: Ed. Rudolf Haller Fragen zu Wittgenstein und Aufsätze zur Osterreichischen Philosophie.Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 31–43. ———. 1991.“On the Historiography of Austrian Philosophy”. In: Rediscovering the Forgotten Vienna Circle. Ed.Thomas Uebel. Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 41–50. Hintikka, Jaakko. 2010.“How can a Phenomenologist have a Philosophy of Mathematics?”. In:Phenomenology and Mathematics. Ed. Mirja Hartimo. Dordrecht: Springer. pp. 91-105. Ierna, Carlo. 2011.“Brentano and Mathematics”. In: Revue Roumaine de Philosophie 55/1, pp. 149–167. ———. 2014a. “Making the Humanities Scientifc: Brentano’s Project of Philosophy as Science”. In: The Making of the Humanities.Volume III:The Making of the Modern Humanities. Eds. Rens Bod, Jaap Maat, and Thijs Weststeijn.Amsterdam:Amsterdam University Press, pp. 543–554. ———. 2014b. “La science de la conscience selon Brentano”. In: Vers une philosophie scientifque. Le programme de Brentano. Ed. Charles-Edouard Niveleau. Paris: Démopolis, pp. 51–69. ———. 2017a.“The Brentanist Philosophy of Mathematics in Edmund Husserl’s Early Works”. In: Essays on Husserl’s Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics. Ed. Stefania Centrone. Berlin: Springer. pp. 147–168. ———. 2017b. “Einfüsse auf Husserl”. In: Husserl-Handbuch: Leben – Werk – Wirkung. Ed. Sebastian Luft and Maren Wehrle. Stuttgart: Metzler, pp. 22-32. Jaray, Kimberly. 2006.“Reinach and Bolzano”. In: Symposium:The Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy 10/2, pp. 473–491. Lehrer, Keith and Marek, Johann Christian. (Eds). 1997. Austrian Philosophy Past and Present. Essays in Honor of Rudolf Haller. Dordrecht: Springer. Meinong, Alexius. 1965. Philosophenbriefe. Ed. Rudolf Kindinger. Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt. Moran, Dermot. 2000. Introduction to Phenomenology. London/New York: Routledge. ———. 2005. Edmund Husserl: Founder of Phenomenology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Morscher, Edgar. 2006. “The Great Divide Within Austrian Philosophy. The Synthetic a Priori”. In: The Austrian Contribution to Analytic Philosophy. Ed. Mark Textor. London: Routledge, pp. 250–263. Richardson, Alan. 1997. “Toward a History of Scientifc Philosophy”. In: Perspectives on Science 5/3. pp. 418–451. Ricœur, Paul. 1987. A l’école de la phénoménologie. Paris:Vrin. Rollinger, Robin. 1999. Husserl’s Position in the School of Brentano. Phaenomenologica 150. Dordrecht: Kluwer. ———. 2008. Austrian Phenomenology: Brentano, Husserl, Meinong, and Others on Mind and Object. Frankfurt: Ontos. Schuhmann, Karl. 1973. Die Dialektik der Phänomenologie I. Husserl über Pfänder, Phaenomenologica 56. Den Haag: M. Nijhoff. ———. 1988.“Brentano und die Münchener Phänomenologie”. In: Brentano Studien 1, pp. 97–107. ———. 1990. “Contents of Consciousness and States of Affairs”. In: Mind, Meaning and Metaphysics:The Philosophy andTheory of Language of Anton Marty. Ed. Kevin Mulligan, Primary Sources in Phenomenology 3. Den Haag/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 197–214.
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Phenomenology and Austrian philosophy ———. 2004a. “Phänomenologie. Eine begriffsgeschichtliche Refexion”. In: Karl Schuhmann: Selected Papers on Phenomenology. Eds. Cees Leijenhorst and Piet Steenbakkers. Dordrecht: Kluwer. pp. 1-33. ———. 2004b. “Die Entwicklung der Sprechakttheorie in der Münchener Phänomenologie”. In: Karl Schuhmann: Selected Papers on Phenomenology. Eds. Cees Leijenhorst and Piet Steenbakkers. Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 79–99. Schuhmann, Karl and Smith, Barry. 1991.“Neo-Kantianism and Phenomenology:The Case of Emil Lask and Johannes Daubert”. In: Kant-Studien 82(3), pp. 303–318. Simons, Peter. 2006. “Austrian Philosophers on Truth”. In: The Austrian Contribution to Analytic Philosophy. Ed. Mark Textor. London: Routledge, pp. 159–183. Smith, Barry. 1990. “Towards a History of Speech Act Theory”. In: Speech Acts, Meanings and Intentions. Critical Approaches to the Philosophy of John R. Searle. Ed. Burkhardt. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, pp. 29–61. ———. 1993. “Von T. G. Masaryk bis Jan Patocka: Eine philosophische Skizze”. In: T. G. Masaryk und die Brentano-Schule. Eds. Josef Zumr and Thomas Binder. Graz/Prague: Czech Academy of Sciences, pp. 94–110. ———. 1994. Austrian Philosophy:The Legacy of Franz Brentano. Chicago: Open Court. ———. 1997. “The Neurath-Haller Thesis: Austria and the Rise of Scientifc Philosophy”. In: Austrian Philosophy Past and Present. Essays in Honor of Rudolf Haller. Eds. Keith Lehrer and Johann Christian Marek. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 1–20. Spiegelberg, Herbert. 1975. Doing Phenomenology. Essays on and in Phenomenology, Phaenomenologica 63. Den Haag: M. Nijhoff. ———. 1982. The Phenomenological Movement, Phaenomenologica 5/6, 3rd edition. Den Haag: M. Nijhoff. Uebel, Thomas. 2000. Vernunftkritik und Wissenschaft. Otto Neurath und der erste Wiener Kreis. Wien/New York: Springer. Varga, Peter Andras. 2015. “Was hat Husserl in Wien außerhalb von Brentanos Philosophie gelernt? Über die Einfüsse auf den frühen Husserl jenseits von Brentano und Bolzano”. In: Husserl-Studies 31/2, pp. 95–121. Wolenski, Jan. 1997. “Haller on Wiener Kreis”. In: Austrian Philosophy Past and Present. Essays in Honor of Rudolf Haller. Eds. Keith Lehrer and Johann Christian Marek. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 45–54. Zahavi, Dan. 2008. “Phenomenology”. In: The Routledge Companion to Twentieth-Century Philosophy. Ed. Dermot Moran. London: Routledge, pp. 661–692.
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PART II
Issues and concepts in phenomenology
8 AESTHETICS AND ART Fotini Vassiliou
The dawn of phenomenological aesthetics in the work of Edmund Husserl It is often said that Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), the founder of the phenomenological movement, notoriously neglected the thematics of aesthetics and art. But while he did not propose a fully developed aesthetic theory, Husserl did provide signifcant insights that inspired and defned subsequent attempts to articulate a phenomenological aesthetics. In his own writing, Husserl parallels aesthetic experience with the phenomenological attitude. Both presuppose a kind of epoché from the natural naïve stance and reveal the givenness of their objects as phenomena when the issue of existence is under suspension. Echoing Kant, Husserl describes aesthetic experience as a disinterested state disconnected from the object’s being or non-being and free from all theoretical and practical interests. In aesthetic contemplation we don’t think about the object or turn toward it to determine it conceptually and describe it by means of predications (see, e.g., Hua XXIII, 591/709–10; see also the famous letter to Hugo von Hofmannsthal written in January 12th, 1907, published in Hua-Dok III/3, 133–136. It is also expressed at several points in Husserl’s working notes gathered in Hua XXIII). Furthermore, we do not desire the object in order “to take delight in it as something actual” (Hua XXIII, 145 n.1/168 n.6). Husserl calls feelings like delight, love, or desire that presuppose belief object-feelings, which are clearly distinguished from the aesthetic feelings involved in aesthetic experience (Hua XXIII, 391/463–464). Aesthetic feeling-intentionalities are always constitutively founded.This means that aesthetic contemplation always presupposes an already constituted objectity toward which it is directed.At the undermost level of transcendent experience, aesthetic pleasure (or displeasure) is founded on simple perception, which is not itself a founded act.Analogously to “perception” (Wahrnehmung), Husserl names this originary aesthetic experience “value-(re)ception (Wertnehmung)” (Hua IV, 9/11). This gives us, “in immediate ‘intuitability’” (Hua IV, 25/27), perceptual spatio-temporal objects charged with value-characters, with some kind of “aesthetic coloration” (Hua XXIII, 389/462). For Husserl, then, beauty is frst given in the originary intuitional act of valuereception as an objective character of the object itself (Hua IV, 14/16). Aesthetic pleasure (or displeasure) is an intrinsically intentional mental phenomenon directed to its own transcendent correlate, namely the aesthetically signifcant object.
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Aesthetic experience may be existence-indifferent, but at the same time it is a turning toward. In this sense it involves an “aesthetic interest” (Hua XXIII, 586/704) directed, particularly, toward the how of the object’s appearance.What matters is “what appears as it appears,” (Hua XXIII, 587/705) “the presented object in the How of its presentedness” (Hua XXIII, 586/704), the “objectivity in its How” (Hua XXIII, 591/710). Let us see how this idea works in the case of taking the aesthetic attitude toward a painting. Husserl delineates here the following intentional nexus: (a) the perceptual constitution of the physical substrate (e.g., the colored piece of canvas); (b) the quasi-perceptual constitution and appearance of the image-object (Bild-Object), the painting as a depiction, which Husserl calls “a nothing (ein Nichts)” (Hua XXIII, 46/50); and (c) the either positing or non-positing consciousness of the image-subject (Bild-Subject), namely of the object that has been represented. In image-consciousness, the image-subject is the prevailing aim of our intention.The aesthetic dimension, however, emerges when the mind leaves the primary object of its ordinary intention and remains captured in the image-object and its subjective givenness. We live, then, in the aesthetic pleasure or displeasure which the How of the appearing awakens. For Husserl, “the manner of appearing alone is aesthetic” (Hua XXIII, 391/463); it alone is the “bearer of aesthetic feeling-characteristics” (Hua XXIII, 389/462). So, when Husserl rigidly claims that “(w)ithout an image, there is no fne art” (Hua XXIII, 44/41), he is actually pointing to a necessary presupposition of the aesthetic attitude, namely the movement of consciousness from its primary object to its image, considered as the primary object’s mode of appearing.This also holds for objects in nature, where our consciousness moves from direct perceptual correlates to their manner of appearing and remains aesthetically captured therein. The constitution of an aesthetically valuable object on the basis of image-consciousness and its aesthetic dimension, however, does not suffce for the constitution of a work of art in the full sense. Works of art as cultural objects are constituted by historically formed, intersubjective communions of persons, who operate within the personalistic attitude of everyday life. The analyses Husserl offers in the second book of his Ideen (Hua IV) are illuminating on this signifcant issue.
Aesthetics and art among early phenomenologists Waldemar Conrad (1878–1915) was the frst of Husserl’s disciples to apply the eidetic phenomenological method to the feld of aesthetics. In his long essay “Der ästhetische Gegenstand: Eine phenomenologische Studie” (1908–9), and on the basis of a presuppositionless attitude that would overcome existence-related determinations of the spatio-temporally extended realizations of artworks, Conrad sought to grasp the ideal essence of literary, plastic, and musical pieces of art and, ultimately, the aesthetic object in general. In the same vein,Theodor Conrad (1881–1969), in his dissertation titled “Defnition und Forschungsgehalt der Ästhetik” (Munich, 1908), objected forcefully to the reduction of aesthetics to psychology and argued instead that aesthetics is a science of value. On his part, Moritz Geiger (1880–1937) placed special emphasis on the existential meaning of art and believed that aesthetics can provide a crucial point of access to the essence of human existence (see Geiger 1913 and the posthumous Geiger 1976). Undeniably, though, the most systematic attempt among early phenomenologists to articulate a phenomenological aesthetics is found in the work of Roman Ingarden (1893–1970). As a realist interpreter of Husserl with respect to both the external world and universals, Ingarden insisted on an ontological reading of phenomenology and sought to unearth the a priori necessary structure and essential laws of pure consciousness itself. Within this context he came to grips with the thematic of aesthetics, which “was intended as preparation for unraveling the problem of reality” (Ingarden 1962, viii/x).The outcomes of his thorough scrutiny of the work 114
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of art and its ontology, on the one hand, and of the cognitive acts involved in aesthetic experience, on the other, were meant to contribute to his fght against transcendental idealism. A genuine phenomenological aesthetics, according to Ingarden, must overcome distorted objectivist or subjectivist approaches to the aesthetic phenomenon and carry out the twofold task of investigating the correlation between constitutive intentional acts and constituted aesthetic formations. Ingarden does not construe aesthetic experience as some kind of momentary feeling of pleasure or displeasure; instead he explicates it in terms of its composite structure and phases of development (see Ingarden 1961, 295). As regards works of art, Ingarden clarifes that they are not identical with the material objects of what he describes as empirically and transcendentally mind-independent physical reality, even if works of art always presuppose some real substrate (Ingarden 1961, 294). Neither are they ideal timeless beings like the objects of mathematics.Works of art are intentional, which means they are constituted, like all social and cultural objects, by acts of consciousness. Artistic objects are, thus, doubly founded.Their existence and essential structure depend on real beings and the intentional acts of their makers and receivers. Ingarden is mostly known for his treatment of the literary work, in which he delineated four constitutive strata: (a) the phonetic stratum of the oral or written linguistic formations; (b) the semantic stratum of meanings that arise as word sounds are ensouled by ideal concepts; (c) the stratum of schematized aspects by means of which the subject matter of the artwork is represented; and (d) the subject matter itself, namely the objectivities that are represented in the artwork (see Ingarden 1931). But Ingarden also dealt in depth with painting, music, architecture, sculpture, and flm, investigating the pertinent layered structure of each. The distinction between the work of art and the aesthetic object occupies a central position in Ingarden’s phenomenology. The work of art, the product of the artist’s intentional acts, is a self-same entity that contains points or areas of indeterminateness (Ingarden 1931, §38). It is a “schematic creation” (see, e.g., Ingarden 1964, 199) that has qualities that appear schematically but also several components or features in potential. It is the interpretative reconstruction by the individual observer, listener, or reader that completes the artwork and renders it concrete. Each such concretization is an aesthetic object.The process of concretization is permeated by a kind of imagination-driven creativity and, besides the reconstruction of what is actually present, consists in flling out the schematic elements of the work of art and actualizing its potential. One work of art can thus be differently, more or less faithfully, and according to the guidelines offered by the work itself, concretized in its different viewings, readings, or hearings. Each aesthetic concretization is characterized by a certain dependent freedom, guided by the artistic object’s potentialities. Being part of the intellectual ferment of early phenomenology, Ingarden was also concerned with the thematic of values. He believed that the material substratum of an artwork is valueneutral. But he also argued that an intentional artwork possesses value-neutral qualities whose combinations can found artistically valuable moments pertaining to the artwork’s different strata. Moreover, the artwork possesses potentially aesthetically valuable qualities that become intuitively manifest in its aesthetic concretizations (Ingarden 1964, 205). Upon these aesthetically valuable qualities rest aesthetic values that characterize the concretized artwork as a whole (see, e.g., Ingarden 1975, 268).As several relations of one-sided or mutual dependence hold between the strata, their pertinent values are in a constant interrelation so that new values may arise and an overall polyphonic harmony may be accomplished.According to Ingarden, true works of art exhibit higher order metaphysical values, such as the sublime, the tragic, the sinful, or the comic, which pertain to the stratum of the represented objectivities and reveal the deeper meaning of life. Ingarden’s approach thus shows that a work of art can be evaluated in a compound manner as to its distributed merits and demerits. And the fact that different aspects of the overall value 115
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stratifcation may be emphasized explains how the artwork can be met with varied or even discordant evaluative judgments.
Martin Heidegger on aesthetics and the work of art While Ingarden stayed faithful to basic Husserlian problems of phenomenological analysis in his theoretical treatment of artworks, Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), Husserl’s most promising student, approached art from a new perspective. This was dictated by the crucial question of his fundamental ontology, namely the question of the meaning of Being (see Heidegger 1977a, 73/86). On this approach, what should be investigated in discussing art is what determines works of art as works of art and thus allows them to show themselves on their own terms. Famously, Heidegger repudiated traditional aesthetics and its preoccupation with “aesthetic” experience and beauty. For him, the problem of art is not a problem of aesthetics since the aesthetic approach to art adopts a Cartesian metaphysical framework, which Heidegger strenuously rejected in his early magnum opus, Sein und Zeit (1927).There, he denounced the subject–object dichotomy prevalent in modern thought as an outcome of theoretical and scientifc projections, taking Dasein’s everyday life and the world of its practical concerns as his starting point. Under this view, in the Heideggerian treatment of art, human beings are not thematized as feeling subjects who experience pleasure when encountering artistic objects.That would wrongly reduce art to a mere matter of human physiology. But neither is the work of art posited as a presentat-hand thingly object supposedly loaded with characteristic value properties. Heidegger argues that such a view presupposes the notion of thingness in one of the following traditional ways: (a) as substance with properties; (b) as unity emerging out of a sensuous manifold; or (c) as matter shaped by form. He shows that all three are derivative of and rooted in the primordial way entities are given as ready-to-hand for our practical concerns and tasks. Heidegger actually points to a more authentic engagement with works of art, which can be best illuminated if we consider his interpretation of the notion of disinterestedness. In the frst of his Nietzsche lectures (1936–37), “Der Wille zur Macht als Kunst,” Heidegger underlines a common and fatal misinterpretation regarding the defnition of Kant’s “disinterested delight,” which “leads to the erroneous opinion that with the exclusion of interest every essential relation to the object is suppressed” (Heidegger 1996, 110/110). In fact, Heidegger tells us, “(t)he opposite is the case” (Heidegger 1996, 110/110). He claims that Kant, by negatively delineating disinterestedness, proceeds with a path-breaking methodology in order to bring to light the essence of aesthetic beauty itself. By excluding all cognitive and practical interests,“the essential relation to the object itself comes into play” (Heidegger 1996, 110/110). Free from any interest in possessing, controlling, or using the object to achieve something else, we attend to it in an unconstrained way, “purely as it is in itself,” and let it “come before us in its own stature and worth” (Heidegger 1996, 109/109). In such engagement with the object, this “letting the beautiful be what it is” (Heidegger 1996, 109/109), a human being arrives at the “fullness of his essence” (Heidegger 1996, 113/113). When we authentically encounter an artwork, we do not turn to it and its subject matter with any theoretical or practical concern; we rather let it disclose the beings it sets forth as what they truly are.The work of art opens up a space for beings to shine forth, to reveal themselves. Heidegger, thus, speaks of art in terms of a “happening of truth” (e.g., Heidegger 1977b, 45/57). And by “truth” he does not mean a correspondence between assertions and facts. He means truth in its most original sense of aletheia, as the coming-out-of-oblivion (of lehte). In the famous phenomenological description of Van Gogh’s painting Boots with Laces (1886), Heidegger articulates this idea vividly.The Being of a pair of shoes, as shoes, cannot be manifested to us as long 116
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as we depend upon their equipmental reliability, as long as we use them in an unobstructed way in our everyday lives.Van Gogh’s painting, though, is the site where the world of the worn-out shoes, taken to belong to a peasant woman, is opened up so that we see the equipmentality of the shoes; we see “what shoes are in truth” (Heidegger 1977b, 21/35). In other words, the world of the shoes is not itself an object or an aggregate of objects; it is rather the horizon of intelligibility according to which this example of equipment is meaningfully given to us.And this is what reveals itself in the work of art. The truth-revealing function of art is not accomplished by the representation or imitation of reality.The artwork does not function as a sign pointing beyond itself toward the represented objects or states of affairs. It is the artwork itself that embodies the disclosed world. But every disclosure is, at the same time, concealment. Heidegger uses the notion of earth (Erde) in order to refer to all those hidden elements of beings that remain ungraspable and elusive, to “that which is by nature undisclosable” (Heidegger 1977b, 33/47). An artwork opens up a world but also presents the earth, the dark ground out of which the world springs forth. Part of the earth is the material of the artwork, the pigment, stone, or wood from which it is made.The artwork, unlike the artifact or the tool, presents those material elements in their materiality; it “lets the earth be an earth” (ibid., 32/46). Heidegger’s phenomenological analysis of the world and earth of a Greek temple clarifes paradigmatically the antagonistic but complementary relation between the tensions of disclosure and concealment that essentially characterizes works of art. Importantly, Heidegger places poetry at the center of his conception of art. Poetry is meant, though, in a broad sense as poiesis, as bringing into being. He says that “(a)ll art, as the letting happen of the advent of the truth of what is, is, as such, essentially poetry” (Heidegger 1977b, 59/72).Through their works, artists speak poetically.They do not use language instrumentally for communication; they rather set forth the poetic speech of authentic thinking, language in its primary function of bringing “what is, as something that is, into the Open for the frst time” (Heidegger 1977b, 61/73). Phenomenology also belongs in this category. As the philosophical method of revealing the concealed and normally forgotten, phenomenology, like art, brings the Being of beings to light (Heidegger 1977a, §7 C). Not surprisingly, Heidegger associated his thought with Hölderlin’s poetry and Cézanne’s painting. In one of his pilgrimages to Cézanne’s homeland (in March 1958), Heidegger is even reported to have said that he has found Cézanne’s path, “the path to which, from beginning to end, my own path as a thinker corresponds in its own way” (see Petzet 1993, 143).
The French contribution Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) played a leading role in the reception of German phenomenology in France. He was heavily infuenced by Husserl’s phenomenological analysis of intentional consciousness, but he also embraced Heidegger’s existential approach and focused his philosophical interest on the concrete human being and human condition. Contrary, though, to Heidegger’s insight about the revelation of the truth of Being independently of Dasein’s volition, Sartre praises consciousness’ radical, unconstrained freedom and its total responsibility to shape the world through its sense-giving activity.With their acts, humans, as “directors of being,” (Sartre 1948, 46/39) relentlessly make the world reveal new faces and orderings.This same theoretical framework determines Sartre’s attitude toward art. Artistic creation, but also aesthetic contemplation, is thus seen as an expression of our power of unconditional choice. The role of imagination is crucial in this respect. In the eyes of Sartre, imagination, in its mental and pictorial variations, denies what is actually given and animates some psychic or physical intermediate respectively, the analogon, as he calls it, aiming intuitively at the imagined as 117
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something irreal situated in an irreal context. Such imaginary irrealities are the aesthetic objects of our aesthetic attitude. Aesthetic pleasure, which Sartre clearly distinguishes from the enjoyment we take from sensory experience, is precisely a manner of apprehending imaginary objects (Sartre 1940, 362–73/188–94). Importantly, in the Sartrean approach, perception and imagination exclude each other. In a painted portrait, for example, the material and analogical dimensions of the painting are surpassed as soon as we envision the imaged person. The painted canvas and the picture in its representing function are left behind, neglected; they are no longer given, no longer perceived (e.g., Sartre 1940, 232/120). Furthermore, the irreal aesthetic object, insofar as it is not posited as actual, is itself absent; it is a form of nothingness (néant) appearing in the work of art. In his own interpretation of aesthetic disinterestedness, Sartre claims that, in the aesthetic attitude, we imaginatively nihilate beings and aim at the nothingness of the imagined. Sartre explains taking the aesthetic attitude toward nature in a similar way. A real thing, he urges, is never beautiful. We apprehend natural beauty by adopting an imaginative attitude toward reality. The real thing then stops being perceived and becomes an analogon of itself, permitting the manifestation of an aesthetic image of what the object is or could be. It is the ensemble, the confguration of the elements of the irreal object, that is beautiful. Indeed, the contemplation of beauty is accompanied by a “painful disinterest” in the real object, since the withdrawal of reality cancels any desire toward it (e.g., Sartre 1940, 372–3/193–4). What will become emblematic of Sartre’s phenomenological aesthetics is the importance he reserves for literature.The core idea here is that in paintings, sculptures, and pieces of music, the aesthetic object and the aesthetic senses it carries cannot but be seen in the real substratum of the artwork. Colors, clay, and musical notes always point inwardly to something that is present in them. They embody aesthetic sense and communicate moods or feelings, but they cannot refer to anything beyond themselves.The yellow color in the clouds of Tintoretto’s Crucifxion (1565) does not signify anguish; the yellowish sky is itself anguish (Sartre 1948, 15/9). In this, Sartre points out that painting, sculpture, and music do not make use of language and cannot communicate conceptual meanings; they don’t say anything. Even poetry emphasizes the material qualities of language, which leads to the reduction of its signifcative function. Poets are thus “mute” because they use words the way painters use colors, creating language objects. Prose writers, however, use words as signs that point to objects, persons, and events beyond themselves. Through words, situations in the world are disclosed (Sartre 1948, 13ff/7ff). In his later writings Sartre attenuated his dismissive attitude toward poetry, but he never stopped praising the distinct signifcative function of prose literature. In Sartre’s view, it is precisely this that means literature can be engaged and committed, which is the point where Sartre’s aesthetic, ethical, and political insights meet. Not bound by the medium, the writer enjoys the privilege of fully and unrestrictedly controlling language and conveying his or her intended meanings. This literal creation is offered generously as a gift and an appeal to readers, who choose freely to respond not only aesthetically but also morally and politically. Sartre’s contemporary and philosophical interlocutor, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961), was also infuenced by both Husserl and Heidegger. In his Phénoménologie de la Perception (1945), Merleau-Ponty investigated our primordial being-in-the-world, which precedes all dualisms imposed by the objective thought of common sense and science. He showed that, primordially, we live as incarnate subjects within the world of perception and action.The later Merleau-Ponty radicalized this theory of incarnate subjectivity and attempted to reveal a deeper ontological structure. In his unfnished manuscript of Le Visible et l’Invisible, and in his research notes, we fnd elements of an ontological circuit between man and nature, an ontological net of wild or brute Being (Merleau-Ponty 1964a, 234, 251/183, 200). Man and worldly things share the same 118
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ontological fesh (chair), the primordial “weaving” of which is expressed in perception, language, philosophical logos, and art. For Merleau-Ponty, art, especially painting, thus acquires a special ontological weight. It is shown to be an “authentic language” that re-discovers and expresses our primordial being-in-the-world. Following Husserl, Merleau-Ponty describes the artistic aesthetic attitude in terms of a reduction in the feld of primordial experience. By this peculiar epoché, the artist suspends both common and scientifc knowledge and works “in full innocence” (Merleau-Ponty 1964b, 13/161). He or she “peels off ” sedimentations of human praxis, evaluation, and theoretization in an attempt to re-constitute the process of perceiving, to capture the essence of how the primordial world comes to being in its appearing. Merleau-Ponty claims that it is precisely by rendering manifest the essence of perception that painting and art in general can be seen as giving access to perceptual truth, that it is “the actualization of a truth” (Merleau-Ponty 1945, xv/lxxxiv). For Merleau-Ponty, Paul Cézanne became the paradigmatic case of an artist who, as a quasiphenomenologist, reveals perception and the world at the moment of their becoming in a painterly way (Merleau-Ponty 1948, 15–44/121–49). To illustrate this, Merleau-Ponty looks at how Cézanne’s paintings, against the academism of his time, do not call on us to see them from a single point of view as if our eyes were cameras. By combining views from varying angles, objects are presented as if seen from multiple points of view. Furthermore, the different superimposed planes manage to depict different levels of depth.The synthesis of these different aspectual elements gives “voluminosity” to the painted objects and depth to the painting itself. Perspective and depth in Cézanne’s works are not constructions of geometrical projections. They are rather lived dimensions of primordial perception. This is further enhanced by the way Cézanne presents the atmosphere of the impression without losing, as with Impressionism, the thing itself in its reality. And he achieves this by neither abolishing outlines nor by tracing just one; in his paintings, modulated colors indicate multiple outlines to delineate the painted fgures and hint at their inner horizons. Distorted, swollen things, disjoined perspectives, multiple outlines, and discordant parts all contribute to the revelation of the hidden logic of visual perception, to the presentation of the thing in its making, in its emergence as a product of a lived process.According to Merleau-Ponty, the artist, the painter par excellence, grasps the “nascent logos” (Merleau-Ponty 1947, 133/25) of perception, the intuitive logos that, without the mediation of concepts, rules the “emerging order” of the sensuous presence of the world. And by exercising his or her “secret science” (Merleau-Ponty 1964b, 14/161), the painter actually rearranges the world of things, like the poet rearranges language, creating another order, a “new system of equivalences which demands precisely this particular upheaval (and not just any one)” (Merleau-Ponty 1960, 71/56). Art’s essential function is thus to approach the unthinkable and, functioning as “speaking speech (parole parlante)” (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 229/202), bring it to being for the frst time. This is how, for example, Cézanne “speaks as the frst man spoke and paints as if no one had ever painted before” (Merleau-Ponty 1948, 32/69). The French philosopher who most systematically and extensively dealt with phenomenological aesthetics was Mikel Dufrenne (1910–1995). His Sorbonne thesis, the Phénoménologie de l’Expérience Esthétique, was published in 1953 in two volumes devoted, respectively, to the aesthetic object and aesthetic perception. Inspired by Husserl, Dufrenne conceives these as poles of a noesis–noema intentional correlation. In constant dialogue with Ingarden, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty, Dufrenne thus attempts to trace a phenomenological path distinct from subjectivist and objectivist aesthetic theories. Similar to Ingarden, he distinguishes between the intersubjectively self-identical work of art and the aesthetic object that is given once the work of art is aesthetically perceived. He objects, though, to Ingarden’s radical separation of perception and aesthetic experience directed toward purely intentional objects. 119
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Likewise, Dufrenne rejects Sartre’s accentuation of imagination and the sharp exclusion of perception from the realm of aesthetic experience. For Dufrenne, the aesthetic object is not cut off from perception, either as a purely intentional object (Ingarden) or as an imaginary irreal being (Sartre). More in accord with Merleau-Ponty, Dufrenne argues that the aesthetic object “is still a perceived object” (Dufrenne 1953, 273/212). However, this is not about the reduction of the aesthetic object to the “brute sensuousness” (Dufrenne 1953, 187/138) of ordinary percepts. Due to its inner logic of organization, the aesthetic object is permeated with meaning (sens), but this meaning never transcends the realm of the sensuous (le sensible). Carrying its immanent aesthetic meaning, “(t)he aesthetic object is nothing other than the sensuous appearing in its glory” (Dufrenne 1978, 403) In Dufrenne’s view, then, the pivotal point is the claim that the aesthetic object is capable of expressing its inherent meanings. It does not function as a sign that points to something beyond itself, and its purpose is neither to depict, nor to knowingly demonstrate, nor to inform us of anything. The purpose of art is to express. Dufrenne grounds his insistence on the autonomy of art in this point.The aesthetic object is self-luminous and not, as Ingarden had it, heteronomously determined. It is, in Sartre’s terms, both in-itself and for-itself, or, in Dufrenne’s exact words, a “quasi-subject” (Dufrenne 1953, 488/393) with which the spectator is, so to speak, intersubjectively and empathically related. The expressive aesthetic object reveals its own depth, its self-suffcient and unitary affective world. And precisely because of the world it opens, the aesthetic object is true. Truth here is not related to ordinary perception, which “looks for a truth about the object” (Dufrenne 1978, 403) and ends in some objectifying act of knowledge or some practical act. Dufrenne parallels aesthetic experience with phenomenological reduction, where belief in existence is suspended, as are intellectual and practical concerns.Aesthetic experience, as lived by spectators, is directed toward the object for its own sake and “seeks out the truth of the object such as it is immediately given in the sensuous” (Dufrenne 1978, 403). It is the truth that pertains specifcally to the realm of the affective.Through an involved, performative, and gradually unfolding attitude, the spectator reads the object’s expressive character as given in a non-conceptual language.The constituents, more particularly, that compose such an attitude, what Dufrenne calls aesthetic perception, are: (a) sensuous perception that presupposes the subject’s concrete bodily presence; (b) representation that is closely related to a restrained imagination; and (c) a “sympathetic refection” (Dufrenne 1953, 488/393, 490/395) that culminates in aesthetic feeling. In aesthetic perception, the subject experiences the resonance of its own existential depth with the inner logic of the aesthetic object in its very being. Dufrenne’s aesthetic insights thus shed light on the intimate relation between man and world. This project is complemented by the fnal part of Dufrenne’s Phénoménologie de l’Expérience Esthétique, where a critique of aesthetic experience provides, in a Kantian spirit, an investigation into the conditions of possibility for the correlation of aesthetic experience and the aesthetic object.According to Dufrenne, it is the affective a priori that governs this correlation (see Dufrenne 1953, 455–56; see also Dufrenne 1959). More specifcally, regarding its subjective or existential dimension, the affective a priori is a “pre-understanding actualized in experience” (Dufrenne 1978, 408). Regarding its objective or cosmological dimension, it is “that which gives it (the object) form and meaning, that by which it is constituted as capable of a world” (Dufrenne 1978, 408). These affective categories render the subject sensitive to the affective meaning that emerges from the lawfully ordered organization of the aesthetic object. Following a similar path to that of the later Merleau-Ponty, Dufrenne radicalizes his view and in his Le Poétique (1963) seeks the ontological source of both subject and world. He claims there that Nature, with a capital N, is “the a priori of the a priori linking man to the world” (Dufrenne 120
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1963, 181) at the most fundamental level. Poiesis of Nature is what grounds all artistic creation and expression. Dufrenne’s view about the preeminent status of poetry is crucial, as poetic language brings us closer to the upsurge of language itself and expresses the original affective communion between man and world in a paradigmatic way.
References Dufrenne, Mikel. 1953. Phénoménologie de l’Expérience Esthétique, 2 vols. Paris: PUF. Trans. E. Casey, The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973. ———. 1959. La Notion de l’A Priori. Paris: PUF. Trans. S. Casey, The Notion of the A Priori. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1966. ———. 1963. Le Poétique. Paris: PUF. ———. 1978.“Intentionality and Aesthetics.” Man and World, 11/3–4: pp. 401–410. Geiger, Moritz. 1913. “Beitrӓge zur Phӓnomenologie des ӓsthetischen Genusses.” Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phӓnomenologische Forschung 1: pp. 567–684. ———. 1976. Die Bedeutung der Kunst. Eds. K. Berger and W. Henckmann. Munich:Wilhelm Fink.Trans. K. Berger, The Signifcance of Art.Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1986. Heidegger, Martin. 1996. Gesamtausgabe 6.1. Nietzsche. Band I. Frankfurt am Main:Vittorio Klostermann. Trans. D. F. Krell, Nietzsche I.The Will to Power as Art. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1991. ———. 1977a. Gesamtausgabe 2. Sein und Zeit. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. Trans. J. Macquarie and E. Robinson, Being and Time. New York: Harper & Row, 1962. ———. 1977b.“Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes.” In: Gesamtausgabe 5. Holzwege. Ed. F.W. von Herrmann Frankfurt am Main:Vittorio Klostermann, pp. 1–74. Trans. and ed. A. Hofstadter, “The Origin of the Work of Art.” In: Poetry, Language,Thought. New York: Harper & Row, 1971, pp. 15–87. Husserl, Edmund. 1989. Ideas Pertaining to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Second Book. Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution. Trans. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. 2005. Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898–1901).Trans. J. Brough. Dordrecht: Springer. Ingarden, Roman. 1931. Das Literarische Kunstwerk. Eine Untersuchung aus den Grenzgebiet der Ontologie, Logik und Literaturwissenschaft. Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1931.Trans. G. Grabowicz, The Literary Work of Art: An Investigation on the Borderlines of Ontology, Logic, and Theory of Literature. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973. ———. 1961.“Aesthetic Experience and Aesthetic Object.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 21/3: pp. 289–313. ———. 1962. Untersuchungen zur Ontologie der Kunst. Musikwerk, Bild,Architektur.Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Trans. R. Meyer and J. Goldthwait, Ontology of the Work of Art:The Musical Work, the Picture, the Architectural Work, the Film.Athens: Ohio University Press, 1989. ———. 1964.“Artistic and Aesthetic Values.” British Journal of Aesthetics 4/3: pp. 198–213. ———. 1975. “Phenomenological Aesthetics.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 33/3: pp. 257–69. Merleau-Ponty, M. 1945. Phénoménologie de la Perception. Paris: Gallimard.Trans. D. Landes, Phenomenology of Perception. London/New York: Routledge, 2012. ———. 1947. “Le Primat de la Perception et ses Conséquences Philosophiques.” Bulletin de la Société Française de Philosophie 41: pp. 119–53.Trans. J. Edie,“The Primacy of Perception and its Philosophical Consequences.” In: The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays. Ed. J. Edie. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964, pp. 12–42. ———. 1948. “Le Doute de Cézanne.” In: Sens et Non-Sens. Paris: Nagel, pp. 15–44. Trans. M. Smith, “Cézanne’s Doubt.” In: The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting. Ed. G. Johnson. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1993, pp. 121–49. ———. 1960. “Le Langage Indirect et les Voix du Silence.” In: Ed. M. Merleau-Ponty. Signes. Paris: Gallimard, pp. 49–104. Trans. R. McCleary, “Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence.” In: Signs. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964, pp. 39–83. ———. 1964a. L’Oeil et l’Esprit. Paris: Gallimard. Trans. C. Dallery, “Eye and Mind.” In: The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays. Ed. J. Edie. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964, pp. 159–90. ———. 1964b. Le Visible et l’Invisible. Paris: Gallimard.Trans.A. Lingis, The Visible and the Invisible. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968.
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9 BODY Maxime Doyon and Maren Wehrle
Introduction Of all the important contributions phenomenology has made to philosophy, it is perhaps the thematization of the role of the body in experience that is the most decisive one. Descriptions of the specifc functions of the body feature in all phenomenological analyses of perception and action, as it is exemplary in the case of the pioneering work of Edmund Husserl (Hua XVI/1997), Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1945/2012), and Martin Heidegger (1927/2008). The body also has a central role to play in various other areas of phenomenological research, including some that might at frst glance appear as thematically more remote, like for instance Max Scheler’s (1913/1970) conception of social relations, Merleau-Ponty’s investigations of arts and aesthetics (1964a), Jean-Paul Sartre’s (1943/1956) refections on politics, and Emmanuel Levinas’s (1961/1969) thoughts on ethics and religious experience. For classical phenomenologists, the body was by no means a topic among others (cf. for a comprehensive overview of phenomenological thinking on embodiment, Alloa et al. 2012); not only does it occupy a central place in their exploration of most if not all dimensions of experience, but their refections on embodiment also led some phenomenologists to draw important epistemological and even ontological conclusions about human experience and reality (Hua XXXVI; Merleau-Ponty 1964/1968). In the contemporary philosophical landscape, phenomenological analyses of embodiment have recently returned to the forefront of philosophical research, either as combined or in critical dialogue with other philosophical or scientifc approaches, such as analytic philosophy of mind (Zahavi 2002), cognitive and neuroscience (Gallagher 2017), developmental psychology (Zahavi and Rochat 2015), feminist theory (Heinämaa 2003, Weiss 1999, De Beauvoir 1949) queer theory (Ahmed 2006), transgender theory (Salamon 2010), and post-colonial theory (Fanon 1952), to name but a few. The phenomenology embodiment is now bolstering, as it provides important insights to other philosophical and scientifc disciplines, and proft, in return, of ideas borrowed from other areas of research (Gallagher and Zahavi 2012). Since they provide most of the methodological and conceptual resources of all the phenomenological analyses of embodiment, including those that aim at radically modifying, expanding or criticizing their works, this entry will focus on the phenomenology of embodiment of Husserl (section 9.1) and Merleau-Ponty (section 9.2). Each section has the same tripartite structure: we frst (i) introduce the basic concepts and distinctions, before turning our attention to two more specifc sets of problems, namely their account of action and perception (ii), and 123
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their descriptions of social relations and intersubjective constitution (iii). We conclude with a brief survey of some important ideas at the heart of the so-called enactive view (section 9.3), which has incorporated a lot of important phenomenological insights into a more holistic conception of embodiment that also draws on empirical sciences and other philosophical traditions such as Anglo-American philosophy of mind and Buddhism.
9.1. Husserl I. The double constitution of embodiment as ‘Leib’ and ‘Körper’. One of the most well-known and neat introductions of the concept of the lived body (or embodiment) can be found in Husserl’s Ideas II, section II, chapter three: “the constitution of psychic reality through the body” (the respective manuscripts were written in 1912). Husserl’s aim in including the body into the philosophical debate was not primarily – as it is often assumed – to overcome the Cartesian mind–body dualism, but rather to show that and how bodily experience plays a key role in the philosophy of the sciences. In this regard, Husserl differentiates between a naturalistic and a personal attitude, the frst belonging to the natural sciences, while the latter is characteristic of the so-called humanities. In this context, the structure and essence of human embodiment is crucial, namely in that the body functions as a turning point between the interior and the exterior (Hua IV, 161, 285f./Husserl 1989, 168, 299). By this Husserl means that one can perceive the body in a twofold way, namely from a personal (or frst-person) perspective, i.e. as the subject of perception (Leib), or else from a naturalistic (or third-person) perspective, i.e. as a physical thing (Körper).This twofold nature of human embodiment as Leib and Körper also serves as the necessary background of our ability to address worldly ‘things’ either as “causal-thingly” parts or as “motivational-expressive” wholes (Heinämaa 2012, 230). The ‘double constitution’ (Hua IV, 144ff./Husserl 1989, 152ff.) of the body, as sensing subject and extended matter or object, characterizes its mediating position between the thinking I, soul and nature on the one hand, as well as between humanities and natural sciences on the other (cf. Hua IV, 175, 183f./Husserl 1989, 184, 193). This essential two-sidedness shows itself in Husserl’s famous description of the so-called ‘double sensation’ of the body: If we touch our left hand with our right hand, both hands can, dependent on our attitude or attention, appear as either the executing instance of touching or the object of touching.We can perceive the touched hand according to its physical or objective attributes, in its smoothness or roughness; it is then the object of perception or touch. But as soon as the localized sensations of the left hand enter the picture, this does not merely add to the characteristics of the physical thing ‘body’; in this very moment, it turns into a lived body (Leib) that itself senses (cf. Hua IV, 144f./Husserl 1989, 152). As Husserl repeatedly emphasizes, the naturalistic attitude, which presents the body as physical Körper, presupposes the personal attitude or mode of apprehension. For if I apprehend the objective characteristics of my left hand, I have to abstract from the sensational qualities that enable its givenness as an object in the frst place.The personal mode of apprehension is thus primary, while the naturalistic apprehension is secondary or derivative (cf. Hua IV, 144ff./Husserl 1989, 152ff.). In the same way that the naturalistic apprehension presupposes the personal, the experienced Leibkörper presupposes a primary experiencing Leib. While the body in the naturalistic attitude appears two-layered, as a physical and psychological stratum, from a personalistic perspective the very same body appears as an expressive whole, i.e. a unity of body and spirit (cf. Hua IV, 203-206, 236-247/Husserl 1989, 214–216, 248–259). If we describe the body from the ‘interior’ or as the subject of perception, it appears as a feld of localized sensations (Lokalisationsfeld der Empfndungen, sometimes also Empfndnisse).1 As such, 124
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it is conceived as the organ of the will and the seat of free movement. But there is more to it still: this subjective body or bodily self (cf. Waldenfels 2000) accompanies every experience, and is even regarded as the foundation of all intentionality and every cognitive act.The body as subject incorporates all our practical capabilities, skills and habits; it is the mobile centre or “zero-point of orientation” (Hua IV, 158/Husserl 1989, 166), in reference to which all other spatial objects are oriented as either left or right, above or beneath, near or far, etc. If, however, we take a look at the body from an exterior viewpoint, it appears as material, extended and embedded in the causal relations of nature; it is a visible, touchable and measurable object. But in contrast to ‘normal’ things, our body can only be perceived incompletely.We cannot look at it from a distance or from different perspectives:“The same body which serves me as means for all my perceptions obstructs me in the perception of itself and is a remarkably imperfectly constituted thing” (Hua IV, 159/Husserl 1989, 167). The body thus has a twofold status: it is on the one hand an organ of the will and perception, an “I can” (Hua XI, 14/Husserl 2001, 51) that provides our practical horizon of freedom, while on the other hand, as a material and feeling Leibkörper, our body, in being visible and touchable, is vulnerable, as it is easy to hurt, manipulate or attack. II.The body and perception. If Husserl fnally came to fully recognize the importance of the body for his analysis of perceptual experience, it was not immediately central to his philosophical endeavour. In his groundbreaking Logical Investigations, the phenomenological analysis of the body is at best indirectly implied by the concept of ‘fulflment’, on which much of his early analysis of perceptual experience turns. Perception is here described as a fulflling experience that involves the consciousness of a coincidence between an emptily intended sense and its corresponding intuitive content. When the intuitively given object is consciously presented as it has been emptily intended, the empty intention is said to be ‘satisfed’ or ‘fulflled’. Given the irreducible one-sidedness of every particular perception – viz. the fact that objects are always perceived under a certain aspect (cf. Hua XIX/2, 589ff./Husserl 2001, 220f.) – perceptual fulflment can only ever be partial or incomplete. This generates what is today called the problem of perceptual presence (cf. Noë 2004), which is brought about by the constitutive discrepancy between what is meaningfully intended (the object) in experience and what is sensibly given (the profle). For Husserl, this is unproblematic, however, for we are directed through the profle toward the object:“consciousness reaches out beyond what it actually experiences. It can so to say mean beyond itself, and its meaning can be fulflled” (Hua XIX/2, 574/Husserl 2001, 211). Husserl’s idea is that the unthematically co-intended profles are integrated in perceptual consciousness and thus contribute to the constitution of objects because perceptual consciousness is by its very nature transcendent. As such, it always stretches beyond itself and intends more than what is sensibly given. It is in the context of explaining the implications of this intending operation – which he will later call ‘Über-sich-hinaus-meinen’ (Hua I, §20, 84/Husserl 1960, 46) or sometimes simply ‘Hinausdeutung’ – that he implicitly refers to the body in the Logical Investigations. Husserl develops his thought on this by means of a phenomenological description of a perception of a piece of furniture covering up a carpet: “If I see an incomplete pattern, e.g. in this carpet partially covered up over by furniture, the piece I see seems clothed with intentions pointing to further completions – we feel as if the lines and coloured shapes go on ‘in the sense’ of what we see – but we expect nothing. It would be possible for us to expect something, if movement promised us further views” (Hua XIX/2, 574/Husserl 2001, 211). The thesis advanced here – which counts as the very frst appeal to bodily movement in Husserl’s published works – states that the object’s seen profle intentionally refers to other profles or aspects of the thing that could become visible via movement. But then Husserl adds that the kind of “occasions for possible 125
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expectations” that movement can generate “are not themselves expectations” (Hua XIX/2, 574/ Husserl 2001, 211). What Husserl is hinting at here is that the visual experience of the carpet does not imply any concrete expectations, and therefore does not command any concrete movements either, because that experience is not – or does not have to be – oriented toward its future realization. Such an experience does prescribe possibilities of fulflment; but these possibilities are mere logical possibilities, as it were; they do not command anything concrete. This explains Husserl’s early distinction between intention and expectancy: “Intention is not expectancy” (Hua XIX/2, 574/Husserl 2001, 211), which means that all intentions do not necessarily require fulflment. Intentions open up the possibility of fulflment, but, strictly speaking, they do not “command” anything, since “it is not of its essence to be directed to future appearances” (Id.; see J. Benoist 2016, 128ff.). Husserl’s view on this will rapidly change, however. After the discovery of the intrinsically temporal nature of consciousness (cf. Hua X/Husserl 1964), Husserl will come to realize that all possibilities anticipated in perception are necessary real, motivated possibilities.That the carpet will most likely continue according to the same pattern is itself motivated by my present experience of the carpet’s pattern and genetically by my habituated experience of carpet patterns continuing in a regular style (cf. Hua XXXIII, 13, 38; Hua XI, 186/Husserl 2001, 236). Both actual and past experience motivate specifc perceptual possibilities which are not just logical, but real or motivated ones (cf. Hua XX/1, 178ff.). In perception, intentions are motivated possibilities, and so they do demand fulflment, by their very essence. Qua intentions, they are empty (to differing degrees), but that emptiness is teleologically oriented toward fullness (cf. Bernet 2004). It is this very idea that Husserl starts to develop in the 1907 lecture-course Thing and Space, and which will be refned in the so-called ‘genetic’ phase of phenomenology in the early 1920s. From 1907 on, Husserl thus constantly stresses the fundamental role of movement in perception.The sensibly given side of the perceived object carries a sense of the whole object and includes indications of possible future locations of my body under which other aspects of the object could be given.The horizon of the co-intended but momentarily absent profles of the object is correlated with my kinaesthetic horizon, i.e. with my capacity for possible movement. The absent profles are experienced in an intentional ‘if–then’ relation: my relation to them is characterized by my awareness that if I move in this way, then this or that profle will become accessible (cf. Hua XVI §55/Husserl 1997, 159ff.; Hua XI §3/Husserl 2001, 47ff.). In Husserl’s view, this intentional law – which he calls the law of motivation – is rooted in ‘kinesthetic experience’, which is an expression Husserl uses to refer both to our capacity to move, the ‘I can’ that belongs to the body (Leib), and to the Ego’s capacity to experience the sensations resulting from the movement of one’s own body (Leib). Husserl calls these sensations ‘kinaesthetic sensations’, and they belong to our sensing Ego-Body.The specifcity of Husserl’s approach to perception is to argue that both kinds of kinaesthetic experience play an indispensable role in the constitution of perceptual objects (cf. Drummond 1983). It is not only our capacity to move freely our own bodies that is required for experiencing spatiotemporal objects, but kinaesthetic sensations are just as crucial. Husserl’s point is that my awareness of my kinaesthetic system, thanks to which I am horizontally aware of the absent profles of objects, is itself based on the tacit experience of my bodily position and of the relative positions of my bodily parts. This is why Husserl mentions in Thing and Space that the very possibility of the presentation of material things supposes a feld of kinaesthetic sensations:“The sensations of movement […] play an essential role in the apprehension of every external thing […] without their cooperation, there is no body there, no thing” (Hua XVI, §46, 160/Husserl 2011, 136). The most important function of kinaesthetic sensations is that they motivate the fow of appearances of perceptual objects, and they do so by generating a more or less defnite set of 126
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expectations. (For a criticism, see Crowell 2013, 136ff.) Perceptual experience is so constituted that I am always implicitly aware that if I perform a continuous bodily activity, then a corresponding series of appearances must unfold as motivated.According to Husserl, there is a covariance relation that holds between the sensations by which one is aware of the movements of one’s own body, and the appearances of the object.The kinaesthetic system does “not simply run parallel to the fow of appearances there; rather the kinaesthetic series [...] and the perceptual appearances are related to one another through consciousness” (Hua XI, §3, 14/Husserl 2001, 50f.).The correlation that obtains between the sensations of movement and the appearances of the object is responsible for the unity of the object, which is an intentional synthetic unity that Husserl conceives as an objective sense (ein gegeständlicher Sinn). In Husserl’s eyes, this process of constitution is teleological in the sense of being oriented toward a “limit”, namely the “consciousness of the most proper givenness.” (Hua XVI, §36, 126/ Husserl 1997, 105) This experience is “the goal of the perceptual movement” (Id.), and it is one for which “no further fulflment” (Hua XVI, §35, 125/Husserl 1997, 104) is needed. Husserl thus calls this an experience of the optimum and conceives it as the end or the goal (Ziel) of the perceptual process. Specifcally, the “thing itself ” is said to be given optimally when it manifests itself “in its saturated fullness” (Hua XI §4, 23/Husserl 2001, 61), that is to say, when it admits no more fulflment.The notion of ‘optimal givenness’ thus refers to something like a maximum of richness and differentiation, a peak in clarity and distinction. Such an optimum is a permanent possibility of perception (cf. Ms. D 13 III, 151a). By making the necessary psychophysical adjustments (changing our location, modifying the lighting, etc.), it is in principle always possible to optimize our experience and gain more determinate content. In this context, Husserl contends that the kinaesthetic paths themselves have their own laws and should be regarded from the point of view of the optimum as well (cf. Ms. D 13 I, 63a). Unless a hurdle surfaces or a particular diffculty arises, we, as perceptual agents, automatically tend to opt for the optimal path and move our body so as to optimize our perceptions.This is possible because our habitual body provides our experience with some kind of basic, but still norm-sensitive, orientation or direction (cf. Doyon 2015;Wehrle 2015).The kind of kinaesthetic freedom I enjoy in this context is therefore not total liberty, since of all the things ‘I can’ do, only some will resonate with my habitualized tendencies and appear suited or appropriate with regard to my perceptual goal (cf. Doyon 2018). III.The body and intersubjectivity. Embodiment is also crucial when it comes to what Husserl thematizes as the perception of the other people (‘Fremderfahrung’). In this regard, the internal split within human embodiment between a lived and a material body can be interpreted as a precondition for every form of empathy, i.e. the experience of other human (and to some extent also non-human) beings as living and conscious subjects with similar psychological or cognitive abilities. Although what we actually perceive is only the visible and external side of the body, the feeling, emotions and sometimes even the thoughts of the other can be virtually perceived by the behaviour and expression of this very body. This is possible because we ourselves have experienced this intertwinement of the exterior, material site of embodiment with an internal/ subjective side (notably in the phenomenon of the double sensation). In his lectures on intersubjectivity (Hua XIII–XV; cf. Kern 2017) as well as in his Cartesian Meditations (Hua I/Husserl 1960), Husserl describes in great detail the necessary function of the body for the perception and understanding of other subjects. It is a real puzzle to explain how we can apprehend other (human or non-human) bodies as the subjects of their own experiences (that is, as thinking, feeling, moving and sensing bodies) given that what we subjectively experience are only our own sensations. Husserl’s solution is to suggest that the sensations of other bodies can be apperceived. In perceptual experience, we automatically add something to our actual perception without having to explicitly posit anything mentally.What is ‘added’ (or 127
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ap-perceived) is indicated or motivated by this perception, but it is not itself actually perceived. In contrast to normal object perception, this specifc object, namely the lived body as that of another subject, can never come to an actual presence (like, when moving around it, I come to see the back side of a house). Rather, the ‘interior’ or the experiences of another animal body can only be ‘indicated’ by its visual appearance and behaviour.This limit is not a failure, but a phenomenological fnding: it is what makes the Other an other, that is, an Ego fundamentally different from myself.2 Husserl’s refections on this cluster of issues go back to 1910–11 (cf. Hua XIII,Text Nr. 8). While he frst thought that for experiencing an alien body as a sensing human being with similar capacities it was suffcient to imagine one’s own corporeal appearance ‘here’ as an external appearance over ‘there’, i.e. to think of oneself as physically moved to another place (Hua XIII, 253, 263), he later criticized his own approach for being too constructive or intellectual. Instead of thinking or imagining oneself in the place of the other, Husserl’s more mature analyses focus on the concrete expressions of the embodiment of others. He emphasizes in this regard that one perceptually experiences the body of the other as a sensing Leib similar to mine without having to infer such a similarity (cf. Hua XIII,Text Nr. 2). Contrary to contemporary inferentialist approaches to social cognition such as Theory of Mind (Carruthers 2015) or the Simulation Theory (Dennett 1987, Gallese 2014), Husserl – thereby clearly anticipating the enactivist view (see section 9.3 below) – thought that the perception of the other takes place in an immediate and direct way. It is based, he thought, on a passive process of association he called ‘coupling’ (Paarung). In this associative coupling, our own body functions as the instituting ‘original’, who initiates a passive process of identifcation between our body and the body of the other. Husserl describes this process as “a primal instituting, in which an object with a similar sense became constituted for the frst time” (Hua I, 141/Husserl 1960, 111). Other people are thus accessible to us through our bodily perception but only in a kind of “verifable accessibility of what is not originally accessible” (Hua I, 144/Husserl 1960, 114). More specifcally, others’ bodies are perceived as of the same type as ours: they, too, are seen as visible and touchable (objects) as well as perceiving and sensing (subjects). But this passive ‘assumption’ – namely that what we perceive is not only a physical body but also a lived body with soul, spirit and ego – has to be proven right, or better it must confrm and demonstrate itself in further sensuous experience or communication.The experience of others is therefore never originally or even fully given to us, but it is still directly accessible through our experiences of and with them, through the behaviour and gestures of their expressive body (Hua XIII, 234). In brief, through empathy (Einfühlung), we are able to experience the other directly: the facial expressions are seen facial expressions, and they are immediately bearers of sense indicating the other’s consciousness (Hua IV, 235/ Husserl 1989, 247). In its duality as material and animate, the body is therefore the concrete precondition not only of the constitution of space and perception, but also of every form of intersubjectivity and empathy.
9.2. Merleau-Ponty I. Body and world.While the body in Husserl still is in the service of consciousness or the Ego, and thus appears as an – although imperfectly – constituted thing, Merleau-Ponty tries in his Phenomenology of Perception (Phénoménologie de la perception, 1945) to bring this view, which he takes to be standing on its head, back on its feet: the body itself is now conceived as a subject in its own right and not as a mere medium of an ego or egoic will.The body, in its inalienable relation to the world, stands for our most primary mode of existence as a concrete and situated subject: “the subject that I am, understood concretely, is inseparable from this particular body 128
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and from this particular world” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 431). Our bodily existence thus combines consciousness and world, or, in Sartre’s words, the being ‘for itself ’ and the ‘being in itself ’ (cf. Sartre 1956). Merleau-Ponty’s ‘phenomenology of the body’ is in this sense an existentialist answer to Husserl’s approach and a critical comment on Sartre’s theory developed in Being and Nothingness.3 Basing himself on Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty describes the body as a factual existence, i.e. as something that is in the world, and emphasizes the primarily practical character of our relation to the world. In contrast to Heidegger, who focuses on the formal description of the structures of Dasein and does not develop an explicit theory of embodiment, Merleau-Ponty is more interested in the concrete actions of the embodied subject. In this sense, the embodied subject is not just in the world, but (behaves) toward the world (which Merleau-Ponty captures by translating Heidegger’s In-der-Welt-sein as être-au-monde). As embodied subjects, we are on the one hand situated in the world in a spatial, temporal, natural, biological as well as historical and cultural way; on the other hand, we fnd ourselves in-situation with the world as the locus of our engagements and commitments. These two levels of situatedness are refected in the “two distinct layers” of the lived body, “that of the habitual body and that of the actual body” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 84). Our lived body (and the world) are always already there, even before we explicitly perceive or refect on them.An embodied and situated subject therefore possesses an individual (past experiences) as well as an over-individual (natural, cultural, generative) pre-history.The latter shows itself in dispositions and acquired habits that represent biological, historical and social developments and meanings, and of which the embodied subject is mostly unaware. Moreover, the subject does not only comprise of a personal horizon of beliefs, explicitly remembered events or decisions; as embodied, it is also determined by a “pre-personal horizon” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 261, cf. Al-Saij 2008) of events or processes the subject never actually experiences or knows about. Our own birth is, for example, a past that never has been present (to us), and our death is a future that will never appear to us. Nonetheless, both the over-individual pre-history as well as the pre-personal dimension are the foundation for every bodily existence and shape every concrete experience. Embodiment is thus not only twofold (Leib and Körper), but being a concrete bodily subject already comes with the prize of anonymity and ambiguity. According to Merleau-Ponty, the inherent ambiguity of the lived body that fnds itself between past and present, pre-personal and personal, natural and cultural dimensions, is not a defcit but rather a necessary condition for a concordant and unifed experience of the (transcendent) world and others (cf.Trigg 2017, Dillon 1988). II. Bodily perception. For Merleau-Ponty, perception is the primary mode of our relation to the world. Moreover, “perception is not a ‘mental’ event, for we experience our own sensory states not merely as states of mind, but as states of our bodies” (Carman 2012, xiv). It is in precisely this sense that Merleau-Ponty affrms that intentionality is frst and foremost a practical and motor intentionality. In this regard, Merleau-Ponty adopts the term ‘operative intentionality’ from Husserl, which he found in his late manuscripts (fungierende Intentionalität, cf. Merleau-Ponty 2012, 441). Operative intentionality, in contrast to act intentionality, does not mentally refer to an already constituted single object (thinking of a house), but describes a bodily aiming or reaching at, a general mode of practical directedness toward something. Like Husserl, Merleau-Ponty thus ascribes a specifc (motor) intentionality to the body: consciousness is originally not an ‘I think’, but rather an ‘I can’ (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 139; cf. Morris 2008, 116). Motor intentionality is characterized by kinaesthetic sensations or proprioception, as well as a bodily awareness of the surrounding environment and of worldly things that are relevant for the current action. It operates on a pre-refective or even a pre-personal level, in which we 129
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are not fully or explicitly aware of all the single operations involved, like when we carry out certain actions while our attention is directed elsewhere, such as when driving or walking while talking to a friend. But this does not mean that our action is a kind of subliminal or mechanical process that lacks any kind of consciousness. Rather, it is guided by a pre-refective form of self-consciousness by means of which we are at the same time aware of the sensory qualities of outer things (cf. Legrand 2006). Merleau-Ponty argues in this regard that motor intentionality is characterized by what he calls an “intentional arc” (2012, 137f.). Bodily movement points always beyond itself, spatially as well as temporally.While engaged in a bodily movement, we are ‘here’, but also already ‘there’, intending the thing or the action that drives our intentional project of activity:“The gesture of reaching one’s hand out toward an object contains a reference to this object, not as a representation, but as this highly determinate thing toward which we are thrown, next to which we are through anticipation, and which we haunt” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 140). In every current action the body thus synthesizes the past, present and future in an ‘intentional arc’. Merleau-Ponty illustrates the ‘normal’ functioning of motor intentionality and embodiment through a contrasting analysis of pathological cases. Throughout the Phenomenology of Perception, he refers several times to a patient of the German neurologists Adhémar Gelb and Kurt Goldstein named Schneider. Due to a war injury, Schneider has severe brain injuries and shows functional distortions in visual perception, movement, memory, thinking and social behaviour. Schneider is, for example, not able to point to his nose when asked to do so, although he perfectly ‘knows’ where his nose is when this movement is embedded in a practical or operative action, like sneezing or in shooing away a fy that sits on his nose. Schneider can thus ‘grasp’ his nose whenever this grasping is a part of a current action or situation, but he cannot ‘point’ to his nose on demand.The same problem occurs when Schneider is asked to show where one of his doctors lives: although he has visited the place several times before and ‘knows’ where it is, he is not able to ‘indicate’ its location on cue. Again, it seems that things and events have no meaning for him when they are too ‘abstract’, viz. when they are not integrated in a ‘concrete’ situation. For this reason, Merleau-Ponty affrms that Schneider is conscious of his own body and of its surroundings as an “envelope of his habitual action but not as an objective milieu”, which is why he is only able to act habitually, but not spontaneously (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 106). In short, Schneider has lost “the power to reckon with the possible” (Romdenh-Romluc 2011, 100), that is to say, he has lost the ability to put himself in a possible position and act accordingly. Instead, he is bound to the immediate present.The intentional arc has lost its elasticity, it went “limp” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 137; for a detailed analysis and critical discussion, cf. Jensen 2009). This affects not only perception and movement, but all domains of existence. For the intentional arc does not only temporarily synthesize movements and perceptions, but also links current actions and objects with past ones, thereby providing us with a temporal continuity and a continuity of meaning.This explains why Schneider also lacks an affective relation to the world and others, and why he is also no longer interested in erotic relations. According to MerleauPonty, sexuality cannot be reduced to a physical function, be it instinctive or refexive; sexuality addresses our whole way of existing (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 160). Having an interest and desire for someone or something implies a certain connection between past, present and future events; without such a connection, neither an affective tension nor a meaningful relation can be built up. One could say that Schneider is still situated, but no longer in-situation, that is, he is not engaged in a current situation or action. He does not desire any more, because he cannot project himself into an erotic situation. Although the future-oriented engagement with the world is disturbed, Schneider is still embedded in the world and perfectly able to operate within the world in a habitual way.This 130
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points to the necessary role of habits for every normal perception and action. Acquired habits, practical know-how and bodily abilities provide us with orientation and skills that do not need constant attention or intellectual interference (cf. recent research in philosophy, cognitive sciences and neurosciences that supports this: Dreyfus 1996, 2002; Milner and Goodale 2006). For Merleau-Ponty, it is the body schema that mediates between our current engagements and the body’s habits.‘Body schema’ is a concept Merleau-Ponty takes over from the psychology of his time (cf. Henry Head 1926, Paul Schilder 1923, Gelb and Goldstein 1920, Gallagher 2005) and re-formulates in the language of gestalt-theory. In contrast to a purely associative understanding of the body schema as a mere sum of information regarding different bodily functions (for example tactile and kinaesthetic sensations), Merleau-Ponty defnes the body schema as a holistic form of organization that is directed toward an environment.The single limbs of our body are not merely loosely connected; instead, “I hold my body as an indivisible possession and I know the position of each of my limbs through a body schema (schéma corporel)” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 100f.).The body schema thus expresses the unity of the body, a unity that is not static or pre-given, but has to generate and actualize itself constantly anew. Because of the body schema, we have an immediate ‘knowledge’ about our localization, size and position within an intersensorial world.We know, for example, whether we will ft through a particular door, whether we will be able to lift a certain object and how to move or behave in a given situation. Such practical knowledge literally has its locus in our body; it is not thematic as such, but is automatically retrieved in situation. Moreover, the body schema is dynamic because it is constantly enriched and extended by current interactions with the world and others. New motor senses, habits and abilities are being acquired and external objects, tools or prostheses are integrated within the body schema. The body schema is thus far from being the mere sum of actual information about the body; rather, it points beyond its current state as well as its material boundaries.The body schema mediates in this regard constantly between the currently performing body, which behaves and projects itself toward the world, and the habitual body, which determines the practical possibilities of this very body through already acquired skills and know-how. In this sense, the body more than a ‘zero-point of orientation’; it creates a feld of action or a situation: it is “the anchoring of the active body in an object, and the situation of the body confronted with its tasks” (MerleauPonty 2012, 103). Merleau-Ponty thus goes beyond the conception of a spatiality of positions toward a spatiality of situations, in which we do not merely occupy a spatial position, but actively inhabit a milieu. The body, which acts as the medium or spatial starting point for perception, is just as well a body of action, which is polarized according to its practical tasks. In this sense, Merleau-Ponty contends that the body schema is a “manner of expressing that my body is in and toward the world” (Id.). The body schema is thus what situates us in the world and at the same time guarantees a smooth interaction with this very world. It thereby facilitates an optimal perception or action in that it synchronizes the body with its environment to enable a ‘maximum grip’ (cf. Dreyfus 1996) on the world. As Merleau-Ponty states, for each object (he refers to the example of a picture in an art gallery), “there is an optimal distance from where it asks to be seen – an orientation through which it presents more of itself – beneath or beyond which we merely have a confused perception due to excess or lack” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 316).This tendency ‘toward the maximum of visibility’, which according to Merleau-Ponty every bodily subject has, is concretely realized through the body schema (see also Kelly 2005 and Taipale 2014, 121f.) In this sense, the maximum of visibility is not an objective norm, but a norm developed through the interaction between the subject and the object.What Merleau-Ponty points out is not the ideal of an adequate perception (independent of specifc perceivers) as, for example, Husserl some131
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times does (cf. Doyon 2018), but an optimum that fts with the general or individual abilities of bodily subjects.The object can only ‘ask to be seen’ in such or such a way if there is someone who is able to witness. Moreover, what an optimal perception or grip concretely adheres to must be relative to the respective interested actions and the overall environment. As Merleau-Ponty argues in his earlier work The Structure of Behavior (La structure du comportement, 1942), what an environment or object shows us or affords us is also highly dependent on our respective skills and habits (Merleau-Ponty 1963, 168f., cf.Wehrle and Breyer 2016, 45). The individual body schema thus facilitates optimal perception or action, but can also restrict and limit it, depending on the situation and the point of reference. For every ‘I can’, there is also an ‘I cannot’, but this general limitation characterizes more obviously still the body schemas of female, colonial and disabled people due to their respective social and political situations. (See on this the analyses of De Beauvoir 1949;Young 1980, 2015;Weiss 1999, 2015; Fanon 1952.) III. Intersubjectivity as intercorporeality (and the fesh). Because of our bodily situatedness, we are immediately connected to other (situated) bodily beings. Therefore, the Husserlian problem of how the experience of other subjects is even possible, i.e. how one ego can reach the other, is not really an issue within Merleau-Ponty’s framework. I do not have to put in an effort to be empathic, to understand what she/he/they feel: this is immediately expressed in the bodily expressions and gestures themselves. His gestures are not referring to a hidden psychological fact behind what can be seen:“The gesture does not make me think about anger, it is the anger itself ” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 190). But this only holds true for subjects who are situated in the same world and share a situation, i.e. interact personally with each other (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 469). In his later works, Merleau-Ponty speaks in this regard about an ‘intercorporeality’, in which bodies are co-existent, act together and synchronize their movements and gestures (cf. MerleauPonty “The Philosopher and his shadow”, in: Merleau-Ponty 1964b; Fuchs 2016,Weiss 1998). Merleau-Ponty illustrates this with the example of a mutual handshake. He describes this as a mutual incorporation, in which I experience the hand of the other as an extension of my own hand:“he and I are like the organs of one single intercorporeality” (Merleau-Ponty 1964, 168). Such an immediate bodily understanding is possible, because we both belong to one and the same world, and are incarnated in the same way. We, and the others, are always already there, not as material bodies of perception, not even as spirits, egos or psyche, but in the way we affectively come in contact with others. Our bodies are intertwined, Merleau-Ponty contends, and this leads to a reciprocal experience of embodied communication:“Communication or the understanding of gestures is achieved through the reciprocity between my intentions and the other person’s gestures, and between my gestures and the intentions which can be in the other person’s behaviour. Everything happens as if the other person’s intention inhabited my body, and mine his” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 191; transl. modifed).The other’s body extends onto my own, and my own overlaps with his; this is what Merleau-Ponty calls intercorporeality, and he conceives of it as a form of primary social understanding. In his posthumously published working notes,The Visible and the Invisible (Le visible et l’invisible, 1964), Merleau-Ponty no longer addresses the individual or concrete living body as subject of perception, but embeds it within a broader structural description of being. In this regard, he uses Husserl’s example of the touching and touched hand to describe the essential relation between two ontological spheres, the visible and the invisible. The human body belongs to both realms: on the one hand, it is visible and tangible (it is an object), while on the other, it can acquire a view of itself (as a subject).While Husserl is still concerned with the experience and constitution of the body, Merleau-Ponty wants to characterize the ontological essence of the body. From such an ontological perspective, the body doubles itself up and unifes itself at the same time: the subjective (Leib) and the objective body (Körper) “encroach upon one 132
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another” (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 117). The same holds true for the relation between body and world. From an ontological perspective, these two are no longer two separate entities that relate to each other; they rather belong to the same situation or milieu, they are of the same fesh (chair). Flesh is thereby the ontological element of the visible, which links the seeing (subjects) with the seen (objects). From this perspective, intercorporeality is founded in a common dimension of fesh, a “generality of the sensible” (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 139), which then differentiates itself from within. In this ontological framework, embodiment is no longer haunted by its ambiguity; it also loses its concrete or existential signifcance.Within the dimension of the fesh, the phenomena of ‘touching and being touched’ are reversible. If one wants to describe experiences of alienation and empathy, explain pathologies and disabilities or investigate the social and political impact on embodiment, one still needs concrete phenomenological descriptions of specifc and situated forms of embodiment.These topics are especially central to debates in Feminist Philosophy, Gender/Queer and Transgender studies, Medicine, Health Care, Disability Studies as well as Post-Colonial and Critical Race Studies. Within these debates, phenomenological perspectives are becoming more and more infuential. Feminist phenomenologists, drawing on Husserl, Merleau-Ponty as well as Simone de Beauvoir (who developed in The Second Sex (Le deuxième sexe, 1949/1953) the frst account of female embodiment) have applied, discussed, extended and transformed the concept of embodiment in fruitful ways (cf. Ahmed 2000, 2006; Alcoff 2006; Al-Saij 2010; Dolezal 2014; Heinämaa 2003, 2010, Rodemeyer and Heinämaa 2010: Slatman 2014, Weiss 1998, 2015; Young 1980, 2005; Zeiler 2013, Zeiler and Folkmarson Käll 2014).
9.3. Enactivism Whereas Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s refections on the signifcance of the body in the production of meaning (in general) led them to draw important metaphysical and ontological consequences about the nature of experience (cf. Hua XXXVI; Merleau-Ponty 1964), the enactivists’ interest in embodiment is usually motivated by the attempt to better understand the nature of perception, or how action is involved in perception. This is paradigmatically the case in the so-called ‘sensorimotor enactivism’ developed by psychologist Kevin O’Regan and philosopher Alva Noë (2001; Noë 2004). In their view, objects appear as present thanks to the fact that we (implicitly) understand the kind of sensorimotor relation involved in experience. Take a tomato and look at it at some distance.You see the front, and yet you have a visual sense of the whole. How is this possible? In O’Regan and Noë’s view, we unproblematically grasp the object as a perceptual whole in virtue of the fact that we have an implicit understanding of the patterns of sensorimotor dependence that govern our relation to the object. Unlike Husserl, for whom the “appearances are kinaesthetically motivated” (Hua XI, §3/Husserl 2001, 47ff.), Noë and O’Regan’s theory is that skilful perceivers understand how experience is responsive to sensorimotor changes, and this know-how is brought about by the coordinated function of our cognitive and bodily skills: “The world shows up for perceptual consciousness in so far as it is available […] thanks to the perceiver’s knowingly and skilfully standing in the right sort of sensorimotor relation to things” (Noë 2012, 22). In this story, there is no consideration whatsoever for the more passive aspects of experience. Perception is a form of action all the way down. Recently, the sensorimotor approach has been criticized within the enactivist camp for operating with a too narrow conception of embodiment.The critique is justifed. Not only does Noë explicitly deny the importance of somaesthetic factors (cf. 2012, 12), but he never acknowledges the theoretical relevance of affective and emotional aspects of experience either.The sensorimotor approach thus needs to be enriched and updated. Moods, emotions and bodily states such as 133
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hunger, fatigue and pain inform perceptual experience insofar as they motivate and stimulate the agent to perceptually engage and explore its surroundings (Bower and Gallagher 2013; Colombetti 2013).Affects can also infuence our emotional and behavioural responses to perceptual situations, as well as explain shifts of attention (cf. Husserl 2004).This is a two-sided relation: not only are we, in virtue of our body, sensitive to perceived emotions, but our response is embodied as well. It shows in our bodily sensations, postures, movements and gestures, as well as in our blood pressure, respiration and circulatory system (cf. Gallagher 2017, Ch. 8). Building up on Merleau-Ponty’s notion of intercorporeality, Fuchs (2016) has coined the concept of ‘bodily resonance’ to highlight the fact that there are no affective and emotional responses without this kind of embodied resonance.The body is the medium of our affective relation to the world, and even if the complex ensemble of affective and emotional factors usually operates below the threshold of conscious awareness, it still has a profound and pervasive impact on conscious life as a whole. Emotions and affects as embodied phenomena command that we conceive of the brain and the body in a new, enactive way. Rather than representing or processing information, the enactivists regard the brain as part of a larger dynamical system that includes the rest of the body and the environment. The brain–body–environment is the most basic explanatory unity for conscious phenomena, and, as active members and enablers of the system as a whole, the brain–body activities and interactions are best described as efforts to constantly attune to changing circumstances in their environment.This is an idea that goes back to the pioneering work of Francesco Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch, who, already in 1991, described the behaviours of all organisms – from the simplest bacteria to the most complex forms of life such as human beings – as engaged in a constant process of sense-making called autopoeisis. Since its inception, enactivism has grown into a variety of related positions – from Thompson’s (2007) autopoietic enactivism to Noë and O’Regan’s (2001) sensorimotor approach and Hutto and Myin’s (2013, 2017) so-called radical enactivism. Despite the theoretical differences these various models display, all enactivists agree on the fundamental role of body to account not just for perception, but more generally for conscious life, including cognition.This insight, which comes with a strong anti-representationalist commitment, is one of the many traces of the powerful infuence that the phenomenology of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty has left on the enactivist movement.
Notes 1 Husserl differentiates between the sensations as they are given in frst-personal perspective (Empfndnisse) from the content of sensations (Empfndungsinhalt), like, for instance, the roughness or the form of the touched hand (cf. Hua IV, 149/156). 2 In this sense, Husserl sees our own bodily experience as a necessary condition for intersubjectivity.The foreign lived body is the “frst intersubjective datum, and my apprehension of it as a lived body is the frst step on the way toward the constitution of an intersubjective world in common” (Zahavi 2001, 36; cf. Hua XIV, 110; Hua XV, 18, 572). 3 For Sartre embodiment is essentially paradoxical and binary, if we consider the body as living and moving subject (as being for itself) then it only operates but cannot be experienced as such. But as soon as we experience (feel, perceive) the body, it turns into an object or Körper that is perceivable for everyone and is thus a ‘being-for-others’.That means that we always experience our body (for itself) in the way it is seen and evaluated by others (cf. Moran 2010, 44; Dillon 1998, 126). For a more detailed account of Sartre’s theory of the body cf. Morris 2010, or the role of the body in the early and late philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas cf. Ciocan 2013, 2014.
References Ahmed, Sara. 2006. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
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Body ———. 2000. Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Postcoloniality. London/New York: Routledge. Alcoff, Linda Martin. 2006. Visible Identities, Race, Gender, and the Self. New York: Oxford University Press. Alloa, Emmanuel; Bedorf, Thomas; Grüny, Christian; Klass, Tobias Nikolaus (Eds.). 2012. Leiblichkeit.Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Al-Saij, Alia. 2008. “A Past Which Has Never Been Present. Bergsonian Dimensions in Merleau-Ponty’s Theory of the Prepersonal.” Research in Phenomenology, 38: pp. 41–71. ———. 2010. “Bodies and Sensings: On the Uses of Husserlian Phenomenology for Feminist Theory.” Continental Philosophy Review, 43: pp. 13–37. Benoist, Jocelyn. 2016. Logique du phénomène. Paris: Harmann. Bernet, Rudolf. 2004. “Husserl’s Transcendental Idealism Revisited.” The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, 4: pp. 1–20. Bower, Matt and Gallagher, Shaun. 2013.“Bodily Affectivity: Prenoetic Elements in Enactive Perception.” Phenomenology and Mind, 2: pp. 108–131. Carman,Taylor. 2012.‘Foreword’. In: Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge. Carruthers, Peter. 2015.“Perceiving Mental States.” Consciousness and Cognition, 36: pp. 498–507. Ciocan, Christian. 2013. “Le problem de corporéité chez le jeune Levinas.” Les études philosophiques, 2: pp. 201–219. ———. 2014.“La phénoménologie Levinassienne du corps dans totalité et infni.” Les études philosophiques, 1: pp. 137–151. Colombetti, Giovanna. 2013. The Feeling Body. Affective Science Meets the Enactive Mind. Cambridge: MIT Press. Crowell, Steven. 2013. Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. De Beauvoir, Simone. 1953. The Second Sex. London: Jonathan Cape. Dennett, Daniel. 1987. The Intentional Stance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Dillon, Martin C. 1988. Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Dolezal, Luna. 2014. The Body and Shame: Phenomenology, Feminism, and the Socially Shaped Body. New York: Routledge. Doyon, Maxime. 2015. “Perception and Normative Self-Consciousness.” In: Normativity in Perception. Eds. Maxime Doyon and Thiemo Breyer. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 38-55. ———. 2018.“Husserl on Perceptual Optimality.” Husserl Studies. Forthcoming., Vol.34/2, pp. 171-189. Dreyfus, Hubert L. 1996.“The Current Relevance of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Embodiment.” The Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy, 4 (Spring 1996). ———. 2002.“Intelligence Without Representation. Merleau-Ponty’s Critique of Mental Representation: The Relevance of Phenomenology to Scientifc Explanation.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 1/4: pp. 367–383. Drummond, John. 1983.“On Seeing a Material Thing in Space.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 40/1: pp. 19–32. Fuchs,Thomas. 2016.“Intercorporeality and Interaffectity”. Phenomenology and Mind,Vol. 11, pp. 194–209. Gallagher, Shaun. 2005. How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2017. Enactivist Interventions. Rethinking the Mind. London: OUP. Gallagher, Shaun and Zahavi, Dan. 2012. The Phenomenological Mind (2nd Edition). London: Routledge. Gallese, Vittorio. 2014. “Bodily Selves in Relation: Embodied Simulation as Second-Person Perspective on Intersubjectivity.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 369/177: pp. 1–10. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0177. Garland Thompson, Rosemarie. 2011. “Misfts: A Feminist Materialist Disability Concept.” Hypatia 26/3: pp. 591–609. Gelb, Adhémar and Goldstein, Kurt. 1920. Psychologische Analysen hirnpathologischer Fälle. Leipzig: J.A. Barth. Head, Henry. 1926. Aphasia and Kindred Disorders of Speech. London: Cambridge University Press. Heinämaa, Sara. 2003. Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference. New York/Oxford: Rowman and Littlefeld. ———. 2010. “Sex, Gender, and Embodiment.” In: The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Phenomenology. Ed. Dan Zahavi. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 216-242. ———. 2012. “The Body.” In: The Routledge Companion to Phenomenology. Eds. Sebastian Luft and Søren Overgaard. New York: Routledge, pp. 222–233. Heinämaa, Sara and Rodemeyer, Lanei. (Eds.) 2010. Feminist Phenomenology. Special Issue of Continental Philosophy Review 43/1.
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Maxime Doyon and Maren Wehrle Husserl, Edmund. Manuscript D 13 III 151a. (Husserl Archives Leuven) Hutto, Daniel and Myin, Erik. 2013. Radicalizing Enactivism. Cambridge: MIT Press. Jensen, Rasmus Thybo. 2009. “Motor Intentionality and the Case of Schneider.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 8/3: pp. 371–388. ———. 2017. Evolving Enactivism. Cambridge: MIT Press. Kelly, Sean. 2005. “Seeing Things in Merleau-Ponty.” In: The Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty. Eds. Taylor Carman and Mark Hansen. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 74–110. Kern, Iso. 2017. “Phenomenologie der Intersubjektiviät.” In: Husserl-Handbuch: Leben-Werk-Wirkung. Eds. Sebastian Luft and Maren Wehrle. Metzler Verlag: Stuttgart, pp. 222–230. Legrand, Dorothee. 2006. “The Bodily Self: The Sensori-Motor Roots of Pre-Refective SelfConsciousness.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 5/1: pp. 89–118. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1961/1969. Totality and Infnity.Trans. A. Lingis. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1963. The Structure of Behavior.Trans.A. L. Fisher. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. ———. 1964a.“Eye and Mind.” In: The Primacy of Perception. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, pp. 159-190. ———. 1964b. “The Philosopher and His Shadow.” In: Signs. New York: Northwestern University Press, pp. 159-181. ———. 1968. The Visible and the Invisible. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. ———. 2012. Phenomenology of Perception.Transl. D. E. Landes. New York: Routledge. Milner, David and Goodale, Melvyn A. 2006. The Visual Brain in Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Moran, Dermot. 2010. “Husserl, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty on Embodiment, Touch and the ‘Double Sensation.’” In: Sartre on the Body. Ed. Katherine Morris. New York: Palgrave McMillan, pp. 41–67. Morris, David. 2008. “Body.” In: Merleau-Ponty: Key Concepts. Eds. Rosalyn Diprose and Jack Reynolds. London/New York: Routledge, pp. 111–121. Morris, Katherine. (Ed.). 2010. Sartre on the Body. New York: Palgrave McMillan. Noë, Alva. 2004. Action in Perception. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. ———. 2012. Varieties of Presence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Noë, Alva and O’Regan, Kevin. 2001. “A Sensorimotor Account of Vision and Visual Consciousness.” Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 24: pp. 939–1031. Romdenh-Romluc, Komarine. 2011. Merleau-Ponty and Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge. Salamon, Gayle. 2010. Assuming a Body. Transgender and Rhetorics of Materiality. Columbia: Columbia University Press. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1956. Being and Nothingness. New York:Verso. Scheler, Max. 1970. The Nature of Sympathy.Trans. P. Heath. New York:Archon Brooks. Schilder, Paul. 1923. Das Körperschema. Berlin: Springer. Slatman, Jenny. 2014.Our Strange Body. Philosophical Refections on Identity and Medical Interventions.Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Taipale, Joona. 2014. Phenomenology and Embodiment. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Thompson, Evan. 2007. Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology and the Sciences of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Trigg, Dylan. 2017.“On the Role of Depersonalization in Merleau-Ponty.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 16/2: pp. 275–289. Varela, Francisco J.,Thompson, Evan, and Rosch, Eleanor. 1991. The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Waldenfels, Bernhard. 2000. Das leibliche Selbst.Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des Leibes. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Wehrle, Maren. 2015. “Normality and Normativity in Experience.” In: Normativity in Perception. Eds. Maxime Doyon and Thiemo Breyer. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 128–139. Wehrle, Maren and Breyer,Thiemo. 2016.“Horizonal Extensions of Attention:A Phenomenological Study of the Contextuality and Habituality of Experience.” Phenomenological Psychology, 47/1: pp. 41–61. Weiss, Gail. 1999. Body Images: Embodiment as Intercorporeality. New York/London: Routledge. ———. 2015. “The Normal, the Natural, and the Normative: A Merleau-Pontian Legacy to Feminist Theory, Critical Race Theory, and Disability Studies.” Continental Philosophy Review, 48: pp. 77–93. Young, Iris Marion. 1980. “Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment Motility and Spatiality.” Human Studies, 3: pp. 137–156.
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Body ———. 2005. On Female Body Experience: “Throwing Like a Girl” and Other Essays. New York: Oxford University Press. Zahavi, Dan. 2001. Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity.Athens: Ohio University Press. ———. 2002. “First-Person Thoughts and Embodied Self-Awareness: Some Refections on the Relation Between Recent Analytical Philosophy and Phenomenology.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 1: pp. 1–26. Zahavi, Dan and Rochat, Philippe. 2015. “Empathy ≠ Sharing: Perspectives from Phenomenology and Developmental Psychology.” Consciousness and Cognition, 36: pp. 543–553. Zeiler, Kristin. 2013.“A Phenomenology of Excorporation, Bodily Alienation, and Resistance: Rethinking Sexed and Racialized Embodiment.” Hypatia, 28/1: pp. 69–84. Zeiler, Kristin and Folkmarson Käll, Lisa. 2014. Feminist Phenomenology and Medicine. New York: State University of New York.
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10 CONSCIOUSNESS Walter Hopp
Consciousness is phenomenology’s fundamental subject matter. According to Husserl, phenomenology is a descriptive, eidetic or a priori science of “pure experiences.”1 That characterization, however, is only part of the story. Consciousness, as we will see, exhibits intentionality; it is directed upon the world and the objects in it. Describing its intentional achievements requires that we also discuss the contents, including meanings, in virtue of which it is about them, and the objects meant. As he expresses it, “To elucidate these connections between veritable being and knowing and so in general to investigate the correlations between act, meaning, object is the task of transcendental phenomenology” (Husserl 2008, 434). There could be no understanding of consciousness itself without understanding the nature of its relation to ideal meanings and real objects, neither of which are literally parts of it. As he writes,“To the extent … that every consciousness is ‘consciousness-of,’ the essential study of consciousness includes also that of consciousness-meaning and consciousness-objectivity as such.”2
10.1. Some essential features of consciousness In Ideas I, Husserl discusses a number of essential features and structures of consciousness that are peculiar to it.This section goes over some of the more salient ones.
a. The mode of givenness of consciousness One of the frst noticeable features of consciousness is that it is presented and presentable in ways unlike anything else. Husserl identifes four features of the givenness of consciousness that, jointly, are unique to it. First, conscious experiences are immanent rather than transcendent. Second, they are adequately given.Third, they are indubitably given.And fourth, they are capable of being given in refection. According to Husserl, the objects of “outer” perception are “transcendent.”This means that they are given to consciousness by appearing, at any given time, in one of a number of possible ways of appearing.To use his example, as I perceive the table, the table is given as a unifed object over against a changing fow of perceptual experiences of it (Husserl 2014, §41, 71).This is not only true of the table, but of each of its properties, including its “secondary” qualities such as color (ibid., 72). Consciousness itself, however, is not given by way of appearances or profles (Husserl 2014, §42, 75). 138
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Rather, experience, and experience alone,“has the intrinsic property of being perceivable in immanent perception” (ibid., 74). Because of this, physical objects can only ever be given inadequately.“A thing can be given only ‘one-sidedly’ in principle” (Husserl 2014, §44, 77). Conscious experiences, by contrast, do not have hidden parts or sides that would come into view with changes in our experience—quite obviously not, since a change in our experience would be a change in the properties of the experience. “It is,” writes Husserl, “an essential property of immanent givenness to afford something absolute that cannot display itself in sides and profles at all” (Husserl 2014, §44, 79). It would be a mistake to conclude from these claims that in ordinary experience we confront two objects: the experience and, over against it, its object. On Husserl’s view, all of the components of consciousness are, while occurring, experienced or conscious. They are not, however, typically objects of experience (Husserl 1970a, 537).When I see a red apple, I do not see my own experience or its parts. In non-refective awareness, “we know nothing of the processes of intuition itself or the essences and essential infnites inherent to it, nothing of their materials and inherent noetic aspects” (Husserl 2014, §150, 300).This does not mean we are unconscious of them.As he writes later,“there is also consciousness of every act. Every experience is ‘sensed,’ is immanently perceived (internal consciousness), although naturally not posited, not meant” (Husserl 1991, 369). In fact, they are not really objects of non-refective consciousness at all, not even marginal or background objects (Zahavi 1999, 61). Rather, his view seems to be similar to Sartre’s, according to which every consciousness is both the positional or objectifying awareness of its object, and the non-positional awareness of itself (Sartre 1956, 13; Zahavi 2003a). Nevertheless, each conscious experience is “intrinsically ready to be perceived” (Husserl 2014, §45, 81; also §78, 142). Moreover, experiences are ready to be perceived no matter our orientation to the world. I do not need to fnd my way to an experience through bodily adjustments or through “continuously and coherently motivated series of perceptions” (ibid.).A simple turn of attention is all that is required. Moreover, this ability to be perceived in refection is an essential feature of experiences.When made thematic, they are given to us as having been “already there” (Husserl 2014, §45, 81). It is, however, not an essential feature of a background object in perception that as long as it exists, it is “already there” for attentive consideration.A couch can fall out of the feld of consciousness altogether, in which case it is not simply there to be attended to, without in any way losing its being as a couch.
b. The temporality of consciousness A further feature of consciousness is that each experience is part of, and is itself, a temporally extended fow. “Every experience is in itself a fow of becoming” characterized by “a constant fow of retentions and protentions mediated by a phase of an originary sort, that is itself fowing” (Husserl 2014, §78, 143).When I dribble a basketball, for instance, I am conscious of it hitting the pavement. But it would radically underdescribe the experience to stop there. I am aware of it hitting-the-pavement-after-hitting-my-hand. The awareness of it having just hit my hand is also something of which I am aware at the time it hits the pavement. I do not, moreover, have a reproductive memory of it having hit my hand, but a “retention,” a perception of what has just passed as having just passed,“of what has just been” (Husserl 1991, §12, 34).At the same time it hits the pavement, I also anticipate it bouncing back up to my hand. I have, that is, a “protention” of the future (see Husserl 1991, §40, 89).
c. The attentional structure of consciousness3 Paradigmatic acts of consciousness are those in which we are attentively aware of something— acts which Husserl designates with the term “cogito” (Husserl 2014, §35, 62). Not all conscious 139
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awareness is in the mode of the “cogito,” however. For instance, I may focus on part of a basketball to determine whether or not the grip is too worn. In doing so I am not only aware of the basketball and its surface. I am also aware of a background of co-perceived objects.This is true, moreover, in every case of perception;“Each perception of a thing thus has a halo of background-intuitions,” each of which is also a consciousness-of something (Husserl 2014, §35, 61). Husserl regards this structure as essential to all types of consciousness.As he puts it,“The stream of experience can never consist of actualizations alone” (Husserl 2014, §35, 62). Furthermore, both actual or focal and non-focal experiences are convertible into one another. Given in the background of my basketball-perception, for example, is the pavement. But it belongs to the essence of my basketball-perception that the basketball can sink into the background, and that my perception of the pavement can become “actional” or attentive (ibid.).
d. Relation to the ego “Every ‘cogito’,” writes Husserl, “is characterized in a pre-eminent sense as an act of the ego” (Husserl 2014, §80, 153). That is, attentional experiences are those in which the ego takes part, in which it “lives” (ibid.). In seeing a basketball, I undergo a visual experience. My visual experience of the basketball does not perceive the basketball, however. Rather, “I perceive it” (Husserl 2014, §80, 154). As for the background experiences, they “form the general milieu for the actuality of the ego.”While they lack the “pre-eminent relatedness to the ego” possessed by each cogito, they are still related to it.The pavement on the ground is part of my “background of consciousness” (ibid.).
e. The “two-sidedness” of consciousness4 Each conscious experience has “a subjectively oriented side and an objectively oriented side” (Husserl 2014, §80, 155). This does not, Husserl insists, mean that the experience is directed at both an object and the ego. Rather, it means that the experience presents an object to or for the ego. In Donn Welton’s terms, consciousness has a “for-structure” (Welton 2000, 22). In being of an object, and presenting it as being a certain way, experience at the same time presents it to or for a perceiving subject.
10.2. Consciousness and intentionality Now we turn to the feature of consciousness that has arguably captured the most philosophical interest: intentionality. In his attempt to distinguish physical from mental phenomena, Franz Brentano articulated one of the most well-known theses in the philosophy of mind: Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, and what we might call … reference to a content, direction toward an object … or immanent objectivity. (Brentano 1973, 88) Perception is of the perceived; love is directed toward the beloved, and so on in other cases. Brentano adds that intentional inexistence of an object is exhibited by all mental phenomena, and that “No physical phenomenon exhibits anything like it” (Brentano 1973, 89). Like Brentano, Husserl rigorously distinguishes acts and their objects. But on Husserl’s view, merely distinguishing acts and objects, and being mindful of the intentional “relation” that binds 140
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them, sheds very little light on the nature of consciousness. Husserl’s position is that conscious experiences are internally complex phenomena that instantiate a wide variety of distinctive properties, both intentional and non-intentional, and which bear law-governed and complicated relationships to one another. The distinctive “relation” that consciousness bears to its objects cannot be made intelligible without appealing to those features. All of the aforementioned features belong to consciousness and help explain its achievements. But it is intentionality that is “the main theme of phenomenology” (Husserl 2001, 161). Not everything making up the fow of consciousness is a bearer of intentionality.The stream of consciousness also contains sensory or “hyletic” components, which only acquire the feature of presenting us with corresponding qualities of objects by being “interpreted” (Husserl 1970a, Investigation 5, §§ 2, 9, 14, 15b).This is one signifcant point of dispute between Brentano’s view and Husserl’s. Nevertheless, it does appear to be Husserl’s view that while not all of the parts and components of consciousness are intentional, the non-intentional components are, in the case of a genuinely “psychical” subject, typically bound up as parts or moments of intentional experiences.5 In ordinary experience, as we have seen, many of the components of the stream of consciousness are not objects of experience. Moreover, most objects of experience are not components of the stream. It is clear that not all objects of consciousness exist in the mind, for the simple reason that we can direct our thoughts to nonexistent objects, and they do not exist anywhere (Willard 1995, 156). I can think of or imagine the god Jupiter, but since Jupiter does not exist at all, he does not exist as a real component in my stream of consciousness (Husserl 1970a, 558–559). Neither, for that matter, do most objects of consciousness, including all “external” or physical objects.The red apple I see is not a constituent of the stream of consciousness any more than the god Jupiter is.“Is it not obvious that an object, even when real (real) and truly existent, cannot be conceived as a real part of the act which thinks it” (Husserl 1970a, 352)? Nor is there an additional “immanent” or merely “intentional” red apple in my consciousness.The perception of a red apple has, as its object, the red apple, and this object is identical with the act’s intentional object (Husserl 1970a, 595). For Husserl this point is purely phenomenological. Whatever the precise ontological status of a red apple, it is a phenomenological mistake to try to identify it, or anything at all like it, with any real components of anyone’s stream of consciousness. For starters, none of the four features of the givenness of experiences is true of apples or any of the properties of apples. When we are conscious of Jupiter, a red apple, or anything else, what is really in consciousness is the intentional experience, along with its parts and features. Furthermore, the presence of such an experience is suffcient for us to be conscious of the corresponding object.“If this experience is present, then, eo ipso and through its own essence … the ‘intentional relation’ to an object is achieved.”6 So while the red apple is nowhere “in” the mind which is conscious of it, what accounts for the fact that the act is of the red apple is. So what does make up the intentional experience itself? Its “content,” certainly. Husserl, however, distinguishes a number of senses of the term “content.”The most important ambiguity to clear away is that between the “intentional” content and the “descriptive” or “real” content. By “intentional,” Husserl means the intended “content,” what we are conscious of—that is, the act’s object.7 As we have seen, that “content” need not be, and usually is not, a real content of consciousness. In part, no doubt, to curb the temptation to suppose otherwise, Husserl adopts the helpful practice of not calling the object of consciousness its “content” (Husserl 1970a, 580). Within the real content of an act—the content which literally resides in and makes up the act—we fnd three distinct kinds of components. First, there are the act’s aforementioned sensory components. Second, there is the act’s matter, which determines both which object is meant and how it is meant (Husserl 1970a, 589). Finally, there is the act’s quality.The quality or “act-character” 141
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is that moment which “stamps an act as merely presentative, judgemental, emotional, desiderative, etc.” (Husserl 1970a, 586). I can believe that an apple is red, but I can also doubt it, desire it, merely represent it, value it, and so on. The matter and quality together comprise an act’s “intentional essence” (Husserl 1970a, 590). Despite calling it an “essence,” Husserl is quite clear that the intentional essence is part of an act’s real content:“[W]e can mean by ‘content’ … its meaning as an ideal unity … To this corresponds, as a real (reelles) moment in the real (reellen) content of the presentative act, the intentional essence with its … quality and matter” (Husserl 1970a, 657). Finally, as the last quotation makes clear, “content” can refer to an act’s ideal content—for instance, a meaning. Meanings can be made thematic objects through an “ideational abstraction” of an act’s intentional or semantic essence (Husserl 1970a, 590). This sort of content is shareable among numerically distinct acts.An act’s ideal content is not its intentional object.When I think that a certain apple is red, the proposition or meaning is not what I am thinking about.8 Rather, I think about the state of affairs of the apple’s being red. Nor is the ideal content a real component or part of the act.When twenty people believe , there are twenty acts, with twenty intentional essences, involved, but only one proposition. Rather, the ideal content is instantiated in the act (Husserl 1970a, 330). Everything, for Husserl, instantiates ideal properties (Husserl 1970a, 11), and intentional acts are no different.What they instantiate are ways of being of something, and that is what meanings are (B. Smith 2000, 294).
10.3. Consciousness and knowledge One of the most important distinctions among intentional acts is between those which are intuitive, such as perception, imagination, image-consciousness, and the “seeing” of essences, and those which are “signitive” or empty. One can merely think about an object. But that object can also, in many cases, be given.The distinction here is not between the objects of consciousness, but between their modes of givenness. Two notable differences between intuitive and signitive acts immediately stand out. First, intuitive and signitive experiences are very different phenomenologically. There is a self-evident phenomenological difference between merely thinking of a red apple and perceiving one. Second, the two types of experience are radically different epistemically. Merely thinking that a given apple is red does not, in itself, provide any evidence at all that it is. Perceiving an apple to be red, however, provides excellent, though defeasible, evidence that it is red. When it comes to empirical objects and states of affairs, perception is the “originary” mode of intuition (Husserl 2014, 9), that mode in which they are not merely presented, as may occur in memory or even imagination, but presented “in person” (Husserl 2014, 93). Intuition itself comes in degrees.The highest grade is immanent or adequate intuition. In adequate intuition, an object is completely given in a non-perspectival way. In such acts, “different perceptions have different objects” (Husserl 1997, §10, 22). Among the possible objects of adequate intuition, as we have seen, are one’s own “pure” experiences—that is, experiences grasped without any positing of natural realities. Physical objects, by contrast, cannot be given adequately, and neither can any of their parts or properties.They are transcendent to any act of perceiving them insofar as no experience of them is complete or fully disclosive. For any such entity, there are many possible perceptual experiences of it, each of which is originary but inadequate.This is true, Husserl insists, even with respect to the “secondary” qualities such as color; the appearance of any physical object or property “can and must continuously change in the course of ostensive experience of it” (Husserl 2014, §41, 72). Husserl, as we have seen, holds that conscious acts intend their objects in virtue of their own internal parts and features.This is equally true in the case of transcendent objects.To characterize 142
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an object as transcendent is not just to register the fact that there is more to it or that further experiences of it are possible. Rather, a transcendent object is also intended as having more to it in an experience that is, on its own terms, incomplete (Husserl 1969, §94, 233; also see A.D. Smith 2008, 324). When we perceive an apple, for instance, there is an intended surplus to the object.This sense of the object’s transcendence is due to the act’s horizons.“Every momentary phase of perception is in itself a network of partially full and partially empty intentions,” writes Husserl, and these empty intentions help constitute the act’s horizon (Husserl 2001, 44).Thanks to their intentionality, which exceeds that of the intuitive content of the act, we are aware of something on the side of the object that exceeds what is given. Naturally an act’s horizon does not merely specify that there is “more” to a perceived object, but intends the object’s features with varying degrees of determinacy (Husserl 2001, 42).As he puts it,“It is an emptiness that is not a nothingness, but an emptiness to be flled-out; it is a determinable indeterminacy. For the intentional horizon cannot be flled out in just any manner” (Husserl 2001, 42).When I see an apple, I anticipate that it will be approximately the same color on the unseen side, and that its interior will be, well, appley rather than hollow or flled with molten rock. Intuitive acts can and normally do function as constituents of more complex acts of fulfllment. In fulfllment, an object is not merely intuited and not merely thought of, but “is seen as being exactly the same as it is thought of ” (Husserl 1970a, 696). I can merely see a red apple. But I can also verify the proposition that the apple is red on the basis of such a seeing. In such a case, the state of affairs of the apple’s being red is intended by both the intuitive act and the conceptual act. Furthermore, the two acts must be synthesized in such a way that the object perceived is recognized as the object which is meant. This can fail to occur. One can perceive a B-fat without conceptualizing it. One can even perceive a B-fat while simultaneously thinking about a B-fat without recognizing the heard note as a B-fat. And one can veridically perceive a B-fat while misconceiving of it or misidentifying it as an F. In none of these cases is anything wrong with one’s hearing.9 Fulfllment, then, is a much more complicated type of act than mere intuition. It is a “union of the conceptualizing act with the object, on the basis of a corresponding intuition of that object together with a recognition of the identity of the object of the concept and of the perception” (Willard 1995, 152). The epistemic importance of fulfllment ought to be clear. The single best way to verify a proposition is by directly confronting the objects or affairs with which it is concerned. If I want to know whether I left my car lights on, for example, I will go check. If they are on, then my thought that the lights are on will be fulflled by my perceptual experience, and my belief that they are on will have acquired justifcation.According to Husserl’s “Principle of all Principles,” [W]hatever presents itself to us in “Intuition” in an originary way … is to be taken simply as what it affords itself as, but only within the limitations in which it affords itself there. (Husserl 2014, §24, 43) Because the state of affairs of my lights being on is given in an originary (though inadequate) way in perception, I am rationally permitted—perhaps even obligated—to take my lights to be on. My justifcation that the lights are on is not infallible, nor can it be made so. But this is not cause for complaint. To demand a higher degree of evidence for empirical propositions than can possibly be delivered by the acts in which their objects are originarily given is absurd (Ideas I §79, 151). Neither ordinary life nor science demands any such thing. As Husserl puts it, “To reduce evidence to an insight that is apodictic is to bar oneself from an understanding of any scientifc production” (Husserl 1969, §60, 161). 143
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Regarded in one way, acts of intuition and fulfllment are simply species under the more general heading of intentional experiences. But this obscures the fundamental priority of intuition and fulfllment—of Evidenz and with it of knowledge—to empty thinking (Moran 2000, 15). First, empty acts provide by themselves no evidence whatsoever for the truth of their own contents. Nor do they, by themselves, provide any evidence for other contents.10 Merely thinking that (a) P and (b) If P, then Q provides no evidence at all for Q.Without acts of fulfllment, our beliefs would be entirely ungrounded. The reason is that empty acts do not bear within themselves an authentic relation to their objects.They are “only called presentations in an inauthentic sense; genuinely speaking they do not actually present anything to us, an objective sense is not constituted in them” (Husserl 2001, 113–114). Secondly, objectifying acts—those which depict how things are—are not simply oriented toward beings and, with them, to truth. “Thanks to evidence,” writes Husserl, “the life of consciousness has an all-pervasive teleological structure” (Husserl 1969, §60, 160).What that “teleological structure” is oriented toward, in the case of objectifying consciousness, is not only truth but also the immediate consciousness of truth in fulfllment.11 Finally, for any object of which we are or can be conscious, there are intentional structures in virtue of which we are conscious of it in the way that we are.This is what A.D. Smith calls Husserl’s “transcendental insight” (A.D. Smith 2003, 28).As Husserl puts it,“every sense that any existent whatever has or can have for me … is a sense in and arising from my intentional life” (Husserl 1977, §43, 91).Again, he writes that “Nothing exists for me otherwise than by virtue of the actual and potential performance of my own consciousness” (Husserl 1969, §94, 234).These actual and potential conscious performances “constitute” the object for us, and the main task of phenomenology is to examine the conscious contents, structures, and relations in virtue of which objects of varying types are constituted (Husserl 2001, 269). Among these constituting intentionalities, however, the givenness of objects in Evidenz occupies a position of decided privilege. What things are—the only things that we make assertions about, the only things whose being or nonbeing, whose being in a certain way or being otherwise we dispute and can rationally decide—they are as things of experience. (Husserl 2014, §47, 85) Because of this, the idea of an evidentially ungrounded noetic structure is an absurdity.Without a grounding in evidence, not only knowledge but intentionality itself would be impossible (Husserl 1969, §86, 209).The sense of any concept or meaning is best explicated with reference to its fulflling sense, the intuitive acts which present what it represents.12 Intuition does not merely confrm judgments; it provides them, ultimately, with their sense and intentional reference.
10.4. Consciousness and being Intentional acts are oriented toward beings, and understanding what those beings are is bound up with some sort of understanding of how they manifest themselves to consciousness.13 “The real cannot be conceived apart from its manifestation to subjectivity” (Sokolowski 1964, 219). Husserl is well aware that not everything we think about does or even can, as a matter of fact, present itself to our consciousness. But while not every object can in fact be given to us, Husserl holds that any object whatsoever could present itself to some possible consciousness. To every region and category of alleged objects there corresponds not only a basic kind of senses or posits but also a basic kind of consciousness originally affording such 144
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senses and, inherent to it, a basic type of originary evidence, that is essentially motivated by the originary givenness of the specifed kind.14 So, even if quarks or black holes cannot be given with Evidenz to us, they could in principle be given in such a manner to some possible consciousness. Objects beyond the possible reach of intuitive consciousness, while logically possible, are “material absurdit[ies].”15 Nothing could count as a rational motivation for believing in them.16 A further interesting feature of Husserl’s view is that objects are not merely contingently or accidentally related to their modes of appearing to consciousness. Squares cannot be given in the way that violin sonatas are, and the ongoing fow of consciousness could not be given in the way external objects are. Of course, it is compatible with Husserl’s view that some things may superfcially resemble others. And it is compatible with his view that there are more ways that squares—to say nothing of persons or galaxies—could possibly present themselves to conscious creatures over and above the ways that they present themselves to us. But the totality of ways in which squares (and persons and galaxies) present themselves could not present something else. This is, arguably, equally true of natural kinds and individuals. Something might resemble water superfcially. But there is no possible stuff, distinct from water, all of whose actual and possible ways of manifesting itself to any possible consciousness are identical with those of water. Not only could there be no rational motivation for believing in such a thing, but we cannot form any contentful conception of such a thing. Such a supposition is as implausible as supposing that something could feel exactly like pain but not be pain.The only difference is that water is given, in any single presentation, much less adequately than pain.17 No doubt Husserl’s view on the relationship between consciousness and its objects will strike some as a version of metaphysical idealism, and this impression is only aggravated by his talk of “constituting” objects through conscious acts. But there is a realist reading of his view. [S]eeing consciousness… is just acts of thought formed in certain ways, and things, which are not acts of thought, are nonetheless constituted in them, come to givenness in them. (Husserl 1999, 52) Here constitution is identifed with bringing objects to givenness, which may or may not involve any actual making of them. And Husserl does not seem to think it is a case of making. As he puts it, Even God is for me what he is, in consequence of my own accomplishment of consciousness [Bewusstseinsleistung] … Here too, as in the case of the other ego, productivity of consciousness will hardly signify that I invent or make this highest transcendency.18 Immediately afterwards he writes: “The like is true of the world and of all worldly causation” (ibid.). Dallas Willard interprets Husserl’s position in realist terms as follows: “The connection between the act and the object is not, in general, an existential one, but is one of essences.”19 Any possible object is essentially such that it could be apprehended with Evidenz. Each essentially has an appearance, the manner in which “it is known or apprehended” (D.W. Smith 2004, 17). But it does not thereby owe its existence to consciousness. Similarly, salt is essentially soluble in water without thereby owing its existence to water. One could not tell the total story of salt without mentioning that it is soluble in water, and specifying how and under what conditions it enters into such a solution.This would be true even in a world that did not contain any actual 145
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water. Similarly, no account of the world and the objects, properties, relations, and states of affairs therein could be complete which neglects to mention, and indeed spell out in detail, their ability to be known and the types of conscious acts in which they could be known.This is part of the total story of everything, including salt, even in worlds with no actual consciousnesses. Of course, when it comes to appearances, most sciences do not say anything at all about this dimension of an object’s being. One cannot and should not expect a chemistry book to contain any statements about salt’s wonderful power to present itself to consciousness in knowledge and fulfllment, much less a developed account of how that happens. Nevertheless, the chemistry book itself stands as a testimony to salt’s capacity to do exactly that. Just like anything whatsoever, salt can only be given to us through our mental activities. But mental activities do not make salt, but make salt an object for us, something of which we can be consciously aware (Drummond 1990, 270). Our natural attitude is one of “infatuation” with objects at the expense of the “constituting multiplicities belonging essentially to them” on the side of consciousness (Husserl 1970b, §52, 176).This does not make the natural attitude defcient—infatuation with the world is exactly what is called for if we want to know about it (see Hardy 2013, 63). It does, however, mean that the natural attitude and the sciences taking place within it are incomplete and at the constant risk of misconstruing themselves and the nature of their subject matter (Husserl 1969, 13).
10.5. The mystery of consciousness Finally, we turn to the “mystery” of consciousness. Consciousness is widely agreed to be among the most puzzling phenomena in existence. Husserl agrees, in part. Consciousness lies at the heart of what he calls the “enigma of subjectivity” or, more radically, the “enigma of all enigmas” (Husserl 1970b, §5, 13), namely “the essential interrelation between reason and what is in general” (ibid.). But that enigma is not insoluble. Indeed, Husserl’s account, as sketched above, provides the beginnings of an intelligible solution to it. Consciousness has an intelligible structure and nature that can be given to us and described as it is given to us, and what such descriptions uncover, among other things, are the essential relations that consciousness and its objects bear to one another. What is noteworthy, however, is that Husserl’s reasons for fnding consciousness enigmatic are not those that grip most contemporary philosophers. From a broadly naturalistic perspective, which of course has no shortage of adherents, consciousness appears to be a problematic outlier, a nonconformist in an otherwise intelligible, objective, and exclusively physical world.This gives rise to the mystery of just how “consciousness arises from the physical” (Chalmers 1996, 243). Even if we think we know that it does, any conceivable attempt to explain how leaves us with an apparently unbridgeable “explanatory gap” (Levine 1983). This is a mystery to which Husserl devotes surprisingly little attention. No doubt part of the reason is that Husserl was unencumbered by any felt need to make consciousness “ft” into a preferred ontology. More importantly, though, Husserl does not think that the physical world investigated by the sciences is made ultimately intelligible by those sciences alone. Instead, he holds that the only way to make anything ultimately intelligible is by exhibiting how it is related to conscious intentionality (Husserl 1970b, §49, 168; also see §55, 189). At the very least, as we have seen, that means that no account of the world could possibly be complete that fails to spell out the appearances of things and the conscious acts in virtue of which they appear.As Dermot Moran puts it,“Subjectivity must be understood as inextricably involved in the process of constituting objectivity” (Moran 2000, 15). And objectivity itself can only be completely understood as something that gets constituted or brought to givenness in subjectivity.“For,” as Zahavi points out,“how things appear is an integral part of what they really are” (Zahavi 2003c, 55). 146
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It is also customary among many contemporary philosophers to draw a distinction between the intentionality of mental states and their phenomenal or qualitative or experiential character, which determines “what it is like” to undergo such an experience (Nagel 1974). For those who think that these features can come apart, there is an additional mystery: why is there consciousness, and in particular experiential consciousness, at all? What function might it serve if information processing, learning, the detection of features in one’s surrounding environment, and the regulation of action can occur without it? As Chalmers expresses this “hard problem,” “even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioural functions … there may still remain the unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience?” (Chalmers 2004, 621). This mystery is one which Husserl simply did not consider. It is arguably an artifact not only of a naturalistic metaphysics to which Husserl claimed no allegiance, but of what, on his terms, surely amounts to a radically fawed description of consciousness itself (Zahavi 2003b; Ratcliffe 2007; Fasching 2012). If not the only type of intentionality, for Husserl, it is clear that conscious phenomenal intentionality is the paradigmatic type.20 One obvious reason for this is that on Husserl’s view, as we have seen, intuitive intentionality grounds the whole structure of intentionality. But intuitive acts are essentially conscious. Detecting features and objects or extracting information from an environment is not at all the same as being intuitively conscious of anything. I believe Fasching makes this point best with respect to machines:“Regardless of how elaborate its computations may be, in whatever causal relations they may stand to the environment and how ‘intelligent’ its output may be …for the computer itself nothing is there at all, since no ‘thereness’ (consciousness) occurs in the frst place” (Fasching 2012, 127). Since non-intuitive acts borrow their intentionality from their capacity, or the capacity of their components, to be intuitively fulflled, it becomes diffcult to make sense of their intentionality in the absence of consciousness either.
10.6. Conclusion After reviewing some of the central tenets of Husserl’s conception of consciousness, it should be clear that if it really does possess most of the features discussed above, that suffces to mark off consciousness as a distinct region instantiating essences unique to it. Insofar as a science of objects must be grounded in experiences in which those objects are given, a science of consciousness must be grounded in refection.“Refection” is “the name for consciousness’ method of knowing consciousness at all” (Husserl 2014, 142). For this reason, Husserl criticizes the “modern exact psychology” of his time, whose “ubiquitous fundamental trait … is to set aside any direct and pure analysis of consciousness” (Husserl 1965, 92), largely because of “its naturalistic point of view as well as its zeal to imitate the natural sciences and to see experimental procedures as the main point” (ibid., 101–102).That criticism may still have some validity. Understanding just how consciousness fts with everything else in the natural world remains, I think it is fair to say, a task so far unaccomplished. Nevertheless, it seems certain that a necessary condition of achieving such an understanding is to investigate consciousness on its own terms, and to allow those investigations to proceed without any imperative to ensure that the results conform to a favored set of metaphysical commitments.Whether the place of consciousness in the world is best captured by monism, dualism, materialism, idealism, naturalism, or some -ism not here mentioned or even yet conceived, the rich philosophical insights of the phenomenological tradition are in large measure explained by Husserl’s willingness to investigate consciousness as it shows itself, and a corresponding resistance to allowing premises from other disciplines, much less metaphysical theses from overarching worldviews, to override what is given in phenomenological refection. 147
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Notes 1 Husserl 2014, §75, 134; also Husserl 1970a, 862. 2 Husserl 1965, 90.This supports Dan Zahavi’s claim that “only a complete misunderstanding of the aim of phenomenology leads us to the mistaken but often repeated claim that Husserl’s phenomenology is not interested in reality or the question of being, but only in subjective meaning-formations in intentional consciousness” (Zahavi 2003c, 63). 3 Watzl (2017, 2) defnes attentional structure as “organizing the mind into parts that are central or prioritized and those that are peripheral.” Husserl’s view on attention is helpfully discussed in Jacobs 2010 and Dicey Jennings 2012, 541–543. 4 Husserl 2014, §80, 154. 5 “A real being deprived of such experiences, merely having contents inside it such as the experiences of sense, but unable to interpret these objectively … would not be called ‘psychical’ by anyone” (Husserl 1970a, 553). 6 Husserl 1970a, 558. In Husserl 2014, §36, 63, he writes: “The essence of experience itself entails not only that it is consciousness, but also of what it is the consciousness.” 7 See Husserl 1970a, 559:“These so-called immanent contents are therefore merely intended or intentional, while truly immanent contents, which belong to the real make-up of the intentional experiences, are not intentional: they constitute the act, provide necessary points d’ appui which render possible an intention, but are not themselves intended, not the objects presented in the act.” 8 Husserl 1970a, 332; also see Willard 1984, 182. 9 See Peacocke 2001, 240.Also see A.D. Smith 2002, 75-76. 10 A point also made by Paul Moser (2011). 11 Willard 1984, 231; Bernet 2003, 159; Dahlstrom 2001, 60ff. also see Husserl 1970a, 726. 12 First Logical Investigation, §14; also see Benoist 2003, 22 and Willard 1984, 207. 13 Husserl 2001, 113;Willard 1984, 206. 14 Husserl 2014, §138, 276; also see Husserl 1969 §60, 161. 15 Husserl 2014, §48, 87. See Ameriks 1977, 506. 16 Such entities might, nevertheless, be possible. See Yoshimi 2015. 17 Crowell 2008, 346. 18 Husserl 1969 §99, 251, translation modifed; also see Mohanty 1989, 151. 19 Willard 1984, 236. For two of the clearest and most compelling expositions of a Husserlian realist position, see Willard 2002 and Willard 2003. 20 This thesis has been recently defended by a number of philosophers. Some of the more prominent proponents are Siewert (1998, Chapter 7) Horgan and Tienson (2002), Loar (2003), Zahavi (2003b), and Kriegel (2011).Also check out the articles in Kriegel (ed.) (2014). One of the earliest explicit defenders of the view of which I am aware is David Woodruff Smith (1989, §4.1).
References Ameriks, Karl. 1977.“Husserl’s Realism.” The Philosophical Review, 86: pp. 498–519. Bayne,Tim and Montague, Michelle. 2011. Cognitive Phenomenology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Benoist, Jocelyn. 2003.“Husserl’s Theory of Meaning in the First Logical Investigation.” In: Husserl’s Logical Investigations. Ed. Daniel Dahlstrom. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 17–35. Bernet, Rudolph. 2003.“Desiring to Know Through Intuition.” Husserl Studies, 19: pp. 153–166. Brentano, Franz. 1973. Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint.Trans. A. C. Rancurello, D. B.Terrell, and L. McAlister. London: Routledge. Chalmers, David. 2004.“Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness.” In: Philosophy of Mind: A Guide and Anthology. Ed. John Heil. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 617–640. Crowell, Steven. 2008.“Phenomenological Immanence, Normativity, and Semantic Externalism.” Synthese, 160: pp. 335–354. Dicey Jennings, Carolyn. 2012.“The Subject of Attention.” Synthese, 189: pp. 535–554. Drummond, John J. 1990. Husserlian Intentionality and Non-Foundational Realism. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Fasching,Wolfgang. 2012.“Intentionality and Presence: On the Intrinsic Of-ness of Consciousness from a Transcendental-Phenomenological Perspective.” Husserl Studies, 28: pp. 121–141.
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Consciousness Hardy, Lee. 2013. Nature’s Suit: Husserl’s Phenomenological Philosophy of the Physical Sciences. Athens: Ohio University Press. Horgan,Terence and John Tienson. 2002.“The Intentionality of Phenomenology and the Phenomenology of Intentionality.” In: Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings. Ed. David Chalmers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 520-533. Husserl, Edmund. 1965.“Philosophy as a Rigorous Science.” In: Q Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy. Ed. Quentin Lauer. New York: Harper and Row Publishers, pp. 71–147. ———. 1969. Formal and Transcendental Logic.Trans. Dorion Cairns.The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1970a. Logical Investigations.Two volumes.Trans. John Niemeyer Findlay. London: Routledge. ———. 1970b. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy.Trans. David Carr. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. ———. 1977. Cartesian Meditations.Trans. Dorion Cairns.The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1991. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917).Trans. John B. Brough. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. 1997. Thing and Space.Trans. Richard Rojcewicz. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. 1999. The Idea of Phenomenology.Trans. Lee Hardy. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. 2001. Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis.Trans. Anthony J. Steinbock. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. 2005. Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory.Trans. John B. Brough. Dordrecht: Springer. ———. 2008. Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge: Lectures 1906/07.Trans. Claire O. Hill. Dordrecht: Springer. ———. 2014. Ideas I: Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy.Trans Daniel Dahlstrom. Indianapolis: Hackett. Jacobs, Hanne. 2010. “I am Awake: Husserlian Refections on Wakefulness and Attention.” Alter. Revue de Phénoménologie 18: pp. 183–201. Kriegel, Uriah. 2011. The Sources of Intentionality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. (Ed.). 2014. Phenomenal Intentionality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levine, Joseph. 1983.“Materialism and Qualia:The Explanatory Gap.” Pacifc Philosophical Quarterly, 64: pp. 354–361. Loar, Brian. 2003. “Phenomenal Intentionality as the Basis of Mental Content.” In: Refections and Replies: Essays in the Philosophy of Tyler Burge. Eds. Martin Hahn and Bjørn Ramberg. Cambridge, MA:The MIT Press. Mohanty, Jitendra Nath. 1989. Transcendental Phenomenology: An Analytic Account. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd. Moran, Dermot. 2000. Introduction to Phenomenology. New York: Routledge. Moser, Paul and Paul Pardi. 2011.“Interview with Dr. Paul Moser: On Knowing God.” Available at: http: //www.philosophynews.com/post/2011/02/02/Interview-with Dr-Paul-Moser-On-Knowing-God .aspx (accessed May 31, 2015). Nagel,Thomas. 1974.“What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” The Philosophical Review, 83: pp. 435–450. Peacocke, Christopher. 2001.“Does Perception Have a Nonconceptual Content?” The Journal of Philosophy 98: pp. 239–264. Ratcliffe, Matthew. 2007.“The Problem with the Problem of Consciousness.” Synthesis Philosophica, 44: pp. 483–494. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1956. Being and Nothingness.Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. New York:Washington Square Press. Sellars, Wilfrid. 1963. Science, Perception, and Reality. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Siewert, Charles P. 1998. The Signifcance of Consciousness. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Smith,A. David. 2002. The Problem of Perception. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Smith, A. David. 2003. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Husserl and the Cartesian Meditations. New York: Routledge. ———. 2008.“Husserl and Externalism.” Synthese, 160: pp. 313–333. Smith, Barry. 2000.“Logic and Formal Ontology.” Manuscrito 23: 275–323. Smith, David Woodruff. 1989. The Circle of Acquaintance. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. 2004. Mind World. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Sokolowski, Robert. 1964. The Formation of Husserl’s Concept of Constitution. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Watzl, Sebastian. 2017. Structuring Mind: The Nature of Attention and How it Shapes Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Walter Hopp Welton, Donn. 2000. The Other Husserl:The Horizons of Transcendental Phenomenology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Willard, Dallas. 1984. Logic and the Objectivity of Knowledge.Athens: Ohio University Press. ———. 1995.“Knowledge.” In: The Cambridge Companion to Husserl. Eds. Barry Smith and David W. Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 138–167. ———. 2002. “The World Well Won: Husserl’s Epistemic Realism One Hundred Years Later.” In: One Hundred Years of Phenomenology. Eds. Dan Zahavi and Frederik Stjernfelt. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 69–78. ———. 2003.“The Theory of Wholes and Parts and Husserl's Explication of the Possibility of Knowledge in the Logical Investigations.” In: Husserl’s Logical Investigations Reconsidered. Ed. Denis Fisette. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 163–182. Yoshimi, Jeff. 2015. “The Metaphysical Neutrality of Husserlian Phenomenology.” Husserl Studies, 31: pp. 1–15. Zahavi, Dan. 1999. Self-Awareness and Alterity. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. ———. 2003a. “Inner Time Consciousness and Prerefective Awareness.” In: The New Husserl: A Critical Reader. Ed. Donn Welton. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 157–180. ———. 2003b.“Intentionality and Phenomenality.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 33: pp. 63–92. ———. 2003c. Husserl’s Phenomenology. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
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11 CRISIS Emiliano Trizio
What is wrong with our sciences? What is wrong with our philosophy? What is wrong with our culture? These questions played a fundamental role in Husserl’s thought from its earliest stage, if it is true that, since at least the 1890s, his self-conscious aim was to react to the unsatisfactory current cultural situation by renewing the classical ideal of philosophy as a systematic theoretical endeavor encompassing all special sciences, culminating in metaphysics, and providing answers to all fundamental questions concerning the world and whatever might exist beyond it (see, for instance, Hua-Mat III, 223–55). It would not be an exaggeration to say that Husserl’s entire life-long effort could be characterized, to resort to the word fguring in the title of the famous Kaizo articles, as one of renewal: renewal of our scientifc spirit and of the mission of science and philosophy as the guide and the driving force of human individual and collective existence. Ultimately, what is stake is nothing else that a refoundation of rationalism in an age that has seen its apparent demise, and, consequently, a widespread weakening of our belief in the value and possibilities of reason. If such a negative appraisal of the present cultural situation is a constant feature of Husserl’s thought, it is undeniable that, through the years, it became more and more radical in content and bleaker in tone. If one excludes some exceptions, only during the last years of his life, to be precise after 1935, does Husserl make a sparse and limited use of the German terms “Krise” and the more formal “Krisis” (and, increasingly so of the latter) in relation to the current state of European (i.e.,Western) culture, of philosophy, and of the positive sciences.Yet, the infuence on Husserl’s thought of the political situation of the 1930s and the widespread use of the term “crisis” in the German-speaking philosophical, scientifc, and political literature of the time (see Graf 2010) should not be overstated. The late use of such terms (which do not belong to Husserl’s technical vocabulary) does not mark any substantial philosophical novelty, precisely because, as we shall see, the concepts and ideas behind them were developed by Husserl much earlier and belong to the essential core of his entire philosophy. Indeed, precisely in order to avoid the numerous misunderstandings that have surrounded (and still surround) the very notion of crisis, it is useful to begin this analysis by showing how such conceptual framework can be discerned already in the Kaizo articles (written in 1922–23) and in Formal and Transcendental Logic (1929). In particular, in the Kaizo articles, we fnd a clear characterization of the notion of health of a cultural formation, and more specifcally, of a scientifc-philosophical civilization, as well as a frst characterization of the reasons why our culture has fallen into a pathological state.The crucial evaluative notion that Husserl employs in those articles is that of 151
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Echtheit (genuineness, or authenticity). In order to understand the role of such notion, however, it is necessary to stress that, since the entire problematic horizon of such questions is cultural (or “spiritual”) in character, a scientifc, i.e., philosophically rigorous, clarifcation will be made possible only by an insight into the essence of culture and, correlatively, of the scientifc knowledge of it. Such an insight, as is always the case for Husserl, is possible if and only if the sphere of spirit is not misunderstood on the basis of analogies derived from the sphere of nature. In very succinct terms, Husserl lists a number of essential features of spiritual reality. 1) Space and time have a peculiar non-naturalistic sense, 2) intentional life is referred to an ego and unifed by a motivational nexus, 3) the different subjects connect to one another by virtue of specifcally “social” intentional acts that give rise to an internal form of unifcation of spiritual reality, and 4) to the intentional acts pertaining to the theoretical, practical, and evaluative life there belong also normative and not only descriptive aspects (Hua XXVII, 8). Only taking these essential features as a starting point is it possible to hope to develop for the region spirit the kind of eidetic cognition necessary to any scientifcally rigorous knowledge, and that, according to Husserl, the pure mathematics of spacetime has already afforded in the case of the sciences of nature. Such eidetic cognition, which is by and large still missing, will result in a science of the essence of the spiritual aspect of humankind (Hua XXVII, 10), and, thus, in a discipline fundamental to all sciences of spirit. It will allow understanding not only the essence of human personal life and all its possible forms in general, not only the essences of social formations and their infnite ramifcations including cultural institutions, forms of state, religions, etc., but also the essence of a good, genuine, true, or ethical human life, and, likewise, the essence of a good, genuine, true, or ethical social and political life.The normative eidetic science of spirit details the conditions that a human society must meet in order to be genuine or authentic.This, however, does not mean that such eidetic cognition would outline a static utopian ideal that we would thereafter have to approximate. Rather, the situation is the one described in the section “Die höhere Wertform einer humanen Menschheit” (Hua XXVII, 54–9) of the unpublished Kaizo article Erneuerung und Wissenschaft. Let us now consider the higher value-form of a genuinely humane humanity (einer echt humanen Menschheit) that lives and develops by shaping itself towards genuine humanity (zu echter Humanität). It is the one in which philosophy has assumed as world-wisdom the form of philosophy as rigorous and universal science, in which reason has shaped and objectifed itself in the form of the “Logos.” (Hua XXVII, 54–5) Since philosophy itself does not consist in the static possession of a fnite body of knowledge, but in the infnite exploration of a likewise infnite feld of truth, subject in turn to a constant form of self-criticism, the resulting picture is that of a humanity that evolves toward an ideal that itself evolves (Hua XXVII, 55–6). In other words, humanity must fulfll the task of its endless reform under the guidance of ideals whose progressive clarifcation is itself an infnite task. A genuine humanity is one that lives in an effort of clarifying as well as achieving a state of humanity of higher and higher value, and, consequently, follows the commandments of an “ethical technology” that stems from the aforementioned normative eidetic insights:“the technology of the selfactualization of genuine humanity” (Hua XXVII, 56). Now, we do not have to lose sight of the fact that philosophy qua rigorous and universal science encompasses all special sciences, whether factual or eidetic. Since genuine humanity is guided by a community of scientifc philosophers whose insights establish the norms to which any aspect of individual and collective life must conform, philosophy as rigorous science establishes the ideal norms of all scientifc activities too 152
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(including itself) and it does so as Wissenschaftstheorie (which ultimately requires transcendental phenomenology, and in particular, the phenomenology of reason).Thus, all sciences themselves, as branches of universal philosophy, undergo an endless process of critical development and revision and constitute so many activities endowed with a high degree of value for the life of a rational humanity. Therefore, The development of the universal theory of science (theory of reason and logic) is an organ and at once a stage of the development of humanity towards a humanity that raises itself to a higher self-actualization. (Hua XXVII, 56) This small section contains also an indication of the signifcance (“Bedeutung”) that a genuine science has for humanity. Husserl here lists three different levels, stressing the importance of the third one. 1) The totality of theoretical cognitions, once properly elucidated within the unity of philosophy, brings with it a kingdom of values whose correlate is what Husserl calls “Erkenntnisfreude” (Hua XXVII, 84). 2) Under the guidance of both natural and social sciences, we develop techniques able to shape our environment according to our needs and goals. 3) On the basis of the clarifcation of the being investigated by the sciences afforded by philosophy it is possible to understand the ultimate sense of the world (Hua XXVII, 57).The third point, which, let us insist, is the most decisive of the three to bestow upon genuine sciences a signifcance for human life, is somehow cryptic, and we will have to go back to it. For the moment, however, we have acquired the needed insight into what Husserl considers the ideal “healthy” (genuine) cultural form for which we should strive. These last considerations connect Husserl’s ethical ideal to the problematic of a phenomenological foundation of all sciences.The jargon of “echtheit” highlights this continuity. A genuine humanity is one that strives toward the realization of its full rational nature under the guidance of philosophy as rigorous science.Within the unity of the latter, all sciences are genuine in that they acquire an increasing level of rationality, i.e., of scientifcity, qua components of such philosophy.As is well known, according to Husserl, it is the specifcity of European culture to have given rise to the ideal of universal philosophy, and to have been shaped by it. European culture is defned by the very fact that it carries within itself the telos of a genuine humanity enlightened by the systematic unity of genuine sciences within a genuinely scientifc universal philosophy (Hua XXVII, 109). If then we turn to the actual historical trajectory of European culture, we discover that they are governed by the vicissitudes of the genuine scientifcity of European sciences. Although Husserl often seems to evoke a stark opposition between echte/unechte Wissenchaft, genuine scientifcity too is a dynamic concept and admits of degrees. To be sure, a body of knowledge such as Babylonian astronomy is not a real/genuine science, since, in spite of its internal interconnectedness and its intersubjective character, it still relies on religious and mystical beliefs that belong only to a given cultural tradition (Hua XXVII, 76). Presocratic philosophy and science, instead, deserve to be called “genuine” at least in so far as they already presuppose the process of de-mythologization and the resulting emergence of what Husserl calls the theoretical attitude. Its results are based on evident insights and, thus, appeal to operations that are not conditioned by traditional beliefs (Hua XXVII, 77–9). However, a higher level of genuine scientifcity is achieved only as soon as, within the unity of Plato’s philosophy, science loses the character of an investigation naïvely directed toward its objects and becomes a critical enterprise guided by logic and by the theory of science (Hua XXVII, 81–3). Genuine scientifcity, thus, requires embeddedness in a general philosophy able to elucidate the rationality of its operations. Two points must be stressed concerning this frst philosophization of the sciences. 1) It arises as 153
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a response to the sophistic skepticism concerning the legitimacy of Presocratic cosmology.The sophists, by denying the possibility of the kind of knowledge sought for by the early physiologists, had for the frst time made scientifcity itself into a problem. In other words, the pretension of early Greek cosmology to be providing rationally compelling insights into the nature of reality was questioned, so that the philosophical grounding of science became necessary. It is noteworthy that what is, to my knowledge, the frst occurrence of the word Krise in Husserl’s corpus in which it appears with the sense that it would acquire in the last years of his life appears in a text written in 1919–20 and it refers to the situation of early Greek philosophy in the wake of the Sophists’ criticism (Hua-Mat IX, 194). Early Greek philosophy is there characterized as being in crisis because its scientifcity had be brought into question.This fully agrees with Husserl’s later characterization of the outbreak of the crisis of philosophy with the modern skeptical empiricist denial of its scientifcity. 2) No past rationalistic philosophy (neither ancient, nor modern) has found the correct way of developing philosophy as a rigorous science and to rescue the different sciences from their naïveté. To be sure, a science embedded into a philosophical system is still animated by the kind of teleological project that characterizes European culture; thus, in a way, it enjoys a certain kind of genuineness. However, already in the Kaizo articles, Husserl mentions the process of technization of the scientifc method occurring after Plato as an antagonist of genuine scientifcity (Hua XXVII, 83). To be more precise, technization is the opposite of philosophization.The more the former prevails, the less genuinely scientifc science is.The failure of Europe to follow its inner teleology, the opacity of the scientifcity of the positive sciences, and, fnally, their failure to contribute to a meaningful human existence are all mentioned by Husserl already in these years. In Formal and Transcendental Logic, especially in the introduction, we fnd a much sharper focus on the failure of our sciences to be genuine (“echte”) sciences and, thus, to occupy the place that belongs to them in the life of a “genuinely humane” humanity. In the introduction, Husserl clarifes what in the Kaizo lectures was only hinted at, i.e., that genuine science is a task set by Plato, rather than an achievement of his reform of philosophy.The merit of Plato is to have established, for the frst time, logic as a discipline “… exploring the essential requirements of ‘genuine’ knowledge and ‘science’” (Hua XVII, 1). Plato is not the founder of genuine science; rather he has, for the frst time, contrived the idea of genuine science as a task.1 The idea of a genuine science is that of a science able to justify its claims in an absolute way, i.e., to a level beyond which no further doubt or investigation makes sense. Husserl calls it “radical self-responsibility.” But, of course, a science can approximate this ideal only within the unity of a rational all-encompassing science (philosophy) that is able to warrant this self-responsibility. Now, this is precisely the path that modernity has abandoned due to the fact that the different sciences have become independent (Hua XVII, 2). “Thus modern science has abandoned the ideal of genuine science that was vitally operative in the sciences from the time of Plato; and, in its practice, it has abandoned radicalness of scientifc responsibility” (Hua XVII, 3–4). Such a unitary grounding of the different sciences requires, in the frst place, a logic that is itself not developed in a naïve, uncritical way; that is, a science of the essence of science in general (Hua XVII, 4, 9); and, in the second place, an investigation into the essence and sense of being of their specifc objective domains (Hua XVII, 6, 13, 17). These investigations would jointly provide the “absolute grounding of the sciences” that Descartes envisaged, but failed to achieve, and that only transcendental phenomenology can assure (Hua XVII, 7). Instead, due to the demise of the idea of a universal scientifc philosophy, the different sciences, and logic along with them, have become “theoretical techniques” (Hua XVII, 3). Once more, we observe the antithesis between genuine science as philosophical, as rooted in a universal philosophy, and technized, independent sciences. Logic, which was meant to lead science to the path of genuine 154
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scientifcity, has itself become a positive science, unphilosophical in character.This by no means implies that logic as well as the special sciences are unable to yield evidently true or (in the case of the empirical sciences) evidently probable theories. Sciences qua theoretical techniques are still positive sciences that can be developed by the rigorous method of their specialists. What is missing in this positivity is, rather, their genuinely philosophical scientifcity, the character of being episteme, sciences of being in the ultimate sense: The unphilosophical character of this positivity consists precisely in this: The sciences, because they do not understand their own productions as those of a productive intentionality (this intentionality remaining unthematic for them), are unable to clarify the genuine being-sense (Seinssinn) of either their provinces or the concepts that comprehend their provinces; thus they are unable to say (in the true and ultimate sense) what belongs to the existent of which they speak or what sense-horizons that existent presupposes-horizons of which they do not speak, but which are nevertheless codeterminant of its sense. (Hua XVII, 13) This passage, as we shall see, condenses the very idea of the crisis of European sciences. Positive sciences (including logic) are unable to justify their method because they are blind to the constitutive operations of transcendental subjectivity that produce their objective domains (Hua XVII, 15). The result is, thus, that the de facto existing positive sciences “… are clues to guide transcendental researches, the aim of which is to create sciences for the very frst time as genuine” (Hua XVII, 14). Moreover, only by virtue of the clarifcation offered by transcendental phenomenology, qua science of constituting intentionality, the positive sciences can be rescued from their unphilosophical state: Only by virtue of such clarifcation, moreover, does the true sense of that being become understandable, which sciences has labored to bring out in its theories as true being, as true Nature, as the true cultural world. Therefore: only a science clarifed and justifed transcendentally (in the phenomenological sense) can be an ultimate science; only a transcendentally-phenomenologically clarifed world can be an ultimately understood world, only a transcendental logic can be an ultimate theory of science, an ultimate, deepest, and most universal, theory of the principles and norms of all the sciences. (Hua XVII, 16) This passage, instead, contains the indication of how transcendental phenomenology is able to provide a remedy to the crisis of European sciences. Now we have gathered all the elements necessary to understand correctly Husserl’s later use of the word “crisis” in relation to philosophy, to the special sciences, and to European culture as a whole. The notion of crisis of European humanity (or culture)2 is developed at length for the frst time in the Vienna Lecture delivered in 1935.The very beginning of the lecture connects the theme of the European crisis, which, as we know, was extremely popular at the time, with the considerations Husserl had developed already in the Kaizo articles concerning the defning role of philosophy for Europe.3 Husserl’s argument is, at bottom, quite simple.There is a consensus that our culture is ill, but there does not seem to be a scientifc rigorous account of the illness, of its cause, and of its remedies (which is, itself, an aspect of our very illness).What is necessary in order to clarify these issues is, frst, to characterize the spiritual shape of Europe, to clarify the “phenomenon Europe” in terms of its inner teleology, i.e., of its guiding idea.The frst section of the Vienna Lecture provides 155
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a famous and extremely dense account of how European culture is defned by the guiding role of philosophy, which, through the praxis of the different sciences and their application, extends to all aspects of individual and collective life.The second section, instead, provides an even more succinct account of what went wrong in the development of European culture, one that will be developed at length in Part II of the Krisis.The account revolves around the role played by the misunderstandings concerning the being of nature and spirit. In other words, the crisis of European culture is ultimately explained in terms of the failure to develop natural and cultural sciences as genuine scientifc disciplines, precisely according to the account of genuine science that we have found in the introduction to Formal and Transcendental Logic. In outline: the development of modern mathematical physics has produced an objectivistic interpretation of material nature, which, in turn, has produced a naturalistic interpretation of the being of spirit, whereby the latter is 1) a fragmented being dependent on the material level; 2) a being to be investigated with methods akin to that of physics.This psychophysical world-view (Hua VI, 342/294) has replaced what, instead, should have been the right way to make sense of the domains of investigation of natural and cultural sciences, i.e., by elucidating their rootedness in the “surrounding life-world” (HuaVI, 342/295).As a result, no genuine science of spirit could be developed, and in particular, not that transcendental, eidetic science of spirit that is necessary to provide the norms for any rational position-taking, any evaluation, and any practical activity. In short, consciousness could not be understood in its constituting function and philosophy could not establish itself as a rigorous science and become the guiding force of European humanity.Thus, once the phenomenon “Europe” is “grasped in its central, essential nucleus,” and European culture is defned in terms of “the teleology of the infnite goals of reason,” then,“… the ‘crisis’ could then become distinguishable as the apparent failure of rationalism” (HuaVI, 347/229). Husserl’s train of thought is very linear: if we want to understand what this “crisis of Europe” everyone talks about is, we need frst to understand what Europe is. This can be done by recognizing that Europe is defned by the teleological idea it carries within itself. Its crisis, then, consists in the fact that it has lost faith in that idea.We can appreciate the continuity between the Vienna Lecture and Husserl’s earlier writings. In it, Husserl explicitly identifes the genuine and healthy state of European culture with the correct functioning of philosophy, and the word “crisis” appears immediately associated with the world “illness” (Hua VI, 315/270). More importantly, Husserl here clearly indicates that it is because of the objectivism derived from modern physics that the essence of subjectivity has been missed, and, thus, modern rationalism has failed its mission.4 One can say that the objectivism stemming from the technized, non-genuine modern physics has played the role of the pathogen agent in the illness of European humanity. We have now gathered the elements necessary to approach the frst part of Husserl’s last work, the Krisis, where Husserl speaks not only about a crisis of European humanity, but also, explicitly, about a crisis of European sciences, and a crisis of philosophy. The considerations developed up to now already indicate that the latter crisis plays the pivotal role in Husserl’s entire critical enterprise, although the title of Part I of the Krisis does not mention it explicitly (“The crisis of the sciences as expression of the radical life-crisis of European humanity”). Let us briefy follow the development of §§1–5 of the Krisis, where these notions are introduced. In §1, Husserl acknowledges that the notion of a crisis of European sciences might seem odd. A crisis of our sciences as such: can we seriously speak of it? Is not this talk, heard so often these days, an exaggeration? After all, the crisis of a science indicates nothing less than that its genuine scientifc character (ihre echte Wissenschaftlichkeit), the whole manner in which it has set its task and developed a methodology for it, has become questionable (fraglich). (Hua VI, 1/3) 156
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In this short passage, Husserl provides already a defnition of what the crisis of science amounts to: it is the fact that its scientifcity becomes to say the least “questionable” or “doubtful.”What is, ultimately, the scientifcity of a science? It is the way in which it has developed a method for its task, i.e., to determine theoretically a certain domain of objects. Obviously, the positive sciences, both natural and cultural, given their incredible theoretical and practical success, do not seem to be in a state of crisis at all. Husserl mentions that only psychology appears more problematic in this respect, but concludes that such science can be granted a certain level of scientifcity too. Such positive sciences, together, must be contrasted with philosophy, Husserl adds, whose “unscientifcity” is unmistakable (Hua VI, 2/4).The problem is, thus, what the crisis of the positive sciences really amounts to. On the basis of the preceding analyses, in particular of the above reading of Formal and Transcendental Logic, we can already anticipate that the solution is based on the recognition of “the unphilosophical character of their positivity”, i.e., of the lack of clarity concerning the being of their domains of investigation.This lack of clarity is precisely due to the demise of the idea of a philosophy in the unity of which the rationality of such sciences would be completely elucidated (as to both their task and method). However, this time, Husserl follows a more complex path, whose aim is to highlight the full signifcance of the positive sciences’ original rootedness in a universal philosophy.To the philosopher, who is conscious of such inprinciple rootedness, the inadequacy of positive scientifcity is clear, but to the general public, as well as to the “scientists who are sure of their method” (Hua VI, 3/5), it is far from being so. Thus, Husserl addresses the reader by appealing to a phenomenon, that, instead, is universally acknowledged at the time he is writing, i.e., that the sciences have lost their meaning for life, as the title of §2 states.5 Husserl calls this phenomenon “crisis” between quotation marks, to signal that he is referring to a use of the word that is not yet the one he is seeking, but rather a common one.This phenomenon is for Husserl undoubtedly real and derives from the “positivistic reduction of the idea of science to mere factual science” as, once more, we read in the title of §2.The idea is the following. Given that we only believe in the kind of rationality that reveals matters of fact, the insights they produce, do not mean anything for our human existence. Piling up theories about natural phenomena, or discovering countless historical and cultural facts, cannot give full meaning to our existence in the absence of a rationality that is able to evaluate them. As we have seen above, scientifc insights cannot guide our existence and be meaningful to us unless they refer to values and norms. If scientifc rationality provides only facts, then a form of nihilism is inevitable; values and norms will be considered merely as contingent facts. Ultimately, this undermines science itself. This situation, however, does not yet tell us what is lacking in the scientifcity of, say, physics, or psychology. Its function here is to trigger the historical considerations that we fnd in §3, where Husserl briefy recalls that during the modern era, and, in particular, within the philosophy of the rationalists (such as Descartes and Spinoza), the notion of science was much broader. Even what we consider today positive sciences were still branches of philosophy conceived as the universal science of being. Such universal philosophy aimed at addressing scientifcally not only questions of facts, but all problems pertaining to the sphere of reason.These, in turn, include the determination of the norms of theoretical, evaluative, and practical reason. They include also the so-called highest and ultimate questions that concern the sense of the world, human existence, and God; in short, the classical metaphysical questions.Within such universal philosophy, the factual sciences could also receive a signifcance for life. In §§4–5, Husserl outlines the “process of dissolution” of such philosophical ideal; in other words, he outlines the crisis of philosophy as the collapse of the project of a truly scientifc philosophy.The decisive moment of this crisis is Hume’s skeptical onslaught against metaphysics. This characterization is fully compatible with the general defnition of a crisis of science that he has provided in §1.The crisis of philosophy as universal science of being consists in the fact 157
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that we have stopped believing in the possibility of a scientifc philosophy; the scientifcity of philosophy, as it was developed during modern rationalism, has become not just “fraglich” but totally bankrupt (as explained in §23). However, now it is also possible to provide the defnition of the crisis of the sciences that we were looking for, i.e., in terms of their philosophical (and not merely positive) scientifcity: Yet the problem of a possible metaphysics also encompassed eo ipso that of the possibility of the factual sciences, since they had their relational meaning (Sinn)—that of truths merely for areas of what is—in the indivisible unity of philosophy. Can reason and that which-is be separated, where reason, as knowing, determines what is? (…) ultimately, all modern sciences drifted into a peculiar, increasingly puzzling crisis with regard to the meaning (nach den Sinn) of their original founding as branches of philosophy, a meaning (Sinn) which they continued to bear within themselves.This is a crisis which does not encroach upon the theoretical and practical successes of the special sciences; yet it shakes to the foundations the whole meaning of their truth (ihre ganze Wahrheitssinn). (Hua VI, 9–10/11–12) This passage is in line with Husserl’s early characterization of the non-genuine character of our science. In Krisis II, Husserl will provide a detailed account of how the objectivism resulting from the misunderstandings surrounding modern mathematical physics has produced the psychophysical world-view that has crippled modern philosophy from the start; while in Krisis III, he will lay the ground for an understanding of the being of nature and spirit, based not on objectivistic, metaphysical hypotheses, but on the original intuitive experience of the life-world. We are now able to give an answer to the questions with which this entry began.The results of this analysis suggest that the crisis of philosophy is the place to begin. The crisis of philosophy consists in the fact that its scientifcity is bankrupt: our philosophy is not scientifc, and we are skeptical about its possibility to ever become so. Due to the crisis of philosophy, we are unable to render our sciences genuine sciences of being: the sense of their objective domains remains obscure and the method whereby they acquire knowledge about them cannot be completely justifed. This is the crisis of European sciences. Furthermore, the sciences, reduced to theoretical techniques have also lost the aforementioned three aspects of their meaning for life: 1) In the absence of a philosophical Wissenschaftstheorie, the “cognitive joy” they provide cannot be complete, due to their mutilated scientifcity. 2) In the absence of a philosophical theory of values and practical norms, they cannot act as reliable means for improving our surrounding natural and cultural world. 3) In the absence of a correct account of teleology and of the“highest and ultimate” metaphysical questions, they fail to give a sense to human existence and to reveal a world that has itself an ultimate sense, a world whose teleological source is God. Finally, since Europe is defned by the teleological idea of a humanity guided by philosophy and science, the crisis of philosophy implies the loss of faith of European humanity in what defnes its true being, the crisis of European culture.
Notes 1 “Thus Plato was set on the path to the pure idea. Not gathered from the de facto sciences but formative of pure norms, his dialectic of pure ideas – as we say, his logic or his theory of science – was called on to make genuine science possible now for the frst time, to guide its practice” (Hua XVII, 2). In this sense, his establishment of logic has on science the effect that, at a more general level, his Republic has on the life of humanity: to generate spiritual formations that strive for an ideal having universal validity. Plato is, more than anybody else, the father of Europe.
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Crisis 2 A letter written by Husserl to Roman Ingarden in 1935 makes clear the equivalence between “European humanity (Menschentum)” and “European culture (Kultur)” (Hua VI, XIII). 3 “In this lecture I shall venture the attempt to fnd new interest in the frequently treated theme of the European crisis by developing the philosophical-historical idea (or the teleological sense) of European humanity. As I exhibit, in the process, the essential function that philosophy and its branches, our sciences, have to exercise within that sense, the European crisis will also receive a new elucidation” (Hua VI, 314/269). 4 “Precisely this lack of a genuine rationality on all sides is the source of man’s now unbearable lack of clarity about his own existence and his infnite tasks” (Hua VI, 345/297). 5 I have already argued that the Krisis §2 has been often mistakenly taken to contain Husserl’s own defnition of the crisis of European science as the loss of their meaning for life (Trizio 2016).This is refected in a number of interpretations that either identify the two phenomena or do not clarify their difference and mutual relation. See Stein (1937, 327), Gurwitsch (1956, 383), Paci (1972, 3), Bohem (1979, 27), Ströker (1988, 207; 1992, 107), Carr (1974, 46; 2010, 86), Bernet, Kern, and Marbach (1993, 220–5), and Dodd (2004, 29–30). In a long and detailed response to my article, George Heffernan (Heffernan 2017) has tried to formulate an alternative reading able to salvage the essential elements of the traditional interpretation. Some of the reasons why I believe his interpretative solutions do not withstand a close scrutiny of Husserl’s texts, nor a critical examination in light of Husserl’s general view of science, can be found in this entry. The only author that, to my knowledge, avoided the “trap” of §2 was Jan Patočka, who in his 1937 review of Husserl’s Krisis wrote: “Husserl begins his exposition with the statement that science is at present undergoing an acute crisis of its scientifcity.The crisis frst appears to the eye as a loss of the meaning of science for life; science has nothing to say to us about the diffculties and anxieties of our existence” (Patočka 2015, 21, italics added).The remaining part of the review adds further details about the unsatisfactory scientifcity of both natural and cultural sciences.
References Bernet, Rudolf, Kern, Iso, and Marbach, Eduard. 1993. An Introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Bohem, Rudolf. 1979. “Husserls drei Thesen über die Lebenswelt”. In: Lebenswelt und Wissenschaft in der Philosophie Edmund Husserls. Ed. Elisabeth Ströker. Frankfurt am Main:Vittorio Klostermann, pp. 23–31. Carr, David. 1974. Phenomenology and the Problem of History. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. 2010.“The Crisis as Philosophy of History”. In: Science and the Life-World. Eds. David Hyder and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 83–99. Dodd, James. 2004. Crisis and Refection: An Essay on Edmund Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Graf, Rüdiger. 2010. “Either-Or: The Narrative of ‘Crisis’ in Weimar Germany and in Historiography”. Central European History, 43(4), pp. 592–615. Gurwitsch, Aron. 1956. “The Last Work of Edmund Husserl”. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 16(4), pp. 380–399. Heffernan, George. 2017. “The Concept of Krisis in Husserl’s the Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology”. Husserl Studies, 33(3), pp. 229–257. Paci, Enzo. 1972. The Function of the Sciences and the Meaning of Man. Evanston: Northwestern Universty Press. Patočka, Jan. 2015.“Edmund Husserl’s Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transcendentale Phänomenologie”. In: The Phenomenological Critique of Mathematisation and the Question of Responsibility. Eds. L’ubica Učník, Ivan Chvatík,Anita Williams. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 17–28. Stein, Edith. 1937. “Edmund Husserl. La crise de la science et de la philosophie transcendantale”. Revue Thomiste, 42–43, pp. 327–329. Ströker, Elizabeth. 1988.“Edmund Husserls Phänomelogie: Philosophia Perennis in der Krise des europäischen Kultur”. Husserl Studies, 5, pp. 197–217. ———. 1992. Husserls Werk. Zur Ausgabe der Gesammelten Schriften. Hamburg: Meiner. Trizio, Emiliano. 2016.“What is the Crisis of Western Sciences?”. Husserl Studies, 32, pp. 191–211.
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12 DASEIN Daniel O. Dahlstrom
Dasein is one of the most basic concepts of Heidegger’s philosophy, beginning with the phenomenology that he develops in his major work, Being and Time (Heidegger 1967), as the method necessary for fundamental ontology. Heidegger’s phenomenology aims to make explicit what is hidden, what does not show itself initially and for the most part, namely, the being of beings.To this end, it begins with an analysis of what is defned by having an understanding of being, albeit a tacit, pre-ontological understanding: Da-sein (1967, 13, 15, 35). Although Heidegger maintains that Da-sein, as he understands it, cannot be translated (Heidegger 1989, 300), he himself exploits the term’s etymology, composed of da (typically meaning ‘here,’ ‘there,’ or ‘since’) and sein (the infnitive of ‘to be’). For this reason at least, Da-sein is often translated ‘being-here’ or ‘being-there.’ Yet Heidegger repeatedly stresses that the da (‘here’) of Da-sein (hereafter used interchangeably with ‘being-here’), far from designating a particular place – as in ‘here or there’ (da oder dort) – designates the clearing (Lichtung) in which the being of particular beings is disclosed. From the fact that Dasein itself is the clearing, Heidegger infers: “Being-here is its disclosedness” (1967, 132–3).1 Even if it is not a particular place, the metaphorical sense of a space persists in Heidegger’s use of da, which he designates as “an open place,” a “parameter,” a “sphere,” an “open expanse” in which things present themselves, albeit only partially and only for a time (1977, 216; 1996, 136–7; 1986, 380).As Heidegger puts it in a 1938 lecture: “The ‘here’ signifes that clearing in which beings stand respectively as a whole, in such a way, to be sure, that in this here the historical being (Seyn) of the open beings shows itself and at the same time withdraws” (1984, 233).The passage just quoted echoes basic features of the conception of being-here articulated in Being and Time. According to the latter work, too, Dasein’s manner of being is such that it is the site in which the manners of being of this or that sort of being – itself, others, tools, things merely on hand – are disclosed. Regardless of how the spatial metaphor is to be parsed out, Heidegger’s construal of beinghere in terms of the clearing and the disclosedness of being constitutes its fundamental phenomenological signifcance for his thinking, early and late.Although Heidegger abandons the project of fundamental ontology after 1930, the concept of Dasein remains – as the cited passage from 1938 suggests – at the center of his subsequent efforts to think the meaning of ‘being’ in historical, non-transcendental terms. Nevertheless, with this shift in Heidegger’s thinking, he accentuates different aspects of being-here. In Being and Time the existential signifcance of being-here takes center stage of the analysis. In later writings Heidegger focuses on its historical signifcance, 160
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relative to his idiosyncratic conception of the history of being. The remainder of the present entry is accordingly divided into two parts: a review of the existential analysis of being-here in Being and Time, followed by a gloss of the historical signifcance of the concept in his later writings.
12.1. Being-here and fundamental ontology Dasein enters into German philosophical terminology by the early eighteenth century as the equivalent for the Latin derivative, Existenz. Both terms traditionally stand for what Heidegger equates with “being on hand” or “present-at-handness” (Vorhandensein), typical of both naturally occurring things that, at least prima facie, appear useless or obtrusive, impediments to use, and decontextualized objects of (allegedly) purely theoretical investigations. In Being and Time Heidegger departs from this traditional usage, introducing both terms – Dasein and Existenz – as words of art that designate what is roughly equivalent to a human being, but cannot be identifed with what philosophy or positive science (including history and theology) traditionally understand by it, namely, something occurring in nature like other things on hand. (To have an understanding of being is essential to being-here, not to being on hand.) To be sure,‘Dasein’ and ‘human being’ may refer to similar phenomena (e.g., affectivity, understanding, conformity, the use of language, scientifc research); indeed, existential analysis (analysis of being-here) can only get off the ground by presuming as much (1967, 11).Yet even when they refer to similar phenomena, they do so in quite different ways. So, too, what existential analysis uncovers is essentially different from historical investigations of human affairs, theological pronouncements on the human condition, or the results of scientifc inquiry into all things human. Consequently, the tendency to substitute the meaning of one term for that of the other, as necessary as it is at the outset, is ultimately misguided. Mention has already been made of being-here’s fundamental phenomenological signifcance as the clearing for the disclosedness of things’ being. This signifcance is intimately connected, Heidegger maintains, to the ways of existing inherent to being-here. In Being and Time he conceives Dasein, quite fundamentally, as the entity that exists (and, it deserves iterating, is not simply on hand) insofar as it possesses an understanding of being, an understanding that matters to it. This passionate understanding is not to be confused with an understanding of natural kinds allegedly already on hand (e.g., animality, rationality). To the contrary, there is a decided if, to be sure, not unqualifed open-endedness to this understanding, since it brings with it Dasein’s understanding of itself in terms of the possibility of being or not being itself. Dasein exists by relating itself to – or, alternatively, behaving toward (sich verhalten zu) – its existence as this possibility. It essentially does so, moreover, in the frst person, from that standpoint that each Dasein respectively can alone call “mine.” Dasein’s passionate understanding of being is of a piece with the fact not only that its existence (“mine” or “yours” respectively) is at stake for it in all it does, but also that its existence is in a fundamental sense up to it. Existence is mine to be, yours to be, and, hence, it can be authentic or not. Or, to put the matter more formally, saying that Dasein is the entity with a passionate understanding of being is equivalent to saying that it relates to its existence as a possibility that it is its own to be. Heidegger’s conception of Dasein in terms of this mutual entailment accounts for the existential signifcance of Dasein. Assuming the fundamental phenomenological signifcance of Dasein glossed above, Heidegger analyzes this existential signifcance but he does so in the service of fundamental ontology, the task of determining the meaning of ‘being’ as the necessary foundation of any other ontological investigation. Precisely because Dasein has a passionate understanding of being and relates to its existence as a possibility, it is ontically distinguished by its ontological or, better, pre-ontological 161
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character. Being-here has this character precisely because it exists with and as an understanding of being. For this same reason (again, in tandem with its fundamental signifcance), being-here allegedly enjoys a privileged status as the point of departure for pursuing the objective of fundamental ontology (1967, 13).Thus, the frst part of Being and Time is entitled “The preparatory fundamental analysis of Dasein” – the frst step of fundamental ontology.The analysis of Dasein aims, as he also puts it, at “freeing up the horizon for an interpretation of the sense of being in general” (1967, 15).As discussed below, that horizon is time, albeit of a particular sort. The existential analysis unpacks several existentials, ways of existing that are disclosive of the various manners of being of beings.Among these existentials, Heidegger singles out certain “basic existentials” – attunement, understanding, talk or discourse, fallenness – that are equiprimordial.That is to say, they are joined at the hip – a point already intimated by the mention earlier of ‘passionate understanding.’ For Dasein to understand being is for being to matter to it (attunement) and vice versa. Nor is the attuned understanding isolated from the fact that beinghere, we share it with others – who are also here (Mit-dasein) – by talking and listening to them. So, too, we share a heritage and a world as a complex of meanings grounded in that heritage.To be sure, for the most part, we fnd ourselves swept up into the modes of conforming to generally accepted attunements, ways of understanding and speaking, without questioning them.This proclivity to conformity is, as the term suggests, a way of falling prey to an anonymous, selfalienating conception of others – the They (das Man) – lending its own unity to the other basic existentials that make up being-here. Just as traditional ontology, with its emphasis on the onhandness of things in nature, mistakenly overlooks the fundamental phenomenological signifcance of being-here, so, too, it “jumps over” the latter’s worldliness, epitomized by the work-world and the concerns (Besorgen) that dominate its everyday, worldly existence. Heidegger accordingly stresses the need to investigate being-here in terms of its essential constitution of being-in-the-world and with an eye to understanding ‘being-in’ existentially, i.e., not as something on hand in another thing on hand in nature (1967, 54, 65) but as a form of immersion in and engagement with the surrounding world or environment (Umwelt) – “the most proximate world of everyday being-here” – and the things within it (1967, 54, 56, 61, 66).2 The analysis reveals a meaningful complex of implements, meaningful both because use of each implement complements the use of other implements and because the complex as a whole is for the sake of being-here. But what, if anything, is being-here for the sake of? In that complex there is, in principle, a suitable place for everything, but is there such a place for beinghere, a place where it is “at home”? And, if not, does that not entail the lack of signifcance (Unbedeutsamkeit) of everything within the world (1967, 186–7)? Of course, being-here may try to avoid these questions by living in the inertia of absorption in the everyday work-world. It is aided, moreover, by the fact that, in its fallenness (its proclivity to conform), being-here has always already accepted some semblance of meaningfulness from the ideology of the crowd. But these ways of living are futile attempts to escape the truth of being-here.“The immersion in the They and the ‘world’ of concerns reveals something like a fight of being-here in the face of itself as its authentic possibility-of-being itself ” (1967, 184). Because the question of being-here’s meaning presents itself in the experience of Angst as the experience of not being at home (unheimlich), Heidegger refers to Angst as a “basic attunement” and the “eminent” form of disclosedness of being-here (1967, 184, 188–9). But Angst is also eminent because, unlike a fear of something within the world, it is precisely about being-here, about being itself and being at all. In this capacity it reveals the being of being-here as care (Sorge). Being-here, we experience Angst because we care and we care because we project something for ourselves and, in that respect, are always ahead of ourselves. But we are ahead of ourselves, not in 162
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the abstract, but precisely by virtue of already being in a world, thrown into it, and caught up in concerns with what is handy within the world and the possibilities that it affords us.The being of being-here is care, understood as “being-ahead-of-itself-(while)already-being-in-(the world) as being-amidst (entities encountered within-the-world)” (1967, 192). As is often the case for Heidegger, this characterization of care as the being of being-here contains a clumsy sequence of hyphens for the sake of maintaining the unity of the existential structure. ‘Being-ahead’ is meant to capture the existential sense of the understanding, conceived as a potential-to-be (Seinkönnen) that coincides with a projection on the part of beinghere (hence, too, understanding is an “overstepping,” “transcending”); ‘being already’ is meant to capture the existential sense of attunement, conceived as the thrownness of an affectivity; and ‘being-amidst’ is meant to capture the absorption in everyday life and work that Heidegger characterizes as fallenness. Being-ahead (vorweg) of oneself, being-already (schon) disposed, and being-amidst (bei) things – in obvious parallel to what’s coming, what was already but is even now, and what is present, respectively – are inseparable, inherent parts (Momente) of care as a whole. The conclusion that care is the meaning of being for being-here serves as the pivot on which the second half of the existential analysis in Being and Time turns.Whereas the frst half concentrated on “the inauthentic being of being-here,” the foundation for elaborating the ontological basic question requires an analysis of being-here “in its possible authenticity and totality” (1967, 233). To this end, Heidegger articulates existential conceptions of death (as the culminating possibility of being-here) and of conscience (as the silent discourse of being-here, calling itself to project this possibility as its ownmost possibility). Anticipating nothingness resolutely, facing rather than feeing it, is the mark of being-here authentically. On the basis of an account of being-here authentically, Heidegger demonstrates that time-liness (Zeitlichkeit) is the ontological sense of care.3 Being-here can be resolute, anticipating its ownmost potential-to-be, only because it can come to itself and “this way of letting itself come to itself (sich auf sich Zukommen-lassen) is the primordial phenomenon of the future (Zukunft)” (1967, 325). But by coming to itself in this way, it takes over its thrownness and is its having been, while also disclosing the situation and making things present.The senses of having been and making present, together with the coming to itself in anticipation, make up the three, jointly necessary elements of time-liness (Zeitlichkeit). This time-liness – time in a primordial sense, not to be confused with clock time or world time – constitutes, Heidegger contends,“the sense of authentic care” (1967, 326).With this contention, he adds, the frst crucial steps are taken toward establishing “the thesis that the sense of being-here is time” (1967, 331).The establishment of this thesis then serves as the template for the unfnished project of fundamental ontology, namely, that of demonstrating that time-liness – labeled, in this respect, temporality (Temporalität) – is the condition for understanding being at all (1975, 389).
12.2. Being-here and thinking being historically determined In Being and Time, analysis of being-here dominates, as Heidegger attempts to demonstrate that time, suitably interpreted, underlies and ultimately gives meaning to its being. After 1930 the center of Heidegger’s focus shifts from being-here to the history of being (including, prominently, the history of ontology). However, being-here – not least as the clearing for beings and their being – remains fundamental to that history. Some of Heidegger’s most sustained treatments of being-here in the latter context are to be found in his Contributions to Philosophy, the subject of the rest of this entry. 163
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Heidegger’s attempt to think being historically in the late 1930s allegedly breaks with traditional forms of metaphysics (onto-theology) that, he submits, mistakenly think of being in terms of some particular being as the ultimate, suffcient ground of other beings. In the process they overlook the fact that even gods are in need of being and, indeed, being in a sense that is not, on pain of regress, correspondingly grounded. Heidegger frequently uses Abgrund to signify this groundlessness and Seyn, an archaic spelling of being, to characterize this sense of being that is an Abgrund, an abyss. He also uses this archaic spelling to signify the historical character of being, in contrast to any traditional reductions of it to some primary being (Seiendste, ens primum) as well as any pretentions to its transcendence or universality. I translate Seyn as ‘historical being’ to signal this difference, though it is historical in a primordial (and thus highly fgurative) sense, one that underlies any other sense of history because it is what happens, in the most basic sense, in being-here at all. Underscoring this primordial sense, he characterizes historical being as Ereignis, a term ordinarily signifying an event, but here signifying, more precisely, historical being’s appropriation or owning of being-here. Against the background of this attempt to thinking being historically, two central features of Heidegger’s later conception of being-here emerges.“Historical being appropriates being-here and yet is not its origin” (1989, 471). In turn, as what is thus appropriated (das Ereignete), beinghere clears the ground, as it were, and thereby grounds the truth of the abyss of historical being (Heidegger 1989, 294–9, 447, 452, 455, 460, 470f, 485–7, 490). I designate these two features – being appropriated by historical being and grounding the truth of it (namely, its lack of ground, its abyssal character) – the ‘appropriated’ and ‘grounding’ characters of being-here, respectively. Historical being’s appropriation of being-here is not an event in any ordinary sense of the term. Instead it coincides with historical being’s withdrawal (epoche, Entzug) and self-concealing (Sich-verbergen). If, for example, being is taken in the traditional sense of the presence of what is present, it can’t be similarly present but must withdraw in order for the entity to be present. In its withdrawal, it does a turn (a U-turn of sorts as the term Kehre often signifes) and it does so in the course of appropriating being-here, refusing itself (1989, 293).Thus, we don’t merely lack access to being in the way that we have access to entities; being is strictly speaking not “given” at all.There are hints (Winke), to be sure, and without it, beings would not be, but being itself escapes us.The emphasis is on the active voice here; being turns from us. Heidegger accordingly speaks of the “turn in the appropriation” (Kehre im Ereignis)4 and the appropriation characterized, in itself, by this turn (das in sich kehrige Ereignis) to which the abyss (the lack of ground mentioned earlier) belongs (1989, 185). But there is no such turn without being-here. Being-here is, as already noted, the ground of the truth of historical being, but being this ground is necessitated “by the basic experience of historical being as the appropriation” (1989, 294). Being-here’s founding experience is that of being what historical being – as the appropriation, the primordial owning – appropriates. Insofar as it is appropriated, it guards historical being’s refusal, its self-concealing (1989, 488). Heidegger characterizes being-here accordingly as “the clearing for the self-concealing (historical being),” “the clearing … in which historical being conceals itself,” and “the clearing of the historical being itself ” (1989, 298–99). In apposition to ‘clearing,’ he sometimes mentions the ‘open,’‘free,’‘unprotected’ – all metaphors of places and states.The expression “clearing for the self-concealing” in particular can appear paradoxical, but perhaps no more so than any registration of an absence. Each of these expressions re-inscribes the fundamental phenomenological signifcance of being-here, introduced in Being and Time (being-here as the “clearing”). In this respect, the third central, identifying feature of being-here (in addition to its appropriated and grounding characters) is a familiar one. But the difference in accentuation is also patent. Although the clearing in Being and Time encompasses both being in the truth and in the untruth, 164
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Heidegger’s later conception of being-here stresses that it is the clearing precisely for historical being’s self-concealing. Above I stressed the active character of historical being’s appropriation, withdrawal, and concealment.Whereas the center of gravity of the existential analysis in Being and Time was in many ways being-here’s projecting (Entwerfen), in the Contributions he stresses that being-here is “thrown, appropriated by historical being” (1989, 304; see also 259). By opening up an open region, the one projecting reveals that it is thrown and “achieves nothing else than taking up the swing back in historical being, i.e., moving back into the latter and thereby into the appropriation and in this way frst becoming itself, the preserver of the thrown projection” (1989, 304). Being-here participates in the appropriation’s refusal by insisting on it and renouncing any attempts to ignore it. That is to say, with its appropriation, being-here has “for its own the guardianship of the refusal.” Heidegger stresses that being-here’s appropriation takes the form of a “renunciation,” a renunciation that “allows the refusal (i.e., the appropriating) to surge into the open.”Yet far from being simply a negating and a negated, renunciation in this sense is a way of standing “primordially” as it were, “unsupported in the unprotected (the steadfastness of beinghere).” Indeed, it is “the mark of being-here, so to ‘stand’ … (peering) down into the abyss and in this way to surpass the gods” (all quotations from 1989, 487). In Being and Time, as noted above, Heidegger takes pains to differentiate his existential analysis, centered on being-here, from studies of human nature, whether in the form of psychology, anthropology, or biology. Still, he acknowledges that several analyses in Being and Time coincide with undertakings of a philosophical anthropology.5 So, while being-here is not identical to human being, it is in some contexts equivalent. In the Contributions, Heidegger frequently calls attention to the resulting ambiguity and faults his existential analyses for remaining in the grip of subjectivity.“In Being and Time being-here still stands in the guise of the ‘anthropological,’ ‘subjectivistic,’ ‘individualistic,’ and so forth, and yet with the opposite of all that in view.”6 But if Heidegger’s later conception of being-here is supposed to bracket, even more fundamentally, all traditional conceptions of the human, the question remains of how being-here relates to being human. Without completely dispelling the ambiguity of the earlier account, Heidegger introduces a new wrinkle in the form of a human transformation on the basis of the status of being-here. While being-here grounds the human being, the latter makes its essence (the guardianship of historical being) its own “insofar as it grounds itself in being-here” (1989, 489).7 True to his original insight – the way being-here is at once in the world, always already disposed to other entities and relating to them, on the basis of an understanding of being that coincides with being the clearing – both human self-understanding and understanding of beings ride on this transformation.“Only in being-here – which the human steadfastly becomes through the transitional, essential transformation – does a preservation of historical being succeed in what thereby frst appears as an entity [Seiendes]” (1989, 489).
Notes 1 This inference fagrantly confates epistemology and ontology or sagaciously locates the sweet spot where they coincide. 2 Each existential is ontologically signifcant, disclosing Dasein’s manner of being and whatever it encounters, in tandem with an ontic signifcance. For example, when I use a hammer, I understand it (ontically) as a means of fastening something; but this use and understanding coincide with understanding/disclosing it (ontologically) as being-handy or ready-to-hand (Zuhandensein). 3 A temporal reading of the adverbs and prepositions (vorweg, schon, bei) used to characterize care already suggests that some sense of time underlies being-here.
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References Heidegger, Martin. 1967. Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Niemeyer. ———. 1975. Gesamtausgabe 24: Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie (Sommersemester 1927). Ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (2nd edn. 1989, 3rd edn. 1997). Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann. ———. 1977. Gesamtausgabe 2: Sein und Zeit (1927). Ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann. ———. 1984.Gesamtausgabe 45. Grundfragen der Philosophie.Ausgewählte “Probleme”der “Logik”(Wintersemester 1937/8). Ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (2nd edn. 1992). Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann. ———. 1986. Gesamtausgabe 15: Seminäre (1951–1973). Ed. Curd Ochwadt (2nd edn. 2005). Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann. ———. 1989. Gesamtausgabe 65: Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (1936–1938). Ed. FriedrichWilhelm von Herrmann (2nd edn. 1994). Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann. ———. 1996. Gesamtausgabe 27: Einleitung in die Philosophie (Wintersemester 1928/9). Eds. Otto Saame and Ina Saame-Speidel (2nd edn. 2001). Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.
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13 EGO Michael K. Shim
The “ego” is a polysemous notion in Husserl. By it, he can mean (1) the empirical self, (2) the numerically identical self, (3) the transcendental self, or (4) “monad.” For each notion, I will provide a brief account and address its reception among some of Husserl’s successors in the phenomenological tradition. At the centre of my discussion is the following historical fact.The Husserl of the frst edition of the Logical Investigations was avowedly Humean about the self: i.e., there is no such thing as personal identity over time. By the time of Ideas I (and the second edition of Logical Investigations), Husserl reversed his position. In the latter period, he introduced the notion of the “pure ego,” a Kantian self that remains numerically identical despite psychological changes in time.
13.1. Empirical ego In the Fifth Logical Investigation, the “empirical ego” is identifed with a Humean notion of consciousness. In the frst edition of the Logical Investigations, Husserl writes that consciousness is “the phenomenological ego as ‘bundle’ or nexus of psychical lived experiences” (Hua XIX, 356). In the second edition, in which the phrase “empirical ego” is explicit, Husserl offers the following slight revision:“the empirical ego [is] the nexus of psychical lived experiences in the unity of the stream of lived experiences” (Hua XIX, 356). In this sense, the empirical ego is the psychological self, consisting of a stream of ever-changing psychological states. Thus, your empirical ego is a “bundle” of whatever perceptual and cognitive experiences, along with nonintentional sensations. For example, right now, your empirical ego consists of seeing the computer screen, hearing the police helicopter hovering over your neighbourhood, thinking that it’s a nice day for a long walk, while feeling hungry and itchy. Over time, this empirical ego will change constantly as various intentional states and experiences come and go. For a better grasp of what Husserl means by “unity” in the Logical Investigations, he advises consideration of the above Humean conception of consciousness in conjunction with the conception of consciousness “as inner awareness of [one’s] own psychical experiences” (Hua XIX, 356), which Husserl claims is “more primordial” and “in itself prior” to the frst conception (Hua XIX, 367). In this light, consciousness is to be regarded as unifed in the relevant sense by virtue of exclusive or privileged access. Intuitively, it seems to make sense that the privacy of
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your consciousness is what individuates you from everyone else. Personal individuation, in other words, is a function of exclusive access. Accordingly,“unity” in the relevant sense seems to be a function of what individuates you—what distinguishes you—from everyone else. However, there is no contradiction between Husserl’s Humean conception of consciousness and his assertion of “unity” in this sense. Not even Hume would deny that your experiences are exclusive and, therefore, de facto individualizing. Unlike Locke, what Hume recognized is that personal individuation—what makes you different from anyone else—is insuffcient for personal identity, the numerical identity of the self over time.1 Consider a pocket universe consisting solely of three particles at any given time. Let each particle be individuated from the other two by colour and location. However, let there be constant change in colour and location of any particle over time without continuity of movement. Under these two sets of constraints, there is no reason for you to think that any one of these particles is numerically identical to any earlier particle in this universe. Consequently, the constraints allow for individuation of particles at any given time, but this criterion of individuation does not suffce to establish numerical identity of any of the particles. As far as you are concerned, any change in location and colour can signify the extinction of one particle and its replacement by an entirely new particle. Just so, the fact that I can’t have access to your lived experiences does not mean that either one of us remains numerically identical over time. For the claim of personal identity, some additional argument is required. Therefore, there is no contradiction between Husserl’s claim of the unity of consciousness and his explicit disavowal of any Kantian “pure ego” in Logical Investigations. In Logical Investigations, Husserl writes: I must now openly admit that I am entirely unable to fnd this primitive ego as the necessary centre of relations. What I am in a position to recognize, thus perceive, is solely the empirical ego and its empirical relationship to whatever its own lived experiences or external objects. (Hua XIX, 374) The empirical ego may be unifed by virtue of exclusive access, which individuates that psychological self from all other selves; but such unity does not entail that there should be an underlying, unchanging self. However, in the second edition, Husserl adds in a footnote that: “Since then I have learned to fnd [the pure ego]” (Hua XIX, 374). In one popular account of the difference between Husserl and Heidegger, Husserl is regarded as some kind of “internalist” while Heidegger is portrayed as a kind of “externalist” (Dreyfus 1991; Carmen 2003). Later, in my rendition of Husserl’s notion of the self as “concrete ego” or “monad,” I will challenge this account as ultimately misleading about Husserl. However, when it comes to Husserl’s conception of the empirical ego from the period of Logical Investigations, the internalist interpretation is hard to reproach. Indeed, on the clearly psychological conception of the self in Logical Investigations, the empirical ego consists exclusively of mentalistic lived experiences.
13.2. Pure ego One of the most signifcant differences between the early Husserl of Logical Investigations and the mature Husserl of Ideas I is that the mature Husserl accepts the Kantian idea that there is an underlying self, which is numerically identical over time—i.e., the “pure ego.” Let me start off with a gloss of Husserl’s characterization of the pure ego in §57 of Ideas I. First, 168
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13.2.1. The pure ego is opaque Husserl writes: after the performance of [the phenomenological] reduction to the fow of manifold lived experiences, nowhere will we hit upon the pure ego as a lived experience among other such experiences; nor as a proper component of any lived experience, which arises and dissipates with that lived experience of which it is a part. (Hua III/1, 109) In other words, the pure ego itself is not a lived experience—a thought, a perceptual episode, a feeling or the like—of which you can be aware. Nor is the pure ego an immanent or genuine feature of any particular lived experience. It does not come and go as the experiences do. Instead,
13.2.2. The pure ego is numerically identical over time As a matter of fact, heading 13.2.2 is an explanation of heading 13.2.1. All that is transparent to the self are its lived experiences. But if the pure ego itself were an experience or a part of an experience, which comes and goes, then over any period of time you would have as many pure egos as you have experiences. Since Husserl insists that the pure ego is “something in principle necessary and absolutely identical between all actual and possible changes of lived experiences” (Hua III/1, 109; see also Hua IV, 98, 103–105), while all that is ever transparently available to us are the constantly changing experiences, the pure ego must be opaque. Further, since the pure ego is neither itself an experience nor a part of an experience, the pure ego is transcendent to any individual intentional act.The pure ego is not a genuine (“reell”) constituent of any individual experience. If it were then the self would come and go with whatever experience it is attached to—which would then lead to a relapse into the disavowed Humeanism of Logical Investigations. As Dan Zahavi explains: “it is necessary to distinguish the self from any single experience, as the self can preserve its identity whereas experiences arise and perish in the stream of consciousness, replacing one other in a permanent fux” (Zahavi 2005, 131). Nevertheless, Husserl notoriously insists on what, at face value, may appear to be a paradoxical formulation:
13.2.3. The pure ego “offers itself with a peculiar—not constituted— transcendence, a transcendence in immanence” (Hua III/1, 109–110) At this point, it is entirely fair to ask, since the pure ego is transcendent to any individual intentional episode, to what then is it “immanent”? As even Kant himself concedes, there is a kind of analytic emptiness to the claim that the “I think must be capable of accompanying all my presentations” (Kant 1996, 177–179). For, as we saw above, the exclusiveness of frst-personal access is simply insuffcient for any robust claim of personal identity.Again, individuation does not imply—without circularity—numerical identity over time. Nevertheless, the unity of consciousness—from the intuitive sense that there exist some experiences that are distinctive by virtue of their being mine and no one else’s—does offer an entity to which the pure ego can be immanent. In §33 of Ideas I, Husserl suggests as much when he writes that, under the phenomenological reduction, what remains is “‘pure conscious169
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ness’ with its pure ‘correlates of consciousness’ and, on the other side, its ‘pure ego’” (Hua III/1, 58; my italics). Similarly, in a research manuscript from 1921, Husserl writes of the “monad”—the later Husserl’s preferred term for “pure consciousness”—that it “steadfastly bears within itself the absolutely identical ego-pole” (Hua XIII, 43; my italics). From these passages we can infer the following: in addition to the individual lived experiences that constitute your unifed consciousness, that same consciousness features a pure ego that is neither itself any of the lived experiences nor a part of any such lived experience.Thus, the pure ego is transcendent to any individual lived experience but immanent to that unifed consciousness. Although Husserl repeatedly denies any accusation of solipsism, Merleau-Ponty (1958) and Levinas (1969, 1998) both suggest some reason to believe that Husserl’s commitment to the pure ego implies commitment to an epistemological version of solipsism. On the metaphysical version of solipsism, there is in fact no one else but oneself. In general, there is no good reason to believe in metaphysical solipsism; and certainly there is no reason to believe that anything Husserl claims commits him to metaphysical solipsism. By contrast, according to epistemological solipsism, other selves may exist but one cannot know that they, in fact, do exist. In order to know that p, one must at the very least be able to think or conceive of that p. Accordingly, in order to know that some other self exists, one must be able to conceive of that other self. Let S conceive of the existence of some other self, non-S. What makes non-S an other self is that non-S possesses a unifed consciousness comparable to S’s. The conception of the consciousness of some other, Husserl calls “analogical appresentation” (Hua I, 138–145; see also Hua XIII, 249). On analogical appresentation, the conception of non-S’s consciousness is simply to conceive of some consciousness from some spatio-temporal location other than one’s own. However, according to the doctrine of the pure ego, S cannot think of anything without accompaniment by that pure ego particular to S.Thus, in attempting to conceive of non-S’s consciousness, S cannot help but conceive of her own consciousness. Since S can have no access to non-S’s pure ego, and any conceivable consciousness inhabited by S’s pure ego is S’s consciousness, it is impossible for S to conceive of any other self. Since S cannot conceive of any other self, S cannot thus know that any other self exists. A plausible reply to this objection, on behalf of Husserl, is this.There is, in general, no good reason to believe in metaphysical solipsism. So no one must think that no other self exists. Epistemological solipsism does not entail metaphysical solipsism: just because you cannot know that any other self exists does not entail that, therefore, no other self in fact does exist.Thus, even if Husserl winds up committed to epistemological solipsism, nothing keeps him from asserting the existence of other selves. In Husserl’s account, then, in perceiving the living body of nonS, S can ascribe to non-S some consciousness that is a lot like S’s. Of course, S cannot know with certainty that non-S does possess such consciousness. But there is no reason for S to think that non-S doesn’t either. Further, Levinas in particular suggests that since S cannot conceive of non-S’s consciousness, S has thus no right to ascribe to non-S any “universal” phenomenological features based solely on her own (Levinas 1969, 220–221; 1998, 110–111, 116–118). In response, the Husserlian can simply reply that, nor is there reason to think that non-S doesn’t possess such a consciousness. Although personal individuation over time is insuffcient for personal identity, if there is such a thing as a pure ego that is immanent to consciousness, then such a pure ego would suffce as an account of how anyone is individuated from anyone else over time: e.g., only you—your pure ego—can enjoy access to your consciousness. However, a notorious problem in Husserl’s account of the pure ego is that he nowhere provides an explicit argument that there should be such a thing at all. Since, in the frst edition of Logical Investigations, he offers classical Humean reasons to be suspicious of the existence of any such pure ego, an argument is owed. Fortunately, we can 170
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piece together some skeletal argument by focusing on a role that Husserl ascribes to the pure ego.According to Husserl, the pure ego is also transcendental (Hua IV, 121).
13.3. Transcendental ego In at least one sense, S is “transcendental” for Husserl if S is constitutive of anything transcendent. In §97 of Ideas I, Husserl is about as clear on this point as he is anywhere; he writes: The designation of the phenomenological reduction and, similarly, the sphere of pure lived experiences, as “transcendental,” consists precisely therein, that we fnd in this reduction an absolute sphere of qualia (Stoffen) and noetic forms, to whose determinately predisposed nexus belongs—in accordance with immanent eidetic necessity— that remarkable consciousness of any determined or determinable [thing], which is given. (Hua III/1, 204) Pure consciousness, which is the “residuum” of the phenomenological reduction, consists of some ever-changing “nexus” of lived experiences. However, pure consciousness can be considered transcendental insofar as it is consciousness of some “determined or determinable” transcendent object. Husserl continues: In contrast to this consciousness stands something fundamentally other, non-genuine, transcendent. And herein lies the source of the only conceivable solution to the most profound of epistemological problems, pertaining to the essence and possibility of objectively valid cognition of what is transcendent.The transcendental reduction exercises the epoché in view of reality. However, to that which remains left over [from the reduction] belong the noemata, with the noematic unity that lies within them, and therewith the means by which the real is given to consciousness itself. (Hua III/1, 204; see also Hua III/1, 104–108, 178) To that bundle of numerically diverse lived experiences appear, as noemata, external objects that are transcendent to any such lived experience. What is distinctive about these noemata is that they represent objective unity despite the subjective diversity of lived experiences. Accordingly, F is transcendent to an intentional act if that intentional act is not exhaustive of F (Hua III/1, 68–69, 73–78, 85–87; Hua XI, 330–331). For example, you see at t1 the front side of this table.The table, however, is not just its front side. And barring some strong version of phenomenal idealism, nor is the table just your experience of it.There are further features to that table: e.g., its backside, its inside, etc.You see at t2 the back side of the table. If, like Brentano, you believe that intentional objects are immanent to their intentional acts—i.e., that intentional objects are “in-existent”—you must now conclude that between t1 and t2, you have seen two objects (Brentano 1995, 88). By contrast, Husserl insists—along with common sense—that between t1 and t2, you have seen just one object, that the two sides are merely two different profles of the same object (Hua III/1, 186; Hua XIX, 386–387).The object of consciousness, in other words, is a “noematic unity.” Nevertheless, there is no denying that the experience of seeing at t1 and the experience of seeing at t2 may be very different from one another. So how are these two different experiences “synthesized” with one another to determine the numerical identity of the intentional object, i.e., the table? Husserl ascribes this transcendental role of 171
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constituting the act-independent transcendence of the intentional object to the pure ego. Hence, the pure ego is also transcendental. To the question, how can the pure ego establish the identity over time of the transcendent object despite the diversity over time of its own experiences of that object, we can infer a Kantian reply. It is because the pure ego is itself numerically identical over time that it can, so to speak, hold on to the diversity of its experiences in the same stretch of time as those of a numerically identical object. In order to constitute the numerical identity of some transcendent intentional object, you have to yourself be numerically identical over time. Or, as Henry Allison somewhat fippantly puts it in his well-known commentary on Kant’s Transcendental Deduction: “the unity of consciousness is correlated with the consciousness of unity (it takes one to know one)” (Allison 1983, 139). According to this argument, then, if S can identify F as the same table over time, it is because S itself is numerically identical over time. To this kind of Kantian argument, Sartre (1991) suggests the following objection. It is not the self that constitutes the numerical identity of any transcendent object. Instead, the “object is transcendent to the consciousnesses that grasp it, and it is in this object that the unity of the consciousnesses is found” (Sartre 1991, 38). In other words, it is because the transcendent object itself is numerically identical that the variety of diverse lived experiences about the object wind up united with one another as experiences of the same object. On this view, S can identify F as the same table despite the diversity of its experiences of F over time because F is, in fact, the same table. F’s own numerical identity is what forces S’s consciousness about F to be unifed over time. To evaluate this objection, let me return to the conceptual distinction between personal individuation and personal identity that I discussed in sections 13.1 and 13.2. As a matter of fact, Sartre is aware that numerical identity of the self over time is not necessary to establish personal individuation (Sartre 1991, 39–40). Thus, individuation does not imply identity. Nevertheless, consider the following example. S walks around table F while looking at it. In Sartre’s account, it is because F itself is numerically identical over time that F can combine S’s various experiences of it. But, while walking around F, let S have thoughts and sensations irrelevant to the visual cognition of F: e.g., during the same stretch of time, let S think about the current political situation in the Middle East while feeling sad. In this case, F surely cannot also be credited with combining the F-irrelevant thoughts and sensations. Regardless, just intuitively, the F-irrelevant thoughts and sensations are also united in S. One account simply appeals to personal individuation: what the visual experience of F, the F-irrelevant thought and sensation, all have in common with one another is that they are available only to S. But this appeal to individuation is not only rather thin but it also does not eliminate Husserl’s preferred account, which is that the three different intentional episodes are united by virtue of S’s numerical identity over time.As I pointed out in section 13.2, although not necessary, something like a pure ego would be a suffcient explanation of personal individuation.
13.4. Monad In some of his later writings, Husserl uses the Leibnizian term “monad” for “the ego taken in full concreteness” (Hua I, 102). At face value, the Husserlian monad is largely equivalent to what, in the period of Ideas I, he meant by “pure consciousness.” In Ideas I, pure consciousness is the “phenomenological residuum” of the epoché, that about the self which survives the phenomenological reduction (Hua III/1, 59, 94).The later Husserl characterizes the monad as “the residuum of the phenomenological reduction” (Hua XIII, 52), such that he even equates
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the phenomenological attitude with the “reduction to my pure monad” (Hua XIII, 52, 262). However, on this face-value equivalence of the “monad” with “pure consciousness,” it seems we must renounce any ready internalist or strictly psychological interpretation of what the mature Husserl means by “consciousness.” For, according to the later Husserl, the monad consists not only of the pure ego and its lived experiences, but can also consist of an “environment” [Umwelt] composed by garden-variety objects, whose appearances are constrained by some subject’s psycho-physical constraints (Hua XIII, 47, 246–254, 276–277, 287–291). That this is not a new position, or a reversal of his position in Ideas I, can be gleaned from the following considerations. First, I take for granted the standard, majority view that what Husserl in Ideas I calls “noema” is just some intentional object. In particular, I agree with John J. Drummond that, in perception, the noema is not ontologically different in kind from some garden-variety object of perception: e.g., the noema of seeing a table just is, ontologically, the table itself (Drummond 1990, 94). Nevertheless, Husserl also insists throughout Ideas I that the noema is also immanent (Hua III/1, 182, 202–205, 220–221; see also Hua XIII, 411). Now, if we keep in mind the antiBrentanianism that I touched upon in section 13.3, if some perceptual noema is an ordinary object then that noema cannot be immanent to any intentional act. But then to what would the noema be immanent? In a remarkable parallel to Husserl’s conception of the pure ego, the best answer seems to be that, although the noema is transcendent to any particular lived experience, the noema is immanent to that personal unity of various lived experiences.That is, the noema is immanent to unifed consciousness. Notice, this interpretation dovetails with Husserl’s conception of the monad: the monad partially consists of some environment, the “same numerically identical nature” that any monad shares with any other monad (Hua XIII, 267). In this light, we are now confronted by another puzzle: namely, what must be the nature of Husserlian “consciousness” that it can consist of ordinary objects like chairs, tables and walls that make up some environment? The best answer seems to be the rejection of the sort of internalist interpretations of Husserl advanced by commentators like Dreyfus (1991) and Carmen (2003). For Husserl, consciousness cannot be some kind of purely mental or soul-like entity. Instead, by “consciousness,” it seems Husserl has in mind a kind of place in the world—literally, some location in space-time—the appearance of which is constrained by some set of psycho-physical circumstances (Hua XIII, 253–254, 291). And surely, there is nothing clearly internalist about such a conception of consciousness.
Note 1 By contrast, Locke writes: “since consciousness … [is] that [which] makes every one to be, what he calls self; and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things, in this alone consists personal identity, i.e. the sameness of a rational Being” (Locke 1975, 335; my italics).
References Allison, Henry E. 1983. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense. New Haven: Yale University Press. Brentano, Franz. 1995. Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. London: Routledge. Carman, Taylor. 2003. Heidegger’s Analytic: Interpretation, Discourse and Authenticity in Being and Time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dreyfus, Huber L. 1991. Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division One. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Drummond, John J. 1990. Husserlian Intentionality and Non-Foundational Realism. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Kant, Immanuel. 1996. Critique of Pure Reason. Indianapolis: Hackett.
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14 EIDETIC METHOD Daniele De Santis
When the frst book of the Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Philosophie was released in 1913, the main goal that Husserl aimed at achieving was to lay the foundations of what he labeled “an essentially new science” (Hua III/1, 3), a “new eidetics” (Hua III/1, 164), phenomenology as a “science of Ideas” (Hua III/1, 4–5) or, in a more emphatic way, as an eidetic science of transcendental phenomena belonging to the region of pure consciousness (Hua III/1, 6–7). Husserl’s chief burden was not only to ensure the possibility of such a new science by disclosing a new feld of investigation (“pure consciousness”), but frst and foremost to legitimize its methodology in opposition, on the one hand, to science of facts (e.g., empirical psychology) and, on the other hand, to already established eidetic sciences (e.g., geometry and mathematics). Since, as Husserl explains, there is an “object-province that corresponds to each science as the domain of its research and since for all correct statements there is a corresponding primal source of the grounding which alone can validate their legitimacy” (Hua III/1, 10–11), we will, frst, have to bring to the fore what kind of (eidetic) knowledge this new science is expected to convey and then, secondarily, what its methodology and validating procedure properly amount to. A remark is however needed: for in what follows we will be discussing what is usually called the method of eidetic or phantasy variation. As, indeed, the recently published Husserliana XLI (text 4, Der Wesensunterschied in den Wesensbegriffen und ihrer Bildung. Anschauungsbegriffe als Typenbegriffe gegenüber exakten Begriffen als Ideen) shows, Husserl used the technical phrase eidetische Variation for the frst time in a 1912 manuscript to indicate a method employed to attain (vordringen) “knowledge” of essential laws and their mutual connections. In this early context— rather than meaning an exclusively intuitive procedure to bring universals to the fore as eide accomplished in the realm of pure phantasy—the eidetic variation works to determine and spell out in statements the Wesengesetze that rule over the elements of “consciousness” and their relations. Rather than relying exclusively on a purely intuitive operation, here the phenomenologist has to consider both an intuitive and a propositional component: the former confrming and giving validity to the states of affairs and laws articulated and expressed by the latter. In the following presentation, we will focus our attention on the method of variation and strive to clarify its meaning and role within the more general problem of eidetic knowledge and method. In order to do so, we will have to explain what such “knowledge” and “method” are (Sections 14.1, 14.2) and then discuss the methodological signifcance of eidetic variation (Section 14.3).1 175
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14.1. The structure of eidetic knowledge: some basic notions As Husserl succinctly puts it, the phenomenologist’s goal is to achieve “scientifc cognition”, i.e., to work out “a system of concepts and statements of laws that have their source in the pure intuition of essences” (Hua III/1, 331).The quote perfectly expresses the three notions at stake in any eidetic knowledge: (i) there must obtain an articulation of concepts into a statement (ii) spelling out a law (iii) validated by the so-called intuition of essence. The clarifcation of the three elements just mentioned will provide us with all the basic notions we need to understand once and for all both the possibility and sense of eidetic knowledge and method. (i) In terms of propositions, there is a difference between so-called “judgments about essences” and “judgments having eidetic universal validity”. Whereas the former directly bear upon essences, e.g., “the essence ‘color’ is different from the essence ‘sound’”, the latter—even without “positing” any individual—judge in the mode “in general” (im Modus des Überhaupt) “about the individual, even though purely as a single particular case of the essence (Einzelheit des Wesens)” (Hua III/1, 18):“A color ‘in general’ is different from a sound ‘in general’”.This difference being recognized, Husserl immediately states what we might indicate as a sort of translatability between them: “any judgment about essence can be converted into an equivalent unconditionally universal judgment about single particular cases of such an essence” (Hua III/1, 19). The translatability might then be represented as follows (with J meaning judgment, ε standing for essence and c referring to the particular case of ε):
The translatability relation
Yet, as Husserl goes on to say, the mere direct relationship between J and ε, or the indirect one via c, does not complete the survey of our eidetic activity. In order to provide a more satisfactory account, we need to consider the objectual (i.e., ontological) correlate of the proposition as a result of our propositional activity:“It is now apparent that the following ideas belong together: eidetic judging, eidetic judgment or asserted eidetic proposition, eidetic truth (or true proposition)”.The correlate of the latter notion is the eidetic state of affairs (as obtaining in the eidetic truth), whereas the correlate of the proposition is the state of affairs as meant (Vermeintheit), in the sense of what is judged in the judgment and that can either obtain (true judgments) or not obtain (in the case of false judgments) (Hua III/1, 19). Let us make all of this clear by drawing a further diagram:
Eidetic knowledge
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The purpose of any eidetic inquiry, i.e., the pursuing and establishing of eidetic truths, consists of two steps: there is frst a signitive, or mere judgmental activity, delineating a possible state of affairs as intended and still in need of eventual confrmation (transition from a via b to b’); there is then, in the case of true propositions, a given state of affairs confrming the corresponding state of affairs and validating (by fulfllment) the relevant proposition, which now turns out to be establishing what we have been after, notably a so-called eidetic truth (from b’ via c to c’). Yet, if in the light of that diagram we know what a truth properly is, i.e., a proposition’s intended state of affairs being confrmed and validated by a given state of affairs, we do not at all know what would make such a truth precisely an eidetic one, a truth belonging to the feld of eidetic science. In other words: what does eidetic mean in the phrase eidetic truth or eidetic law? (ii) In a nutshell, Husserl describes “eidetic truths” as those truths “valid in an unconditional universality and necessity for everything possible as well as for everything authenticating itself as actual in actually occurring experience” (Hua V, 42).“Unconditional” universality and necessity seem to be the two primary features of any eidetic truth.Yet, as Husserl hastens to remark, even if the notions of “universality” and “necessity” are correlates, they are not to be confused: “An eidetic particularization (Besonderung) and singularization (Vereinzelung) of an eidetically universal state of affairs, in so far as it is that, is called an eidetic necessity” (Hua III/1, 19). If, then, the aspect of universality primarily applies to universal states of affairs, necessity pertains to the “propositional” consciousness to which a “state of affairs” is given precisely as a particularization of the universal one:“The consciousness of a necessity, more particularly a judging consciousness in which there is consciousness of a state of affairs as a particularization of an eidetic universality, is called an apodictic consciousness”.The situation might be illustrated as follows:
Apodictic consciousness
Our propositional consciousness (A) is aware—through the relation to a particular state of affairs (B)—of the universal one (C) of which B itself is only a particularization. In turn (by following the dotted line), the universality of C, being singularized in a particular—and thereby necessary—state of affairs (B), makes our propositional consciousness apodictic (A). It is worth pointing out that if, on the one hand, our judging consciousness is in a direct relationship only to (B), the particular and necessary state of affairs, it is, on the other hand, universality (C) that has priority over necessity: indeed, it is only by particularizing a universal state of affairs that B can be described as necessary and, therefore, our consciousness of it as apodictic. It is necessity to be primarily experienced by our propositional consciousness and the feature of universality is only indirectly given via necessity. The argument above allows us to take a further step in order to better understand the relation between “eidetic judging about individuals” and “the factual positing of something individual”. The eidetic universality can be applied, say, or transferred to something individual posited as “existing”. In so doing,“The state of affairs posited as actual is then a matter of fact insofar as it is an individual and actual state of affairs (individueller Wirklichkeitsverhalt); it is, however, an eidetic necessity insofar as it is a singularization of an essential universality” (Hua III/1, 20). 177
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(iii) Since, as has already been mentioned, universality seems to have priority, if we inquire into what is meant by Wesensallgemeinheit and how it is possible, the answer will be, to quote from the German text, that es sagt aus, was rein im Wesen gründet:“it expresses what is purely grounded on the essence” (Hua III/1, 20). Husserl speaks then of Wesenswahrheit and Wesensnotwendigkeit, Wesensallgemeinheit, Wesensmöglichkeit, and Wesensgesetz. Not only the two “modal” notions of necessity and possibility, but also universality, truth and law are determined in the light of the key concept of “essence”. Essences or eide,2 as Husserl urges over and over again, are new sorts of objects (Gegenstände), by “object” meaning—“in the necessarily broadened sense proper to formal logic”—any subject of possible true predications (jedes Subjekt möglicher wahrer Prädikationen) (Hua III/1, 15). This is why—being “states of affairs” (Sach-Verhalte), the objectual correlates of predications3—Husserl tends to speak, more and more frequently, not just of essence (Wesen), but of Wesen-Verhalte, that is, of “essential states of affairs” (he refers indeed to die originäre Gegebenheit des Wesensverhalte, (…) den jener Satz ausdrücklich hinstellte, “the originary givenness of the essential state of affairs explicitly set down by that proposition”) (Hua III/1, 20–21). Contrary to what a certain tradition has always—and misleadingly—taken Husserlian essences and eidetic intuition to be, notably, the intuition of concepts thought of as “crystallized in a splendid isolation”, for Husserl the highly dreaded notion of intuition of essence does refer to the intuition of (eidetic) states of affairs. Now, to expand upon the response to the question “what does eidetic mean in the phrase eidetic truth?”, one might uphold that if these truths are “valid in an unconditional universality and necessity for everything possible”, it is because they express states of affairs rooted in a relevant essence. Or, to put it better, because of the essence being “explicable” in propositions shaping Sachverhalte, which hence are essential states of affairs (Husserl speaks of the states of affairs “included” (beschlossen) in the essence (Hua III/1, 24)). Husserl hastens to point out that “no intuition of essence is possible without the free possibility of turning’s one regard to a corresponding ‘individual’ and forming an exemplary consciousness—just as, conversely, no intuition of something individual is possible without the free possibility of bringing about an ideation and, in it, directing one’s regard to the essence exemplifed in what is individually sighted” (Hua III/1, 15–16). Let us propose a fourth diagram to illustrate the argument.
Exemplary consciousness
The methodologically key moment is represented by the exemplary consciousness (following the upward movement) by which we regard an individual as exemplifying an essence. In this respect, the very same individual can be taken as exemplifying, alternatively, different essences and hence giving rise to different intuitions of essence and eidetic analyses: the “book” on my table might 178
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be regarded as an example of the essence “spiritual formation” (geistiges Gebilde) or of the essence “material object”, in so doing opening up the possibility of different lines of inquiry (and indeed, to put it as a slogan, die Differenzen zu sehen ist die Leidenschaft der Phänomenologie).4 Yet, Husserl speaks of “a system of concepts and statements of laws that have their source in the pure intuition of essences”.That is, the intuition of essence, by offering different (essential) states of affairs to our “gaze”, can either confrm and validate the states of affairs meant in and shaped by our judgmental activity or contradict and prove them wrong.
14.2. A Socratic procedure 14.2.1. The purpose of the method Let us start by providing an overview of the different levels, and corresponding goals, that we can aim at fulflling with the eidetic method.They can be grouped and listed as follows. (I) The frst level concerns what Husserl calls relation between “particular” and “universal” (Hua XXXI, 80–81) or, better, between a τόδε τι and a relevant essence.This can be done (I’) Either by subsuming an individual under an essence (Hua III/1, 33); or (I’’) By applying, so to say, the essence to the individual (Hua XXXV, 210). In so doing (see previous Figure) we move from our consciousness of something individual to the exemplary consciousness in which the individual is regarded as exemplifying an essence. In judgmental terms, the basic form is “This is … an α”. Such a relationship in which, as Husserl points out,“A is grasped through α” (A ist begriffen durch α) can be either framed as “A is an individual of the universal α” (emphasis on exemplifcation) or “α belongs to A” (emphasis on application) (Hua XXXV, 210). At this point it might be interesting to briefy discuss what a former Göttingen student of Husserl, Roman Ingarden, maintains in his essay Essentiale Fragen. In his view, the starting point of any eidetic investigation is what he calls the “frst essential question”, the one asking “What is this?”.To this question there corresponds, as an answer, a judgment that he refers to as an “identifcation judgment” (Bestimmungs-Urteil).5 If then the question reads “What is this?”, the answer will have the form “That is … an α”. For example: “that is a triangle”,“that is a rose”,“that is an intentional experience”.What is such an identifcation judgment about? In order to answer the question Ingarden refers to the Munich phenomenologist Alexander Pfãnder, who, in his Logic, describes identifcation judgments as those judgments that “determine the subject by stating its ‘what’ (Was)”:6 “In identifcation judgments, therefore, the copula not only carries out the general function of relating the predicatedetermination to the subject […] but posits, at the same time, that material unity (sachhaltige Einheit) which exists between the object and its ‘what’. Identifcation judgments are thus understood correctly only when this unique, material unity is co-posited along with them”. By following Pfãnder’s analysis and Ingarden’s one might then urge that (I) consists precisely in the possibility of forming “identifcation judgments”. (II) On a second level we meet with the explication of what Husserl refers to as “the relationship of an eidetic genus or species to its eidetic particularization among the relationships of ‘part’ and ‘whole’” (Hua III/1, 31–32). This can be seen as a further development of (I) in which we regard an individual in the light of the higher species and genus which are—according to the mereological terminology employed here—“directly” or “indirectly” “included” in the individual in question as exemplifying such or such a higher essence: 179
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“The eidetic singular essence thus implies collectively the universals lying above it and which, for their part, level by level, ‘lie one inside another’, the higher always lying inside the lower” (Hua III/1, 31). (III)By leaving off the realm of individuals, we face the problem to which Husserl refers in terms of “subordination of an essence to its higher species or to a genus” (Hua III/1, 33). In opposition to (II), where we focus the attention on the relationships species–genus only as they are exemplifed in a relevant individual, here we consider those relationships per se. Here too, Ingarden’s analysis might turn out to be helpful. Once we answer the frst question and get to know what this, as a τόδε τι, really is—for instance: “this is an hawk”, “this is an intentional experience” or, to quote his favorite example, “this is a square”, we could further investigate and ask “what is the hawk?”, “what is the intentional experience?”, “what is the square?”. The answer, in this case, cannot be another “identifcation judgment”; rather, it is what Ingarden refers to as a judgment of essence (Wesensurteil), whose general form is: “α is β with the properties a, b, c…” and spells out the relationship-articulation between the “genus” and one of its “species” regardless of them being exemplifed in a corresponding individual.7 Considering Ingarden’s example, if the question is “what is then the square?”, the response will sound like this: “The square (α) is the parallelogram (β) with four equal sides and four right angles (a, b, c…)”. Unlike “identifcation judgments”, where an individual is grasped and seen as exemplifying a lower species or a higher genus, in the case of “judgments of essence” we exclusively deal with essences and their relationships, as Husserl would say, of “including” and “being included”. (IV)At this point we reach the fnal level where, upon the basis of the more pregnant concepts of non-independence and independence, we work out all the “connections” of containedness, unity, and synthesis (Verknüpfung) “in a more proper sense” (Hua III/1, 35; likewise Hua XXXV, 83).This is the very moment, exclaims Husserl, in which we need to Sehen, Erfassen, Analysieren, to see, to grasp, to analyze in a very strict and rigorous sense (Hua III/1, 153). In other words, we need to see the essences (or Wesensverhalte), grasp the mutual essential relations (Wesenszusammenhänge) and analyze them by eventually giving them “conceptual expressions” (begriffiche Ausdrücke). In this sense, as Moritz Geiger once put it, phenomenology is the attempt “to let the givennesses speak freely, in the whole fullness of their being” (die Gegebenheiten rein als solche sprechen zu lassen, in der ganzen Fülle ihres Seins8). It is here that we can describe our “judgmental activity” as Gesetzes-Urteilen and the judgments themselves as establishing a Gesetz-Gebung. As Husserl emphatically points out, “the realm of universal judging” (das Reich des allgemeinen Urteilens) is “the realm of legislation” (das Reich der Gesetzgebung) (Hua XXXI, 83).The essential possibilities turn out, then, to be truly “necessary possibilities” (notwendige Möglichkeiten), i.e.,“forms of union of compatibility that are prescribed in the essences and delimited by laws of essence” (Hua III/1, 356; likewise Hua XXXI, 83). Such forms of union and compatibility, as determined and delimited by laws of essence, might be formulated in two different ways.We can either focus on the general law and say, for instance, that:
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•
“A is in general given along with B; in general then, if any A whatsoever is, so is B” (Überhaupt ist mit A B gegeben; überhaupt ist, wenn etwas A ist, es auch B) (Hua XXXV, 227). In so doing, we frame “general laws” expressing “necessary” connections and syntheses in the form of hypothetical judgments bearing exclusively upon essences, that is to say, upon their “essential connections” and mutual implications (Hua XXXV, 233); yet, one might also say: • “If any X is A, it is necessarily also B” or, even better,“if any X falls under A, it necessarily falls under B”. In this new case,“single particulars falling under one essence cannot exist without being determined by essences which at least share a generic community with other essences” (Hua III/1, 35). Hypothetical judgments assume now the possibility of something individual exemplifying the essence, or essences in question, hence their mutual connections.9 If identifcation judgments are πρότερον πρός ἡμάς, namely “frst for us” because they determine the individual as “exemplifying” such or such an essence, only judgments of essence are πρότερον φύσει—being judgments that express the essential connections and syntheses that can be rephrased in the form of hypothetical judgments (giving a defnite form to the above laws).
14.2.2. The method of the method Husserl himself speaks of a “Socratic procedure” (Hua V, 100); of course, it is not just a matter of “fxing linguistic usage, but rather, in such coinciding, it is one of making an […] essence stand out in what is intuitively given, and of fxing it as that which is meant by mere word-meaning”. Am Leitfaden der Wortbedeutungen, namely “following the guiding thread of word-meanings”—this is how the method might be properly presented.Yet, as Husserl himself hastens to explain: “Only in a clarifying intuition can it become apparent to us, through a purely expressive ftting of the word-meaning, the logical one, to the essence given in the intuition, whether the expression with its sense actually fts onto that which is unclearly meant” (Hua V, 87; likewise Hua-Mat IX, 27, where this procedure is explicitly compared to Socrates’ mode of inquiring).10 Before we embark upon a discussion of the method, it is necessary not to overlook the distinction between the following two notions and procedures: •
•
Making Distinct (Verdeutlichung): “Making a concept, what is meant by a word as such, distinct, is a procedure that occurs within the mere sphere of thought (Denksphäre). Before the least step toward clarifcation is taken […], what lies in the meaning can be considered: for example, in the ‘decahedron’, a body, a regular polyhedron with ten congruent lateral surfaces”. Clarifying (Klärung):“With clarifcation, we go beyond the sphere of mere word-meanings and signifying thinking; we bring the signifcations into congruity with the […] intuition, the […] object of the former with that of the latter” (Hua V, 101).
Once we go beyond the sphere of mere thought or meaning and look for a fulflling intuition, three possibilities can occur: the given state of affairs can (i) either confrm in toto the state of affairs as it was originally intended in the judgment; (ii) or disprove it in toto or, (iii) fnally, confrm some of the elements of the intended state of affairs while contradicting the remaining ones.While then (ii) will simply force us give up on the concept as it was semantically expli-
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cated in the intended state of affairs, (iii) calls for a re-elaboration (Husserl speaks of “producing anew” (Hua V, 102)) of the concept originally explicated and meant in the state of affairs. Of course, and Husserl could not be clearer on this point, (iv) one cannot rule out the possibility of different intended states of affairs that nevertheless fnd their confrmation in the same intuitively given state of affairs. Now, the application of the method follows three distinct steps, by Husserl sharply distinguished. (α) Let us say that we want to make clear the concept “material thing” and what it really “means”. To this end, we start making the concept distinct by defning it and formulating a state of affairs, spelling out, in a purely signitive manner, what a material thing is supposed to be; (β) At this point, given the state of affairs as it is meant in a judgment, we proceed from examples that “represent unquestionable applications of the word ‘thing’, e.g., stones, houses and the like, but are not content with merely snatching these up, so to speak, through the name, i.e., with ‘thinking’ by mere word-meanings. Rather, we proceed to intuition” (Hua V, 100); (γ) In so doing, we can make comparisons between the various given objects so as to bring to the fore “differences” and “commonalities”: “We look rather to that which in the intuitively given is, so to speak, brought out, covered, conceptually meant by the word-concept [and] which essential moments there are of the intuitively given, for whose sake the fact is precisely so ‘called’”. Now, if (α) corresponds to the operation of making a concept distinct (in this case by defning what a material thing is supposed to be), (β) includes what we have previously called “identifcation judgments” (“this is an (unquestionable) example of material thing”) on the basis of the defnition of the concept previously provided; after we compare all the examples at our disposal, (γ) will end up formulating judgments of essence, i.e., judgments stating not simply what “material things” are supposed to be, but what they actually and essentially are (“X is Y with the properties a, b, c…”), and see whether the judgment of essence confrms the defnition provided in (α). We can now further develop one of our previous Figures and propose the following schematization:
The full structure of eidetic knowledge
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14.3. Hic sunt phantasmata: phantasy (variation) and the method of eidetic knowledge In order to appreciate the role assigned to phantasy and phantasy “variation” within the framework of eidetic knowledge, thereby its methodological place in our last Figure), we will distinguish three arguments concerning their relation: (A) Indifference Argument. Since the “eidetic” or “essential truths” state pure possibilities and not solely factual or mere contingent connections, “they can be exemplifed for intuition in experiential givennesses—in data of perception, memory and so forth”; but they can be “equally exemplifed in data of mere phantasy” (Hua III/1, 16).The argument does not yet entail any gnoseological relevance, nor does it consider phantasy as playing any methodologically key role. It is based on the “ideal linkage between perception and phantasy” (Hua XIX/2, 645), according to which to each perception corresponds a conversion into a possible phantasy.This leads us to: (B) The so-called truth-conditions argument. If we take into account the difference between the “truth-conditions” of Daseins-Urteile, judgments as to matters of fact, and Wesens-Urteile, essential judgments or judgments bearing upon essences, it is apparent that in the former case the position of actual realities is included in their own propositional sense. Hence the defnition: a “judgment” is a “judgment as to matters of fact” iff its validity can be exemplifed and exhibited (ausweisen) only in data of perception and experience (Wahrnehmung und Erfahrung) (Hua XXVI, 121–122). An hic sunt phantasmata blocks the way to the “possibility” of exemplifying in phantasy the truth of judgments supposed to bear exclusively upon actual realities—in so doing giving us a negative criterion so as to discriminate judgments on matters of fact from essential judgments. In this sense, a judgment is not a judgment as to matters of fact if its validity can be exemplifed also in data of phantasy (likewise Hua V, 26–27). (C) Variation Argument. Upon the basis of (B), the hic sunt phantasmata represents a “necessary” yet not “suffcient” condition for the eidetic method to exclusively work with data of phantasy. In this respect, Husserl underlines both vantages and disadvantages of the act of phantasy: •
•
The “well-known” disadvantage of phantasy is that “it does not stand frm, even if it is clear; it quickly loses its fullness; it sinks into the semi-clear and the dark” (Hua V, 54)— in so doing making it very hard for the “scientifc investigator” to fx and describe what is intuitively given. In this sense, perception, not phantasy, owns methodological priority (Ideas I, §70); Yet, there are several reasons by virtue of which in phenomenology, as an eidetic science, “free phantasies acquire a position of primacy over perceptions” (Hua III/1, 161–162); the main being that the phenomenological Wesensgestaltungen or “formations” to be investigated, described, and then eidetically fxed, are infnite: to our end, namely in order to investigate as many formations as possible, we “can use the resource of originary givenness only to a limited extent”.
From both (B) and (C) it follows that the key and “unavoidable” role assigned to phantasy in the course of our eidetic investigations and clarifcations is due not only to its ability to “negatively” discriminate between Daseinsurteile and non-Daseinsurteile, but also to its contriving a potentially infnite amount of data (larger than that provided by perception) to either confrm or disprove the states of affairs as they are intended at the outset in our judgments. 183
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Now, if we want to locate the process of variation in our last Figure, it would appear between (b’’–c) and (c’), between the identifcation judgments, which yield us an unquestionable application of the starting states of affairs, and the establishing of judgments of essence. Let us try to explain it better. In order to make a concept distinct, we defne it by formulating a state of affairs (b’), which is merely meant in a judgment.Then we point to an individual that can assume the role of unquestionable application of the state of affairs; on the basis of this individual we formulate an identifcation (b’’) judgment, which hence takes it as exemplifying the essence and confrming the initial state of affairs (c). Here phantasy comes into play with its ability to contrive, by varying on the given exemplifying state of affairs, potentially infnite new ones. It is worth emphasizing the twofold task that the variation can be called for to accomplish: •
•
As suggested by (γ) we need to look to a multiplicity of exemplars in order to compare and bring to the fore commonalities as well as differences. In this sense, the variation is simply asked to yield a multiplicity of variants of the starting example as confrming the original state of affairs as it was meant in the judgment.The phenomenologist employs here the variation, as already said, in her way to bring about judgments of essence; Nevertheless, the variation can be also appealed to in order to determine the limits of application and the conceptual boundaries of a judgment of essence already formulated.To this end, we operate in the opposite way: we make that judgment of essence (“X is Y with the properties a, b, c…”) our new starting point and frame alternative states of affairs (“X is Y with the properties a, b, d…” and “X is Y with the properties a, b, e…”). Now, by going back to (b’’), we make use of phantasy (variation) to come up with a case that can be held as an example of the new state of affairs. If this is not the case, namely, if the variation turns out to be unable to yield the example, it means that the property was essential to the state of affairs and limits its application. If, by contrast, the variation yields such a case exemplifying the new state of affairs, the latter obtains validity and the original concept has been modifed according to one (or more) of its properties.11 ***
Unlike Husserl’s later development of the method of variation as a purely intuitive procedure, here the eidetic or phantasy variation is construed as a part of the method of eidetic knowledge characterizing phenomenology as an eidetic science. Rather than being used in order to bring about the intuitive “apprehension” of universals as eide, here the eidetic variation operates, say, in collaboration with different judgmental forms (identifcation judgments, judgments of essence) to either provide the basis for the establishing of eidetic truths, or validate (by fxing its boundaries) an already established one.12 This work was supported by the European Regional Development Fund-Project “Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions of the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World” (No. CZ.02 .1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000734).
Notes 1 For a general and overall work on phantasy, see Volonté 1997. 2 For the sake of clarity we are not making any distinction between the notions of essence as Wesen and pure essence as eidos in this context. In Ideas I Husserl takes the notion of “pure essence”, not just essence, to mean the same as eidos. On the difference between essence and eidos, Sowa 2007, 88:
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3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12
“Essences in the pregnant sense demanded by Husserlian descriptive eidetics are pure essences, which Husserl also refers to as eide. Eide or pure essences, however, are not correlates of any general concepts; rather, they are exclusively correlates or pure general concepts. These pure concepts especially occur in pure material laws or material eidetic laws, and are presupposed by these laws”; and Majolino 2010, 595:“‘Eidos’ n’est donc pas un autre nom pour ‘essence’, une essence étant, en un sens très général, tout ce dont un individu donné (un tode ti, concret ou abstrait) peut être l’exemple. L’eidos husserlien est en revanche une ‘essence pure’, c’est-à-dire une essence dont l’intuition […] se fonde sur l’apparaître d’un individu qui peut être autant le corrélat d’un acte positionnel (perception, mémoire, attente, etc.) que d’un acte positionnellement neutre”. “In the judgment a state of affairs ‘appears’ before us, or, put more plainly, becomes intentionally objective to us” (Hua XIX/1, 461). Geiger 1933, 5. Ingarden 1925, 148 (§6). Pfänder 1963, 47–48. Ingarden 1925, 220–263. For a detailed analysis, De Santis 2014. Geiger 1933, 4. For a phenomenological analysis of the different meanings of the hypothetical proposition in relation to ontological problems and eidetic analysis, see Ingarden 1958, 443–446. This aspect was already emphasized by Wilhelm Pöll (1936, 112–114), a former student of Pfänder. We agree with Sowa 2010, 548, when he claims:“along with Austin, we give the ‘initial word’ to everyday language and its often already very subtle conceptual articulations of certain domain of phenomena, although we already know at the outset that it will not be ‘the fnal word’.The (provisional) ‘fnal’ word will be the result of descriptive analyses provided in the form of an ensemble of eidetic laws through which the everyday concepts that we began the analysis with gain new, intuitively deepened, and intuitively calibrated signifcations”. See also Mohanty 1991, 267–268, on the necessity of a preliminary acquaintance with the meaning of the concept at stake. Sowa 2010, 547–548, describes the process as an attempt to “proceed from frm exemplars to frm counterexamples of the thematic universal and from there to limit-cases in which the application of the concept becomes dubitable”. Lohmar 2005, 71, correctly speaks of “justifcation” of our concepts “on the basis of a fulflling intuition” (die Berechtigung von Begriffen auf dem Grunde der erfüllenden Anschauung) (see also what he says on pages 83 and 86 on the Grenze unserer Begriffe). Only in this sense one can also speak of a method employed to “clarify” “vague concepts” (see page 78), according to the distinction between Verdeutlichung and Klärung.
References De Santis, Daniele. 2014.“L’idea della fenomenologia come fenomenologia della Idee. Su di un Peri Ideon tra Gottinga e Monaco.” In: Di Idee ed essenze. Un dibattito su fenomenlogia e ontologia (1921–1930). Ed. Daniele De Santis. Milan: Mimesis, pp. 7–139. Geiger, Moritz. 1933. “Alexander Pfänders methodische Stellung.” In: Neue Münchner Abhandlungen. Festschrift für Alexander Pfänder. Hrsg. Ernst Heller, Friedrich Löw. Leipzig: Barth, pp. 1–16. Ingarden, Roman. 1925. “Essentiale Fragen. Ein Beitrag zu dem Wesensproblem.” Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung (7): pp. 125–304. ———. 1958.“The Hypothetical Proposition.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (18): pp. 435–450. Lohmar, Dieter. 2005. “Die phänomenologische Methode der Wesensschau und ihre Präzisierung als eidetische Variation.” Phänomenologische Forschungen: pp. 65–91. Majolino, Claudio. 2010. “La partition du réel: Remarques sur l’eidos, la phantasia, l’effondrement du monde et l’être absolu de la conscience.” In: Philosophy, Phenomenology, Sciences, Essays in Commemoration of Edmund Husserl. Eds. Carlo Ierna, Hanne Jacobs, Filip Mattens. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 573–660. Mohanty, Jitendra Nath. 1991. “Method of Imaginative Variation in Phenomenology.” In: Thought Experiments in Science and Philosophy. Eds. Tamara Horowitz and Gerald Massey. Savage: Rowman & Littlefeld, pp. 261–272. Pfänder, Alexander. 1963. Logik. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer. Pöll, Wilhelm. 1936. Wesen und Wesenserkenntnis. Untersuchungen mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Phänomenologie Husserls und Schelers. München: Ernst Reinhardt.
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Daniele De Santis Sowa, Rochus. 2007. “Essences and Eidetic Laws in Edmund Husserl’s Descriptive Eidetics.” The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy (7): pp. 77–108. ———. 2010. “The Universal as ‘What is in Common’: Comments on the Proton-Pseudos in Husserl’s Doctrine of the Intuition of Essence.” In: Philosophy, Phenomenology, Sciences, Essays in Commemoration of Edmund Husserl. Eds. Carlo Ierna, Hanne Jacobs, and Filip Mattens. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 525–557. Volonté, Paolo. 1997. Husserls Phänomenologie der Imagination. Zur Funktion der Phantasie bei der Konstitution der Erkenntnis. Freiburg, München:Verlag Karl Alber.
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15 ETHICS John J. Drummond
The term “ethics” in the phenomenological tradition is used in a broad sense, encompassing (1) ethics considered as the discipline that investigates the nature of the good life and the notions of character and virtue; (2) moral philosophy considered in the Humean sense as the discipline whose subject matter is the human as born for action; and (3) morality considered in its broadly accepted contemporary sense as the discipline that investigates, most often with a view to our relations with others, the right and the wrong, the obligatory, non-obligatory (permissible), and the impermissible. On contemporary understandings, in other words, moral philosophy is the philosophical discipline concerned with the question:What is the right thing to do? The term “ethics,” by contrast, denotes the philosophical discipline concerned with the questions: What is the good life—the fourishing life—for humans? And:What sort of character must I develop in order to realize that life? In the phenomenological tradition, however, the term “ethics” has been used in relation to all these and other questions as well, such as: What is the ground of ethical life? What is it to act morally? And: How does practical reason come to know what to do? Indeed, to put the matter as briefy as possible: for phenomenologists “ethics” refers to every form of moral experience, from grounding experiences to recognizing goods to be pursued and bads to be avoided to choosing what to do. Speaking most generally, then, phenomenologists are concerned to clarify the intentional structures at work in (1) our varied experiences of valuing, choosing, planning, trying, striving, and acting in ways that have moral signifcance; (2) our experiences of persons, actions, situations, and events as good or bad and right or wrong; and (3) our experiences of institutions and social structures as benefcial or harmful or as liberating or imprisoning.1 These varied experiences include moral perceptions encompassing not only the use of one’s perceptual faculties but also one’s affective responses to what is sensibly given. Such perceptions involve the appearance of an instantiated moral attribute2 as presented in one’s perceptual/ emotional experience. Moral perception underlies moral judgment, i.e., the formation of a proposition explicitly asserting the belongingness of a moral attribute to one’s actions (present, past, or in prospect) or to one’s character (present, past, or future) or to the actions or character of another. Moral judgments can be spontaneous judgments of the value of a thing, action, or person, or they can be the result of moral deliberation, i.e., the process of formulating moral propositions in which one mulls over their plausibility, thinks about reasons for and against, entertains other options, and so forth, all of this with the aim of reaching a moral verdict of some 187
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type about some course of action or issue. Moral deliberation often takes the form of weighing competing goods and recognizing the priority of one good over another, a recognition that underlies the experience of an obligation to realize the higher good. Arguably, however, the experience of obligation can be direct and absolute, for example, in the experience of another person as, say, making (spoken or unspoken) demands of various sorts upon an agent. Moral emotions, we have suggested, are already at work in moral perception’s presenting things as good or bad and in our judgments of value and obligation. Moreover, moral emotions, both positive (e.g., gratitude, respect, admiration) and negative (e.g., embarrassment, shame, guilt), besides having a robust and complex phenomenal character, have ethical signifcance insofar as a well-ordered and balanced emotional life, both personally and in our interpersonal relationships, is a constituent of a fourishing life (see, e.g., Drummond 2010; Ozar 2010; Hermberg and Gyllenhammer 2013; Steinbock 2014, 2016; Drummond and Rinofner-Kreidl 2017). All these categories and aspects of moral experience are facets of our moral agency and part of the subject matter of moral phenomenology. Moreover, they are porous; they blend into and separate from another in ways that are themselves subject to phenomenological investigation and description. In what follows, I shall not explicitly discuss where and how moral phenomenology intersects different approaches to normative ethics and contemporary discussions in metaethics, but I do hope to illustrate them.
15.1 Axiology and ethics The porous character of moral experiences is most evident in the moral phenomenology of the early phenomenologists—those working (roughly) in the frst third of the twentieth century, such as Edmund Husserl (see 1988; 2004), Adolf Reinach (1912–13), Edith Stein (1989; 2007), Max Scheler (1973), Nicolai Hartmann (1963), and Dietrich von Hildebrand (1916; 1922; 1953a)—who adopted an axiological approach to ethics.These phenomenologists agree that values and the signifcance that attaches to them are dependent for their disclosure on subjects capable of feelings and emotions.They agree that intentional feelings (or emotions) grasp value-objects independent of those feelings, at least in the sense that a thing’s being valuable is not reducible to its being felt valuable. To that extent, they are all value-realists. Furthermore, they agree that the emotions have moral relevance and that our choices are in some manner rooted in the emotional disclosure of the value of both the ends at which the agent aims and the actions considered conducive to those ends. The simple statement of these agreements, however, obscures signifcant differences among their views. In particular, there is disagreement about the nature of value as experienced, a disagreement best exemplifed in the difference between Husserl, on the one hand, and Scheler and Hartmann, on the other. For Husserl, to experience a value is to have an intentional feeling or emotion grasp an object (e.g., a thing, state of affairs, action, event, person, institution) as valued. The value of the object is grounded in particular, non-axiological properties possessed by the object, which, relative to the physiological constitution, interests, concerns, and commitments of the subject, are valuable in the current experiential context. This is a “weak” value realism insofar as the value attribute is understood as a dyadic attribute dependent upon both features of the object and subjective structures at work in the subject’s evaluatively intending the object. Husserl characterizes this experience of value as a type of perception; he uses the term wertnehmen (1989, 12)—a modifcation of wahrnehmen, to perceive or take as true—to denote the taking of “objects, things, qualities, and states of affairs that stand there in the valuing as valuable (im Werten als werte)” (Husserl 2014, 190). Such value-perceptions underlie both value-judg188
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ments and the identifcation of the a priori “values as objects themselves” [Wertgegenstände or Wertobjektitäten (Husserl 2014, 190–1)], which involves the identifcation of the non-axiological properties and the subjective interests, concerns, or commitments necessary for an object to have that value. Given his view that the value is frst and foremost the valued object (a thing, event, or situation) perceived or judged, Husserl adopts a version of Franz Brentano’s idealized utilitarianism, one that views ethics as a thoroughly rational and objective discipline comparable in its rigor and universality to logic and whose laws underlie choices that seek to maximize the good. The rationalism of Husserl’s ethics is tied to the views (1) that our ethical judgments are grounded in an evidential insight into axiological and practical truths and (2) that the laws governing our axiological and ethical reasoning are a priori laws. Ethical norms are grounded in a theoretical science whose claims about the rules governing the contents of moral thinking are necessary and universal. In this vein, Husserl articulates a version of the categorical (but not Kantian) imperative inherited from Brentano: “Do what is best among what is attainable within your entire practical sphere” (Hua XXVIII, 142, 221). Husserl reformulates this subjective formulation in more objective terms:“What is best among what is achievable in the entire practical sphere is not only comparatively the best, but the sole practical good” (Hua XXVIII, 221). Husserl also identifed two other fundamental laws: (1) the laws of the summation of goods [“the existence of a good alone is better than the simultaneous existence of a good and a bad”; “the existence of a good and a bad at the same time is better than the existence of a bad alone”; “the existence of two random goods together is better than the existence of one of them alone”; and “for every summative composite of values, the sum of goods is better than an individual good belong to the summation or any reduction of it” (Hua XXVIII, 93–4, 97)] and (2) the law of absorption [“In every choice, the better absorbs the good, and the best absorbs everything else that is to be valued as a practical good in and of itself ” (Hua XXVIII, 136)].Taken together, these laws entail a consequentialism aimed at acting so as to achieve the greatest summative good. Husserl subsequently considered an objection, raised by Moritz Geiger, to the laws of the summation of goods (Hua XXVIII, 419–22). Geiger objected that not all values are comparable. Hence, they cannot be summed in a simple calculation. Husserl considered the example of a mother faced with a choice between rescuing her own child or another person, even when that other person is of exceptional character and whose continued life would maximize the good of the greatest number.The mother, Husserl concedes, need not even consider saving the other person. The mother’s love for her child demands that she protect her child from harm even when sacrifcing her child is a lesser good for the aggregate or when saving her child leads to harm for others. Central to Husserl’s new position is the recognition that the same objective value can become an “individual, subjective value of love,” i.e., that “the same value can be infnitely more ‘signifcant’ for one person than another” (Hua-Mat IX, 146n.). Hence, Husserl came to favor the view that “absolute loves” (commitments) generate “absolute oughts” (HuaMat IX, 146; 2014, 391–2).This does not entail a subjective relativism; instead, the idea is that an object valued by a subject with certain commitments (loves) unconditionally binds that subject to honor those commitments regardless of what any purely objective calculation might require (Hua XLII, 391–2). Such absolute loves motivate an agent to adopt an ethical life-project and to undertake those actions necessary to realize that project, a project that is “the deepest ground of [her] personal identity and individuality” (Melle 1991, 131; see also 2002, 243–4).3 Scheler (1913–16), in contrast to Husserl, adopts a stronger version of value realism. He identifes an emotive intentionality through which values are directly apprehended a priori. The experience of value in an intentional feeling or emotion is prior to the experience of an object as a bearer of value.The prior apprehension of the value underlies the grasp of the object as a good.The value-perception, in brief, apprehends the instantiated value as the good-making 189
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characteristic of the object valued as good, but, contra Husserl, the value does not depend on any non-axiological properties of the bearer or any psychological features of the subject experiencing it.While valued objects (goods), considered as objects of desire, are empirical, variable, and subjective, the values themselves are not; they are a priori, immutable, and objective ideals. Whereas, for Husserl, values are a priori (necessary features of objects possessing that value) but not epistemologically prior to goods, they are, for Scheler, ontologically and epistemologically prior to goods.And whereas for Husserl value attributes are dyadic, value-objects are for Scheler monadic. Scheler further believes that there is an a priori hierarchy of values, a fact that has moral signifcance.The lowest level comprises values of the pleasant and unpleasant. Next are the vital values, such as the fne and the vulgar; then the spiritual values, such as the beautiful and the ugly, correctness and incorrectness.At the highest level are the values of the holy and unholy. It is noteworthy, however, that the list does not itself include any moral values. Scheler views moral values as attaching to the actions that realize the values listed in the hierarchy. This view is rooted in Scheler’s distinction between the purely ideal ought-to-be (the value) and the moral ought-to-do (Scheler 1973, 203ff.). In opposition to Kant’s formal, categorical imperative, Scheler claims that insight into the ideal ought-to-be serves as the basis for willing and for realizing the moral ought-to-do. But there is no clear account in Scheler of the transition from the insight into ideal value-possibilities to the experience of moral imperatives, for the experienced value must be grasped in a feeling, i.e., it must strike one as desirable or lovable prior to the experience of the moral ought-to-do. Because the relation between the desire for the value itself and the experience of the imperative is not elucidated, it is not clear how, or even whether, the moral ought would be recognized were one not to experience the feeling or emotion directed to the value itself. Scheler’s imperatives, therefore, would, in Kant’s terms, be only hypothetical imperatives. Hartmann, like Scheler, maintains that feelings and emotions access a priori values. Hartmann stresses to a greater degree than Scheler the universality of values, although he tacks back toward Husserl in recognizing that values can have a different importance to different persons. Hartmann, more interested in metaphysics than in epistemological matters, discusses less the nature of value-consciousness and more the nature of value itself. He advances the view that ideal values are experienced as universal demands, but he acknowledges that personal and universal values confict in ways that can never be fully resolved.To do what everyone should do in the same circumstances is, in effect, to say an agent is replaceable by anyone, and this is to deny the agent’s individuality as a person (Hartmann 1963, 357). Indeed, Hartmann argues an even stronger point. Appeals to universal principles depend upon a typicality among the situations in which we are called upon to act, but any maxim of action must be tied to a particular situation and to a particular agent in that situation. Hence, the universality of a principle undercuts its own applicability to a particular situation that, owing to the uniqueness of persons and their interests and commitments, is itself unique (Hartmann 1963, 358–60). Universal principles, in a paradoxical way, just insofar as they fail to heed the individual personalities of agents, do not, and cannot, offer moral guidance.
15.2. An ethics of freedom Martin Heidegger was a critic of the then-prevalent theories of value (see, e.g., 2010, 97). He argued instead that the experience of value depends upon the prior disclosedness (Erschlossenheit) of being-in-the-world. Disclosedness, for Heidegger, is a function of three, equally primordial, dimensions of our being-in-the-world: understanding, disposedness (Befndlichkeit),4 and discourse. Being-disposed to the world is to fnd oneself immersed in the world in a particular 190
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affective state. Disposedness, to put the matter differently, “manifests itself as affect: mood, feeling, emotion … [I]t is through mood that the world as a whole—the context of signifcance co-structured by my projects—is opened up as mattering in a certain way” (Crowell 2013, 70–1). Heidegger’s analysis of anxiety, however, reveals that the context of signifcance can break down such that what previously mattered no longer does. Such a breakdown reveals a subject who is called to give meaning back to the world and responsible for the meaning given. It is disputed whether Heidegger commits himself to a “decisionism” (see, e.g., Tugendhat 1986; Okrent 1999) or a “deep deliberation” (Burch 2010, 212; Crowell 2007, 55–6, 59–62; 2013, 206–13).Whichever view is correct, for our purposes we need note only that Heidegger does not develop an explicit theory of value beyond his discussions of Befndlichkeit or of ethics beyond his discussions of conscience (Gewissen) and resoluteness (Entschlossenheit). Subsequent phenomenologists develop the idea of decision or choice as constitutive of value more systematically. Jean-Paul Sartre (1992), Simone de Beauvoir (1948), and Maurice MerleauPonty (2012) all believe that values are created in the exercise of human freedom. Sartre, for example, attributes the reality of values to the fact that the freedom defnitive of human beings can consciously and freely transcend what exists in their own situation and grasp a non-existent possibility as the object of their desires and choices. Human autonomy, in other words, is the sole source of value, including the value of human existence itself. On Sartre’s view, an autonomous agent recognizes and values his or her existence as it is: free, gratuitous, and lacking transcendent values to justify it (Sartre 1992, 76–8). Although there are factical circumstances that serve as obstacles to the (morally) solipsistic agent’s exercise of freedom—obstacles that are to be overcome—freedom itself is unconstrained by objective values or principles. Sartre, in brief, affrms an anti-realist axiology. Simone de Beauvoir follows Sartre both in placing freedom and transcendence at the center of her ethical refections and in recognizing the obstacles freedom faces in its exercise and in transcending the limitations of the human situation. Indeed, this is, for de Beauvoir, the fundamental ambiguity that characterizes human existence.A human being, identical with its freedom and unconstrained by objective principle, chooses freedom as its end. However, the goal at which freedom aims “is not fxed once and for all” but rather “is defned all the along the road which leads to it” (de Beauvoir 1948, 153). De Beauvoir also believes, moreover and now moving beyond Sartre, that one must not merely tolerate the freedom of others; the other’s freedom cannot be viewed simply as an obstacle to one’s freedom. Rather, one’s own freedom and the realization of one’s projects requires the (cooperative) freedom of others. For Merleau-Ponty, moral agency is analogous to artistic expression insofar as it attempts to institute value within the limitations of a given situation.Whereas Sartre thinks that meaning—and not only value—is constituted in the free, even if unconscious and non-deliberated choices of agents, Merleau-Ponty believes that persons are born into a world already permeated with meaning and that freedom is exercised in this context. Moral agents take the world as a task to be completed, a task of instituting meaning and value wherever and whenever possible (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 32).To create value consists in actively taking up our situations of chance, making something out of contingency, establishing communicative relationships, and creating and recreating values by working to change the world such that values may truly be instantiated (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 464–73, 480–1).
15.3. An ethics of obligation Values are often experienced as confronting us, that is, as prescriptions, norms, imperatives, obligations, demands, requirements, and so forth. But since, in the views discussed above, values 191
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are largely experienced as arising in relation to our interests, our feelings and emotions, or our choices, it would seem that we are always (at least somewhat) free to value and choose otherwise, precisely because our interests, feelings, and choices can vary. It is, in other words, diffcult to understand in what sense the values we encounter as the objects of our feelings, emotions, interests, desires, and choices can be thought to impose obligations. Hartmann, we have seen, adopts a skeptical attitude toward the possibility of universal ethical rules (although not universal values). This attitude is for him rooted not merely in the fact of freedom but in the very structure of individual personhood itself.Von Hildebrand, by contrast, seeks to address this problem of accounting for obligation from within the axiological approach. Thinking that Scheler’s view allows for the spontaneous love of value as heteronomously motivating action, von Hildebrand insists that moral obligation has not hypothetical but categorical force (although he avoids Kant’s formalism). Von Hildebrand speaks of the “importance” (Bedeutsamkeit) of objects, where importance is understood as that “property of a being which gives it the character of a bonum or a malum” (von Hildebrand 1953b, 24) and, hence, what enables the being to awaken a person’s interest and motivate her to act.Von Hildebrand distinguishes three “categories” of importance: the “subjectively satisfying” to or for a person; the “objective good for the person”; and the “important-in-itself ” (von Hildebrand 2016, 14). Since the second category presupposes the third, these in practice collapse into two (see, e.g., von Hildebrand 1953b, 34–43, 53–9), and von Hildebrand concludes,“Only that which is important-in-itself is a value in the true sense” (von Hildebrand 2016, 16).Von Hildebrand argues that any attempt to ground an imperative in the experience of the subjectively satisfying determines the will only contingently and heteronomously, and he identifes a group of intrinsic values that “challenge” (rather than “invite”) the agent apart from any relation to subjective interests, emotions, desires, needs, and wants (von Hildebrand 1953b, 42). If, however, he gains a ground for obligation in so doing, he does so at the expense of divorcing these values and their attendant challenges from their importance to or for an agent. This, in turn, raises questions concerning whether things having intrinsic value can by themselves motivate action. It is the problem of making the transition from the experience of value to the experience of obligation that provides the context for understanding those phenomenologists, chief among them Emmanuel Levinas, who seek to ground the notion of obligation independently of the notion of value. Levinas claims that the experience of obligation is prior to all acts of evaluation, all choices, all projects, and all dictates of reason. Hence, Levinas considers ethics to be wholly non-teleological in character.This is expressed in his opposition to “totalizing” views of ethics that organize all our ethical experience under a single ego-centered overarching set of values or hypergoods or an objective hierarchy of goods. Obligation arises for Levinas, as it does for Kant, from beyond all “inclinations.” Unlike Kant, however, Levinas turns his attention to intersubjectivity to fnd the ground of obligation.Whereas the phenomenological axiologists and advocates of a freedom-centered ethic stress the frst-person perspective, Levinas adopts a “second-person perspective” (cf. Darwall 2006) in which moral demands are experienced in encountering the “face” of the Other. Levinas’s ethics begins from the fact that intersubjective life begins when another addresses me, summons me, and commands me.The “face” of the other is pure expression (Levinas 1969, 66), and this expressive face,“exceeding the idea of the other in me” (Levinas 1969, 50), carries the summons and the command. The other and I are in an asymmetrical relation; the other’s ethical superiority outweighs my egoism (Levinas 1969, 215). The other approaches from on high, disconcerting my conscious intentionality and contesting my freedom, calling both into question in such a way that I have no choice but to respond.The other’s address, summons, and command awaken in me a sense of responsibility such that my concerns must transcend the 192
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merely egoistic in the direction of the other (Levinas 1969, 43, 50–1; 1998, 181). Encountering the face of the other in a face-to-face relation gives rise to transcendence in the response to the summons and the recognition (implicit or explicit) of the command. Only because I have already acknowledged this command do I live in a world with the other and become a person myself. Morality begins, then, neither with my feelings and emotions nor with my freedom, but with the recognition that my freedom is arbitrary.The other challenges my identity by presenting itself as a face that exceeds any idea I can have of him or her. In confronting me in this manner, this radical alterity obligates me to give more of myself than I can expect from the other. The experience of the other is thus from the start an experience of obligation. The question raised by this account is similar to the one raised by von Hildebrand’s account. I can encounter moral obligation as my obligation only insofar as what I encounter is referred back to my moral concerns. As Hartmann recognizes, obedience to the moral imperative apart from any reference to inclinations depersonalizes the action—whether in Kant, von Hildebrand, or Levinas—insofar as the action is divorced even from the agent’s will to fourish precisely as a moral agent through obedience to the moral imperative and in fulflling her own moral commitments. The will to fourish is entirely displaced in Kant by obedience to law, in von Hildebrand by obedience to the call of the important-in-itself (value), and in Levinas by the presence of the Other. The question arises whether this is satisfactory as an account of moral motivation.
15.4. Other developments It would be misleading to leave the impression that these are the only issues discussed by phenomenological thinkers or that these thinkers are the only ones by means of which connections to developments in contemporary moral (and political) philosophy can be established. One need note only (1) Hannah Arendt’s attempt to retrieve the Aristotelian notion of the polis (1958; 1968) and to synthesize notions of radical freedom with the excellences of the Greeks, the virtù of Machiavelli, the virtues of Montesquieu, and Jefferson’s notion of citizenship, or (2) Gabriel Marcel’s discussion of the virtue of fdelity and of the manner in which it imposes unconditional obligations on the faithful agent (1964), or (3) Adolf Reinach’s discussions of the a priori foundations of civil law (1983) and of deliberation (1989), or (4) Herbert Spiegelberg’s attempt to establish a value-based foundation of natural law (1935; 1937; 1986), or (5) Paul Ricoeur’s discussions of the nature of justice (1992; 1995; 2001). Nor are phenomenological approaches to ethics (in the broad sense outlined at the beginning) of mere historical interest. There has recently been an explosion of interdisciplinary research into the emotions, including work by phenomenologists. Although not all of this research is concerned with the evaluative role and ethical signifcance of the emotions, much of it revives the axiological and teleological approaches of the early phenomenologists. For example, Íngrid Vendrell Ferran has explored the work on the emotions by early, realist phenomenologists (2008), and she has explored the implications of their work for contemporary metaethics and theory of value (2013) and for the analysis of individual moral emotions (see, e.g., 2017). Ullrich Melle (e.g., 1991; 1992; 1997; 2007) and Henning Peucker (2011), in addition to editing Husserl’s ethical writings, have offered careful commentary on those writings. Sonja RinofnerKreidl, developing ideas found in Husserl and Scheler, has explored the ethical signifcance of a number of emotions (e.g., 2011; 2014a; 2014b; 2017). Sophie Loidolt (e.g., 2010; 2011; 2018) has developed ideas from both Husserl and Arendt. Sara Heinämaa (e.g., 2014; 2017),Anne Ozar (e.g., 2009; 2010; 2017), and Michael Kelly (e.g., 2016a; 2016b; 2016c) have analyzed morally relevant emotions, and Paul Gyllenhammer (e.g., 2010, 2017) has tied his analyses of emo193
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tions to the virtues (see also Reynolds 2013). John Drummond (e.g., 2006; 2010; 2013; 2015; 2017) has modifed Husserl’s understanding of the founded character of intentional feelings and emotions and developed a eudaimonistic account that also addresses the issue obligation from within an axiological framework. Janet Donohoe (2004) and James Hart (e.g., 1992; 1997) have explored Husserl’s later ethical thought, and Anthony Steinbock (e.g., 2014; 2016) has developed a view of moral emotions grounded in Scheler’s views.William Smith (2012), Irene McMullin (forthcoming), and Steven Crowell (e.g., 2007a; 2007b; 2013; 2015) have addressed the question of moral normativity from a Heideggerian perspective. Similarly, there have been many commentators who have developed Levinas’s insight into ethics as frst philosophy (e.g., Cohen 1985; Bernasconi 1989; Bergo 1999; 2002; 2011). This recitation of both previous and current phenomenologists, incomplete as it is, is suffcient, I believe, to reveal the liveliness, breadth, and importance of phenomenological refection on the ethical.
Notes 1 In what follows, I shall use the term “ethics” in this broad phenomenological sense, and I shall use the expression “moral phenomenology” as coterminous with “ethics.” One caveat: the expression “moral phenomenology” in the contemporary philosophical world is used in several senses. It can refer simply to the refection upon the “what-it’s-like” of different moral experiences involving feelings of some sort, or it can refer to a refection upon the character and content of moral experiences that are available to a frst-personal, psychological introspection. The latter view would include in the scope of moral phenomenology a consideration of not only the what-it’s-likeness of the experience but its representative content. Finally,“moral phenomenology” can refer to the study of the structures of frstpersonal experience and its intentional object, where that intentional object is not a psychological or mental content. It is in the last sense that I use the expression; cf. Drummond 2007. 2 For the use of the term “attribute” rather than “property,” see Geach (1956), Williams (1993), Drummond (2005). 3 This idea is similar to Charles Taylor’s (1989, 63) notion of “hypergoods” as “goods which not only are incomparably more important than others but provide the standpoint from which these must be weighed, judged, decided about.”The orientation to such a good,Taylor says,“comes closest to defning my identity, and therefore my direction to this good is of unique importance to me.” 4 Befndlichkeit is one of Heidegger’s many neologisms and is diffcult to translate. It captures something at play in the ordinary greeting Wie befnden Sie sich? This is most commonly understood as “How are you?” or “How are you feeling?” when this last question refers not so much to one’s physical health but to one’s psychological state, one’s “state of mind,” as Macquarrie and Robinson translate Befndlichkeit (1962, 172).Translated literally, the expression says “How do you fnd yourself?” and Haugeland (2000, 52) adheres closely to the literal when he translates Befndlichkeit as “sofndingness.” Blattner (1999, 45) translates the term by “affectivity,” saving “attunement” for the ways affectivity manifests itself. Crowell (2013, 70) uses “affectedness,” and Dahlstrom (2013, 62–3) “disposedness,” which Blattner now prefers (http://faculty.georgetown.edu/blattnew/heid/Heidegger-jargon.html).
References Arendt, Hanna. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1968. Between Past and Future. New York:Viking Press. Bergo, Bettina. 1999. Levinas Between Ethics and Politics: For the Beauty that Adorns the Earth.The Hague: M. Nijhoff. ———. 2002.“Remarks on Emmanuel Levinas’s Contribution to Classical and ‘Situated’ Justice”. Theoria, 100, pp. 38–63. ———. 2011.“The Face in Levinas:Toward a Phenomenology of Substitution”. Angelaki, 16, pp. 17–39. Bernasconi, Robert. 1989.“Rereading Totality and Infnity”. In: The Question of the Other. Eds.A. Dallery and C. Scott.Albany: SUNY Press, pp. 23–34.
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Ethics Blattner, William. 1999. Heidegger’s Temporal Idealism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burch, Matthew. 2010. “Death and Deliberation: Overcoming the Decisionism Critique of Heidegger’s Practical Philosophy”. Inquiry, 53, pp. 211–34. Cohen, Richard A. 1985. Face to Face with Levinas.Albany: SUNY Press. Crowell, Steven. 2007a. “Sorge or Selbstbewußtsein? Heidegger and Korsgaard on the Sources of Normativity”. European Journal of Philosophy, 15, 315–33. ———. 2007b.“Conscience and Reason: Heidegger and the Grounds of Intentionality”. In: Transcendental Heidegger. Eds. S. Crowell and J. Malpas. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 43–62. ———. 2013. Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger. New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2015.“Why is Ethics First Philosophy? Levinas in Phenomenological Context”. European Journal of Philosophy, 23, pp. 564–88. Dahlstrom, Daniel. 2013. The Heidegger Dictionary. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Darwall, Stephen. 2006. The Second-Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and Accountability. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. de Beauvoir, Simone. 1948. The Ethics of Ambiguity.Trans. B. Frechtman. New York: Philosophical Library. Donohoe, Janet. 2004. Husserl on Ethics and Intersubjectivity: From Static to Genetic Phenomenology. Amherst, MA: Humanity Books. Drummond, John. 2005. “Value-Predicates and Value-Attributes”. In: Erfahrung und Analyse/Experience and Analysis: Proceedings of the 27th International Wittgenstein Symposium. Eds. J. Marek and M. Reicher. Vienna: öbv&hpt, pp. 363–71. ———. 2006.“Respect as a Moral Emotion:A Phenomenological Approach”. Husserl Studies, 22, pp. 1–27. ———. 2007.“Moral Phenomenology and Moral Intentionality”. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 7, pp. 35–49. ———. 2010. “Self-Responsibility and Eudaimonia”. In: Philosophy, Phenomenology, Sciences. Eds. C. Ierna, H. Jacobs, and F. Mattens. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 411–30. ———. 2013. “The Intentional Structure of Emotions”. Logical Analysis and the History of Philosophy/ Philosophiegeschichte und logische Analyse, 16, pp. 244–63. ———. 2015. “Neo-Aristotelian Ethics: Naturalistic or Phenomenological”. In: Phenomenology in a New Key—Between Analysis and History. Eds. J. Bloechl and N. de Warren. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 135–49. ———. 2017. “Having the Right Attitudes”. The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, 15, pp. 142–63. Drummond, John and Rinofner-Kreidl, Sonja. (Eds.). 2017. Emotional Experiences: Ethical and Social Signifcance. London: Rowman & Littlefeld International. Geach, Paul. 1956.“Good and Evil”. Analysis, 17, pp. 33–42. Gyllenhammer, Paul. 2010. “Sartre on Shame: From Ontology to Social Critique”. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 41, pp. 48–63. Hart, James. 1992. The Person and the Common Life: Studies in a Husserlian Social Ethics. Dordrecht: Kluwer. ———. 1997. “The Summum Bonum and Value-Wholes: Aspects of a Husserlian Axiology and Theology”. In: Phenomenology of Value and Valuing. Eds. J. Hart and L. Embree. Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 193–230. Hartmann, Nicolai. 1963. Ethics.Trans. S. Coit. New York: Humanities Press. Haugeland, John. 2000. “Truth and Finitude: Heidegger’s Transcendental Existentialism”. In: Heidegger, Authenticity, and Modernity, vol. 1. Eds. M.Wrathall and J. Malpas. Cambridge, MA:The MIT Press, pp. 43–78. Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and Time.Trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. New York: Harper & Row. ———. 2010. Being and Time.Trans. J. Stambaugh, rev. D. Schmidt.Albany: SUNY Press. Heinämaa, Sarah. 2014. “Husserl’s Ethics of Renewal: A Personalistic Approach”. In: New Perspectives to Aristotelianism and Its Critics. Eds. M.Tuominen, S. Heinämaa, and V. Mäkinen. Leiden: Brill, pp. 196–212. ———. 2017.“Love and Admiration (Wonder): Fundaments of the Self—Other Relations”. In Drummond and Rinofner-Kreidl, (Eds.), 2017, pp. 155–74. Hermberg, Kevin and Gyllenhammer, Paul. (Eds.). 2013. Phenomenology and Virtue Ethics. London: Bloomsbury. Husserl, Edmund. 1988. Vorlesungen über Ethik und Wertlehre, 1908–1914. Ed. U. Melle. Dordrecht: Kluwer. ———. 1989. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution.Trans. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
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John J. Drummond ———. 2004. Einleitung in Die Ethik:Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1920/1924. Ed. H. Peucker. Dordrecht: Kluwer. ———. 2012. Einleitung in der Philosophie.Vorlesungen 1916–1920. Ed. H. Jacobs. Dordrecht: Springer. ———. 2014. Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie: Analysen des Unbewusstseins und der Instinkte Metaphysik. Späte Ethik.Texte aus dem Nachlass (1908–1937). Ed.T. Sowa and T.Vongehr. Dordrecht: Springer. ———. 2014. Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology.Trans. D. Dahlstrom. Indianapolis: Hackett. Kelly, Michael. 2016a.“Grief: Putting the Past Before Us”. Quaestiones Disputatae, 7, pp. 156–77. ———. 2016b. “Envy and Ressentiment, a Difference in Kind: A Critique and Renewal of Scheler’s Phenomenological Account”. In: Early Phenomenology: Metaphysics, Ethics, and the Philosophy of Religion. Eds. B. Harding and M. Kelly. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 49–66. ———. 2016c. “Phenomenological Distinctions: Two Types of Envy and Their Difference from Covetousness”. In: Phenomenology for the Twenty-frst Century. Eds. J. A. Simmons and J. E. Hackett. London: Palgrave-Macmillan, pp. 157–77. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1969. Totality and Infnity: An Essay on Exteriority. Trans. A. Lingis. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. Loidolt, Sophie. 2010. “Husserl und das Faktum der praktischen Vernunft: Anstoss und Herausforderung einer phänomenologischen Ethik der Person”. In: Philosophy Phenomenology Sciences. Eds. C. Ierna, H. Jaccobs, and F. Mattens. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 483–503. ———. 2011. “Fünf Fragen an Husserls Ethik aus gegenwärtiger Perspektive”. In Mayer et al. (Eds.), 2011, pp. 299–334. ———. 2018. Phenomenology of Plurality: Hannah Arendt on Political Intersubjectivity. New York: Routledge. Marcel, Gabriel. 1964. Creative Fidelity.Trans. R. Rosthal. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Company. Mayer,Verena et al. (Eds.). 2011. Die Aktualität Husserls. Freiburg/München: Karl Alber Verlag. McMullin, Irene. 2019. Existential Flourishing: A Phenomenology of the Virtues. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Melle, Ullrich. 1991.“The Development of Husserl’s Ethics”. Etudes phénoménologiques, 7, pp. 115–35. ———. 1992.“Husserls Phänomenologie des Willens”. Tijdschrift voor Filosofe, 54, pp. 280–305. ———. 1997.“Edmund Husserl:Wert des Lebens,Wert der Welt. Sittlichkeit (Tugend) und Glückseligkeit”. Husserl Studies, 13, pp. 201–35. ———. 2002.“Edmund Husserl: From Reason to Love”. In: Phenomenological Approaches to Moral Philosophy: A Handbook. Eds. J. Drummond and L. Embree. Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 229–48. ———. 2007.“Husserl’s Personalist Ethics”. Husserl Studies, 23, pp. 1–15. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2012. Phenomenology of Perception.Trans. D. Landes. New York: Routledge. Okrent, Mark. 1999.“Heidegger and Korsgaard on Human Refection”. Philosophical Topics, 27, pp. 47–76. Ozar, Anne. 2009. The Moral Signifcance of Sincerity. Ph.D. Dissertation, Fordham University. Available at https://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI3353775. ———. 2010. “The Value of a Phenomenology of the Emotions for Cultivating One’s Own Character”. The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, 10, 303–17. ———. 2017.“Trust as a Moral Emotion”. In Drummond and Rinofner-Kreidl, (Eds.), 2017, pp. 137–53. Peucker, Henning. 2011. “Husserls Ethik zwischen Formalismus und Subjektivismus”. In Mayer et al. (Eds.), 2011, pp. 278–98. Reinach,Adolf. 1983.“The A Priori Foundations of Civil Law”.Trans. J. Crosby. Aletheia, 3, pp. 1–142. ———. 1989.“Die Überlegung: ihre ethische und rechtliche Bedeutung”. In: Sämtliche Werke.Textkritische Ausgabe. Eds. K. Schuhmann and B. Smith. Munich: Philosophia Verlag, pp. 279–312. Reynolds, Jack. 2013.“Phenomenology and Virtue Ethics: Complementary Antitheoretical Methodological and Ethical Trajectories?”. In: Hermberg and Gyllenhammer, (Eds.), 2013, pp. 113–31. Ricoeur, Paul. 1992. Oneself as Another.Trans. K. Blamey. Chicago:The University of Chicago Press. ———. 1995. Le Juste 1. Paris: Éditions Esprit. ———. 2001. Le Juste 2. Paris: Éditions Esprit. Rinofner-Kreidl, Sonja. 2011. “Motive, Gründe und Entscheidungen in Husserls intentionaler Handlungstheorie”. In Mayer et al. (Eds.), 2011, 232–277. ———. 2014a. “Neid und Ressentiment: Zur Phänomenologie negativer sozialer Gefühle”. In: Die Dimension des Sozialen: Neue Philosophische Zugänge Zu Fühlen,Wollen Und Handeln. Eds. J. Müller and K. Mertens. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 103–26. ———. 2014b.“Neid. Zur moralischen Relevanz einer ‘Outlaw Emotion’”. In: Affektivität Und Ethik Bei Kant Und in der Phänomenologie. Ed. I. Römer. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 173–204.
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16 EXISTENCE Emanuele Mariani
In the course of the phenomenological movement, the concept of existence refers prima facie to the “existential analytic” that Heidegger elaborates in Being and Time (1927). “Existence” is thus intended in the light of Dasein, as “human existence”, and represents a key notion in the fundamental ontology that permits Heidegger to formulate the “question of being” (Seinsfrage), whose sense is at once conveyed and hidden by the history of metaphysics. As part of a conceptual plot constituted by related notions like “transcendence”, “world”, “freedom”, “responsibility”, “authenticity” and so forth, the concept of existence occupies an even more relevant position in existentialist philosophy through an appropriation of the phenomenological method that generally stands in critical opposition to the rationalism of Western tradition.This raises the related issue of the affnity between these two multifaceted forms of thought, phenomenology and existentialism, giving way to composite interpretations that have been tending to antithetical outcomes: the association that, on the one hand, legitimates a form of “existentialist phenomenology” and the differentiation that, on the other hand, does not allow phenomenology for compatibility with the so called “philosophies of existence”. Heidegger, for his part, openly rejected such a combination as evidenced by the Letter on humanism (Heidegger 1976); instead, Sartre did not hesitate to claim a convergence, by redefning his phenomenological proposal in terms of “existentialist humanism”. Further examinations concerning the concept of existence, mostly sympathetic with the motifs of the phenomenological inquiry, between the frst and the second half of the twentieth century, are in the philosophy of Karl Jaspers, in the philosophical anthropology of Max Scheler and in other authors that, beyond the feld of philosophical studies, addressed the problematic nature of the human condition under the concepts of paradox and of crisis. In literature, Sartre himself is one such example, together with Albert Camus and Simone de Beauvoir; in religious studies, Martin Buber, Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann and Paul Tillich are enumerated among the most illustrious scholars. Original meanings of the concept of existence should also be noted in the “School of Brentano” aside from the existential as well as existentialist approaches, in a philosophical context characterized by issues of an entirely different order. The categories’ deduction proposed by the young Brentano in his 1862 dissertation on the several senses of being in Aristotle; the ontological nature of intentional objects faced with the phenomena classifcation into “mental” and “physical”; the understanding of existential judgements; and, beyond Brentano, the method198
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ological suspension of the thesis of existence about the world of the natural attitude elaborated by Husserl following the transcendental stage of phenomenology. The plot of related notions of which the concept of existence is here systematically part, is as follows: “being”, “reality”, “essence”, “substance”, “fact” and “fction”; a philosophically wide-ranging plot placed at the intersection of logic and ontology, whose sense radically changes when exposed to the various requirements of the phenomenological research.
Existence’s modes of being On the basis of this preliminary consideration, a distinction may be drawn between two different understandings of the concept of existence: existence is philosophically conceived as the way of being particular to man or, more generally, as a certain way of being.Therefore, two are the sections to be introduced in order to phenomenologically illustrate the concept of existence following a chronological order: (i) from the young Brentano who, since the 1862 dissertation, makes existence (ἔξω τῆς διανοίας,“outside the mind”) one of the criteria to defne substance as the leading meaning of being, (i.i) up to the issues concerning the “intentional in-existence” of mental contents and the equivalent debate between some of Brentano’s pupils (Husserl and Twardowski) about the ontological status of intentional objects; (ii) from Heidegger, who initially addresses being’s polysemy in the light of Dasein, conceived as the “privileged entity”, whose essence coincides with existence, (ii.i) up to Sartre and the subsequent project of an existentialist phenomenology that frmly asserts the primacy of existence over essence.
Historical background The reference to Aristotle, even though ideally shared by both sections, does not entail an exact correspondent of the term “existence” in Aristotle’s lexicon.The Greek ὐπάρχειν, which translates to the Latin “existere”, is associated with existentia as a result of a long series of historical transformations. Being, for Aristotle, is always being of a certain essence; and the distinction between “essence” and “existence” made in Posterior Analytics (see for instance Aristotle 1991, 5: I, 2, 72a 23–24) cannot be equated with the doctrine of the “real distinction” established in medieval philosophy since the thirteenth century; a doctrine that was designated to articulate an even more metaphysically and theologically relevant distinction, on the basis of which existence, contrary to Aristotle’s conception, shows a specifc determination that is not contained in the predication of essence. “Essence” (esse essentiae) and “existence” (esse existentiae) would thus be separated in creatures and identical in God.Two different arguments connected by a unique principle: all that exists, exists by participation to being and this being – as paradigmatically stated by Thomas Aquinas – is God. The philosophical roots of the concept of existence lie in the Christian appropriation of the term existo (a compound of ex and sisto from stare, “stand”), that in the classical Latin of Cicero (De Offciis: I, 30, 107) or of Lucretius (De rerum natura: II, 871) simply means:“step up”, “come forth”,“arise”.The semantic reconfguration of the concept steams from the encounter between the dogma of Christian theology and the philosophical grammar of Greek ontology, Platonic and especially Neoplatonic, in response to another crucial distinction: between the οὐσία-substantia, whose mode of being is determined by accidents, and being purely and simply, without determination, relating to ὕπαρξις (“existence”) that specifes the pre-existing subsistence of an origin.The neologism existentia introduced by authors like Marius Victorinus (fourth century A.C.) hence allows us to express the indication of a provenance, as evidenced by the prefx ex; a provenance back to which anything that exists is referred (Adversus Arium: I, 199
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30, 1062 c 18 sq.). Existere, as Richard of Saint Victor states among others, means nothing but ex alio sistere: to receive one’s own substantial being from someone else, that is to say from an origin (De Trinitate: IV, 12 937C–983); an origin that is subsequently interpreted as a cause, the effect of which is existence. The basic outcomes of this historically composite transformation become established in the thesis of Suarez: the real entity is what exists extra suas causas et extra nihilum – “beyond its causes and beyond nothingness”. Eventually, it is along this way of thinking that Leibniz and Wolff come to superimpose the concepts of “cause” (causa) and “effect” (effectus) over “power” (potentia) and “act” (actus), thereby translating existentia into the semantic domain of effciency and actuality (Leibniz: Theodicy, art. 87; Principles of Nature and Grace, art. 1; Wolff: Philosophia prima sive Ontologia, §174). For Kant, the link between existence and causality is continued within the moral law as regard to the idea of freedom understood in terms of autonomy; as Dasein, “existence” belongs to the category of modality in the Critique of Pure Raison’s table of categories, between “possibility” and “necessity”, and on the ground of the second postulate of empirical thought it means that which is “real” (wirklich).
Objective existence, real existence, intentional in-existence In 1862 the young Brentano, in line with the exegetical tradition of the Aristoteles-Renaissance of nineteenth-century Germany, aimed at demonstrating against Kant’s and, partly, Hegel’s criticism that the number of the Aristotelian categories respects a clear criterion of ordering. The strategy of the 1862 dissertation is as follows: to trace the several senses of being back to the fgures of predication (τἀ σχήματα τῆς κατηγορίας), by electing substance (οὐσία) as the leading meaning of being and reconfguring the Aristotelian ontology as an “ousiology”. All that exists is either substance or is depending on substance and substance, according to Aristotle’s Categories, is defned as “frst substance”, the synolon of matter and form that denotes sensible reality (Aristotle 1991, 3: Cat. I, 1b25-2a4).The criterion of ordering is so established: the object of metaphysics properly concerns that which exists per se (ὄν καθ’αὐτὀ), outside the mind (ἔξω τῆς διανοίας), whose existence is “real”, contrary to that which exists only by accident (ὄν κατἀ συμβεβηκός) in connection with something else (in alio).The different modes by means of which the categories relate to the substance express the substance’s modes of being; and substance is determined in accordance with “quantity”, “quality”, “relation”, “place”, “time”, “position”,“state” and “action”.The remaining ontological meanings mentioned by Aristotle – the accident, the true and the false and to a certain extent that which is potentially or actually (Aristotle 1991, 85: Metaph. E 2, 1026a34) – are excluded from the metaphysical inquiry. Saying that something is does not result, indeed, in saying that something exists.“Is” in the sense of “it is true” merely signifes the copula that is applied to all that can be thought: one may claim, for example, that the centaurs are mythological monsters, that Jupiter is a false god, etc.As Brentano argues:“every mental construct [Gedankendingen], i.e., everything which in our mind can objectively [Alles, insofern es objectiv in unserem Geiste existierend] become the subject of a true affrmative assertion, will belong to it [i.e. to being as truth]” (Brentano 1862, 37). Two modalities of existence should therefore be distinguished since 1862: “objective existence” that refers to the objects of thought and “effective existence” that corresponds to the reality of transcendent things. A frst testing ground for the nascent phenomenology will concern, and it is not coincidence, the understanding of this relationship between “immanence” and “transcendence”, in an attempt to reorganize the concept of intentionality under an equivalent distinction between the “content” and the “object” of a consciousness act. Indeed, if being, as Kant asserted, is not a real predicate, what about the ontological character of objects that exist 200
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only by virtue of an act of thinking? Should a residue of reality (Realität) be attested in spite of the non-existence of such objects? Objective existence – Brentano replies – is mental existence, to wit, an “in-existence” (Inexistenz) that is relative to our mind. “Objectiv” is consequently to be understood as a modifying adjective that shows the conversion of an existing object into the “in-existence” of a mental content. Drawing inspiration from the Aristotelians of the Middle Ages, Brentano, as is well known, employs the word Objekt not in the modern sense, but as synonymous to “intentional”, as opposed to the physically characterized thing, the object, to which the mental act is referred, continues to be conceived in the 1867 Psychology of Aristotle in terms of Inexistenz (“existing in”). “Materially, as physical quality, coldness is in the cold thing. As object, i.e., as something that is sensed, it is in him who feels the cold” (Brentano 1876, n. 6, 80). The theory of the intentional reference – as we read in a footnote of Psychology from empirical standpoint – has its roots in this passage from Aristotle’s De Anima (III 2, 425b, 25) where Aristotle asserts that “in actuality the sensible is in the sense” by virtue of an identity relationship (ὁμοίωσις) that makes the one who perceives similar to what is perceived (Brentano 1867, 80).While being perceived, sounds and colours are objects of an act that we are immediately aware of; by hearing a sound, we experience the hearing regardless of whether the sound, physically understood, really exists or not.There is a communion between the act and the mental object, the “proper sensible” as Aristotle would have said, that Brentano in 1874 rephrases in terms of an “special connexion” (eigentümliche Verwebung) or a “fusion” (Verschmelzung) among the “immanent objectivity” and the “intentional reference”: “in presentation something is represented, in judgment something is affrmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired and so on”. (Brentano 1874, 68).The epistemological primacy of inner perception that constitutes the methodological principle of empirical psychology acquires legitimacy on the account of this “connection” that leads to a complete overturning of the initially established relationship between the two modalities of existence (intentional and real). If a sound can in principle be thought, irrespective of the awareness concerning the hearing of the sound, it is nevertheless the hearing that one should address so as to grasp the difference between that which is really given and that which is announced through apparitions. Contrary to “physical phenomena”, Brentano defnes as “mental” all those phenomena that intentionally have an object whose existence, thanks to the support of inner perception, is true and evident beyond any doubt.
The several senses of existence But if an object is intentionally contained in a mental act, how are representations to be interpreted in relation to non-existing objects? In this respect, Bolzano was talking about “objectless representations”, whose meanings – one may think of the squared circle example – cannot intuitively be fulflled. The diffculty, in such cases, is determining the reference of the mental act, given that the object of representation is separate from the act of presentation. “It is not the stone which is in the soul” – as Aristotle would have asserted – “but its form” (De An. III 8, 432a). The controversy between Husserl and Twardowski essentially focuses on this issue in view of Twardowski’s threefold distinction of “act”,“content” and “object”, initially presented in his 1894 work, On the Content and Object of Presentations; a threefold distinction on the ground of which the two aforementioned meanings of existence (intentional and real) are associated with Brentano’s mental phenomena classifcation into presentation [Vorstelllung], judgement and phenomena of love and hate. It would thus be up to the act of judging to accept or reject the existence of that which is represented, as opposed to the phenomenal or intentional existence pertaining to the object of representation. Representing, as Twardowski in turn argues, is neces201
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sarily representing something; and even if the object does not exist per se, that which is presented is there as “mental content” (Twardowski 1894, 28). Husserl’s criticism directly addresses the character of this threefold distinction, by denouncing the danger of an “ontological duplication” inherent to Twardowski’s argument. “If a round square” – Husserl affrms in a text on Intentional objects contemporary with Twardowski’s work – “is immanent in the representation in the same sense as the intuited color, then there would be a round square in the representation”. (Hua XXII, 310).Two meanings of the same thing should be instantiated under these circumstances, “immanent” and “transcendent”, two meanings that would problematically claim the right to existence; and when the object does not really exist, there would at least be its content which, like a mental image, would serve as an ersatz object. By criticizing the Brentanian division of phenomena into mental and physical, Husserl refuses by the same token to provide the mental content with an existential character and conceives of transcendence – to which intentionality is systematically oriented – in an ontologically wider sense than that of what is regarded as real. “Representation [Vorstellung]” – we read in a draft of a letter to Anton Marty – “is not the mere being-there [Dasein] of a content in consciousness – that is, its presence in the real context of psychical processes. Rather, representation is an intentional process, a certain minding [Meinen], whereby an object appears […]” (Hua-Dok III/1, 75).The objective reference of the intentional act, for Husserl, can be determined regardless of the temporal existence of the object itself; and “temporality” (Zeitlichkeit) – as attested by the Second Logical Investigation – is a suffcient mark of “reality” (Realität) as opposed to the “timeless ‘being’ of the ideal” (Hua XIX/1, 124). “If this experience is present” – Husserl asserts in the Fifth Logical Investigation – then, eo ipso, and through its own essence (we must insist), the intentional “relation” to an object is achieved, and an object is intentionally present […]. And, of course, such an experience may be present in consciousness together with its intention, although its object does not exist at all, and is perhaps incapable of existence. (Hua XIX/I, 372–373) The debate with Twardowski achieves this result: any representation represents something, but it does not necessarily contain an existing object. “Existence” and “nonexistence” are neither determined by the objective of the intentional reference, nor by the acceptance or by the rejection resulting from an act of judgement in accordance with Brentano’s theory, but by an act of fulflment that intuitively confrms or possibly contradicts a related intention of meaning. The object, phenomenologically speaking, is in conclusion to be understood in several senses: as spatiotemporal and hence existing, as timeless or, which is tantamount, as ideal, as singular or general, as empirical or eidetical; as real or ideal, following the methodological principle of intuition, the reach of which is extended by Husserl far beyond the limits of sensible perception. We should note that the link between “existence” and “reality” is maintained in the transcendental stage of phenomenology where “existence” continues to be mainly intended as spatiotemporal. “Factually existent” is that which belongs to the world as a totality of objects traceable, directly or indirectly, to the feld of sensible perception; a totality of objects available by means of the various activities we are capable of (theoretically, practically and axiologically). “The world” – Husserl states – “is always there as an actuality [Wirklichkeit]” (Hua III/1, §30). This is the sense in which the “thesis of the natural attitude” is defned; a thesis that the phenomenological attitude aims at suspending in order to reveal a new region of being,“transcendental consciousness”, conceived as “the primal category of all being”, as “the primal region in which all other regions of being are rooted” (Hua III/1, §76, 141). 202
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Existence, existentiell, existential and existentiality In his Sketches for a History of Being as Metaphysics (1941), Heidegger openly acknowledges the restriction dictated by Being and Time to the concept of existence: the existentia of the philosophical tradition that was originally grounded on the Greek substance (οὐσία) and led to “effective reality” (Wirklichkeit) by way of the Latin “actuality” (actualitas), in 1927 is conceived as “existence” (Existenz) that is the basic character of human being, notoriously renamed Dasein. From existentia to Existenz, from the mode of being relative to all that there is to man’s mode of being, such a restriction – as Heidegger says – only apparently follows Kierkegaard’s enterprise at the crossroads between philosophy and Christian theology, in an attempt to make coincide the human existence and the quest for the self; an enterprise that is explicitly recovered by Jaspers through analysis of the existential situation, the distinctive aspect of which is man’s relation to transcendence. Being and Time’s originality is rather in the interpretation of existence in the light of the ontological question that, according to Heidegger, has nothing in common with Kierkegaard’s Christian philosophy or Jaspers’ philosophy of existence. Dasein’s existence essentially relates to being inasmuch as Dasein is the privileged entity in view of which the question of being has to be formulated. Dasein, the entity that in its being has this very being as an issue for it, is in an intimate relation with its own being; a relation that is made explicit by means of its ontological constitution: the possibility of being or not being itself that presupposes, at the same time, a relation to being in general.“Understanding of being” – as §4 of Being and Time reads – “is itself a defnite characteristic of Dasein’s being”; as opposed to any other entity, Dasein “has to be” (zu-Sein) on the account of the possibilities that constitute its existence. In a famous formula Heidegger establishes that “the essence of Dasein lies in its existence”, thereby complementing the ontological question with the “who” question (Werfrage) that Dasein responds to in a frst-person perspective as “an entity which is in each case I myself ” and “its being is in each case mine” (Heidegger 1927, §9, 25). Dasein’s understanding of itself is also part of a context of relations that specifes another essential characteristic of Dasein’s existence: “being-in-theworld” – “Thus Dasein’s understanding of being pertains with equal primordiality both to an understanding of something like a ‘world’, and to the understanding of the being of those entities which become accessible within the world” (ibid., §4). The initial restriction serves as condition for overturning the categories of classical ontology: the “what” is understood in the light of the “who”; existentia is translated into “present-at-handness” (Vorhandenheit) of things, the quidditas, whose properties can in principle be enumerated as it is the case, by way of example, for a “house”, a “tree” or “a piece of bread”;“present-at-handness” of things that designates a modality of being that is depending on a certain interpretation of being’s entity as performed by Dasein. Dasein, on the ground of its existence, bears an understanding of any being’s entity that it is not itself; an understanding of any entity that for Dasein, as being-in-the-world, becomes accessible within the world.This explains the fundamental character of the 1927 ontology, to which any other ontology has to be traced back, to wit, any attempt of understanding the world that sciences – as Dasein’s behaviours or ways of being – address to all entities that are not like Dasein. By the same token, this explains the defnition of Being and Time’s fundamental ontology as “existential analytic”; a defnition that is based on a double priority: the ontic priority of Dasein as an entity whose being has the determinate character of existence; the ontological priority as a result of the relationship that Dasein, contrary to any other entity, has towards being. It is an ontico-ontological priority that allows an equivalent articulation between the two modalities, by means of which Dasein relates to its own existence: “existentiell” (existenziell) that specifes the way Dasein understands itself through existing; “existential” (existenzial) that specifes the 203
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understanding of the ontological structures of existence or, to put the matter more formally, of “existentiality” that constitutes the state of being of the existing entity (Heidegger 1927, §4). Yet another crucial feature of Being and Time’s existential analytic lies in the “destructive method” that organizes the historical interpretation of the ontological categories. Indeed, Heidegger aims at revealing the not suffciently thematized presuppositions that preside over the constitution of Western philosophy’s leading concepts like, inter alia, the Cartesian cogito and the idea of substance in the wake of the Greek conception that would hiddenly direct the modern idea of the “subject”. These are concepts that, by way of the “destructive method”, ought to be traced back to their origin; that is to say, back to the “primordial experiences” – as Heidegger asserts – that the tradition, through its transmission process, problematically conceals. “Primordial”, following Being and Time’s lexicon, has to be regarded as synonymous with “existential”:“demonstrating the origin of our basic ontological concepts” – as §6 of Being and Time reads – is nothing but displaying “their ‘birth certifcate’”; “birth certifcate” is relative to Dasein’s temporal dimension by reason of the systematic equivalence that Heidegger establishes between “being” and “temporality”.“Temporality” constitutes “the horizon for all understanding of being and of any way of interpreting it” as well as “the meaning of the being of that entity which we call Dasein” (Heidegger 1927, §5).Taking the example of substance, the objective of the destructive method is detecting the “ontologico-temporal” indication concerning the concept of οὐσία (“substance”) as παρουσία (“presence”), which concerns a specifc Dasein’s mode of being; a temporally characterized mode that, according to Heidegger, eventually imposes “present-at-handness” as the general pre-understanding of being as such, thus preventing the revealing of Dasein’s proper existential dimension. Beyond Being and Time, it should be noted that the concept of “existence” becomes increasingly scarce in connection with the Heideggerian project of overcoming metaphysics and the corresponding enhancement of the ecstatic character of human being. Existence is then understood in terms of “ecstaticity” under the metaphor of the “clearing” (Lichtung), conceived as the stance (da) from where Da-sein opens up to “the truth of being”:“the occasional use of the concept of existence” – as Heidegger himself retrospectively points out in 1941 – “serves only to prepare for an overcoming of metaphysics” (Heidegger 1961, 71). In response to Sartre’s existentialist phenomenology according to which “we are precisely in a situation where there are only human beings” (Sartre 1946, 36), Heidegger, at the request of Jean Beaufret, can consequently comment upon the supposed equivalence between “humanism” and “existentialism” as follows: “we are precisely in a situation where principally there is being” (Heidegger 1976, 165).
Existence and existentialism “Existence precedes essence”: the principle of Heidegger’s existential analytic lies at the heart of the phenomenological ontology that Sartre realizes in Being and Nothingness (1943). Existence, according to Sartre, is defned as the mode of being pertaining to Dasein that translates to “human reality” on the basis of an articulated analysis of consciousness that explicitly requires a recovery of the Cartesian cogito. Consciousness, phenomenologically conceived as “consciousness of something”, involves a form of self-consciousness that Sartre understands in terms of pre-refective self-awareness: being self-aware is thus the necessary condition for consciousness to be intentionally directed towards something other than itself.And it is in view of the “other” to which consciousness is primordially oriented that consciousness may become consciousness of the self; not like an object of knowledge, but, as Sartre specifes, pre-refexively, as a result of an immediate relationship to itself of non-cognitive nature. Consciousness exists as being consciousness of what it is not, in connexion with the “other than self ”; its way of being – as 204
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Sartre stresses – is “for-itself ”, which means that consciousness does not properly exist as separated from the world; in this sense, consciousness is understood as “distance from the self ” and contrary to being that is “in-itself ” (en-soi), the “for-itself ” (pour soi) of consciousness – as Sartre concludes – has always to strive to be its own being. Accordingly, human reality turns out to be fundamentally projected “out there”, “in the world”, whose structure is phenomenologically described as transcendence (Sartre 1936, 1943). The existentialist primacy of existence over essence implies nevertheless, in contrast to Heidegger, a basic opposition between these two notions: the understanding of human reality is, for Sartre, resistant to any aprioristic approach; there are no concepts that can be applied to man, the entity that exists, so as to establish his essential properties.“Man”, strictly speaking,“is nothing”; he “is nothing other than what he makes of himself ” (Sartre 1943, 22). Sartre’s existentialism is grounded on this very principle, whereby the meaning of existence is achieved in terms of “project” and of “responsibility”, which are the expressions of a primordial freedom; a freedom that refects, from the ethical perspective, the nihilating relationship (néantifcation) that man has towards being. “Existentialism” – as Sartre affrms – “is a doctrine that makes an authentically human life possible” (Sartre 1946, 18).Abandoned to his freedom, man is burdened with having to choose himself, with having to be his own legislator. The notion of existence, as MerleauPonty has for his part the opportunity to specify, serves as key to conceive of the human condition in a radically new way on the cultural scene of post-war Europe, where existentialism, once codifed as a doctrine and disseminated beyond the feld of philosophical studies, ends up being an alternative to the overriding views inherent to the Christian or to the Marxist doctrines.The need expressed by existentialism, according to Merleau-Ponty, is for combining the material with the spiritual aspect of man, which is not regarded as a thing among the things of the world, neither as a detached entity from the world itself, but rather as an existing embodied subjectivity ineluctably “condemned to be free” (Merleau-Ponty 1948).
Concluding remarks Following the French reception of Heidegger’s reorienting shift in philosophy known as the “turn” (die Kehre), the concept of existence tends to become peripheral within post-war phenomenology, in favour of other notions allegedly considered as more relevant, like, for instance, “alterity” or “ethics” for Emmanuel Levinas, “fesh” or “revelation” for Michel Henri, “event” or “givenness” for Jean-Luc Marion. A critical tension appears to be registered between existence and the context of ontology in line with the project of overcoming metaphysics renovated by French phenomenology, in spite of divergent views on both Heidegger’s own project and Sartre’s existentialism (see, for instance, Levinas’s Existence and Existents). This tension is even more noticeable if we consider that the frame of reference for the composite realization of such an overcoming is no longer the problem of the categories that prevailed, though not steadily, in the German tradition of phenomenology: starting from Brentano, passing through the overturning of the two basic meanings of existence (real and intentional) established by empirical psychology, through the descriptive and transcendental reconfguration of the categories proposed by Husserl up to the existential analysis of the ontological question formulated by Heidegger in Being and Time.
References Aristotle 1991. The Complete Works of Aristotle. The Revised Oxford Translation. Ed. J. Barnes. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Volumes One and Two (Electronic Edition)
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Emanuele Mariani Brentano, Franz. 1862. Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles. Freiburg: Herder. English translation: On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle. Trans: R. George. 1975. Berkeley: University of California. ———. 1867. Die Psychologie des Aristoteles. Insbesondere seine Lehre vom nous poietikós. Nebst einer Beilage über das Wirken des Aristotelischen Gottes. Mainz: F. Kirchheim. English translation: The Psychology of Aristotle (in particular his doctrine of the active intellect).Trans: R. George. 1977. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1874. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt. 2 Bde. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. Trans: A. C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrel, and L. L. McAlister. 2009. London/New York: Routledge. ———. 1991. On Duties. Eds. M.T. Griffn and E. M.Atkins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heidegger, Martin. 1927. Sein und Zeit, Gesamtausgabe II. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1986. Being and Time. Trans: J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. 1967. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 1961. Nietzsche. Pfullingen:Verlag Günther Neske. Nietzsche.Trans: D. F. Krell. 1982. San Francisco: Harper and Row. ———. 1976. Brief über den Humanismus, Gesamtausgabe, IX. Frankfurt: Klostermann. Letter on Humanism, in Pathmarks.Trans: Frank A. Capuzzi. 1998. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2003. The End of Philosophy.Trans: J. Stambaugh. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kant, Immanuel. 1999. Critique of Pure Reason.Trans: P. Guyer and A.Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge Press. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. 1952. Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil. Ed.A. Farrer. New Haven:Yale University Press. ———. 1968. General Investigations Concerning the Analysis of Concepts and Truths. Trans: W. H. O’Briant. Athens: University of Georgia Press. ———. 1989. Philosophical Essays.Trans: R.Ariew and D. Garber. Indianapolis: Hackett. ———. 1998. Principles of Nature and Grace. In: Philosophical Texts.Trans: R. S.Woolhouse and R. Francks. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1947. De l’existence à l’existant. Paris: Fontaine. English translation: Existence and Existents. Trans:A. Lingis. 1978.The Hague: Nijhoff. Lucretius. 1987. De rerum natura.Trans:W. H. D. Rouse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1948. Sense et non-sens. Paris: Nagel. Richard of Saint Victor. 2012. On the Trinity.Trans: R.Agelici. Cambridge: James Clarke, 2012. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1936. “La transcendance de l’ego. Esquisse d’une description phénoménologique”. In: Recherches philosophiques, (VI): pp. 85–123. ———. 1943. L’être et le néant. Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique. Paris: Gallimard. Being and Nothingness. An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology.Trans: H. E. Barnes. 1992. New York:Washington Square Press. ———. 1946. L’existentialisme est un humanisme. Paris: Les Editions de Nagel. Reprint: Gallimard, 1996. Existentialism is a Humanism.Trans: C. Macomber. 2007. New Haven/London:Yale University Press. ———. 1948. “Conscience de soi et connaissance de soi”. In: Bulletin de la Société française de Philosophie, XLII, n. 3, pp. 49–77. Reprint:Vrin, 2003. Suárez, Francisco. 1999. Disputationes metaphysicae. Hildesheim: George Olms Verlag. Twardowski, Kasimir. 1894. Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellung. Eine psychologische Untersuchung. Wien: Hölder. On the Content and Object of Presentations. A Psychological Investigation. Trans: R. Grossmann. 1977.The Hague: Nijhoff. Victorinus, Marius Caius. 1981. Adversus Arium, in Theological Treatises on the Trinity. Trans: M. T. Clark. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. Wolff, Christian. 1997. Deutsche Metaphysik. Halle, Germany, 1751. Reprint: Hildesheim, Germany: Olms.
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17 GENESIS Pedro M. S. Alves
17.1. The frst characterizations of phenomenology: descriptive psychology and transcendental philosophy As is well known, in its global development, phenomenology underwent several metamorphoses. It began as a “descriptive (eidetic) psychology,” later becoming a “transcendental phenomenology.”1 When Husserl used the label “descriptive” in 1901 to classify the kind of psychology that was at issue, the term had a clear Brentanian resonance. For Brentano, a descriptive psychology, or psychognosy, was opposed to a “genetic” psychology, which would have a physiological basis and would explain the laws of “generation, coexistence, and succession” of mental phenomena (Brentano 1995, 9). In contrast to the hypothetical character of genetic psychology and its dependence on a still embryonic physiology, the frst part of the system of a full-fedged psychology would be a description, based on inner perception, of mental phenomena as they are present to the mind. Descriptive psychology “does this by listing fully the basic components out of which everything internally perceived by humans is composed, and by enumerating the ways in which these components can be connected” (Brentano 2002, 4). For Brentano, such a descriptive endeavor does not depend on any genetic investigation; there is only a relationship of mutual help, even though “the services which psychognosy provides to genetic psychology are incomparably more valuable” (Brentano 2002, 10). As a matter of fact, for Brentano, “psychognosy is prior in the natural order” (Brentano 2002, 8), so that the explanation of the occurrence, coexistence, and succession of mental phenomena in the stream of conscious life enters neither into the pure classifcation of these phenomena nor into the determination of their internal laws of connection (for instance, how a presentation motivates a judgment, and so on). Indeed, as descriptive, psychology would prepare the way for a future explanatory theory of the psychic realm. Now from Husserl’s point of view, this Brentanian independence of description from a causal explanation will have an even more radical consequence: for Husserl, such independence will allow the emergence of a purely descriptive theory that would be free from any connection with naturalistic investigations of the genetic, physical, and physiological origins of mental phenomena.2 In a sense, from the Brentanian title “descriptive psychology” Husserl retained the idea of description while extricating it from the framework of a full scien-
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tifc psychology, where description precedes, prepares, and then gives way to explanation.3 Husserl’s frst debt to Brentano was thus the rejection of “genesis” and “explanation” in favor of a pure and independent descriptive approach, whether or not this is still to be understood as a variety of psychology. The turning point in this somewhat unstable frst characterization of phenomenology was the great discovery that the radical science of consciousness is not a kind or a modifcation of psychology, but rather a transcendental philosophy. In 1906, Husserl drafted a letter to Cornelius where he declared that “I grossly misunderstood myself when I identifed phenomenology and descriptive (immanent) psychology.” He then continues, “For four or fve years now, I have constantly warned my students against this big mistake” (Hua XXIV, 441). However, the introduction of the transcendental reduction in the frst fve lectures of the Thing and Space course of 1907 (published as The Idea of Phenomenology) and then in Ideas I in 1913 clarifes the whole issue. By means of the method of reduction, phenomenology will consider “purifed phenomena,” now free from any mundane apperception, and will develop as an eidetic theory of the region “pure consciousness and its lived-processes” (Erlebnisse), along with its noematic correlates.The noetic–noematic correlation will be the feld of phenomenology from now on. Relations of foundation between intentional acts and their correlative objects will accordingly be exhibited; key descriptive concepts such as “horizon,” “actuality,” and “potentiality,” “ego-polarization,” “mode of givenness,” and “doxic character” (and its modifcations) will be introduced; and fnally, the whole endeavor will assume the form of a doctrine of object-“constitution,” while the self-constitution of consciousness as a stream will be announced but not addressed. As Husserl famously says in Ideas I, “Luckily, in our preparatory analyses we can dispense with the enigma of time-consciousness without jeopardizing their rigor” (Hua III/1, 182). Despite its Brentanian inceptions, then, phenomenology was not a psychology, but a transcendental philosophy, and rather than being a matter of empirical (immanent) research, it was instead an eidetic theory. Roughly speaking, by choosing the side of a descriptive psychology, Husserl rejected any genetic approach and explanatory investigation from the very outset; moreover, by later rejecting the label psychology, Husserl put his descriptive endeavor in an entirely new realm: the non-natural region of pure consciousness and its intentional correlates.
17.2. The move toward a genetic phenomenology: the concept and the program A “genetic” (genetische), “dynamic” (dynamische), or “explanatory” (erklärende) phenomenology is the fnal version of Husserl’s theoretical project, put forth in the Freiburg years, especially from the 1920s onward. How can one understand this sudden return of such concepts as explanation and genesis, concepts against which phenomenology has defned itself? Indeed, what will a genetic phenomenology (or perhaps a phenomenological “description” of genesis with an “explanatory” import) add to the apparently self-contained feld that emerges from Ideas I as a realm of “absolute being”? Where does genesis stand in the realm of consciousness? How is it traceable and brought to “evidence”? Is not the phenomenological system already complete with a taxonomy of intentional acts, several ontological regions (along with their relations of foundation), and a doctrine of object-constitution? What is still missing? In a nutshell, doubts arise whether genetic phenomenology is a necessary complement for the completion of the system, or whether it is the expression of another point of view and another approach to pure consciousness. Some of Husserl’s most general statements provide some guidelines concerning the nature and scope of genetic phenomenology: 208
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1. The frst version of transcendental phenomenology was merely “static”;4 2. The most universal form of static phenomenology is the type ego-cogito-cogitatum, where the unity of the object intended functions as an ontological “transcendental leading clue”;5 3. In contrast, the most universal form of phenomenological genesis is the self-constitution of immanent temporality;6 4. Intentional genesis concerns the self-constitution of the concrete ego as a “monad” in the unity of a history;7 5. The key concepts for the self-constitution of the monad are the concepts of motivation, original institution of sense, and sedimentation (habituality);8 6. Genetic phenomenology is a phenomenology of the several forms of “apperceptions,” or of the several processes according to which consciousness arises out of consciousness;9 7. For the highest general eidetic form of a genetic phenomenology, there are no objectivities of whatever type (natural, intersubjective, social, cultural—in short, a world) given in advance (hence no “transcendental leading clues”), since the self-constitution of one monad in a space of varying possibilities of the ego is at the same time the constitution of a corresponding world with several kinds of objectivities;10 8. Here there are only systems of compossible and incompossible types of formations of consciousness, eidetically arranged as sets of pure possibilities linked by systems of motivations in their order of coexistence and succession—however, the huge transcendental problem within a genetic framework is the constitution of the individuality of the monad itself (of its “facticity”);11 9. A phenomenology of genesis thus understood is an explanatory phenomenology, in contradistinction to a merely descriptive and static one, so that there are three levels comprising a universal theory of consciousness: 1) general theory of the structures of consciousness, 2) constitutive phenomenology, and 3) phenomenology of genesis.12 What is truly new in this project? There are both points of continuity and points of cleavage, so that doubts about the relationship between the two versions of transcendental phenomenology are not immediately decidable. More precisely, the issue is whether the new version is a continuation of the former program, or whether it must be understood as a kind of transcendental recovery and reinstatement of an approach that phenomenology initially left aside in the process of its own formation: that is, a transcendental explanatory theory of the very genesis of consciousness in its factical stream of lived-processes, now reinstated as a self-constitution. Indeed, from now on the central theme is the transcendental subjectivity that has constituted itself, by way of primal institutions of meaning and sedimentations, as a concrete monad “in the unity of a history.” Genesis is now a transcendental concept, and points to the most fundamental (or “concrete”) part of phenomenology itself. As Husserl surprisingly declares to Paul Natorp in 1918 (surprisingly, if we take into consideration Husserl’s long-standing refusal of the very idea of genesis from the Logical Investigations to the Ideas13),“For more than a decade [sic], I have already overcome the stage of static Platonism and have framed the idea of transcendental genesis as the main theme of phenomenology” (Hua-Dok III/5, 137).14 For Husserl, and contrary to Natorp’s concept of a “genetic theory” as developed in the latter’s Allgemeine Psychologie (see Natorp 1965), the genetic self-constitution of transcendental subjectivity is only comprehensible as based on an ultimate self-temporalization, so that the monad is conceived as a “unity of becoming.” In a strong sense, the initial description of noetic–noematic structures gives way to a dismantling (Abbau) of experience in its formative elements of sense, and then to a post hoc reconstruction of these elements. Instead of disclosing relations of foundation among strata of sense in a “static” way, this procedure is tantamount to bringing to light relations of derivation 209
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linked by motivational connections. The most basic strata are no longer seen as providing an ultimate foundation of validity (Geltung), but function instead as an effective origin according to essential genetic laws that must be brought to light. In a way, as Steinbock has emphasized (Steinbock 1998, 133), with its descriptions of structures guided by ontological clues, static phenomenology is now the leading clue for genetic phenomenology itself. This is so because the latter opens a systematic regressive questioning (Rückfrage) into the origin (Ursprung) of the structures that static phenomenology encounters as ready-made. As Husserl points out, the general task of genetic inquiry is to illuminate (aufzuklären) “every given formation according to its origin” (Hua XI, 339). The reconstruction of such a genetic process would thereby have a real explanatory signifcance: it will not simply describe what is but will show how and why it is so. Since both descriptive and explanatory investigations are directed to the exhibition of eidetic laws, it follows that laws of foundation, relative to validity and static constitution, would be overdetermined by laws of derivation, relative to origins and genetic constitution. The very concept of “constitution” will be split into two strata. In this regard, the further elaboration of the concept of constitution— a genetic one and a static one, or rather, the move from a static to a genetic constitution as “the constitution of this [i.e., the static] constitution” (Hua XXXV, 407)15—would be where the static and genetic dimensions of phenomenology intersect. Indeed, as early as 1916 or 1917, while determining the several senses of the phenomenological concept of origin (Ursprung), Husserl sketched the double orientation of this constitutive research. He writes: Sense of the questions concerning the origin: 1) What I elsewhere also (inappropriately) named static phenomenological constitution: the “object” in the how of its original modes of givenness, as a noematic unity of original-noetic multiplicities.The a priori necessary system of appearances in which its unfolded perception consists. 2) A frst go at the doctrine of genesis according to general principles. Genetic constitution. (Hua XIII, 346n)
17.3. Pondering the novelties: the reference to Brentano It is open to debate whether this transition from static to genetic phenomenology is tantamount to an unbroken addition of elements that were already pre-contained (but provisionally left behind) in the frst transcendental approach to pure consciousness. Moreover, every one of the words that characterize this fnal version of phenomenology—explanation against description, genesis against being, dynamic against static—recalls authors that belong to Husserl’s milieu, along with the corresponding theoretical debates he had with them.This suggests a complex move that combines both the internal development of the initial point of view and the inclusion of new themes, or better yet, a development by inclusion that does not leave its very starting point intact. Indeed, when one puts these concepts in their proper Husserlian framework, Natorp, or even Dilthey, not to mention Brentano once more, are unavoidable references.Thus, Husserl’s concept of a genetic phenomenology will best be understood when it is also set against the backdrop of these authors and doctrines.The coherence of Husserl’s own theses and their internal development can certainly be understood by themselves. Nevertheless, it is helpful to pay attention to the oppositions, debates, and criticisms by which concepts like “genesis,” “explanation,” or “dynamism” were brought to the forefront in Husserl’s thought. A zigzag between systematic and contextual elements is therefore the best way to shed light on Husserl’s project of a genetic, dynamic, or explanatory dimension of transcendental phenomenology. 210
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For example, one can wonder about the connections that this new point of view has both with the preceding version of phenomenology and with Brentano’s program of a “genetic, explanatory psychology.” Viewed against the initial Brentanian framework, will not a genetic phenomenology be the transcendental recovery of a genetic psychology, that is, of the quest for the laws that underlie the “generation, coexistence, and succession” of mental phenomena? However, the recovery in question institutes a non-naturalistic concept of genesis (non-physiological, and in fact constituting the physiological) after having developed a non-naturalistic concept of description. The very frst symptom that Husserl’s fnal move was more than a simple continuation of the former program of the Ideas, since it amounts not only to an addition of something new but also to a self-transforming assimilation, is the fact that it is hard to see a strict continuity in the central theme of phenomenology. First of all, intentional structures were initially abstracted from the complexity of the fow so that they could be described as essential morphological types (“perception,” “judgment,” and so on), regardless of their intricate and fused instantiation in a concrete, factical life. Now, however, it is the Strom itself in its complexity and in the very process of its becoming that is brought to the fore. Accordingly, instead of Bewusstsein-von, Husserl will increasingly speak of subjektives Leben. One can argue that this transition can be construed as a passage from an abstractly isolating approach to a concrete approach, or from the “simplest” to the “most complex” descriptive themes. But Husserl’s move amounts to a reversal of the relationship between static and genetic approaches. It is now the genetic analyses that provide a leading clue for the formation and then description of structures. In addition, it also amounts to a change in the focus of phenomenological analysis.The “abstraction” in which phenomenology remained was not an arbitrary one; it was necessary in order to circumscribe its very theme. Just as the descriptive psychologist abstracts from the concrete, natural genesis and becoming of subjective life, so also the phenomenologist puts into brackets the concrete, subjective stream of life in its causal insertion into nature, for the sake of the pure description of the structures of the consciousness of objects and their respective modes of givenness. Additionally, abstracting from the complexity of the concrete, factical stream is not incompatible with a description of the constitution of immanent time. Indeed, the description of time-consciousness—which was done by Husserl in a rather “static” way—is one thing; investigating the material concretion of the stream—returning to its supposedly most elementary elements, which are not given by themselves, and reconstructing the processes of its formation and the growth of its complexity—is quite another thing. In other words, this feld of inquiry into limit-phenomena that are not given by themselves but are only accessible by a method of dismantling (Abbau), a feld that was initially left behind, now returns and assumes the place of a leading theme. Certainly, in a transcendental stance, the dependence of the stream of a concrete subjectivity on physiological and physical bases is put into brackets, instead of serving as a passage (as in the scientifc-psychological stance) from descriptive to genetic-causal research. However, in my view, this move is not suspended, but is simply reformulated. The reinstatement of such naturalistically oriented research in a transcendental theory will now assume the form of a regressive inquiry aiming at the “reconstruction” of the complex processes through which subjectivity “constitutes itself for itself ” as an individual monad, processes arising from the depths of its “unconscious” and “passive life.” Indeed, if we look, for instance, at the fundamental concepts of passive and receptive genetic constitution, we fnd Husserl going beyond the structural opposition between intentional morphe and sensual hyle. He talks about awakenings, sensible prominences, stimuli, affections, and so on. And he describes them from the side of transcendental consciousness, as noetic processes only, putting methodologically into brackets 211
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the natural-causal mechanisms that are the determining factors within a psychological genetic approach.What is at stake from now on is a phenomenological description of the self-arising and self-growth of consciousness according to the internal, “material laws” that sustain both the concrete unity of the stream and the increase of noetic complexity that comes with the corresponding noematic constitution of higher orders of objects. The exhibition of these basic internal laws of the self-unity of the fow (for instance, that one affection motivates another affection, or associatively recalls a former one, and so on), in the very place where the psychological approach only saw the intersection between the psychological and the physiological, will be one of the great discoveries of the genetic approach. There is an internal “because” (weil) for the factical being of the stream, one that was hidden by investigations of its physiological underpinnings under the heading “genetic-causal psychology.” Indeed, in a research manuscript about the senses of the concept of phenomenological origin, Husserl distinguishes “psychological” and “phenomenological” origins. Psychological origin is conceived in terms of the ancient problems of genetic psychology.16 Then he analyzes the connection between both concepts, and in a later revision, he symptomatically replaces the term “psychological origin” with the term “genetic origin.”The former opposition between the psychological and the phenomenological concepts of origin accordingly becomes the opposition between “genetic origin and phenomenological-static origin,”17 a distinction that is now internal to transcendental phenomenology inasmuch as it absorbs the theme (but not the method) of genetic-psychological inquiry (the search for what he names the Werdenfaktoren of the stream). The last section of the manuscript, initially titled “Psychological and phenomenological origin,” will consequently be amended to “Thoughts for a genetic phenomenology” (Hua XIII, 354).18 The crucial point is that in this passage Husserl begins to understand that “the a priori lawfulness of genesis, the reference of any present experiential motivation back to a past consciousness to which it is related as the origin of its being [Seinsursprung], hang together with reason [Vernunft],” so that “consciousness is not an arbitrary fux of facts that could arbitrarily be different: the earlier consciousness motivates possibilities for the later one a priori, in such a way that the latter […], in its facticity, is necessarily motivated through the corresponding earlier consciousness” (Hua XIII, 357). This has two important consequences: 1. From a naturalistic stance, the layer of sensibility cannot be construed as a simple causal interaction between a physical reality and the mind: the mental has internal laws of organization, even at the passive level—laws that are almost always associative laws—along with patterns for the internal confguration of the sensible felds (fusion, prominence, and contrast stand at this basic level). 2. The principle of a strong connection among lived-processes is expanded to all layers of objective constitution, either “horizontally,” i.e., among lived-processes of the same layer, or “vertically,” i.e., as motivations that go from the lower strata to the upper strata (or vice versa: for instance, a practical or cognitive interest motivates a selection of affections in the receptive feld). Hence, as well as being seen as an internal development of the former program (the flling in of “a big gap”—Hua I, 100), Husserl’s move to a phenomenological theory of genesis focusing on the self-unity of the Strom can also be construed as a more complex absorption of a set of problems that phenomenology (and Brentano’s descriptive psychology) had necessarily left behind in presenting itself as a descriptive, eidetic theory of the non-natural region “pure consciousness and its intentional correlates.” And this absorption entails more than an extension. It is tantamount 212
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to redefning the leading theme of transcendental phenomenology: the self-constitution of the monad in its autarchic unity.As Husserl emphasizes, There are also laws that positively prescribe what necessarily belongs to the formal structure of a monad, and that moreover prescribe what must become when a certain individual content is already there.Thus, the primal law of genesis is the law of original time-constitution, the laws of association and reproduction, the laws through which the monad constitutes itself for itself as a unity, and so on. (Hua XIV, 39)
17.4. Still pondering the novelties: the monad has “windows” As another symptom of the complexity of the transition, it must be observed that eidetic laws of foundation and eidetic laws of origination do not inevitably overlap, forming a coherent system of complementation and mutual reinforcement. As Husserl puts it, static phenomenological constitution is the quest for the validity (Geltung) of objectual formations. This entails the search for their original modes of itself-givenness as being-there in the fesh (leibhaft da); for the corresponding modifcations; and for the relations of foundation on other layers of objectual formation. This threefold investigation circumscribes the concept of static constitution. The leading vectors are the inquiries into origin and foundation: more precisely, into validity-origin (Geltungsursprung) and validity-foundation (Geltungsfundierung). Here the prototype of itself-givenness is the apodicticity of the self-presence of the ego in the living present, while the global issue is the clarifcation of the whole-structure of the experience of a world. As Lee has pointed out, the validity-structure is non-temporal (Lee 1993, 24).19 The founding strata are not earlier than the founded ones, and they cannot be spread over time as a process of becoming, as if they could account for the history of a living monad. Rather, they are an ideal architecture of layers of sense in the constitution of objects. Husserl stresses this very point with great clarity when he writes that “with the verifcation of validityfoundation, it is not the genesis of the higher senses of being that is in question—namely, as if the founding senses in subjective-immanent temporality would have awakened the founded ones” (Hua XV, 615).Thus “to pursue the constitution is not to pursue the genesis” (Hua XIV, 41). However, the quest for validity is not abandoned in genetic constitution, nor is the guiding principle according to which experience (Erfahrung), in the broad sense of original givenness, has a privileged status (Husserl writes that this principle encompasses both static and genetic constitution—Hua XVII, 317).They are nevertheless thrown into a different framework. Searching for origin is now tantamount to searching for a frst beginning (Anfang); searching for foundation is tantamount to establishing temporal relations of “earlier” and “later,” establishing a relationship of consequence (more precisely, of motivation, as the “causality” proper to conscious life) in the constitution of objectual formations.The new framework is subjective life as a unity in becoming, or the temporal self-constitution of the monad in its concrete life. The experience that serves as a leading clue for the investigation is now traceable in a concrete subjective life as an original institution of sense (Urstiftung). And validity now refers back to the motivations according to which, in subjective life, something is posited because something was posited in the present or in the past of the life-stream. Genetic foundation (Genesisfundierung) and genetic origin (Genesisursprung) are therefore different from the concepts of foundation and of origin in static phenomenology, for they point in a different direction. Ultimately, the genetic approach tends to absorb the static approach by transferring the problems of validity and original givenness into another framework. 213
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For measuring to what extent the genetic approach is an ordered, internal development of the static approach on the one hand or an expansion entailing a new formulation on the other, one traditional thesis must be briefy examined—namely, the view that for moving from static to genetic phenomenology, what is needed is only the addition of the time variable. In his classic study,Antônio Almeida states that “the theme of static phenomenology is, materialiter, the same as that of genetic phenomenology” (Almeida 1972, 7). According to him, the theme of phenomenology simpliciter would be the stream of lived-processes (Erlebnisstrom), and this will then furnish the objectum materiale, so to speak, of both the static and genetic versions of phenomenology. They would be distinguishable by means of the “formality” under which their unique material object would be considered. As Almeida points out, static phenomenology would be like a cross-section (Querschnitt) of the stream, while genetic phenomenology would be like a longitudinal section (Längsschnitt) of the very same stream. Both analyses display “a complex system of syntheses” (Almeida 1972, 7). However, in focusing only on a punctual moment of the stream, static phenomenology would not be able to consider the “processual character” of intentionality and would be led to a fnal opposition between sensual content (Inhalt) and sense (Sinn). In contrast, genetic phenomenology would consider the very “lawfulness” (Gesetzmässigkeit) that underlies the production of content—namely, the depths of timeconstitution—and on that basis will be able to account for the institution of sense as a dynamic “subjective power” of an “active, productive subject.” Sokolowski’s account goes slightly in the same direction when he says that “once [Husserl] adopts this theory of genetic analysis, reconciliation of temporality with objective constitution becomes possible” (Sokolowski 1964, 183). More recently, Donn Welton has used a rather similar (albeit more complex) explanatory model for capturing the difference between static and genetic analyses (see Welton 2003, 263). His point is that “the difference between static and genetic analysis cannot be construed simply as a contrast between synchronic and diachronic analysis,” as the metaphor of the cross-section and longitudinal section of the stream would suggest, because static analysis “also has a diachronic side” (Welton 2003, 263–264). Nevertheless, he concludes that the transition from static to genetic accounts is based on deepening the analyses of time. In other words, the analyses evolved from a (static) concern with the “temporal form” of the constitution of objects to an account of the internal streaming of the living present that encompasses the production of content. However, pace Almeida, we have argued that the self-temporalization of the stream as the fundamental theme of phenomenology is an achievement of genetic phenomenology.The transition cannot be accounted for by means of the too simple difference between punctual and processual analyses. As Welton points out, issues of “time-form” and “time-syntheses” also enter static analysis. In addition (here too borrowing from Welton’s later explanations), the crucial point is that the direction of the phenomenological inquiry underwent a dramatic change. As he put it, “genetic analysis deals not with the distinct temporal character attending various modalizations of different types of experiences, for this is handled in constitutive analysis, but with the becoming of the horizon itself. In the fnal analysis, it accounts for the historicity of intentional life” (Welton 2003, 277, my emphasis). I believe that this is the key issue. In a well-known text, Husserl characterizes the specifcity of the genetic inquiry. It is worth quoting it here: Genetic intentional analysis is directed to the whole concrete nexus [Zusammenhang] in which each particular consciousness stands, along with its intentional object as intentional. Immediately the problem becomes extended to include the other intentional references, those belonging to the situation in which, for example, the subject exercising the judicative activity is standing, and to include, therefore, the immanent unity of 214
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the temporality of the life that has its “history” therein, in such a fashion that every single process of consciousness, as occurring temporally, has its own “history”—that is: its temporal genesis. (Hua XVII, 316) More than time alone, the genetic point of view also entails the following: 1. The consideration of the whole nexus in which each lived-process stands; 2. The consideration of all of the intentional references that belong to the situation in which the subject stands; 3. The consideration of the temporal unity of life, to whose internal development the whole situation refers back; 4. The recognition that every single lived-process is now explained in its occurrence as the carrier of a sense having a historical density; and 5. The recognition that to pursue this history is to question genetically. Where does this regressive questioning lead? The key to the bewildering unity of Husserl’s genetic inquiry, regardless of its apparent dispersion throughout disparate themes, depends on a clear answer to this question. First, it leads from the intentional act to its receptive and ultimately passive, pre-objective dimensions.This “downward” inquiry gives rise to the project of a “transcendental aesthetics.”The interplay between acts and their foundations in pre-predicative experience opens the task of phenomenological research into passive and active syntheses. Second, it leads to horizons of progressively unclear and eventually obscure life, horizons that surround the intentional acts of the ego-form.These horizons are contained in the subject’s present situation and point back to its past life, be they prior achievements that remain productive under the unclear form of habituality and sedimentation, or earlier experiences expressly evoked in a clear remembrance, or fnally, primal institutions that are now lost in a forgotten past. This paves the way for a phenomenological theory of “unconscious” life.Third, taking a step forward, such inquiry leads to ultimate questions of birth and death, which Husserl calls “generative problems” (see Hua XV, 171; Hua XLII, passim). Last but not least, it leads to the transcendental horizons of intersubjectivity—of community—and to the historicity of the monad in its living with others.20 Suddenly, but not incomprehensibly, the pursuit of the history of sense within one monadic life also leads to original institutions that transcend this very monadic life and can only be explained within the broader horizons of community (Gemeinschaft) and of historicity (Geschichtlichkeit), with its modes of institution, transmission, and reinstitution of sense (Urstiftung, Nachstiftung—Hua IX, 212).As Husserl writes, every present of life stands in its historical nexus, which is partially open, partially concealed. It has “historical presuppositions” that one can pursue in a regressive questioning, in a pure turning inward, in a pure refective direction of the regard to concrete life and to what has sense and validity from tradition. (Hua XXIX, 344) These ultimate original institutions must be reinstated by means of a reconstructive historical anamnesis.This, however, does not have a factual, empirical signifcance. Just as in the theory of genesis in general, factual historical genesis and phenomenological historical genesis certainly have complex relationships, but are not defnitively the same.The history of sense develops in the realm of idealities and is grasped by means of eidetic laws; from this point of view, empiri215
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cal facts, by themselves, are only instantiations of eidetic possibilities.21 Husserl has offered three splendid applications of this method in his essays concerning the sense-origins of Galilean science, geometry, and Europe as a spiritual phenomenon (Hua VI, 20–60, 365–386, 314–348). Yet is this fnal part of the genetic-historical inquiry, working out the inter-monadic horizons of community and historicity, just an internal development of the static phenomenology of Ideas I? Regarding this ultimate horizon of a transcendental theory of inter-monadic community and historicity, I believe that instead of being a merely linear development, it is not only an ordered self-transformation of phenomenology itself, but a complex assimilation of Dilthey’s project for a descriptive and analytic psychology as a foundation for the human sciences, as put forth in his Ideen über eine beschreibende und zergliedernde Psychologie from 1894 (see Dilthey 1924). Indeed, I believe that it was an attempt Husserl made in order to include a domain that had remained at the margins of transcendental philosophy as long as it developed as a “Cartesian” theory of an isolated transcendental subjectivity.The double step forward was frst to come to intersubjectivity as the absolute subject of world-constitution, and then, by means of the theme of the historicity of inter-monadic life, to replace the fawed psychological foundation with a transcendental account of the historical world. As a matter of fact, Husserl expressly stresses that as compared with Brentano’s descriptive psychology, Dilthey’s most important advantage consists “in having, from the very outset, his regard stretched beyond the single subject of historical life, and having been directed to historical life itself, [which is] in each human being inwardly unitary, and yet trans-individual.” This puts at the forefront the “personal subject in communal life, and this in its unitary history, which is naturally a communal history” (Hua IX, 355). In a further contrast, Husserl emphasizes that, contrary to Brentano’s concern with isolated lived-processes, Dilthey always looked at “the wholeness of the stream of lived-processes, and in general, at the concrete whole of the pure psychic subject” (Hua IX, 355). Dilthey’s concept of an Erlebniszusammenhang (rather than a sheer, abstracted Erlebnis) has not only an individual dimension, but communal and historical dimensions as well, so that the self-remembering of the monad is like an open window to dimensions that transcend it, while constituting it in its very individuality. Thus, for Husserl, the attention paid to the “interior-exterior sphere” (Innen-Aussen Sphäre—Hua IX, 361), to the intertwining between subjectivity and the intersubjective, communal, and historical, marks the superiority of Dilthey’s descriptive psychology over Brentano’s. However, Dilthey’s psychological foundation of the historical world was just a frst attempt. He remained at the level of an unresolved opposition between explanatory and descriptive or analytic psychology, tributary of a dualistic naturalism. For Dilthey’s approach, explanatory methods are “only possible in psychophysics,” while descriptive psychology based on inner perception reaches no more than an understanding of individual types in the framework of their communal and historical horizons.Thus,“according to Dilthey, a descriptive and analytic psychology is not different from, and should not and could not be more than a descriptive natural history of human psychic life, of the ‘developed typical human being’” (Hua IX, 16). For Husserl, the point is to employ an eidetic approach to the internal laws of streaming, historical life in order to reach essential necessities that overcome the level of empirical generalities and inductions.This was Dilthey’s “radical lack” (Hua IX, 13).And this is, for Husserl, the point where Dilthey’s psychology must be absorbed into and transformed by a transcendental phenomenology that for its part has transformed itself, thereby receiving its theoretical legacy.At the transcendental level of a phenomenological genetic approach to inter-monadic, historical life, the reconstructive understanding of individual life under essential laws is the complete comprehension of its being, and this complete comprehension is tantamount to a full explanation of it. 216
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Thus, in the end, a full-fedged transcendental phenomenology takes the form of an explanatory theory. Nothing more is left over as a residuum of opacity, because “to understand a historical nexus is its unique meaningful explanation” (Hua IX, 10, my emphasis). In a manuscript where he considers the opposition between home-world and alien-world, Husserl goes so far as to risk speaking of understanding our world “genetically-historically” (Hua XV, 214).
17.5. By way of a conclusion: Husserl’s contribution and some glimpses beyond Putting it all together, I would say that the initial project of a transcendental phenomenology as presented in Ideas I underwent two dramatic reformulations.These two changes were strategic moves to absorb issues that the earlier phenomenology—now conceived as “static”—necessarily left behind in order to delimit its own feld of investigation. However, these changes cannot be conceived as a simple ordered extension of the initial project. First, there was the issue concerning the factical stream of subjective life. Following Brentano’s distinction between two types of psychology, this required inquiring into the genesis, coexistence, and succession of lived-processes understood as the theme of a genetic-causal approach, a psychophysics, which should be left aside in a purely descriptive psychology. Husserl’s great discovery was that the stream had internal laws of unifcation, so that a phenomenological account of the processes through which it constitutes itself as a unity is now the new horizon of phenomenological inquiry. The frst layer is the very process of self-temporalization. Now, however, this layer is not simply formal: it is closely connected with the constitution of primitive content by means of basic noetic processes such as confgurations of the sensible felds, stimuli, and affections. Starting phenomenologically at the very level where the old division had located the feld of a genetic psychology, the new endeavor assumed the form of a genetic phenomenology. It developed as an investigation into passivity, receptivity, and the spontaneity of judgment—in short, as an inquiry into passive and active syntheses.This was the very core of genetic phenomenology, and it entailed not only an extension, but a reorganization of the initial project. Second, since his demolishing critique of “historicism” as a variety of relativism in his Logos article from 1911, history was for Husserl a distant, even forgotten continent. However, Dilthey’s project for a descriptive psychology as opposed to the emerging psychophysics, which he called “explanatory,” was the promise of a psychological foundation of supra-individual dimensions of subjectivity, such as the various forms of “objective spirit” and ultimately the very historicity of life. Husserl’s account of intersubjectivity could not embrace this domain. The leading clue for an extension of phenomenology to this entire domain was the concept of the historicity of meaning and its reference back to an original institution.The processes of institution, tradition, and reinstitution of sense now appeared, in this new light, as the fundamental form of the “a priori of historicity” and as the clue for researching the communal and historical dimensions of monadic life. Although it was proposed, this new dimension of phenomenology was only sketched in Husserl’s works, in contrast to the genetic investigation of passive and active syntheses within the framework of the project of a transcendental logic. Nevertheless, even if this may be a controversial view, I believe that this fnal dimension—that of the communal and the historical—still falls within the scope of the concept of a genetic phenomenology. The issues concerning this fnal part of Husserl’s inquiry were isolated by Anthony Steinbock under the Husserlian title of “generative phenomenology” as a “transcendental phenomenological philosophy of the social world.”As Steinbock puts it in his book Home and Beyond, a generative phenomenology “means both the process of becoming—hence the process of “generation”—and a process that occurs over the “generations”—hence specifcally the process of ‘historical’ and social becoming” (Steinbock 1995, 3).The views Steinbock has developed concerning the opposition 217
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between the experiences of the “home-world” and the “alien-world,” of “normality” and “abnormality,” along with other related issues, are borrowed from Husserlian concepts and themes, but do constitute in and of themselves a fresh and very interesting extension of Husserl’s ultimate legacy. Finally, it is worth pointing out an interesting project for an “experimental phenomenology” that crosses the bridge between description of mental phenomena and observation of psychophysical events, instituting a proftable dialogue between the two branches of psychology that Brentano (and Husserl too) distinguished. This project (developed by Liliana Albertazzi and others) roughly coincides with Husserl’s “passivity-receptivity” domains, and for now, it is almost exclusively centered on the study of visual phenomena. As Albertazzi stresses, the basic tenet of “experimental phenomenology” is the exclusion of any “reduction of phenomena to physical or neuronal correlates” (Albertazzi 2013, 6). In keeping with one of Husserl’s results emphasized above, she expressly declares that “qualitative phenomena are irreducible to stimuli” (Albertazzi 2013, 8), so that the description of the qualitative aspects of experience opens a “science of appearances” that correlates them with, but never reduces them to their neural and physical underpinnings. While inspired by Husserl’s views about the autonomous confguration and meaningfulness of the sensible felds, this “experimental phenomenology” also opens a new and interesting expansion of Husserl’s legacy of a genetic phenomenology.
Notes 1 The contrast between the notes in section 6 of the Logical Investigations is a clear expression of how Husserl’s characterization of phenomenology shifts. In 1901, Husserl wrote: “Phenomenology is descriptive psychology. Epistemological criticism is therefore in essence psychology, or at least only capable of being built on a psychological basis.” However, by 1913, the text was replaced by the following: “If our sense of phenomenology has been grasped, and if it has not been given the current interpretation of an ordinary ‘descriptive psychology,’ a part of natural science, then an objection, otherwise justifable, will fall to the ground, an objection to the effect that all theory of knowledge conceived as a systematic phenomenological clarifcation of knowledge is built upon psychology. […] We naturally reply that […] phenomenology is not […] empirical, scientifc description” (Hua XIX/1, 23). Note that in some cases I have relied on published English translations of Husserl’s works, albeit with occasional minor modifcations; all other translations from Husserl are my own. 2 In the same note of section 6 quoted above, Husserl even rejects the title of “psychology” for his descriptive approach.The text reads as follows:“It is not the full science of psychology that serves as a foundation for pure logic, but certain classes of descriptions which are the step preparatory to the theoretical research of psychology. These, in so far as they describe the empirical objects whose genetic connections the science wishes to pursue, also form the substrate for those fundamental abstractions in which logic seizes the essence of the ideal objects […]. Since it is epistemologically of unique importance that we should separate the purely descriptive examination of the knowledge-experience, disembarrassed of all theoretical psychological interests, from the truly psychological researches directed to empirical explanation and origins, it will be good if we rather speak of ‘phenomenology’ than of descriptive psychology” (Hua XIX/1, 24, my emphases). 3 Both the difference from Brentano’s understanding of description as a preparatory step and the difference between description qua psychological and qua phenomenological (eidetic) are clearly stated by Husserl in his Urteiltstheorie of 1905 (Hua-Mat V, 43–46). 4 “The phenomenology developed at frst is merely ‘static’; its descriptions are analogous to those of natural history, which concern particular types and, at best, arrange them in their systematic order” (Hua I, 110). 5 “The most universal type within which, as a form, everything particular is included is indicated by our frst universal scheme: ego-cogito-cogitatum.The most universal descriptions […], which we have attempted in a rough fashion concerning intentionality, concerning its peculiar synthesis, and so forth, relate to that type. In the particularization of that type, and of its description, the intentional object (on the side belonging to the cogitatum) plays, for easily understood reasons, the role of ‘transcendental clue’ to the typical infnite multiplicities of possible cogitationes that, in a possible synthesis, bear the intentional object within themselves (in the manner peculiar to consciousness) as the same meant object” (Hua I, 87).
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Genesis 6 “The universal essential form of intentional genesis, to which all others are related back, is the constitution of immanent temporality” (Hua XVII, 318). 7 “The ego constitutes itself for itself in, so to speak, the unity of a ‘history’” (Hua I, 109). 8 “The eidetic laws of compossibility (rules that govern simultaneous or successive existence and possible existence together, in the fact) are laws […] of motivation in the transcendental sphere” (Hua I, 109);“In all phases, we also have the sedimented history of these respective phases, in each one the monad had its concealed ‘knowing,’ its habitual structure” (Hua XIV, 36); “Experience is the primal instituting of the being-for-us of objects as having their objective sense” (Hua XVII, 173). 9 “Thus, it is a necessary task to establish the universal and primitive laws under which stands the formation of an apperception arising from a primal apperception, and to derive systematically the possible formations, that is, to clarify every given structure according to its origin.This ‘history’ of consciousness (the history of all possible apperceptions) does not concern bringing to light a factical genesis for factical apperceptions or factical types in a factical stream of consciousness […]. Rather, every shape of apperception is an essential shape and has its genesis in accordance with essential laws; accordingly, included in the idea of such apperception is that it must undergo a ‘genetic analysis.’ […] Thus, the theory of consciousness is directly theory of apperceptions” (Hua XI, 339). 10 “Transcendentally he fnds himself as the ego, then as generically an ego, who already has (in conscious fashion) a world of our universally familiar ontological type, with Nature, with culture (sciences, fne art, mechanical art, and so forth), with personalities of a higher order (state, church), and the rest. […] This, moreover, is a necessary level; only by laying open the law-forms of the genesis pertaining to this level can one see the possibilities of a maximally universal eidetic phenomenology. In the latter the ego varies himself so freely that he does not keep even the ideal restrictive presupposition that a world having the ontological structure accepted by us as obvious is essentially constituted for him” (Hua I, 110–111). 11 “The phenomenological eidetic reduction places me on the footing of a possible monad in general, but precisely not of a monad thought as individual and identical and under the charge of circumscribing the individual identity according to its possibilities and necessities. But I can also set this new task, and of course do so by using the doctrine of the essence of acts, of structures being constituted, etc. One can even say that I can also describe individuated geneses and laws of genesis without systematically tackling the problem of the universal genesis of a monad and the nature of its individuality. […] Finally, we have the phenomenology of monadic individuality, including the phenomenology of a genesis integral to it, a genesis in which the unity of the monad arises, in which the monad is by becoming” (Hua XIV, 37–38). 12 “Phenomenology: 1) universal phenomenology of the general structures of consciousness; 2) constitutive phenomenology; 3) phenomenology of genesis. […] In a certain way, we can therefore distinguish ‘explanatory’ phenomenology as a phenomenology of regulated genesis and ‘descriptive’ phenomenology as a phenomenology of possible essential shapes […] in pure consciousness and their teleological ordering, in the realm of possible reason, under the headings ‘object’ and ‘sense.’ In my lectures, I did not say ‘descriptive,’ but rather ‘static’ phenomenology” (Hua XI, 340). 13 For a survey of the improper senses of genesis Husserl used up to the time of Ideas I, see Bernet, Kern, Marbach 1996, 182–184. 14 In his response to Husserl’s letter, Natorp comments, perhaps ironically, that he is happy with the fulfllment of his “prediction” (Hua-Dok III/5, 139). Natorp is referring to his former statement (in his review of Husserl’s Ideas, published in the journal Logos, 1917/18) that Husserl’s eidetics in Ideas is only a static “classifcation,” in a somewhat Aristotelian vein, of the sciences according to separate “regional ontologies.” Instead, he affrms that what must be promoted is their “logical genealogies” (Natorp 1973, 45). He then expresses the wish that Husserl’s “defects will be corrected, in whole or in part, in the later implementation.”The statement I quoted in Husserl’s letter is a direct response to Natorp’s criticism about a static comprehension of the Platonic “doctrine of ideas” in Ideas I. Here I cannot explore the profound impact Natorp had on Husserl’s idea of a genetic, reconstructive theory. This is a complex issue that deserves an independent treatment. See Kern 1964, 321–374;Welton 2003, 266–270; Staiti 2013, 71–90; Luft 2016, 326–370. 15 “With this, the static is here described as what has become an as-always in the ‘history’ of the ego, a frmly-formed habituality, and a type of perception associated with it, a type of apperception.The genetic analysis is the comprehension and elucidation of the genetic constitution, i.e., the constitution of that constitution” (Hua XXV, 407). 16 In the passage in question, Husserl characterizes the issues of psychological origin as follows: “The question concerning psychological origin is related to mental acts, states, living-processes, capabilities, and
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other real properties, in a word, to real mental events of all types and levels of complication, thus especially to ‘presentations,’ living-processes of consciousness in which ‘objects’ are conscious. This is the question of how, in the ‘life of the mind’ [Leben der Seele], i.e., in the real becoming of this life—which integrates itself into the world’s becoming—they have arisen, and especially the question concerning from which psychic factors of becoming […] they arose. […] The idea of a psychological origin has its determinate sense: it is a causal question related to the ‘reality’ of the psychic” (Hua XIII, 346). The title “Zusammengang zwischen psychologischem Ursprung und phänomenologischem Ursprung” is rewritten as “Zusammenhang zwischen genetischem Ursprung und phänomenologisch-statischem Ursprung” (see Hua XIII, 351–352n.). Thus Husserl writes, “Gedanken zu einer genetischen Phänomenologie” instead of “Psychologischer und phänomenologischer Ursprung” (Hua XIII, 354). Lee puts this even more strongly in speaking of the “supra-temporal structure of validity-foundation.” I do not subscribe here to Steinbock’s thesis according to which these issues are not conceivable as genetic because genetic issues are, he says, restricted to individual monadic life and to a synchronic intersubjectivity. Accordingly, he isolates them under the title of “generative phenomenology.” For instance,“In distinction to a genetic analysis that is restricted to the becoming of individual subjectivity as founded in an egology, generative phenomenology treats phenomena that are historical, geological, cultural, intersubjective, and normative from the very start” (Steinbock 1995, 178). For a detailed discussion of the “historical turn” within genetic phenomenology, see Ferencz-Flatz 2017.
References Albertazzi, Liliana, ed. 2013. Handbook of Experimental Phenomenology:Visual Perception of Space, Shape, and Appearance. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Almeida, Guido Antônio de. 1972. Sinn und Inhalt in der genetischen Phänomenologie E. Husserls. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff. Bernet, Rudolf, Kern, Iso, and Marbach, Eduard. 1996. Edmund Husserl. Darstellung seines Denkens. Rev. ed. Hamburg: Felix Meiner. Brentano, Franz. 1995. Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint.Trans. Antos C. Rancurello, D. B.Terrell, and Linda McAlister. London: Routledge. ———. 2002. Descriptive Psychology. Ed. and trans. Benito Müller. London: Routledge. Dilthey, Wilhelm. 1924. “Ideen über eine beschreibende und zergliedernde Psychologie.” Gesammelte Schriften. Band V: Die Geistige Welt. Stuttgart: B.G.Teubner, pp. 139–240. Ferencz-Flatz, Christian. 2017. “Zur geschichtlichen Wende der genetischen Phänomenologie. Eine Interpretation der Beilage III der Krisis.” Husserl Studies 33: 99–126. Kern, Iso. 1964. Husserl und Kant. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff. Lee, Nam-In. 1993. Edmund Husserls Phänomenologie der Instinkte. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Luft, Sebastian. 2016.“Reconstruction and Reduction: Natorp and Husserl on Method and the Question of Subjectivity.” Meta: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy 8: 326–370. Natorp, Paul. 1965. Allgemeine Psychologie.Amsterdam: E.J. Bonset. ———. 1973. “Husserls ‘Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie.’” In: Husserl. Ed. Hermann Noack. Darmstadt:Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, pp. 37–60. Sokolowski, Robert. 1964. The Formation of Husserl’s Concept of Constitution.The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Staiti, Andrea. 2013. “The Ideen and Neo-Kantianism.” In: Husserl’s Ideen. Ed. Lester Embree and Thomas Nenon. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 71–90. Steinbock, Anthony J. 1995. Home and Beyond: Generative Phenomenology After Husserl. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. 1998. “Husserl’s Static and Genetic Phenomenology: Translator’s Introduction to Two Essays.” Continental Philosophy Review 31: 127–134. Welton, Donn. 2003. “The Systematicity of Husserl’s Transcendental Philosophy: From Static to Genetic Phenomenology.” In: The New Husserl. Ed. Donn Welton. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 255–279.
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18 HORIZON Saulius Geniusas
The philosophical background: the history of the concept The concept of the horizon derives from the Greek verb horizein, which one could roughly translate as “to divide,” “to delimit,” or “to mark off by boundaries.” In Antiquity, this concept was employed primarily in astronomy. One can trace the specifcally philosophical applications of this term to Neo-Platonism and its doctrine of emanation. We come across the concept of the horizon in The Book of Causes (Liber de causis), which in the middle ages was falsely assumed to have been written by Aristotle. This work, whose content derives from Proclus’ Elements of Theology, contends that the human soul fnds itself in the horizon of eternity, under and above time. Such a metaphysical interpretation of the horizon remained central in medieval philosophy until the 13th century.The situation changed with Thomas Aquinas, who was the frst to interpret the concept of the horizon anthropologically. For Aquinas, the nature of a human being is both spiritual and physical, and thus a human being is said to have the limits of both natures in itself. While medieval philosophy determined the concept of the horizon either metaphysically or anthropologically, in modern philosophy the horizon became an epistemological concept. With the advent of modernity, it was no longer a question of metaphysically determining the soul’s or the human being’s place in the order of the cosmos, which presumably had been set in advance and which one could only subsequently identify, although by no means modify. Modernity introduced new distinctions between true and apparent horizons, as well as individual and universal horizons.With modernity, the horizon became a matter of refection and self-determination. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, as well as Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, employed the concept of the horizon in their pursuit of the rational and historical limits of human knowledge. The task of determining the breadth and limits of human knowledge remained the central task that guided Immanuel Kant’s use of the concept of the horizon. It was especially the synthesizing powers of Kant’s philosophy that rendered his refections on the horizon highly outstanding. In post-Kantian philosophy of the 19th century, and especially in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and Wilhelm Dilthey, we face a growing philosophical interest in cultural, individual, and historical horizons.1 221
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Thus, in the history of philosophy, the horizon has received a number of complementary and conficting determinations, the chief of which are metaphysical, anthropological, epistemological, historical, and cultural. Nonetheless, in all these diverse frameworks, the concept of the horizon remained a metaphorical term, whose signifcance was only marginal and which never reached a clear determination. Edmund Husserl was the frst not only to transform the horizon into a notion of central philosophical importance, but even more notably, to uncover its full-blown problematic and signifcance.2
The psychological background: William James’ Principles of Psychology In phenomenological literature, the concept of the horizon originates in the frst volume of Husserl’s Ideen. Such at least was Husserl’s own view, which he expressed in Formal and Transcendental Logic.3 In Ideen I, the concept of the horizon refers to a non-intuitive context, which co-determines the sense of any object consciousness might be contemplating.4 To obtain a more precise understanding of this concept, one needs to address Husserl’s relation to William James. As is well known, Husserl did not receive formal training in philosophy, but rather in mathematics and psychology. It should therefore come as no big surprise that his use of the concept of the horizon has more affnities with James’s psychology than with any philosopher, who has used the concept of the horizon before him.As Husserl himself has repeatedly observed, James’ concept of fringes of consciousness, which we come across in the Principles of Psychology, marks the psychological basis of Husserl’s concept of the horizon.5 In his Principles of Psychology, James uses the terms “fringe,” “halo” and “horizon” interchangeably. James employs these terms in the framework of his argument that there is no such thing as a purely thematic consciousness. As James puts it, “into the awareness of the thunder itself the awareness of the previous silence creeps and continues; for what we hear when the thunder crashes is not thunder pure, but thunder-breaking-upon-silence-and-contrasting -with-it” (James 1950, 240). Just as to be conscious of a sound is to be simultaneously aware either of other sounds or of silence that precede and follow it, so to be thematically and explicitly conscious of any perceptual, affective, or conceptual object is to be simultaneously aware, although only non-thematically and implicitly, of other objects that surround and escort it. According to James, any thematic consciousness whatsoever is always “fringed” or “suffused” with emptiness “that is fused into one with it and has become bone of its bone and fesh of its fesh” (James 1950, 255). Following James, Husserl employs the notion of the horizon still in the lecture notes and research manuscripts that precede the publication of Ideen I. However, in these early writings, the notion of the horizon is not yet employed in the phenomenological sense, which the term was subsequently given in Ideen I. In the earlier works, Husserl uses the terms horizon (Horizont), background (Hintergrund) and halo (Hof) interchangeably, while he repeatedly acknowledges that he takes all three terms from James and understands them psychologically, as qualifcations of experience (what James calls the “inner world of consciousness”) and not determinations of objects themselves.The situation changes in Ideen I, where Husserl for the frst time employs the concept of the horizon as a transcendental notion. In Ideen I, Husserl draws a distinction between the horizon, on the one hand, and halo and background, on the other. In §28 of this programmatic work, he argues that for consciousness transposed into the arithmetical “world,” the natural world is “a background for my actconsciousness, but it is not a horizon within which an arithmetical world fnds a place” (Husserl 1983, 55). Husserl continues to employ the terms “background” and “halo” as James had done before 222
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him, that is, as equivocal terms, which can determine either the “inner” or the “outer” world of consciousness. By contrast, he employs the concept of the horizon as a concept meant to cover only the phenomenon’s essential determinations, that is, those determinations in the absence of which the object would no longer be the object that it is.With this in mind, one could qualify the horizon as a notion that is meant to cover those dimensions of sense that consciousness implicitly co-intends in a way that the sense of what is co-intended is inseparable from what makes an object into what it is. Thus, while pre-Husserlian history of philosophy provides us with metaphysical, anthropological, epistemological, historical, and cultural determinations of the horizon, and while James enriches this arsenal of senses with a psychological determination, Husserl was the frst to transform this notion into a specifcally transcendental concept, which was eventually meant to account for the world’s constitution.
Husserl’s static phenomenology of the horizons As far as Husserl’s static phenomenology of the horizon is concerned, the most elaborate analysis is to be found in Ideen I. Here Husserl thematizes the horizon as a necessary dimension of intentionality. For Husserl, the horizons belong neither to the natural world, nor to consciousness as it is conceived from the natural standpoint.The horizons are not components of nature and natural things, but essential aspects of intentional consciousness, which in Ideen I lends itself to a noetic and a noematic analysis.6 In virtue of noematic horizons, the explicit and thematic appearances are always already intentionally tied to implicit and non-thematic appearances. Due to these intentional ties, what appears explicitly and thematically is apperceived as an appearance of this and no other object of experience. For example, to hear a melody is to hear a particular tone explicitly as well as a number of other tones implicitly—tones one has already heard in the past or tones one expects to hear in the future. If other past and future tones were to accompany the tone I hear at the moment explicitly, one would in effect hear a different melody. Thus, to hear a melody, one needs to hear not only tones, but also relations between tones—to hear how the tones are bound to each other, in what harmony or disharmony. Insofar as appearances are appearances of an intentional object, they have their noematic horizons. This insight gains its central signifcance in the framework of Husserl’s refections on constitution.To account for how an intentional object is constituted is to clarify the implicit totality of references, which binds a plurality of noemata into an intentional unity. The horizon-consciousness thereby proves to be an empty-consciousness, which renders pure presence a sheer impossibility.The horizon-consciousness initiates a play between presence and absence, between what is given thematically and non-thematically, in virtue of which an appearance becomes an appearance of this and no other object of experience. While noematic horizons signify the intentional bond that ties appearances to each other, noetic horizons are formed by intentional references that bind explicit acts of consciousness to implicit intentional relations, made up of sedimented retentions and protentions.These implicit relations contribute to the apprehension of the object that consciousness thematically intends. To return to the example of the melody, consciousness of the tone carries with it its past and future noetic horizons: when it intends a tone, consciousness also intends its own past actualities as well as future possibilities.This necessary overlap of what Husserl calls “transverse intentionality” and “longitudinal intentionality” highlights the fact that noetic horizons are essentially temporal: each act of consciousness carries with it the horizon of the before and after, and just as what is given before, so also what might be given after co-determines the intentional content of consciousness and transforms the present content into a momentary phase of consciousness. 223
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Besides offering a noetic and noematic accounts of the horizons, Ideen I further thematizes horizon-intentionality in terms of the intentional object’s inner- and outer-horizons, which can be clarifed both noetically as well as noematically. From a noematic standpoint, the inner-horizon refers to the cogivenness of those implicit and non-thematic appearances, which, taken along with explicit and thematic appearances, constitute the intentional object’s inner determinations. From a noetic standpoint, the inner-horizon stands for the references that bind the explicit and thematic act of consciousness to those implicit and non-thematic acts, through which the inner determinations of the intentional object are constituted. Due to the noetic and noematic references that constitute the object’s inner-horizon, the cup of coffee that lies on my desk has a side unseen. I must be conscious of this unseen side if I am to identify this object as a cup of coffee. The intentional object’s outer-horizon also calls for both a noetic and noematic clarifcation. From a noematic perspective, the outer-horizon covers those intentional references that bind the explicit and thematic appearances of this particular intentional object to the implicit and non-thematic appearances of other intentional objects. From a noetic standpoint, the outerhorizon binds the explicit and thematic acts of consciousness with those other implicit and non-thematic acts, through which other intentional objects are constituted. If what appears intentionally is to be qualifed as an object, it must have both an inner- and an outer-horizon. Thus the cup of coffee of which I just spoke is on my desk, to the left of the book, in this study, and so on. Besides spatial objects, temporal objects also have their inner- and outer-horizons.To return to the melody: it is given to me not only in the now, but also in the past and the future that I now intend.This implicit givenness of the melody in the past and future qualifes the melody’s inner-horizon. So also, temporal objects have an outer-horizon.Thus while I hear this melody in the concert hall, I can also hear someone coughing, or I can keep comparing the present performance to other performances of the same piece I have heard in the past, or, fnally, I can anticipate the applause I will hear after the performance comes to its end. These implicit references to the givenness of other temporal objects constitute the non-spatial object’s outerhorizon. Different types of objects, be they conceptual or affective, also have their inner- as well as outer-horizons. It is crucial not to overlook that Husserl’s discussion of the noetic and noematic, as well as inner- and outer-horizons, takes place in the framework of his transcendental analysis. For Husserl of Ideen I, it would be an error akin to psychologism to reduce the horizons to merely psychic properties. For Husserl, the horizons are essential determinations of intentional consciousness and one of phenomenology’s central tasks is to clarify the role they play in the intentional object’s constitution. Building on the basis of Husserl’s analysis of the horizon in Ideen I, one could further qualify horizon-consciousness as a peculiar form of self-consciousness, which is just as characteristic of transcendent as it is of immanent perception. Horizon-consciousness is a type of self-consciousness in three different senses. First, horizon-consciousness can be conceived as the consciousness of the “I can,” which entails the awareness of what one can do if one does the things one can do. In the words of Ludwig Landgrebe, the consciousness of the horizon is the “more or less dark awareness that ‘I can continue in this direction and thus gain experiences that will confrm or correct my previous experiences’” (Landgrebe 1973, 10). Secondly, for each act of consciousness to be a unifed act, the now-point of the act must be experienced along with references to a system of retentions and protentions, in the absence of which the act of consciousness would lose its unity and, thus, could not be qualifed as an act at all.Thirdly, each act of consciousness is experienced as bound not only to retentions and protentions, but also to the outermost limit of all acts, namely, the stream of consciousness itself. What unfolds beyond this limit (i.e. the 224
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experiences that belong to other streams of consciousness) does not play a constitutive role in determining the sense of one’s transcendental experiences.
Husserl’s genetic phenomenology of the horizons: the horizons of subjectivity When the further development of Husserl’s phenomenology of the horizons is taken into account, one can identify two chief limitations of Husserl’s static phenomenology of the horizons. First of all, this analysis misses the phenomenon of the world. Secondly, it also misses the horizons of transcendental subjectivity.The reason for both shortcomings is methodological: it concerns the reduction, as it is understood and practiced in static phenomenology in general, and in Ideen I in particular.The alternative paths to the reduction (especially the paths through psychology and through the lifeworld), have signifcantly enriched Husserl’s phenomenology of the horizons, so much so that the horizon could be qualifed as a specifcally genetic theme, which in its emergence appears dressed in static garb. While this section will concentrate on Husserl’s genetic phenomenology of the horizons of subjectivity, the next one will turn to the world-horizon. For Husserl, horizon-intentionality is a characteristic of horizon-consciousness. However, static and genetic methods determine horizon-consciousness in signifcantly different ways. As we saw, in static phenomenology, horizon-consciousness is understood in terms of the object’s inner- and outer-horizons, each of which lends itself to a noetic and noematic clarifcation. By contrast, genetic phenomenology addresses it as “the horizon of typical pre-acquaintance in which every object is pregiven” (Husserl 1973, 150). The latter qualifcation suggests that consciousness is horizonal insofar as it typifes appearances, due to which it can anticipate the phenomenon’s subsequent modes of appearances.The awakening of typical pre-acquaintance is the awakening of the horizons of anticipation, that is, of the other possible manners of givenness, which consciousness prescribes in advance to the appearing phenomena. Husserl further qualifes the horizons of typical pre-acquaintance as the horizons of determinate indeterminability, which means that the projections of sense that the horizon-consciousness gives rise to can lead both to fulfllment and disappointment.The horizons could thus be said to be defning, yet not defnite; determining, yet not determined. On the one hand, because of the pregivenness of horizon-consciousness, each and every appearance is always already apperceived as an appearance of a particular intentional object. On the other hand, new experiences, insofar as they do not lead to pure fulfllment but bring about some kind of disappointment, transform the horizon’s anticipatory schema. This means that horizon-consciousness originates in experiences themselves, or more precisely, in the sedimentations of experience. Experience itself generates habitualities, which in its own turn guides subsequent experiences. One might wonder if phenomenology of the horizons does not land in a vicious circle when it maintains that just as experiences are determined by the horizons, so the horizons are determined by experiences. For Husserl, this apparent tension is inherently productive: it proves that there are no fully formed horizons; that is, that the horizons are always in the process of formation. Moreover, this tension points toward deeper levels of genetic constitution, which phenomenology of the horizons is meant to clarify.To conceptualize horizon-consciousness genetically is nothing other than to inquire into the rudimentary sense-accomplishments that make up the horizonality of the horizon. More precisely, for Husserl, the tension in question originates in the syntheses of homogeneity and heterogeneity. The horizon of typical pre-acquaintance “has its ground in the passive associative relations of likeness and similarity, in the ‘obscure’ recollections of the similar” (Husserl 1973, 150). 225
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The awakening of the horizons of typical pre-acquaintance is possible only as far as consciousness retains its past accomplishments as sedimented capabilities. The horizons thereby reveal themselves as the “mirroring” of the whole life of consciousness within each lived-experience. Horizon-consciousness, once taken in its concreteness, proves to be a horizon of subjectivity. That subjectivity itself possesses its own unique horizons can be considered one of the most fundamental accomplishments of Husserl’s genetic analysis of horizon-intentionality. The horizon of subjectivity proves to be the thematic feld of genetic phenomenology itself: to thematize the origins of sense-formation is nothing other than to delineate the crystallization of the horizons. The genetic references that bind different appearances to each other is exactly what makes up the horizonality of the horizon.This basic fact enables one to single out the frst sense of the genetic concept of the horizon: the horizon is the implicit system of references (Verweisungshorizont), which embraces all appearances, due to which an actual appearance is an appearance of a particular objectivity. As we have already seen, it is primarily potential appearances that are entailed in the actual one.The implication of potentiality within actuality highlights the second sense of the genetic concept of the horizon: the horizon is the horizon of validity (Geltungshorizont). That is, only in virtue of the implicit references that bind the actual appearance to potential appearances does my actual appearance become an appearance of a particular intentional object. The horizon thereby turns out to be the unity of validity,7 which in its own turn designates the homogeneous style of the forward streaming experience.
Husserl’s genetic phenomenology of the horizons: the world-horizon In some of his research manuscripts, which are meant to clarify the concept of the world-horizon, Husserl draws an intriguing distinction between world-consciousness (Weltbewußtsein) and world-experience (Welterfahrung).This distinction suggests that the world-horizon can be thematized at least at two fundamentally different levels of transcendental experience.The worldhorizon, as it is given through world-consciousness, could be further qualifed as the world, conceived as the wherefrom of experience. By contrast, the world-horizon, as it is given through world-experience, could be further determined in two complementary ways: as the wherein and the whereto of experience. When it comes to determining the horizons of things, conceived as singular realities, one must distinguish between the core appearance, given directly and immediately, and the horizons of typical pre-acquaintance, which enable consciousness to apperceive various other modes of the object’s appearance and thereby to transform the actual appearance into an appearance of this and no other object.Yet as Husserl maintains in some of his research manuscripts, “one should not overlook that the world is not constituted the way singular realities are constituted” (Hua XXXIX, 83). So also, in his Crisis Husserl qualifes the being of the world as unique and further suggests that “there exists a fundamental difference between the way we are conscious of the world and the way we are conscious of things or objects” (Husserl 1970, 143). In contrast to things, the world is not given through horizons; it is rather given as a horizon.With this in mind, one can determine the world-horizon, conceived as the wherefrom of experience, in the following way: the world-horizon, insofar as it is given to world-consciousness, and not worldexperience, is a background without foreground, a halo without any kind of intuitive core.8 We are faced here with the world’s non-objective, non-thematic, and non-intuitive givenness. Despite such a threefold negative determination, the concept of world-consciousness remains a phenomenological concept in that it forms a necessary counterpart of the appearance of existent things.Thus the “universal ground of belief in a world which all praxis presupposes” (Husserl 226
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1973, 30) forms the necessary basis that underlies all consciousness of singular realities. The world as ground of experience, conceived as the intentional correlate of the universal passive belief in being, is nothing other than world-consciousness itself. In contrast to world-consciousness, world-experience presupposes the same background/ foreground schema that characterizes the consciousness of singular realities. In this regard, it is crucial not to overlook that Husserl qualifes things in terms of “existence-in” (Inexistenz): “the existence of anything real never has any other sense than that of existence-in” (Husserl 1973, 34).The qualifcation of things as existences-in calls for a correlative qualifcation of the world as the wherein of the experience. While real intentional things are qualifed by their being-insomething, the world needs to be qualifed as the wherein-of-everything: “everything is in it, and it itself is not an in-something” (Husserl 1973, 137). Husserl identifes such a notion of the world-horizon as the totality of nature. “The totality of nature is also ‘experienced’” (Husserl 1973, 137): it is experienced as the bond that ties all individual and plural substrates to each other. Such is the meaning of the world-horizon, conceived as the wherein of experience. Yet Husserl himself admits that the notion of the world as the totality of nature is an abstraction: “but the world of our experience, taken concretely, is not only the totality of nature” (Husserl 1973, 138). This is because the world conceived as the totality of nature does not include founded, but only founding objects of experience.The concept of the world-horizon as the whereto of experience is meant to overcome this shortcoming.While the frst two notions of the world-horizon refer to sensuous experience taken in its unmodalized manifestation, the third concept is meant to describe in its essential features the enrichment of sense the worldhorizon undergoes due to modalization and non-sensuous experience. Modalization is genuinely productive in that it generates essentially new types of experience. According to Husserl,“with each new object constituted for the frst time (genetically speaking) a new type of object is permanently prescribed” (Husserl 1973, 38). This generation of a new typology of experience brings with it new horizons of anticipations, which guide subsequent experience.Thus, while unmodalized experience merely brings to fulfllment what was entailed in the previous horizons of anticipation, modalization gives rise to new horizons of anticipation, which do not overlap with the previous ones.Thus, the experience of the new transforms not only the subject’s understanding of concrete objects of experience; it also transforms the “horizon of all horizons”—the world-horizon. We come to face here “an enrichment of the world through new intentions and acquisitions” (Hua XXXIX,Text Nr. 41), which derives from modalized experience. Due to modalization and the generation of new types of experience, “our pregiven surrounding world is already ‘pregiven’ as multiformed, formed according to its regional categories and typifed in conformity with a number of different special genera, kinds, etc.” (Husserl 1973, 38). The world-horizon, conceived as the whereto of experience, is an accomplishment of intersubjective historicity.To suggest that the world-horizon is inherently historical is to recognize that it is always in the process of constitution.Taken in its historical concreteness, the world-horizon embraces not only what is constituted in founding unmodalized experiences, but also what is given through founded and modalized sense formations. In this way, the world-horizon, conceived as the whereto of experience, proves to be the lifeworld itself, taken in its concreteness. Thus, even though scientifc theories and logical constructs are not things like stones, houses, or trees, they nonetheless “belong to this concrete unity of the life-world, whose concreteness thus extends farther than that of ‘things’” (Husserl 1970, 130).To emphasize this point, Husserl speaks of indentation (Einrückung) that founded objectivities leave on the world-horizon. Just like the sea indents the coastline, so the streaming-in of new experiences continuously indents the world-horizon, thereby transforming its “pregivenness.” For Husserl, when the constitutive 227
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effects of such “indentation” are taken into consideration, the lifeworld proves to be a universal philosophical theme. Thus, as a genetic concept, the horizon is simultaneously a horizon of subjectivity and the world-horizon. This does not mean that Husserl’s phenomenology of the horizon takes one in two opposite directions. Rather, such a state of affairs corroborates one of Husserl’s central claims he has argued for ever since Ideen I: the horizon is a fgure of intentionality.
Post-Husserlian phenomenology of the horizons The horizon, conceived both as a phenomenological concept and a phenomenological theme, does not exclusively belong to Husserl’s phenomenology. We come across this concept in the works of virtually all other phenomenologists, who implicitly or explicitly derive it from Husserl’s writings. Heidegger employs the concept of the horizon most frequently in Being and Time, and especially in the context of his account of temporality. Part One of his monumental study is titled “The Interpretation of Dasein in Terms of Temporality, and the Explication of Time as the Transcendental Horizon for the Question of Being” (Heidegger 2008, 65). Of central importance is the distinction Heidegger draws between the horizon of vulgar temporality and the ecstatic-horizonal unity of temporality. Just as in Husserl’s writings, so in Being and Time as well, the horizon is understood in two complementary ways: it concerns the transcendental determination of Dasein as well as the determination of transcendent entities. Such a two-sided determination of the horizon leads to the realization that the factical Dasein necessarily understands itself in the horizon of transcendence—a realization that, in its own turn, lies at the basis of Heidegger’s account of authenticity and inauthenticity.After Being and Time, Heidegger rarely employs the notion of the horizon, arguably due to the concept’s epistemological connotations. In Heidegger’s later writings, the notion of the horizon is replaced with that of releasement (Gelassenheit), which in contrast to any kind of horizonal projections of sense, is meant to let things be in whatever way they may be. Just like Heidegger, so also Merleau-Ponty derives the concept of the horizon from Husserl’s writings. Just as Husserl, so also Merleau-Ponty understands the horizon as a fgure of intentionality. In the Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty employs the concept of the horizon in the framework of his analysis of the lived-body, which has its counterpart in the natural world, conceived as “the horizon of all horizons” and “the style of all styles” (Merleau-Ponty 1976, 330). For Merleau-Ponty, the horizons are essentially open, which means that the horizonal synthesis is a temporal process and that this synthesis merges with the moment of the passage of time. According to Merleau-Ponty’s main contention, the horizons one inhabits can never be made fully explicit (Merleau-Ponty 1976, 332–333). This realization underlies the central role that ambiguity plays in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy.With the discovery of the concept of fesh in his late works, Merleau-Ponty re-conceptualizes the horizon as a pre-egological “syncretism,” which he also calls a “polymorphic matrix” and a “new type of being” (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 220–221). While for Heidegger the horizons are frst and foremost temporal, and while for MerleauPonty they are primarily perceptual, for Hans-Georg Gadamer, the horizons characterize the essence of understanding. Borrowing the concept of the horizon from Nietzsche and Husserl,9 Gadamer transforms this concept into a central hermeneutical theme, which concerns the relation between the universal and the particular. According to one of Gadamer’s most famous defnitions of understanding, “understanding is the fusion of the horizons, supposedly existing by themselves” (Gadamer 2004, 306).This defnition suggests that in the hermeneutical frame-
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work, the horizons are always already “fused” (verschmolzen) from the outset, although not “fused enough” to abolish the differences between cultures, languages, or individuals. The horizon turns out to be a concept that embodies the living unity of identity and difference, and this unity in its own turn is conceived as a necessary condition of hermeneutic understanding. While Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Gadamer have appropriated Husserl’s concept of the horizon and have sought to develop it in different frameworks of analysis, in more recent French phenomenology, we also come across attempts to abandon this concept. According to Jean-Luc Marion, the horizons of anticipation transform the unseen into the pre-seen, thereby erasing the phenomenon’s “fundamentally irreducible novelty” (Marion 2002, 186). For Marion, the horizon is a “visual prison,” “a panorama without exterior, forbidding all genuinely new arising” (Marion 2002, 186). The task of Marion’s phenomenology becomes that of freeing givenness from the horizon and that of demonstrating that certain phenomena exceed their horizon.
Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9
For a more extensive historical overview of the concept of the horizon, see Scherner 1974. See in this regard Kuhn 1940 and Kwan 1990. See Husserl 1969, 199. See Gander 2010, 133. For instance, in the Crisis, Husserl observes: “as much as I know, James was the only one who, under the heading of ‘fringes,’ became aware of the phenomenon of the horizon” (Husserl 1970, 267). See Drummond 2007, 96 and Gander 2010, 134. See Hua VIII, 147. Or, as Husserl puts it in one of his research manuscripts,“to make the world thematic and, in a certain way, to direct to it a thematic regard, to want to know the world ‘experientially,’ to want to bring the world to intuition as the universe of possible experience … the unthematic world-horizon precedes all this” (Hua XXXIX, 83). See Gadamer 2004, 301.
References Drummond, John J. 2007. Historical Dictionary of Husserl’s Philosophy. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2004. Truth and Method. Trans. J. Weinsheimer and D. G. Marshall. London: Continuum. Gander, Hans-Helmuth. (Ed.). 2010. Husserl-Lexikon. Darmstadt:Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Heidegger, Martin. 2008. Being and Time. Trans. by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Thought. Husserl, Edmund. 1969. Formal and Transcendental Logic.Trans. Dorion Cairns.The Hague: Nijhoff. ———. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy.Trans. David Carr. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. ———. 1973. Experience and Judgment: Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic. Trans. J. Churchill and K. Ameriks. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. ———. 1983. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology.Trans. F. Kersten.The Hague: M. Nijhoff. James, William. 1950. Principles of Psychology, vol. I. New York: Dover Publications. Kuhn, Helmut. 1940.“The Phenomenological Concept of the ‘Horizon’.” In: Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl. Ed. Marvin Farber. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 106–123. Kwan,Tze-Wan. 1990.“Husserl’s Concept of Horizon:An Attempt at Reappraisal.” In: Analecta Husserliana, vol. XXXI. Ed.Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 361–399. Landgrebe, Ludwig. 1973.“The Phenomenological Concept of Experience.”Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 34(1): pp. 1–13.
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19 IMAGINATION AND PHANTASY Julia Jansen
Not all philosophical handbooks require an entry on imagination.The handbook of phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy, however, does. Husserl considered imagining one of the key elements of his phenomenological method. His meticulous analyses of what exactly it is we do when we imagine, and of the nature of imagined objects, led him to important ontological discoveries and to valuable insights into the complexity of intentional consciousness. Some of the most prominent philosophers of the 20th century who drew from Husserl’s phenomenology as at least one of their sources, even when they largely parted ways with him, still retained some of the key philosophical lessons to be drawn from his scrupulous analyses of imagination: for example, that imagining need not involve the manipulation of mental images and thus challenges a representationalist account of the mind. That imagining enables us, frst of all, to distinguish between the real and the unreal and thus is constitutive both of a sense of reality and of a sense that we can reach beyond it, to consider alternative realities and pure possibilities, that is, of a sense of freedom. And, not least, that philosophical thinking cannot rely on empirical observations, concepts, and inferences alone, but equally requires the philosopher to be imaginative and creative. In what follows, I attempt to give an overview of some of the most important themes that have emerged and have been explored by phenomenological research into the imagination.This is, of course, a selection. Given the signifcance of the imagination for phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy as a whole, it is not surprising that there is a wealth of sources in the tradition as well as in contemporary thought – especially if one looks for relevant ideas beyond the name “imagination” to include relevant analyses of images and of creative thought. There is no way to do justice to this wealth within the constraints of this article. I have thus chosen to highlight certain coordinates or ‘nodes’ that I hope will also illuminate, by way of infuence, connection, or opposition, some of the positions that I cannot mention explicitly here.
19.1. Imagination, image consciousness, and representation Husserl begins his efforts to re-examine imagination in his 1904/05 lectures on “Phantasy and Image Consciousness (Phantasie und Bildbewusstsein)” (Husserl 1983, 2005, Text 1). From the start, he leaves aside the classical Aristotelian model that places the imagination (phantasia) between perception and thought, as well as the Kantian notion of a transcendental imagination 231
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(Einbildungskraft) as a faculty that is geared towards judgment and, in its name, carries an unquestioned link to images (Bilder). Instead, Husserl, in an attempt to avoid traditional preconceptions, begins afresh with his analysis of “phantasy (Phantasie),” a term that is also common in everyday German language use. For ease of expression and to highlight the connections between the different positions outlined in this article, I will drop ‘phantasy’ in what follows and instead use the verb ‘imagining’ to express that Husserl is investigating an act of consciousness, not a faculty or mental state.1 Genuine cases of imagining (as opposed to, for example, cases of ‘mere supposing,’ or of ‘imagining that’) are, for Husserl, cases of sensory imagination. Imagining is, in the language of German philosophy, “intuitive (anschaulich).” Given the correlative nature of intentionality, according to Husserl, we do not simply imagine something, we imagine seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and/or touching something.An imagined object or scene is imagined as being seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and/ or touched.An object that (de iure, not de facto) cannot be experienced in at least one of these modes is ‘un-imaginable’ in the relevant sense. Hence, the distinction between imagining and perceiving does not depend on the absence or presence of such sensory contents, nor, as Hume would have it, does it depend on their comparative vivacity. Instead, it depends on the distinct mode in which they are experienced: namely, in the mode of “non-actuality” or “irreality.” To say that an imagined object is experienced as ‘non-actual’ or ‘irreal,’ rather than as ‘unreal,’ is meant to avoid the impression that only a particular set of objects are imaginable, namely those that are unreal, or non-existent.We may, but need not, imagine unreal, non-existent objects, such as unicorns and golden mountains.We may just as well imagine objects that in fact exist, such as an idyllic beach, or a cold beer; or we may imagine the possibility of being at that beach, or having that cold beer. Imagining, for Husserl, does not involve a relation to objects of a special ontological category, e.g., non-existent or fctional objects, but rather involves a particular mode of relating to objects. Referring to imagined objects as ‘non-actual’ suggests that they are experienced as objects that could be actual (because they are, to speak with Kant,‘possible objects of experience’); they are not, or at least not in the present environment of the person imagining. Referring to imagined objects as ‘irreal’ suggests that the person imagining is indifferent towards their ontological status, real or not; the usual positionality, which, according to Husserl, accompanies other acts (in perception, objects are posited as actual; in memory, objects are posited as having been actual, etc.), is neutralized. The senses of both ‘non-actual,’ which points towards imagining as awareness of possibilities, and ‘irreal,’ which points towards its ontological neutrality, are combined in the sense of the German unwirklich.’ In Husserl’s terminology, imagining is “quasi-perceptual”; a “phantasy” is a “quasi-perception (Quasi-Wahrnehmung).”Whereas in perception “the object appears to us, so to speak,‘in person,’ as itself present”; the imagined object appears as merely represented or as only possible (but not actual):“it is as though it were there, but only as though” (Husserl 2005, 18). However, Husserl does not merely gather his fndings. His analyses also contribute to a change in his approach. Continuing to come back to the issue of imagining, he also draws from it in his turn towards transcendental phenomenology.With respect to imagining specifcally, this involves an increasing skepticism towards a model of consciousness as a mind, i.e., an entity that in some sense ‘contains’ representations that can stand-in for external objects. This positions Husserl against philosophers who insist on the need for such representations in the case of imagining, even if they may have non-representationalist convictions concerning other modes of cognition. Historical examples may come to mind here. Think of Locke and Hume, or remember, for example, Kant’s defnition of imagination as “the power of presenting an object even without the object’s being present” (Kant 1996, B 151), which prima facie seems to require that the object’s presence be replaced by the presence of a mental image.You can also fnd many advocates of 232
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such views in contemporary discussions in philosophy of mind and cognition science. For example, even in circles that otherwise advance alternatives to representationalist models (such as extended or enactive approaches), imagining has been described as “representation-hungry” (Clark and Torribio 19952). Husserl effectively rejects all such views in an anti-representationalist move that seeks to overcome what he calls the “image theory” of consciousness. Instrumental in his move is Husserl’s analysis of what he calls “image consciousness (Bildbewusstsein).” Image consciousness involves an awareness of a perceptual object (for example a photograph, canvas, or computer screen), which lets us ‘see’ the object that it depicts. According to Husserl, this may involve three distinct moments: (1) the physical image, such as the black-and-white patches on an old photograph, the paint distributed on the canvas, or the pixels on the screen; (2) the image object, i.e., the fgure, which is confgured by a certain distribution of colors and shapes; and (3) the image subject, the object, person, or scene depicted or represented by the picture (Husserl 2005, 20f.).The physical image is indispensable for image consciousness. Therewith, according to Husserl, image consciousness is ‘essentially’ different from imagining, which requires no such image (physical or mental), but instead aims directly at its imaginary object. Only image consciousness involves this peculiar tripartite structure.3 Consequently, Husserl vehemently rejects the “erroneous image-theory” which assumes “that: ‘Outside the thing itself is there (or is at times there); in consciousness there is an image which does duty for it’” (Husserl 2001a, 125; 5th Log. Inv., Appx. to §11 and §20). It is not an act of viewing of mental images that characterizes imagining, but an act of simulating possible experiences, including experiences of image consciousness (I may, of course, imagine [seeing] an image). Imagining makes us thus, implicitly or explicitly, aware of perceptual possibilities, regardless of whether they were or ever will be actualized.This modal capacity of imagining depends on and makes evident a ‘parallelism’ between perception and phantasy, which remains a leading systematic idea throughout Husserl’s work (cf. Husserl 2001a, 285 f., 6th Log. Inv. §47; Husserl 1969, 183; Husserl 1973, 28 §6) and bears great methodological signifcance. This culminates in Husserl’s renewed efforts to approach the phenomenon of imagining in the context of his later genetic analyses, which are meant to uncover the ‘history’ of those relations and the complex interconnections in which they are generated (Husserl 2001b).This illuminates the depths of imagining much further, including its original temporality and its modal functions. In this context, Husserl is increasingly interested in the capacity of imagining to generate consciousness of possibilities. Such consciousness relies on the possibility of switching between the position of the imagining ‘I’ and the ‘I’ of the imaginatively simulated experience. In other words, when I immerse myself in my imaginings, I live in the ‘as if.’When I instead consciously hold the position of the one who is imagining herself experiencing something in such imaginings, they manifest possibilities to me, namely, possible ways of experiencing something, and, correlatively, possible objects to experience (see Husserl 2005,Text 19). Of critical importance for Husserl, also methodologically, is the distinction between “real possibilities,” which are motivated by actual experience and, more generally, by the ‘real’ world of the individual who is imagining. By contrast, a “pure possibility” would be a possibility in which no individual reality is co-posited as actual; a pure possibility is therefore anything objective that becomes constituted exclusively by imaginative quasi-experience. (Husserl 2005, 661; trans. slightly modifed)4 Husserl’s investigations into the capacity of imagining to make manifest possibilities also supports his insistence on its epistemic function. Imagining provides intuitive evidence, above all evidence 233
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of possibilities, and is thus, to use the language of Ideas I, a “legitimizing source of cognition” (Husserl 1983, 44). Of course, the evidence imagining provides may only be accepted “within the limits” (ibid.) appropriate to it. Insofar as it is an intuitive act, imagining yields evidence, even though as a presentifying (vergegenwärtigender) and not directly presenting (gegenwärtigender) act, the evidence it can give us is limited. Obviously, we cannot, without further ado, believe in the existence of whatever we imagine (think of hallucinations, for example), nor in the very ways something presents itself in our imagination (think of illusions, for example). However, as long as we keep in mind that we are imagining something, and not perceptually observing or logically deducing something, it is, according to Husserl, appropriate to say that we learn something from imagining.We even learn from it something that we cannot learn by other means, we learn about possibilities that are not already implicit in the ‘status quo.’ Not everyone agreed with Husserl on this pronounced opinion on the evidential force of imagining, nor on the possibility of (becoming aware of) pure possibilities. Here it is not irrelevant that by the time Sartre, for example, famously maintained that “one can never learn from an image what one does not know already” (Sartre 2004, 10), the life-world of most phenomenological philosophers had radically changed. In a world that is oversaturated by images of all kinds, their seductive distracting and distorting nature is often foregrounded, even though our (e.g., neuro- and medical) sciences rely on “imaging”5 more than ever.That said, even though Sartre was skeptical of the epistemic, i.e., evidential, powers of imagining, he also saw in it the locus of possibility, as well as of negativity and lack. In his existentialist phenomenology, imagining explicitly becomes an expression of human freedom.
19.2. Imagination, being, and freedom For Sartre, then, the imagination shows the way towards what we might call the ‘existentialist stance,’ from which consciousness comes to be seen not any longer as a certain kind of being, but as the opposite of being, that is, the ‘nothingness’ that fings itself out towards any being. From this perspective, “transcendental philosophy” appears like the idealist reminder of a ‘digestive’ consciousness philosophy that needs to be overcome so badly. For Husserl, on the contrary, a proper account of imagining inevitably challenges ‘natural’ assumptions about consciousness and thus contributes in a signifcant way towards his ‘transcendental turn’ (Jansen 2005). It should be noted, however, that Sartre’s existentialist and Husserl’s transcendental stance converge, despite fundamental oppositions, on the following point: consistently remaining true to the intentional nature of consciousness requires giving up, once and for all, the idea that consciousness can somehow be thought as a mind whose inner inventory (e.g., mental states and representations) and whose inner workings can be reduced to causal relations (e.g., psychological or neurological ones). In that sense, the phenomenological analysis of imagining leads to a liberation of phenomenological philosophy for a ‘de-naturalized’ (Jansen 2018) approach. While much of what is truly original and most philosophically valuable of Husserl’s work on imagining can be found only in his later research manuscripts, it is also true that even there Husserl holds on to some of his earliest convictions. One of the most important of these is Husserl’s commitment to ‘eidetic’ inquiry, or to inquiry into what is essential about something. This involves Husserl’s general ontological thesis that reality, in the all-encompassing sense of ‘everything there is,’ is irreducible to ‘real’ objects stricto sensu, namely to objects in space and time. As Husserl already lays out in the Logical Investigations, there are also ideal objects, which are irreducible to real ones, such as psychological events or nominalist constructions. Ideal objects, for Husserl, are objects at which consciousness can be intentionally directed and which
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have their own ontological nature, such as, for example, meanings, which remain irreducible to their real linguistic expressions, or species (like the color ‘red’), which remain irreducible to their real exemplifcations (like any red object, which is necessarily of a particular shade of red). By the time of the publication of his Ideas I in 1913 as well as in the second edition of the Logical Investigations (published around the same time), Husserl develops this thought into his doctrine of eide, or essences. Since an essence (the essential ‘what’ or something as opposed to its contingent particularities) is irreducible to a mere concept, it can, according to Husserl, not just be thought, but intuited. Since an essence is irreducible to any real object or event (e.g., a psychological one), it is intuited not by empirical, but by eidetic intuition. Eidetic intuition has been very controversially discussed, with many doubting that there even is such a thing. For Husserl, it is the intuitive fulfllment of a thought that is directed at something general or abstract. It is that, in other words, which gives us the experience of not only thinking it, but seeing that it holds and what it means. For him, the question is not whether there is such an experience (one mode of which would be a certain ‘aha’ experience), but rather how it can be kept from missing its mark because the researcher is, for example, merely projecting, or illegitimately, as we would put it today,‘essentializing.’ Given that the whole purpose of Husserlian phenomenology is to fgure out the essential features of consciousness in its different modes and with its different objects, this remains a methodological issue for the rest of his life. Husserl sets the bar increasingly high. While initially he does not seem to think much of it when he maintains that we ‘see’ the species ‘in’ its particular real instance (e.g., the species ‘red’ in any red thing), he soon realizes that a more rigorously methodic form of ideation is required in order to avoid, as much as possible, the pitfalls of empirical induction or generalization for the sake of gaining ‘essential,’ i.e., necessary, insights. It is here that imagining acquires a privileged position. Imagining, methodically trained, helps circumvent contingency by enabling the “arbitrary variation” of an arbitrarily chosen sample of whatever essence we are trying to clarify (Husserl 1973 §87). By thus releasing the researcher (at least to a certain extent) from habitual preconceptions concerning that essence, imagining does not yet itself yield eidetic insights, but it does provide as rich a tapestry of samples as possible, which, insofar as it is produced by acts of imagining, has only slackened ties to the reality a researcher is habitually familiar with. On the basis of this, and not on the basis of contingently chosen examples, can researchers methodically and rigorously reach insights into the overlaps and boundaries of that tapestry of variations: they can grasp what is essential to it, and, importantly, what falls outside it, thus what is inessential to it. With this, the imagination moves center stage in phenomenological ontology. Other philosophers within the phenomenological tradition, even those who, like Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, oppose Husserl’s prioritizing of eidetic analyses in favor of existential ones (after all, “existence precedes essence!” and not the other way around), retain the outstanding position Husserl ascribes to it. Not having access to Husserl’s later research manuscripts, they take their clues from what they knew. Sartre picks up on the issue of imagination already in response to Ideas I and to the Lectures on a Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness (which he read during his research stay in Berlin in 1933/34). Merleau-Ponty takes inspiration from additional, at the time unpublished, sources, such as the material that was later edited under the title Ideas II (which he read during his visit to the newly founded Husserl Archives in Leuven in 1939). Both Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, far from being followers, rethought those Husserlian ideas concerning the imagination in their own ways, which of course also refected other philosophical infuences, such as, for example, the Bergsonian notion of “image” (Bergson 2005) and the French idealism represented by Brunschvicg, which was dominant when they were students.Their ‘rethinking,’ in different ways, also betrays their shared suspicions towards an old-fashioned ‘subject-philosophy.’
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For Sartre, the “imaginary,” not the ‘imagination,’ becomes central to an ontology of human existence and central to his existentialist account of freedom in particular.6 Sartre picks up on Husserl’s point that both imagining and image consciousness share a “non-positing” character. He is as convinced as Husserl was that ‘images’ cannot be found ‘in’ consciousness. However, while Husserl asserts an essential difference between image consciousness and imagining as two fundamentally different modes of consciousness, Sartre investigates “the image family” (Sartre 2004, 17), or the feld of “the imaginary.” This ranges from concrete pictures (a photograph of Pierre), to more abstract ones (portraits, caricatures, impersonations, drawings, hypnagogic images, even things seen in coffee grounds and crystal balls), and mental images. In all these cases the respective image is ‘no thing’, but “nothing other than a relation,” namely “the relation of consciousness to the object,” or an “act” (Sartre 2004, 7, 9). In fact, the misappropriation of an image as a thing, as something objective and static, is one common source of human self-subjugation.The self-identifcation with a certain image of oneself (as, to use Sartre’s famous example, a waiter) denies one’s own transcendence of any being ‘in itself ’ and displays that existential attitude which in Being and Nothingness Sartre calls “bad faith” (mauvaise foi) (Sartre 1978, 47–70). As he astutely observes, we are not only creators of images, we are also held captive by them. However, understood as a creative act of the ‘for itself,’ imagining is more than just one way of asserting one’s freedom among others.The ability to imagine is the ability to negate par excellence.To imagine, Sartre explains, one must be able to deny the reality of the picture, and … deny this reality … by standing back from reality grasped in its totality.To posit an image is to constitute an object in the margin of the totality of the real, it is therefore to hold the real at a distance, to be freed from it, in a word, to deny it. (Sartre 2004, 183) It is only by being able to (imaginatively) negate and hold at bay what actually impinges on us that we become able to step back and grasp our surroundings, i.e., our world, as a whole. And only then do we gain an awareness of ‘the world,’ set before us as a particular situation to which we can respond and which we can change. Given the fundamental importance of these considerations, Sartre might very well be called “a philosopher of the imaginary,” for whom the imagination, properly understood, reveals itself both as constant threat of self-objectiviation and as the “the locus of possibility, negativity and lack, articulated in creative freedom” (Flynn 2014, 76). For Merleau-Ponty, especially in his late working notes on The Visible and the Invisible, the imagination is rethought in terms of an ontology of the rich lived fabric of reciprocal intertwinings of lived body and world that he will eventually call “the fesh” (cf. Merleau-Ponty 1968). Thus, on the one hand, Merleau-Ponty is keen to dispel the impression that his phenomenology of perception confnes consciousness to the real. On the basis of what I have said, one might think that I hold that man lives only in the realm of the real. But we also live in the imaginary, also in the world of ideality.Thus it is necessary to develop a theory of imaginary existence. (Merleau-Ponty 1964a, 40) On the other hand, he also wants to challenge too simple a conception of what ‘the real’ amounts to: “The same creative capacity that is at work in imagination and in ideation is present, in germ, in the frst human perception” (Ibid.).Thus Merleau-Ponty denies the common
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dichotomy between the real and the imaginary. What we call ‘the real’ is much more instable than we tend to believe. Rather than being made of a totality of objects that knows no gaps or jumps and that is exhausted by what is causally explicable, the real is dynamic and open. It has imaginary dimensions and oneiric qualities.The imaginary, then, is not the ‘other’ of reality. It is the stuff of reveries and nightmares, of poetic and artistic creations, of feverish fantasies and pathological aberrations, of childhood plays and dreams. In a certain sense, Merleau-Ponty here blends the Husserlian insight that reality cannot be reduced to the real narrowly conceived with the Kantian claim that imagination is “a necessary ingredient of perception itself ” (Kant 1995, A 120 n.) with his own ontology of the fesh. The real of this ontology is shot through with the imaginary and also demands ontological inquiry that attempts to make out the ‘essential’ linings of reality imaginatively, in an “exploration of an invisible and the disclosure of a universe of ideas” (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 130). Such an inquiry learns from current science as much as from Cezanne, Klee, and Proust. It also requires and generates the awareness that these explorations and interrogations are reciprocated by being, and that the philosopher is summoned and interrogated just as much. Thus imagining is not anymore to be thought necessarily as the activity of an individual ‘consciousness’ (of an imagining philosopher even); and the ‘imaginary’ is not “a mere fgment of my imagination, a mental entity that I could still possess in the very absence of its object” (Dufourcq 2015, 33). It becomes a “fundamental dimension of the real” (Dufourcq 2012, 187–189, 342–398), which is part and parcel of the intricate “intertwining (entrelacs)” of things and ideas that “institutes” being (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 262). Like “fesh,” it thus is, for Merleau-Ponty,“a ‘general thing’ between the individual and the idea that does not correspond to any traditional philosophical concept, but is closest to the notion of an ‘element’ in the classical sense” (Toadvine 2016; Merleau-Ponty 1968, 139; Jansen 2018). It was, of course, Heidegger who had strongly infuenced French existentialist in their disavowal of idealist ‘subject-philosophy.’ However, curiously, his stance towards imagination signifcantly differs from theirs. Although, even after his ‘turn’, Heidegger remains indebted to a language of essence (Wesen),7 he, unlike his estranged philosophical ‘father’ Husserl, never considers the imagination central to letting essences come to the fore. On the contrary, any preoccupation with the imagination appears, from his perspective, symptomatic of those idealist philosophies he calls on us to overcome. He does, however, already early on, acknowledge the signifcance of the imagination for precisely such philosophies. His chosen example in this respect is the philosophy of Kant, who, according to Heidegger’s controversial reading in his so-called Kant-Buch of 1929, “shrinks back” from the fnal consequences of his notion of the ‘transcendental imagination’ and thus fails to recognize that he is really grappling with the “common root” of the faculties, thereby anticipating but falling short of Heidegger’s account of temporality (Heidegger 1997). Heidegger never makes reference to Husserl’s extensive research on the imagination, even though we have to assume that he was well aware of it. This overt eclipse of the imagination notwithstanding, one may consider Heidegger’s post-turn refections on art and, in particular, on poetry as his post-subjective rethinking of imagination: Art “works” to “gather” being (Heidegger 1971); poetry articulates language as the “house of being” beyond conventions; man is free to “let things be” without having to reify or dominate them, and thus to “dwell” in an otherwise alienated world (Heidegger 1993, 393–426). The freedom we fnd here is the freedom from the technocratic “framing (Gestell)” and the utilitarian “machinations (Machenschaften),” or the freedom from the forgetting of being (Heidegger 1993, 307–342).
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This line of thinking is, in different ways, taken up in the distinct original philosophical refections of, for example, Eugen Fink, one of Husserl’s closest assistants who, however, is at least as much indebted philosophically to Heidegger. Fink develops a phenomenological metaphysics, which expands the idea of simulation into the idea of ‘worlds’ of phantasy and which remains relevant in contemporary discussion (Fink 1930).At the beginning of the 21st century, Marc Richir explicitly returned to a phenomenology of phantasy, as part of a new transcendental philosophy, in order, on the one hand, to radicalize the constitutive role of imagining for reality, and, on the other hand, to tie it back to its “image producing” function (Richir 2004). In a way that is much more directly inspired by Heidegger’s ‘poetics,’ John Sallis (2012) continues to expand the horizons of the imagination, in two directions, towards the elements and towards the cosmos. Within the more recent rediscovery of a phenomenological metaphysics, phenomenological challenges meet ‘new realist’ (post-)phenomenological approaches in the attempt to do justice to the ‘surplus’ of being that allegedly transcends any intentional correlation. In the work of Alexander Schnell, for example, imagining acquires renewed signifcance within a new ‘constructive’ phenomenology that helps connect the two sides of reality that cannot simply be presupposed: on the one hand, the concretely real, which is always moving in a process of phenomenalization, and, on the other hand, the ‘material a priori,’ which always requires schematic appropriation (see Schnell 2015, 20f.).This leads him also to anthropological conclusions.The human is here seen as ‘homo imaginans’ with three “forming” or “imaging” (bildende) functions: representation, refexion, and phantasy.
Conclusion: imagination, phenomenology, and phenomenological philosophy Looking back, much begins with Husserl’s insistence on the freedom of imagining. He did not think of this as a (surely naïve) assumption concerning the factual freedom of anyone’s capacity to imagine. Rather, he thought of the ideal freedom of the imagination as a philosophical and existential imperative – namely, the imperative perpetually to work towards liberating oneself from traditional, disciplinary, and other preconceptions and habits.Tracing this imperative from Husserl through the later phenomenological philosophers towards the discussions of today, on the one hand highlights the existential dimensions of phenomenological philosophy already present, but not yet released, in Husserl. On the other hand, it helps, in my view, to dispel a common reductive understanding of phenomenology (promoted also by some phenomenologists) as nothing more than a matter of methodic description of the many aspects of consciousness, or of lived experience, from a frstperson perspective. The signifcance of the imagination for phenomenological philosophy also brings out the attempt to fnd new creative modes of engagement with whatever being it investigates and is challenged by, new creative modes of being, new creative interventions in the real. Following the line of thought traced in this chapter, it would appear that the worst kind of philosopher is the non-imaginative one.This is not only because there is simply a need, let’s say, to ‘imaginatively’ explore Being as it is and to be ‘creative’ about it. It is also because, as Nietzsche (1968), and, more recently, Deleuze and Guattari (1994) have reminded us, genuine philosophical thinking is productive. Far from merely describing the given or merely refecting (on) it, it interferes with, crosses out, and adds to the possibilities of being by means of the concepts it produces and the evidences it seeks; it generates realities as much as it encounters them.Taking imagining as a leading clue in one’s tracing of trajectories through phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy begins to bring this into focus.
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Notes 1 The next two paragraphs are taken from Jansen 2016. 2 For a critical discussion of these views from a Husserlian perspective see Jansen 2014. 3 An image subject, in contrast, is not required for image consciousness, as is evident in images that do not depict anything.Think of highly abstract paintings. Even objets trouvé, or ready-mades, are images and correlate with image consciousness, according to Husserl’s model.They become, by virtue of being placed in a gallery, irreducibly distinct from the physical objects that they also are (thus opening the gap between physical object and image object), but openly resist the idea of depiction. 4 Husserl is well aware that there is a difference between the freedom of ideal phantasy, to which researchers can only aspire, and the real constraints of the empirical capacities of real researchers. For Husserl, this does not disqualify phantasy in the slightest; it only makes the efforts required to approximate that freedom an infnite task. See his Revisions to the 6th Logical Investigation. 5 Here it is interesting that ‘imaging’ in contemporary sciences most of the time does not involve ‘images’ in the sense in which many people understand images, namely visual representations. 6 Note here the transition in title from his 1936 book L’imagination to his 1940 study L’imaginaire. 7 See, for example, Heidegger’s inquiries into “the essence of truth,” or into “the essence of technology” (Heidegger 1993), etc.
References Bergson, Henri. 2005. Matter and Memory.Trans. N. M. Paul. New York: Zone Books. Clark,Andy and Torribio, Josefa. 1995.“Doing Without Representing?” Synthese 101: pp. 401–431. Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix. 1994. What is Philosophy? New York: Columbia University Press. Dufourcq, Anne. 2015. “The Fundamental Imaginary Dimension of the Real in Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy.” Research in Phenomenology 45 (1): pp. 33–52. ———. 2012. Merleau-Ponty: Une Ontologie de l’Imaginaire. Dordrecht: Springer. Fink, Eugen. 1930.“Vergegenwärtigung und Bild.” Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung XI: pp. 239–309. Flynn,Thomas R. 2014. Sartre.A Philosophical Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heidegger, Martin. 1971. Poetry, Language,Thought.Trans.A. Hofstadter. New York: Harper & Row. ———. 1993. Basis Writings. Ed. David Krell. New York: Harper Collins. ———. 1997. Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics.Trans. R.Taft. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Husserl, Edmund. 1969. Formal and Transcendental Logic.Trans. D. Cairns.The Hague: M. Nijhoff. ———. 1973. Experience and Judgment.Trans. J. Churchill and K.Ameriks. Evanston: Northwestern. ———. 1983. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy.Trans. F. Kersten. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publisher. ———. 2001a. Logical Investigations, vols. 1 and 2.Trans. J. N. Findlay, ed. D. Moran. London: Routledge. ———. 2001b. Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis.Trans.A. Steinbock. Dordrecht: Springer. ———. 2005. Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898–1925).Trans. J. Brough. Dordrecht: Springer. Jansen, Julia. 2005. “Husserl’s First Philosophy of Phantasy: A Transcendental Phenomenology of Imagination,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4 (2): pp. 121–132. ———. 2014. “Imagination, Embodiment and Situatedness: Using Husserl to Dispel (Some) Notions of ‘Off-Line Thinking’.” In: The Phenomenology of Embodied Subjectivity. Eds. D. Moran and R. T. Jensen. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 63–79. ———. 2016.“Husserl.” In: Routledge Handbook of Imagination. Ed.A. Kind. London/New York: Routledge, pp. 69–81. ———. 2018. “Imagination De-Naturalized: Phantasy, the Imaginary, and Imaginative Ontology.” In: Oxford Handbook of the History of Phenomenology. Ed. D. Zahavi. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 676–695. Kant, Immanuel. 1996. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. W. S. Pluhar, Introd. P. W. Kitcher. Indianapolis/ Cambridge: Hackett. ———. 1964a. The Primacy of Perception.Trans. C. Dallery. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. 1968. The Visible and the Invisible.Trans.A. Lingis. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1968. The Will to Power.Trans. F. Kaufmann. New York: Random House. Richir, Marc. 2004., Phantasia, Imagination, Affectivité. Grenoble: Millon.
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20 INSTINCT Nam-In Lee
Edmund Husserl frst addresses the issue of instinct in the Fifth Logical Investigation and develops the phenomenology of instincts in his later phenomenology as the deepest layer of genetic phenomenology.This development can shed new light on the basic character of his phenomenology as a whole. Moreover, it has the potential to be developed further in many different directions. In order to understand the phenomenology of instincts properly, one has to begin by clarifying the ambiguity of the concept of instinct itself.
Two concepts of instinct: instinct as instinctive behavior and as innate drive As Max Scheler points out, instinct is a “very controversial and unclear concept” [ein seiner Deutung und seinem Sinne nach sehr umstrittenes dunkles Wort].1 It is ambiguous in many respects. Among the various concepts of instinct, the following two are the most important: 1) instinctive behavior; and 2) the innate drive that is specifc to a species.2 First, instinct as instinctive behavior means the “distinct behavior pattern”3 of a species such as the nesting of birds or the copulation of animals. Instinct is something that every entity of a species is innately equipped with, like a kind of automaton. Its operation is completely determined, just like the operation of a machine. Whereas instinct in this sense plays a decisively important role in an animal’s life, it does not play any important role at all in human life.The reason for this is because the various instincts that have been decisively engraved in an animal’s life have been reduced in human life so that their activity has become insignifcant.This is precisely the central point of Arnold Gehlen’s theory of “instinct-reduction,” implying that there is a “surprising defciency in genuine instincts”4 in the case of humans. The concept of instinct as instinctive behavior is used in some natural-scientifc disciplines, such as evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, and animal psychology, as well as in some disciplines of the humanities and social sciences, such as philosophical anthropology and theology. It was frst widely used in the theory of the animal mind in the Christian theology of the Middle Ages. Creatures were considered to be endowed by God with instinct through the act of creation.This concept of instinct was handed down to the empirical sciences of the nineteenth century, even though the latter took a critical stance toward the notion of the divine origin of instinct.5 241
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Second, instinct as innate drive means the innate power that propels an organism belonging to a species to head toward specifc types of objects. It is a power working inside the organism. Therefore it is different from a physical force that can be transferred from one object to another. Yet it is not just animals who possess instinct as innate drive; humans do as well, and, indeed, possess more instincts than animals do. Humans possess most of the instincts that animals possess, such as the slumber instinct, the hunger instinct, the sexual instinct, and so on. But in addition, humans have instincts that are inherent only to humans and that animals do not possess. Representative examples are the knowledge instinct, the artistic instinct, the moral instinct, the religious instinct, and so on. One could certainly not propose the idea of instinct-reduction with respect to this concept of instinct. Instead, the number of instincts is enlarged in humans, and the idea of instinct-reduction should be replaced by that of instinct-enlargement. Instinct as innate drive manifests itself through the organism’s behavior. In this respect, there is no essential difference between humans and animals.The difference between them simply lies in the kind of behavior through which each respective type of instinct is manifested.Whereas instinct in animals manifests itself through behavior without deliberation, instinct in humans manifests itself in many cases after having gone through rational deliberation. This concept of instinct has a long history. One can fnd it, for example, in Aristotle, who opens his discussion in Metaphysics with the remark that man desires to learn.6 The desire [orexis] that Aristotle mentions there is instinct, since it is the innate drive that propels humans to pursue knowledge in general. In addition to Aristotle, there are many proponents of this concept of instinct, such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who deals with an innate moral drive as the central concept of moral philosophy;7 Friedrich Schiller, who deals with an innate aesthetic drive as the central concept of aesthetics;8 and William James, who deals with “special human instincts”9 that are inherent only to humans.
The phenomenological concept of instinct Among the two concepts of instinct discussed above, it is the concept of instinct as innate drive that could qualify as a phenomenological concept of instinct.The phenomenological concept of instinct differs from the natural-scientifc one.Whereas the latter is established through “observation from the outside” [Aussenbetrachtung], the former is established through “observation from within” [Innenbetrachtung].10 The concept of instinct as instinctive behavior is a natural-scientifc concept, since instinctive behavior is experienced through “observation from the outside” [Aussenbetrachtung]. In contrast, the concept of instinct as innate drive is a phenomenological concept, since instinct as innate drive is experienced in “observation from within” [Innenbetrachtung]. It is the phenomenological concept of instinct that Husserl relies upon in developing his phenomenology of instincts.11 Instinct as innate drive is a kind of intentionality, and as such, it has the structure of a noetic–noematic correlation. On the one hand, it has the noesis as a kind of intentionality that Husserl calls “instinctive intentionality.”12 On the other hand, it has the object toward which it is directed, namely, the noema. In this case, noema means the “specifc types of objects” toward which the instinct is heading. For example, in the case of the hunger instinct, food becomes the noema, and in the case of the slumber instinct, sleep becomes the noema. Since diverse types of instincts exist, the noema too will differ in correlation with the different types of instinctive intentionality. The phenomenological concept of instinct can be clarifed in two different attitudes, namely, in the phenomenological-psychological attitude and in the transcendental-phenomenological attitude. Correspondingly, the phenomenological concept of instinct takes two different forms, 242
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namely, the phenomenological-psychological concept or the “psychological concept of instinct” (Hua XLII, 119) on the one hand and the transcendental-phenomenological concept of instinct on the other.The former is the basic concept of the phenomenological psychology of instincts, whereas the latter is the basic concept of the transcendental phenomenology of instincts.
Phenomenological psychology of instincts It is the task of phenomenological psychology to clarify the “essential forms” [Wesensformen] of the various kinds of lived experience.13 It is the task of the phenomenological psychology of instincts, as a sub-discipline of phenomenological psychology, to clarify the essential forms of instincts. The preliminary analysis of the phenomenological concept of instinct carried out above is in part a phenomenological-psychological analysis of instinct. Husserl’s analysis of instinct as a topic in phenomenological psychology has its beginning in the Fifth Logical Investigation from 1900/1901. The phenomenology developed there is a phenomenology of the natural attitude, and as such, it is a phenomenological psychology, not a transcendental phenomenology. As the title of the Fifth Logical Investigation—“On intentional experiences and their ‘contents’” [Über intentionale Erlebnisse und ihre ‘Inhalte’]—shows, there Husserl attempts to analyze the structure of intentionality. He makes a general distinction between intentional experience and non-intentional experience. Intentional experience contains as one of its constitutive components an objectifying act as “the conscious representation of its goal” [die bewußte Zielvorstellung],14 whereas non-intentional experience does not contain such an act. After Husserl establishes the distinction between intentional experience and non-intentional experience in the sphere of perception, he raises the question whether it is possible for us to make such a distinction within the “sphere of natural instinct” (Hua XIX/1, 409/Husserl 2001, 111). He gives a positive reply to this question: It is also possible for us to make a distinction between an intentional instinct that has “the conscious representation of its goal” and a non-intentional instinct that does not have such a representation. He interprets the “conscious representation” contained in an intentional instinct as one carried out in the mode of “indeterminateness” [Unbestimmtheit] (Hua XIX/1, 410/Husserl 2001, 111). In his later philosophy, however, Husserl no longer follows this line of investigation in his intentional analysis of instincts, and he drops the idea that instinct is founded on an indeterminate conscious representation.The invalidation of this idea leads him to characterize the genetically lower instincts—which would be characterized as non-intentional experience in the Fifth Logical Investigation—as intentional wherever they display the trait of “directedness-toward.”And, as can be gathered from the extensive manuscripts written after the 1920s, in his later philosophy Husserl does actually ascribe intentionality to the lower instincts. Thus, for example, he characterizes “inborn instincts as an intentionality that belongs to the original essential structure of psychic being” (Hua-Mat VIII, 169). After the shift in the concept of instinctive intentionality, the instinctive intentionalities are divided into those that are not interwoven with conscious representations and those that are. The former represent the less developed form, whereas the latter represent the more developed form. Thus the distinction between “intentional” and “non-intentional” instinct made in the Fifth Logical Investigation turns out to be merely a distinction between two different genetic modes of intentional instinct. In addition to the task of clarifying the possibility of defning instinct as either intentional or non-intentional experience, there are many other tasks of the phenomenological psychology of instincts. For example, one of its important tasks is to clarify the essential structure of each of the 243
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various kinds of instinct such as the instinct for nourishment, the sexual instinct, the maternal instinct, the social instinct, the instinct of curiosity, the instinct of objectifcation, the instinct of self-preservation, and so on. On the basis of the clarifcation of the various kinds of instinct, one can then try to clarify whether there are “layers of instincts” [Stufen von Instinkten] (Hua XLII, 118). Another task of the phenomenological psychology of instincts is to clarify the distinction and the relationship between instincts and “acquired drives” [erworbene Triebe] (Hua XLII, 83), as well as the relationship between instinct and habituality [Habitualität] (Hua XLII, 93).The relationship between instinct and “reason” is also an important topic of the phenomenological psychology of instincts, as Husserl unexpectedly defnes “reason itself ” as “a transformed instinct” [Vernunft selbst verwandelter Instinkt] (Hua XLII, 134). Now, as we have seen, the phenomenological-psychological analysis of instincts forced Husserl to withdraw some basic assumptions that guide the intentional analyses of the Logical Investigations and Ideas I. This withdrawal results in a radical change of his phenomenology in his later philosophy. As already mentioned, one assumption is that there is a sharp distinction between intentional and non-intentional experience. But there are also two other assumptions—namely, the second assumption that “Each intentional experience is either an objectifying act or has such an act as its ‘foundation’” (Hua XIX/1, 514/Husserl 2001, 167, trans. altered), and the third assumption that there is a sharp distinction between cognition, emotion, and volition. Let me consider the second assumption.As indicated above, the genetically lower instinct that is not founded on an objectifying act as a conscious representation is nevertheless called intentional experience, since it is directed toward some object. Contrary to what Husserl thought in the Fifth Logical Investigation, it is directedness toward something that is the essence of intentional experience. Thus, the assumption that the intentional experience is either an objectifying act or has such an act as its “foundation” is withdrawn. And once this assumption has been withdrawn, Husserl can speak of the “intentionality” (M III 3 II 1, 29) of mood or of “unconscious intentionality,”15 even though they are neither an objectifying act nor have such an act as their foundation. I will now consider the third assumption that there is a sharp distinction between cognition, emotion, and volition. The clarifcation of the structure of any experience reveals that such a distinction cannot be made. Let us take the experience (E) of tasting a meal (M) carried out by a person (P) who wishes to satisfy the instinct of nourishment. E has cognition as one of its components, since E could not take place if P does not know that M exists. Moreover, E has will as another of its components, since P strives to satisfy the instinct of nourishment, and this striving is nothing other than a will. Finally, E has feeling as a third component, since in tasting M, P experiences satisfaction or dissatisfaction, and this is nothing other than the feeling.Thus E turns out to have at least three components—cognition, will, and feeling—and is a mixture of these components. But since E has all of these components, it could be named after any one of them; it could be called cognition or will or feeling.This implies that there is no sharp distinction between cognition, will, and feeling, and Husserl accordingly maintains “that reason allows for no differentiation into ‘theoretical,’ ‘practical,’ ‘aesthetic,’ or whatever” [daß Vernunft keine Unterscheidung in ‘theoretische,’ ‘praktische’ und ‘aesthetische’ und was immer zulässt] (Hua VI, 275/Husserl 1970, 341).
Transcendental phenomenology of instincts It is the aim of transcendental phenomenology to clarify the structure of the transcendental constitution of the world and worldly objects. Husserl conceives of his transcendental phe244
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nomenology as a systematic whole comprising both static phenomenology and genetic phenomenology. It is the aim of static phenomenology to clarify the structure of the foundation of validity [Geltung] in transcendental constitution, whereas it is the aim of genetic phenomenology to clarify the structure of the foundation of genesis [Genesis] in transcendental constitution.16 As blind intentionality, instinct cannot be the origin of validity, but is the genetic origin of the various kinds of consciousness. This implies that the transcendental phenomenology of instinct is a discipline of genetic phenomenology; it is the most original among the various felds of genetic phenomenology. It is thus the aim of the transcendental phenomenology of instincts to clarify the constitutive function of the different kinds of instinct in the different layers of transcendental genesis. In order to develop the transcendental phenomenology of instincts systematically from the perspective of transcendental genesis, we have to distinguish different layers within the unity of transcendental genesis, such as the scientifc layer, the pre-scientifc layer, the sensual layer, and the pre-sensual layer, and we have to analyze the transcendental function of different kinds of instinct on each of these layers. Let us begin with the analysis of the pre-sensual layer as the most original layer of transcendental genesis. The pre-sensual layer of transcendental genesis is devoid not only of scientifc intentionality, but also of the different kinds of intentionality at work in the constitution of the pre-scientifc lifeworld and the sensual world, since it is a layer that we get by dismantling the scientifc, the pre-scientifc, and the sensual layer of transcendental genesis.This does not mean, however, that it is a layer totally devoid of intentionality. In fact, it is a layer equipped with different kinds of instinctive intentionality. Let us clarify this point by taking as an example of this layer the transcendental genesis of a subject in the state of sleep. A subject in the state of sleep is different from an inanimate thing without any intentionality. In order to survive, this subject has to be in constant exchange with the world and worldly objects, and this exchange is carried out through different kinds of instinct working unconsciously, such as the instinct for breathing, the instinct for self-preservation, and so on.The instincts at work on this layer are not objectifying instincts, but non-objectifying ones. As such, they are directed to the world and worldly objects, and for this reason they are called “instincts of worldliness” [Instinkte der Weltlichkeit] (AVI 34, 34). It is through these non-objectifying instincts that the pre-sensual world is constituted unconsciously as the most original form of the world. Let us move from the pre-sensual to the sensual layer. The sensual layer of transcendental genesis comes into being on the basis of the pre-sensual layer. It has all the components of the pre-sensual layer. However, in contrast to the pre-sensual layer, it is also equipped with new types of intentionality—namely, different kinds of sensual intentionality such as visual, auditory, haptic, and so on. Moreover, it is equipped with the lowest level of consciousness, since sensual intentionality requires that the subject is conscious of the sensual objects. It should be noted that these new types of intentionality and the lowest level of consciousness on the sensual layer function because the subject has the striving to “know” the different kinds of sensual objects. The striving to know the different kinds of sensual objects is called the “instinct of ‘objectifying’” [Instinkt der “Objektivierung”] (Hua-Mat VIII, 258) or the “instinct of curiosity” [Instinkt der Neugier] (AVI 26, 60ff.).Thus, the instinct of objectifying or curiosity turns out to be the origin of the transcendental constitution of sensual objects in general. Let us move from the sensual to the lifeworldly layer.The lifeworldly layer has new types of intentionality that could not be observed on the sensual layer, types such as memory, expectation, imagination, picture-consciousness, judgment, inference, intersubjective intentionality, moral intentionality, aesthetic intentionality, religious intentionality, and so on. These new types of intentionality are different from sensual intentionality in that they are directed to life245
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worldly objects that go beyond the scope of the “here and now,” whereas sensual intentionality is directed to the sensual objects that are confned to the “here and now.”Various kinds of instinct function as the genetic foundations of various kinds of intentionality observable on the lifeworldly layer. As the instinct of objectifying repeatedly comes into play on the sensual layer, different kinds of objectifying intentionality come into being. Similarly, as different kinds of non-objectifying instinct such as the instinct of nourishment, the sexual instinct, the aesthetic instinct, the religious instinct, and the moral instinct repeatedly come into play, the different kinds of non-objectifying intentionality come into being. The different kinds of instinct and the different kinds of intentionality founded on them are the constitutive origin of the different types of world such as the world of meals, the aesthetic world, the religious world, and the moral world as partial worlds within the pre-scientifc lifeworld. Finally, let us move from the lifeworldly layer to the scientifc layer. The scientifc layer consists of the different kinds of scientifc intentionality. There are as many types of scientifc intentionality as there are different scientifc disciplines.The act of carrying out transcendental refection is also a kind of scientifc intentionality.All the different kinds of scientifc intentionality have their genetic origin in the instinct of curiosity discussed above. It should be noted, however, that the instinct of curiosity that is at work on the scientifc layer has a different mode than the one at work on the sensual and the lifeworldly layer. It is a habitualized and systematized instinct.The instinct of curiosity and the different kinds of intentionality based on it are the constitutive origin of the different kinds of scientifc world. The following points should be added with respect to the transcendental phenomenology of instincts. First, the different layers discussed above are the layers of the transcendental genesis that is carried out in the present horizon of transcendental subjectivity. However, each of them is something that has been built up in the past horizon and is still at work in the present horizon. For this reason, it is a further task of the transcendental phenomenology of instincts to clarify the process of “building up” each of the layers in the past by taking into account the role of various kinds of instinct in building up each of these layers. Second, each of the different kinds of instinct is teleological, since it is directed to its object as the “telos” or the end that could satisfy it. Not only the individual instinct, but also the totality of the different kinds of instinct is teleological, since the latter is directed to the selfpreservation of transcendental subjectivity as its telos. Since the totality of the different kinds of instinct is teleological, Husserl speaks of “the total instinct that comprises all the individual instincts” [der Totalinstinkt, der alle Sonderinstinkte umfasst] (E III 9, 18) or “the universal instinct that synthetically unifes all the individual instincts” [der universale Instinkt, der alle Sonderinstinkte synthetisch vereinheitlicht] (A VI 34, 37). There is thus a teleological tendency running through the total instinct or the universal instinct, and Husserl calls this tendency the “transcendental instinct” (Hua-Mat VIII, 260).Transcendental instinct is a teleology that runs not only through each individual transcendental subjectivity, but also through intersubjectivity as the totality of the individual subjectivities. This is why Husserl calls the transcendental instinct a “universal teleology” (Hua-Mat VIII, 260). Third, the transcendental phenomenology of instinct shows that Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology has “two faces” [Doppelgesicht] (Hua XV, 617).Transcendental phenomenology is often considered to be a kind of Cartesianism, a philosophy of consciousness, or an intellectualism. However, it should be noted that this assessment represents only one of its two faces.There is another face that is represented by the phenomenology of instincts and genetic phenomenology. As the phenomenology of instincts shows, the other face of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology as universal teleology is a voluntarism that emphasizes the decisive role of instinct 246
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for the constitution of the world and worldly objects. As such, it is a “scientifc philosophy of life”17 that aims to clarify the structure of life by having recourse to the clarifcation of instinct as the origin of life.
Phenomenology of instincts in post-Husserlian phenomenology and future tasks The different types of post-Husserlian phenomenology do not address the issue of the phenomenology of instinct. The main reason for this might be that Husserl’s manuscripts on this topic were not published during his lifetime and remained unknown to phenomenologists after Husserl. Max Scheler could have dealt with the phenomenological concept of instinct as one of the important topics of his phenomenological material ethics as well as his philosophical anthropology and his sociology of knowledge. Unfortunately, he does not deal with the phenomenological concept of instinct as a basic concept of his philosophy. This is due to the fact that in his analysis of instinct he is guided by the concept of instinct as instinctive behavior. In this context, confessing that instinct is a very unclear concept, he attempts to cope with this diffculty by defning the concept of instinct “exclusively from the so-called behavior of the living being” [ausschliesslich vom sog. Verhalten des Lebewesens aus].18 Then, guided by the concept of instinct as instinctive behavior, he speaks of “reduced instincts” [zurückgebildete Instinkte]19 in a manner similar to Arnold Gehlen. In Sein und Zeit, clarifying the structure of “care” [Sorge], Heidegger addresses the issue of “urge” [Drang],20 which is closely related to the phenomenological concept of instinct. However, he considers “urge” to be a mere derivative mode of “care” and does not deal with the related issue of the phenomenological concept of instinct. If he had paid attention to the fact that instinct has the power of revealing the world and the existence of Dasein, he could have analyzed the phenomenological concept of instinct in a detailed manner. As the founder of the phenomenology of freedom, Jean-Paul Sartre does not deal with the issue of instinct as the origin of moral value in L’être et le néant.21 However, in his later phenomenology, he holds the view that “the root of morality is in need.”22 If he had clarifed “need” in a more detailed manner, he could have dealt with the phenomenological concept of instinct as the origin of value. In La structure du comportement, Maurice Merleau-Ponty addresses the issue of instinct in order to clarify the structure of behavior, but he is guided by the concept of instinct as instinctive behavior.23 He does occasionally address the issue of instinct in Phénoménologie de la perception. But here too he is guided by the concept of instinct as instinctive behavior.24 Even though he was decisively infuenced by Husserl in developing his phenomenology of perception, he was infuenced by Scheler rather than by Husserl in employing the concept of instinct as instinctive behavior. His phenomenology of perception could have been enriched in many respects if he had adopted the phenomenological concept of instinct and utilized it for the clarifcation of various topics in phenomenology of perception. Let me conclude with two remarks concerning the future tasks of the phenomenology of instincts. First, if phenomenologists after Husserl had had a chance to become acquainted with Husserl’s phenomenology of instincts, the various types of phenomenology they developed could have been enriched in many respects. Husserl’s phenomenology of instincts provides plenty of resources for such enrichment. It is one of the future tasks of the phenomenology of instinct to promote a dialogue between post-Husserlian phenomenology and Husserl’s phenomenology of instincts. 247
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Second, there are various felds within the phenomenology of instincts that Husserl himself did not explore.Typical examples include the phenomenology of moral instinct, the phenomenology of aesthetic instinct, and the phenomenology of religious instinct. In recent years, there have also been concrete investigations of other types of instinct such as the language instinct, the art instinct, and so on.25 It is another task of the phenomenology of instincts to develop different areas within the phenomenology of instincts through a dialogue with research on instinct conducted outside of the phenomenological tradition.
Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
Scheler 1976, 17.All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated. I have dealt with this issue in a more detailed manner in Lee 2015. Gehlen 1974, 25. Gehlen 1974, 34. Funke and Rohde 1976, here 414ff. Aristotle 1924. Fichte 1971. Schiller 1962. James 1981. Hua XLII, 98. See Lee 1993; Mensch 1997; Hart 1998; Hua XLII, xix–cxv; Moran 2017. Hua-Mat VIII, 169. Hua IX, 259/Husserl 1997, 111–12. Hua XIX/1, 409/Husserl 2001, 111. Hua VI, 240/Husserl 1970, 237. Hua XV, 615–17. Hua XXXII, 241. Scheler 1976, 17. Scheler 1976, 21. Heidegger 1972, 195–6; Heidegger 1962, 240–1. Sartre 1943. Jean-Paul Sartre, Lecture given in Rome, May 1964, at the Gramsci Institute, cited in Anderson 2002, 381. 23 See e.g. Merleau-Ponty 1942, 178–9, 196; Merleau-Ponty 1963, 164–5, 181. 24 See e.g. Merleau-Ponty 1945, 92–3; Merleau-Ponty 1962, 77–8. 25 For example, Dutton 2009; Pinker 1994.
References Anderson,Thomas C.2002.“Jean-Paul Sartre:From an Existentialist to a Realistic Ethics.” In:Phenomenological Approaches to Moral Philosophy: A Handbook. Eds. J. J. Drummond and L. Embree. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 367–89. Aristotle. 1924. Metaphysics.Trans.W. D. Ross. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Dutton, Denis. 2009. The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution. New York: Bloomsbury Press. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb. 1971. Fichtes Werke. Band IV. Zur Rechts- und Sittenlehre II. Berlin:Walter de Gruyter. Funke, Gerhard and K. Rohde. 1976.“Instinkt.” In: Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie. Eds. J. Ritter and K. Gründer.Vol. 4. Basel/Stuttgart: Schwabe, pp. 408–17. Gehlen, Arnold. 1974. Der Mensch. Seine Natur und seine Stellung in der Welt. Frankfurt am Main:Athenaion. Hart, James G. 1998. “Genesis, Instinct, and Reconstruction: Nam-In Lee’s Edmund Husserl’s Phänomenologie der Instinkte.” Husserl Studies, 15: pp. 101–23. Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and Time.Trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. New York: Harper & Row. ———. 1972. Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Husserl, Edmund. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy.Trans. D. Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
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Instinct ———. 1997. Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology and the Confrontation with Heidegger (1927– 1931).Trans. and ed.T. Sheehan and R.A. Palmer. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. 2001. Logical Investigations. 2 vols.Trans. J. N. Findlay. Ed. D. Moran. New York: Routledge. ———. Manuscripts A VI 26 (1921-1931),A VI 34 (1931), M III 3 II 1. (1900-1914) James, William. 1981. The Principles of Psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lee, Nam-In. 1993. Edmund Husserls Phänomenologie der Instinkte. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. 2015. “Phenomenological Clarifcation of the Concept of Instinct Through a Criticism of A. Gehlen’s Theory of Instinct-Reduction” [in Korean]. Cheolhaksasang, 56: pp. 163–88. Mensch, James R. 1997.“Instinct—A Husserlian Account.” Husserl Studies, 14: pp. 219–37. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1942. La structure du comportement. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. ———. 1945. Phénoménologie de la perception. Paris: Gallimard. ———. 1962. Phenomenology of Perception.Trans. C. Smith. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. ———. 1963. The Structure of Behavior.Trans.Alden L. Fisher. Boston: Beacon. Moran, Dermot. 2017. “Husserl’s Layered Concept of the Human Person: Conscious and Unconscious.” In: Unconsciousness between Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis. Eds. D. Legrand and D. Trigg. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 3–23. Pinker, Steven. 1994. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. New York:W. Morrow. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1943. L’être et le néant. Paris: Gallimard. Scheler, Max. 1976. Späte Schriften. Gesammelte Werke.Vol. 9. Bern: Francke. Schiller, Friedrich. 1962. Schillers Werke. Band 20, Philosophische Schriften, Erster Teil. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger.
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21 INTENTIONALITY Burt C. Hopkins
Introduction: phenomenological origin of the problem of intentionality Intentionality is the term used by Edmund Husserl to characterize, initially, the structure of a certain class of experiences that he called “lived.” In line with the phenomenological design of Husserl’s thought, the structure in question on his view is emphatically not empirical. Its structure is therefore neither contingent nor something that can be made manifest by the appeal to the sensible components of experience. Rather, the structure of intentionality is essential, in the precise sense that that term expresses 1) the invariant directedness to an object other than that directedness and 2) the object itself of that directedness. Points 1) and 2) taken together are determinative of the most basic element of the class of lived-experiences:“By ‘intentionality’, we understand the distinguishing property of lived-experiences:‘being consciousness of something’” (Husserl 2014, 162). Lived-experiences involve a particular self-relation of the subject undergoing the experience to the manifestation of the experience itself. All my lived experiences are related to me, as the same I, but also by my lived experiences all objects which are constituted in them as object-poles are related to me. Of course every refection which I relate to myself and every synthesis of refections in which I fnd myself as identical is itself a lived experience and makes me objective— objective for me. (Husserl 1977, 159) For both Husserl and those either working in or critical of the philosophical tradition he initiated, the precise character of the self-relation determinative of lived-experience is controversial. Specifcally, what is controversial is whether the self-relation is intrinsic to the conscious moment of lived-experience or whether what is required for this self-relation is a distinct act of self-refection upon lived-experience’s givenness. The status of this self-relation as the sine qua non for experience to manifest itself as lived, however, is uncontroversial. Intentionality, then, is the term introduced by Husserl to characterize the phenomenological structure, which is to say with him, the phenomenological “essence” of the class of conscious lived-experiences whose subjective mode of consciousness is characterized by the correlation of an original directedness to an object and the object of that directedness. 250
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Contemporary philosophical discourse about intentionality in both the analytic and continental traditions, in addition to its systematic preoccupations, recognize intentionality as a fundamental philosophical concern in Ancient and Mediaeval philosophy, but not in the modern period. Both discourses credit Franz Brentano with reviving the terminology of intentionality in the late 1800s and acknowledge Husserl’s development and criticisms of Brentano’s account of the phenomenon.This discourse, however, is misleading. Prior to Husserl the terminology of intentionality was not ubiquitous.The word “intentionality” (intentionalitias) frst appears in the 14th century in the work of Hervaeus Natalis (Doyle 2009).There, intentionality is a relation of a knowable or known object to an act of the intellect’s understanding.The relation intrinsic to intentionality for Natalis is, as such, “a being of reason” (Doyle 2009, 269). Natalis situates his account of intentionality within the more prevalent Mediaeval terminology of frst and second intentions, wherein a frst intention is a concept directed to a thing in rerum natura and a second intention is a concept understood by the intellect insofar as it is known in an act of its understanding. Second intentional concepts include intentionality according to Natalis, regardless of whether its object is frst or second intentional. Intentionality itself therefore becomes known for Natalis in the intellect’s refection upon its own act together with its relation to frst and second intentional objects. In Brentano, there is no talk of intentionality but only that of the inexistence of the intentional object that is characteristic of every mental phenomenon, which he calls variously “relation to a content, direction upon an object (which is not here to be understood as a reality) or immanent objectivity” (Brentano 1973, 88). In both Mediaeval philosophy and Brentano, then, what counts as intentional is exclusively either the relation of an object to an act of the intellect or the relation or direction to an immanent (mental) object. Both of these formulations contrast with Husserl’s account of intentionality, which, while related to the notion of mental relation, introduces a novel account of that which makes possible something like a mental relation in the frst place. For Husserl, then, intentionality exhibits the essential structure originally responsible for the correlation between the mind’s directedness to an object and the object in which that directedness terminates. Crucial to what is exhibited by this structure is what Husserl will call the “noetic” awareness proper to consciousness, which is patently not a conceptual or mental relation but a mode of “seeing”—which is irreducible to seeing in the sense of visual perception—that is responsible for a concept or something mental manifesting a relation to something objective in the frst place. Signifcant in this regard are three radical departures from the Mediaeval concept of intentionality and Brentano’s intentional inexistence. One, the direction of the relation determinative of intentionality is reversed from its direction in Natalis, as for Husserl it moves from the mind and the noetic awareness responsible for its directedness to the object.Two, Husserl’s account of the non-conceptual (noetic) awareness responsible for the intentional relation characteristic of intentionality is completely novel and has no precedent in the Mediaeval account of intentionality or Brentano’s account of the intentional object.And, three, the articulation of intentionality in terms of the invariant correlation between its moment of non-conceptual awareness and the object of that awareness again is completely novel and therefore unprecedented in the tradition that precedes Husserl. The Husserlian origin of intentionality’s formulation as the correlation between a nonconceptual directedness and the object of that directedness means that the contemporary philosophical discourse’s positing of “intentionality” as a problematic in traditional philosophy has its basis in an unacknowledged and distorted interpretation of Husserl’s novel formulation, which it then projects back into the putative traditional accounts of intentionality.These putative accounts of “[t]he problem of intentionality [which] is the problem of explaining what it is in general for mental states to have content, as well as the particular conditions responsible 251
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for specifc variations in content” (Caston 2008, §2), claim that the problem can originally be found in the Pre-Socratic philosophers and then traced in Ancient philosophy’s subsequent development (Caston 2008, §§3–6). In line with this, however, it has to be stressed that before Husserl there is no account of a non-conceptual origin of intentional directedness, but only the Mediaeval “being of reason” status of the intentional relation of the object to act of the intellect or Brentano’s reference to an immanent (mental) content characteristic of the intentional object. Husserl’s non-conceptual formulation of the intentional directedness as that which is responsible for the intentional relation or reference is therefore reconfgured in contemporary discourse in terms of the related but not identical problem of an objective reference or relation. One signifcant result of the unacknowledged appropriation and distortion of Husserl’s account of intentionality is that both Husserl’s phenomenological formulation of intentionality and the resources of the phenomenology he developed in order to address it philosophically are passed over in silence.What is overlooked are the three major aspects constitutive of intentionality that remain constant in Husserl’s phenomenological account of it from his early logical investigations until his fnal writings on the intentionality of historical meaning.
Three aspects of the original problem of intentionality overlooked in contemporary discourse The frst and most important aspect of Husserl’s account of intentionality that is overlooked in most contemporary philosophical discourse—non-phenomenological as well as phenomenological—is the non-equivalence of the consciousness of which it is the essential structure and the mind.The mind, whether conceived ontologically in terms of the inner object determinate of the interiority of inner perception (or of the terminologically equivalent object of introspection), or psychologically as a dimension of empirical nature, is rejected as the source of intentionality by Husserl from start to fnish. It is so because the phenomenon of consciousness proves to exceed that of specifcally mind-dependent phenomena by encompassing both psychological and physical phenomena. This is to say that for Husserl the intentionality of consciousness is composed by an original directness to intentional objects that manifests the appearance of both mental and physical phenomena (Husserl 1970a, Appendix 4). As such, intentionality is in essence coincident with neither of one of them as it—minimally—encompasses them both. The second aspect of Husserl’s account of intentionality that is overlooked by most contemporary philosophical discourse is the non-conceptual nature of both the intentional directedness element of intentionality and the conditions inseparable from this directedness’ origination. These conditions, like the directedness that issues from them, are manifestly not conceptual. That is, they are no more conceptual than the vision in which visible objects appears is itself a visible object. Rather, both these conditions and the intentional directedness that issues from them are in essence self-referential phenomena. As such, they can only appear when the very same non-conceptual intentional directedness apprehends itself in a refective modifcation that redirects the direction of its intention 1) away from its intentional object to 2) itself as the source not of that object but of the explicit consciousness in which it is made manifest.The systematic, which is to say with Husserl, rigorously scientifc, articulation and execution of the refective method operative in the self-referential character of the apprehension of intentional directedness and its conditions, together with the articulation of its non-conceptual essential structure, represents a crucial task of the phenomenological investigation of intentionality. “[R]efection is a name for acts in which the stream of lived-experience with all its manifold manifestations (inherent [reellen] aspects of lived-experience, intentional elements) will be able to be grasped and analyzed in an evident way” (Husserl 2014, 142). 252
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And, fnally, the third aspect of Husserl’s account of intentionality frequently overlooked in contemporary discourse is its transcendental dimension. As a transcendental phenomenon, intentionality is responsible for the unity of the manifold stream of lived-experience. “It is intentionality that characterizes consciousness in the precise sense of the term and justifes designating the entire stream of lived-experience at the same time as a stream of consciousness and as the unity of one consciousness” (Husserl 2014, 161). As such, the transcendental dimension of intentionality is responsible for the unity of both consciousness’ directedness toward aspect and that of the object of this directedness. Because both of these aspects of intentionality are inseparable from consciousness before and after the transcendental reduction that exhibits intentionality’s transcendental dimension, a crucial aspect of Husserl’s phenomenological account of intentionality is his answer to the question of how transcendental consciousness is distinguished from psychological consciousness.At issue in this absolutely crucial distinction for Husserl is the difference between the intentional structure of psychological and transcendental consciousness. What is at stake in it for Husserl is nothing less than providing a philosophical foundation for the unities of both intentionality’s directedness and the object of its directedness.This is the case because, absent the making of the fundamental distinction between psychological and transcendental consciousness, the unities of the multiplicities manifested by intentionality cannot but not be understood to have the status of the mental being proper to psychological reality. To be sure, pure psychology of consciousness is a precise parallel to transcendental phenomenology of consciousness. Nevertheless the two must at frst be kept strictly separate, since failure to distinguish them, which is characteristic of transcendental psychologism, makes a genuine philosophy impossible. (Husserl 1960, 32) Thus, insofar as the unities in question are the objectivities determinative of the exact sciences or ontological unities discovered by the natural sciences, the psychological understanding of the intentional consciousness in which they are given results in what, for Husserl, is the biggest challenge faced by phenomenology: psychologism. “[T]he expression psychologism is more appropriate to any interpretation which converts objectivities into something psychological in the proper sense; and the pregnant sense of psychologism should be defned accordingly” (Husserl 1969, 169). In what follows, the discussion of Husserl’s account of intentionality is divided into three phases that track the development of his thought.Thus, his psychological, pure transcendental, and genetic-historical formulations of the problem of intentionality are discussed.The discussion concludes with a brief account of Heidegger’s critique of the phenomenological originality—in the sense of its philosophically foundational claim—of Husserl’s account of intentionality.
Husserl’s psychological account of intentionality The core of Husserl’s descriptive psychological account of intentionality focuses on a crucial phenomenological distinction internal to the structure of lived-experience, which characterizes its intrinsic (reell) and non-intrinsic (irreell) aspects. Lived-experience for Husserl is a temporal whole composed of parts that intrinsically belong to that whole, in the precise sense that “they can be found in its immanent temporality” (Husserl 1977, 132). Husserl characterizes this intrinsic relation of belonging in terms of the parts’ intrinsic inclusion in the temporal unity characteristic of the whole of the lived-experience.This means that the manifold of those parts, which he characterizes in terms of 1) hyletic data (“data of color, data of tone, data of smell, 253
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data of pain, etc., considered purely subjectively, therefore here without thinking of the bodily organs or of anything psychophysical” [Husserl 1977, 128]), 2) the “intentional characters” (Husserl 1977, 133) of that hyletic data, and 3) the synthesis of those intentional characters into appearances of objectivities, “have an intrinsic [reell] unity of lived-experience and a certain peculiar species (Art) of being bound to one another, which is called the synthesis of appearances” (Husserl 1977, 132). The phenomenal relation between these intrinsic parts, which are “ever new” (Husserl 1977, 132) and “temporally separated” (Husserl 1977, 132) contrasts with the phenomenal relation between the appearing object that appears in and through them.The latter, despite its appearance in the manifold parts intrinsic to lived-experience, is not manifold but maintained by Husserl to be “one in numerical identity” (Husserl 1977, 132).Thus, while no intrinsic (reell) part can be identical with another, owing to its temporal discreteness as a phase belonging to the manifold whole of a lived-experience, the appearance of the object manifest in each part, as a phase of that manifold, is not intrinsic to that manifold, a status Husserl captures with the word irreell (non-intrinsic). It is so in the precise sense of its identity being maintained despite the manifold manner of its appearance. Husserl puts it this way: But if we restrict ourselves to what is exhibited and shown within the streaming perception itself, we see, then: the synthesis of streaming appearances in the same object [im selben Objeckt] … has the marvelous specifc property on the one hand of being a intrinsic [reell] synthesis and on the other hand containing in every phase something non-intrinsic [irreell], namely, of having “in” itself in separated phases evidently the same numerically identical object which is called non-intrinsic [irreell] in relation to the immanent synthesis of lived-experience. It could also be called ideal in this relation because it is evidently the same, whereas the separate phases of lived-experience cannot intrinsically [reellen] contain anything identical. (Husserl 1977, 134) That is, the intentional object is constituted as something that is not intrinsic (reell) in the precise sense that: 1) it does not share the non-identity of the subjective phases of the intentional manifold that composes the temporal unity of lived-experience, and 2), unlike the intrinsic (reell) inclusion of those phases in that temporal unity, the intentional object is not an intrinsic part of that unity.The phenomenal result of 1) for Husserl is the invariance inseparable from objectivity, in the exact sense of the appearance of the intentional object that manifests it remains one and the same throughout the variations of the “fowing” or “streaming” synthesis of the nonidentical intrinsic (reellen) phases of lived-experience that exhibit the appearing of the object’s appearance.And the phenomenal result of 2) is the transcendence inseparable from the objective appearance, in the exact sense of its not being an intrinsic (reell) part of the lived-experience in which it nevertheless appears. Husserl’s psychological account of the distinction between the intrinsic and non-intrinsic parts of the unity of lived-experience, which was frst formulated in his logical investigations at the turn of the 20th century, forms the basis for both his initial and all subsequent accounts of intentionality. Husserl characterizes the source of the non-identity of the unity of the intrinsic (reellen) parts of the immanent dimension of lived-experience as the intentional act, from which issues precisely the peculiar directedness aspect of intentionality.The non-identity of the fowing manifold of those parts, together with the immanent temporal character of their unity, is what is responsible for the non-conceptual nature of its intentional directedness. It is also responsible for Husserl’s use of metaphors in its descriptive characterization. In addition to the metaphors of “fowing” and “streaming” used by him to capture the non-conceptual temporal unity intrinsic 254
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(reell) to the manifold aspect of lived-experience, he also uses the metaphor of a “ray,” as in “ray of regard” (Blickstrahl), to describe the intentional directedness that issues from the intentional act and terminates in the object of which it is conscious. The intentional object, in virtue of its not being an intrinsic part of the immanent unity of lived-experience, is likewise for Husserl not an intrinsic part of the intentional act that is the source of that unity. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the transcendent status of the intentional object’s non-intrinsic (irreell) unity vis-à-vis the intentional act, that unity still belongs—in some sense—to lived-experience in Husserl’s view. It does so precisely insofar as its intentionally objective unity is something that appears, and indeed, can only appear nowhere else other than to the ray of regard characteristic of the intentional act’s directedness, which is also to say, with Husserl, to its intentionally peculiar “consciousness of.” It is, however, a triviality to characterize Husserl’s account of intentionality in terms of its invariant “consciousness of.” In addition to the distinction between the intrinsic and transcendent parts of lived-experience, Husserl’s psychological account of intentionality distinguishes the quality of the intentional act from the matter of its intentional object.The quality of the intentional act is characterized by its kind, with the most original kind being perception, followed by memory and anticipation. In addition, there are the act qualities of judging, signifying, phantasizing, symbolizing, wishing, willing, as well as affective act qualities like emotion and valuing, etc.The intentional matter characterizes both what appears as the intentional object and the how of its appearance. The same act matter, in terms of what appears, can appear in different kinds of acts; for example, the frst volume of the Logical Investigations can appear in the perception of a copy on my desk, in the memory of having read it once, in the anticipation of reading it again, in the valuation of it as profound, in the judgment that it represents a pre-philosophical phase of Husserl’s thought, etc. In the kinds of acts other than perception, the act matter presents its object in what Husserl calls an empty intention. In such acts, the intentional directedness of the act refers to an intentional object that itself appears in a way that its very appearance refers beyond what appears to the acts that give it originally.The latter acts according to Husserl intuitively fulfll the meaning intended by the intentional object’s empty intention in what he characterizes as a synthesis of overlapping (Husserl 1970a, 199). In such a synthesis, the meaning of the emptily intended “what” determinative of the act matter extends over the act that originally presents the content of that meaning. The extent of the synthetic overlapping is measured by Husserl in terms of the degree of adequation that ranges between the poles of completely adequate and inadequate overlapping, or, equivalently, of adequate and inadequate evidence. In line with Husserl’s initial account of the intentional essence of lived-experience in accordance with the protocols of a phenomenological psychology, he distinguished that aspect of the intentional object that is an intrinsic part of the intentional act from the aspect transcending it. That part intrinsically belonging to the act he characterized as the “intentional content” and that which transcends it he reserved the term “intentional object.” This distinction, however, proved problematical, as it highlighted an ambiguity in Husserl’s methodological self-understanding of psychology. On the one hand, he radically distinguished the descriptive aspect of its method from the method of explanatory psychology. He did so on the basis of the latter’s cognitive concern with the causally determined contingent reality of the psycho-physical reality and the former’s concern with the intentional essence of lived-experience. Because the latter essence, however, includes both intrinsic (reell) and non-intrinsic (irreell) parts, the status of both the distinction between and the character of the intentional content and intentional object is ambiguous. It is so, depending on whether their meaning is correlated, respectively, to the act’s intrinsic (reell) or non-intrinsic (irreell) parts or, again respectively, to the whole of the act’s parts and that which is external to those parts and thus transcends them. 255
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Husserl’s transcendental phenomenological account of the intentionality of pure consciousness Husserl sought to resolve this ambiguity with the phenomenological epoché and reduction, which in his view methodologically transforms the psychological immanence of intentionality into an immanence that is transcendentally phenomenological. Husserl believed this is accomplished with the recalibration of intentional immanence, from that which is intrinsic to the intentional act to that which is evidently manifest in the whole of the intentional structure of lived-experience. Immanence so reconfgured now includes for Husserl both the intrinsic (reell) and non-intrinsic (irreell) parts of lived-experience, which means that, when considered transcendentally, the non-intrinsic (irreell) transcendence of the intentional object has the phenomenological status of a “transcendence in immanence.” It also means that there is no longer any methodological basis for distinguishing intentional content from the intentional object, as the latter is transcendentally reduced to its givenness in the former. Husserl’s transcendental account of intentionality no longer characterizes it in terms of the essential structure of a class of lived-experiences but rather as the essential structure of the transcendentally phenomenologically reduced region of pure consciousness. In line with this and in accordance of the latter’s correlation not just to the manifold of intentional objects but also to the phenomenon of the world within whose horizon such objects appear, Husserl’s account of the intentionality of transcendental consciousness introduces fundamental distinctions not found in his psychological account of intentionality. The frst and most important distinction is that between “actual” (aktuell) and “non-actual” (inaktuell) modes of intentionality. We again recognize then that inherent in the essence of all lived experiences—taken always in a completely concrete way—is that remarkable modifcation that converts consciousness in the mode of a currently actual (aktuell) turn toward something into consciousness in the mode of non-actualization and vice versa. (Husserl 2014, 61) The former is characterized by its intentional regard actively thematizing the intentional object, such that the appearance of the latter is made explicit. For Husserl, then, in its actional modality,“the lived experience is so to speak ‘explicit’ consciousness of something that is, for it, objective” (Husserl, 2014, 61). Husserl explicitly identifed intentionality’s actual modality with the structure of the Cartesian term “cogito” (Husserl 2014, 62). Henceforth, Husserl’s use of the term “act” in connection with intentionality refers to its actual mode, or what is the same, to the cogito. The latter, non-actual mode of intentionality is characterized by its intentional regard’s non-thematizing consciousness of its intentional object and the latter’s consequent non-thematic appearance. This intentional mode is initially invoked by Husserl to characterize the how of the appearance of the world-horizon and then, eventually, the non-thematic horizon that structures, essentially, the background of the actual mode of intentionality. In line with this, Husserl comes to articulate the inner and outer horizon of the cogito: the inner refers to the non-thematic feld of intentional objects that, in accordance with essential necessity, can be made thematic by a shift in the direction of the thematizing intentional regard; the outer refers to the world-horizon whose non-objective mode of appearance, in accord with essential necessity, does not lend itself to themati