The Subject(s) Of Phenomenology: Rereading Husserl 3030293564, 9783030293567, 9783030293574

Table of contents :
Acknowledgments......Page 6
Introduction......Page 7
Part I: The Phenomenological Project: Definition and Scope......Page 8
Part II: The Unfolding of Phenomenological Philosophy......Page 9
Part III: At the Limits of Phenomenology: Towards Phenomenology as Philosophy of Limits......Page 10
Contents......Page 12
Part I: The Phenomenological Project: Definition and Scope......Page 14
1 Introduction......Page 15
2.1 Formal Logic Versus Pure Logic......Page 17
2.2 Communication Between Reasonable Beings......Page 18
2.3 Does “I” Mean Something? I as Indexical......Page 19
3.1 The Antepredicative Part of the Language......Page 20
3.2 The Passive Synthesis and the Animation of Words......Page 21
4.1 The Reduction and the Problem of the Mundane Language......Page 23
4.2 The Egological Content of the Expression......Page 24
5 Conclusion: An Overture to the Ichrede......Page 26
References......Page 27
1 Introduction......Page 28
2 The Problem of Necessity and Pure Logic......Page 29
3 Parts, Wholes, and Necessary Fitness......Page 30
4 Multi-level Generalizations......Page 34
5 The Distinction Between Analytic and Synthetic Necessity......Page 36
6 Correlational A priori and Intentionality......Page 37
7 The A priori Bound to the Empirical and the Problem of Necessity......Page 39
References......Page 40
1 Introduction......Page 42
2 Transcendental Philosophy and Structuralism......Page 43
3 Phenomenology as Wissenschaftslehre......Page 45
4 Wholes and Aggregates......Page 48
5 Transcendental Structuralism......Page 50
References......Page 52
1 Introduction......Page 55
2 Three Readings......Page 56
3 Problem and Solution......Page 59
4 Further Discussion......Page 62
5 Conclusion......Page 64
References......Page 65
Philosophy as an Exercise in Exaggeration: The Role of Circularity in Husserl’s Criticism of Logical Psychologism......Page 67
1 Introduction......Page 68
2 Tautology of Inner Evidence: Psychologistic Cynicism as a Testimony to the Ideality of Logical Laws......Page 78
3 Circularity of Ideal Laws – The Irony of Purification as a Testimony to the Self-Assurance of Inner Evidence......Page 86
4 Husserl’s challenge to the Self-Assurance of Reason......Page 95
5 Concluding Remarks......Page 103
Secondary Sources......Page 104
Part II: The Unfolding of Phenomenological Philosophy......Page 105
Husserl’s Idea of Rigorous Science and Its Relevance for the Human and Social Sciences......Page 106
1 The Idea of Rigorous Science in Husserl and its Relevance for the Human and Social Sciences......Page 107
2 Alfred Schutz and the Phenomenology of Social Life......Page 110
3 Final Remarks......Page 112
References......Page 113
1 Introduction......Page 115
2 Ego-Splitting as Unexplainable Fact in Kant......Page 118
3.1 Ego-Splitting in Representifications......Page 126
3.2 Ego-Splitting in Recollection......Page 127
3.3 Ego-Splitting in Phantasy Experiences......Page 129
3.4 Ego-Splitting and Reflection......Page 132
4 Conclusion. The Split at the Core of the Transcendental Subject......Page 136
References......Page 139
1 Introduction......Page 142
2 What Is Reproduction and What Is Reproductive Imagination?......Page 144
3 Perception and Imagination......Page 147
4 Memory and Phantasy......Page 150
5 The Role of Phantasy in the Constitution of the Cultural Worlds......Page 153
6 Conclusion......Page 158
References......Page 159
1 Introduction......Page 161
2 Husserl the Transcendental Idealist/Husserl the Solipsist......Page 163
3 From Disciple to Detractor: Theodor Celms......Page 169
4 Celms’ Claim that Phenomenological Idealism Leads to Solipsism......Page 175
5 In Defense of Husserl......Page 182
6 Conclusion: The “Special Sense” of Transcendental Idealism......Page 184
References......Page 187
1 The Reduction(s)......Page 191
2 Inability of the Different “Ways to the Reduction” to Illuminate Genetic Constitution......Page 195
3 The Possibility of a “Genetic Reduction”......Page 197
4 Eidetically Realizing the Genetic Reduction......Page 201
References......Page 204
1 Introduction......Page 207
3 Death......Page 208
5 Husserl on Passivity......Page 209
6 Merleau-Ponty on Passivity......Page 213
References......Page 216
Part III: At the Limits of Phenomenology: Towards Phenomenology as Philosophy of Limits......Page 218
1 Introduction......Page 219
2 Preliminary Remarks on the Phenomenon of Oblivion......Page 220
3.1 Husserl’s Early View: The Endless Retentional Process......Page 221
3.2 Husserl’s Late View: The Finite Retentional Process and Sedimentation......Page 224
4 Past-Lines and the One Past......Page 231
References......Page 232
On the Verge of Subjectivity: Phenomenologies of Death......Page 234
1 Introduction......Page 235
2 Death as a Phenomenological Problem......Page 236
3 Death as a Phenomenon......Page 237
4 The Phenomenality of Death......Page 239
5 Death Within the Horizon of Subjectivity......Page 241
6 Death within the Horizon of Intersubjectivity......Page 243
7 Death, Put Differently......Page 245
References......Page 246
1 Introduction......Page 247
2 Frege, Meaning, and the Husserlian Logical Project......Page 248
3 Husserl’s Notion of Expression......Page 254
3.1 Clarifying Some Ambiguities in Expression......Page 255
3.2 Essential Characteristics of Expression......Page 258
4 Spirit and/as Expression......Page 259
4.1 Husserl’s Account of Spirit......Page 260
4.2 Spirit, Sense and Expression......Page 263
5 Expression: The Promise of Phenomenology......Page 265
References......Page 269
Individuation, Affectivity and the World: Reframing Operative Intentionality (Merleau-Ponty)......Page 272
1 Introduction......Page 273
2.1 Merleau-Ponty’s Recasting of Intentionality......Page 274
2.2 The Analogical Structure of Perception and the Differentiations of the Flesh......Page 277
3.1 From “The Imaginary Texture of the Real” to the Mundus Imaginalis......Page 280
3.2 Gradiva or the Oblique Vision of Desire......Page 283
4.1 Artistic and Literary Expressions as “Interrogative” Ontology of Individuation......Page 286
4.2 The Style of Existence and the Subject to Come......Page 288
References......Page 290
1 Introduction......Page 292
2 The Role of the Concept of Europe in Husserl’s Crisis......Page 297
3 The Conflation of America with Europe in the Vienna Lecture......Page 301
4 What Is New in an Instituting Event?......Page 303
5 Conclusion......Page 308
References......Page 310
1 Introduction......Page 312
1.1 Philosophy and Its Shadow......Page 314
2 The Philosopher and His Shadow......Page 318
References......Page 327
1 Introduction......Page 328
2 Intentionality with Reference to the Lack or Excess of Appearance......Page 330
3 The Problem of Givenness as the Problem of the Phenomenality of the Phenomena......Page 332
4 The New Paradigm of Phenomenon as Event......Page 335
References......Page 339
1 Introduction......Page 341
2 From Heidegger to the Theory of Retentions......Page 343
3 Beyond Derrida’s Reading of Retentionality......Page 345
4 Technics, Organology and Pharmacology Within the Epoché......Page 348
5 Conclusion: The Politics of Epochality......Page 350
References......Page 352
1 Introduction......Page 355
2 Phenomenology’s Primitive......Page 357
3 Pulling Phenomenology in Different Directions......Page 358
4 Historical Epistemology as Critique of Phenomenology: A Case Against the Transcendental Subject......Page 359
4.1.1 Husserl’s Universal Ambition......Page 360
4.1.2 Husserl’s Impoverished Method......Page 362
4.2 Jean Cavaillès (Case Study #2)......Page 366
4.2.1 The Janus-Faced Legacy of Kant’s Philosophy of Mathematics......Page 367
4.2.2 Husserl’s Sterile Philosophy of Mathematics......Page 368
5 From Critique to Expansion: Historical Epistemology as Phenomenology?......Page 373
6 Further Research......Page 376
References......Page 378

Citation preview

Contributions to Phenomenology 108

Iulian Apostolescu Editor

The Subject(s) of Phenomenology Rereading Husserl

Contributions to Phenomenology In Cooperation with The Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology Volume 108 Series Editors Nicolas de Warren, Department of Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, USA Ted Toadvine, Department of Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, USA Editorial Board Lilian Alweiss, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland Elizabeth Behnke, Ferndale, WA, USA Rudolf Bernet, Husserl Archive, KU Leuven, Belgium David Carr, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA Chan-Fai Cheung, Chinese University Hong Kong, Sha Tin, Hong Kong James Dodd, New School University, New York, USA Lester Embree, Florida Atlantic University, Florida, USA Alfredo Ferrarin, Università di Pisa, Pisa, Italy Burt Hopkins, University of Lille, Lille, France José Huertas-Jourda, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada Kwok-Ying Lau, Chinese University Hong Kong, Sha Tin, Hong Kong Nam-In Lee, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea (Republic of) Dieter Lohmar, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany William R. McKenna, Miami University, Ohio, USA Algis Mickunas, Ohio University, Ohio, USA J.N. Mohanty, Temple University, Philadelphia, USA Dermot Moran, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland Junichi Murata, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan Thomas Nenon, The University of Memphis, Memphis, USA Thomas M. Seebohm, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz, Germany Gail Soffer, Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy Anthony Steinbock, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, USA Shigeru Taguchi, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan Dan Zahavi, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark Richard M. Zaner, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA

Scope The purpose of the series is to serve as a vehicle for the pursuit of phenomenological research across a broad spectrum, including cross-over developments with other fields of inquiry such as the social sciences and cognitive science. Since its establishment in 1987, Contributions to Phenomenology has published over 100 titles on diverse themes of phenomenological philosophy. In addition to welcoming monographs and collections of papers in established areas of scholarship, the series encourages original work in phenomenology. The breadth and depth of the Series reflects the rich and varied significance of phenomenological thinking for seminal questions of human inquiry as well as the increasingly international reach of phenomenological research. All books to be published in this Series will be fully peer-reviewed before final acceptance. The series is published in cooperation with The Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/5811

Iulian Apostolescu Editor

The Subject(s) of Phenomenology Rereading Husserl

Editor Iulian Apostolescu Faculty of Philosophy University of Bucharest Bucharest, Romania

Portions of Adam Konopka’s chapter entitled “Parts, Wholes, and Phenomenological Necessity” were published in Ecological Investigations: A Phenomenology of Habitats (New York: Routledge, 2020), 126–138. ISSN 0923-9545     ISSN 2215-1915 (electronic) Contributions to Phenomenology ISBN 978-3-030-29356-7    ISBN 978-3-030-29357-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29357-4 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, my thanks go to Philippe P. Haensler and Vedran Grahovac for their support and inspiring discussions at earlier stages of this project. I especially appreciate the unusual patience of all the contributors to this volume, which has been 3 years in the making. I am also grateful to Nicolas de Warren and the two anonymous referees for their suggestions for revisions and constructive feedback. This collection would not have the form it does if it were not for their input. I would like here to extend my due thanks to Rodney K.B. Parker for generously lending his time in helping with editing the introduction. Finally, I would like to thank Anita van der Linden-Rachmat and Cristina dos Santos at Springer for their invaluable editorial assistance. Bucharest, Romania 2019

Iulian Apostolescu

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Introduction

2018 marked the 80th anniversary of the death of Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl. While phenomenology “is now safely ensconced in the cultural firmament,”1 its basic philosophical assumptions and invariant methodological commitments remain thought-provoking, if not deeply enigmatic.2 For, as elegant as Husserl’s often cited claim that we must return to the “things themselves” (Wir wollen auf die “Sachen selbst” zurückgehen),3 may be, it is anything but simple. Both “orthodox” Husserlians and phenomenology’s harshest critics will readily agree that the main subject matter of Husserl’s philosophy is the subject or the pure field of transcendental subjectivity. However, it is far from clear what precisely this implies. Considering the vast range of themes covered in Husserl’s writings, as well as the immense complexity underlying the development of his thought—from its Brentanian beginnings4 to its  Sokolowski, R. 2010. “Husserl on First Philosophy”. In: Mattens F., Jacobs H., Ierna C. (Eds.), Philosophy, Phenomenology, Sciences. Phaenomenologica (Published Under the Auspices of the Husserl-Archives), vol 200. Springer, Dordrecht, 3–23. 2  For a discussion of “the inner ambiguities of the phenomenological method” see Mertens, Karl. 2018. “Phenomenological Methodology”. In: Zahavi, D. (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Phenomenology, Oxford University Press, 469–491. See also, Luft S., Overgaard, S. (Eds). 2012. The Routledge Companion to Phenomenology, Routledge, 1–14. For a thorough treatment of the phenomenological methodology, see especially the essays by Ludwig Landgrebe, Jan Patočka, and Dieter Lohmar included in Drummond, John J., Höffe, O. (Eds). 2019. Husserl: German Perspectives, Fordham University Press. 3  Husserl, E. 2001. Logical Investigations, Part I of Volume II, “Investigations into Phenomenology and the Theory of Knowledge”, Trans. J. Findlay. London and New York: Routledge, § 2, 168. See also Husserl, E. 1987. “Philosophie als strenge Wissenchaft”. In: Sepp, H.R., Nenon, Thomas (Eds.), Aufsätze und Vorträge (1911–1921), Husserliana: Edmund Husserl – Gesammelte Werke, Volume XXV, Springer, 21: “Weg mit den hohlen Wortanalysen. Die Sachen selbst müssen wir befragen. Zurück zur Erfahrung, zur Anschauung, die unseren Worten allein Sinn und vernünftiges Recht geben kann. Ganz trefflich!” 4  See Husserl, E. 2018. “Reminiscences of Franz Brentano”. In: Antonelli, M., Boccaccini, F. (Eds.), Franz Brentano: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers. Volume I: Sources and Legacy, Routledge, 356–364. Originally published in Kraus, O. (Ed.). 1919. Franz Brentano. Zur Kenntnis seines Lebens und seiner Lehre, Munich: Beck, 151–167; Rollinger, R. D. 1999. Husserl’s Position in the School of Brentano. Dordrecht: Springer; Moran, D. 2000. “Husserl’s Critique of 1

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transcendental reinterpretation5 and, last but not least, to its own “crypto-­ deconstruction” in the revisions of his early manuscripts and in his later work—one cannot but acknowledge the fact that “the” subject of phenomenology marks an irreducible plurality of possible subjects. Thus, phenomenology’s imperative to turn to the “things themselves,” today, indicates a task of re-approaching phenomenology’s own linguistic framework and methodological strategy before anything else: to return to the “texts themselves,” to re-engage with Husserl as a writer, with his disciples and successors as readers. Bringing together established researchers and emerging scholars alike to discuss new readings of (readings of) Husserl and to reignite the much needed discussion of what phenomenology actually is and can possibly be about, The Subject(s) of Phenomenology: Rereading Husserl sets out to critically re-evaluate (and challenge) the predominant interpretations of Husserl’s philosophy, and to adapt phenomenology to the specific philosophical challenges and context of the twenty-first century. The chapters in this volume are arranged into three parts:

Part I: The Phenomenological Project: Definition and Scope In the first chapter of Part I, Jean-Daniel Thumser explores Husserl’s understanding of “transcendental language” by tracing the different phases in Husserl’s conception of language from the Logical Investigations to his later manuscripts. In his contribution, Adam Konopka reconstructs the account of the organization of unified definite manifolds that Husserl develops in his early writings. He argues that Husserl’s concept of necessity gets fixed through the logic of “fitness” that is operative in Husserl’s account of unified definite manifolds organized by symmetrical part/whole relations. Simone Aurora shows how the philosophy of the early Husserl—as put forth Brentano in the Logical Investigations”, In: Manuscrito, XXIII (2), 163–206; Moran, D. 2017. “Husserl and Brentano”, In: Kriegel, U. (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School, Routledge, 293–304; Fisette, D. 2018. “Phenomenology and Descriptive Psychology: Brentano, Stumpf, Husserl”, In: Zahavi, D. (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Phenomenology, Oxford University Press, 88–104; Fréchette, G. 2019. “The Origins of Phenomenology in Austro-German Philosophy”, In: Shand, J. A. (Ed.), Blackwell Companion to 19th-Century Philosophy, London, Wiley-Blackwell, 418–453. 5  Mohanty, Jitendra Nath. 1997. Phenomenology: Between Essentialism and Transcendental Philosophy, Evanston: Northwestern University Press; Luft, Sebastian. 2011. Subjectivity and Lifeworld in Transcendental Phenomenology, Evanston: Northwestern University Press; Staiti, Andrea. 2014. Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology: Nature, Spirit, and Life, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Zahavi, Dan. 2017. Husserl’s Legacy: Phenomenology, Metaphysics, and Transcendental Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press; Livingstone, Paul M. 2018. “Edmund Husserl: From Intentionality to Transcendental Phenomenology”. In: Lapointe S. (Ed.), Philosophy of Mind in the Nineteenth Century: The History of the Philosophy of Mind, Volume 5, Routledge, 232–248; Apostolescu, I., Serban, C. (Eds.). 2020. Husserl, Kant and Transcendental Phenomenology, De Gruyter.

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in the Logical Investigations—ought to be considered part of both the wider tradition of transcendental philosophy and structuralism. Aurora addresses Husserl’s notion of Wissenschaftslehre and the mereology developed in the third Logical Investigation to show how Husserl’s position can be defined in terms of “phenomenological structuralism,” “structural phenomenology,” or, as Aurora proposes, “transcendental structuralism.” Corijn van Mazijk analyzes three different interpretations of transcendental consciousness and identifies the respective reasons for supporting them. What is particularly novel about van Mazijk’s account is that, on the one hand, it exposes Husserl’s notion of transcendental consciousness as involving a kind of “metaphysical commitment,” and, on the other, it no longer takes consciousness as a kind of “object” or matter of a “regional ontology.” It is argued that the streaming life of transcendental consciousness should be characterized as encompassing the totality of being. Vedran Grahovac suggests that Husserl develops a peculiar strategy in order to disclose the vicious circle that is at work in the psychologist’s notion of inner evidence. Instead of merely dismissing psychologistic logic in the Logical Investigations, Husserl enacts its inherent circularity, thereby opening the space for an ideal science of logic. By closely following the argumentative structure of his contemporaries and immediate predecessors whom he criticized and by fully acknowledging their concerns, Husserl was able to move beyond their philosophical projects.

Part II: The Unfolding of Phenomenological Philosophy The primary aim of Victor Gelan’s contribution is to show that Husserl’s idea of rigorous science offers a fundamental contribution to the understanding, clarification, and development of the idea of science in general, especially to the structuring of the scientific character of the social and human sciences. Marco Cavallaro argues that there are at least two essential traits that commonly define being an “I”: personal or self-identity and self-consciousness. He argues that they bear quite an odd relation to each other, insofar as self-consciousness seemingly jeopardizes self-­ identity. Cavallaro’s chapter elucidates this issue by situating it in the history of transcendental philosophy beginning with Immanuel Kant. Re-evaluating and applying the resources of Husserlian phenomenology, Saulius Geniusas aims at shedding new light on the essential structures of productive imagination (produktive Einbildungskraft). According to Geniusas’ working hypothesis, productive imagination is a relative term whose meaning derives from its opposition to reproductive imagination. Rodney K.B. Parker focuses on the relationship between Husserl and Theodor Celms, especially Celms’ criticisms of Husserl’s transcendental-­ phenomenological idealism. Celms argues that, despite his account of intersubjectivity, Husserl cannot escape the threat of solipsism. The relation of genetic phenomenology and the project of phenomenological reduction is the primary concern of Matt Bower’s chapter. Despite Husserl’s occasional loose references to “the” reduction, performing the reduction implies numerous interrelated techniques.

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Bower delves into these intricacies with the aim of determining the place of genetic phenomenology within the whole of the phenomenological method. Putting Husserl into dialogue with Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Randall Johnson’s chapter turns to phenomenology’s notion of “passivity.” According to Johnson, the inherent (self-)fragmentation of passivity forces philosophy to pay tribute to the problematic “space between” noema and noesis and to reflect on the highly ambiguous status of a “genetic” phenomenology trying to think its own origins.

 art III: At the Limits of Phenomenology: P Towards Phenomenology as Philosophy of Limits Benjamin Draxlbauer begins Part III by offering a phenomenological analysis of the phenomenon of oblivion [Vergessen]. For Husserl, Draxlbauer argues, oblivion is a true limit-case emerging on the edge of time consciousness. The chapter elaborates two distinct aspects of oblivion discussed by Husserl in conjunction with broader considerations on the topic and its relationship to intentional consciousness. Christian Sternad’s chapter analyzes various phenomenological approaches to death and elucidates how these approaches subsequently influence conceptions of subjectivity. Since death interrupts the correlation between the subject and the object, it calls into question the fundamental premises of the phenomenological method. In light of this, Sternad suggests that one can only gain a full picture of human mortality by a thorough account of intersubjectivity: death is not an isolated experience at the end of our lives, Sternad argues; rather it is what structures the ways in which we engage with others and our lifeworld. In his chapter, Neal DeRoo turns to the problem of expression and its role in the phenomenological project. DeRoo shows that the concept of expression grows out of Husserl’s debate with Gottlob Frege, more specifically: that expression is Husserl’s first attempt to more rigorously define “sense” as the essential connection between subjective acts of meaning and “objective” meanings. As a consequence, DeRoo argues, it is expression that is the true— and unexpected—core of Husserlian phenomenology as a whole. Elodie Boublil’s chapter shows how Merleau-Ponty’s reference to the idea of “coherent deformation” is his attempt to rethink subjectivity’s individuation with regard to the dynamics of operative intentionality and their expressions. Boublil demonstrates that, in response to André Malraux, Merleau-Ponty works out a diacritical sense of individuation as style that conveys existential possibilities. Boublil concludes by proposing a “phenomenology from within” that relies on literary, psychoanalytic, and artistic works to exhibit the “metamorphosis of the subject in and through its world.” Rereading Husserl’s Vienna Lecture, Ian Angus’ chapter interrogates Husserl’s attempt to define Europe as the spiritual home of reason. Against the backdrop of Husserl’s notion of “primal institution” (Urstiftung), Angus re-evaluates Husserl’s interpretation of the exploration of North America as an important exogenous renewal for the European entelechy of reason. In his chapter, Keith Whitmoyer turns

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to Merleau-Ponty’s reading of Husserl in Le philosophe et son ombre and the 1958– 1959 course at the Collège de France, La philosophie aujourd’hui, putting them into dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas’ 1948 essay, La réalité et son ombre. On this basis, Whitmoyer argues that Husserl’s work must not be treated as a luminous canon, as a set of sacred scriptures bereft of all darkness, but that the brilliance of the founder of phenomenology lies in his multiplicity; that Husserl was always otherwise than himself, haunted by his shadows. Emre Şan elaborates how contemporary phenomenology sets out to explore territories perhaps indicated, but mostly ignored or abandoned, by Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Şan examines three protagonists of the so-called “new” phenomenology, Michel Henry, Merleau-Ponty, and Jean-Luc Marion, in order to understand the reinterpretation of the concept of phenomenon in terms of givenness and event after the theological turn. In his chapter, Ben Turner explains how the phenomenological epoché understood as a methodological principle is rethought as political in the work of Bernard Stiegler. For Stiegler the epoché is both the suspension of existing social systems and a moment of critical redoubling where the source of disruption is integrated into a new “epoch.” Of particular interest to Turner is how Stiegler develops this double understanding of the epoché through his reading of retentionality as found in Husserl’s lectures On the Consciousness of Internal Time. Putting Husserl into dialogue with the writings of Jean Cavaillès and Gaston Bachelard, David M. Peña-Guzmán shows how historical epistemology can be read as simultaneously critiquing and expanding Husserlian phenomenology. In doing so, Peña-Guzmán rebuffs the widespread conception that historical epistemology is phenomenology’s “Other” and calls for further research on their historical and philosophical relationships.

Contents

Part I The Phenomenological Project: Definition and Scope An Analytic Phenomenology: Husserl’s Path to the Things Themselves��������������������������������������������������������������������������������    3 Jean-Daniel Thumser Parts, Wholes, and Phenomenological Necessity������������������������������������������   17 Adam Konopka The Early Husserl Between Structuralism and Transcendental Philosophy����������������������������������������������������������������������   31 Simone Aurora Transcendental Consciousness: Subject, Object, or Neither? ��������������������   45 Corijn van Mazijk Philosophy as an Exercise in Exaggeration: The Role of Circularity in Husserl’s Criticism of Logical Psychologism��������������������������������������������   57 Vedran Grahovac Part II The Unfolding of Phenomenological Philosophy Husserl’s Idea of Rigorous Science and Its Relevance for the Human and Social Sciences����������������������������������������������������������������   97 Victor Eugen Gelan Ego-Splitting and the Transcendental Subject. Kant’s Original Insight and Husserl’s Reappraisal��������������������������������������  107 Marco Cavallaro What Is Productive Imagination? The Hidden Resources of Husserl’s Phenomenology of Phantasy������������������������������������������������������  135 Saulius Geniusas

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Does Husserl’s Phenomenological Idealism Lead to Pluralistic Solipsism? Assessing the Criticism by Theodor Celms��������������������������������  155 Rodney K. B. Parker Finding a Way Into Genetic Phenomenology������������������������������������������������  185 Matt E. M. Bower The Allure of Passivity������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  201 Randall Johnson Part III At the Limits of Phenomenology: Towards Phenomenology as Philosophy of Limits Time and Oblivion: A Phenomenological Study on Oblivion����������������������  215 Benjamin Draxlbauer On the Verge of Subjectivity: Phenomenologies of Death����������������������������  231 Christian Sternad Spiritual Expression and the Promise of Phenomenology ��������������������������  245 Neal DeRoo Individuation, Affectivity and the World: Reframing Operative Intentionality (Merleau-Ponty)����������������������������������������������������������������������  271 Elodie Boublil Husserl and America: Reflections on the Limits of Europe as the Ground of Meaning and Value for Phenomenology��������������������������  291 Ian Angus Husserl and His Shadows: Phenomenology After Merleau-Ponty��������������  311 Keith Whitmoyer Phenomenological Crossings: Givenness and Event������������������������������������  327 Emre Şan Politicising the Epokhé: Bernard Stiegler and the Politics of Epochal Suspension ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  341 Ben Turner Not Phenomenology’s ‘Other’: Historical Epistemology’s Critique and Expansion of Phenomenology��������������������������������������������������  355 David M. Peña-Guzmán

Part I

The Phenomenological Project: Definition and Scope

An Analytic Phenomenology: Husserl’s Path to the Things Themselves Jean-Daniel Thumser

Abstract  In contrast to the scientific and mundane understanding of things, Husserl introduced the phenomenological reduction in order to comprehend things themselves. As the transcendental subject redirects his sight to apprehend things in a non-thetic way, things which were first perceived simpliciter are now perceived idealiter because they are reachable for the conscious subject. However, the practice of the reduction rejects any use of a thetic mundane aspect. Then how is it possible to talk about inner or reduced experiences when the language itself is mundane? It is our task to understand how a transcendental language may be possible by determining the different steps of Husserl’s conception of language from the Logical Investigations to his later manuscripts. We will see that the path to the things themselves is more perilous than we think. Keywords  Phenomenology · Analytic phenomenology · Pure logic · Transcendental language · Indexicals · Passive synthesis · Egological discourse

1  Introduction Contrariwise to the common and scientific language, which are both based on a certain positive understanding of things, phenomenology’s aim is to describe the essence of the experiencing life by practicing the phenomenological reduction (ἐποχή or bracketing). This reduction tends to put into parenthesis the thetic understanding of life by focusing on how phenonality appears consciously. The phenomenological reduction permits to redirect our view on the subject’s constituent and transcendental life – the antechamber of the subjective life from which the entire world acquires a meaning. Therefore, the domain of phenomenology concerns essences and idealities. Things are considered as phenomena, namely noematic I would like to thank two persons who helped me improve this paper in English: Chih-I Chang and Appoline Hontaas-Romanens. J.-D. Thumser (*) Ecole Normale Supérieure, Archives Husserl, Paris, France © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Apostolescu (ed.), The Subject(s) of Phenomenology, Contributions to Phenomenology 108, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29357-4_1

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correlates. Phenomenology’s use of langage is then specific insofar as it deals with idealities. Thus, phenomenology can’t be satisfied with common thetic language. On the contrary, the scientific approach tries to determine and classify nature in its own terms as it is for instance the case with the periodic table of elements for the chemist. But nature might not be reduced to that kind of reasoning, for the naturalist scientist does not take his very own subjectivity into account during his research. Therefore, the naturalistic determination of the world  – the scientific ideation of nature – tends to deny the subjective part of any research insofar as science’s ambition is to unveil a “pure object”. As Heisenberg worded it: “Ideally the aim of a scientific representation is the “objective” representation of a specific state of affairs. It is assumed that the relevant condition can be sufficiently detached from us and from its representation that it in fact may be turned into a pure ‘object’” (Heisenberg 1942, I 3 Order). Hence, resorting to an naturalistic posture when it comes to the environment of life (Lebensumwelt) or nature in general may not allow the researcher to acquire the right position concerning subjectivity itself for it is always “hidden”. The scientist’s ego is precisely anonymous, because none of his researches concern the primordial status of the ego: “The transcendental life accomplishes itself in a profound anonymity and remains blind to itself as long as it does not reflect on its self-constitution” (Montavont 1999, 48). It is precisely phenomenology’s task to discover the constituent role of the ego and to explain how the constitution of any kind of reality belongs to it. Consequently, what are the specific resources of phenomenology that could help us override the inherent explanatory gap which belongs to the scientific taxonomy of beingness? How did Husserl intend “to go back to the things themselves” (Husserl 2001a, 168), and what does it accurately mean when it comes to the expression of reduced experiences (Erlebnisse)? By describing how a transcendental language is possible, we aim to highlight the fact that none of the substantives or deictic expressions that one may use to designate an element of the field of phenomenology are legitimate insofar as phenomenology deals with universal and eidetic invariants. An analytic phenomenology may then be conceived as an attempt to understand how the transcendental language is possible as an expression of lived experiences. This method was initially mentioned in the first Logical Investigations in order to determine a path to the things themselves. It is our task to examine this method within an analysis of a major part of Husserl's work which has never been thematically considered from both Husserl and his commentators: an “analytic phenomenology” (Husserl 2001a, 172). We will consequently highlight the importance of this uninterrupted question in Husserl’s corpus in order to comprehend its unity and its later developments. As Adolf Reinach formerly assured: When we strive to make analysis about the essence, it is natural to begin with words and their meanings. It is not a coincidence that Husserl’s Logical Investigations begins with an analysis about the concepts of word, expression and signification, etc. At first, it is to master the hardly believable ambiguities which are in particular in the philosophical terminology (Reinach 2012, 49).

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2  I n the Depth of Subjectivity: A Return to the I and the Others 2.1  Formal Logic Versus Pure Logic The first Logical Investigation brings us to clarify the suitable terms used to express any kind of thoughts, and permits us to apprehend “true objects of logical research” within a “clarity that excludes all misundertanding” (Husserl 2001a, 165). It is therefore necessary to begin with a formal review in order to reach what pure logic is, or what specifically belongs to a phenomenology which concerns the expressions covering the intimate experiences (innere Erlebnisse). We may then underline that Husserl began an analysis of expressions and significations in the context of a gnosiological research that would not be reduced to a simple formal logic but that which already is a phenomenological pure logic. Consequently this analysis can’t be reduced to “grammatical discussions, empirically conceived and related to some historically given language” (Husserl 2001a, 166). Husserl indeed positioned himself as a phenomenologist who aimed to describe the essence of experiences by employing a method that does not include the empirical experiences. He thus tried to distinguish the terms that are used in order to depict a thought, but also thoughts themselves by considering them only as phenomena while the mundane experiences are reduced. It is then the intentional act that matters, not the object itself, but the content of experience: “it is absolutely crucial to our interpretation of Husserl that the claim that noemata and Sinne are meanings be understood only in conjunction with the claim that they are contents, not objects, of acts” (Woodruff Smith and McIntyre 1982, 155). This method offers the possibility to distinguish what concerns the signification and the manifestation of things whenever it comes to lived experiences. The same can be said when it comes to distinguishing what is meant, in other words what falls sometimes in a direct relation with the object (Gegenstand) – the filling acts –, and sometimes the signitive acts which may however lack an object, even if this act confers a signification. It is in that sense that the imperative return to the things themselves can be understood: it means a return to the pure subjective sphere that always provides a sense to what is encountered. Then the question about the relations linking terms in a linguistic structure has no importance for phenomenology, it leads us to a descriptive analysis of essential relationships which gives rise to a “meaning-fulfilment” (Husserl 2001b, 184). Moreover, we can emphasize with Alexander Schnell that what matters in any kind of expression concerns the expression in specie that does not depend neither on the situation in which it is expressed nor on the person who pronounces it. We must therefore clearly distinguish between the ideal signification on the one hand, and the real acts, that are constitutive for the signification, on the other hand – the correlation that Husserl will name in the Ideen I the ‘noetico-­ noematic correlation’ (Schnell 2007, 87).

Thus there is no possible analysis that isn’t strictly phenomenological. An analysis is inevitably based on experiences which could be universalized for all rational

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beings. Nevertheless, such a descriptive approach accomplishes much more than poiting to an explanation of expressions. It highlights a whole section on the communication of ideas within the human community.

2.2  Communication Between Reasonable Beings Husserl discerns about the intersubjective link a crucial issue about the expression: communication. Indeed, an expression is always based on an intention to signify something to someone through words: “the articulate sound-complex, the written sign etc., first becomes a spoken word of communicative bit of speech, when a speaker produces it with the intention of ‘expressing himself about something’” (Husserl 2001a, 189). We may also underline the fact that “expressing oneself” (sich äussern) means “to externalize oneself” and refers likewise to the verb “äussern” which means “articulate”. In that perspective the meaning of an expression of oneself leads to an articulation of a thought, an articulation of the subjectivity which intends to externalize itself. This dimension of the expression reflects the immeasurable need to express oneself on her/his experiences (Erlebnisse) and at the same time the need to share knowledge in order to confront it to the authority of others and make it valid – it is also the same need while the subject soliloquizes (Husserl 2001a, §8). Sich äussern here has the same value than existing (exsistere), that means appearing, showing ourselves, as originally understood in Latin. In this case, it means to share one subjective experience with another, as well as manifesting this subjective experience within words. That is the way a communicating community recognizes itself, because subjects share their ideas and their experiences, thanks to sounds, gestures, and writings. The “tools” that are used are neither unarticulated sounds, nor random behaviors and haptic movements, but expressions of a subjectivity which externalizes itself. Furthermore, this communication between thinking subjects is not limited to the recognition of others as reasonable beings, but includes a communication of experiences that cannot be expressed with words. Thus, if words may limit our understanding of other people’s experiences, they contribute in their descriptive use to discover other people’s experiences. This new comprehensive dimension illustrates how we share our emotions, our pain, etc. As Husserl wrote, this linguistic dimension is referred to another kind of perception that is not a perception like a taking-for-real (Warhnehmung). It participates to the presentification (Vergegenwärtigung) that presents us other people’s experiences obliquely and permits us to transpose those experiences to our own, but not identically: Common speech credits us with percepts event of other’s people’s inner experiences; we ‘see’ their anger, their pain etc. Such talk is quite correct, as long as, e.g., we allow outward bodily things likewise to count as perceived, and as long as, in general, the notion of perception is not restricted to the adequate, the strictly intuitive percept. […] The hearer perceives the speaker as manifesting certain inner experiences, and to that extent he also perceives these experiences themselves: he does not, however, himself experience them, he has not an ‘inner’ but an ‘outer’ percept of them. Here we have the big difference between the real

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grasp of what is in adequate intuition, and the putative grasp of what is on a basis of inadequate, though intuitive, presentation” (Husserl 2001a, 190).

If it is possible to partially understand other people’s inner experiences through their behavior and expression, this comprehension is nevertheless limited. Indeed, we may for instance consider the case of a young person who has never tasted wine and who is now talking to an oenologist: the neophyte is able to understand the notion of a certain taste but won’t be able to link those concepts to any previous experience (Erlebnis). Moreover, if we consider the current neurocognitive research, we may also point out that despite the major discovery of the mirror neurons – that we could call social neurons as they are activated during empathy and social interactions –, the “pain matrix” that is engaged while the subject sees another subject who is being hurt is limited. In fact, as the title of a recent paper summarizes it, the limits of our understanding of an other’s pain is limited: “empathy for man involves the affective but not the sensory components of pain” (Singer et al. 2004). Whereupon Husserl could be designed as precursor on the necessary modalities to recognize and share our experiences. Indeed, Husserl radically distinguishes himself from Max Scheler and what he called an “affective fusion” (Einsfühlung). For Husserl, communication is essential but limited. To express oneself is a manifestation of oneself’s experience and subjectivity. We recognize ourselves as individual beings in flesh and bones (leibhaftig) endowed with reason. However, to what extent are we precisely able to manifest subjectivity? Is saying “I” sufficient to express our inner experiences? That might not be the case, especially if we consider it only as an indexical, even more as an “essential indexical” (Perry 1993). The limits of communication and of the transcendental language may lie here.

2.3  Does “I” Mean Something? I as Indexical In fact, the indexicals “I”, “here” and “now” are commonly used to describe a perceived situation, but the “I” may suggest more than that. For instance, “The indexical “I”, not the philosophical anomaly, “the I” or “the eidos I” […], refers to the unique individual who is self-present immediately in her unique essence and who may be present for the listener “in the flesh”, (“registered”, as Sokolowski puts it), and not in an empty intention” (Hart 2009, 67). In that sense, saying “I” suggests more than a simple indexical, it is essential as it refers itself to a reasonable being. But Husserl introduces another point in the Logical Investigations: the “I” is nothing that is universal or objective. The “I”, “here” or “now” are “essentially occasional” (Husserl 2001a, 218) terms, which are used to describe a punctual and unique situation: Every expression, in fact, that includes a personal pronoun lacks an objective sense. The word ‘I’ names a different person from case to case, and does so by way an ever altering meaning. What its meaning is at the moment, can be gleaned only from the living utterance and from the intuitive circumstances which surround it. […] It is the universal semantic function of the word ‘I’ to designate whoever is speaking, but the notion through which we express this function is not the notion immediately constitutive of its meaning (Husserl 2001a, 218–219).

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Thus the signification of the expressed “I” finds its meaning only in the subjective part of the subject. “I” means “I am here, present, thinking, speaking to someone on something” and can only be distinguished from the things it speaks about by the use of the “I”. Furthermore, if every human being is able to express his or her very own subjectivity by the use of the “I”, even if it is under an implicit form, this “I” always means another subjectivity and another concept of the “I”: “Each man has his own I-presentation (and his individual notion of I) and this is why the word’s meaning differs from person to person. But since each person, in the quest of himself, says ‘I’, the word has the character of a universally operative indication of this fact” (Husserl 2001a, 219). But if Husserl brings here attention to the communication between different empirical egos, it is not necessary for him that each ego clearly understands the notion of the “I”. That could indeed be the case for many individuals. The “I” does not express the person entirely. We may also call it with Stéphane Chauvier a certain “descriptive ingenuity of the I-thinking”, because “behind the ‘I’, likewise behind the ‘here’ or the ‘now’, there is no description of anything and that is the reason why the ‘I think’ […] does not include any knowledge of the thing which thinks” (Chauvier 2009, 118). For instance, a brain damaged person is also capable to say “I” without any need to know what it is to be an I: it is the same case for people who suffer from Alzheimer or anosognosia. And Husserl does not say the contrary, at least in the Logical Investigations, when he affirms briefly that “the word ‘I’ has not itself directly the power to arouse the specific I-presentation ; this becomes fixed in the actual piece of talk.[…] In its case, rather, an indicative function mediates, crying as it were, to the hearer ‘Your vis-à-vis intends himself’” (Husserl 2001a, 219). As we see here, Husserl describes the “I” as a particular indexical, that has an indicative function not similar to the other indexicals like “here” or “now” for the “I” indicates a living reasonable being. Nevertheless Husserl does not give any further explanation about the specific role of the “I”. He remains evasive on this issue, by not mentioning anything that could be possibly linked to his later transcendental phenomenology. We will consequently take into account the new horizons opened by Husserl when he introduced the ego as the foundation of all apodictic knowledge.

3  The Antepredicative Articulation of Linguistic Thoughts 3.1  The Antepredicative Part of the Language Thanks to the introduction of the transcendental ego, Husserl is able to determine the origins of all knowledge. “The expressions, “I perceive,” “I judge, “I want, “designate at the same time an essential shape of these lived-experiences themselves that are essentially given through the ego-centration. Here, the ego is everywhere living in these acts as carrying them out […]. The ego is not a box containing egoless lived-experiences” (Husserl 2001c, 17). But how are those experiences expressed through language? Are the conscious lived experiences expressible through language, or does the language come after experiences? Husserl introduces here a

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certain novelty by saying that “Thinking is carried out from the very outset as linguistic. What resides in our practical horizon as something to be shaped is the still indeterminate idea of a formation that is already a linguistic one” (Husserl 2001c, 12). Indeed Husserl indicates that the expression of lived experiences is already linguistic inasmuch as thoughts are always linguistic. This means that the antepredicative part of our life determines in a certain pre-linguistic way the expression and the predication of our experiences within the use of words. As specified by Natalie Depraz, “The primordial language of phenomenology is the language of the perception, of the perceived sense, in other words, Husserlian, it is a language which is originated from the antepredicative” (Depraz 1999, 91). Then, contrariwise to what we may think about the originarity of our experiences, the ego is always confronted to a linguistic world which arises from the antepredicative experiences. Nevertheless, Merleau-Ponty demonstrated this a bit further with the assimilation and the use of words that may not be without interest. In fact, he highlights that the ego may be surprised about the inner process of the language: The speaking power that the child assimilates by learning the language is not the sum of the morphological, syntactic and lexical significations: this knowledge is neither necessary nor sufficient to acquire a language […]. Words and phrases that are necessary to lead to the expression of my significant intention does only recommend to me, when I talk, by what Humboldt called the innere Sprachform (and which is called by the moderns Wortbegriff) […]. There is a “linguistic” meaning of the language which accomplishes the mediation between my intention still silent and the words, so that my words surprise me and teach me my thought. Organized signs have their immanent sense which falls outside the ‘I think’, and belongs to the ‘I can’ (Merleau-Ponty 1960, 110–111).

Thus, the idea that there is a certain “descriptive ingenuity” about the use of indexicals may totally be true, for the ego is not completely involved in the inner linguistic process, but is occasionally surprised by the words it uses. On that point, we may emphasize the fact that more recent researches have come to the same conclusion: the inner linguistic process takes place in the act of perceiving, and thinking cannot be distinguished from the language for there is no thinking without words. But the role of the ego in the determination of words is not primordial insofar as thinking is already linguistic. In this case, Merleau-Ponty is right when he affirms that “organized signs have their immanent sense which […] belongs to the ‘I can’”, because the inner linguistic process does not include, at least for the antepredicative part of our understanding, any participation of an ego. As Jean Petitot also stated: “the non-­ conceptual pre-structuration of the semiotic of the natural world is in a large part perceptual” (Petitot 2004, 138).

3.2  The Passive Synthesis and the Animation of Words This problem of an antepredicative formation of our linguistic understanding may only be comprehended by analyzing what Husserl calls the “passive synthesis”. Indeed, in the stratification of the constitutive conscience, the passive synthesis is an

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underlying activity that is necessary to unify the diversity of the lived experiences. “This synthesis, that the activity of conscience always finds as already done, can also only be passive in relation to the activity [conscience as an activity of judging logically], and in so far as it is strictly pre-logic, […] it is antepredicative” (Escoubas and Richir 1989, 11). The passive synthesis is thus distinguished from the active one for this latter deals with logical and empirical judgments, and more generally deals with the field of the perception (Wahrnehmung). The active synthesis is a judicative act, contrariwise to the passive synthesis which is the basis for the active one for it is a principle of association from which “the Ego always has an environment of ‘objects’” (Husserl 1960, 79). In other words the passive synthesis is the activity which permits the transcendental subject to constantly be in a world of objectivities (Gegenständlichkeiten). Its process is to be a relation between different kinds of living experiences and objects, between what is pre-given and what will later permit the subject/object relation. Moreover, if the antepredicative life finds its ground on the experience of the world in which we take part and in which the mundane ego is not yet able to access its very own self-consciousness, the world must be understood as a horizon that needs to be constantly constituted, and carries in itself an overture of sense. It is the gap between the world and the subject that gives rise to any attribution of sense. This is how the passive dimension of experience matters that much, because it takes place in the “environment” (Umgebung) necessary for knowledge to that extent that it precedes any thetic act: The environment (Umgebung) is copresent as a domain of what is pregiven, of a passive pregiveness, i.e., of what is always already there without any attention of a grasping regard, without any awakening of interest. All cognitive activity, all turning-toward a particular object in order to grasp it, presupposes this domain of passive pregiveness. The object affects from within its field; it is an object, an existent among others, already pregiven in a passive doxa, in a field which itself represents a unity of passive doxa (Husserl 1973, 30).

This implies that the passive synthesis is the origin of all knowledge. It is the activity of the phenomenal conscience which permits the ego to actualize its field of view concerning the objects (Objekte) so that these objects become, thanks to the reduction, categorial objectities resulting from the aware activity of the ego. This activity of conscience is essential in many forms, but particulary permits us here to understand the propitious modalities of the expression of living experience. Indeed, Husserl underlines another aspect of the passive synthesis regarding its linguistic role, the fact that the comprehension of words as “sounds of the language” comes from the passive synthesis, not the conscious and active one: in ordinary reading, we by no means have, combined with that, an accompanying articulation of actual thinking, of thinking produced from the Ego, member by member, in synthetic activity. Rather, this course of thinking properly is only indicated (by the passively flowing synthesis of the sensuous verbal sounds) as a course of thinking to be performed (Husserl 1969, 56).

We can see here that the production of sense, whether it is about the expression or the entire thinking, is essentially linked to the passive synthesis as something to be done. Husserl indicates in this passage that language and the whole activity of

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thinking is based on the passive synthesis – this latter is the unique necessary activity to acquire a conscious association. The antepredicative may also be comprehended as a primary form of linguistic, a proto-language based on the prejudicative living, the perceiving living. Afterwards, when this process of passive association is done, words acquire another level of meaning. Indeed, Husserl underlines the fact that once the formatting of the linguistic and predicative thought is consciously done, words, which originally have only a social and positive meaning, now bear a soul as they are expressed by a thinking subject: “in speaking we are continuously performing an internal act of meaning, which fuses with the words and, as it were, animates them. The effect of this animation is that the words and the entire locution, as it were, embody in themselves a meaning, and bear it embodied in them as their sense” (Husserl 1973, 22). We could eventually say that the passive synthesis is necessary to comprehend a unity within the variety of different living experiences. It is also necessary to express experiences through words inasmuch as thinking is a result of an experience that is antepredicative. The passive synthesis is then the junction between the transcendental life and the world because the world “in its primitive ontological structure, it is the preconstituted substrate of all meaning” (Derrida 2003, 110). But it constantly needs to be consciously actualized within the process of the passive synthesis and, furthermore, the reduction. Nevertheless, the expression of reduced living experiences is still unexplained and needs to be clearly analyzed for it certainly is the most difficult task of the phenomenologist. Indeed, how can a reduced experience be expressible in a mundane language that is at the same time rejected during the reduction?

4  T  he Expression of Reduced Experience: The Transcendental Sprache 4.1  T  he Reduction and the Problem of the Mundane Language Within this last part of our article, we will try to answer this question: Under which circumstances is it possible to express reduced experiences? If it is accepted that every thought is developed through language, the phenomenological reduction might hamper the expression of immanent experiences because it sets aside everything that is related to the doxic terms of the mundane life to which the language belongs. Moreover, as Husserl wrote first it in the fifth Logical Investigation, judgments “elude complete conceptualization and expression, they are evident only in their living intention, which cannot be adequately imparted in words” (Husserl 2001b, 88). It is then obvious that Husserl could not consider at this moment that the inner experiences may be completely expressed within words, but the introduction of the reduction has brought with it a major turnaround: the living experience can

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now be fully examined as we practice the transcendental reduction. Nevertheless, could this examination be done in a non-linguistic way? Certainly not. And the descriptive task that Husserl aimed for depends on a linguistic approach that needs to be revisited. Since 1913 Husserl asked himself about this linguistic reform: “For how far logical and, in a like way, pure ontological, pure ethical, and whatever other apriori propositions one may cite, actually express something phenomenological, and to which phenomenological stata the respective propositions may belong, is not obvious” (Husserl 1983, 211–212). This difficulty is even greater because the language does not seem to be adequate to signify the immanent dimension of pure experiences. Its current use is only to describe physical phenomena, landscapes, faces, in other words the being as it is given. But phenomenology cannot be limited to this point for its aim is to explain a vision of essence (Wesenschau). However, can the phenomenologist content her/himself with the common language? Husserl does not give a definitive answer to that, but claims in the first volume of the Ideen: “as phenomenologists we are not supposed to stop being natural human beings or positing ourselves as such when we speak” (Husserl 1983, 149). This assertion leaves us in uncertainty as we doubt about the reach of the ordinary language to express experiences of an eidetic order. Therefore the eidetic reflections encounter a certain risk to that extent that they might not be expressible, at least in their own essence. This alternative may also be related to the later thesis of a private language, as Wittgenstein stated. But is it really the case with Husserl?

4.2  The Egological Content of the Expression Husserl could not assuredly accept a dualistic way to understand the expression of the inner experience. For instance, there cannot be an inner and private language that could be distinguished from a mundane language because the experience cannot be divided into two: the first unspeakable and the other expressible. The reduction itself shows that there is a way to access the inner sphere of the subject and, as we reach this sphere, the subject acquires the ability to make salient “the unnoticed intrusions of empty verbal meanings” (Husserl 1983, 212). Therefore the phenomenological reduction permits to comprehend words in a non-mundane and scientific way, because it gives prominence to the immanent originary life in which everything is “seen” in a sheer way without any specific thetic acts. The intelligibility of the inner experiences is thus egologically oriented. How could it be otherwise? As Berthoz and Petit also stated: “the very notion of a ‘point of view’ refers to an ego: ‘an objective point of view’ is typically a contradictio in adjecto” (Berthoz and Petit 2006, 280). Moreover, as Husserl affirmed in an unpublished manuscript, the reduction allows the phenomenologist to give another content to his discourse, a transcendental content for it is oriented by the ego: In the return to the absolute subjective sphere, this one reveals itself as a field of experience and of descriptive research. But jointly, it is given to us as a predicative truth which will be

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studied and expressed, a truth that might beside be, from a descriptive point of view, a truth of fact or a truth of essence. Therefore we use here the language and its significations – but the language will be egologically reduced and the words and the propositions will be reduced to simple egological symbols which freely receive their meaningful content from the ego, a content that, by means of the bracketting, will become a purely egological meaning […]. As a transcendental ego, I shape symbols – transcendental symbols which exist in my transcendental sphere and which are then intersubjectively ‘feelable’ in their intersubjective transcendental being, and which, as significations, symbolize transcendental states of affairs. We need then, thanks to their signification, to set in general transcendental truths, first by a descriptive way for my primordial sphere, secondly for my intersubjectivity that is egologically oriented, for the world of experience in a transcendental apprehension in all its strata. – It is on this that we potentially must ground in an indirect way a transcendental knowledge: ‘a transcendental logic’. The logic of predicative truths, as transcendental truths, the Logos of the transcendental. […] Of course, all of this is not contradicted by the fact that the accomplished enunciation in words, in the German grammar already has a meaning which refers itself to the German nation, and, consequently, that I immediately contradict the transcendental epoch with my discourse, even in the discourse-that-I-havewith-­myself. Furthermore, it is sufficient here to return to the possibility to reduce by this way my language, in order to repel any mundane meaning so that it could become a pure expression of what I aim for, it means consequently that I do not put anything else in value but the discourse originally conceived by myself (Husserl 1931, 19–20).

We see here that the use of language is totally different when we practice the phenomenological reduction because the content of the expressions is transcendentally oriented. Everything that we could say then expresses an intimate experience, an egological experience. As Husserl’s disciple Eugen Fink also stated, the natural language is not modified during or after the reduction, but receives another content that is, this time, transcendentally modified. We do not speak about mundane, ephemeral things, nor about Abschattungen, but about things themselves as they are perceived within the inner transcendental sphere. “I always speak the natural language, but in a transcendentally altered sense” (Fink 1995, 86). While the common language is used to express things in a thetic way, to express them in their current actuality and qualities, their hic et nunc, phenomenology has contrariwise in sight the originary experience of the transcendental subject. And, even if there is nothing like a proper phenomenological language, there is however a verification of the content of sentences: “Phenomenological sentences can therefore only be understood if the situation of the giving of sense to the transcendental sentence is always repeated, that is, if the predicatively explicating terms are always verified again by phenomenologizing intuition” (Fink 1995, 92). We are now able to understand that the transcendental Sprache is not a specific language with another structure, but a modification of the sense of each sentence by the practice of the reduction. Thus the “language will be egologically reduced”. And, at least but not at last, the use of inverted commas is remarkable as well in Husserl’s corpus, because it underlines another understanding of words and things. Indeed, in contrast to the scientific use of language, Husserl uses the inverted commas to speak about things not as real components of nature, but as correlates of conscious acts; it points out the redirection of the sight from the thing simpliciter that is perceived and scientifically explainable to the thing idealiter which is only reachable for the conscious subject:

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J.-D. Thumser ‘In’ the reduced perception (in the phenomenologically pure mental process), we find, as indefeasibly belonging to its essence, the perceived as perceived, to be expressed as ‘material thing’, ‘plant’, ‘tree’, ‘blossoming’ ; and so forth. Obviously, the inverted commas are significant in that they express that change in sign, the correspondingly radical significational modification of the words (Husserl 1983, 216).

5  Conclusion: An Overture to the Ichrede Finally, we are now able to say that the phenomenological langage is grounded on the passive synthesis because every thought is originally linguistic even if a lived experience is not conscious at first. The passive synthesis is indeed an activity which allows to organize thoughts and to actualize them within a underlying process which can constantly become conscious. Furthermore, the phenomenologist discovers an always new world as he practices the reduction – the transcendental life –, and realizes that she/he is the only constitutive part in the intersubjective constitution of sense with other egos. “The transcendental life is given to me, that is also that I give it to me. […] Living as a phenomenologist is also conquering in ourselves a self that is more lively than the simple natural I” (Depraz 1991, 461). Nevertheless, as the phenomenologist conquers another level of life, the expression of the inner living experiences is still problematic for there is no proper transcendental language. The only thing that changes is the content of sense that is given while the reduction is practiced. Therefore, the linguistic way to express things themselves is modified with the use of inverted commas, for example. But the important aspect of this linguistic modification is not the use of this kind of tools, it is instead the egological centration. Indeed, and as a conclusion to this paper, Husserl invites us to constantly meditate about the transcendental and egological part of our lives where everything makes sense. It is his goal to emphasize the fact that every discourse can be an egological discourse (Ichrede) insofar as the reduction is practiced. Suddenly as the transcendental ego reflects on itself a “new understanding of life” can be revealed in order to establish a “universal science” grounded on the transcendental subjectivity: We must now focus on the discourse of the I and each participant is the I, the I that is in question. I, I say so as a beginner in philosophy, I want to start a new understanding of life, a constant knowledge from an absolute legitimacy and that could in some way, I hope so, neatly, become a universal science (Husserl 2002, 315).

An Analytic Phenomenology: Husserl’s Path to the Things Themselves

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References Berthoz, A., and J.-L. Petit. 2006. Phénoménologie et physiologie de l’action. Paris: Odile Jacob. Chauvier, S. 2009. Ce que Je dit du sujet. Les Études Philosophiques 88: 117–135. Depraz, N. 1991. La vie m’est-elle donnée ? Réflexions sur le statut de la vie dans la phénoménologie. Les Études Philosophiques 4: 459–473. ———. 1999. Écrire en phénoménologie. Paris: Encre Marine. Derrida, J.  2003. The Problem of Genesis in Husserl’s Philosophy. Trans. Marian Hobson. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Escoubas, E., and M. Richir. 1989. Husserl. Grenoble: Jérôme Millon. Fink, E. 1995. Sixth Cartesian Meditation: The Idea of a Transcendental Theory of Method. Trans. Ronald Bruzina. Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Hart, J.G. 2009. Who One Is, Book 1: Meontology of the “I”. A Transcendental Phenomenology. Dordrecht: Springer. Heisenberg, W. 1942. Reality and Its Order. http://werner-heisenberg.unh.edu/t-OdW-english. htm#seg13. Husserl, E. 1931. Ms B I 5 V [Epoché, Reduktion, korrelative Weltbetrachtung und Phänomenologie], Erster Gang der Besinnung, Reduktion korrelativer Welbetrachtung und nach der ontologischen Seite Anfang ontologischer Eidetik. Reduktion. Voran ein Blatt über transzendentale Sprache als zunächst ständige Voraussetzung. ———. 1960. Cartesian Meditations. Trans. Dorion Cairns. Dordrecht: Springer. ———. 1969. Formal and Transcendental Logic. Trans. Dorion Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1973. Experience and Judgment. Trans. Churchill J.S., and Ameriks K.  London: Routledge. ———. 1983. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book. Trans. Kersten, F. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 2001a. Logical Investigations, Volume I. Trans. John Findlay. London: Routledge. ———. 2001b. Logical Investigations, Volume II. Trans. John Findlay. London: Routledge. ———. 2001c. Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis. Trans. Anthony J. Steinbock. Dordrecht: Kluwer. ———. 2002. Einleitung in die Philosophie. Vorlesungen 1922/23. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Merleau-Ponty, M. 1960. Signes. Paris: Gallimard. Montavont, A. 1999. De la passivité dans la phénoménologie de Husserl. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Perry, J.  1993. The Problem of the Essential Indexical and Other Essays. New  York/Oxford: Oxford University Press. Petitot, J. 2004. Morphologie et esthétique. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose. Reinach, A. 2012. Phénoménologie réaliste. (Ed. Dominique Pradelle). Paris: Vrin. Schnell, A. 2007. Husserl et les fondements de la phénoménologie constructive. Grenoble: Jérôme Millon. Singer, T., B. Seymour, J. O’Doherty, H. Kaube, R.J. Dolan, and C.D. Frith. 2004. Empathy for Pain Involves the Affective But Not Sensory Components of Pain. Science 303 (5661): 1157– 1162. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1093535. Woodruff Smith, D., and R. McIntyre. 1982. Husserl and Intentionality: A Study of Mind, Meaning and Language. Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster: Kluwer.

Parts, Wholes, and Phenomenological Necessity Adam Konopka

Abstract  This chapter reconstructs the account of the organization of unified definite manifolds that Husserl developed in his early logic of parts and wholes. I argue that Husserl’s conception of necessity gets fixed through the logic of fitness that is operative in his account of unified definite manifolds that are organized by symmetrical part/whole relations. Husserl’s logical account of necessity finds its ultimate justification in his theory of intentionality and is operative in his phenomenological methodology generally. Through this conception of necessity of the way in which manifolds are unified and organized, Husserl radicalized and exploded the Kantian conception of the material a priori and distinguished among several kinds of a priori, e.g., the correlational a priori, a priori bound to the empirical, and pure material a priori. Husserl’s phenomenological account of the material a priori further clarifies the important differences with Kant’s approach to the problem of necessity. Keywords  Necessity · Manifolds · Unity · Synthesis · A Priori · Kant · Husserl

1  Introduction The problem of necessity concerns the identification and clarification of the kinds of invariant unities that can be known amidst the variant manifolds of a contingent world. This problem can be initially highlighted through a reference to the Copernican revolution and the historical shift from a geocentric understanding of solar system variation to a heliocentric view. From a geocentric approach, the apparent motion of heavenly bodies, e.g., sun, moon, and stars, are accounted for in terms Portions of Adam Konopka’s chapter entitled “Parts, Wholes, and Phenomenological Necessity” were published in Ecological Investigations: A Phenomenology of Habitats (New York: Routledge, 2020), 126–138. A. Konopka (*) Xavier University, Cincinnati, OH, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Apostolescu (ed.), The Subject(s) of Phenomenology, Contributions to Phenomenology 108, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29357-4_2

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of the actual motion of heavenly bodies. By contrast, a heliocentric approach accounts for the apparent motion of heavenly bodies in terms of the motion of the observer. The observer undergoes variations that condition the knowledge of the variations in the world. In this historical sense, the problem of necessity is the problem of how to account for invariance amidst complex variation. The difficulty lies in the authentic clarification of how the variation in a contingent manifold is given as a unified determinate object with a necessary invariance-amdist-variability. As Julia Jansen formulated it, the problem of necessity concerns the way in which a contingent sensible manifold is unified, “While the world is given as a sensible manifold, and, insofar as it is given, it is always contingent, its unity may carry and be known to carry necessity, in which case the unified manifold attains objectivity.”1 Jansen identifies an important difference in the way in which Kant and Husserl account for the kinds of necessity in which sensible manifolds are unified as objects. While Kant’s account maintains that a unified manifold receives the necessity of its unity in an asymmetrical relation to the transcendental unity of apperception, Husserl’s symmetrical account recognizes that objects are passively synthesized with a necessary unity proper to themselves.

2  The Problem of Necessity and Pure Logic Husserl’s treatment of the problem of necessity in the Logical Investigation arises in the context of his discussion of the propositional truths of this scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge is grounded in explanatory laws that provides justification for knowledge, “To know the ground of anything means to see the necessity of its being so and so. Necessity as an objective predicate of truth (which is then called a necessary truth) is tantamount to the law-governed validity of the state of affairs in question.”2 Husserl thus identifies the necessity of a truth with justified propositional knowledge and makes the distinction between the necessity involved in individual and general truths. Individual truths contain propositions that indicate the actual existence of factual singulars and, as such, are contingent. By contrast, general truths involve assertions that infer the possible existence of individual facts from general laws. General truths yield justified propositions through deduction and have a necessity that results from the interconnectedness of basic laws that comprise a systematic theory. The necessity involved in general truths is not vague and indeterminate, but has determination in correlation with a given field of knowledge that comprises a determinate manifold, “The objective correlate of the concept of a possible theory … is known in mathematical circles as a manifold.”3 A manifold is a multiplicity in the  Jansen, Julia. 2015. Transcendental Philosophy and the Problem of Necessity in a Contingent World. Metodo: International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy, 1, 48. 2  Husserl, Edmund. 1975. Husserliana XVIII Logische Untersuchungen. Erster Teil. Prolegomena zur reinen Logik, ed. Elmar Holenstein. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, §63. Hereafter, Hua. XVII. 3  Ibid., §36. 1

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formal and mathematical sense and Husserl’s conception of the objective correlate of theoretical investigation finds its analytic expression as a theory of manifolds. It was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz who first envisioned the ideal of logic as a ­“discipline of mathematical form and strictness” and the breadth of logic to include a mathematical theory of probabilities.”4 Leibniz’s notion of mathesis univeralis was the first systematic attempt to unify the formal apophantics of Aristotle with the mathematical logic that historically developed after Franciscus Vieta. As Husserl states, “Our relation to him [Leibniz] is relatively of the closest” regarding the understanding of the relationship between logic and mathematics, a relation that finds its mature expression in Formal and Transcendental Logic.5 In the Logical Investigations, Husserl identifies Leibniz’s notion of a pure theory of manifolds with pure logic – a discipline that investigates the necessary unities of synthesized manifolds. Pure logic is a discipline that underlies the methodological and normative features of logic in general and can serve as a formal theory of scientific reasoning. The discipline of pure logic identifies and clarifies meaning-categories (Bedeutungskategorien) and object-categories (Gegenstandskategorien) and the lawful combination of the two. For example, pure logic identifies and clarifies the laws governing combinations of meanings into propositions, arguments, and theories. The investigation into the meaning categories yield formal concepts that correspond to the categories of formal ontology, e.g., concepts such as one, object, quality, relation, number, plurality, whole, and part. These formal categories are organized around the empty notion of “something” or “object as such” and are distinguished from the material concepts of object-categories. While the formal concepts apply to any object whatsoever, material concepts such as color, brightness, tone, intensity, plant, animal, and so on are organized around the highest regions among various given objects. The investigation into these object categories yields a study of unified definite manifolds.

3  Parts, Wholes, and Necessary Fitness Husserl’s Third Investigation is a study of the lawful relations among two formal concepts of meaning categories – the essential necessity among parts and wholes. He begins this investigation with the general distinction between simple and complex objects. Simple objects have no parts, while complex objects do. Complex objects, in other words, are wholes with parts. This distinction between wholes and parts that arises in complex objects is primitive, which is to say, no other terminology can provide a concept that is more basic nor can the relation between wholes and part be clarified by a more primitive terminology as long as parts and wholes are  Hua. XVIII, §60.  Husserl, Edmund. 1974. Husserliana XVII Formale and transzendentale Logik. Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft, ed. Paul Janssen. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, §23. Husserl did not think that Leibniz’s notion of mathesis universalis provided an adequate account of how the unity that brings together apophantic logic and mathematical logic in a single science is achieved. 4 5

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taken in general indeterminateness of formal concepts of meaning categories.6 Parts and wholes are fundamentally correlative, which is to say, they are defined in a mutual relation. Parts part wholes and wholes whole parts, that is, each is unintelligible without relation to the other. The first distinction Husserl then makes concerns two types of parts – independent (Selbstständigkeit) parts (pieces) and non-independent parts (moments). Moments are parts that are non-independent from their wholes. Consider, for example, a material object taken as a whole – it cannot be presented without reference to its extension, surface, color, and brightness. Consider, in particular, a leaf from a fallen tree. These constituent parts of the leaf are organized through relations of dependence. The brightness of the leaf cannot be presented without presupposing its color, the color of the leaf cannot be presented without its surface, and its surface cannot be presented without its extension. These presentational moments of the leaf supplement each other and their whole necessarily, which is to say, the necessary supplementation involved in complex wholes defines Husserl’s notion of moment (non-independent part).7  In Peter Simons’ pioneering attempt to formalize Husserl’s mereology, he criticizes Husserl’s seemingly arbitrary privilege of complex objects over simple objects. This criticism also arises in Simons’ comment on Husserl’s concept of a pregnant whole, “The pregnant whole for the foundation relation in question offers [Husserl] the promise of being neither too large nor too small. But this concept is itself defined in terms of the relation of individual foundation, as we shall see below, so it cannot be invoked without circularity. I do not believe that Husserl saw the threat of circularity here…” Simons, Peter. 1992. Philosophy and Logic in Central Europe from Bolzano to Tarski: Selected Essays. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 90. This criticism is correctly applied to the Third Investigation where Husserl does not provide this justification. However, it is ultimately Husserl’s analysis of intentionality in the Sixth Investigation and eventual development of the phenomenological reduction that provide the justification for the individual foundation of complex objects and Husserl’s concept of pregnant whole. Husserl methodologically establishes his theory of intentionality between the first and second editions of the Logical Investigations through his non-psychologistic investigation of the relationship between consciousness and presentational contents (sense – Sinn). Husserl understands presentational contents to be necessarily intentional and intentionality to be necessarily content directed. See Husserl, Edmund. 1984. Husserliana XIX Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Teil. Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis. ed. Ursula Panzer, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, Sixth Investigation, §48; Husserl, Edmund. 1950. Husserliana III Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenlogie und phänomenlogischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. ed. Walter Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, §2 and 88. 7  Hua. XIX, Third Investigation, §24. For a pioneering study of Husserl’s part/whole logic, see Sokolowski, Robert. 1968. The Logic of Parts and Wholes in Husserl’s Investigations. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 28(4): 537–553. For an approach to the relationship between Husserl’s part/whole logic and broader methodology, see John Drummond, John. 2008. Wholes, Parts, and Phenomenological Methodology. In Edmund Husserl: Logische Untersuchungen, ed. Verena Mayer, 105–122. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Hereafter, Drummond 2008a. For a critique of Sokolowski, see Lampert, Jay. 1989. Husserl’s Theory of Parts and Wholes: The Dynamic of Individuating and Contextualizing Interpretation – Übergehen, Abheben, Ergänzungsbedurftigkeit. Research in Phenomenology 19(1): 195–212. For an account that explores the relationship between Husserl and Heidegger in light of part/whole logic, see Øverenget, Einar. 1996. The Presence of Husserl’s Theory of Wholes and Parts in Heidegger’s Phenomenology. Research in Phenomenology, 26(1): 171–197. For a criticism of Husserl’s part/whole logic through a notion of biological func6

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Pieces, by contrast, are independent parts that can by their nature be presented apart from the other parts forming a complex whole. Consider, for example, a tree as a whole comprised of branches, trunk, bark, roots, and so on. These parts can be presented separately – aspects of the tree branch can be presented in separation from the other independent parts of the tree, e.g., extension, weight, and shape. Not only can these parts be presented independently from the whole of the tree, e.g., the tree weight and branch weight have separable sums, but the parts can be independently presented from each other, e.g., the shape of the branches and trunk are not dependent on each other. Husserl recognized that certain aspects of a part are altered when removed from its whole while other aspects retain their identity. The fallen branch is separated from its functional unity with the whole tree and its corresponding functional sense is altered – the branch no longer functions in the nutritive dynamic of its whole – and therefore the functional sense of the branch has a non-­independent relation (moment) to its whole. The fallen branch is a branch of the tree in name only (homonymously), which is to say, abstractly. However, Husserl’s point is that the phenomenally presentational aspects of the branch – e.g., extension, weight, and shape – have senses that are independent in that they are not altered by their separation and are therefore not in need of supplementation. The independent branch can be presented apart from its functional incorporation into the whole tree and can be presented in its own unified right – as wood. Husserl thus defines a “piece” as any part that is independent relative to the whole W of which it is a part.8 Husserl’s mereology develops out of this basic distinction between independent and non-independent parts, a distinction that relies on a notion of necessity at work in the supplementation involved in alteration. As we will see below, this notion of necessity among part/part relations and part/whole relations is basic to his presentational account of dependence and has implications for the way Husserl’s conception of necessity relates to Kant’s. The important point here is that the principle of relative dependency not only goes all the way down in Husserl’s conception of part/part relations, but even extends to the basic part/whole relation itself. In other words, parts exist only in a relative dependency to wholes and while some parts can become

tion, see De Preester, Helena. 2004. Part-Whole Metaphysics Underlying Issues of Internality/ Externality. Philosophica 73: 27–50. For additional approaches, see Lohmar, Dieter. 2000. Edmund Husserls ‘Formale und transzendentale Logik’. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft; Gurwitsch, Aron. 1966. Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press; Gurwitsch, Aron. 1964. The Field of Consciousness. Evanston: Northwestern University Press; Seebohm, Thomas M. 1973. Reflexion and Totality in the Philosophy of E. Husserl. Journal of the British Society of Phenomenology, 4:20–30; Fine, Kit. 1995. Part-whole. In The Cambridge Companion to Husserl, ed. Barry Smith and David Woodruff Smith, 463–485. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Willard, Dallas. 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, 163–182. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers; Drummond, John. 2008. Historical Dictionary of Husserl’s Philosophy. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. Hereafter, Drummond 2008b; and Moran, Dermot and Joseph Cohen, Joseph. 2012. The Husserl Dictionary. New York: Bloomsbury. 8  Hua. XIX, Third Investigation, §17.

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presented as objects in their own right as wholes and thereby become a self-­founding concretum, this nevertheless presupposes a more original complex whole. Husserl’s mereology proceeds from the distinction between (non)independent parts (pieces and moments) to founding/founded relations, relations that Husserl uses extensively not only in the Third Investigation, but in his later understanding of constitution.9 Generally speaking, Husserl employs founding/founded relations extensively in his subsequent articulation of the network of definitions and laws governing the manifold of relationships that follow upon the piece/moment distinction. Husserl defines foundational moments as: (A) founded moment – a moment for which another moment provides a foundation in the formation of a whole;” such that founded moment A supposes and forms a unity with moment B or whole W according to necessary association. (B) founding moment  – provides a supposition and forms a unity with another moment and for the whole that it forms with its associated moments; such that moment B founds moment A such that B is the supposition of and unified with A or whole W according to necessary association.10 Consider a forest as an extended illustration of these founding/founded relations. The forest has a manifold of moments that can be considered in various founding/ founded relationships. The populations of trees provide habitat for a manifold of insects, birds, and other animals. The set of interactions involved in this habitat relation could be considered a specific type of collective according to relations of foundation. If the habitat collective is merely a sum or aggregate with no founding/ founded relations, then it is merely a whole in a rather wide sense, that is, determined merely in terms of abstracted unifying moment such as number or content. The habitat-as-whole would be merely a collective that lacks inherent organization. If the tree populations interact in a meaningful relation with the insects, birds, and other animals, this meaningful interaction can be expressed in various kinds of founding/founded relations. Consider, for example, interactions involving nutrition distribution. The tree provides nutrition for the insect, the insect is nutrient provision for the woodpecker, and so on. In this nutrient chain, one that has causal attributes as well, the nutrient provision of the woodpecker is founded on the insect, which in turn is founded on the beech tree. These founded/founding moments in the constitution of the nutrient chain could further be organized according to several additional distinctions that Husserl makes in his theory of foundation, e.g., immediate or mediate, remote or proximate, and so on. We could say, for example, that the beech tree is a mediate founding moment to the nutrient provision of the woodpecker, while the insect is the immediate founding moment. It is according to founding relations such as this that the nutrient fitness involved in a habitat is not merely 9  Edmund Husserl 1973. Experience and Judgment: Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic, ed. Ludwig Landgrebe, trans. James S.  Churchill and Kart Ameriks. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, §81. See also Sokolowski, Robert. 1970. The Formation of Husserl’s Concept of Constitution. The Hague: Springer. 10  See Hua. XIX, Third Investigation, §14; Drummond 2008b, 82.

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a sum or aggregate, but an organized and organizing collective of meaningful relations that, as we have seen, have suppositions and forms of unified contents that are proper to the kind of object that it is. While Husserl’s understanding of wholes is not as developed as his mereology, his analysis of wholes is nevertheless instructive for drawing out the extent to which a priori necessity pervades his part/whole logic. Husserl defines a pregnant or proper whole as a set of contents (parts) united by a single, although possibly complex, foundation without the help of additional, non-essential contents (parts).11 Notice that this definition of whole makes use of the non-independency of founding/ founded relations. Every content (part) comprised in a proper whole is foundationally related with every other part or content comprised by that same whole. Husserl is clear that the unity of foundational relationships in proper wholes is not an additional moment over and above this interconnected unity of moments. Rather the “unifying moment” (Einheitsmoment) of the whole is immanent to the founding relations. This means that the unity of proper wholes arises from and finds its justification in the need for supplementation according to the lawful regularity of its non-independent parts. Even in the most minimal sense – the necessity of coexistence – is sufficient to produce the unity of a whole. Indeed, the whole is nothing other than the interconnected unity of founding/founding moments and this unity is nothing other that the necessary lawful interconnections of moments. This brief introduction to Husserl’s account of necessity allows for a more general characterization of his position. Complex objects are presented as identities in a manifold that are organized in the part/whole relations. The principle of lawful necessity not only pervades Husserl’s conception of parts, but his conception of wholes. As we have seen, Husserl provides a symmetrical notion of presentational dependence that operates with a notion of necessity that can be defined as necessary supplementation involved in alteration. The symmetry between parts and wholes in complex objects is absolute according to a priori necessity. This has not only been seen in Husserl’s first distinction between parts as independent or non-independent according to necessary supplementation, but in his characterization of the unity of wholes in terms of the necessity at work in founding/founded relations. To put it differently, Husserl provides a symmetrical model of presentational dependency that finds its evidential justification, as I explore below, in his conception of noesis-­ noema correlate.

4  Multi-level Generalizations The problem of necessity is also tied, more broadly, to the process of generalization from the unified definite manifolds of perceptual sense to gradient kinds of generalizations involved in conceptualization. The unified definite manifolds involved in complex wholes can be distinguished according to the kinds of synthesis involved 11

 Hua. XIX, §21.

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in perception and conceptualization. First, the unities involved in the perception of synthesized manifolds yield an identity. This identity-­synthesis involved in perception implies that objectivity is not reducible to the presentational phases of the intended perceptual object, but rather has the unification of an identical individual. In short, perceptual synthesis in a manifold yields an identity – a unified and individual object.12 Perceptual objects obtain their identity through the synthesis of appearances that manifest a unified individual. Second, the unity involved in conceptualization is the result of a synthesis of a like with like (similarity). The synthesis involved in conceptualization is involved in the predications in which properties or attributes are related to objects, e.g., perceptual identities. For example, the judgment “The tree is tall” does not merely indicate that the tree has a certain vertical magnitude – that the tree is this tall. This would merely indicate that this tree is this tall and, as such, it is different than other tall trees. Instead, the judgment involves a predication of a property or attribute that involves a synthesis of like with like – that the tree is tall and as such is similar to other objects that have the attribute of being tall even amidst noticeably different heights. Such a predication involves the synthesis of similarity (like with like) at work in conceptualization. The unities involved in the synthesis of like with like among collectives of objects can arise through a consideration of similarities or differences among the individuals of the collective. The collective is not merely an empty totality, but can be considered in terms of the similarity of objects with common attributes. The agreement of sense involved in this synthesis does not cancel the difference among spatially individuated objects. Rather the similarity of multiple objects is spread out in an array in which the differentiation of individuals persists. The unity here is the “unity of a plurality of kinship.”13 The persistence of the recognition of individuals in a collective distinguishes the identity of perceptual synthesis from the similarity of like with like involved in conceptualization. The patterns of similarity involved in collectives can be analyzed at various levels of generality or universality. At one end of the spectrum is the lowest level of generalization that have only particular instances under them. Husserl calls the ideal objects of this level “eidetic singularities” that “manifest the lowest specific differences.”14 Second, the next level of generality focuses on the shared attributes of individuals of a collective and abstract a universal object-species. A species is a low level generalization that abstracts the shared attributes of objects as identities and has a morphological essence that is determined in relation to eidetic singularities. At the third level of generalization are genera that abstract the common attributes among groups of species and individuals. We can grasp with lawful necessity the commonalities among species, e.g., beech, maple, and hemlock trees, and arrive at a genus – tree and plant in general. Finally, the highest level of generality involved  Husserl 1973, §81.  Ibid., 323. 14  Hua. III, §30. See also Drummond, John. 1995. Synthesis, Identity, and the A Priori. Recherches husserliennes 4: 27–51. 12 13

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in collectives of individual objects is a region. Husserl defines region as “the total highest generic unity” in which the genera and species of independently existing objects are organized, e.g., the regions of spatio-temporal materiality, animate organisms, and cultural achievements.

5  The Distinction Between Analytic and Synthetic Necessity The notion of necessity that is proper to the identity in a manifold of object categories and the synthesis of like with like involved in meaning-categories phenomenologically clarifies the authentic distinction between analytic and synthetic necessity. The degrees of increasing levels of generality progress according to an interest in the unity proper to the synthesis of “like with like” (similarity) and are determined according to the essential necessity of the eidetic sense of object-categories. The necessary supplementation involved in the alteration of presentational sense is also involved in both the determination of the various levels of generalization. We have seen that the lawful relations of formal concepts such as object, quality, relation, number, plurality, whole and part have an essential difference from material concepts of object categories, e.g., color, brightness, plant, tree and so on. Analytically necessary laws are operative in the formal concepts of meaning categories that are independently founded on the indeterminate notion of “something” or “object as such.” These analytically necessary laws are free from the determination of material concepts and the explicit or implicit assertion of individual existence. By contrast, synthetic necessity is determined by the material laws of object categories and the specific nature of unified moments. The essential distinction between formal categories and material spheres of essence provide the authentic basis for the distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions. An analytic necessity characterizes any proposition that is unconditionally universal in that it is free from the specifications of particular material content. The proposition “A whole has parts and parts have wholes,” for example, has an analytic necessity that is merely determined by the formal concepts of whole and part. Analytic necessity can be distinguished from the specifications involved in material concepts when positing the relation among object-categories. Consider, again, the relationship between color and extension. Propositions regarding these material concepts do not involve an inherent relation to each other – color and extension have meanings that are independent from each other. Nevertheless, there is an essential necessity in the relation between color and extension. This necessity among material concepts of object categories is synthetic in that the proposition “Color is not presented without extension” relates different object-­categories that operate at different degrees of generalization. The relation between the sense of the concept of color and extension not only relate different propositional meanings but also relate varying levels of generalization – color is a lower level generality than extension. Color does not analytically entail extension – analytic necessity is free of material determination of object categories at whatever level of ­generalization.

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Synthetic necessity is defined, in contrast, as any law that identifies a founding relationship of material concepts through the clarification of the specific sense of unified moments. The synthetic or material a priori is the necessary lawfulness of the determinate sense in which various objects are disclosed.

6  Correlational A priori and Intentionality Husserl solidifies the conception of necessity that is operative in his notions of the a priori lawfulness through the logic of fitness in his theory of parts and wholes. We have seen that the necessary supplementation involved in alteration defines, in particular, Husserl’s conception of a material a priori law as the essential relations of presentational dependence that organize unified definite manifolds. While Husserl’s solution to the problem of necessity gets worked out in an eidetic analysis of the formal concepts of meaning categories, he applies this solution extensively in his broader philosophical project, e.g., in the investigation into the logic of grammar and later theory of constitution. Husserl’s mature theory of intentionality provides the ultimate justification for this conception of necessity. All consciousness is consciousness of such and such – or more formally – the experience of an object and the object of experience are internally related moments, not externally related pieces. All objects are complex objects insofar as they are given, minimally, to a subject. Husserl characterized this internal unity between subject and object as mutually or reciprocally dependent moments of experience. This involves a departure from the distinction between “being for us” and “being in itself” in that an “object that is, but is not and in principle could not be an object of consciousness, is pure non-­ sense.”15 Husserl thus rejects Kant’s distinction between the world as it appears and the world as it is in itself and shifts explanatory emphasis to the correlational variation involved in the determinate sense through which objects disclose themselves. It is thus possible to speak of a “correlational a priori” proper to the noesis-­ noema correlate that characterizes the structures of intentionality.16 For example, the variations involved in perception provide correlative unified definite manifolds – a manifold of appearances proper to the perceptual object and a manifold of perspectival orientation proper to an embodied noesis. The perceptual object, e.g., a tree, obtains its identity in a synthesis of a visual manifold that is generated by bodily variations, e.g., eye movements, neck movements, walking around the tree, and so on. The identity of the tree is manifested in and through the visual manifold. This is a significant point that can highlight another important difference between Husserl and Kant. For Husserl, the unity that is achieved in the synthesis identity of  Husserl, Edmund. 1973. Husserliana II Die Idee der Phänomenologie. Fünf Vorlesungen, ed. Walter Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 19ff. 16  Hua. XVII, §72; Hua. III, §90. Husserl, Edmund. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. David Carr, §46. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. 15

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p­ erception is inherent in the determinate sense of the object itself and not reducible to the perceptual achievements of the cognizing and embodied subject. The unity of identity is present in and through the manifold of contents such that the tree is one individual that is persistent throughout the manifold – the perceptual contents of the phases of the perceptual manifold necessarily supplement each other in an identity. The unity here is discovered (not achieved by the knower) and it is disclosed by and in the object in a “synthesis of coincidence” (Deckungssynthese).17 The necessity here finds its justification in the lack of variation or alteration among the propositional attributes of the tree, e.g., extension, location, color, and so on. The object is a definite manifold that is unified as an identity – an individual whole – according to the essential necessity of its interrelated parts. Kant, by contrast, maintained that the unity involved in objects of appearance is produced by the achievements of the cognizing knower. Kant’s account of the unity of a sensible manifold reflects his separation between the faculties of understanding and sensibility. Unity presupposes synthesis that, in turn, is “an act of the [subject’s] self-activity.”18 The unity that obtains through synthesis is an “act of the understanding” because unity, unlike form, demands the understanding. On the one hand, the unity of intuition is produced in the sensible synthesis and gives intuitions to objects. On the other hand, the unity of concepts, produced by intellectual synthesis, gives unified concepts to objects. In both cases, the unity is presupposed and conditioned by a “higher” unity, that is, the “original synthetic unity of apperception.” The unity of apperception is necessarily valid and guarantees the possibility of self-­ consciousness, “The I think must be capable of accompanying all my presentations.”19 This necessity is objective in that it unifies the intuitions of sensible manifolds. Indeed, Kant characterizes objectivity as “that in whose concept the manifold of a given intuition is united” and this unity is the achievement of the understanding, “that which itself is nothing more than the power to combine a priori and the bring the manifold of given intuitions under the unity of apperception.”20 This unity of apperception supervenes on objects in a sensible manifold as a one-sided relation between the subjective condition to the conditioned object. The principle of necessity in Kant’s conception of the a priori is asymmetrical (one-sided) from the point of view of Husserl’s notion of the correlational a priori proper to intentionality. The correlational a priori operates with a symmetrical notion of necessity wherein the determinate senses of objects themselves obtain unity and fit together in states of affairs. As we have seen, this difference between Husserl and Kant’s conception of a priori knowledge is particularly evident in their respective accounts of the synthesis of sensible manifolds.

 Ibid., The Origin of Geometry, 360.  Kant, Immanuel. 1965. Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, B130. New York: Macmillan and Company. 19  Ibid., B131. 20  Ibid., B136. 17 18

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7  The A priori Bound to the Empirical and the Problem of Necessity Husserl radicalizes and explodes Kant’s notion of the a priori according to the various levels of generalization or universality. As we have seen, the formal objective a priori involves investigations into formal and mathematical logic and formal ontology. The material objective a priori is more complicated in that Husserl distinguishes between the a priori that is pure, exact, and “bound to the empirical.”21 Consider, in particular, the conception of necessity that is involved in the “a priori bound to the empirical.” As we have seen, objects take shape as synthetic unities in the mode “they themselves” and not merely as appearances of objects. They have the determinate sense of their material content that is not merely unified according to the formal concepts of the meaning formations of objects in general. The material attributes of objects include, as we have seen, characteristics that operate at various degrees of generalization, e.g., species, genera, and region. In addition, these material attributes have particular determination as contingent matters of fact. It is in this sense that the material objective a priori is also a contingent a priori. The specific core of material content finds its determination in contrast to the specificity of different subsets of contents and are thus relationally limited in contingent matters of fact. Objects have relations with different objects and the extent of these differences limit the possible variations in which the object’s specific attributes can be determined as an object of that type. The “a priori bound to the empirical” departs from the contents realized in empirical generalizations and intuits these contents as presumptively necessary for objects of given type. It is a presumptive generalization with an empty necessity that is waiting to be filled out in that it has not tested the necessity of its relations and the universality of its generalizations. The “a priori bound to the empirical” is distinguished from the “pure material a priori” that has achieved its fulfillment in the essential necessity manifest through a process of eidetic variation. Even though the necessity-amidst-contingency involved in the “a priori bound to the empirical” has not yet been fully clarified in reflection, this does not imply that the necessity of unified manifolds is not proper to the objects themselves. Reflection on the way in which determinate objects in the world present themselves as sensible manifolds with necessary associations confirms that the world is pre-given with its own unity of coincidence (Deckung). As Husserl stated, “…there are breaks here and there, discordances; many a partial belief us crossed out and becomes a disbelief, many a doubt arises and remains unsolved for a time, and so forth. But ultimately, … if the world gets an altered sense through many particular changes, there is a unity of synthesis in spite of such alterations running through the successive sequence of universal intending of the world – it is one in its

21

 Husserl 1973, 374.

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particular details … it is in itself the same world. All of this seems very simple, and yet it is full of marvelous enigmas and gives rise to profound considerations.”22 The necessary unities of sensible manifolds are not merely the result of subjective accomplishments, but have pre-given associations that are passively synthesized with a necessary unity proper to themselves. Both Kant and Husserl share the conviction that transcendental philosophy attempts to identify and clarify the necessity of the lawful regularities in a contingent world through a reference to the necessary conditions of their knowability. They differ, however, in important ways with regard to their accounts of these necessary conditions. While Kant reasons from the necessary condition of the possibility of knowledge (unity of apperception  – the “I think” that accompanies all my representations) to that which is conditioned (unified manifolds), Husserl reasons from the conditioned (organized unity of definite manifolds) to the condition (the structures of intentionality). In other words, Kant accounts for the necessity proper to the unity and organization of manifolds in a one-sided relation to the subjective accomplishments of the knower. In contrast, Husserl account for necessary unities of sense in terms of a two-sided relation of intentionality that is inclusive of lateral unities of coincidence.

References De Preester, Helena. 2004. Part-Whole Metaphysics Underlying Issues of Internality/Externality. Philosophica 73: 27–50. Drummond, John. 1995. Synthesis, Identity, and the A Priori. Rescherches husserliennes 4: 27–51. ———. 2008a. Wholes, Parts, and Phenomenological Methodology. In Edmund Husserl: Logische Untersuchungen, ed. Verena Mayer, 105–122. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. ———. 2008b. Historical Dictionary of Husserl’s Philosophy. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. Fine, Kit. 1995. Part-whole. In The Cambridge Companion to Husserl, ed. Barry Smith and David Woodruff Smith, 463–485. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gurwitsch, Aron. 1964. The Field of Consciousness. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. 1966. Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Husserl, Edmund. 1950. In Husserliana III Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenlogie und phänomenlogischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, ed. Walter Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1966. Husserliana XI Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten, 1918–1926, ed. Margot Fleischer. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Trans. D. Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. -------. 1973. Husserliana II, Die Idee der Phänomenologie. Fünf Vorlesungen, ed. Walter Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1974. Husserliana XVII, Formale and transzendentale Logik. Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft, ed. Paul Janssen. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

 Husserl, Edmund. 1966. Husserliana XI Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten, 1918–1926. ed. Margot Fleischer, 101. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

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———. 1975. Husserliana XVIII Logische Untersuchungen. Erster Teil. Prolegomena zur reinen Logik, ed. Elmar Holenstein. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1984. Husserliana XIX Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Teil. Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis, ed. Ursula Panzer, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Jansen, Julia. 2015. Transcendental Philosophy and the Problem of Necessity in a Contingent World. Metodo: International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy 1: 47–80. Lampert, Jay. 1989. Husserl’s Theory of Parts and Wholes: The Dynamic of Individuating and Contextualizing Interpretation – Übergehen, Abheben, Ergänzungsbedurftigkeit. Research in Phenomenology, 19(1): 195–212. Lohmar, Dieter. 2000. Edmund Husserls ‘Formale und transzendentale Logik. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Moran, Dermot, and Joseph Cohen. 2012. The Husserl Dictionary. New York: Bloomsbury. Øverenget, Einar. 1996. The Presence of Husserl’s Theory of Wholes and Parts in Heidegger’s Phenomenology. Research in Phenomenology 26 (1): 171–197. Seebohm, Thomas M. 1973. Reflexion and Totality in the Philosophy of E. Husserl. Journal of the British Society of Phenomenology 4: 20–30. Simons, Peter. 1992. Philosophy and Logic in Central Europe from Bolzano to Tarski: Selected Essays. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Sokolowski, Robert. 1968. The Logic of Parts and Wholes in Husserl’s Investigations. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 28 (4): 537–553. ———. 1970. The Formation of Husserl’s Concept of Constitution. The Hague: Springer. Willard, Dallas. 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, 163–182. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

The Early Husserl Between Structuralism and Transcendental Philosophy Simone Aurora

Abstract  Phenomenology and structuralism are commonly understood as two opposing and largely incompatible schools of thought. Indeed, if the former is thought of as the philosophy of subjectivity par excellence, and the latter as the tradition in which the “death of man” is declared, it seems difficult to challenge the antagony between them. On closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that this picture represents an oversimplification and turns out to be, to a great extent, fallacious. The aim of this paper is to show that the philosophy of the early Husserl – notably as exposed in the Logical Investigations – ought to be fully considered as both part of the wide tradition of Transcendental philosophy as well as Structuralism. To this end, the paper mainly addresses Husserl’s notion of Wissenschaftslehre and the mereology developed in the Third logical investigation and, as a result, tries to show how Husserl’s position can be defined in terms of a “phenomenological structuralism” or a “structural phenomenology” or, as I propose, a “transcendental structuralism”. Keywords  Edmund Husserl · Logical investigations · Phenomenology · Transcendental philosophy · Structuralism

1  Introduction This paper is consistent with a line of research that had its heyday in the 1970s and that can be basically traced back to two pioneering works published by Elmar Holenstein (Holenstein 1975, 1976. See also Kultgen 1975). The main thesis underpinning these investigations is that phenomenology and structuralism emerged as pan-European and interdisciplinary approaches and, far from representing conflicting or alternative schools, developed within a wide and complex network of mutual influences at the beginning of the twentieth century. Even though these S. Aurora (*) Dipartimento di Filosofia, Sociologia, Pedagogia e Psicologia Applicata (FISPPA), Università degli studi di Padova, Padova, Piazza Capitaniato, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Apostolescu (ed.), The Subject(s) of Phenomenology, Contributions to Phenomenology 108, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29357-4_3

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investigations remained quite marginal – when compared with the main directions of phenomenological and structural inquiries – and were gradually abandoned, they have recently regained their vigour. Just to mention the most recent and detailed outcomes of this renewed interest in the relationship between phenomenological and structural approach, one can make reference to the two last special issues of Acta Structuralica. International Journal for Structuralist Research (whose topics are, respectively, Phenomenology and Structuralism and Merleau-Ponty and Structuralism) as well as to fresh publications like Stawarska (2015), De Palo (2016), Aurora (2017), Flack (2018). Against this background, the present paper intends to show in which sense the work of the early Husserl represents a privileged place for a discussion of the possible intertwining between phenomenological and structuralist research and, in this way, to support to the above-mentioned new – or rather – renewed approach to Husserl. In a wider sense, the combination of the fundamental features of phenomenology and structuralism, as found in many aspects of Husserl’s philosophical reflection, outlines the twin idea that, on the one hand, phenomenology is essential to solving the typical impasse of a certain kind of structuralism, namely its tendency to employ too rigid a notion of structure and to rest on a naïve objectivism on the other hand, structuralism is also revealed as essential to the typical impasse of many versions of phenomenology with their tendency towards radical forms of subjectivism.

2  Transcendental Philosophy and Structuralism Let us begin by way of some definitions. We can define “transcendental philosophy” as any philosophical perspective that displays all of the three following features (for the following definition of the hallmarks of transcendental philosophy cf. Rametta 2008, 2015).: 1. A philosophy that raises the question concerning the conditions of possibility of knowledge. This question requires an immanent and critical investigation of the legitimacy of every cognitive performance and, especially, of scientific knowledge. That is why philosophy becomes, in its transcendental disguise, a “critique of reason” with Kant and, first with Fichte and then with Husserl, a “theory of science” or a “science of science”; 2. A philosophy that stresses the productive character of reason and its capacity to condition and determine reality a priori; 3. A philosophy that demands reflection on the nature of subjectivity and on its theoretical relationship with experience, on the one hand, and consciousness, on the other hand. As regards the term “structuralism”, this usually refers to a research trend in the humanities, especially popular in France during the 1950s and 1960s, whose “pilot science” – to borrow an expression from Dosse 1991 – was represented by Saussurian

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linguistics and, above all, by the structural linguistics developed by the schools of Prague, Moscow and Copenhagen. In fact, however, the history of structuralism begins much earlier and is not at all limited to the field of linguistics and social sciences and still less to a particular period of French culture (cf. Flack 2016). On the contrary, structuralism constitutes – using Thomas Kuhn’s classic formulation – a scientific paradigm, that is a set of principles that “define the legitimate problems and methods of a research field” or, as in the case of structuralism, of a wide range of research fields, and that is moreover “sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of scientific activity […] and sufficiently open-ended to leave all sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners to resolve” (Kuhn 1996, 10). “Structuralism”, as Ernst Cassirer observes in Structuralism in Modern Linguistics (1945), is “no isolated phenomenon; it is, rather, the expression of a general tendency of thought that […] has become more and more prominent in almost all fields of scientific research” (Cassirer 1945, 120). In short, structuralism can then be seen as a coherent, unitary and integrated scientific endeavour, which emerges in opposition to the scientific framework typical of the nineteenth century, according to which only those explanations are truly scientific, which are causal and historical-genetic. Mature structuralism, which will not be taken into consideration in what follows, can then be seen as a modulation of this general “tendency of thought” via an often original development and a productive complication of those distinguished features that are the outcome of a well-defined epistemological rupture that took place in Europe at the turn of the twentieth century and that lies in the emergence, in many disciplinary areas – such as mathematics, psychology and linguistics – of a scientific paradigm of a structural kind (cf. Bastide 1962; Piaget 1970) “A structuralist perspective”, Roman Frigg and Ioannis Votsis write, “is one that sees the investigation of the structural features of a domain of interest as the primary goal of enquiry.” “This vision”, they continue, “has shaped research programmes in fields as diverse as linguistics, literary criticism, aesthetics, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and various branches of philosophy” (Frigg and Votsis 2011, 227). In other words, a structuralist approach seeks to identify and describe the specific structures embedded in a specific class of elements, which evidently varies from discipline to discipline. To provide a univocal and rigorous definition of the concept of structure is not an easy task, though (see Boudon: 1971; Broekman 1974 and Lepschy 1981). Nonetheless, I think that is possible to offer a definition of “structure” via a combination of two “standard definitions” of this notion, advanced by Roger Bastide and Jean Piaget in the 60’s. Bastide defines the concept of structure in the following way: 1) a bound system, such that the change made to an element implies a change in the other elements; 2) this system (and this is precisely what distinguishes it from a mere organisation) is latent in the objects – hence the expression of ‘model’ used by the structuralists – and it is precisely because it is a model that it allows predictability and makes the observed facts intelligible; 3) models are ‘local’ – not only in the sense that they vary depending on the disciplines – but also that every discipline may have to use variable models; 4) the concept of structure is a ‘synchronic’ concept (Bastide 1962, 13, my translation).

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Some years later, Piaget writes that A structure is a system of transformations. Inasmuch as it is a system and not a mere collection of elements and their properties, these transformations involve laws: the structure is preserved or enriched by the interplay of its transformation laws, which never yields results external to the system nor employ elements that are external to it. In short, the notion of structure is comprised of three key ideas: the idea of wholeness, the idea of transformation, and the idea of self-regulation (Piaget 1970, 5).

According to these definitions, a structure can be described as a totality, that is as a closed system of elements governed by a set of transformation rules that determine the range of all possible combinations between its elements, such that every change made to one of the elements modifies all the others. Moreover, a structure is auto-­ regulative. This means that the transformation rules of a structure cannot yield elements which do not belong to the domain of the structure itself. Furthermore, elements produced through the transformation rules preserve these same rules and are subject to them. Finally, a structure must always be able to be interpreted in terms of a model, namely of a formal description that allows one to outline and predict the relations that subsist among the elements composing the structure itself. While Husserl’s work is widely (though not universally) accepted as belonging to the tradition of transcendental philosophy, its connection to the structuralist cause has been, mostly, neglected, when not explicitly or implicitly refused, especially by those scholars who understand Husserl’s philosophy as a radical form of subjectivism (see for instance Lavigne 2005). An important exception is represented by two books published by Elmar Holenstein in 1975 and 1976 respectively. Essential as they are, they limit themselves to a detailed reconstruction of the historical and theoretical relationship between Husserl’s phenomenology and Roman Jakobson’s structural linguistics (cf. Holenstein 1975, 1976). With the exception of these works and of a few brief essays by Giovanni Piana (Piana 2013a, b), as well as of some crucial texts by Jacques Derrida (cf. Derrida 2005), scholars have limited themselves to merely acknowledging the role played by Husserl as a generic precursor of structuralism (see for instance Dosse 1991; Verhaar 1973; Fontaine 1974; Caws 1988; Albrecht 2010). However, even in these cases the focus has mainly been on linguistic structuralism, especially on Prague’s linguistic structuralism. What is still missing is thus a systematic study of the historical and theoretical relationship between Husserl’s phenomenology and structuralism in general.1

3  Phenomenology as Wissenschaftslehre In the preface of the first edition of the Logical Investigations, Husserl claims that he will focus on “discussions of a very general sort” that stretch far beyond “the narrow sphere of mathematics” –which he had dealt with in his first philosophical work published in 1891, namely Philosophy of Arithmetic – and that aspire to “a  I have tried to fill this gap in Aurora (2017, 2018).

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universal theory of formal deductive systems” (Husserl 2001a, 1). Accordingly, Husserl’s analyses address “fundamental questions regarding the essence of the form of knowledge in contradistinction to its matter, and the sense of the distinction between formal (pure) and material properties, truths and laws” (Husserl 2001a, 2). In other words, the aim of the Logical Investigations consists in seeking to bring to light the formal structure of knowledge, namely the set of all those laws that are common to every possible form of knowledge and, especially, scientific knowledge. These laws represent therefore the conditions of possibility of all specific sciences, both of those “that are concerned with actual reality” (Husserl 2001a, 16)  – like physics, biology or psychology – and of those that Husserl calls “formal sciences” – like mathematics or geometry. The enquiries conducted in the Logical Investigations concern “all sciences equally, since they concern, in brief, whatever makes sciences into sciences” (Husserl 2001a, 16). Moreover, the laws addressed in the Logical Investigations are laws whose observance represents a necessary condition, although not sufficient, for the constitution of a scientific knowledge. The “theory of science”, as Husserl writes in the Prolegomena to a Pure Logic, must then consider sciences: as systematic unities of this or that sort in other words, with the formal features that stamp them as sciences, with the features that determine their mutual boundaries and their inner articulation into fields, into relatively closed theories, with the features which fix their essentially different species or forms etc. (Husserl 2001a, 24).

He also asserts that the outcome of these investigations will be: the delineation of a new, purely theoretical science, the all-important foundation for any technology of scientific knowledge, and itself having the character of an a priori, purely demonstrative science. This is the science intended by Kant and the other proponents of a ‘formal’ or ‘pure’ logic, but not rightly conceived and defined by them as regards its content and scope (Husserl 2001a, 14).

Husserl names this “new, purely theoretical science”, Wissenschaftslehre, or “theory of science”. This theory intends to be something like, as Husserl writes, a “theory of theory” or a “science of science”. In order to address the question concerning “the possibility and justification of such a discipline” (Husserl 2001a, 16), Husserl is then forced to provide a definition of the very concept of science, which is, evidently, the very object of the “theory of science”. According to Husserl, science differs from simple knowledge in that it involves a set of knowledge. If the mere evidence of the existence or non-existence – or of the probability of the existence or non-existence – of the state of affairs A is a simple act of knowledge, science must instead necessarily involve a set of knowledge: A exists, B does not exist, C exists etc. However, this set of knowledge is not just an aggregate, that is a sum or a juxtaposition of various bits of knowledge, but is rather a set which is ruled by what Husserl calls “systematic coherence in the theoretical sense” (Husserl 2001a,  18), namely, by rules that connect and combine knowledge according to necessity.

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Wissenschaftslehre can thus be defined as an axiomatics of science, that is as a set of fundamental, self-evident and universal laws that every particular science must follow and from which all specific scientific statements can be obtained. Thus, the theory of science must develop into what Husserl calls “the theory of the possible forms of theories” or “the pure theory of manifolds” (Husserl 2001a, 155). Indeed, the theory of science must complete the search for the conditions of possibility of science as such – namely the observance of a definite set of elementary self-evident and universal laws, that are defined by formal logic – with the deduction of “all possible theories in a priori fashion” (Husserl 2001a, 155). In other words, according to Husserl, “it is possible to construct out of purely categorial concepts, many definite concepts of possible theories or pure ‘forms’ of theories” (Husserl 2001a, 155), which Husserl names, with a term taken up from the formal mathematics and geometry of his time, “manifolds”. According to Husserl, once we have identified and defined all the categorial concepts – like, for instance, “truth”, “proposition”, “concept”, “object”, “unity”, “relation” – and all the universal laws that establish the set of their mutual relations and that represent the conditions of possibility of the concept of theory in general, we should be able to deduce, in a priori fashion, all the possible specific forms of theory, that is all the possible interconnections of truths concerning a specific class of objects, say numbers or phonemes. Every form of theory would then represent a class of possible theories, which are produced by specific “categorial variations”: these theories would be, as Husserl writes in Part I of Formal and Transcendental Logic, mutually “equiform” or “isomorphic” (Husserl 1969, 95).2 The theory of numbers, for instance, represents the formal theory of the class of objects represented by numbers, the theory of language the formal theory of the class of objects represented by phonemes. Theories can then, once we have specified a subclass of objects, give life to new and “less” fundamental formal theories, for instance the formal theory of cardinal numbers, of real numbers, of complex numbers, etc. If we change the class of objects to be considered, we can generate different theories, which are anyway always deducible in a priori fashion out of the universal laws upon which, as scientific theories, they are necessarily grounded. A pure theory of manifolds should therefore lead to something like a categorial combinatorial analysis able to define, in a priori fashion, all the possible theories generated by every possible variation of the class of objects considered. It is exactly at this point that, according to Husserl, a proper philosophical analysis, namely phenomenology, must come into play. Indeed, Husserl is convinced that it is not enough “to develop pure logic”, namely a pure theory of manifolds, in the manner of our mathematical disciplines, as a growing system of propositions having a naively factual validity without […] gaining insight into the essence of the modes of cognition which come into play in their utterance and in the ideal possibility of applying such propositions (Husserl 2001a, 165).

 In the text published by Husserl, one only finds the German term “äquiform”, while the term “isomorph” is present in the working manuscript used by Husserl. 2

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Indeed, as he also writes, the philosopher is not content with the fact that we find our way about in the world, that we have legal formulae which enable us to predict the future course of things, or to reconstruct its past course: he wants to clarify the essence of a thing, an event, a cause, an effect, of space, of time etc., as well as that wonderful affinity which this essence has with the essence of thought, which enables it to be thought, with the essence of knowledge, which makes it knowable, with meanings which make it capable of being meant etc. (Husserl 2001a, 159).

A philosophical approach should then lead to an “objective theory of knowledge” (Husserl 2001a, 166), which coincides with what Husserl calls “the pure phenomenology of the experiences of thinking and knowing” (Husserl 2001a, 166). This, Husserl writes further, “has, as its exclusive concern, experiences intuitively seizable” – since only intuition can ensure evidence to an act of knowledge – but only “in the pure generality of their essence, not experiences empirically perceived and treated as real facts, as experiences of human or animal experients in the phenomenal world that we posit as an empirical fact” (Husserl 2001a, 166). Thus, the six Logical Investigations, in which all the fundamental questions that constitute the object of the phenomenological analysis find their place, do not run the risk of falling back to a psychologistic position. Indeed, they are not concerned with lived experiences of knowledge, these understood as empirical-psychological real events, but rather with the universal structures that define the necessary a priori correlation between logical-ontological and cognitive levels. Indeed, categorial concepts and their formal interrelations can “come to giveness”, both in scientific and ordinary knowledge, only insofar as they are thought and known, without this meaning that they are produced by a psychological subject. It is not a matter of investigating the psychic mechanism that enables a psychological subject to acquire knowledge, but rather of describing the pure a priori and universal structure of all the intentional interconnections, namely of the forms that necessarily define the relationship between a certain object and its intuitive prehension. Thus, phenomenology is not concerned with naively presupposed real objects – as natural sciences typically do – nor with empirically considered real subjects – as psychological sciences typically do – but rather turns out to be a proper typology of the intentional acts that distinguish, in a priori fashion, the relations between known object and knowing subject.

4  Wholes and Aggregates After having argued for the ideal nature of meaning, in the First Investigation, and having proposed the crucial distinction between individual and specific objects, in the Second, Husserl devotes himself in the Third to a fundamental, formal study of the possible relations that can obtain, in a priori fashion, among objects.3 These are  On the crucial role played by the Third Investigation within Husserl’s work (cf. Fine 1995; Drummond 2003; Simons 1982; Sokolowski 1977). 3

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considered independently from their belonging to a particular class or domain. Indeed, as Husserl writes at the beginning of the Third Investigation, “the term ‘object’ is in this context always taken in its widest sense” (Husserl 2001b, 5). In fact, the term “object” does not designate only spatio-temporally determined things; rather, it identifies, in the most general way, a possible, that is, non-contradictory, content of representation. “Objects”, Husserl claims at the beginning of the Third Investigation, “can be related to one another as Wholes to Parts, they can also be related to one another as coordinated parts of a whole” (Husserl 2001b, 4). He then distinguishes between two fundamental kinds of relations that can obtain among two or more objects, namely independence and non-independence. “A content”, or an object, “A is relatively non-independent in regard to a content B (or in regard to the total range of contents determined by B and all its parts)”, Husserl writes, if a pure law, rooted in the peculiar character of the kinds of content in question, ensures that a content of the pure Genus A has an a priori incapacity to exist except in, or as associated with, other contents from the total ranges of the pure Genera of contents determined by B. If such a law is absent, we say that A is relatively independent in regard to B (Husserl 2001b, 22–23).4

If an object A is a priori connected to another object B according to a law of necessary implication – that is to say, with Husserl’s wording, according to a foundational relation – A is relatively non-independent in regard to B (for instance, number 2 is relatively non-independent in regard to number 3); if instead the connection between an object A and another object B is arbitrary and accidental, A is then relatively independent in regard to B (for instance, a pencil is relatively independent in regard to the table on which it rests). An object is thus independent, when the relation that connects it to another object is not necessary but only accidental or arbitrary, thus only a posteriori definable; an object is instead non-independent, when the relationship that binds it to another object is necessary, namely a priori definable. The term “necessity”, however, must not be understood as indicating a “subjective incapacity-to-represent-things-otherwise”, but rather “the objectively ideal necessity of an inability-to-be-otherwise” (Husserl 2001b, 12). The kind of necessity that comes into play in the definition of independent and non-independent relations is thus ontological and not merely psychological. “What prevents its being otherwise is”, in the case of a non-independent object,

 According to the Third Investigation, we can only talk of relative independence and non-independence. As Husserl indeed maintains, there cannot be objects that are absolutely independent to each other, namely that have no relation whatsoever with other objects, nor objects that are absolutely non-independent, namely that are connected with each and every object. Objects are always independent or non-independent in relation to other specific objects. Thus, an object A can be relatively non-independent in regard to B and, at the same time, relatively independent in regard to C. 4

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the law which says that it is not merely so here and now, but universally so, and with a lawful universality. Here we must note that […] the ‘necessity’ relevant to our discussion of non-independent ‘moments’ stands for an ideal or a priori necessity (Husserl 2001b, 12).

The general form that pertains to the necessary lawfulness that presides over the foundational relations that obtain among non-independent objects is determined by ontological inclusion-exclusion laws. An object or content A is thus non-­independent whenever it necessarily entails the existence or non existence of an object or content B. Against this background, Husserl then distinguishes between two different kinds of sets of objects, namely aggregates and wholes. Aggregates are mere sums of independent objects, which stand together accidentally, that is without implying a relation of foundation, whereas by wholes Husserl understands a set of non-­ independent objects, which are unified by a foundational relation, that is to say, with Husserl’s words, a range of contents which are all covered by a single foundation without the help of further contents. The contents of such a range we call its parts. Talk of the singleness of the foundation implies that every content is foundationally connected, whether directly or indirectly, with every content (Husserl 2001b, 34).

A whole is thus a set of objects among which subsists a foundational relation, that is to say a relation of necessary implication. The notion of “whole” proposed by Husserl in the Third Investigation is perfectly comparable to the structuralist notion of “structure”. In fact, just in the same way as for the notion of structure, a whole is not merely the resulting sum of its components. Moreover, it includes laws of necessary implication, which are grouped by Husserl under the title of “foundational laws”. Finally, it has In- itself the principles of its own regulation, since the parts and the relations that compose the whole are mutually determined and do not need any element external to the system in order to function. As Göran Sonesson has observed in an article on structuralism, “structure has to be studied within a more complete mereological framework, that is, within the science of parts and their relation to the whole, first defined by Twardowski and Husserl” (Sonesson 2012, 84).

5  Transcendental Structuralism Husserl’s version of structuralism is, however, original in many respects. Indeed, unlike the various structuralist currents that have animated many scientific fields, the philosophical programme which underlies the Logical Investigations is by no means limited to a specific disciplinary domain. On the contrary, it aims to give life to a general formal science of all the possible relations that can obtain among objects, which remain absolutely undetermined from a material point of view. The theory of science must provide a systematic description of all the possible structural frameworks in which objects, in the most general sense, can enter. The basis for this

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systematic description lies in the formal ontology developed by Husserl in the Third Investigation. All the various specific structuralisms, like structural linguistics or mathematical structuralism, must then be able to be deduced, in a priori fashion, via the pure theory of manifolds developed by Husserl in the Prolegomena to a Pure Logic. Every single science represents, in this sense, a specific manifold, that is a domain of objects which is governed by a set of axioms and mereological laws that are bound to the class of object specifically considered. For instance, in the case of mathematics mathematical entities and their structural laws, in the case of linguistics, linguistic signs and their structural laws, and so on. Husserl’s structuralism is, moreover, a phenomenological structuralism. In the first place, it is a general theory of knowledge and, in the second place, a general theory of scientific knowledge. Accordingly, it could also be defined as a gnoseological or as an epistemological structuralism. From a phenomenological point of view, the fundamental relation behind all possible knowledge lies in intentionality, that is, in the mutual relationship between the structures of the consciousness and the structures of different objectualities. However, there is no ontological priority whatsoever between these two poles of the intentional relation. Although an epistemological priority pertains to consciousness, since it is consciousness that implements the process of knowledge, there could be no consciousness, and therefore no knowledge, without the intentioned phenomenical objectualities which are pre-­ given to consciousness. At the same time, no phenomenon could be experienced outside the relation to a consciousness. Phenomenology aims to study not the psychological rules of the relation between a specific consciousness and its particular objects, but instead the conditions of possibility of this correlation, that is the general, universal and structural laws of intentionality. As Giovanni Piana writes, the general thesis of phenomenological research, which is at the same time its condition of possibility, sounds as follow: in all its various manifestations, experience always reveals a structure and phenomenological research must uncover with clarity all the joints and articulations of this structure (Piana 2013a, 8, my translation).

Indeed, according to Husserl, objects always come to giveness as elements of an aggregate or a whole. Phenomenology seeks to bring to light the conditions of possibility of the knowledge of aggregates, and in this sense is a theory of knowledge, or of wholes, and in this sense is a theory of science. It is indeed only insofar as wholes – or structures – are concerned, that a science can be developed, since it is only in the case of structures that a necessary a priori lawfulness can be detected, whereas in the case of aggregates, it is possible to develop knowledge, but not science, since the relations that form aggregates are always of an accidental or arbitrary kind. Also on this point, Husserl’s structuralism is quite dissimilar from canonical structuralisms. In fact, these limit themselves to identifying a domain of objects – as for instance, natural language – and to uncovering its structure, namely the formal model that displays all the possible relations that can subsist among the objects belonging to the domain, without looking into the conditions of the possibility of the knowledge of the structure. From this point of view, phenomenological structur-

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alism can be also described as transcendental structuralism, since it aims to unearth the conditions of the possibility of knowledge in general. In this regard, phenomenological structuralism seems to be able to provide a possible solution – although not conclusive nor unproblematic – to one of the fundamental difficulties pertaining the structuralist paradigm, namely the question regarding the relationship between genesis and structure or, better, the problem concerning the genesis of structure. As Jean Piaget writes, “the real problem is to decide between predetermination and construction” (Piaget 1970, 61). To put it differently, either structures exist independently from the knowing subject or they are nothing but a construction of the knowing subject. Phenomenological structuralism rejects this dichotomy by enabling a third option: structures are not subjective constructions, but nonetheless must always show themselves to a consciousness within an intentional relationship. In other words, consciousness and objects are always and necessarily correlated. Structures are certainly pre-given but they can only be given to an intentional consciousness. In the same way, the consciousness’s structure is independent from the objects that it addresses, but cannot exist outside the relationship with an object whatsoever. As Jacques Derrida observes, [Husserl] had to navigate between the Scylla and Charybdis of logicizing structuralism and psychologistic genetism […]He had to open up a new direction of philosophical attention and permit the discovery of a concrete, but nonempirical, intentionality, a “transcendental experience” which would be “constitutive,” that is, like all intentionality, simultaneously productive and revelatory, active and passive. The original unity, the common root of activity and passivity is from quite early on the very possibility of meaning for Husserl. And this common root will ceaselessly be experienced as the common root of structure and genesis which is dogmatically presupposed by all the ulterior problematics and dissociations concerning them (Derrida 2005, 198–99).

Consciousness and objects postulate each other. Thus, to speak properly, what are pre-given are not objective structures nor consciousness’s structures; rather, what is pre-given is the intentional correlation itself. As Derrida writes further, Husserl, thus, ceaselessly attempts to reconcile the structuralist demand (which leads to the comprehensive description of a totality, of a form or a function organized according to an internal legality in which elements have meaning only in the solidarity of their correlation or their opposition) with the genetic demand (that is the search for the origin and foundation of the structure) (Derrida 2005, 197).

This attempt to conciliate genesis and structure, which we find in the early Husserl and, especially, in the Logical Investigations, represents the hallmark of Husserl’s structuralism and, at the same time, the fundamental question which Husserl attempts to answer in his mature works.

References Albrecht, J. 2010. Europäischer Strukturalismus. Tübingen/Basel: Francke. Aurora, S. 2017. Filosofia e scienze nel primo Husserl. Per una interpretazione strutturalista delle Ricerche logiche. Padova: Cleup.

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———. 2018. Structural Phenomenology: A reading of the early Husserl. Cognitive Semiotics 11 (2): 1–11. Bastide, R., ed. 1962. Sens et usages du terme structure dans les sciences humaines et sociales. The Hague: Mouton. Boudon, R. 1971. The Uses of Structuralism. London: Heinemann. Broekman, J.M. 1974. Structuralism. Moskow – Prague – Paris. Dordrecht/Boston: Reidel. Cassirer, E. 1945. Structuralism in Modern Linguistics. Word 1: 99–120. Caws, P. 1988. Structuralism. The Art of the Intelligible. New Jersey/London: Humanities Press International. De Palo, M. 2016. Saussure e gli strutturalismi. Il soggetto parlante nel pensiero linguistico del Novecento. Roma: Carocci. Derrida, J. 2005. Writing and Difference. London/New York: Routledge. Dosse, F. 1991. Histoire du structuralisme. Tome I: le champ du signe 1945–1966. Paris: La Découverte. Drummond, J.J. 2003. Husserl’s Third Logical Investigation: Parts and Wholes, Founding Connections, and the Synthetic A Priori. In Husserl’s Logical Investigations, ed. D.O. Dahlstrom, 57–68. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Fine, K. 1995. Part-Whole. In The Cambridge Companion to Husserl, ed. B. Smith and D.W. Smith, 463–485. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Flack, P. 2016. Roman Jakobson and the Transition of German Thought to the Structuralist Paradigm: Towards a New Historiography of Structuralism. Acta Structuralica. International Journal for Structuralist Research 1: 1–15. ———. 2018. Idée, Expression, Vécu. La question du sens entre phénoménologie et structuralisme. Paris: Hermann. Fontaine, J. 1974. Le cercle linguistique de Prague. Tours: Mame. Frigg, R., and I. Votsis. 2011. Everything you always wanted to know about structural realism but were afraid to ask. European Journal for Philosophy of Science 1 (2): 227–276. Holenstein, E. 1975. Roman Jakobson phänomenologischer Strukturalismus. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 1976. Linguistik, Semiotik, Hermeneutik. Plädoyers für eine strukturale Phänomenologie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Husserl, E. 1969. Formal and Transcendental Logic. Den Haag: Nijhoff. ———. 2001a. Logical Investigations. Volume I. London/New York: Routledge. ———. 2001b. Logical Investigations. Volume II. London/New York: Routledge. Kuhn, T. 1996. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press. Kultgen, J. 1975. Phenomenology and Structuralism. Annual Review of Anthropology 4: 371–387. Lavigne, J.F. 2005. Husserl et la naissance de la phénoménologie (1900–1913). Des Recherches logiques aux Ideen: la genése de l’idéalisme transcendental phénoménologique. Paris: PUF. Lepschy, G.C. 1981. Osservazioni sul termine Struttura. In Mutamenti di prospettiva nella linguistica, ed. Giulio C. Lepschy, 37–73. Bologna: Il Mulino. Piaget, J. 1970. Structuralism. New York: Basic books. Piana, G. 2013a. L’idea di uno strutturalismo fenomenologico in Strutturalismo fenomenologico e psicologia della forma, ed. G. Piana. Lulu.com: 5–17. ———. 2013b. Momento figurale e qualità ghestaltica, in Strutturalismo fenomenologico e psicologia della forma, ed. G. Piana. Lulu.com: 101–119. Rametta, G. 2008. Metamorfosi del trascendentale. Percorsi filosofici tra Kant e Deleuze. Padova: Cleup. ———. 2015. Transcendental and Its Metamorphoses. In Modern Thinking. Fichte to Deleuze (Through Husserl). Metodo. International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy Special issue n. 1, ch. 1: 137–152.

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Simons, P.M. 1982. Three Essays in Formal Ontology. In Parts and Moments. Studies in Logic and Formal Ontology, ed. B. Smith, 111–260. München/Wien: Philosophia. Sokolowski, R. 1977. The Logic of Parts and Wholes in Husserl’s Investigations. In Readings on Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations, ed. J.N. Mohanty, 94–111. The Hague: Nijhoff. Sonesson, G. 2012. The Meanings of Structuralism. Considerations on Structures and Gestalten, with Particular Attention to the Masks of Lévi-strauss. Segni e Comprensione XXVI (78): 84–101. Stawarska, B. 2015. Saussure’s Philosophy of Language as Phenomenology. Undoing the doctrine of the course in general linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press. Verhaar, J.W.M. 1973. Phenomenology and Present-Day Linguistics. In Phenomenology and the Social Sciences. Volume 1, ed. M.  Natanson, 361–464. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Transcendental Consciousness: Subject, Object, or Neither? Corijn van Mazijk

Abstract  Although the term ‘transcendental consciousness’ seems like a rather basic notion in Husserl’s philosophy, its precise meaning is in fact one of the principle dividing points among scholars. In this paper I first outline three different views on transcendental consciousness and identify reasons for maintaining them. The most interesting opposition this exposition yields is between the latter two positions. The rest of the paper is then devoted to developing a solution to this interpretative problem which should satisfy intuitions underlying both camps. Particularly novel about this solution is that it (a) understands Husserl’s notion of transcendental consciousness as involving a kind of metaphysical commitment, and (b) takes it not as any kind of object or regional ontology, but as encompassing the totality of being considered from a unique transcendental-phenomenological perspective. Keywords  Husserl · Phenomenology · Transcendental Consciousness · Transcendental Subjectivity · First Philosophy · Metaphysics · Subject-Object Split · Noema Debate

1  Introduction What is transcendental consciousness? Simple as this question may sound, it is one of the principle dividing points among Husserl scholars. My aim in this paper will be to provide a new answer to that question. To my mind, there are at least three interesting sides to the proposed reading. First, if convincing, it could offer a new way of considering the well-known noema-debate between east and west coast readers of Husserl. Second, the suggested reading subscribes to Husserl’s phenomenology a kind of metaphysical commitment. This means that, if the suggested reading is correct, transcendental phenomenology is not metaphysically neutral. Third, it allows for considering transcendental consciousness not in terms of a subject or C. van Mazijk (*) Faculty of Philosophy, Department of the History of Philosophy, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Apostolescu (ed.), The Subject(s) of Phenomenology, Contributions to Phenomenology 108, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29357-4_4

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any kind of objective regional ontology, but instead as encompassing the totality of being considered from an ultimate viewpoint. Transcendental consciousness as region of inquiry includes the totality of being viewed from the transcendental attitude. In contemporary literature one can find a number of opposing views on the target object of phenomenological inquiry. My aim in the next section will not be to provide a detailed overview of all these positions. Instead, I will give a broad outline of three kinds of views on transcendental consciousness that are reflected in current literature and briefly indicate reasons for maintaining them. I call these (i) the subjectivist readings, (ii) the representationalist or objectivist (west coast) readings, and (iii) the east coast readings. Out of the opposition between the last two an interpretative problem then surfaces, which I address in more detail in the third and fourth sections.

2  Three Readings The first type of reading of Husserl’s concept of transcendental consciousness I want to put forward might be classified as ‘subjectivist’. Subjectivist readings are prominent particularly throughout the post-phenomenological and continentally oriented literature. Heidegger, for one, in his comments on the Encyclopaedia Britannica article which he was supposed to write with Husserl in 1927, writes that Husserl’s notion of transcendental consciousness is too Cartesian. Heidegger’s concept of Dasein as a concretely existing subjectivity that includes its world in itself (‘being-in-the-world’) was developed partially in response to Husserl’s supposedly world-abstract framing of consciousness. Heidegger’s reading influenced interpretation of Husserl’s concept of transcendental consciousness for decades. Some scholars today also seem to defend broadly subjectivist readings of transcendental consciousness. Sebastian Luft (2005), in an article on the Husserl/ Heidegger-relationship, argues that Husserl’s phenomenology simply is a rigorous science of the subject. Transcendental phenomenology studies consciousness from a ‘view from within’ (Luft 2005, 150). Husserl’s phenomenological attitude is ‘not a stance beyond the distinction between first-and third-person perspective; it is firmly a first-person perspective’ (Luft 2005, 152). The subjectivist reading, then, sees transcendental consciousness as a kind of too narrowly restricted, exclusively first-person reality. A second and very different type of reading of transcendental consciousness stems from a more analytically oriented tradition of U.S. west coast thinkers, which includes Dagfinn Føllesdal, Ronald McIntyre, Hubert Dreyfus, and David Woodruff Smith.1 These readings can broadly be characterized as ‘representationalist’. Generally speaking, these authors insist that Husserl is concerned with the ways in  See: Føllesdal (1969), Dreyfus and Hall (1982), Dreyfus (1982), McIntyre (1986), McIntyre and Smith (1989), Smith (2007, 2013). 1

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which we acquire knowledge of things, and that nothing is thereby implied about the being of those things. On this reading, consciousness and the existing object to which it can be intentionally related are in fact ‘completely distinct entities’ (Smith and McIntyre 1989, 162). In phenomenology, what is at stake is ‘the representational character of mind or consciousness’; how a ‘mental state or experience is […] a representation of something other than itself’ (Smith and McIntyre 1989, 147). The phenomenologist, in this respect, neither studies real objects nor clarifies the being of those objects. Instead, phenomenology has its own region of objectivities, its own regional ontology, namely the mental representations in consciousness and the intentional processes that yield them. Representationalist readers frequently maintain that for instance in an act of perceiving, the acts and appearances in consciousness are ontologically distinct from the real object that the act is directed at. Such a reading is supported by recurring remarks of Husserl where he contrasts appearances with real things existing outside of us. In both Logical Investigations and Ideas I, Husserl maintains that a ‘real tree’ as an object of natural-scientific scrutiny is distinct from a ‘real tree as appearance’ (Husserl 1983, 182–184; 1984, 359–390). Of the former notion of tree we say it can be chopped or burned down; of the latter we do not. One can, Husserl thinks, formulate numerous propositions that one holds to be true about the real tree, yet none of these have any bearing on the real tree as appearance. Partially taking clue from such remarks, scholars such as Smith and McIntyre hold that consciousness for Husserl is best understood as something distinct from the kind of reality studied in science. As they put it, ‘the noemata [broadly speaking the object reduced to its appearance] and objects are distinct’ (Smith and McIntyre 1989, 165). Although consciousness for Husserl indeed is a condition of possibility for knowledge of objects, it does not give being to those objects. Husserl’s notion of consciousness therefore has primarily an epistemological signification, which makes transcendental phenomenology ‘an epistemological rather than a metaphysical doctrine (such as Berkeley’s idealism)’ (Smith and McIntyre 1982, 104). The third reading worth demarcating stems from a school of readers which challenges the above west coast interpretation. These scholars understand transcendental consciousness in a more world-encompassing sense. The so-called east coast readers, including Dan Zahavi and John Drummond2, point out that there are reasons to hesitate in straightforwardly accepting a representationalist reading of the object of transcendental-phenomenological inquiry. One reason for this is that Husserl is himself dismissive of a representationalist account of consciousness (Husserl 1983, 92–94). Also, Drummond claims that west coast readers misinterpret the relation between phenomenology and ontology. They ‘ontologize’ the noema and indeed consciousness itself, which, according to Drummond, ‘distorts Husserl’s theory of intentionality’ (Drummond 2009, 593–94). By ontologizing, Drummond means ascribing to phenomenology a region of objectivities distinct from and on a par with the regions of natural scientific inquiry. The west coast readers, so east coast readers claim, isolate consciousness from its world by making consciousness  See: Zahavi (2004, 2008, 2010), Drummond (1992, 2009).

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and object distinct entities. According to the east coast reading, transcendental consciousness is not distinct from its world; it is beyond the divide of subject and object (Zahavi 2008, 371). These are, in all too brief summary, three prominent readings of transcendental consciousness as the phenomenological field of inquiry. First, the subjectivist readings, which identify consciousness with (some part of) the subject or affiliate with it an explicitly subjective mode of inquiry. Second, the representationalist readings, which stress that consciousness for Husserl is a distinct ontological region, and thus is a kind of object (or region of objectivities) of its own kind (which does not have the privilege of clarifying other regional objectivities apart from our access to them). Third, the east coast readings, which take consciousness in a more world-­ encompassing sense and possibly as lying beyond the distinction of subject and object altogether. Notwithstanding the importance of subjectivist readings, the east and west coast readings are, to my mind, philosophically speaking the most significant. Their opposition is due to an actual tension found in Husserl’s writings. On the one hand, Husserl frequently expresses his commitment to the idea that real objects and phenomenologically reduced objects are not the same thing. In Logical Investigations as well as in Ideas I, Husserl notes that whereas a real tree can burn, the tree as appearance cannot. Again, in Ideas III, Husserl expressly states that the theme of phenomenology has to be ‘a totally different one’ than the one central to natural-­ scientific research. As he there puts it: ‘a “physical thing” as correlate [of consciousness] is not a physical thing; therefore the quotation marks’ (Ideas III 72 my italics). All of this serves the west coast readers well, as it suggests that consciousness is indeed distinct from real objects. On the other hand, however, Husserl also remarks in Ideas I that the ‘whole spatiotemporal world […] is nothing’ beyond its ‘being for a consciousness’ (Husserl 1983, 112). It is altogether inconceivable, he further notes, that any object would ever signify a ‘reaching out beyond the world which is for consciousness’ (Husserl 1983, 121). Every existent, everything ‘transcendent necessarily must be experienceable […] by an actual ego’ (Husserl 1983, 108). Also, in Ideas III, Husserl notes that pure phenomenology does not really have a distinct object of inquiry after all, but rather ‘contain[s] within itself all ontologies’ (Husserl 1980, 66). Real objects and objects for consciousness are not distinct: the ‘true being of nature is not a second one next to mere intentional being’ (Husserl 2002, 276). Reality does not somehow contain two types of being which would ‘dwell peaceably side by side’ (Husserl 1983, 111). All of this, in turn, supports the east coast reading, as it stresses the world-encompassing nature of transcendental consciousness, beyond which there would be nothing. Over the course of the next section, I aim to develop a reading that provides a new way of considering this apparent contradiction which has fueled debates about transcendental consciousness (and the noema) for several decades. Because of the limited length of this paper, I will put most energy in the development of just one argument. The argument primarily serves to show that the kind of intuitions that guide the west and east coast readers can be made compatible (which is not to say

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both views are equally correct). The argument contains, to my mind, two interesting features: (a) it subscribes to Husserl a kind of metaphysical commitment, and (b) it considers transcendental consciousness as region of inquiry as encompassing the totality of being viewed from an ultimate standpoint. While (b) might be shared by some east coast readers, getting clear about (a) allows us to integrate the correct intuitions underlying west coast readings.

3  Problem and Solution First let me restate our interpretative problem clearly. For this we can return in a bit more detail to the example of the two senses of the tree Husserl discusses. On the one horn of our dilemma, Husserl claims that a real tree can burn down and tree as appearance to consciousness cannot (Husserl 1983, 182–184; 1984, 359–390). As Husserl generalizes the point in Ideas III, ‘to posit physical things as actually present is not to posit something meant as a physical thing’ (Husserl 1980, 89). To illustrate the point, Husserl suggests that if I want to know the chemistry of a burning tree, I should not go and study tree appearances. Reversely, if I want to understand the appearance of trees in pure perceptual consciousness, facts about the chemistry of trees will have no epistemic bearing. In both cases, ‘the theme is therefore a totally different one’ (Husserl 1980, 85). There can be little doubt that Husserl maintained this separation of themes of phenomenological and natural inquiry. If we follow this line of thought further, it can be tempting to conclude that consciousness and real object must be altogether ‘distinct entities’ (Smith and McIntyre 1989, 162). No examination of consciousness could then say anything about real trees. To be sure, phenomenology explains the appearing of real trees, that is, of the ‘real tree as appearance’. It describes consciousness’s access to reality. It does not, however, address reality itself. It is thus a form of epistemological idealism, as Smith and McIntyre suggest (Smith and McIntyre 1982, 104), which examines our knowledge of or access to things, but not the very being of those things. Yet there is an abundance of textual evidence that makes this reading unsatisfactory to say the least. On the other horn of our dilemma, we find Husserl apparently negating his separation of consciousness from reality, claiming that reality in fact ‘is possible only as an intentional unity motivated in transcendentally pure consciousness’ (Husserl 1983, 115). As Husserl writes, ‘unities of sense presuppose […] a sense-bestowing consciousness’ (Husserl 1983, 128–129). Reality does not lie beyond consciousness: the ‘world […] is nothing’ beyond its ‘being for a consciousness’ (Husserl 1983, 112). So here is our dilemma: if we accept the first line of thought, we can maintain phenomenology’s independent scientific status; phenomenology has its own distinct object of study. Also, we avoid opening Pandora’s box and having to consider Husserl some kind of eccentric idealist. On the downside, however, this reading leaves us virtually no tools to make sense of Husserl’s recurring ideal of a ­transcendental phe-

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nomenology, which, he frequently asserts, addresses meaning and being: it clarifies ‘every imaginable sense, every imaginable being’ from transcendental consciousness as that which ‘constitutes sense and being’ (Husserl 1960, 84 my italics). In short, by maintaining a strict separation of consciousness and object, we cannot really explain why Husserl says that the world is nothing beyond consciousness. If, on the other hand, we follow the second line of thought, we face the substantial threat of losing phenomenology’s status as an independent science. If transcendental consciousness is truly the ‘All of absolute being’ (Husserl 1983, 116) which ‘contains within itself […] all worldly transcendencies’ (Husserl 1983, 113) beyond which there is nothing, then it seems the phenomenologist can no longer be said to study the tree as appearance in opposition to the real tree. The real tree has collapsed into the appearing tree; now there are only appearing trees. Now here is my simple solution. The way I see it, there is another way to reconstruct Husserl’s intentions which does make both claims perfectly compatible. The central idea here is that there need be nothing contradictory about claiming that (i) appearance-reality and reality are different while (ii) also maintaining that they are identical, on the condition that we can exploit both claims coherently at different levels. This is, to my mind, how things indeed stand for Husserl. On the one hand, I want to suggest that Husserl makes a deeper commitment – one we might call metaphysical, as I explain later  – where he ‘identifies’ consciousness and real being, claiming that the latter is necessarily a constitution ‘within’ the former. Yet on the other hand, at a higher – ontological, in Husserl’s terms – level, Husserl maintains that real being, once accomplished by consciousness, acquires a status distinct from consciousness qua sense or qua theme, even though it is never radically beyond consciousness. Let me first address the second (ii) part of this solution in a bit more detail. To do so, it is useful first to make explicit what I mean by a metaphysical commitment. In the present context, metaphysical does not serve to suggest that some speculative thesis with no basis in experienceable reality is involved (as Kant treats special metaphysics). Instead, metaphysical here (as in its classic sense) refers to a positive claim about what all (actual and possible) being in its final sense amounts to. It thus refers to the first principles of being.3 Certainly some readers will find the idea of subscribing a metaphysical commitment to Husserl odd. Yet if we understand metaphysical in its classic sense, as referring to the initial conditions or most fundamental make-up of all being – rather than to an abstract theory with no basis in reality – then Husserl in fact discusses the issue quite openly at numerous places. It figures, for instance, in the annihilation of the world argument in Ideas I. Here, Husserl first purports to convince us that we can imagine a consciousness which has immanent activity but no transcendent reality constituted in that. We can, for instance, perfectly imagine a creature (let’s say, a coral polyp or a jelly fish) which has immanent conscious connections, but which  Melle (2010, 94) correctly points out that Husserl’s metaphysical claim, or argument as Melle calls it, comes before the phenomenological reduction. The commitment at stake is therefore not strictly phenomenological, but can be made prior to that in the natural attitude. 3

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lacks a proper reality constituted in that. Consciousness, then, can be thought without a world correlated to it. Husserl’s second – and much more crucial – step is to show that the reverse thesis is not imaginable (Husserl 1983, 109–112). Husserl claims that we cannot possibly conceive of world without consciousness. Now this reverse thesis must be understood as a metaphysical thesis. Husserl, then, suggests that consciousness is a priori involved in reality, while the reverse does not hold. As Husserl puts it, ‘the world, every thinkable world in general is only thinkable as relative, relative to the reality of consciousness’ (Husserl 2003, 78). This amount to a metaphysical thesis in the sense defined because it concerns a claim about what all possible and actual being amounts to. To be sure, Husserl himself does not so much consider this a metaphysical postulate, but rather an a priori valid insight. That the real tree must ultimately collapse into the appearing tree is plainly undeniable. For Husserl, there is no sense to the idea of an object that excludes relations to apprehending consciousness – even the very idea presupposes a consciousness entertaining it. For Husserl, it is not just accidentally the case that all being is tied to constituting transcendental consciousness. It is no mere theory. Rather, we can ascertain ourselves a priori that it cannot possibly be otherwise. It is this postulate Husserl accepts – appropriated by him as an apodictically ascertainable insight – that we can characterize as metaphysical, as it is a postulate concerning all possible and actual being. This metaphysical postulate is further not contingent to the phenomenological enterprise, but strictly necessary for transcendental phenomenology to take off.4 Phenomenology is transcendental – addressing the ‘final source’ of things (Husserl 1976, 100) – only on the premise that ‘everything’ in its final sense can be ‘brought back’ to transcendental consciousness (Husserl 1980, 69). Indeed, the material possibility of existence beyond consciousness must be excluded. Without this certainty, there is no absolute guarantee that phenomenology can offer the final clarification of ‘every imaginable sense, every imaginable being’ (Husserl 1960, 84). The metaphysical commitment thus satisfies (ii): that appearance-reality and reality are in a sense identical, i.e. that they do not ‘dwell peaceably side by side’ (Husserl 1983, 111); that the real world is not something apart from or beyond being for consciousness (Husserl 1983, 112). So how does Husserl make this compatible with the first (i) claim, that appearance-reality and reality must also be understood as distinct? The way he does so by claiming that in regional-ontological terms, the empirical sciences study an objective reality which qua sense or qua theme is independent from consciousness. This is, I think, the correct intuition underlying west coast readings. In terms of themes of inquiry, phenomenology and empirical science have  Phenomenology as such does not demand this a priori thesis. Husserl’s statements about e.g. physical thing constitution could still hold a priori within a certain region without it. More exactly, the phenomenological laws of physical thing constitution could then hold a priori within the now limited (ontological) region of consciousness. In short, an a priori phenomenology could do without the metaphysical commitment. However, it would then be a ‘de-transcendentalized’ phenomenology, and hence not the phenomenology the mature Husserl envisaged. 4

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different objects. That is to say, once constituted by consciousness, reality by its very essence appears to consciousness as consciousness-independent. That is in fact part of what it means to be ‘real’; to have the sense-ascription of consciousness-­ independence. And it is in conformity with that sense that it can become its own theme of inquiry – even though it is not thereby distinct from consciousness at the more fundamental level, as the metaphysical thesis suggests. The distinction in sense or scientific theme, then, does not exclude an underlying unity of both as specified by the metaphysical thesis. In other words, it is not necessitated by the fact that phenomenology is a science with its own theme that it studies a distinct object in the literal sense. West coast readings, to my mind, generally fail to acknowledge that their view regarding the distinct themes of natural science and phenomenology is in fact perfectly compatible with Husserl’s metaphysical commitment that a real object is never more than an object for consciousness. Husserl can maintain, conform (i), that speaking of a real tree is not to speak of an appearing tree; these are different themes or senses. Yet he can also say, conform (ii), that in any natural-scientific claim about the real world, about how ‘it is there […] in the ways in which we know it, there lies a claim about consciousness’ (Husserl 2003, 111). The two claims are not in conflict, because they must be understood, so to say, at different levels. Although, as I just mentioned, a correct intuition concerning the distinctness of themes underlies west coast interpretations, I do think that the metaphysical commitment Husserl makes contradicts the epistemological idealism of some west coast readers. The very possibility of epistemological idealism rests on the premise that one can ultimately separate the space of transcendental consciousness from the space of real being, such that the latter is accessed by the former, but does not rely on it in terms of its being. But the mature Husserl denies the sense of this distinction (e.g. Husserl 2003, 55–56). The whole category of being signifies nothing in complete isolation of possible consciousness. The space of all theoretical-scientific construction, of all reality-positing, is within the space of transcendental consciousness: the ‘space of possible absolute consciousness encompasses all meaningful questions and answers, all meaningful truth and existence’ (Husserl 2002, 270–271).

4  Further Discussion My argument in the previous section was that phenomenology and natural science genuinely study one and the same reality, even though they have different themes. ‘Real and intentional being’ thus do not ‘dwell peaceably side by side’ (Husserl 1983, 111). There is ultimately only one world, and it is the world experienced by consciousness. The phenomenologist does not investigate a separate realm of conscious being; it investigates this very world: ‘the always presumed world, as and how it is presumed, the always known and knowable world, precisely as it is known and knowable’ (Husserl 1974, 43). I argued that the fact that phenomenological and empirical-scientific investigations have a different theme does not demand positing distinct objects. Instead, the

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separation of themes can also be accounted for in terms of attitudes to which correspond different themes. Whereas the sciences simply leap over the constituting activities of consciousness and the object as produced in it to the object as real, which ultimately is only a constitutive accomplishment of consciousness, the phenomenologist studies (metaphysically speaking) the same object, only now as constituted appearance-reality in constituting consciousness. As Husserl puts it: the ‘transcendence [of the empirically real object] is part of the intrinsic sense of anything worldly, despite the fact that [it] necessarily acquires all the sense determining it, along with its existential status, exclusively from my experiencing’ (Husserl 1960, 26 my italics). This latter level of constituting experiencing is made thematic in transcendental phenomenology. The real object of natural-scientific inquiry is metaphysically speaking not beyond this level; only qua sense or qua theme of inquiry does it acquire a separate status. In the introduction I stated that this interpretation would have two implications of particular interest. One concerns how to conceptualize transcendental consciousness as a region of inquiry, the other the metaphysics underlying transcendental phenomenology. Regarding the latter, I argued that transcendental phenomenology strictly speaking is not metaphysically neutral. When Husserl remarks that ‘every imaginable sense, every imaginable being […] falls within the domain of transcendental subjectivity’ (Husserl 1960, 84), he does not merely make an assertion about the scope of the phenomenological field of investigation. There is also a statement implied about what all being, actual and possible, ultimately boils down to. Moreover, as I showed previously, phenomenology can be transcendental only by accepting this postulate. It must be impossible to even conceive of existence beyond consciousness if we are to obtain a priori certainty that a science of consciousness can be a first philosophy. Let me now turn to the other point of interest, namely how the current account affects how we ought to think about transcendental consciousness. On the present reading, transcendental consciousness simply is the totality of being considered purely for what it is at what I have called the metaphysical level. This means that instead of leaping over the object as constituted toward the object as real, the phenomenologist sticks to the former, which is ultimately (metaphysically, not ontologically) what the latter amounts to as well. Transcendental phenomenology then has the endless task of analyzing what all actual and possible being in its final sense (at the constitutingconstituted level) amounts to. As Husserl puts it, ‘by carrying out the transcendentalphenomenological reduction, […] we make the world as such our theme together with every natural consideration of the world, from an ultimate standpoint […] which includes all critique of reason and all genuine philosophical problems’ (Husserl 1977, 170 my italics). The standpoint is ‘ultimate’ simply because it directly thematizes that to which all transcendent being can ultimately be brought back to, i.e. transcendental consciousness as final ‘source’ (or the final truth) of all being. To conclude this section, we can juxtapose this reading here briefly to the subjectivist, representationalist, and east coast readings discussed earlier. With respect to them, it is my suspicion that the subjectivist readings, much like the representationalist west coast readings, rely on too strict a separation of consciousness and object.

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There is, to be sure, a sense in which the world’s unfolding is always an unfolding for a consciousness, and to that extent a subjective characterization of phenomenology seems justified. But to suggest that Husserl’s position is ‘firmly a first-person perspective’ (Luft 2005, 152) which is not ‘beyond the distinction between first-and third-person perspective’ seems to steer away from the a priori bond of the object to consciousness Husserl subscribes to. Transcendental consciousness is not some pure subject in opposition to the world, unaffected in its constitutive activity by the real things and people it encounters. The social-objective world is part of the universe Husserl investigates (because everything is, which is precisely what the metaphysical thesis specifies), and so is the self as a person in that world. Subject and object are both sides belonging to transcendental consciousness, and phenomenology is not restricted to the study of just one of them. The representationalist readings, on the other hand, as I discussed already, fall short for downplaying the metaphysical inclusion of the being of the object in constituting consciousness. Husserl’s separation of reality and appearance-reality as distinct themes of inquiry is misinterpreted as a distinction in ontological regions that would be on a par and mutually grounding. Thirdly, then, east coast readings generally do recognize Husserl’s idealist commitments. Moran, for instance, argues that the notion of transcendental consciousness involves a metaphysical claim (Moran 2005, 197), and so does Melle (2010, 94). Also, Zahavi believes that consciousness for Husserl is beyond the distinction between inner and outer (Zahavi 2004, 52; 2008, 356–371). Zahavi, however, although he accepts that phenomenology has some metaphysical implications (excluding naïve realism, for instance), seems to object to reading Husserl as a metaphysical idealist and to understanding transcendental consciousness as a metaphysical notion (Zahavi 2010, 79–87). I tried to argue here that Husserl does accept a postulate about all possible and actual being that could be characterized as metaphysical. Moreover, this postulate is separate from and compatible with distinctions in ontology Husserl makes while also necessary for ascribing a transcendental character to phenomenology. Getting clear about Husserl’s metaphysical commitment thus contributes to dissolving apparent tensions that lie at the foundations of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology.

5  Conclusion The debate about transcendental consciousness (and to a certain degree the noema) is, I argued, to a large extent due to a tension in Husserl’s writings. This tension is, however, only apparent. Husserl resolves it by making a positive assertion about what all possible and actual being in its foundations amounts to. Crucially, this commitment comes prior to distinctions in ontology and scientific themes or regions of inquiry, and is therefore compatible with such distinctions. The understanding of transcendental consciousness this account yields is thereby not ontological. For Husserl, transcendental consciousness ‘contain[s] within itself all ontologies’

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(Husserl 1980, 66); it is that which all being can ultimately be brought back to – the streaming life of consciousness which harbors the full sense of reality in itself, and beyond which no existent would be conceivable.

References Dreyfus, H.L. 1982. Husserl’s Perceptual Noema. In Husserl, Intentionality and Cognitive Science, ed. H.L. Dreyfus and H. Hall, 97–123. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Dreyfus, H.L., and H. Hall. 1982. Husserl, Intentionality, and Cognitive Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Drummond, J.  1992. An Abstract Consideration: De-Ontologizing the Noema. In The Phenomenology of the Noema, ed. J.  Drummond and L.  Embree. Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media, B. V. ———. 2009. Phénoménologie et ontologie. Trans. G.  Fréchette, Philosophiques 36 (2009): 593–607. Føllesdal, D. 1969. Husserl’s Notion of Noema. Journal of Philosophy 66 (20): 680–687. Husserl, E. 1960. Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology. Trans. D. Cairns. The Hague/Boston/London: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1974. Kant and the Idea of Transcendental Philosophy. Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 5 (3): 9–56. ———. 1976. Krisis der Europäischen Wissenschaften und die Transzendentale Phänomenologie: Eine Einleitung in die Phänomenologische Philosophie, Husserliana VI, ed. W. Biemel. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1977. Phenomenological Psychology: Lectures, Summer Semester, 1925. Trans. J. Scanlon. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1980. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: Third Book: Phenomenology and the Foundation of the Sciences. Trans. T. E. Klein, W. E. Pohl. The Hague/Boston/London: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. ———. 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/ Boston/Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. ———. 1984. Logische Untersuchungen, Band I-II, Husserliana XIX/1-XIX/2, ed. U. Panzer. Den Haag: Nijhoff ———. 2002. Einleitung in die Philosophie: Vorlesungen 1922/23, Husserliana XXXV, ed. R. Bernet and U. Melle. Dordrecht: Springer Science + Business Media B.V. ———. 2003. Transzendentaler Idealismus: Texte aus dem Nachlass (1908-1921), Husserliana XXXVI, ed. R.D. Rollinger and R. Sowa. Dordrecht: Springer Business+Media B.V. Luft, S. 2005. Husserl’s Concept of the ‘Transcendental Person’: Another Look at the Husserl-­ Heidegger Relationship. International Journal of Philosophical Studies 13 (2): 141–177. McIntyre, R. 1986. Husserl and the Representational Theory of Mind. Topoi 5: 101–113. Melle, U. 2010. Husserls Beweis für den Transzendentalen Idealismus. In Philosophy, Phenomenology, Sciences: Essays in Commemoration of Edmund Husserl, ed. C.  Ierna, H. Jacobs, and F. Mattens, 93–106. Dordrecht/Heidelberg/London: Springer. Moran, Dermot. 2005. Edmund Husserl: Founder of Phenomenology. Cambridge: Polity. Smith, D.W. 2007. Husserl. New York: Routledge. ———. 2013. Phenomenology. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2013/entries/phenomenology/ Smith, D.W., and R. McIntyre. 1982. Husserl and Intentionality. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.

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Smith, D. W., and R. McIntyre. 1989. Theory of Intentionality. In Husserl’s Phenomenology: a Textbook, ed. J.N.  Mohanty and W.  McKenna, 147–179. Washington: University Press of America. Zahavi, D. 2004. Husserl’s noema and the internalism-externalism debate. Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 47 (1): 42–66. ———. 2008. Internalism, externalism, and transcendental idealism. Synthese 160: 355–374. ———. 2010. Husserl and the ‘absolute’. In Philosophy, Phenomenology, Sciences: Essays in Commemoration of Edmund Husserl, ed. C. Ierna, H. Jacobs, and F. Mattens, 71–92. Dordrecht/ Heidelberg/London: Springer.

Philosophy as an Exercise in Exaggeration: The Role of Circularity in Husserl’s Criticism of Logical Psychologism Vedran Grahovac

As regards my frank critique of the psychologistic logic and epistemology, I have to recall Goethe’s saying: There is nothing to which one is more severe than the errors that one has just abandoned. (Edmund Husserl, Forward to the first edition of Logical Investigations) We … require a special word when we wish to speak of propositions with which we are not acquainted, of which we don’t even know whether any thinking being has thought them … Since no other term was available, I allowed myself to choose the expression proposition in itself or in the objective sense to designate this concept. You must in every case first know whether a given combination of ideas constitutes a proposition before you can even raise the question of whether a certain being might assume this proposition (make it his judgment). (Bernard Bolzano, Letter to Franz Exner, 18. Dec. 1834.)

Abstract  I propose in this text that Husserl’s response to his contemporaries, critics and immediate predecessors in Logical Investigations consists in the development of circular strategy. Husserl does not challenge psychologsim, empiricism or neo-Kantianism by immediately assuming a position of epistemological primacy over these philosophies. To the contrary, Husserl philosophically challenges these positions by enacting a circularity that already underlies them. Husserl’s critical distance from these theories implies a methodological proximity which enables him to advance his phenomenological project with constant backward reference to the theories he challenges. Husserl’s circular philosophy transforms the themes it investigates and the theories it criticizes, transforming itself in that process.

V. Grahovac (*) University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Apostolescu (ed.), The Subject(s) of Phenomenology, Contributions to Phenomenology 108, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29357-4_5

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Keywords  Husserl · Circularity · Psychologistic logic · Inner evidence · Phenomenological reduction · Ideality · Self-regulation

1  Introduction In this text I focus on Husserl’s relationship with psychologism, and how his response to psychologistic logic informed his analysis of logical categories and their constitution. Husserl proposes, as an alternative to psychologistic logic, a groundwork for the analytical practice called the ideal science of logic. Husserl reflects upon psychologism as a theory of logical relations in terms of their mental correlates. He sees the alternative in an ideal science of logic that is focused on ideal lawfulness and the genesis of logical categories. The seemingly obvious and strict opposition between psychologism and the science of logic turns out being, I suggest, a more complicated relationship of concurrence and conceptual complementarity. Husserl’s criticism of psychologism develops as a careful problematizing of its philosophical justification and unfolds as a thorough investigation into the self-­ evidential moments in its theory. The firm ground of the ideal science of logic is achieved through its argumentative dependency on the psychologistic notion of self-evidentiality. Husserl criticizes the psychologistic tradition in the Prolegomena to the Logical Investigations through the careful examination of the works of Mill, Sigwart, Stumpf, Herbart, Erdmann, Heymans and Lotze. Martin Kusch points out in Psychologism: A Case Study in the Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge that Husserl’s reflection upon logical psychologism offered praise for and levied harsh criticism towards the authors he treated.1 I propose in this chapter that Husserl’s criticism of psychologism unfolds as the inflation and the radicalization of its accomplishments. I also suggest that, conversely, the philosophical success of the  “To begin with, Husserl found words of praise even for those philosophers that he criticized harshly and at great length: Mill’s treatment of logic was ‘valuable’ ([1900] 1975:19); Drobisch was ‘excellent’ (trefflich) ([1900] 1975:50); Lange’s logic ‘wise’ (geistvoll) ([1900] 1975: 101); Sigwart ‘important’ (bedeutend) ([1900] 1975:106, 138), ‘excellent’ (ausgezeichnet) ([1900] 1975:107) and displaying ‘so much acumen’ (Scharfsinn) ([1900] 1975: 138); Heymans’ work was ‘interesting’ ([1900] 1975:116); Erdmann ‘excellent’, ‘of outstanding merit’ (verdient) ([1900] 1975:149) and ‘outstanding’ (hervorragend) ([1900] 1975:157). Husserl also referred to Brentano and Stumpf indirectly ‘as the men…to whom my scientific education owes most’ ([1900] 1975:7). Husserl even denied that ‘psychologism’ was meant as a term with negative connotations: ‘I am using the expressions “psychologicist”, “psychologism”, etc. without any derogatory slant’ ([1900] 1975:64). And having chastised Erdmann’s ideas as ‘absurd’, Husserl went on to explain that ‘absurd’ too was used ‘without any slant’ ([1900] 1975:153). Furthermore, at one point, Husserl presented his anti-psychologism as a compromise formula between the earlier normative anti-psychologism and psychological logic” ([1900] 1975:168).” (Kusch, Psychologism: A Case Study in the Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge, (New York, 203). This observation by Kusch is also recalled by Andras Varga in his essay “Psychology as Positive Heritage of Husserl’s Phenomenological Philosophy” in Studia Phaenomenologica X : 118. 1

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pure science of logic can only be measured against the background of its own hyperbolizing. The main distinction of Husserl’s relation to psychologism is reflected neither in the frontal dismissal of the psychologistic theories, nor in the mere replacement of psychologism with the theory of the ideal science of logic. The confrontation between the pure science of logic and logical psychologism cannot be understood as a mere confrontation between the victorious side and the defeated opponent. The reason why this wrestling cannot result in the brutal self-affirmation of the victor is that the ideal laws of logic gain their purity only through the illumination of the completeness of the psychologistic concept of self-evidentiality.2 The illumination of the main principles on which the concept of inner evidence, conceived as a mental investment, rests provides insight into the inherent betrayal of its obligatory and universal claim for truth. Husserl does not discover a particularized problem in the argumentative structure of the psychologistic notion of inner evidence but suggests that the ‘problem’ lies precisely in the seeming argumentative success of psychologism. Husserl’s understanding of the pure science of logic collapses the psychologistic distinction between logic as a theory of norms and logic as a normative-regulatory discipline. The psychological act of epistemological self-assurance culminates in mere compulsion and calls for the intervention of the pure science of logic. Conversely, the ‘theoretical’ purity of the ideal science of logic consists in the ‘practice’ of the critical examination of the psychologistic inner-evidentiality. I address this relation between pure science of logic and psychologism by tracing Husserl’s criticism of psychologistic logic. According to psychologistic logic, every logical operation is grounded in mental processes, and this is a self-evidential fact. The fact that logical operations are mentally founded is supported by experiential evidentiality. This means that because we have the capacity for psychological experience, logical laws must be grounded psychologically. The self-evidentiality of the psychologistic notion of inner evidence, as observed by Husserl, ends up in tautology. What seems to be a sufficient psychologistic confirmation of the founded-ness of logical laws on mental processes is revealed to be a mere self-repetition of its seeming experiential obviousness and it is exaggerated as such under the lens of Husserl’s ideal science of logic. The psychologistic tautology is visible in the seeming obviousness of the mutual exclusion of contradictory modes of consciousness in one judgment. Husserl describes the psychologistic notion of inner evidentiality by suggesting that the “term ‘inner evidence’ stands for a mental character, well-known to everyone through his inner experience, a peculiar feeling which guarantees the truth of the judgment to which it attaches.”3 This inner experience, which is “well known to everyone,” is fortified by the seeming obviousness of the fact that “mutual exclusion enters into the definition of the correlative terms.”4 In other words, the affirmation  Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, 86–87. I use the abbreviation LI 1 and LI 2 for the two volumes of Logical Investigations in this paper. The emphasis in bold is mine throughout this essay. 3  Ibid, 115. 4  Ibid, 57. 2

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of one term in a relation is provided through the exclusion of its opposing term. The indubitable authority of the feeling of certainty, or the lack thereof, which guarantees acquisition of knowledge of the inquired phenomenon, is what prevails. This feeling of certainty, however, makes possible the completion of the tautological motion, where the psychological confirmation assumes the form of self-repetition. In other words, the structure of the psychologistic insight into the impossibility of two contradictory terms being joined in one observation – the weather is hot and cold– develops in the following manner: the weather cannot be cold and hot at the same time, as our mental capacity to confirm the unification between these two terms will not provide us with the tranquility of a final decision. Furthermore, that we experience mental fulfillment in our recognition that two opposing terms in relation exclude each other points back to the state-of-affairs to which our mental confirmation or dismissal refers. In other words, it is not hot and cold, because we simply feel it cannot be otherwise. We feel satisfied with the argumentative structure of our insight that it is cold or hot outside simply because it is not hot or cold at the same time. The reason for this, of course, lies in the empiricist-psychologistic assumption that consciousness is a flow and a combinatory host to its components. We simply cannot feel hot and cold at the same time, as we reflect upon what is available to us in terms of the ready-made components of the reflective predisposition of our consciousness. These mutually exclusive components cannot co-exist in our consciousness, as the impossibility of the combination of the isolated parts determines the flow of consciousness. The flow of consciousness confirms itself by being able to choose between opposing terms, because it organizes the terms in relations in a way in which they do not exclude each other. In other words, the terms that are supposed to be self-evidentially related within the mediation of consciousness are already experienced as isolated, so that the subsequent relation of either inclusion or exclusion of these terms can take place. In this text I propose two main components of the relation between pure science of logic and psychologism, namely two different modes in which tautology (psychologistic logic) and circularity (pure science of logic) are related to exaggeration and intensification. Both tautology and exaggeration (and, analogously, circularity and intensification) should be treated as inherently connected, because they are manifested only through their mutual reference. I shall describe these two different types of circularities before I turn to the examination of Husserl’s text. One could argue that psychologism justifies itself by openly promoting ‘particularism’ over the ‘universality’ of logical laws. However, if we carefully approach the argumentation employed by psychologism, we realize that it secures for itself a peculiar position of ‘theoretical purity.’ The purification of logical laws from the claims that these laws are not contingent upon mental processes is grounded in the argumentative self-evidentiality of psychologism. Conversely, the pure science of logic openly announces its purity apropos psychologism, while at the same time acknowledging its argumentative indebtedness to it. The ideal science of logic is not oblivious to the process of its constitution, which as a deliberate self-referentiality serves as a mirror to the constitutive gaps in the seeming particularism or concretism found in psychologistic logic or empiricism. The purification process in the

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ideal science of logic is designed to address the problems involved in the distinction between pure and contingent as it is found in both psychologistic logic and logical absolutism. Circularity-intensification (the ideal science of logic) and well as tautology-­exaggeration (in psychologism), to sum up, provide an insight into two complementary processes: 1. The psychologistic attempt to secure the ground of logic through the exclusion of what it is to be purified of ends up in self-repetition, and the justification for this self-repetition is that it opens up the possibility for further clarification of the purification process by the ideal science of logic. The ideal science of logic suggests that the stark opposition between the realm of the contingent and the purified realm of logical laws as found in logical absolutism is merely replicated in psychologism under the guise of the mental foundation of logical laws. I propose that Husserl develops his analysis of the relation between psychologism and the ideal science of logic by insisting that what underlies psychologistic criticism of absolute logicism is a reversal of epistemological authority. Instead of the primacy of the universality of logical laws, psychologism advances the primacy of their dependency on mental processes. Psychologism thereby secures its anti-­ universalism through the insistence on the fact that the epistemological throne, which used to belong to the authority of universal, is now reserved for the psychologistic notion of inner evidence. I suggest that one sort of purification is merely being substituted for another: logicism practices the purification of logical processes through the purgation of mental correlates, while psychologism practices the purification of logical processes through the purgation of all of them that are not located in psychological processes. Psychologism ends up in self-repetition, and it turns its justificatory lack into a universal epistemic value. The only philosophical justification of psychologism is in its calling upon its capacity to guarantee the certainty of inner evidence. What appears to be the reason for the ultimate argumentative success of psychologism, namely the experiential evidentiality of its position, becomes the main target for Husserl. Husserl’s finding is that psychologistic self-justification is not only tautological but also proud of its self-referentiality. This makes the process of psychologistic justification dominantly cynical through its own self-exaggeration. It is not only that the claim “A (logical laws) is B (mental correlate)” is confirmed through the fact that B underlies our experience of logic, but also through the claim that B is B, or the psychological foundation of our experience of logic is always self-­ evidential. In other words, not only A is B because B is A, but B is A because B is B. Husserl’s pointing out of the mere reversal of the epistemological authority in psychologistic anti-absolutism is crucial for the design of his pure science of logic. 2. The ideal science of logic secures its legitimate position as a ‘science’ by demonstrating its impossibility to be external to what it criticizes. The possibility of the grounding of logical laws is found in the withdrawal of the pure science of logic from the battle between universal objectivity of logical rules and the non-­ universalist contingency of psychological laws. The grandiosity of its self-­

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promotion as a science of purification is therefore an explicit demonstration of an irony, where its seeming resting at the privileged throne of ideal lawfulness is reflected in its capacity to intensify its own self-referentiality apropos the self-­ repetition of the concept of inner evidence. This means that Husserl reverses the above-mentioned argumentative structure of psychologistic logic by exaggerating it. This exaggeration, however, arises through the pure science of logic’s becoming deliberately more self-referential than psychologism. Husserl, in designing the realm of the pure science of logic, starts from the argumentative position where he made the self-referentiality of psychologism obvious: A (logical laws) is B (mental correlates), because B is B (mental foundation of logical laws is self-evidential). This means that Husserl starts with the claim that the ideal science of logic (D) is ideal because it is pure in-itself, or D is D, which is why A (logical laws) is D (pure). The relation “A (logical laws) is D (pure science of logic)” is used for the insight that “D is D (ideal science of logic is pure in itself)”. However, this insight is used as an inversion of the psychologistic relation “B is B (psychologistic logic is self-evidential)”, with the aim of providing the following insight: “D is D” because “B is B”, or ideal logic is pure in itself, because psychologistic logic is inner-evidential. The ideal science of logic self-intensifies apropos the exaggeration of psychologistic logic. Husserl’s final aim is, of course, to suggest the following: “A is A” (logical laws are lawful or pure in themselves) because “B is B” (psychologistic logic is inner-evidential). The self-promotion of the ideal science of logic has a therapeutic effect on psychologistic logic. The circularity of the pure science of logic deliberately adopts the tautological form of psychologistic logic and subverts it by bringing it to light that the resolution of logical self-justification is the activity of self-repetition. In other words, while the theoretical self-evidentiality of psychologistic logic ends up in the activity of an unaware self-repetition, the authority of the pure science of logic is secured in its deliberate theoretical contingency apropos the obviousness of the psychologistic self-evidentiality. This is understood through Husserl’s contention that the ability of truth to “retain its ideal being”5 is preceded by its inability to be psycho-­physically realized. We observe in the passage below the peculiar relation of mutuality between the ideal science of logic and psychologism which is established precisely through their difference: We do not of course doubt that to know truth and to utter it justifiably, presupposes proper seeing of it. Nor do we doubt that logic as a technology must look into the (116) psychological conditions in which inner evidence illuminates our judgments. We may even go a further step in the direction of the conception we are refuting. While we seek to preserve the distinction between purely logical and methodological propositions, we expressly concede that the former have a relation to the psychological datum of inner evidence, that they in a sense state its psychological conditions. Such a relation, must, however be regarded as purely ideal and indirect. The pure laws of logic say absolutely nothing about inner evidence or its conditions… The propositions about inner evidence which arise in this manner keep their a priori character, and the conditions of inner evidence that they assert bear no

 LI, vol. 1, 117.

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trace of the psychological or the real. They are purely conceptual propositions, transformable, as in every like case, into statements about ideal incompatibilities or possibilities… (118) Though we stress the ideality of the possibilities of evident judgment which can be derived from logical principles, and which we see to reveal their a priori validity in cases of apodeictic self-evidence, we do not deny their psychologistic utility… If we take a law that, out of two contradictory propositions, one is true and one is false, and deduce from it the truth that, one only out of every pair of possible contradictory judgments can have the character of inward evidence, we may note this to be a self-evidentially correct deduction, if self evidence be defined as the experience in which the correctness of his judgment is brought home to a judging subject, the new proposition utters a truth about the compatibilities or incompatibilities of certain mental experiences. In this manner, however, every proposition of pure mathematics tells us something about possible or impossible happenings in the mental realm. No empirical enumeration or calculation, no mental act of algebraic transformation of geometrical construction, is possible which conflicts with the ideal laws of mathematics. These laws accordingly have a psychological use. We can read off from each of them a priori possibilities and impossibilities relating to certain sorts of mental acts, acts of counting, of additive and manipulative combination etc. These laws are not there made into psychological laws. Psychology, the natural science (119) concerned with what we mentally live through, has to look into the natural conditions of our experience. In its field are specifically to be found the empirically real relationships of our mathematical and logical activities, whose ideal relations and laws make up an independent realm. This latter realm is set up in purely universal propositions, made up out of ‘concepts’ which are not class-concepts of mental acts, but ideal concepts of essence, each with its concrete foundation in such mental acts or in their objective correlates. ... The inward evidence of our judgments does not merely depend on such psychological conditions, conditions that one might also call external and empirical, since they are rooted not purely in the specific form and matter of our judgment, but in its empirical context in mental life: it depends also on ideal conditions.6

We can suggest, from this, that Husserl explicitly rejects psychologism as a failed theory of logic, which, as a discipline that deals with the peculiarities of mental states, has relevance within the realm of the natural sciences. It appears that Husserl straightforwardly dismisses psychologism for its logical inadequacy, contrasting it with the purity of the ideal science of logic. The fact that psychologism cannot move beyond the realm of the “natural conditions of our experience”7 further emphasizes the absolute necessity of the ideal science of logic for the understanding of “purely conceptual propositions, transformable, as in every like case, into statements about ideal incompatibilities or possibilities.”8 The more psychologism proves its relevance for the natural sciences, the more the ideal science of logic seems to be untouched by it. However, I suggest here that Husserl’s strong epistemological differentiation between the ideal science of logic and psychologism does not result in confrontation, but in substantial argumentative concurrence. That the logical concepts have their psychological utility, their empirical relevance, their “concrete foundation in such mental acts” already confirms the basic premise of psychologism, but this is now confirmed through a critical lens. Husserl’s suggestion is that, although logical  Ibid, 119.  Ibid. 8  Ibid. 6 7

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concepts have their psychological foundation, their full epistemological scope is not actualized in this way. Their indebtedness to the mental realm, in fact, testifies to the fact that this is only one part of the story, so to speak. While the ideal laws of logic have their psychological relevance, they are nevertheless not reducible to the realm of psychologism. The psychological utility of a priori logical principles does not impinge upon their ideality, but it does emphasize that their ideal component belongs to a realm that lies outside the jurisdiction of psychologism. Husserl thereby confronts the logical significance of psychologism by not dismissing the psychological relevance of logical laws. This allows Husserl to suggest that propositions about inner evidence (a psychologistic term) retain simultaneously both their a priori character and their psychological relevance. Even though the propositions of pure mathematics “tell us something about possible or impossible happenings in the mental realm”, and a priori logical laws have the capacity to be relevant for the realm of psychology, this does not render them exclusively psychological. I suggest that this situation does not illustrate the epistemological primacy of the ideal science of logic over psychologism, but it does complicate the process of epistemological prioritizing. The ideal science of logic can have its relevance for logic - not despite, but because of its relevance for psychology. Furthermore, the less the ideal correlate of mental processes is concerned with psychologistic logic, the less it is interested in dismissing psychology. The ideal science of logic unfolds in its lawful purity when it looks back at the self-enclosure of psychologistic argumentation. Husserl even suggests that each concept that belongs to the realm of “purely universal propositions” has “its concrete foundation in mental acts or objective correlates.” At this juncture, one might raise two questions: why Husserl would emphasize that “ideal concepts of essence” have their concrete foundation? Why would ideal concepts need reference to a foundation that lies beyond their realm? I suggest that it is due to the fact that concepts of the ideal science of logic have their psychological correlate that they are able to reassert their ideal purity. I further suggest that is not only that psychologism and the ideal science of logic unfold in a mutual disinterestedness, but that their mutual independence is argumentatively rooted in their complementarity. In other words, one term of this relationship calls for the other term, precisely because that terms is complete in itself: as much as ideal logical laws are not reducible to psychologism because of their psychological component, so too psychologistic logic can be re-articulated ideally because of its mental concreteness with reference to its ideal possibility. Husserl states that the conditions of the possibility of inner evidence “bear no trace of the psychological or the real.”9 For Husserl, the “inward evidence of our judgments” depends not merely on psychological but also on ideal conditions. He further writes: The laws of pure logic are truths rooted in the concept of truth, and in concepts essentially related to this concept. They state, in relation to possible acts of judgment, and on the basis of their mere form, the ideal conditions of the possibility or impossibility of their  Ibid.

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inner evidence… It is clear, for the rest, that the terms in question, and all such as function in purely logical contexts, must be equivocal; they must, on the one hand, stand for class-­ concepts of mental states such as belong in psychology, but, on the other hand, for generic concepts covering ideal singulars, which belong in a sphere of pure law.10

Husserl does not disregard the psychologistic concept of inner evidence as a construct, which is to be replaced by the authenticity of pure logical lawfulness. He recognizes that inward evidence is dependent on psychological conditions, as it “arises and perishes” in the “natural conditions of the experiences” such as “concentration of interest, a certain mental freshness, practice etc.”11 However, this relationship of dependence is not final (a simple one) since inner evidence “depends also on ideal conditions.”12 Husserl, challenging the logicism of Leibniz and recalling Hume, observes that it is not enough to merely draw a sharp distinction between “‘relations of ideas’ and ‘matters of fact’”. Rather, one “must clearly grasp what the ideal is, both intrinsically and in its relation to the real, how this ideal stands to the real, how it can be immanent in it and so come to knowledge.”13 For Husserl it does not suffice to simply dwell within the realm of pure logic, as it is precisely its relation to the experiential or real that defines its possibility of coming to knowledge. What is at stake here, I suggest, is an examination of what is involved in the process of the ideal becoming epistemological - the process of the ideal “standing to” the psychological as the motion standing–in-itself and standing–against. Husserl criticizes the empiricist suggestion that logical laws and their ideal objects are “mere pointers to ‘thought economies’, verbal abbreviations whose true content merely reduces to individual, singular experiences, mere presentations and judgments concerning individual facts …”14 Maintaining the ‘idealist’ position, Husserl argues that the empiricist concept of non-ideal generality, as a reduction of the “ideal unities to real singularities”,15 is “involved in hopeless absurdities,” and “that its splintering of concepts into a range of singulars, without a concept to unify such a range in our thought, cannot be thought.”16 Husserl explicitly suggests that the psychologistic-empiricist prioritization of real singularities fails to recognize the universality of its own alleged particularism. Psychologism thereby fails to see that it performs a peculiar sort of generalization, instituting the real on ‘the orphaned throne’17 of the ideal. Psychologism, in fact, reinforces the ideal-real division by

 Ibid, 119, 117.  Ibid, 119. 12  Ibid. 13  Ibid, 120. 14  Ibid. 15  Ibid. 16  Ibid. 17  This is a reference to Adorno’s reflection from Negative Dialectics: ”But it is not the purpose of critical thought to place the object on the orphaned royal throne once occupied by the subject. On that throne the object would be nothing but an idol. The purpose of critical thought is to abolish the hierarchy” (Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 180–181). 10 11

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insisting on the seeming obviousness of inner evidentiality in the experience of truth and the primacy of inner evidentiality over logical laws. Husserl’s second argument against psychologism focuses on the psychologistic notion of normality. Husserl suggests that the epistemic obviousness of the notion of normalcy tends to conceal rather than to reveal anything about the capacity of inner evidentiality to serve as the guarantor of truth of logical judgments. He even mockingly observes that the recourse to normality will not supply the conditions for the inwardly evident coinciding with true judgments. It is important to notice here that the way Husserl criticizes psychologism reveals his own conception of the ideal science of logic: It is not the sort of mental character that simply lets itself be attached to any and every judgment of a certain class, i.e. the so called ‘true’ judgments, so that the phenomenological content of such a judgment, considered in and for itself, would be the same whether or not it had this character… Inner evidence is rather nothing but the ‘experience’ of truth. Truth is, of course, only experienced in the sense in which something ideal can be an experience in a real act. Otherwise put: Truth is an Idea, whose particular case is an actual experience in the inwardly evident judgment. The inwardly evident judgment is, however, an experience of primal givenness: the non-self-evident judgment stands to it much as the arbitrary positing of an object in imagination stands to its adequate perception. A thing adequately perceived is not a thing merely meant in some manner or other: it is a thing primarily given in our act, and as what we mean it, i.e. as itself given and grasped without residue. In like fashion what is self-evidently judged is not merely judged (meant in a judging, assertive, affirmative manner) but it is given in the judgment experience as itself present – present in the sense in which a state of affairs, meant in this or that manner, according to its kind, whether singular or general, empirical or ideal etc., can be ‘present’… The experience of the agreement between meaning and what is itself present, meant, between the actual sense of an assertion and the self-given state of affairs, is inward evidence: the Idea of this agreement is truth, whose ideality is also its objectivity. It is not a chance fact that a propositional thought, occurring here and now, agrees with a given state of affairs: the agreement rather holds between a self-identical propositional meaning and a self-identical state of affairs.18

In this passage Husserl clearly stresses that the ideality of the phenomenological content of a true judgment not only persists “in and for itself” (regardless of whether the mental component is attached to it or not) but that the “in and for itself” of this ideality is measured against the background of “mental character.” The apparent fixity of the ideal-phenomenological content of such a judgment is adequately confirmed by the certainty of inner evidence (or the lack thereof, where the accompanying feeling is one of uncertainty). Furthermore, the mental activity of inner evidence is a testimony to the constitution of phenomenological ideality, which prevails regardless of the possibility or impossibility of its mental articulation. Logical truth, therefore, can be experienced only insofar as any ideality can be reflected in the completion of a ‘real’ act. The apparent fixity of the ideal phenomenological content is reflected in the mobility of the self-assertion of its psychological counterpart.

18

 LI, vol. 1, 121.

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We can take as an example the justification of the mathematical proposition 2 × 2 = 4. The usual justification offered for this equation would be that this proposition is valid for all subjects and in all times. However, this does not mean that the proposition is valid beyond, above, or despite our capacity to confirm it, but it is in a peculiar relation to our capacity for multiplying. We can say that the ideal assertion of the relation between the two terms unfolds in relation to our capacity to successfully or unsuccessfully conduct or realize this assertion. If the situation were the opposite, then the regular justification would turn into a vicious circle – the equation 2 × 2 = 4 is valid because it is valid. Husserl describes inward evidence in the following way: And, as in the realm of perception, the unseen does not at all coincide with the non-existent, so lack of inward evidence does not amount to untruth. The experience of the agreement between meaning and what is itself present, meant, between the actual sense of assertion and the self-given state of affairs: the Idea of this agreement is truth, whose ideality is also its objectivity. It is not a chance that a propositional thought, occurring here and now, agrees with a given state of affairs: the agreement rather holds between a self-identical propositional meaning and a self-identical state of affairs. ‘Validity’ or ‘objectivity’, and their opposites, do not pertain to an assertion as a particular temporal experience, but to the assertion in specie, to the pure, self-identical assertion 2 × 2 = 4 etc.19

The idea of the agreement between propositions in themselves and the self-­ evidentiality of states of affairs is what is called truth. This does not mean that the ideality of a proposition does not persist if its objective correlate is not established in an agreement with it (this is why Husserl writes about both objectivity or validity and its opposites). To the contrary, the ideal “sense of assertion” persists in a relation to its experiential validity. Validity and invalidity pertain to their respective ideal correlates, which are concerned with their ideally lawful realm precisely through a contradistinction to their objective correlates of the valid or invalid proposition. The fact that objectivity does not stand in the “idea of agreement” (i.e. truth) with its ideal correlate does not mean that the propositions in themselves are impossible – they are simply not in a relation of adequacy with their experiential correlates. The relation between ideality and objectivity is one of belonging in difference, where one term in the relation points to another term with each term regarded individually stands independent of the other(s). In the next section of this article I shall suggest the following relation: the more that psychological self-assertion assumes its indisputable fixity, the more it crystalizes itself as the constancy of the activity of its self-repetition in front of the “phenomenological-­idealistic” mirror. In other words, the more that psychologism ignores its inability to provide what it promises, the more it tells us about the capacity of ideal logical laws to emphasize the reversal of the fixity-mobility polarity inherent to psychologism, but not recognized by it. If the ultimate ‘realization’ or completion of the concepts of evidence, grounding and regulation is possible, then these concepts must assume the form of the ideally lawful self-evidence or self-­regulation.

19

 Ibid.

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Conversely, the full capacity for self-regulation of the ideal laws is reflected in their ‘insistence’ on the further clarification of the concept of regulation.

2  T  autology of Inner Evidence: Psychologistic Cynicism as a Testimony to the Ideality of Logical Laws Husserl emphasizes that Mill defines the logical law of contradiction by referring to the “supposed facts of experience.”20 Mill, in response to Hamilton, suggests that the constancy of logical law is obvious in the fact that “the appearance of any positive mode of consciousness cannot occur without excluding a correlative negative mode: and that the negative mode cannot occur without excluding the correlative positive mode.”21 This obviousness rests on the existential conditions of the “coexistence or succession of facts.”22 Logical laws, therefore, belong to the very facts that they are supposed govern, as long as these facts are truths. Logical laws are measured by the experience they are supposed to govern; in other words, that which grounds is explained by what is grounded by it. Husserl sarcastically observes the following: “A law would therefore ascribe a ‘coming and going’ to certain facts called truths, among which, as among others, the law would itself be found. The law would arise and perish in conformity with the law, a patent absurdity.”23 It is interesting, however, to notice that Mill is not disturbed by the explicit tautology of logical law. He is, in fact, convinced that the justification of logical law should be seen as an “inherent necessity of thought” and as “an original part of our mental constitution.”24 According to Mill, the universality of logical laws is guaranteed by “the native structure of our minds.”25 He supports this claim by suggesting that the “conditions of our experience deny us experience which would be required to alter them”26 even, or especially, in the case where the subject who asserts a logical proposition is not experientially specified. For Mill, everything that conflicts with the law of experience, turns into a case of impossibility. Husserl quotes the following observation by Mill: They may or may not be capable of alteration by experience, but the conditions of our experience deny to us the experience which would be required to alter them. Any assertion, therefore, which conflicts with one of these laws, any proposition, for instance, which asserts a contradiction, though it were on a subject wholly removed from the sphere of our experience, is to us unbelievable. The belief in such a proposition is in the present constitution of nature, impossible as a mental act.27

 Ibid, 57.  Ibid. 22  Ibid, 55. 23  Ibid. 24  Ibid. 25  Ibid. 26  Ibid. 27  Ibid, 57. 20 21

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The logical impossibility for two contradictory propositions to be part of one proposition relies purely on experiential self-evidence. Furthermore, Mill calls upon the firmness of the constitution of nature and natural laws, whose indubitable character rules out any possible criticism. The psychologistic reliance on the indubitable character of our natural constitution consistently leads either into a circle, “if the principles of proof used to justify the principles of proof were the same as the latter”, or into a regress, “if the principles of proof themselves required further proof.”28 Empiricist logic discloses two components of its justification: “the correctness of the [psychologistic] theory presupposes the irrationality of its premises” and “the correctness of the premises [presupposes] the irrationality of the theory (or thesis).”29 This logic sustains the lack of ideal, non-empirical grounding precisely through its inductively consistent tautology. Empiricist logic, by repeating its psychological referentiality, unwillingly stresses the importance of the ‘objectivity’ of the science of logic. Husserl emphasizes that the empiricist unawareness of the incompleteness of its principle of self-­ evidence is possible because “the equivalent normative transformation, is confused with psychological assertions.”30 This confusion is most directly manifested in the psychologistic inability to differentiate between the inexistence of judgment and its lawful irregularity.31 Since it is experientially evident that we cannot experience two contradictory situations at the same time, or in one judgment, it has to be that this is what defines the logical formulation of this particular experiential situation. Husserl notices “the grave ambiguity in the word ‘impossibility’” which points both to a unity excluded by objective law and to a subjective incapacity32 to unify the contradictory statements. This ambiguity not only is a sign of the weakness of psychologism, but it also suggests that psychologistic logic is able to secure its logical validity only through the perpetual repetition of its justification. Psychologistic logic, paradoxically, by destroying “the possibility of the rational justification of mediate knowledge”, (i.e., the universality of the laws of logic) institutes a peculiar kind of mediating knowledge, which is “the product of various validating connections.”33 Psychologism thereby installs, not despite, but precisely through its own programmatic particularism, a new sort of logical ‘universality’. It therefore does not reject “the principle of validation” as such by rejecting the universalist validation of logical laws. This is why Husserl suggests that psychologistic logic, through its own consistency of self-repetition, also admits not only “that there is a logic, but [that it] itself helps to construct it.”34 Psychologistic programmatic particularism culminates in the instantiation of new sort of ’universalism of the particular’ or ‘universal perspectivalism’ and psychologism fails to live up to its own  Ibid, 60.  Ibid, 61. 30  Ibid, 61. 31  Ibid. 32  Ibid, 63. 33  Ibid. 34  Ibid, 59. 28 29

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expectations. In other words, the more determinately we are ready to admit that the validity of logical laws is secured through psychological experience, the better we can guarantee their lawfulness or purity. This perspectivalism, whose ­non-­universalist universalism must end in tautology, as Husserl suggests, is obvious in the following insight: Whatever pairs of opposed acts of belief we may select, whether belonging to one or to several individuals, whether coexisting in the same time-stretch or separated by time-­ stretches, it holds strictly, and absolutely, and without exception, that not both members of each such pair are correct, or in accordance with truth. I do not think that even an empiricist could question the validity of this norm.35

The last sentence might strike us as an unnecessary and slightly odd addition to the reflection above. It seems that Husserl still feels a need to address psychologistic concerns. We might wonder why it should even be important to consider what would be accepted or rejected by psychologists if we have already agreed that they cannot fulfill the promise of self-evidentiality. Husserl, however, regards the major problem in psychologism to lie in its tendency to take pride in its unacknowledged universal perspectivalism, rather than in its inability to secure its validity on universal grounds. Husserl suggests that even the empiricist, in her desire to thematically secure the universality of logic, indirectly discloses the problem in her notion of self-evidence. Husserl observes that “there is no route of escape from the demand for definition and proof by an appeal to the ‘self-confidence of reason’”, and he suggests that as soon as the “thought content” of the logical laws is “seen as psychological, their original sense, to which our insight into them attaches, has been wholly altered.”36 As Husserl further observes: Exact laws have, as we saw, been turned into vague, empirical generalities: if their range of indefiniteness is duly noted, they may claim validity, but they are quite removed from self-evidence. Following their natural thought-trends, thought without a clear consciousness of them, psychological theorists of knowledge no doubt at first understand the laws in question in an objective sense – before, that is, their arts of philosophical interpretation are brought into play. Then they make the mistake of thinking that they can appeal to the self-evidence attaching to the properly interpreted formulae, a self-evidence guaranteeing their absolute validity, even when subsequent reflection has imposed wholly new senses on the logical formulae in question.37

Husserl ironically suggests that as long as psychologists stay within the silence and the ‘modesty’ of their capacity for “philosophical interpretation”, as long as they “follow their natural thought-trends” without any aspirations to provide the ultimate ground for the laws of logic, they are not committing any major fault. Psychologism is not mistaken if it simply confirms its own authority as a non-logical discipline, because it legitimately stays within the confines of its own discipline. However, as soon as psychologism interprets its own ground within the imperative of the universality of non-universal self-evidence, it will necessitate the ongoing  Ibid, 59.  Ibid, 61. 37  Ibid. 35 36

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process of self-­repetition. Once psychologism identifies the logical incompatibility of the contradictory judgments in one proposition with the psychological-existential impossibility of these judgments, it interprets the logical operation through the lens of psychological lawfulness. We can argue that this is an obvious case of self-­ exaggeration, because the same psychologistic characterizations which are found in the premises are evoked in the conclusion. The psychologistic inability to leave this circle is reflected in its self-perpetuation, the process of which is very carefully described by Husserl: I cannot believe that contradictories coexist: try as hard as I will, my attempt shivers itself upon an unconquerable, felt resistance. This incapacity for belief is arguably an inwardly existent experience: I see belief in contradictories to be impossible for me, as for any being that I must think of by analogy with myself … Experience shows that, once we have passed judgment on an issue, the attempt to give up the conviction now flooding us, and to embrace some opposed alternative, is vain, even if new thought-motives come up, retrospective doubts arise, old convictions at variance with our present ones haunt us, we are often assailed by an obscure ‘feeling’ of upsurging, embattled thought-masses. The ‘vain’ attempt, the ‘felt resistance’ etc., are individual experiences, limited as to person and time, bound up with definite, if not exactly specifiable circumstances. How could they provide inner evidence for a universal law which transcends persons and times? One ought not to confuse the assertoric inner evidence for the existence of a single experience, with the apodeictic inner evidence for the holding of a general law. Can the evidence for the existence of a feeling, which we interpreted as one of incapacity, provide the insight that what we now in fact do not bring off will be for ever denied us by law? One should note how impossible it is to specify the circumstances which play so essential a role in this situation.38

The intensification of the tension in psychological self-assurance confirms that the process of self-justification is a circular movement, whose particularism is crystalized (or even exaggerated) in its claim for universal validity. Husserl’s usage of the word “often” in “we are often assailed in the by an obscure ‘feeling’ of upsurging, embattled thought-masses” is made in direct reference to Lange. According to Lange, when a statement and its contradiction relate to the same object, we start to experience a feeling of doubt. Lange describes this doubt as a clear indication of error, which, even if disturbed, “springs once more from the familiar round of associated ideas, and lives on for as long as repeated assaults do not finally lay it down.”39 These repeated assaults, which elicit repeated acts of self-assurance, are rooted in and confirmed by experience. Lange describes the pulsation of self-­ assurance as the self-maintenance of the living organism. Psychological law, which is for Lange a destructive principle of natural progress, is “the sharp edge by which, in the course of experience, untenable combinations of ideas are destroyed while more tenable combinations survive.”40 The alleged objectivity of psychologistic self-confirmation, Lange openly admits, does not even need to thematize itself, but

 Ibid, 63.  Ibid. 65. 40  Ibid. 38 39

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it explicitly rests on its ‘non-reflective’ execution.41 However, the mere self-­ execution of psychologistic logical laws, a process commended by Lange, is for Husserl the source of the problem. The alleged ‘logical objectivity’, according to Husserl, is not secured by the self-unfolding of psychological laws – it is merely opened, serving as a testimony to the inescapable perspectivalism of the alleged psychologistic objectivity. Lange’s ‘confession’ above is not an ironical insight into the inability of psychologistic logic to secure the universality it promises. Quite the contrary: it is a statement of the psychologistic promotion of its own lack as a value. Husserl explicitly writes that it is possible “that multiplied testing by examples has engendered a lively empirical judgment to this effect, but the inner evidence that this always and necessarily happens we do not possess at all.”42 We should, however, briefly consider Lange’s notion of inner or inward evidence in his famous essay “The Standpoint of the Ideal” (from the History of Materialism) before we delve more into Husserl’s criticism. Lange, in this essay, carefully separates between certainty of scientific reasoning and inner evidentiality of religious experience, thereby complicating the notion of inner evidence. However, even though the notion of inward evidence in religious experience is distinguished from scientific-empirical self-evidentiality, it appears that it resembles the method of self-­ confirmation that we find in scientific investigations. Lange, in the search for the “form of the spiritual process”43 in religious practice and experience, suggests that the scientific search for harmony “between the necessary factors of knowledge, which are independent of our will”44 shares the same source with “the speculative mind of man”, which is a reflection of the human capacity for “free synthesis.”45 Lange observes that the speculative mind “still strives, like empirical research, after a unitary exhibition of data in their connection, but it lacks the guiding compulsion of the principles of experience.”46 He distinguishes between scientific reasoning based on empirical observations and speculative thinking, however, only to relate them in a peculiar way. The striving for a unitary and harmonious picture of the world that one finds in speculative reasoning is contrasted to the analytic rigor of scientific reasoning. Lange observes that, although the “optimism” of the speculative reasoning is always successfully challenged by the “pessimism” of scientific pursuit, the latter cannot unfold without “the natural ideal of the world which we carry with us.” 47 Scientific pessimism is capable of distorting the world picture only in contrast48 to the harmonious unity of speculative optimism, observes Lange. The optimistic philosopher “praises the harmony which he himself introduced into [the  Lange suggests that the mode of action of psychologistic justification is “objective, and it need not first be brought to consciousness in order to act” (ibid). 42  Ibid, 63. 43  Luft (ed), The Neokantian Reader, 72. 44  Ibid, 66. 45  Ibid. 46  Ibid, 67. 47  Ibid. 48  Ibid. 41

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world]”49 not only regardless of, but also in contrast to, the disharmony that is concealed50 by the world as it is observed through the lens of scientific investigations. The lawfulness that is prevalent in natural sciences is both contrasted to and ­complemented by the ideal regularities of “inward experience.”51 The rigor of scientific pessimism dissolves the harmonious picture of the world without affecting the ideal framework that underlies that picture. Lange describes the relationship between pessimism and optimism in the following manner: [Pessimism] cannot do away with the act that our mind is so constituted as ever anew to produce within itself a harmonious picture of the world: that here as everywhere it places its ideal beside and above reality, and recreates itself from the struggles and necessities of life by rising it thought to a world of all perfections … for even in the notion of the thing, that stands out as a unity from the infinite coherency of existence, there lies that subjective factor which, as a constituent part of our human reality, is quite in place, but beyond it only helps to fill up, on the analogy of our reality, the gap for that which is absolutely inconceivable, but which must at the same time be assumed (69) … Let us accustom ourselves, then, to attribute a higher worth than hitherto to the principle of the creative idea in itself, and apart from any correspondence with historical and scientific knowledge, but also without any falsification of them.52

The first and the last sentences of this passage almost resemble Husserl’s sensitivity for the mutual enclosure of the terms in relations, particularly within the context of the epistemological struggle between the ideal science of logic and psychologism. The terms are suggested to be not only “without any correspondence”, but also without any tendency to replace or compete with each other. What remains unclear in Lange’s analysis throughout this essay, however, is whether the relation between speculative and scientific, ideal and real, spiritual and empirical is one of interchangeability, complete replacement or co-existence. The second last sentence in the passage above suggests that, even though the realms of spiritual and scientific pursuit are strongly distinguished by the peculiarities of their respective practices, they seem to compete for a position of primacy. This means that, although the areas of religious (and, more broadly, speculative) and scientific experience are carefully separated, they either spring from the same underlying ideality or are above each other. The language of the struggle for primacy between the scientific and the religious is especially visible in Lange’s analysis of the importance of inner evidence for the development of religious ideas.53 Lange suggests that religious doctrines are praised above other knowledges because they do not “rest upon greater certainty, but upon a greater value, against which neither logic, nor touch of the hand, nor sight of the eye can avail, because for it the idea, as form and essence of the constitution of the soul, may be a more powerful object of longing, than the most

 Ibid.  Ibid, 69. 51  Ibid, 72. 52  Ibid. 53  Ibid, 71. 49 50

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real matter.”54 Lange observes that the “trustworthiness of religious truths,” or rather “the periphrastic expressions or confusions of an exalted mind for the stronger impulse of the heart towards the living source of edification”,55 is contrasted with the “sober knowledge which enriches the understanding with small change.”56 For this reason “really pious mind” has always valued “inward experience as an evidence of faith.”57 If we compare this analysis with Lange’s reflections upon logic we realize that the peculiarity of both psychologistic logic and religious experience is demonstrated by their ability to exclude and replace absolute logicism and scientific investigation. Clearly, Lange’s emphasis on the uniqueness of religious experience does not reduce this experience to the epistemological values that underlie the world of the natural sciences. However, Lange proposes that religious speculation should be treated with the same or with even deeper respect than the knowledge we attain through the natural sciences. Returning to Husserl’s criticism of psychologism, we notice that the “grave ambiguity in the word ‘impossibility’” (when speaking of mutually exclusive judgments participating in one proposition) is emphasized even more by the proponents of psychologistic logic. The psychologistic logicians support the self-evidentiality of the principle of contradiction by suggesting that the validity of this principle is to be found in the instinctive and immediate experience58 of the impossibility of two mutually contradictory judgments. Heymans, in the passage quoted by Husserl, suggests that any justification of the self-evidentiality of the principle of contradiction that fails to acknowledge the necessity that instinctive experience will encounter the problem of circularity: “If one seeks to show, independently of this fact [the instinctive experience], that only the non-contradiction may be asserted, one finds repeatedly that the proof always presupposes what it has to prove.”59 Heymans not only proclaims that psychologistic naturalism fortifies its ‘universality’ exclusively in the necessity of its tautology, but further suggests the universality of logical laws is to be ‘located’ in the particularism of psychologistic self-justification. The logical ideality of the law of contradiction (in psychologism) is reflected in the mental tendency of “nisus,”60 i.e., the natural effort of thought to move towards non-­ contradictory combination: The thought that is directed to truth no doubt strives to achieve thought combinations that are free from contradiction, but the value of these non-contradictory thought-combinations again plainly resides in the circumstance that the non-contradictory alone can be asserted.61

 Ibid. 72.  Ibid. 56  Ibid. 57  Ibid. 58  LI, vol. 1, 71. 59  Ibid. 60  Ibid. 61  Ibid. 54 55

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We realize that this quotation resembles the form of Husserl’s own criticism of psychologism. The only difference between Heymans and Husserl is that the former applauds what the latter finds dubious. Husserl, in a footnote to the passage just quoted, recalls Sigwart’s suggestion in Logische Studien that the factual suppression of contradiction is the only source of the ideality of logical rules. Husserl most certainly agrees with the form of Sigwart’s reflection, but he inverts the roles: the ideality of logical rules illuminates the factuality of the psychologistic definition of the contradiction principle. This means that psychologistic factuality serves as a ground for the possibility of logical laws through the demonstration of its own particularism. However, the psychologistic self-enclosure is (for Husserl) the way of further opening up the question of the logical lawfulness - not its conclusion. The self-repetition in the construction of the psychologistic argument for self-­ evidence is apparent in the concept of “irrefragable necessity.”62 Husserl suggests that the “felt compulsion”, which is obviously the result of one’s “irrefragable necessity” to hold the conclusion true if the premises are conceded, is, however, occasioned in the cases of both true and false syllogisms. Husserl maintains that “once it is felt,” it is “always the same.”63 The self-repetition of the psychologistic self-evidence of felt compulsion in the completion of the syllogism results in its own non-reflected exaggeration, while it simultaneously initiates the ideal ‘purification’ of the notion of self-evidence: This felt irrefragability so little proves real irrefragability that it may yield to the force of new reasons, even in the sense of correctly drawn conclusions recognized as such. It should therefore not be confused with the genuine logical necessity that pertains to every syllogistic inference, which means, and can mean, nothing beyond the insightfully knowledgeable (though not actually known by each judging person) validity of the syllogism, with its governance by idea law… Circumstances which cannot be specified exactly, such as certain ‘concentration of attention’, a certain ‘mental freshness’, a certain ‘preparedness’ etc., are favorable conditions for the emergence of a logical act of inference. The circumstance of conditions (in the strict sense), from which the inferential act of judgment follows with causal necessity, are entirely hidden from us … Syllogistic formulae do not have the empirical content men attribute to them: their true sense is plainest when we state them in the equivalent form of ideal incompatibilities, e.g. it is universally the case that two propositions having the forms ‘All M’s are X’ and ‘No P is M’ are not true unless the proposition having the form ‘Some X are not P’ is also true. And so in every case. Nothing is here said about a consciousness or the acts and circumstances of its judgments.64

Psychologism is incapable of thematically addressing the most important component of its self-justification: its experientially favorable conditions (while entrenching itself behind the notion of inner evidentiality). Whether we focus on the vivacity of anxiety, or on relief in the (in)compatibility of syllogisms, we observe that these psychological states can only repeat their own unfolding, precisely ‘in the face’ of ideal laws. The process of self-betrayal within the psychologistic search for  Ibid, 73.  Ibid. 64  Ibid, 73–74. 62 63

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the ultimate evidentiality, manifested in its own execution, can be paralleled with Levinas’ observation below: Being is not only itself, it escapes itself. Here is a person who is what he is; but he does not make us forget, does not absorb, cover over entirely the objects he holds and the way he holds them, his gestures, limbs, gaze, thought, skin, which escape from under the identity of his substance, which like a torn sack is unable to contain them. Thus a person bears on his face, alongside of its being with which he coincides, its own caricature, its picturesqueness. The picturesque is always to some extent a caricature.65

Levinas points out that one’s path of grasping one’s essence is betrayed by the endurance of that path. One’s coinciding with one’s own being already means one’s own exaggeration in the attempt to thematize this coincidence. This exaggeration, however, can turn only into cynicism – once the impossibility of its thematizing is recognized  – but it is nevertheless pursued under the pressure of that very impossibility. To return to psychologistic cynicism, we realize that the psychologistic notion of inner evidence capitalizes on the falsity of the division between the purity of the logical laws and the contingency of what is regulated by these laws. Psychologism is entirely disillusioned with the ‘objectivity’ of the pure science of logic, and it insists on the constitutiveness of experience for the principle of self-evidence. However, its insistence on the importance of experience does not rid psychologism of the very same problems surrounding the question of epistemological primacy that it ascribes to absolute logicism. To the contrary, the new source of theoretical purity is firmly fixed in the openly acknowledged psychological foundation of the pure science of logic. Psychologism promotes an inverted ideality of logical laws by carefully preserving the falsity of the division between logic and experience. In psychologism, the particular enjoys primacy over the universal, but it suffers from the inability to acknowledge its limitation and indebtedness to its other, thereby exercising the same sort of exclusivism it ascribes to logical absolutism. It safeguards the authority of logical laws by locating it in the world of mental phenomena. Husserl, by descriptively illuminating the psychologistic cynicism, contrarily supplies the opportunity for experience of the ideal laws and successfully transforms the division between logical absolutism and psychologism. The realm of the ideal science of logic is opened through its tedious ‘practice’ of the illumination of the psychologistic tautology. The ideal logical laws are not superior to psychologism, but they are inextricably connected to it as an exercise in its correction.

3  C  ircularity of Ideal Laws – The Irony of Purification as a Testimony to the Self-Assurance of Inner Evidence In this section I trace the strategy of circularity employed by Husserl in his justification of the ideal science of logic. As explained above, psychologistic logic strengthens its inherent particularism, according to Husserl, by failing to transparently 65

 Levinas, Collected Philosophical Papers, 6.

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incorporate it into its justification. The particularism of the psychological grounding of logical laws is important for psychologism so long as it remains the inverted universality of logical absolutism. Husserl’s ideal science of logic, to the contrary, secures the ‘universality’ of its ground through the explicit demonstration of its ‘particularization’, thereby exhibiting its deep indebtedness to psychologism. The ideal science of logic is constantly engaged in the regulation and critical inspection of the available theories of logic, particularly psychologistic logics that were current in Husserl’s day. When I speak of the ‘regulation’ engaged in by Husserl’s ideal science of logic, I mean its capacity to constantly inspect and point out the moments where psychologistic logic assumes the position of pure theory of logic by calling upon the certainty of its naturalistic background. The ideal science of logic is at the same time regulating, or “governing” the “theoretical connections” that it is itself establishing: This science would have the unique peculiarity of itself qua form, underlying the content of its laws; the elements and theoretical connections of which it, as a systematic unity of truths, consists, are governed by the very laws which form part of its theoretical content.66

The circularity of the ideal science of logic is not a mere psychologistic tautology, where self-repetition becomes a side-effect of the psychologistic tendency to merely subvert the universality of pure logic. Even if psychologistic particularism is acknowledged and cynically accorded positive value, the switching of the roles of psychological and abstract-logical (by means of which the obvious disadvantage of psychologistic justification is turned to its advantage) is clearly not recognized. Since it is experientially absurd to look for the universality of logical laws outside the laws of psychology, the psychological laws are selected as the only remaining choice. However, the ‘obviousness’ of the self-repetition is never further explored. For Husserl, on the other hand, the value of the ground of logical laws consists in their withdrawal from any attempt to frontally disengage with psychologism. This frontal attack on psychologism would lead towards the mere exchange of the primacy of the psychologism and the ideal science of logic with respect to the grounding of logical laws. Husserl reactivates psychologistic potential for the self-examination that never fully came to the fore in psychologism. The self-activity of the ideal science of logic is neither an undesired side-effect nor a cynicism of self-evidentiality, because it is realized in a constancy of its ‘staring at the face’ of psychologistic self-sufficiency. The tautology that is employed in the psychologistic justification is transformed into the circular dynamics of the realm of ideal lawfulness. The circular motion in the justification of the pure science of logic exaggerates the constitutive role of the perspectivalism in the psychologistic grounding of the logical laws. In the section 39 of Logical Investigations, Husserl criticizes Sigwart for his anthropologism in defining logical incompatibility. The anthropological-relativistic hypothesis is that there cannot be truth if its source is not confirmed through the 66

 LI 1, 107.

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mere evidentiality of the common human constitution. Husserl pressures this thesis, suggesting what it states is that there would be no truth if there were no human constitution. This means that this hypothesis is ideally-logically subverted by its own propositional appearance, because its thesis has the following form: “There is a truth that there is no truth.” Husserl suggests that the logical form of this proposition, as a negation of a valid statement, is one of the falsehood, and not of absurdity.67 However, if we follow the anthropologistic-relativistic argumentation, we observe that the absurdity of the hypothesis (the existential impossibility of truth) formulates the proposition of the thesis. The result is that “absurdity taints the whole hypothetical statement, since it connects an antecedent having a coherent (‘logically possible’) sense with an absurd (‘logically impossible’) consequent.”68 The skeptic, precisely because she insists on the self-evidentiality of the anthropomorphic ground of truth, ends up in the tautology discussed in the previous section: The notion that the non-existence of a certain constitution should be based on this very constitution, is a flat contradiction: that the truth-conditioning, and therefore existent constitution should condition the truth (among other truths) of its own non-existence. The absurdity is not greatly lessened if we substitute existence for non-existence, and apply our arguments, not to an imaginary species from a relativistic standpoint is possible, but to our human species. Our contradiction then vanishes, but not the absurdity associated with it. … The truth that such a constitution and such laws subsist must then have its real explanation in the fact of this subsistence: the principles of our explanation must be identical with such laws – again mere nonsense. Our constitution would be causa sui in respect of laws, which would cause themselves in virtue of themselves etc.69

Husserl transforms this psychologistic tautology into the circularity of the ideal laws by insisting on the ambiguity of the notion of the truth judgment. The logical ideality of judgment, by recalling its own purity, simply rules out the possibility where the truth is dependent on the differences between the agents of judgment. The truth for one species does not mean as same as the truth of that species, but it implies that the certain species (e.g. human) have an access “to the circle of truth.”70 The circle of truth is defined as the absolute authority to which one might or might not have an access, not vice versa. Husserl’s circularly provides the definition of the ideality of truth, while he simultaneously exaggerates the ‘reality’ which reflects this circularity: “what is true is absolutely, intrinsically true: truth is one and the same, whether men, or non-men, angels or gods apprehend and judge it.”71 Furthermore, Husserl emphasizes that the ideal unity of truth is unbreakably “set over against the real multiplicity of races, individuals and experiences.”72 Sigwart suggests, in his treatment of the ideality of logical truth, that even if we agree that knowing something as it is in itself impossible without the existence of  Ibid, 80.  Ibid. 69  Ibid, 81. 70  Ibid, 79. 71  Ibid. 72  Ibid. 67 68

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the producer of the idea of truth, we still have to possess a “consciousness of necessity.”73 This consciousness of necessity does not have to be hosted by the real-­ existing subject, but it can be asserted by “all other thinking beings, even purely hypothetical ones, endowed with the same nature as ourselves.”74 Husserl, ironically, turns this reflection upside down, and proposes the following; If there are no intelligent beings, if the natural order excludes them, of if they are, in a real sense, impossible – or if there are no beings capable of knowing certain classes of truths – then such ideal possibilities remain without fulfilling actuality. The apprehension, knowledge, bringing to consciousness of truth (or of certain classes of truths), is nowhere ever realized. Each truth, however, remains in itself what it is, it retains its ideal being: it does not hang somewhere in the void, bit is a case of validity in the timeless realm of Ideas.75

This passage is preceded by Husserl’s reflection that the idea of truth is given in the act of ideation based upon intuition.76 We witness from Husserl’s observation that the activity of ideality is performed as a certain demobilization of the activity of the consciousness of inner evidentiality. This does not mean that inner evidence is simply put out of play, but it is exaggerated in its own separation from the universality it replaces with its own self-evidentiality: “we are evidently clear as to truth’s unity and identity over against the dispersed multitude of concrete, compared cases of inwardly evident judgment”77. If we cannot consider ideal propositions within the context of the agent who can experientially confirm or actualize them, then we should see them through the lens of ideal lawfulness. The propositions are in this case simply without any ‘fulfilling actuality’. This means that even though the agent of thinking is presumably ruled out, the logical statements persist in their ideal possibility. The seeming existential impossibility of the reconciliation of two conflicting statements merely exemplifies a situation where the logical laws do have no psycho-physical or existential ‘realization’. The actualization of the judgment is not dismissed or ruled out as a psychological impossibility, because this actualization of the judgment is not categorially thematized within the frame of the ideal science of logic. However, the psycho-physical impossibility is reflected, so to speak, in an ideal-logical incompatibility. The circular grounding of the ideality of logical truth ends up in an exaggeration of the psychologistic notion of inner evidence suggesting the following: the fact that the truth of the proposition is ideal, because it is what it is, is entirely proportional to the fact that the inner evidence is not what it claims to be, because of what it is. We can suggest that the self-activity of the logical law does not only critically relate itself to the self-evidentiality of the psychological processes - it also stares at what it criticizes, so to speak. The source of Sigwart’s confidence, the appeal to the consciousness of necessity, is even more emphasized as it is pointed at by the  Ibid, 85.  Ibid. 75  Ibid, 86. 76  Ibid. 77  Ibid. 73 74

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f­ulfilling actuality of the ideal logical laws (or the lack thereof). According to Husserl, ideal meaning can be fulfilled or not, which means that, in the case of fulfilling actuality, the relation between meaning intention and meaning fulfillment is one of logical compatibility. The relation between meaning intention and meaning fulfillment is one of incompatibility in the case where the ideal meaning is not actualized. This insight radically challenges the notions of existential possibility (where the correspondence between meaning intention and meaning fulfillment is psychologically confirmed) and existential impossibility (the psychological impossibility for the two contradictory judgments to ‘exist’ in one judgment). The intuition of the ideality of truth proceeds in its unbridgeable difference from the necessity of inner evidence. We can even suggest that the self-activity of the ideal is measured by the full accomplishment of the self-evidentiality of the psychologistic real. When Husserl suggests that the logical concept can be meant but not “produced”78 by our thought, he most certainly does not dismiss Sigwarts’s view of the universal as something inward that depends “on the inner power of our thought.”79 Husserl does not challenge Sigwart’s claim about the necessity of inner evidence, simply because the psychologistic concept of truth is not an ideal one. The “what” of the psychological content, the ideality of the concept itself, further emphasizes that the “conceptual presentation as a subjective act” has “this or that psychological content.”80 We observe that the persistence of the circularity of logical truth strengthens its difference from tautology by openly recognizing the disciplinary importance of psychologism. Psychologism, to the contrary, unwillingly necessitates the importance of the ideal science of logic by insisting on its own self-sufficiency of its own tautology. We can follow Andre de Muralt in The Idea of Phenomenology: Husserlian Exemplarism and suggest that the realm of the ideal, in fact, exemplifies the realm of facticity (and vice versa) through its own persistence. For example, in the analyses of the relationship between fact and essence (in reference to Husserl’s Ideas 1) de Muralt suggests that both fact and eidos stand in a relationship of fissure, which is at the same time a relationship of their radical community.81 This relationship is developmental, because the facticity ‘reaches’ its fullness in the process of its asymptotic progression towards the eidos. Conversely, the absoluteness of the essence (as a measure of facticity) is completed through its predisposition to be a measure of facts.82  Ibid, 87.  Ibid. 80  Ibid. 81  This community, however, is embodied in the fact that “essence involves no factical element” [de Muralt, Idea of Phenomenology: Husserlian Exemplarism, 33]. 82  De Muralt further writes: “There is no measure without something being measured, and the eidos turns out to be the measure of the individual thing. Continuity is thus reestablished, but in the reverse direction. Whereas the fact was just seen to refer to the eidos as its essential type, here the eidos measures the fact. Thus, it is important to define the points of view from which the fissure appears and from which unity is reestablished” (ibid, 34). 78 79

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Further, de Muralt insists that the traditional logic and the transcendental logic are directly exemplified through each other. Their relationship is not to be found in their mutual confirmation, reflection, reconciliation or causal dependency. To the contrary, the absolute completion of one realm is visible and accessible to us only through the ‘intensification’ of another: He [Husserl] motivates transcendental logic as the intentional telos of traditional logic; and conversely, traditional logic is motivated as the factical example is motivated, in the last analysis, by the ideal exemplar, as the embryonic form is justified in the full-blown form… It is therefore to be expected that Husserlian logic would integrate this first logic. On the one hand, it does so by maintaining traditional logic within its proper limits and consequentially retaining what is valid in it. On the other hand, it does so by taking it as point of departure for a constitutive exemplary criticism which is intended to elucidate the latent intentional sense of its immanent structures and to show its necessary outcome in a transcendental logic.83

On this account, purification of the realm of transcendental logic is, therefore, already implied by the rigorous delineation of its formal-logical counterpart. The ultimate perfection of traditional logic calls for the crisis of its own expansion, which is embodied in the possibility of (its) ideal. Conversely, the transcendental-­ logical ideal, because it is destined to be purified, is constantly with an eye on its contingent counterpart. It is only because ideal and factual, or pure and contingent are necessarily limited in the endlessness of their expansion that they can mutually ‘ground’ each other. The ideal incompatibility of the judgment firmly maintains its heterogeneity with the psychological non-performability of the act of judgment, “even if the latter were to go with the former in all human cases, and the acceptance of absurdities were ruled out by natural laws.”84 It is crucial to mention that Husserl’s attack is directed not only to the psychologistic concept of inner evidentiality, but also to the anti-­ psychologistic position on the objectivity of truth. Husserl uses the notion of logical absolutism mostly in reference to the rationalist understanding of logic (such as in Leibniz, for example), and to Kantian logical formalism as it is manifested in his Logic. The strategic ‘cooperation’ between the ideality of logical laws and psychologistic inner evidentiality manifests itself through their heterogeneity. The mutuality between the self-regulation of the ideal and the tautology of the mental illuminates the contradiction in the seeming confrontation between logical absolutism and psychologism. Psychologism and logical absolutism come together through their mutual refutation in their unanimous agreement about the exclusionary nature of the process of purification. Husserl suggests that the purification of logic against the contingency of psychologism results in the dependence of the former on the latter, because the former accepts the internal-external, ideal-real or objective-­ subjective dualisms of the latter. In other words, the anti-psychologist notion of ideal is confirmed through its formal generalization against psychologistic particularism. The problem for Husserl is that both psychologism and anti-psychologism 83 84

 Ibid, 102.  LI, vol.1, 93.

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secure the self-evidentiality of truth through its formal universality, without realizing that the abstract generalization will always be conceptually indebted to what it excludes, namely to the concrete particularization. The ideal science of logic is not merely pure so to speak: it can confront the contingent, but it is contingent in its openly admitted relationship with psychologism, so it can achieve its purity. To the contrary, for the anti-psychologists, the main role of the science of logic (its “essence”85 as Husserl points out) is a normative one. The difference between the science of logic and psychologism lies in fact that the science of logic, contrary to psychologism, has a regulatory role. The purity of the science of logic is achieved through its relation to the experience from which it was instructed to stay away. Husserl employs the method of descriptive analysis, where he entirely transforms the polarity: contingency of experience – purity of its regulation. Ideal laws are delivered by the very structure of experience, not beyond it or outside of it. Further, the experience does not appear as merely contingent, because it urges the need for its ideal purification through its own unfolding, through the crystallization of the question of its own self-evidentiality. The so-called phenomenological description in Husserl’s early texts is the initial form of bracketing, where the bracketed term and the term that does the bracketing are treated beyond the process of the hierarchical prioritizing. Husserl uses the example of the pure arithmetic law that the product of the sum and the difference of two numbers is the difference of their squares. If we consider this law in its normative-objective sense, this means that the law has the following form: “To arrive at the product of the sum and difference of two numbers, one should find the difference of their squares.”86 This poses a serious problem, because this proposition assumes the form of the rule for the proper thought operation, instead of a logical law. Husserl draws a direct parallel with the anti-psychologistic definition of the ideal science of logic, which, being a law of thought, fails to differentiate between the “proper content” of the logical laws and “their practical application.”87 The science of logic becomes the “methodology of the specifically human acquisition of knowledge”88 whether it is being treated as the science of the rules of correct judgment or as the science of the justification of the meaningful possibility. The pure science of logic, to the contrary, must abandon the falsity of the dualism of anti-psychologism – psychologism by not merely ignoring what it is supposed to be purified from. Husserl wonders, already in dealing with the anti-psychologists’ view of logic as a normative discipline, whether it is possible to see ideal logic’s normative capacities as a reflection of “the specific meaning content which gives them [logical laws] a natural right to regulate our thought.”89 He inverts the position where logic gains its universality through the inner evidentiality  Ibid, 102.  Ibid. 87  Ibid. 88  Ibid, 103. 89  Ibid, 102. 85 86

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of its capacity to regulate thoughts and suggests that the self-evidence of logic as a regulatory power, by its own necessity, points to the type of universality which is entirely distinct from it: That science which deals with all sciences in respect of their form, should eo ipso deal with itself, may sound paradoxical, but involves no inner conflict. The simplest example will make this clear. The law of contradiction governs all truth, and since it is itself truth, governs itself. To realize what such self-government means one needs only apply the law of contradiction to itself: the resultant proposition is an obvious truism, having none of the marks of the remarkable or the questionable. This is invariably the case where pure logic is used to regulate itself.90

The ideal science of logic does not appear prior to psychology in order to regulate it, but it regulates itself so it can point out the self-defeat of psychologism in its pursuit for subverted (or non-universal) universality. The pure science of logic secures its own realm not through the safety of its universal-objective ‘fixity’ (in contrast to the psychologistic ‘flux’), but through the deliberate dynamics of its self-­ repetition. The pure science of logic, through the constancy of its self-encircling, transforms the absolutist-logical notion of the eternity of logical laws into their a-temporality. Husserl explicitly suggests that the eternity of logical laws means that the judgments bounded by them are “without regard to time and circumstances.”91 If we treat eternity outside the context of the objective time flow (therefore ‘atemporally’), we easily avoid using the terminology generated within the: psychologistic concreteness  – absolutist-logical universality. The constancy of circularity of logical laws is not affected whatsoever by the fact that the ideality of logical laws can be psychologistically re-articulated. Husserl sarcastically remarks that the “relation to mental creatures plainly puts no restriction upon universality: norms for judgments bind judging beings, not stones.”92 The logical absolutists see the above-­ mentioned eternity as opposed to the temporality of psychologism, because they see the logical laws as “intrinsically and essentially prescriptive.”93 The purity of logical laws, however, can be applied normatively, but this normativity cannot be used as a tool for the interpretation of these laws. Furthermore, the logical laws can be normative because their self-referential ‘ideality’ makes them destined to regulate the realm of ‘reality’. Husserl draws an important distinction between the formal-­ logical approach to logical laws and their pure-ideal counterpart: the former focuses on the prescriptive nature of logical laws, whereas the latter focuses on the specific content of these laws: To the extent that formal logicians, I their talk of normative laws, were concerned with this purely conceptual, a priori character, their arguments hit on a point that was undoubtedly correct. But they overlooked the theoretical character of the laws of pure logic, they failed to recognize the difference between theoretical laws destined by their content to the ­regulation of cognition, and normative laws which are intrinsically and essentially prescrip Ibid, 104.  Ibid, 93. 92  Ibid. 93  Ibid. 106. 90 91

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V. Grahovac tive… The repugnancy consists basically in the fact that propositions relating to mere form (i.e. the conceptual elements of scientific theory as such) were to be deduced from propositions having a wholly heterogeneous content. In the case of primitive principles like the law of contradiction, the modus ponens etc., this repugnancy would plainly amount to a circle in so far as the deduction of these principles would involve steps that presupposed them – not in the form of premises, but in the form of deductive principles upon whose validity the sense and validity of the deduction depends. One could, in this respect, speak of reflective circle, as against the usual, direct circulus in demonstrando, where premises and conclusion overlap. Of all sciences only pure logic escapes such objections, since its premises are homogenous in respect of their objects with the conclusions they establish. Pure logic further escapes circularity in that, in a given deduction, it never proves principles that every deduction presupposes, but that it simply lays them down as axioms at the summit of all its deductions. Pure logic therefore, has the extraordinarily difficult task of analytically ascending to such axioms as are indispensable starting-point of deduction, and are also irreducible to one another without a direct or a reflective circle, and then constructing and arranging a deduction for the theorems of logic – of which the rules of the syllogism form a small part – so that at each step, not only the premises, but also the principles of our deductive transitions, are neither among our axioms, or among previously proven theorems.94

The extraordinary difficulty of the ideal science of logic consists not so much in dismissing or ruling out of both psychologism and formal logic, but in finding appropriate modes to challenge the above-mentioned approaches to logic, thereby fully disclosing their inherent circularity. The phenomenological bracketing of both psychologism and formal logic happens neither through the replication of nor through the expansion upon their methods, but through the continual demonstration of the difference between the ideal science of logic and its counterparts. This difference is, as Husserl suggests, already necessitated, but not taken in its full scope, by psychologism and formal logic. Therefore Husserl suggests that the ideal laws of logic are “destined by their content” to have a relation of regulation to cognition, a relation that is already acknowledged, but not respected, so to speak, by psychologism. This process of the continual re-assertion of phenomenological reduction, in its capacity to point out psychologistic tautology, is what I have been referring to as the circularity of the ideal science of logic. Husserl clearly critically engages with the notion of circular movement in argumentation. However, his employment of such phrases as the simple “laying down” of ideal laws, their ipseity and their self-­ regulation in the face of psychologistic self-reference, suggests that the psychologistic staticism is fully revealed through the peculiar self-movement of the ideal science of logic.

 Ibid, 106–107. For psychologists, to the contrary, the logical laws are normative because they claim their ideality only through their capacity to regulate what they are allegedly purified from. 94

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4  Husserl’s challenge to the Self-Assurance of Reason The persistence of the critical relation of pure science of logic towards psychologism, as the exaggeration of the latter through the self-regulation of the former, secures, in fact, the fixity of its epistemological position. The emphasis on the conscious particularism of the logical claim for universality clearly remains a pivotal concern for Husserl in the 1905–1907 lectures on Logic. The purified epistemology openly states its reservation regarding the formalism of the polarity between truthfulness and falsity, and introduces itself as a self-performance: In this investigation, I naturally constantly realize cognitions. It is indeed obvious and grounded in the essence of knowledge that knowledge is needed to shed light on the essence of knowledge. We already recently said that it would be nonsense to see some limitation of human knowledge in this, since any, even divine, knowledge can only determine the universal essence of knowledge in acts of knowledge, and that consequently any theory of knowledge, even knowledge Absolute Spirit, is self-referential. . . Of course, the acts of cognition, the acts of presenting, of judging, of conceptual fixing and determining in which the investigation itself operates, in which it itself is constituted, and which are not objects for it, are performed cognitive acts, not critically analyzed and tested… Reflection is one of the absolutely evident basic facts of knowledge, and the absolute certainty of the existence of actual phenomena of reflection provides the field and everything we need for the solution of the problems. Implied in the nature of the problem is that it must be realized purely within the sphere of absolutely, indubitable givens, of givens that must be shown and seen as absolute there.95

The expression ‘the constant realization of knowledge’ can be also read as the constant performance of knowledge: “In dieser Untersuchung vollziehe ich natürlich immerfort Erkenntnisse.”96. The knowledge that sheds light on knowledge is possible only as an activity, or as the constancy of the acts of knowledge (vollzogene Erkenntnisakte). The acts of cognition are literally carried out. These acts, however, must be performed, not simply analytically fixed and analyzed. The phenomena of reflection are actual because their givenness arises only within, and as, the act of their showing themselves. We can certainly endorse Peter Varga’s attempt in “Psychologism as Positive Heritage of Husserl’s Phenomenological Philosophy” to locate the similarity between Nelson and Husserl in their ability to establish the “recognition of the necessary self-referential character (Rückbeziehung) and circularity of any justification.”97 However, the final result of the insight into the circularity of any justification is significantly different in these authors. While Nelson’s depiction of circularity remains within the realm of the careful psychological delineation of the self-assurance of reason, Husserl’s circularity of the ideal science of logic, is ‘secured’ through the process of its self-regulation.  Husserl, Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge: Lectures 1906/07, 195–196.  Husserl, Einleitung in die Logik und Erkenntnistheorie: Vorlesungen 1906/07, 199. For this purpose, the better translation of the word Erkenntnis would be cognition, not knowledge, especially as it captures the notion of mobility that is indicated in the understanding of the knowledge or cognition as a performance. 97  Varga, “Psychology as Positive Heritage of Husserl’s Phenomenological Philosophy”, 126. 95 96

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Peter Varga also suggests in that same essay that the notion of Selbstvertrauen der Vernunft (self-assurance or self-reliance of reason) in Lotze and Nelson resembles Husserl’s treatment of circularity: However, what is more important for our purposes is the circularity that Lotze is trying to counter with resorting to the Selbstvertrauen der Vernunft. In both cases this is an inherent structure that involves presuppositions: the justification of our knowledge presupposes the knowledge itself, and the basis for the refutation of scepticism is always contained in what scepticism doubts. By introducing the Selbstvertrauen der Vernunft, Lotze intends to cut through these circularities… Husserl rejects the principle of Selbstvertrauen der Vernunft. It is clear from what we have learnt about his knowledge of this principle above and it is also consistent with his opinion of Lotze’s epistemology: Just like his relation to Bolzano, Husserl claims that he had learnt much from Lotze, but he always despised Lotze’s Epistemology … However, it is one thing to reject a notion and it is another to solve the underlying philosophical challenge that the rejected notion was supposed to resolve. Thus Husserl has to address the problem of the circular presuppositions. This issue is quite pressing for Husserl, as exactly before he involved (and then rejected) the “Hypothese des berechtigten ‘Selbstvertrauen der Vernunft’“, he had to face a regress endangering his phenomenological investigation… Nelson’s earnest attempts to work out the foundational implications of the notion of Selbstvertrauen der Vernunft could have contributed to the methodology of Husserl’s phenomenology. A particular example of the methodological implications that could have been relevant for Husserl’s phenomenology is Nelson’s recognition of the necessary self-referential character (Rückbeziehung) and circularity of any justification – which is exactly the context that first led Husserl to consider the notion of the Selbstvertrauen der Vernunft.98

Varga acknowledges the differences between these thinkers in their understanding of circularity, but he notes that they bear a similarity to Husserl either in their reaction against skepticism (Lotze) or in their insistence on the epistemological status of the Selbstvertrauen der Vernunft (Nelson). He observes that for Leonard Nelson, who was Husserl’s contemporary and a proponent of the psychologistic justification of logical laws, Husserl was yet another stern anti-psychologist. Nelson describes both Husserl’s and Frege’s criticisms of psychologism as “examples of the ‘dogmatic premises’ in the antipsychologistic arguments.”99 He sees a major problem in Husserl’s inability to discern a ‘modal difference’ between psychologistic and logical judgments,100, and he proposes the following solution to this prob Varga, “Psychology as Positive Heritage of Husserl’s Phenomenological Philosophy”, 111–112, 126. 99  Ibid, 113. 100  Varga quotes Nelson: 98

“Aber dieses Argument träfe nur den, der die logischen Sätze aus psychologischen beweisen wollte; denn allerdings würde ein solcher Beweisversuch, da er die psychologischen Sätze als Gründe der logischen in Anspruch nehmen müßte, an der modalischen Ungleichartigkeit der angeblichen Prämissen und Schlußsätze scheitern. Damit ist jedoch die Möglichkeit einer psychologischen Begründung der logischen Grundsätze noch keineswegs ausgeschlossen. [...] Wohl aber gibt es eine kritische Deduktion der logischen Grundsätze, und diese ist, da sie den Grund der zu begründenden Sätze nicht enthält, sehr wohl auf psychologischem Wege möglich.” (ibid, 116).

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lem: the fact that logical laws can be justified psychologistically does not mean that they should be exclusively justified in that way. Nelson suggests that logical laws are not grounded on psychologistic premises, but they are derived through from deduction from logical principles. He calls the deduction of these principles a psychological deduction, and justifies it with the power of reason to assure itself (Selbsvertrauen der Vernunft).101 In other words, he believes he avoids psychologism through the careful differentiation of the jurisdiction of logical deduction from psychologistic justification, although does still claim that the self-assurance of reason lies in the background of the ideality of logical laws. Husserl, for Nelson, remains caught up in anti-psychologistic formalism when he criticizes psychological foundation of logical laws for being circular. The formal fallacy of psychologism, according to anti-psychologists, maintains that if logical laws are based on psychological conditions, then they bear the properties of psychological laws.102The fact that logical laws are grounded in the Selbstvertrauen der Vernunft concerns a principle that needs no further legitimation. The Selbstvertrauen der Vernunft, Nelson suggests, “figuriert also nur als Obersatz in der logischen Form der Deduktion.”103 We must secure its subsets, Nelson suggests, in other possible ways. Nelson accuses Husserl of being a craftsman of theory-less description, although he acknowledges that the text of Logical Investigations is different from the Prolegomena and that it brings Husserl into proximity with psychologism.104 He believes that Husserl reduces the critique of logical absolutism to a mere description,105 where each phenomenological statement is “already an application of the founding principles on the mere material of inner perception.”106 Varga observes that Nelson identifies Husserl’s notion of categorial intuition with intellectual intuition. However, if we look at the Sixth Logical Investigation, we see that Husserl not only differentiates between sensuous and categorial intuition, but he also recognizes no relation of epistemological hierarchy between them. Husserl maintains that categorial intuition merely documents what is obtained by sensuous intuition. Husserl’s  Nelson writes the following: “Dies Selbstvertrauen der Vernunft ist das allgemeine Prinzip, das die psychologischen Ableitungen aus der Theorie der Vernunft zur kritischen Deduktionen macht, d. h. das es uns ermöglicht, in der inneren Erfahrung einen Leitfaden für die systematische Begründung der Philosophie zu finden” (ibid, 115). 102  Ibid. 103  “Denn [der Grundsatz des Selbstvertrauens der Vernunft] enthält die Legitimation aller Sätze, die ihren Ursprung in der reinen Vernunft und mithin sich selbst als metaphysische Grundsätze erweisen können. Welche Sätze aber aus reiner Vernunft entspringen, darüber vermag er nichts auszusagen. Er figuriert also nur als Obersatz in der logischen Form der Deduktion. Ihre Untersätze müssen wir uns auf anderen Wegen versichern.” (Ibid, 115). 104  Ibid. 105  Ibid, 122. 106  Ibid. This is the full text of Nelson’s observation as quoted by Varga: “… ob eine solche Einschränkung überhaupt durchführbar ist, ob nicht vielmehr jeder Satz der Phänomenologie bereits eine Anwendung der zu ‘fundierenden’ Gesetzte auf das bloße Material der inneren Wahrnehmung einschließt, und dies um so mehr, wenn die Phänomenologie nicht nur eine ‘Betrachtung’, sondern auch eine ‘Analyse’, ‘Vergleichung’ und ‘Unterscheidung’ der Erkenntnisakte enthalten soll.” 101

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stark differentiation between sensuous and categorial intuition calls attention to the distance between the phenomenological definition of categorial intuition and its psychologistic counterpart: Where general thoughts find fulfilment in intuition, certain new acts are built on our percepts and other appearances of like order, acts related quite differently to our appearing object from the intuitions which constitute it. This difference in mode of relation is expressed by the perspicuous turn of phrase employed above: that the intuited object is not here itself the thing meant, but serves only as an elucidatory example of our true general meaning. But if expressive acts conform to these differences, their significative intention will not move towards what is to be intuitively presented, but towards what is universal, what is merely documented in intuition. Where this new intention is adequately fulfilled by an underlying intuition, it reveals its own objective possibility (or the possibi1ity or ‘reality’ of the universal)107

It is important to notice that even the word ‘reality’ is placed within quotation marks, and the reality of the universal counts as the ‘universality’ of the psychologistic mental reality. If Husserl had followed Nelson, Varga remarks, he would have avoided to accuse him for working with (psychological) premise and (logical) conclusion. Nelson’s Husserl would be able to guarantee the integrity of logical laws by grounding them logically; this grounding would have been secured through inner perception of a “purely intellectual nature.”108 Varga suggests that, although Nelson dismisses Husserl’s notion of categorial intuition, Nelson’s notion of psychologistic deduction seems to resemble what he criticizes in Husserl. This similarity with Husserl can be located even in Nelson’s observation: Was Husserl von der psychologischen Kritik noch trennt, ist lediglich der Umstand, daß bei ihm der Begriff der Deduktion fehlt und daß ihm infolgedessen in Ermangelung einer dem Beweise koordinierten Begründungsmethode die bloße Berufung auf die innere Wahrnehmung übrigbleibt.109

Although we can see the formal similarity between Nelson’s psychological deduction and Husserl’s ‘mere calling upon internal perception’ (all the dubiousness of this term aside), we should notice nevertheless that Husserl’s calling upon the mereness of internal perception comes precisely as the unfolding of a psychologistic lack in its own foundation. Varga points out that Nelson should regard phenomenological circularity110 not as a problem, but as a process, and one that resembles Nelson’s own conception of the self-assurance of reason. He even suggests that “Nelson’s theory could have contributed to a methodological problem that Husserl himself faced” 111 had not Husserl misunderstood it.  LI 2, 275.  Ibid, 121. 109  Ibid. 110  Varga makes the following remark on the similarity between Nelson and Husserl: “However, he has also a profound remark coupled to this misunderstanding, namely that “every sentence of the phenomenology already consist of an application of the laws that are supposed to be justified” (Varga, “Psychology as Positive Heritage of Husserl’s Phenomenological Philosophy”, 122). 111  Ibid. 107 108

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Although both Husserl and Nelson clearly indicate the importance of circularity, they have in mind two substantially different processes. Nelson’s self-assurance of reason operates in a manner that disallows description or analysis by both naïve descriptive psychologism and abstract anti-psychologism. Husserl’s circularity, on the other hand, achieves its full power only as a self-regulating activity that unfolds as the exaggeration of psychologism. As I mentioned earlier, the circularity of the ideal science of logic deliberately resembles the psychological tautology in order to disclose the inability of psychologism to offer the universality it promises. The seemingly self-evidential security of the psychologistic grounding of logical laws delivers the dynamics of the internal struggle taking place within the purification process itself. What is purified is, by the necessity of its own unfolding, already immersed in what it is critically addressed by it. The inversion and the transformation of the roles of purity and contingency, movement and fixity, and even immanence and transcendence, are crucial not only for Husserl’s construction of phenomenological reduction, but also for some of the key concepts and strategies in the work of Levinas (the self-inversion of the notions of enjoyment and responsibility), Heidegger (the concept of being-towards-death as well as the inherently inverted structure of the forgetfulness of being), Patočka (the permeability of the eidos-facticity, I-thou, self-world poles), Merleau-Ponty (the transformation of the seer-visible polarity into the intertwinement of the poles). Nelson defines psychological deduction as a reflexive activity of the self-­ assurance of reason, as a “direct knowledge of the pure reason."112 The peculiarity of the psychological deduction is echoed in the justification of metaphysical principles, which can be neither proven (because then they wouldn’t be principles) or demonstrated (because then they wouldn’t be metaphysical).113 The major difference between Husserl and Nelson lies precisely in Husserl’s open recognition of the responsive character of the circularity of ideal laws, which, Nelson seems entirely to ignore. This is why Husserl, as Varga recalls, observes that the formality of Nelson’s argument has “a genuine philosophical shortcomings.”114 It is interesting that Husserl locates Nelson’s major weaknesses, besides his being a “logic-head,”115,

 Ibid, 114.  “Wie sollen wir aber die metaphysischen Grundsätze begründen? Beweisen können wir sie nicht; denn sonst wären sie keine Grundsätze. Sie können aber auch nicht demonstriert werden; denn sonst wäre sie nicht metaphysisch. Wir nennen ihre Begründungsweise Deduktion”(ibid). 114  Ibid, 124. Varga quotes Husserl’s remarks on Nelson: “Allerdings zeigt sich N bisher nur als ein eminenter ‘logischer Kopf’, d.h. ausgezeichnet ist er in der formalen Stringenz seiner Beweisführungen, sowie im Aufspüren von Inconsequenzen, Aequivocationen, Widersprüchen auf Seiten der kritisierten Autoren. Seine Schwäche sehe ich in dem, was allen u[nd] im echten Sinne Originalität ausmacht, in der Intuition: es fehlt, bisher wenigstens, der habitus der sich an den Sachen selbst, szs in directem Schauen u[nd] Analysieren bethätigenden Forschung. Vielleicht erklärt sich dieser Mangel aus der einseitig polemischen Bethätigung N. Es scheint mir nicht ausgeschlossen, daß er sich noch zu einem in höherem Sinne selbstständigen Denker entwickle” (ibid). 115  Ibid. 112 113

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in his lack of a “true sense of originality, of intuition.”116 According to Husserl, at the very least Nelson lacks habituality “towards the things themselves”117, which is defined as a direct looking at the investigated phenomena. Although we can treat this observation merely as a figure of speech, it is indicative for the purpose of the argument introduced in this text that Husserl confronts Nelson’s sophisticated distinction-­making formality with the capacity of phenomenological investigation to stare at what it critically analyzes. Varga points out the importance of the concept of the self-assurance of reason already in the writings of Hermann Lotze. Lotze, as distinct from Nelson, does not develop a sophisticated conceptual network of justification of the self-assurance of reason, but he openly promotes its self-reference as a value. Varga believes in fact that Lotze’s arguments about the self-assurance of reason are similar to the circularity characterizing the arguments employed by Husserl. Varga also proposes that Lotze was the one who provided Husserl with “a form of epistemological foundational argument that is summarized by the phrase ‘Selbstvertrauen der Vernunft.’”118 For Lotze, the self-assurance of reason is designed as an anti-skeptical device and is rooted in the fact that “our knowledge always remains our subjective condition, which depends on the various ways of the nature of our reason and which is codetermined, for the most part, by the nature of the things that effect us.”119 Varga quotes Lotze’s position on the self-assurance of reason from the article “Philosophy in the last Forty Years”, where Lotze states that reason’s motives for decision are “nothing but these same necessary principles upon which it is to decide.”120 Lotze proudly concludes that “the confidence of reason in itself has inevitably lain at the basis of all philosophical investigations, even of those which relate to the determination of its own truthfulness.”121 The pride that Lotze takes in the self-assurance, or in the inner evidence of reason, is a result of his explicit confrontation with skepticism. Lotze states in the third book of his Logic that the skepticism he is trying to refute “is not driven to doubt through any special cause residing in the nature of its subject-matter”, but it “simply looks upon the possibility of raising doubt as ground sufficient for actually raising it.”122 It seems as we can almost read into these lines Husserl’s own urge for the circularity of ideal logical laws, which he finds is lacking in inner evidence. Further, Lotze’s insight into the inherent deafness of skepticism towards any possible demonstration by which it is challenged, seems to resemble Husserl’s observation of the tautology in psychologism, as described earlier in this article. However, if we look  Ibid.  Ibid. 118  Ibid, 106. 119  Ibid, 109. 120  Ibid, 108. 121  Ibid, 109. 122  Lotze, Logic in Three Books: Of Thought, Of Investigation and Of Knowledge, 179. 116 117

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at the reflection below, we realize that Lotze’s Selbstvertrauen der Vernunft is missing what it unintentionally already proposes through its self-purification. It misses, namely, to acknowledge the necessity of its relational indebtedness to skepticism: For every argument which can be brought into the field against it [skepticism] can only rest upon the self-evidence and necessity with which it is thought, and must belong therefore to that sphere of necessities of thought as to which the old barren question can always be renewed to infinity, whether after all things may not be in reality quite otherwise than thought makes them … In the presence of this skeptical disposition we should fall back for the purpose of science upon a principle from which in the ordinary affairs of life our opponent himself cannot escape and does not shrink, - faith in reason. We should continue to regard a necessity of thought as true until through the conclusions which it itself produces it proves itself to be no such thing, and compels us to declare it a ‘show of being’ only, which in such case would be not entirely a vain show but an appearance standing in a definable relation to the truth with which it can no longer be identified. This attitude towards the skeptic is that with which we find observed in life, for through the world’s history this groundless skepticism has always reappeared from time to time, but as often as it has made its appearance men have simply turned their backs upon it.123

The skeptical tautology, precisely because of its persistence, is challenged by the self-assurance of reason. The Selbstvertrauen der Vernunft requires nothing but the mere presence of the skeptical disposition to fall back to itself. We almost seem to witness a similarity between Husserl’s own circularity and the reflection above. Varga insightfully observes that “the justification of our knowledge presupposes the knowledge itself, and the basis for the refutation of skepticism is always contained in what skepticism doubts.”124 It almost seems we can accept Varga’s claim regarding Husserl’s sensitivity for circular argumentation, which he inherited from Lotze. However, the remaining part of the quotation above suggests that Lotze’s notion of the self-assurance of reason has a tendency toward epistemological fixity, where the contingency of the skeptical position would be annihilated. Lotze uses the temporal designation “until” in “We should continue to regard a necessity of thought as true until through the conclusions which it itself produces it proves itself to be no such thing” , thereby suggesting finality in the break between skeptical self-justification and the self-assurance of reason. The process of mutual necessitation between pure and contingent, which we witness in Husserl, is never given importance in Lotze’s analyses, particularly because of the fact that the self-assurance of reason stands in a “definable relation to truth, with which it can no longer be identified.”125 The purity of the self-assurance of reason is exhibited in its definite decision to dismiss the skeptical tautologies through the brute power of its self-confidence. To the contrary, Husserl’s enthusiasm about the self-regulation of the ideal science of logic is sparked by constant emphasis on the contingency of inner evidence. Husserl’s observation about the co-constitution of natural knowledge and epistemological  Ibid, 179, 181.  Varga, “Psychology as Positive Herritage of Husserl’s Phenomenological Philosophy”, 111. 125  Lotze, Logic in Three Books: Of Thought, Of Investigation and Of Knowledge, 181. 123 124

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knowledge exemplifies the inherent capacity of the ideal laws of logic to relate to what they ought to distance themselves from: Certainly, needed too is reflection upon the investigation in terms of performed investigation. Besides the elucidation of natural knowledge, an elucidation of epistemological knowledge is needed too, deliberation as to whether it itself yields new cognitive occurrences and whether the elucidations of the first level already include everything permitting elucidation of occurrences on the second level.126

Varga, contrary to what we have claimed, sees the reflection above as a sign of Husserl’s concern that the phenomenological method itself can be endangered by circular regress. Husserl, as I mentioned earlier, acknowledges the importance of the psychologistic objections directed at the potential circularity of the pure science of logic. I believe, however, that this passage is not the best example of that acknowledgment. Husserl, precisely in this passage, suggests that it is impossible for one to secure the theoretical elucidation of epistemological knowledge without being aware that the question of its importance and legitimacy is already necessitated by the elucidatory work within the constraints of the natural sciences. Varga notes that Husserl does not define the above-mentioned epistemological elucidation he promises, suggesting that Husserl continues his investigation with “the familiar topic of the relationship between psychology and epistemology.”127 I suggest, however, that the importance of circularity in the ideal science of logic can be fully grasped precisely through the investigation of the immanent mutuality obtaining between epistemological and psychological investigations. The passage Varga quoted is preceded by Husserl’s reflection that “the cognitive acts of epistemological investigation”128 need a peculiar kind of elucidation. The “cognitions performed”129 (volzogenne Erkenntnisse) cannot be analyzed through the lens of “transcendent uncertainties.”130. To the contrary, this elucidation performs itself (“vollzieht sich")131 on the ‘principial’ experience (“principiell erlebten”)132 and it is “constantly verified in this  Husserl, Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge, 196. The German original reads: Sicherlich bedarf es auch der Reflexion auf die Untersuchung nach vollzogener Untersuchung. Neben der AufkIarung der natiirlichen Erkenntnis bedarf es auch einer Aufklarung der erkenntniskritisch en Erkenntnis, einer Erwagung, ob sie selbst neue Erkenntnisvorkommnisse bietet und ob die Aufklarungen erster Stufe schon alles enthalten, was die Vorkommnisse zweiter Stufe aufzuklaren gestattet. (Husserl, Einleitung in die Logik und Erkenntnistheorie: Vorlesungen 1906/07, 200). 127  Varga, “Psychology as Positive Herritage of Husserl’s Phenomenological Philosophy”, 112. 128  Husserl, Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge, 195. 129  Ibid. 130  Ibid. 131  Husserl, Einleitung in die Logik und Erkenntnistheorie: Vorlesungen , 199. 132  Ibid. “Die Erkenntnisse, die vollzogen werden, benutzen keine vorgegebenen und erkenntniskritisch hinsichtlich ihrer Zulassigkeit ungeprueften Praemissen aus der Sphaere der transzendenten Fraglichkeiten. Jeder Schritt vollzieht sich in einer prinzipiell erlebten und in dieser Hinsicht bestaendig nachgeprueften Sphaere. Die Cartesianische Fundamentalbetrachtung gibt das zweifelIose Gebiet: das der Phaenomene, naher der Erkenntnisphanomene und nun gilt es, Fragen zu stelIen, 126

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regard.”133 We suggest that the success of verification of the principial experience (or of the experiencing through the principles) is mirrored in the self-performing of its analytic steps. Epistemological self-investigation importantly does not only transform science into phenomena, but it also transforms epistemological validity into an “apparent claim to validity.”134

5  Concluding Remarks By reviewing the strategies Husserl deployed in designing the ideal science of logic I have demonstrated that Husserl’s phenomenological method, in his early writings, is argumentatively indebted to psychologism. I have suggested that the relationship between the ideal science of logic and psychologistic logic is characterized by two types of circularities: (1) the tautological circle of the inadvertent self-referentiality in psychologism, which is created by the psychologistic tendency to reverse the relation of priority in the polarity between the absolute and the psychological foundations of the science of logic and (2) the deliberate circularity employed by the ideal science of logic in order to expose the self-referentiality of psychologism . The strategy of ‘withdrawal’ from a position of epistemological priority made possible for the pure science of logic, or phenomenology, to challenge not only psychologistic logic but also the absolute logicism. This approach to Husserl simultaneously recognizes that Husserl’s relation with psychologism is one of overcoming-through-indebtedness, just as the relation of post-Husserlian phenomenologists to Husserl is the one of indebtedness-throughovercoming.

Analysen zu vollziehen und daraufhin zu klaeren. Darin figuriert aIle Wissenschaft nicht als Gegebenheit schlechthin, sondern als Phaenomen, nicht als GeItung, sondern als Geltungserscheinung, erscheinender Geltungs anspruch. Diese Erscheinung kann wie jede andere analysiert werden. Freilich, die Akte der Erkenntnis, die Akte des Vorstellens, des Urteilens, des begrifflichen Fixierens und Bestimmens, in denen sich die Untersuchung selbst bewegt, in denen sie selbst sich konstituiert und die nicht fuer sie Objekte sind, sind vollzogene Erkenntnisakte, nicht kritisch analysierte und gepruefte” (ibid). 133  Husserl, Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge, trans. Claire Ortiz Hill (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008), 195. 134  Ibid.

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References Primary Texts Husserl, E. 1975. Logische Untersuchungen. Erster Teil. Prolegomena zur reinen Logik. Text der 1. und der 2. Auflage. Halle:1900; rev. ed. 1913. ed. Elmar Holenstein. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1985. Einleitung in die Logik und Erkenntnistheorie. Vorlesungen 1906/07, ed. Ullrich Melle. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Primary Texts in Translation ———. 2006. Logical Investigations 2. Trans. J. N. Findlay. New York/London: Routledge. ———. 2007. Logical Investigations 1. Trans. J. N. Findlay. New York. London: Routledge. ———. 2008. Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge. Trans. Claire Ortiz Hill. Dordrecht: Kluwer/Springer.

Secondary Sources Adorno, T. 2007. Negative Dialectics. Trans. E. B. Ashton. New York: Continuum de Murralt, A. 1974. The Idea of Phenomenology: Husserlian Exemplarism. Trans. Garry L. Breckon. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Kusch, M. 1995. Psychologism: A Case Study in the Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge. New York/London: Routledge. Lange, F.A. 2015. The Standpoint of the Ideal. In The Neokantian Reader, ed. Sebastian Luft, 66–78. New York City: Routledge. Levinas, E. 1998. Collected Philosophical Papers. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Lotze, H. 1888. Logic in Three Books: Of Thought, of Investigation and of Knowledge. Trans. Bernard Bosanquet. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Varga, P.A. 2010. Psychology as Positive Herritage of Husserl’s Phenomenological Philosophy. Studia Phaenomenologica X: 101–127.

Part II

The Unfolding of Phenomenological Philosophy

Husserl’s Idea of Rigorous Science and Its Relevance for the Human and Social Sciences Victor Eugen Gelan

Abstract  The main aim of this paper is to show that the idea of rigorous science, elaborated by Edmund Husserl, makes a fundamental contribution to the understanding, clarification, and development of the idea of science in general, and especially to the structuring of the character of science itself for social and human sciences. The first step of my approach is to outline a general theoretical framework for discussing the thorny issues of methodology and epistemology in the social and human sciences. I shall start by probing the way in which Husserl tried to give a philosophical clarification of the sciences and sought to ground them through transcendental phenomenology. Husserl’s idea of rigorous science proposed a new understanding of the way science is constituted in general and led to important developments which determined a re-evaluation of the scientific character of other sciences, and in particular, the social sciences. The rich programme of grounding the social sciences and the rigorous reconfiguring of their scientific character that was developed by the Austrian phenomenologist and sociologist, Alfred Schutz, is just one major exemplification of Husserl’s idea of rigorous science. In the second part of my paper I shall show how the Husserlian idea of rigorous science influenced the scientific understanding of, and approach towards social life. In this sense, I shall direct my analysis towards the way Schutz understands and elaborates the idea of social relations in a phenomenological manner, by which he tries to account for the phenomenological constitution of the meaning of social action and the possibility of knowledge in social sciences. When shaping his programme, Schutz begins with the Husserlian phenomenological reduction and theory of constitution of meaning. But both the theory of the constitution of meaning, and the idea of the phenomenological reduction itself, are made possible for Husserl precisely through his idea of rigorous science. Keywords  Rigorous science · Social sciences · Human sciences · Methodology of science · Epistemology of science · Transcendental phenomenology · Possibility of knowledge

V. E. Gelan (*) Center for Phenomenological Studies, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Apostolescu (ed.), The Subject(s) of Phenomenology, Contributions to Phenomenology 108, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29357-4_6

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1  T  he Idea of Rigorous Science in Husserl and its Relevance for the Human and Social Sciences Edmund Husserl developed the idea of rigorous science as a critical reaction to the philosophical trends of his time: naturalism (psychologism of logic, positivism, etc.), historicism (which stemmed from Dilthey’s ideas), and philosophy as Weltanschauung (a psychological-subjective or “private” perspective on the world). By criticizing these three ways of thinking and debunking their unfounded claims to scientificity and their reductive limits, Husserl came to elaborate the idea of philosophy as rigorous science, in the sense of a phenomenological critique of reason, conceived as a transcendental undertaking. In a 1911 article published in the journal Logos, ‘Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft’ (‘Philosophy as rigorous science’), Husserl emphasizes that the most serious error of naturalism consists in the naturalization of consciousness, and moreover of ideas in general (on the ideal or ‘eidetic’ level). Consequently, the laws of logic are deemed to be natural laws of thinking. Furthermore, the outcome of such assumptions spells disaster for philosophy as logic is thereby considered as the object of a naturalistic-positivistic science; this reductionist view of philosophy renders it unable properly to approach and grasp the universality and ideality of the logical laws and principles of thinking. With respect to historicism, Husserl’s main reproach is directed towards its attenuation of the rigour of philosophical reflection by neglecting the a priori and regulative structures of human thinking. Finally, philosophy as Weltanschauung represents an objectionable idea from Husserl’s perspective because it harbours the danger of a psychological subjectivism that is incapable of explaining objective knowledge and which encourages insufficiently grounded personal opinions. Therefore, if philosophy aims to become a rigorous science, it cannot follow the lead of naturalism, historicism or philosophy as Weltanschauung. According to Husserl, these theoretical paths are more than misleading because they wrongly invite a reductionist approach to reason and its genuine powers of knowledge. They lead in fact to an enshrouding in confusion and falsity of any authentic sense of philosophy and even its originary impulse –seeking the truth according the rigorous laws of reason – becomes muddled and unrecognizable. In opposition to these three erroneous trends of thought, Husserl develops the idea of philosophy as a rigorous science which must find its own way as a reflective science through a double delimitation, both in content and method, from the sciences of nature (Naturwissenchaften) and from the sciences of ‘spirit’ (Geisteswissenschaften). Uncritically taking up methods and attitudes used by the natural and ‘spiritual’ sciences within philosophy, and furthermore, within the human and social sciences, represents for Husserl a faulty practice that leads to a false naturalization or historicization and relativization of philosophy (and especially of practical philosophy, that is, ethics, moral philosophy, and philosophy of law), and in particular, by extrapolation, of all the principles, norms, values and ideas of the entire field of the human and social sciences.

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Philosophy as rigorous science has to be primarily a critique of reason, whose mission and task consists in reflecting upon the principles, norms and universal laws of rational thinking and action in general and upon their a priori validity. In other words, philosophy becomes an a priori and reflective research into the ultimate principles and laws which give structure to formal, theoretical and practical reason, and which confer legitimacy to their governing role. Philosophy as rigorous science (i.e. transcendental phenomenology1) draws out and questions the totality of the conditions and presuppositions that ground the constitution of sciences; therefore, it conceives of itself both as a critical science of the grounds and foundations of the other sciences, and as a theory or doctrine of sciences (Wissenschaftslehre). Husserl’s method takes the shape of a radical reflection upon the conditions of possibility of the constitution of knowledge and of the scientific character in general. Through this radical reflection, philosophy as rigorous science shows how it is possible to envisage science as science and, in particular, how the human and social sciences in turn are possible as rigorous sciences. To endow the sciences, through phenomenological research, with their ultimate grounds is tantamount to raising them to a philosophical status. As Husserl states: “only as philosophy is science rigorous, science in its most pregnant sense” (Husserl 1956, 56). Consequently, Husserl’s project of conceiving philosophy as rigorous science does not entail a reduction of philosophy to science, but is rather, on the contrary, a philosophical re-signification of the idea of science. Understanding itself as an attempt to go beyond the apriorism and formalism of Kantian abstraction, as well as positivist empiricism, phenomenology and the phenomenological reduction employed within its confines abundantly provided numerous important contributions to logic (Husserl), to the theory of value and philosophical anthropology (M. Scheler), to aesthetics (R. Ingarden, M. Dufrenne), to the social sciences (A. Schutz), and to anthropology, literary theory, philosophy and the sociology of religion, among other fields. The theory of intentionality, as developed within Husserlian phenomenology, had a decisive influence in outflanking the mechanistic vision of consciousness and led to the comprehension of the latter as openness, as a process of continual adequacy with regard to the object. Through philosophical reflection and the use of phenomenological reduction, Husserl gained access to transcendental subjectivity, understood as the original spring or source of every sense-bestowing act. By laying bare the fundamental structures of consciousness in and through which intentional acts constitute meaning, phenomenology represented an important impetus and drive in the evolution of philosophical conceptions in the twentieth century and of research in the human and social sciences. Husserl’s ideas represent a major contribution to the project of founding the sciences by revealing the structures of transcendental subjectivity. His theme of the ‘life-world’ (Lebenswelt) concentrates in fact the bulk of the issues posed by the justification of theoretical constructs and scientific reflections about the world. In  See, for example, Dermot Moran, ‘Making Sense: Husserl’s Phenomenology as Transcendental Idealism’, in Continental Philosophy Review 41 (4): 401–425 (2008). 1

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this sense, scientific knowledge ultimately refers to the pre-scientific knowledge upon which the former is grounded. The elaboration of the problematic of Lebenswelt (Husserl 1976b, 105–193), undertaken by Husserl as an attempt to recover the sensuous world, corresponds in fact to the object of empirical research prescribed to the social sciences. Several essential issues, fundamental for establishing the general, theoretical framework of the methodology and epistemology of the human and social sciences, are already delineated in Husserl’s analyses. These include the critical probing of the difference and relationship between objective science and the idea of science in general; the scientific investigation of the pre-scientific character of the life-world and its relevance for the constitution of a scientificity different from the positive-objectifying one; and the emphasis on the relevance and importance of subjective-relative experience for the objective sciences and for the idea of objective knowledge in general, which are based on this subjective experience. In this sense, objective knowledge is constituted precisely through its clear delimitation from the subjective sphere and through the hypothetical postulation of an “in itself” of the world – and of the logical-mathematical truths in themselves – which philosophically necessitates, for Husserl, the unfolding of a rigorous thematization and questioning of the fact that “the world in itself” is, ultimately, an assumption derived from the usual and ordinary practice of the life-world. Furthermore, phenomenology involves an examination of the subjective-relative element as an object of study for the social sciences, especially psychology, and a scrutiny of the contrast between the objectivity of the sciences and the subjectivity of the life-world. In this context, subjectivity is approached in a different manner to that of the positive sciences of nature, which leads to the delineation of another type of scientificity to that of the objectifying kind. Other essential themes include: the problematic of the life-world as a domain of originary evidences (and whether what is called “objective” is a direct object of experience); critical interrogation of the idea of grounding the sciences in the Lebenswelt, and the phenomenological grounding of predicative knowledge upon an ante-predicative knowledge (from this point of view, the idea of objective or truthful science “in itself” points to a project or practical hypothesis whereby a possible rapport with the life-world is constituted); and lastly, the discussion of a new type of scientificity, specific to the life-world, as a philosophical problem. Each of these themes and problems requires a thorough and painstaking examination that I do not have the space to undertake here. They glue together the general, theoretical framework demanded by the foundation of the human and social sciences through transcendental phenomenology.2

  See, for example, Bernhard Waldenfels, ‘Beyond Foundationalism and Functionalism: Phenomenology in Exchange with the Human and Social Sciences’ (in Evans and Stufflebeam 1997). Other relevant studies include: Evan Thompson, Alva Noe, and Luiz Pessoa, ‘Perceptual Completion: A Case Study in Phenomenology and Cognitive Science’ (in Petitot et al. 1999); JeanLuc Petitot, ‘Constitution by Movement: Husserl in Light of Recent Neurobiological Findings’ (in Petitot et al. 1999); Maria Villela-Petit, ‘Cognitive Psychology and the Transcendental Theory of Knowledge’ (in Petitot et al. 1999); and Giorgi 2005. 2

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2  Alfred Schutz and the Phenomenology of Social Life According to Alfred Schutz, there is a methodological unity and a “unitary logic” of the empirical sciences which allows for certain epistemological equivalences between the natural and socio-human sciences to take place. Nevertheless, in contrast to positivism, which takes up “mechanically” the methods and concepts of natural sciences in order to differentiate and distance them from philosophical speculation, phenomenological sociology deems philosophy to offer the possibility of a synthesis of knowledge and a proper and legitimate foundation for the methodology of social-scientific research. Schutz elaborates a systematic, phenomenological analysis of the social world. Admittedly, the central phenomenological source of Schutz’s endeavour was Husserl’s phenomenology,3 with whose help the Austrian philosopher intends to ground the theory of the meaning of social acts. According to Schutz, the social sciences do not grapple with the philosophical aspects of intersubjectivity, but rather with the structures of the life-world (Lebenswelt), such as it is experienced within the ‘natural attitude’ (Schutz 1959, 93). Therefore, the basic assumption of the natural attitude is that, ultimately, the communication and understanding between subjects is possible with the aid of signs and symbols given within an already extant social organization which precedes every subject (Schutz 1959, 93). Using Max Weber’s study from 1921/1922, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Economy and Society), Schutz remarks that, for Weber, all the phenomena of the social-cultural world stem from social interaction. For Schutz, however, Weber does not render clear enough what is really meant by subjective meaning or social action. In other words, Schutz strongly asserts that the conditions of possibility of an objective science that has to deal with subjective meaning contexts are not sufficiently and satisfactorily interrogated by Weber. Therefore, Schutz appeals to Husserl’s work and to its outcomes in order successfully to resolve several of the crucial and sensitive questions raised by his confrontation with Weber. According to Schutz, a social action is an action oriented toward the future (in contrast with behaviour), which is motivated and guided by a pre-conceived project. Such an action requires a process of projection, which means that it enlists the power of imagination. At the same time, the projection process, the unfolding in imagination of the future course of action, is based on what Husserl calls in Ideen I the neutrality modification (Neutralitätsmodifikation). On the other hand, the way in which Schutz understands and explains the relationship between the projection of the action and the future action as such demands the input of Husserlian analyses of the internal consciousness of time, in its subjective flowing and objective persistence (Schutz 1959, 94). Every action is projected against a complex of experiences which constitute the totality of protension (Protention) or anticipation acts and is based upon the ideation  Schutz states clearly, at one point, that the entire work of Husserl was an important influence in the foundation of the social sciences (Schutz 1959, 93). 3

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process (eidetic variation) rigorously and thoroughly described by Husserl. Schutz envisages the knowledge of the social world as multi-layered and pluri-stratified, the result of continual processes of synthesis undertaken by acts of consciousness (an idea that employs the Husserlian theory of founding and founded acts). Precisely these very issues are explored at length by Husserl in his analysis of the structures of consciousness and of the constitution of meaning and knowledge in general. In other words, the theory of the constitution of meaning is taken over by Schutz from Husserl and applied to social knowledge and its way of being constituted in the social sciences. The relationship between meaning and expression, or between meaning-giving intentions and the acts that fulfil them, which is investigated by Husserl in the first and second Logical Investigations, can be translated in terms of a theory of signs and symbols. Likewise, Husserl’s theory of appresentation (Appräsentation) can be successfully applied in analysing the relationship between the sign and what is signified (or between symbol and what is symbolized), as well as the constitution of large symbolic systems such as language, mythology, religion, art, and ideologies. They are all part of what Husserl calls the life-world (Lebenswelt) and to dissect the latter analytically represents an important task for the social sciences (Schutz 1959, 96). Such an analysis of the life-world envisages the multiple levels of reality and their interconnectedness, as well the concrete way in which such systems are, or become constitutive of, a particular culture or society. Husserl’s theory of a formal axiology and praxeology (formal praxis) (Husserl 1976a, §147, 339–342) opens up the possibility of a theory of choice within the natural attitude (of the social world) – a theory which is important for the social sciences as well. At the same time, Husserl’s analysis of the common milieu of intersubjectivity and of the way in which the other becomes known, starting with the index points of here-there (Husserl 1976b, § 54), holds a defining sway over the understanding of the life-world in general within the natural attitude, and consequently over the research field of the human sciences. Here represents the zero-­ point of a coordination system whereby the subject’s own social action and its interaction with the other can be explained. The other constitutes a completely different point within the same system of coordinates; he/she represents a there. However, from the latter’s perspective within the system, the subject constitutes a there for her/him, and he/she a here for her/himself. This type of explanation is borrowed by Schutz and transformed into what one might call in the social sciences “the reciprocity of perspectives”. This refers not only to a certain spatial location in a socially-given system of coordinates (whereby the terms of a system of coordinates can be “translated” and understood in terms of another system altogether). It also refers, primarily, to the possibility of “translating” and reciprocally comprehending a mutually lived situation, perspective, point of view, social and cultural mentality, despite their origination in totally different social systems. Other important Husserlian ideas which can be applied to the analysis of the social world are the pre-predicative experience and the typologies of experience (see Husserl 1999, especially paragraphs 8, 22, 24, 25, 26, 80, 83). Schutz re-works these ideas himself in the course of his interrogation of the social world and social

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relationships. The social world displays several dimensions of closeness and distance (in space and time), as well as intimacy and anonymity, among other factors, from which we can extract, by in-depth analytical probing, the organizational structures of the social world and experience. In the social sciences, this issue appears under the heading of social roles, which brings up the problem of the subjective and objective interpretation of the meaning of social action (a problematic that Schutz takes over from Max Weber and to which he allocates numerous analyses of his own). The research object of phenomenological sociology consists in the common knowledge that people have of themselves and of the society in which they live. Through spontaneous, empirical constructs, people pre-select and pre-interpret the ordinary, common world which they experience as the reality of their everyday life. These empirical constructs determine and motivate their behaviour. The objects of thought that the social researcher builds in order to understand social reality must be erected upon these empirical constructs of ordinary thought, as distilled within the everyday life of ordinary people. In this sense, the constructs of the social sciences are “second degree” constructs or constructs about the constructs concretely called into play by the “actors” of the social scene, whose behaviour the social researcher should observe and explain. Through these second degree constructs, the researcher from the natural sciences builds up “the general image of recurrent typologies and models of social interactions” (Berger and Luckmann 1969, 56). Schutz remarks justly that empirical social sciences have their true foundations not in a transcendental phenomenology as such, but in a phenomenology constitutive of the natural attitude and the natural world. This is precisely what Husserl parenthesizes by using the phenomenological reduction and what he subsequently tries to recover, although only at the end of his philosophical endeavours, by introducing the problematic of the life-world (Lebenswelt) – and this corresponds in fact to the field of the social sciences. Husserl’s work on Lebenswelt is considered by Schutz to be essential for the social sciences and for their rigorous foundation through a fundamental philosophical anthropology. The fact that Husserl’s analyses concern a mainly eidetic phenomenology (entailing the transcendental attitude and a systematic application of several types of reduction) and that their crucial results demand the use of the phenomenological reduction, does not diminish at all their importance or their validity for the problematic of the natural world and the natural attitude. On the contrary, their vital role in the foundation process is only better underlined in this way.

3  Final Remarks The application of the phenomenological reduction to social life entails a going back to the subjective meaning of social actions and quotidian social activities, and a revealing of the fact that this meaning, inter-subjectively grounded, sustains the constitution of the objective meaning and knowledge of the social sphere. This is nothing but a recognition of the importance of subjectivity for the constitution of

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knowledge in the social and human sciences, and at the same time, a rejection of the reification of psychical acts and the conception of individual behaviour and interpersonal relationships in a deterministic-causal manner. Therefore, a blending of quantitative methods of research with qualitative ones is embraced within the social and human sciences. Knowledge in the social sciences is constituted as “second degree” knowledge (as reflective knowledge in the Husserlian sense), which ensues from the interpretation of the meaning of social actions and the ways in which actors relate to their social space, as well as to the other actors. They range themselves in several typologies of action, from which the sociologist constructs an objective image of the really-perceived world. Grounded in the inter-subjective human accord (inter-subjective testing), this image renders the social sphere as a regional ontology, within which the analysis of social actions leads to the definition of regional typologies as “intersubjective structures of historical life-worlds” (Schutz 1970). Husserl understood that it was necessary to complete his analysis of transcendental intersubjectivity (in Ideas I) with an investigation of subjectivity at the level of the natural world and attitude (elaborated in Krisis), from which the positive sciences emerge. This is where Husserl and Schutz meet. According to the former, there are certain invariant structures of the life-world (within which takes place the multitude of the flowing subjective-relative processes), which must be excavated before any other description and theoretical explanation via positive sciences is given. In this approach, the life-world (Lebenswelt) is what originates and ultimately grounds all the human and social sciences. Therefore, the relationship between the sciences and philosophy should be regarded not as a part-whole relationship, but as a rapport of radical self-clarification (through a widespread and sedulous critique of presuppositions and foundations)  – i.e. a founding-founded relationship. From this perspective, the Husserlian idea of philosophy as rigorous science still keeps pace with our current time and can provide serious help for research in the human and social sciences, at both a fundamental level (by using the epoché or generalized reduction), and at the level of diverse studies and applied investigations.4 Acknowledgements  This paper was supported by the Sectoral Operational Programme Human Resources Development (SOP HRD), financed by the European Social Fund and by the Romanian Government under the contract number POSDRU/159/1.5/S/133675.

References Barber, M., and J. Dreher, eds. 2014. The Interrelation of Phenomenology, Social Sciences and the Arts. Cham: Springer. Berger, P., and Th. Luckmann. 1969. La realta come costruzione sociale. Bologna: Il Mulino. 4  For applied investigations, see for example studies such as Englander 2016; McIntosh 1997; Vandenberghe 2002; and Barber and Dreher 2014.

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Cioveie, V. 2011. Impalpabila sferă a realului. Cluj-Napoca: Eikon. Englander, M. 2016. The Phenomenological Method in Qualitative Psychology and Psychiatry. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-Being 11 (1). https://doi. org/10.3402/qhw.v11.30682. Evans, J. Claude, and Robert S. Stufflebeam, eds. 1997. To Work at the Foundations: Essays in Memory of Aron Gurwitsch. Dordrecht: Springer. Giorgi, A. 2005. The Phenomenological Movement and Research in the Human Sciences. Nursing Science Quarterly 18 (1): 75–82. Husserl, E. 1956. Erste Philosophie (1923/4). Erste Teil: Kritische Ideengeschichte, hrsg. von Rudolf Boehm. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1971. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Drittes Buch: Die Phänomenologie und die Fundamente der Wissenschaften. Hrsg. von Marly Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1976a. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, hrsg. von Karl Schuhmann. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1976b. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, hrsg. von Walter Biemel. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1987. Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft. In Aufsätze und Vorträge (1911–1921), hrsg. von Thomas Nenon und Hans Rainer Sepp, 3–62. Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. ———. 1999. Erfahrung und Urteil: Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik. Hamburg: Meiner. McIntosh, D. 1997. Husserl, Weber, Freud, and the Method of the Human Sciences. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 27 (3): 328–353. Moran, D. 2008. Making Sense: Husserl’s Phenomenology as Transcendental Idealism. In Continental Philosophy Review 41 (4): 401–425. Olaru, B. 2004. Ideea de știință riguroasă. Proiectul husserlian de întemeiere fenomenologică a științelor. (The Idea of Rigorous Science. The Husserlian Project of Phenomenological Foundation of Sciences). Iași: Editura Universității ʽAl. I. Cuzaʼ. Petitot, J., F.J. Varela, B. Pachoud, and J.-M. Roy. 1999. Naturalizing Phenomenology. Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Schütz, Alfred. 1932. Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt. Wien: Springer. Schutz, Alfred. 1959. Husserlʼs Importance for the Social Sciences. In Edmund Husserl (1859– 1959). La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1970. The Phenomenology of the Social World. London: Heinemann. Vandenberghe, F. 2002. Empathy as the Foundation of the Social Sciences and of Social Life: A Reading of Husserl’s Phenomenology of Transcendental Intersubjectivity. In Sociedade e Estado. vol. 17 no. 2 Brasília, Dec.

Ego-Splitting and the Transcendental Subject. Kant’s Original Insight and Husserl’s Reappraisal Marco Cavallaro

Abstract  In this paper, I contend that there are at least two essential traits that commonly define being an I: self-identity and self-consciousness. I argue that they bear quite an odd relation to each other in the sense that self-consciousness seems to jeopardize self-identity. My main concern is to elucidate this issue within the range of the transcendental philosophies of Immanuel Kant and Edmund Husserl. In the first section, I shall briefly consider Kant’s own rendition of the problem of the Egosplitting. My reading of the Kantian texts reveals that Kant himself was aware of this phenomenon but eventually deems it an unexplainable fact. The second part of the paper tackles the same problematic from the standpoint of Husserlian phenomenology. What Husserl’s extensive analyses on this topic bring to light is that the phenomenon of the Ego-splitting constitutes the bedrock not only of his thought but also of every philosophy that works within the framework of transcendental thinking. Keywords  Kant, Immanuel · Husserl, Edmund · Ego-splitting · Transcendental philosophy · Subjectivity · Self-consciousness

1  Introduction There are two essential traits that, taken together, provide us with a general definition of being an I: self-identity and self-consciousness.1 The first is straightforwardly a necessary condition. Any object whatsoever must be identical with itself to be thinkable or, more generally speaking, experienceable. Even a squared circle must be identical with itself if I state its nonexistence. I-ness partakes of this formal condition of every being whatsoever.  Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes from sources that are not available in English translation are the author’s own translation. Quotes from sources available in English translation make reference only to the page number of the English translation. 1

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Self-consciousness, on the other hand, represents a necessary condition of I-ness in a way that is more specific. It defines the essential property of being an I, i.e. that without which there would be no sense of saying ‘I’ or saying ‘my’ thoughts, ‘my’ experiences. An I that is not conscious of being an I is not an I or, as Husserl phrased it, “to be a subject means to be in the mode of being conscious of itself” (Husserl 1973b, 151).2 Certainly, this does not necessarily imply that everything that is currently unaware, e.g. the realm of the so-called unconscious, is not part of myself.3 No doubt, being a self involves a certain primordial manner of experiencing (Erleben), and being in a primal relation with my instincts, habits, reflexes, and so forth. The I manifests itself in each of these passive experiences in the sense that it is there in the mode of being affected and receptive of what, principally or momentarily, lies outside its faculties in a broad sense. Still, on closer inspection what entitles me to say ‘I’, what constitutes my original experience of being an Ego is independent of the unconscious core of the human person. The self is the most original dimension of personal experience, the one that we, each for herself or himself, do not share with anyone else. But to distinguish myself and my experiences from another person and her experiences, I need to be conscious in the first place of my experiences precisely as my experiences. Self-consciousness or self-awareness as an inherent, structural moment of every experience is constitutive of my personal individuality. Hence, it represents a necessary condition of that entity that everyone is and which we normally refer to by the term ‘I’. By placing self-consciousness at the core of our definition of I-ness, we are also indirectly justifying the assumption we made that self-identity too must be deemed as an essential property and necessary condition of being an I. Self-consciousness implies the possibility for the I to thematize itself, which means to become, to say, an object for itself. Being an experienceable object implies being self-identical with itself. Consequently, self-consciousness and self-identity seem to consist in two essential and complementary features of the I. Granted that we need at least self-identity and self-consciousness to think of and experience an I in the first place, one notices that these two fundamental conditions bear quite an odd relation to each other. Indeed, many thinkers have pointed out the fact that self-consciousness entails a sort of split of the I and, for this reason, it ends in jeopardizing the unity and identity of the I with itself. This would imply that, while being conscious of myself – for instance when I reflect upon my current experiences of writing these sentences –, I am the one who experiences something and, in the same breath, the one who experiences himself experiencing. In other terms, a split seems to occur between the one who is concentrated on the activity of writing  Fichte expresses the same view as follows: “The self exists only insofar as it is conscious of itself” (Fichte 1982, 98). From this Fichte draws the conclusion that it is contradictory to ask what I was before I came to self-consciousness. The obvious answer is that I did not exist at all, for I was not a self, i.e. an I in the full-blown sense. 3  Mohanty 1997, 53 makes a similar point by clearly distinguishing between consciousness and subjectivity. Therefore, even the unconscious counts as subjective, as belonging to the I in this specific sense. 2

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these sentences, and the one who reflectively observes this activity itself. In reflection, which is usually taken as the paradigmatic example of self-consciousness, the I splits up, as it were, into two different I’s. These are, respectively, the I that reflects upon the experience (the reflecting I) and the I that is reflected upon (the reflected I). If one generally agrees with this insight, then the relation between self-consciousness and self-identity becomes plainly troublesome. To put it straight, the former seems to render the latter sheer impossible. It appears that an I cannot be conscious of itself without splitting into two (or even more) I’s, that is, without losing its (self-)identity. Hence, self-consciousness and self-identity seem to be two incompatible conditions of being an I. This appears as more aporetic as one recalls the initial thesis according to which self-consciousness and self-identity only together define most properly what an I is. If we maintain the initial premises and the subsequent argument, we end up with serious repercussions for our understanding of the I and even for our belief that something like an I can exist at all. Indeed, the I ultimately reveals itself close to a self-contradictory entity, meaning an entity whose essential conditions of possibility contradict themselves. Here we face a concept, indeed a very important one which we constantly employ in everyday life and in our natural thinking and speaking, which nonetheless speedily betrays its untenable character as soon as philosophical reflection seizes upon it. Therefore, it seems at this point that we would have good reasons to sympathize with Ernst Mach’s famous saying, and admit that “the ego must be given up”.4 This is a too hasty conclusion, however. There is in fact a strand of philosophical thinking that takes into serious consideration this (as we will see) apparent contradiction embedded in the very essence of being an I.  We are notably referring to transcendental philosophy. A transcendental philosopher would admit in general that every kind of object-identity is the result of a specific form of synthesis actively or passively carried out by a transcendental subject.5 The identity of an object throughout its manifold of appearances is not a given datum that the subject simply acknowledges, but the outcome of a “constituting” process in which the subject is actively or passively engaged. This overall view is generally common among all forms of transcendental philosophy. For instance, Kantian criticism and Husserlian phenomenology share this basic insight – although it hardly needs saying that they differ when it comes to determining the precise nature of the relationship between the subject and the object of experiencing.6  Mach 1914, 24. Needless to say, the reasons that triggered Mach’s rejection of the I-concept do not correspond to the ones laid out here. 5  I do not consider here the strand of transcendental philosophies which admit no space for a constituting subject and that claim that the constitutional activity is performed (almost) exclusively by asubjective synthetic accomplishments. Cf. for instance Patočka 1991/1971. 6  For an encompassing discussion of the relationship between the philosophies of Husserl and Kant, see the classical volume of Kern 1964. Important for the topic of this paper is also the insight set out by Kockelmans 1977. 4

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From a transcendental standpoint, the problem of the Ego-splitting assumes an even more intriguing connotation. If the I has to be represented (experienced) in the first place – since this is an essential condition entailed in the definition of being an I–, how is it possible here to speak of a synthesis that should constitute the object at stake, i.e. the I? Is not rather the I the (transcendental) condition of every possible synthesis and, hence, of every possible experience of an object in general? It seems very likely here that transcendental philosophy faces an (apparently) unredeemable circle in the foundation of knowledge. Let us try to schematically sum up premises and conclusions of this circle. The I transcendentally conditions every experience of an object. At the same time, the I must have an experience of itself as an I, otherwise it would not fit with the former definition of the I as an entity conscious of its own being. Therefore, the I must also be the condition of its own experience and per definitionem the condition of its own existence. This would clearly amount to a case of generatio aequivoca.7 The purpose of this paper is to examine how Immanuel Kant and Edmund Husserl address this problematic circle in the chain of transcendental arguments. My suggestion is that the Kantian and the Husserlian takes on transcendental philosophy differ especially when it comes to tackling this fundamental issue. In the first section, I shall briefly take into account Kant’s own rendition of the problem of the Ego-splitting. My reading of some of the Kantian texts on this issue reveals that Kant himself was aware of this phenomenon, although he conceives of it as an unexplainable fact. The second part of my paper tackles the same issue from the standpoint of Husserlian phenomenology. I will show that what Husserl’s extensive analyses on this topic bring to light, is that the Ego-splitting constitutes the bedrock not only of his thought but of every philosophy that works within the framework of transcendental thinking.

2  Ego-Splitting as Unexplainable Fact in Kant According to Kant, the reduplication of the I occurring in the Ego-splitting, i.e. its being at the same time subject and object of experience, is primarily a “fact” whose actuality the philosopher can do nothing but acknowledge without trying to explain. The most commented Kantian passage on this topic stems from one of his late  Alfredo Ferrarin (1994) notices something similar in his reading of Husserl’s late reflections on the historicity of the pure ego. He states that there must be a tension in the transcendental conception of the ego that Husserl cannot solve, i.e. “the fact that consciousness must both be the originary consciousness of inner time and be constituted or synthetically unified in time: synthesis and the object of synthesis, activity and form”. To put it differently, the difficulty consists in the double requirement that the ego be the identical subject of its Erlebnisse and be the object of its concrete self-constitution in a history. If it has to constitute itself, it has in fact to be the subject of its selfobjectification  – in which case it has to presuppose itself for its own constitution (Ferrarin 1994, 655). Personally, I do not agree with this interpretation of the Husserlian doctrine, as I hope it shall gradually emerge between the lines of the present discussion. 7

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writings, Preisschrift über die Fortschritte der Metaphysik, and reads quite eloquently as follows: I am conscious of myself, is a thought that already implies a twofold I, the I as subject and the I as object. How it is possible that I, being the I who thinks, be an object (of intuition) for myself, and in what way I would be able to differentiate me from myself, is simply impossible to explain, even though it is an unquestionable fact [Faktum]. (Kant 1902-, AA XX, 270)

Kant’s thesis in this passage is threefold: (1) self-consciousness obtains, (2) it entails an Ego-splitting, (3) the phenomenon of Ego-splitting amounts to a “limit” with respect to any possible knowledge concerning the transcendental subject. In the following we will examine these claims one by one. (1) Kant assumes that self-consciousness obtains, meaning that it is the case that I (the I of transcendental apperception) am conscious of myself and my synthetic activities. In this sense, he takes a similar view as the one Husserl expressed in the passage quoted at the beginning, for which to be an I is to be conscious of oneself. Accordingly, being conscious of oneself is not an accidental property of the I, a state which the I now and then just happens to be in; on the contrary, it is part of its very definition and characterizes the totality of its experiences. Kant is referring here notably to transcendental self-consciousness and not to a form of empirical, psychological self-consciousness. This cannot be predicated as an essential and necessary attribute of an I, for we may from time to time lack empirical self-consciousness. Kant refers in this sense to the example of reading. While reading, the subject is thematically conscious of the meaning of the words she is reading but not of the activity of reading itself, i.e. the grasping of the words as bearers of meaning (Kant 1902-,  AA II, 191). In other words,  she does not possess empirical self-consciousness of her grasping activity. In a passage from the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View Kant explicitly contrasts empirical self-consciousness or inner sense with transcendental selfconsciousness or apperception: Inner sense is not pure apperception, consciousness of what we are doing; for this belongs to the power of thinking. It is, rather, consciousness of what we undergo as we are affected by the play of our own thoughts. This consciousness rests on inner intuition, and so on the relation of ideas (as they are either simultaneous or successive). (Kant 1974, 39)

Empirical self-consciousness or inner sense is a receptive faculty which sets in when the mind is affected not by external things but by its own activity (“the play of our thoughts”). Apperception instead is a “pure” faculty, meaning a faculty which is before and beyond any experience of outer as well as inner objects (i.e. mental states). It is an a priori and transcendental consciousness of “what we are doing”. As has been correctly pointed out (cf. Brook 2013), Kant is referring here to the fact that the way one becomes conscious of an act of representing is not in receiving intuitions but by doing it: “Man, […] who knows the rest of nature solely through the senses, knows himself also through pure apperception; and this, indeed, in acts and inner determinations which he cannot regard as impressions of the senses” (Kant 1998, A546/B574; see also B132 and B153). One is conscious of oneself as

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spontaneous, self-legislating, free subject of acts, as the doer of deeds and not just as a passive receptacle for sensuous data and representations. In Kant’s words, “I exist as an intelligence which is conscious solely of its power of combination” (B158–159), of “the activity of the self” (B68).8 Apperception is thus characterized as a consciousness of mental activity – rather than of mental states – so that one might interpret the distinction between empirical and transcendental self-consciousness like the distinction between consciousness of mental passivity and activity, respectively. In this view, apperception would obtain only if the mind is actively involved in producing its own thoughts, whereas inner sense would occur when the mind is guided by its own principles of association – “consciousness rests on inner intuition, and so on the relation of ideas”. This kind of reading would certainly hold true if the categories of activity and passivity at stake here were thought of as belonging to the same level of foundation. However, the activity of which transcendental self-consciousness is consciousness of has nothing to do with the mental activity performed by an empirical subject (the soul). Roughly speaking, the former is transcendental whereas the latter is empirical. The consciousness of the activity of counting the members of a given manifold is not a form of transcendental self-consciousness, for counting is not in itself a transcendental performance. If we hold with Kant that self-consciousness arises out of a kind of self-affection representations, objects or activities exert on the mind (Gemüt), one must notice that the self-affection which motivates and grounds transcendental apperception stems from an array of transcendental (and not merely mental) intuiting, synthetizing, and combining activities – i.e. those activities that render experience possible, first of all the activity of synthesis which combines representations given by sensibility in order to form concepts and judgments (cf. Kant 1998, A77–8/B102–3).9 Therefore, it is not astonishing to read Kant at A78/B103 noting that although acts of synthesis are indispensable for cognition, we are conscious of them “only very rarely [selten nur einmal]” and at A103–4 describing consciousness as “feeble [schwach]” and lacking in clarity. Here Kant is most likely referring to empirical self-consciousness and not to transcendental self-consciousness. We do not normally experience transcendental synthetic activities but more likely their products, i.e. the objects of representation and, through inner sense, the representations themselves. Yet, transcendental activities are always apperceived, that is, transcendentally, not empirically, self-conscious, so that apperception amounts to a necessary condition for the possibility of cognitive experience and  This reading of the Kantian transcendental self as activity has been recently purported by Melnick 2009. Martin Heidegger already anticipated this trend of Kant’s scholarship in his lecture course entitled Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason where he points out: “thinking as acting is what is fundamentally in the manner of ‘I think.’ Thinking as such […] starts ‘from itself,’ from the self as itself. […] The ability character of my actions [thinkings] determines the mode of being of the subject” (Heidegger 1997, 234). 9  For the meaning of transcendental, see Kant’s account in the appendix to the Prolegomena: “the word ‘transcendental’ […] does not signify something passing beyond all experience but something that indeed precedes it a priori, but that is intended simply to make cognition of experience possible” (Kant 2001, 106 f.). 8

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thus a pervasive feature of the entire life of consciousness (see e.g. Kant 1998, B132).10 The question that naturally arises is whether the (non-empirical) consciousness of the transcendental intuiting, synthesizing, and combining activities of the understanding equates for Kant to the consciousness the transcendental subject has of herself. There is little doubt that this must be the case. Kant believes not only that the subject is always and necessarily (non-empirically) conscious of her own transcendental activities; he also argues that this self-consciousness of representations entails at the same time a self-consciousness of the subject. I am constantly conscious of myself, meaning that I am conscious of being the bearer and doer of the transcendental activities which appear in self-consciousness. Self-consciousness of representational states always entails as inherent moment self-consciousness of the I.11 (2) Kant points out that self-consciousness essentially involves an Ego-splitting. More precisely, he asserts that in the thought that corresponds to the judgment “I am conscious of myself” the I figures as both subject and object. The splitting thus amounts for Kant in the double characterization of the I as subject and object of a self-reflective judgment – meaning a judgment that expresses an experience of selfreflection, such as “I am conscious of myself”. Kant’s characterization of self-consciousness as a judgment derives from his peculiar usage of the term ‘experience’. Kant always takes experience to involve the exercise of judgment (see e.g. Kitcher 1982, 57). Thus, having an experience of oneself does not amount to simply being conscious of oneself but rather judging that this is the case. The experience of self-consciousness entails the judgment “I am conscious of myself”. This point is of paramount importance to characterize Kant’s own rendition of the problem of Ego-splitting. The split of the I occurs in the selfreflective judgment which accompanies every self-conscious experience; it is a con For a more detailed account of the meaning of transcendental self-consciousness and why Kant regards it to be a necessary condition for cognitive experience cf. the refined analyses of Kitcher 1999. More extensive readings are to be found in Keller 1998 and Powell 1990. 11  Here lies the reason why Kant often equates transcendental synthesis with the transcendental unity of apperception: “This amounts to saying, that I am conscious to myself a priori of a necessary synthesis of representations – to be entitled the original synthetic unity of apperception” (Kant 1998, B135). Unfortunately, I cannot dig into this topic any further. I rely in my understanding of Kant’s point here on Patricia Kitcher’s discussion in Kitcher 1982. Kitcher clearly points out why Kant is committed to postulate self-consciousness of the I as a necessary condition for experience and especially cognition. Due to its complexity, I shall not report the all argument here. It suffices to mention the following fundamental steps. Kant regards a relation of synthesis between the subject’s mental states as the condition of their representational feature: “We are conscious a priori of the complete identity of the self in respect of all representations which can ever belong to our knowledge, as being a necessary condition of the possibility of all representations. For in me they can represent something only in so far as they belong with all others to one consciousness, and therefore must be at least capable of being so connected” (Kant 1998, A116, italics are mine). But since for Kant a mental state is possible only as representational and I can acknowledge a relation of synthesis only if it is there, then a synthetic unity of all my mental states is both necessary and subsistent. This synthetic unity amounts to the possibility of ascribing every mental state to an “I think”, that is, I must be able (which means that actually I do not do it all the time) to acknowledge a relation between it and other mental states (Kant 1998, A116/B131–32). 10

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sequence of the fact that every kind of experience according to Kant involves judgment, on the one hand, and that judgments contain a subject and a predicate conjoined by a copula, on the other. Then, in a judgment the I is split into the subject and the object (predicate) of judgment, respectively ‘I’ and ‘myself’. In a sense, judgments accompanying self-consciousness may resemble judgments of identity – such as the judgment “A is A”. Nonetheless, an important aspect allows us to draw a distinction between the two forms. As far as self-consciousness does not necessarily and directly entail a predication of the identity between subject and predicate, it is the more legitimate here to raise the issue of the Ego-splitting.12 There seems to be a path that Kant could have followed to escape the problem of the Ego-splitting in self-consciousness. This amounts in dismissing the view which declares experiences of self-consciousness to be nothing but judgments of the type “I am conscious of myself” or ego cogito (me cogitare). In the passage from the Preisschrift quoted at the beginning of this section, Kant plainly does not follow this path. The same happens in the Paralogisms in the first Critique where he initially speaks of the ego cogito as a “judgment” involving a “concept” (Kant 1998, A341/B399), while later negating that we can even have the least concept of it (Kant 1998, A346/B404). Self-consciousness, considered on its own, is not the representation of an object in particular, but “a form of representation in general, insofar as it is to be called a cognition” (ibid.). Accordingly, it does not amount to any extension of our knowledge of reality – under this respect, selfconsciousness distinguishes itself specifically from self-knowledge (cf. Henrich 1982, 19). A real alternative to the view which is more likely to denounce the Ego-splitting is introduced in the Prolegomena. There Kant describes self-consciousness as “nothing more than the feeling of an existence without the least concept” (Kant 2001, 334 n., emphasis added). Rudolf Makkreel (1994, 103 ff.) suggests considering the feeling of existence lived through by the transcendental Ego in terms of the “pure aesthetic feeling of life,” which is introduced in the Critique of Judgment as the “bare consciousness of existence” (Kant 1987, § 29) in opposition to the aesthetic feeling of pleasure/displeasure or the “feeling of the enhancement of life”. Nor is self-consciousness, as a bare sensation (Empfindung) or feeling (Gefühl) of my own existence, to be conflated with the moral feeling of respect (Achtung) set out already in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). Both selfconsciousness and respect are types of sensations not caused by the influence of an outer object – they are both “non-referential” in the strict sense of not-being dependent upon a sensuous affection of the subject by the object (see Kumar 2014). However, the feeling of respect is “a feeling self-wrought [selbstgewirktes]” by  I am not negating that judgments predicating identity of something with itself generally do not pose the problem of splitting. My observation, as simple as it is, refers merely to the fact that in self-consciousness it is easier to become aware of the problem of splitting than it is referring to identity judgments. On a related note, that the latter involve great difficulties and mediations when rightly seized upon is most efficiently proved by the Fichtean system of the theory of science or Wissenschaftslehre. 12

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means of a concept of reason, i.e. the moral law (Kant 1997, 14), therefore it does refer to something, in the broader sense of the term: namely it is caused by an a priori principle of the practical reason. Self-consciousness instead is not even linked to a rational concept or principle which resides in the mind, since it fundamentally lacks the referential or presentational power as such. Hence Kant more precisely explains it as a “power [Vermögen]” which does not contribute anything to cognition, “but merely compares the given presentation in the subject with the entire presentational power, of which the mind becomes conscious when it feels its own state” (Kant 1987, 44). This is not at odds with what we noticed above, namely that transcendental self-consciousness implies a consciousness of my activities, meaning my “entire presentational power.” In this regard, self-consciousness as bare sensation of existence represents for Kant the transcendental feeling of spontaneity that the mind lives through in every (transcendental) activity it performs (see Klemme 2012, 207 ff.). In such a manner, it seems the Ego-splitting would not be a problem at all. In the feeling the subject lives through of her own existence and spontaneity, there is no splitting of the I, no mediation, but rather an unmediated relation or “familiarity [Vertrautheit]” (cf. Frank 2002, 49; Klemme 1996, 401) of the I with its own presentational power and transcendentally constituting activity. In other terms, if selfconsciousness needs to be conceived of as a feeling of bare existence, no objectification of the I and a correspondent splitting between the subject (as experiencing) and this subject as its own object (as experienced) seem to occur. Nevertheless, far from being uncontroversial, this thesis has been thoroughly debated in the most recent Kantian scholarship. In a famous article, Dieter Henrich blamed, among others, Kant for relying on what he calls the reflection theory of the I. This theory assumes a subject of thinking and emphasizes that this subject stands in a constant relation to itself. It then explains this relationship as a result of the subject’s turning back into itself from its original relation to objects, and thus of its making itself into its own object. The I is thus ultimately regarded by Kant as that act in which the knowing subject becomes aware of its constant unity with itself (Henrich 1982, 19). This conception is insofar questionable for Henrich as it falls into a vicious circle. If we understand self-consciousness as reflection, the structure of reflection itself requests us to postulate an essential duality, i.e. a split, between the reflecting I and the reflected I  – Subjekt-Ich and Objekt-Ich in Henrich’s terminology. What is then the nature of the first subject, the subject-I? Properly speaking, it cannot be regarded as an I for one can only speak of an ‘I’ where a subject has apprehended itself. Further, the sole function of reflection consists in making explicit what was already there but concealed. Reflection therefore cannot explain the origin of the I, meaning that it is logically inadmissible to explain the I in terms of self-consciousness. The main premise of Henrich’s argument, which is more of interest for the topic of this paper than the argument itself, is that self-consciousness qua reflection entails a splitting of the I. As soon as reflection sets in, the I is not identical with itself anymore and a duality in its essential core is produced. This is however not an eventuality which pertains uniquely to those experiences in which the I grasps itself,

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for reflective self-experience, according to the refection theory of the I, is constitutive for the I. The internal split of the I would consist then in an essential feature of I-ness, a feature which most intimately defines the being of the transcendental subject for Kant. This conclusion however has been recently challenged by Dieter Sturma. His critique of Henrich’s reading of Kant amounts to showing that there are two ways in which Kant himself understands the phenomenon of self-consciousness: either as the consciousness of states and properties of the I (empirical self-consciousness) or as an immediate feeling about the bare existence of the I (transcendental self-consciousness). For the first kind of self-consciousness we might be keen to acknowledge a split and the consequent reduplication of the I, since the I is now considered as an object of experience with specific states and properties attaching to it. While this is only valid for the empirical concept of self-consciousness that Kant rejects in the Paralogisms, in transcendental self-consciousness, Sturma argues, there is no sense of speaking of an object-I and, consequently, of an Ego-splitting as the I cannot be an object of knowledge like any other (cf. Sturma 1985, 125). Accordingly, self-consciousness does not necessarily involve a split of the I for Kant. In spite of his criticism of Henrich, Sturma himself is aware of a certain ambivalence in the Kantian doctrine regarding the second notion of self-consciousness (cf. Sturma 1985, 92). Indeed, in describing transcendental self-consciousness, Kant employs a notion of objectivity that must be distinguished from his more common usage of the concept of object as object of (sensuous) experience. In this sense Kant writes: “I am conscious of myself (apperception). I think i.e. I am to myself an object of intellect” (Kant 1902-, AA XXII, 119). As an object of intellectual intuition the transcendental I does not partake in the same essential conditions that make an object of sensible experience possible. This (Fichtean) reading of Kant’s notion of transcendental self-consciousness draws on the distinction between sensible and intellectual intuition. According to Kant, objects are given to sensible intuition, whereby they are created or posited by intellectual intuition (Kant 1998, B135, 139). In a sensible intuition we are passive, since the object acts on us; in an intellectual intuition we actively produce the object we represent. Therefore, if we compare self-consciousness to intellectual intuition, the former is not barely the making explicit of the I but at the same time the production or positing of the I as such. The I is posited as an object to itself. Clearly, the kind of object posited by intellectual intuition is of a different sort than the object given in sensuous intuition. For this reason, Sturma suggests considering the I qua the object of self-consciousness as a “quasi-object” (Sturma 1985, 96). This interpretation of the issue of self-consciousness, even if it might offer a reply to Henrich’s argument, does not solve the issue of the Ego-splitting but only shifts it further towards another level. A quasi-objectivity is still an objectivity and the problem is again to state the identity between the subject-I and the quasiobject-I, that is, to preserve self-identity while admitting self-consciousness. Thus, eventually Sturma’s criticism seems to boost Henrich’s reading for which Kant

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would rely on a reflection model in his account of the internal structure of self-consciousness. (3) The third thesis that we can find in the above quoted passage may tone down the just addressed difficulties to a certain extent. From the Kantian perspective, the phenomenon of Ego-splitting amounts to a “limit” with respect to any possible knowledge concerning the transcendental subject (cf. Broekman 1963, 148). It is, to put it plainly, as if an analysis of the essential core of the I should stop exactly at the point in which this essential reduplication emerges. We can say nothing about it except that it occurs. It is a “matter of fact (Faktum)” that escapes any sort of explanation. As such, the Ego-splitting cannot be led back to a form of intuition stemming from sensibility, nor to a category of the understanding. One may notice that this is at odds with the role self-consciousness plays within the Kantian system. Transcendental self-consciousness or apperception is according to Kant the most fundamental condition for the possibility of cognitive experience. It is “pure” because it does not stem from experience but renders it possible in the first place. Since it may be regarded as the product or outcome of self-consciousness, also the Ego-splitting must share this same feature: it is not something we find in sensuous experience, but is a pure condition of experience. Kant, however, says nothing concerning what kind of transcendental function, if any, the Ego-splitting should undertake in the process of constitution of experience. If apperception allows us to grasp the manifold of experiences in terms of a totality, thus making possible a unitary experience which is in turn a condition of possibility for cognition, what transcendental condition does the ego-splitting ultimately fulfill? I tend to believe that we can hardly find an answer to such a question in Kant’s own works. As the outcome of the previous analyses, then, it must be retained that for Kant the Ego-splitting represents a fundamental matter of fact that we encounter when confronting ourselves with the nature of the transcendental subject as selfconscious I. Nonetheless, the transcendental philosopher must limit herself simply to admitting this split without trying to explain it. By taking the Ego-splitting as an unexplainable fact, Kant utterly rejects the task of rescuing the identity of the I from the threat of its splitting. It seems that self-consciousness has eventually taken over self-identity. To find an answer to the previous question, namely what transcendental condition does the Ego-splitting fulfill, we need to consider Husserl’s own reappraisal of Kant’s original insight in the next section. In this manner, it shall be possible to shed more light on the nature of this phenomenon as well as to uncover its cardinal transcendental functioning in laying down the conditions of possibility for experience in general.

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3  Husserl’s Phenomenology of Ego-Splitting In a recent article, Konrad Cramer argued for two theses concerning the problem of Ego-splitting in Husserl’s transcendental philosophy. First, he argues, Husserl never had the problem that we also encounter in Kant, which means that he never had to account for a split of the I in self-consciousness. Second, even if he had had it, he would have appreciated Kant’s ‘solution’ of it, that is, he would have agreed that we simply must acknowledge the Ego-splitting without even trying to explain it  – “Husserl did not have this difficulty. But, if he had had it, he would have agreed with Kant’s relinquishment of explaining this as well as any other ‘undoubtful’ fact” (Cramer 2011, 25). I contend that neither of the two assertions Cramer supports here are true. On the one hand, Husserl has indeed encountered the phenomenon of Egosplitting in his phenomenological analyses of reflection and representification. On the other, he does not simply limit himself to acknowledging the occurring of the Ego-splitting in common, natural experiences, but he takes it as characterizing the essential core of the transcendental subject. Not for nothing, Jan Broekman once stated that Husserl conceives of the Ego-splitting as the bedrock of his entire philosophy (cf. Broekman 1963, 123). In what follows, I shall argue for my twofold thesis with a reading of Husserl’s texts in which the Ego-splitting comes particularly to light, that is, the texts in which Husserl considers the intentional structure of a peculiar type of acts, i.e. representifications (Vergegenwärtigungen), and those that deal with the nature of reflection. Secondly, I show in which sense transcendental subjectivity harbors a fundamental split in its very core, which is, I shall argue, what determines in turn its transcendentally constituting activity.

3.1  Ego-Splitting in Representifications Husserl’s phenomenology aims at providing a description of the essential structures of pure consciousness or experience. According to Husserl, the phenomenological method allows us to draw the distinction between two fundamental types of living experiences: namely experiences that presentifiy (gegenwärtigen) their object directly and experiences that representify (vergegenwärtigen) their object indirectly. Husserl famously calls the former presentifications (Gegenwärtigungen) and the latter representifications (Vergegenwärtigungen).13 Representifications display our capacity of representing things, states of affairs and events that are not in the actual field of our experience, i.e. that are absent. This faculty underpins many activities we carry out in our daily life, such as when we are waiting for the train, when we recollect the meal we have eaten last night or when we are imaging a battle of cen I follow Eduard Marbach (2012, 236) in translating the German Vergegenwärtigung and vergegenwärtigen with “representification” and “to representify”, on the one hand, and Gegenwärtigung and gegenwärtigen with “presentification” and “to presentify”, on the other.

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taurs. In all these cases, we relate to an object or event (the train, the last night meal, the centaurs’ battle) which is not really here and now, but which is in this or that manner representified. Living in acts of representifications, we are not only able to call into presence, as it were, objects and events that are no more, not yet, or that have never been and will never be in the field of perception. According to Husserl, the representification of an object involves a sort of reduplication or split of the I. A couple of examples should clarify the essential structure of this phenomenon that we find at work in every act of representification.

3.2  Ego-Splitting in Recollection Let us begin with the case of what Husserl notably calls “reflections upon memory” (Husserl 2019, 297; cf. Husserl 1983, 197 ff.). I recollect an event that took place in the past, e.g. a fire. What I recall is not only the event in se, in its objective existence, but also the event per se, that is, in the way I once experienced it. Therefore, the activity of recollection can function only as long as it representifies both the recollected object and the perception (or judgment, volition etc.) which once presentified that object.14 Now, at least since the publication of Ideas I Husserl attributes to every experience a double polarization: towards the object-pole and towards the I-pole.15 Every experience or act intends an object that is altogether “transcendent” with respect to the act itself. The intending or “being-directed-to” (Gerichtet-sein) of the act has its point of origin in an I-pole that is both transcendent and immanent with respect to the act itself: in Husserl’s famous words, it is “a transcendence in the immanence” (cf.  Husserl 1989, 105–107; Husserl 1973a, 246; Husserl 1973b, 43; Husserl 1983,  109–112). This somewhat exotic expression serves Husserl to underline a fundamental twofold character of the I-pole. As a structural moment in the intentional act, the I is deemed to be “immanent” and to arise and perish along with the singular act in the stream of consciousness. Notwithstanding, for Husserl the I endures and remains identical by any real or possible changing of living experi Husserl’s analyses of recollection notably focus on one specific type of remembering, i.e. what cognitive psychology nowadays calls “episodic memory”, the memory of an event I experienced in the past. However, there are other forms of remembering like the so-called “semantic memory”, which is the memory I have for example of the date of Caesar’s murder – an event I did not directly experience. Cf. Fernández 2006 and critically Naylor 2011. 15  Husserl explicitly purports a non-egological conception of consciousness in his Logical Investigations (1900–1901) in which the relation between the experiences or acts and the (phenomenological) I – intended as the bundle of all lived experiences – is considered as not phenomenologically proven (Husserl 2001, 85 f.; cf. also Marbach 1973, 5–22). Later he changed his view, when he realizes that the I represents an essential moment of every act of consciousness actively lived through. For a recent reconstruction of the development of Husserl’s theory of the I, see Lohmar 2012. 14

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ences. The I does not amount to a “really inherent piece” (reelles Stück) of the act, nor to a “fixed idea” that stupidly accompanies every and each intentional experience (Husserl 1983, 132). Although the I needs to be distinguished from the acts in which it lives and functions, it cannot exist independently of them. The I in this specific sense “transcends” the current lived experience as an abiding dimension of every form of manifestation (Hart 2009, 93; see Zahavi 1999, 148). In the present context the latter insight allows us to explain the splitting of the I in representifications. In the case of recollection, by representifying a past experience one eventually faces a reduplication of the I into the I-pole of the representifying experience (in the previous example, the recollection of the fire) and the I-pole of the representified experience (the perception of the fire I lived through in the past). In Husserl’s own words: “In each memory lies in a certain sense a doubling of the I [Ichverdoppelung], insofar as what I remember directly is not only in general conscious as something past, but as something past as perceived by me [als von mir wahrgenommenes Gewesen]” (Husserl 2019, 297; see also Husserl 2006b, 58; Husserl 2006a,  366). The reason of doubling of the I, which as we will see is a consequence of the Ego-splitting, lies in the fact that the content of recollection belongs to my past I, i.e. the I that was there in the past and bore witness to the fire (cf. Husserl 2019, 297). However, the two I’s of the recollecting and recollected experience maintain their identity despite the split and the temporal distance that separate them. This identity is, in the case of recollection, an identity through time, i.e. persistence. The persistence of the I through time is in no respect like the persistence of physicalmaterial objects through time. The latter is an objective duration that calls for a constituting activity of the subject. The former, instead, implies what Husserl in § 29 of Ideas II calls “a kind of consequence of the Ego” (Husserl 1989, 120). This means that the identity of the I through the manifold of (its) experiences depends on the fact that I am a priori the same as far as I maintain consequence among all my position-takings. Surely, I may become “unfaithful” and “inconsistent” to myself – for instance, I may convert to a new religion and reject my previous stance towards it. I nonetheless remain identical with myself insofar as it is me that carries out this new decision and allows it to fit with the previous history of all my position-takings. What preserves my identity through time is thus the gradual sedimentation of my experiences and position-takings and their functioning in the present field of consciousness as individual patterns of motivational force and affection (cf. Cavallaro 2016). The remembering and the remembered I’s have the same history of experience in common. This entails two possibilities: either what motivates the remembering I is akin to what has motivated the remembered I in the past or, even if the I has meanwhile changed its way of being motivated, i.e. the set of motivations the I allows itself to be affected by has been modified, it is possible to trace the motives that led the I to change its way of being motivated within the coherence of the same history of the I. In both cases, the so-called “genetic” identity of the I is still preserved. From a static point of view, the identity of the I through recollection is cherished as well. It belongs to the intentional structure of recollecting an experience that the

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I of the past experience be the same as the I of the recollecting experience. As Husserl pointed out in the previous quote, the past is given to me not as such but as being perceived and experienced by me. Therefore, there is a difference between representifying a past experience which belongs to my own history and representifying a past experience of someone else, as when I imaginatively recollect the first date of my parents. The criterion for distinguishing the two forms of recollection resides in the fact that my past experience has been lived through from the firstperson perspective whereas this condition is fundamentally lacking in the latter case – I was obviously not there experiencing the scene when my parents met the first time.16

3.3  Ego-Splitting in Phantasy Experiences17 Similarly, Husserl notices another form of Ego-splitting caused by those acts of representification which constitute the core of phantasy experiences. What characterizes phantasy in opposition to perception and recollection is the fact of being a non-positing consciousness in which something (an object or event) is experienced in the mode of the “as if [als ob]”. Let’s say I now live through a phantasy of a piano sonata by Chopin. I experience tones, intervals, and chords “as if” I would really perceiving them right now. In fact, I do not actually ‘listen’ to these sounds; rather I just imagine them as if they really existed. Nor I am occupied with a recollection of having once been hearing the piano sonata. In the latter case, I would effectively posit the concrete (past) existence not only of the musical piece (e.g. regarded as acoustic waves in the physical space, as long as I commit myself to a naturalistic worldview), but also of my experience of having listened to this musical piece. In phantasy, instead, both existential positings are “neutralized”.18 At this point we need to raise the following question: how is consciousness aware of the as-if character of phantasy experiences? This character cannot in fact be postulated as an in se quality of a certain type of experience. To be phenomenologically admissible, this datum must further be perceived in some manner or be experientially conscious: in other terms, it must be a per se quality. It is precisely here that the Ego-splitting comes into play. In fact, the as-if character must be someway experienced by the phantasying subject. The quasi-position of the phantasy act becomes  This more static form of identity is due to an inner constituent of experiencethat Dan Zahavi famously calls “minimal self” (cf. Zahavi 1999). 17  For a  much broader assessment of  the  problems related to  Husserl’s phenomenology of  pure phantasy, especially with  regard to  the  phenomenon of  the  ego-splitting, see Cavallaro 2017. In this section of the present paper, I mostly draw on the analyses laid down in that article. 18  In Ideas I Husserl defines phantasy “the neutrality modification of ‘positing’ presentification, therefore of memory in the widest conceivable sense” (Husserl 1983, 260, translation modified). Yet, the identification of phantasy with a “modification” of a pre-given act is highly problematic, as Husserl himself will recognize in his later manuscripts published in Husserl 2005, 689–708. For an assessment of this issue see Cavallaro 2017, 167–171. 16

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aware through what Husserl calls “inner consciousness, “inner perception”, or “original consciousness” of the act. In an important appendix to his lectures on time-consciousness, entitled Internal Consciousness and the Grasping of Experiences, Husserl illustrates this general feature of all acts of consciousness as follows: “Every act is consciousness of something, but there is also consciousness of every act. Every experience is ‘sensed’ [empfunden], is immanently ‘perceived’ (internal consciousness)” (Husserl 1991, 130). This inner experiencing accompanies every kind of intentional act and is not itself, as Husserl points out, an intentional act – otherwise this would lead to an infinite regress.19 Therefore, one can live through a phantasy experience only in virtue of an internal awareness of that experience and its respective quasi-positing character. If we did not have such inner consciousness of the phantasying act, for example we would stand no chance of carrying out the divide between phantasy and perception – for, as we have seen, phantasy experiences distinguish themselves from perceptual experiences in virtue of their neutralizing character. This significant phenomenon sheds light on the problem of the Ego-splitting here at stake. Namely it shows how inner consciousness is fundamentally responsible for the Ego-splitting in the case of phantasy experiences. As Rudolf Bernet pinpoints in his book Conscience et existence: “The inner consciousness of the accomplishment of an act of phantasy is the living experience of a reduplication of the intentional consciousness” (Bernet 2004, 6; cf. also Husserl 2005, 34). This entails that whenever we live through a phantasy experience we undergo a specific doubling of the intentional consciousness as well as of a split of the I. Let us develop this point more in detail. To begin with, it is necessary to introduce a distinction between two forms of split involved in the living through of phantasy experiences. Firstly, there is the split of intentional consciousness. The phantasy experiences of the phantasied I do not belong to the same temporal flux of the phantasying I. As Fink distinctly puts it, “the time [of the phantasy world] does not coincide with the time of the actual I, it does not stand in any relation of orientation with the present, in which the phantasy experience constitutes itself” (Fink 1966, 46).20 This aspect makes the distinction between phantasy and recollection even clearer. In recollection, as already discussed, we also experience a doubling of the intentional act, but in this case the two moments, namely the recollected perception and the actual recollecting act belong to the one and the same flux of consciousness. On the contrary, the phantasied experience and the phantasying experience remain alien to each other, for they belong to two different worlds, with their correspondent spatio-temporal dimensions.  Would consciousness become conscious only dependently on a second intentional experience, one would have to postulate a further intentional experience that makes the latter equally conscious, and so on ad infinitum. Hence, in order to forestall the regress one must consider self-consciousness an intrinsic feature of any experience whatsoever. 20  Husserl himself reaches a similar conclusion in Experience and Judgment where he refers to the specific character of phantasy time as detached from the absolute time of perception (cf. Husserl 1975, § 39). 19

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In addition, the split involves a redoubling of the I who lives through the phantasy experience. This difference of phantasying and phantasied I comes particularly into the fore in Husserl’s references to the phenomenon of phantasy in the second part of his lectures on First Philosophy. Here, Husserl introduces the famous example of the phantasy experience of a centaurs’ battle. Phantasying the battle, Husserl pinpoints, “it is also possible that I am not part of it [the phantasy world of the centarus’ battle, that I do not count. But upon closer inspection I am myself then in a certain sense, and necessarily so, co-phantasized. For, how could I imagine such an episode of the phantasy world with such determination, without imagining it in a certain orientation?” (Husserl 2019, 319; cf. also Husserl 2005, 556). One could argue that, in a certain respect, an analogy between phantasy and perception holds true, for also in phantasy we cannot quasi-perceive an object if not from a given viewpoint in the phantasy space. However, what is interesting here is the fact that the phantasied I who observes the centaurs’ battle from a certain orientation is detached from the I who lives through the phantasy experience. No reunification or identification is possible between the two, otherwise, as Natalie Depraz correctly observes, “one would face a case of madness due to multiple personality disorder, schizophrenia in the literal sense” (Depraz 1995, 263; cf. also Bernet 2004, 112). Phantasying I and phantasied I must remain separated if the I should maintain its identity. To take a step further, it can be argued that the impossibility of reunifying the two I’s is justified by both static and genetic considerations. From a static point of view, the phantasied I represents the I-pole of the quasi-perception reproduced by the phantasy experience, whereas the phantasying I equals the I-pole of this experience itself. Thus, they belong to the inner intentional structure of two different acts and as such must be kept separated. The possibility of a sheer identification between the two I’s is ruled out by Husserl since they belong to two different fluxes of consciousness, i.e. to two different temporal horizons. From a genetic point of view, I cannot consider the phantasyzed I as myself since this one, together with the phantasy experience that gives rise to it, is the product of an unmotivated act of subjective freedom in which phantasy ultimately consists (cf. Bernet 2004, 108, 115). I cannot find so to speak a place for it in my genetic history since it does not fit with my past sedimented experiences in which, to continue the example began earlier, no centaurs occur and perform a battle in front of my incredulous eyes. Does this ruling out the identity between the phantasying I and the phantasied I jeopardize the self-identity of the I? Once again self-consciousness and self-identity seem to clash here. It is namely self-consciousness that motivates us to draw the distinction between the phantasying experience and the phantasied experience along with their corresponding I’s. If self-consciousness was not obtaining, surely I could not become conscious of living through a phantasy experience as I would not be aware of the neutralizing character of the positing performed by phantasy. Nonetheless, Husserl still admits here a “union of coincidence” (Deckungseinheit) between the phantasying I and phantasied I, which means a sort of identity in difference. There is no strict difference, since the phantasied I does not resemble an alter ego which I can perceive in the real world, but this I is nothing else than me as

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imagined in a phantasy world. At the same time, there is also not a straightforward identity between the I’s. The split brought about by self-consciousness is a split inasmuch as the consciousness of identity does not totally disappear but is still there albeit modified, tantalized by difference. The I loses its sheer identity in order to acquire a new level of identification which entails and harbors difference in itself. In this sense, strictly speaking, the splitting of the I does not coincide with its reduplication. A reduplication entails that at first there is one I, while thereafter there are two I’s. On the opposite, a  splitting does not bring to existence a new, second  I, which would be numerically distinct from the first. In this case, the I undergoes a process, i.e. the splitting, which allows difference to enter its self-identity. At the end of this process, there are not two I’s, but one and the same splitted I. In sum, Husserl’s phenomenological analyses of recollection and phantasy experiences expounded so far have shown us an intrinsic feature of the subject, namely its distinctive aptitude of splitting itself without giving up its own identity. In the case of phantasy, we further noticed that the identity of the I which follows the Egosplitting is of a different kind with respect to the sheer self-identity prior to it. Now, these aspects of Husserl’s approach to the problem of the Ego-splitting find their culmination in his analyses of reflection. We shall see in the next section how Husserl reached a more advanced insight into the issue concerning the incompatibility between self-consciousness and self-identity in his inquiries into the phenomenological structure of reflective experiences. This will at the same time allow us to draw a parallel with the Kantian approach set out in the first part of this paper.

3.4  Ego-Splitting and Reflection The previous discussion about the role of the Ego-splitting in recollection and phantasy has shown the centrality of this concept for the general understanding of acts of representification. In every kind of representification, consciousness undergoes a splitting that, on the one hand, seems to jeopardize the identity of the I, but, on the other hand, renders it eventually possible to experience such an identity. As paradoxical as it may sound, the condition of possibility for experiencing the identity of the I rests on its original split. This is namely the general insight we can gather from Husserl’s meditations on the phenomenon of Ego-splitting. Yet, before jumping to this conclusion, we still need to examine a further type of acts, in which the characteristic split of the I still plays a crucial role: we refer here to the acts of reflection. Reflection for Husserl does not constitute a specific topic of phenomenological analysis among others. Instead, it takes on a “universal methodological function” since “the phenomenological method operates exclusively in acts of reflection” (Husserl 1983, 174). Husserl distinguishes a kind of reflection that we commonly perform in the natural attitude and the reflection peculiar to the phenomenological method. In contrast to natural reflection  – which may also assume the form of a scientific enterprise such as in the case of the method of introspection as employed by empirical psychology  – phenomenological reflection brackets the positing of

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being pertaining to the reflected living experience by means of the phenomenological epoché (cf. Husserl 1960, 32 f.; see also the whole § 15 of the First Cartesian Meditation). What remains after this putting out of action of the existential thesis which accompanies every experience is the pure experience with its eidetic features. Now, despite the methodologically different meaning and usage of natural and phenomenological reflection in Husserl’s philosophy, one notices that they both share a common intentional structure – which constitutes the referential common ground that permits us to employ the term ‘reflection’ to refer to each of those.21 Reflection has in common with the other kinds of experience such as perception, recollection, and phantasy the fact of having an intentional character. Accordingly, the relationship between the reflecting act and the reflected experience is to be characterized as intentional. This intentional relation however can neither be interpreted as a relation between two transcendent things nor as a relation between two relata that happen to be at two different moments in the objective time, like in the case of recollecting experiences. As a matter of fact, Husserl at times seems to boost an understanding of reflection in terms of a “retrospective glimpse [rückschauender Blick]” (cf. Husserl 1989, 260; cf. Husserl 1987, 208; Husserl 2006a, 196), which involves a temporal delay of the reflected act with respect to the reflecting act. In such a view, I can reflectively seize upon an act only insofar as it is already elapsed (and retentionally present), so that the act of reflection must be imagined at any time a step ahead, as it were.22 However, Husserl gradually abandons this early insight. On the one hand, he becomes well aware of the difficulties and paradoxes that invalidate this account of reflection, and which are the ones traditionally attributed to the reflection-theory of the self and self-consciousness criticized for instance by Henrich (see above). On the other hand, in the second volume of his lecture course on First Philosophy he explicitly hints at the possibility of a reflecting act that runs parallel to the reflected experience. While perceiving a house I may turn my regard to the experience of perceiving as such, albeit without suspending my ongoing perception. Husserl writes there: Once the perception, in our example the perception of a house, continues after having established myself already as a reflecting I, then I have, for this further continuing perception, not a temporal spread [Auseinander] of the I directed at the house [on the one hand] and, on the other, of the I of reflection directed at this I and its being-directed-perceptually-at-thehouse [...]. Rather, in the living present I have in coexistence the doubled I and the doubled I-actus; hence the I which now observes the house continually, and the I which enacts the actus: ‘I am aware that I continually observe the house’, and which articulates itself, perhaps, in the form ‘I observe the house’ (Husserl 2019, 292).

 It is thus not my intent here to unveil the much debated topic of the split between the phenomenological, natural, and phenomenologizing I first identified by Eugen Fink in Fink 1933. For a recent valuable discussion of this topic see Varga 2011. 22  In the same vein, Zahavi interprets reflection as an act that, when it sets in, “initially grasps something that has just elapsed, namely the motivating prereflective phase of the experience. I remain affected by that which is no longer present, and I therefore have the possibility to react on the affection and to thematize the backward sinking phase of experience” (Zahavi 1999, 117). 21

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This long passage is crucial for understanding the difference between the Egosplitting occurring in reflection and the one characteristic of the acts of representification considered so far, that is, recollection and phantasy. Previously we observed that the activity of recollecting a past experience entails a split between the recollecting I and the I of the recollected experience. In this case, we clearly notice a “temporal separation [zeitliches Auseinander]” between the two I’s: the I of recollection belongs to the living present in which the recollecting act takes place, whereas the I as immanent moment of the recollected experience settles in the temporal horizon of the I’s past life. The situation becomes more complicated when it comes to addressing the temporal dimension of the Ego-splitting pertaining to phantasy experiences. In contrast to the phantasying I, the phantasized I is in no sense part of this world with its objective time and space. This means that it would make little sense to localize it in a temporal point instead of another, as long as these points are determined with respect to the now-point (Jetztpunkt) of the I who lives through the phantasy experience. A sentence as ‘the adventures of Frodo Baggins took place in the year 496 A.C.’ immediately appears awkward since we do not usually pose the objective existence of the happenings narrated in the fictional book of J.R.R. Tolkien while reading them. As already argued above, phantasy world and real world do not share the same modality of temporal experience  – clearly, the same holds true for the experiential dimension of space. A consequence of this is that also the respective I’s with their corresponding experiences do not partake of the same temporal level. To put it plainly, it goes against the set of eidetic laws for phantasy experiences to say that the phantasying I is a step ahead or behind with respect to the phantasyzed I. In fact, the phenomenological structure of the two temporal dimensions does not allow any criterion of comparison for establishing what comes first and what comes after.23 In reflection, on the contrary, we acknowledge a temporal relation between the reflecting I and the reflected I, which is, first, incomparable with the one of phantasy experience and, second, of a different sort than the one of recollection. The act of reflection together with the reflected act join in a relationship of, to say, “temporal chiasm [zeitliches Ineinander]” or “contemporaneity”. Thus, it turns out that what makes reflection a peculiar act of its own, especially in contrast to recollection and phantasy, is the simultaneity between the reflected and reflecting experience together with their corresponding I’s. Furthermore, it is clear, in this case as in the previous occurrences of the split, that these two I’s must maintain their identity in spite of the split. Were this not be the case, I would face an experience of the consciousness’ life of somebody else (what is called by Husserl “empathy”) and not a reflection into my own life of consciousness. The criterion that permits us to establish the fact that I am introspec Thus, also simultaneity between the phantasying and the phantasied experience and their respective I’s is ruled out. Temporal categories are relative categories of things (objects, events), which means, they hold true only if they are taken all together as possible predicates of one individual at a time. 23

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tively experiencing my experience instead of empathizing with the experience of someone different from me is the phenomenal character of the reflected experience. If this experience is originally lived through, i.e. in a first-personal mode of presentation, I cannot cast in doubt its being-mine: objectively, I lack experiential motives to attribute it to someone else. For the first-personal givenness of the experience of another I different from me is fundamentally inaccessible to me or, as Husserl puts it, “if what belongs to the Other’s own essence were directly accessible, it would be merely a moment of my own essence, and ultimately he himself and I myself would be the same” (Husserl 1960, 109). Thus, although empathy and reflection share the structural simultaneity of two I’s (and of two egological lives), they differ to the extent that in reflection it is one and the same I which is contemporaneously representified and then representifying, whereas empathy representifies the experience of another self, which cannot be identified with the experiencing I. Even if reflection distinguishes itself from representifications, it may be considered as their essential condition. By every representification a type of reflection sets in, which in turn renders possible the representifying of an absent object or experience. The type of reflection we are talking about must not be conflated with the reflection as an autonomous act of consciousness which thematically directs itself towards its intentional object. As a condition for representifying experiences, reflection is rather an un-thematically conscious operation which brings about the Egosplitting which is fundamental for any kind of representifying act. For the splitting must not be seen as an outcome of representification, rather as its most essential condition. In order to representify an experience, consciousness must redouble itself. This is true for every kind of representification: in remembering, phantasy, and reflection itself – considered as an intentional act – a reduplication of the I and a consequent split takes place. We cannot remember a past experience without operating a split of the I in remembering and remembered I. We cannot imagine experiencing something without divorcing the current experience of imagining from the imagined experience, and so for their corresponding I’s. Finally, we cannot reflect upon our own experience without producing a new level of experiences with its reflecting I. The unthematic reflection which is at the basis of the split plays a double role by differentiating the I and at the same time identifying again the divided I’s. The Ego-splitting becomes a factor of union rather than separation, since for Husserl, the reduplication (Verdoppelung) or split (Spaltung) of the I does not necessarily entail separation (Scheidung) (cf. Farges 2015), rather being the condition of possibility for self-identity. Without a previous splitting of the I, the latter cannot become conscious of itself, i.e. self-manifest. Self-consciousness ultimately implies the Ego-splitting as its condition of possibility.

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4  C  onclusion. The Split at the Core of the Transcendental Subject What is the significance of these analyses for the problem stated at the beginning? We preliminarily observed that self-consciousness entails an Ego-splitting and noticed that this is at odds with the prerequisite of self-identity we generally attribute to every experienceable or solely thinkable object. The discussion in the first section has shown that Kant was aware of this problem, albeit without seriously tackling it. That by every act of reflection and self-consciousness the I can appear both as object and subject is for him an “undoubtable fact” which is at the same time “absolutely impossible to explain”. Husserl’s phenomenology has the merit of having uncovered new aspects of this fundamental split of the I. For him every act of representification, i.e. acts in which something absent comes into presence, may be deemed responsible for a certain type of Ego-splitting. We see in fact that to any form of representification corresponds a specific mode in which the splitting of the I can occur. Furthermore, we noticed how this qualification of the Ego-splitting basically depends on the relation between the temporalities of the representifying I and the representified I characteristic for each case. In recollection both I’s belong to the same temporal stream, whereby what principally differentiates them is their ‘position’ in the temporal continuum. In phantasy experiences the phantasying I and the phantasied I are not parts of the same temporal stream. Hence, their difference does not amount to the delayed location within a temporal continuum, but to the heterogeneity of the temporal dimensions in which the two I’s, with their entire egological life, are to be located. Finally, we noticed that reflection discloses a further type of Ego-splitting due to the “temporal chiasm” between the reflecting and reflected I. In this case, we have seen, one can speak of a simultaneous existence of the two I’s in the living experience. At the end of the previous section, it emerged how for Husserl reflection in general can be regarded as the condition of possibility for every act of representification. Husserl admits a sort of non-thematic self-consciousness which accompanies each and every act of representification. Since self-consciousness involves an Egosplitting, we conclude that also the structure of this kind of act demands a split of the I. In the same vein, Kant’s analyses of transcendental self-consciousness showed that the latter is a fundamental ingredient of every experience and thus must always be presupposed as a transcendental condition of all experiencing. Husserl’s analyses further follow Kant’s in noticing in reflection or self-consciousness an Ego-splitting. We can gather from this, the conclusion that the Ego-splitting itself must be regarded as a transcendental condition of experience. For in order to experience something, the I must ‘see’ itself experiencing, as it were. This involves a split between the I who sees itself experiencing and the I who is seen. Far from being the cause of an infinite regress, the splitting of the I is the condition for which an I can appear to itself, that is, in Husserl’s terms, can be “constituted” as an I. From a transcendental philosophical standpoint, self-manifestation

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or self-constitution is a necessary condition not only for the I as a particular being, but for any object of knowledge and experience. We saw this point in the discussion of Kant’s theory of transcendental self-consciousness. In order to have an experience of an object such as a table, there must be an I who experiences the object. This means that experiences are not alike floating entities with nobody conscious of them (cf. Husserl 1991, 84–88, 120–122). A no-ownership theory, i.e. a theory that downplays the role of a subject of experience, stating that there can be experiences that nobody really owns, clashes against a transcendental understanding of the structures of experience itself  (cf.  Hart 2009, 81–93). There is always a subject experiencing, thinking, desiring, and willing an object. The principle of intentionality, often considered as the major contribution of phenomenology, is condemned to remain misunderstood as long as one overshadows its counterpart, i.e. the eidetic necessity of what has been called the “self-luminosity” of experience, meaning the belonging of every and each experience to an experiencing subject.24 Now, to solve our issue, the question we ultimately need to respond to is precisely the following: does this appearing of the experience to itself involve a necessary split, in the sense of an irremediable separation, of the I’s own life? The answer is no, since, as the previously analyses reveal, no matter what kind of split is at stake in whatever mode of representification, the representified experience and the representifying experience are my experiences, that means, they are the experiences of one and the same I. The problem, however, is not simply to state the identity of the I with itself. More fundamental is to show how the I becomes aware of its identity. To constitute its identity per se, the I must experience itself as divided. This is the original insight Kant offers us in his theory of self-consciousness. And this is the same insight that we can gather from Husserl’s phenomenological analyses of the Ego-splitting in the acts of representification and reflection. Not solely self-consciousness, but also self-identity involves the Ego-splitting, for identity in the case of transcendental philosophy is in no way akin to a feature which entities possess in se – identity is rather always posited by a subject and hence it equals the product of an experiential synthesis. If this holds true for common entities such as tables, trees etc., the more it must hold for that peculiar sort of entity which is the transcendental subject. In other terms, the identity of the subject itself cannot be regarded as a given but always as a product of a synthesis. As we previously noticed, in this case Husserl speaks of a “synthesis of coincidence [Deckungssynthese]” between the two I’s produced by the split. This synthesis obtains automatically, as it were, which means, it proceeds without any active position-taking by the subject – and obviously so, since it is the synthesis that transcendentally constitutes the subject as such. The most inner nucleus of the subject thus entails an inner process of differentiation which brings about the split. Jan M. Broekman (1963, 124 and n. 3) speaks in this sense of an “egological difference” inhabiting the intimate depth of the I. This splitting, this differentiation is not the last word, however. Where there is a split, there is always a 24

 This is a central thesis in the works of Dan Zahavi. See for instance Zahavi 1999.

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possibility of reunification, of synthesis and reconciliation of what was previously separated. It is as if the subject constituted its own difference in order to subsequently affirm its identity on a deeper level.25 In an appendix to the second volume of First Philosophy, Husserl refers to a kind of synthesis of recognition of the I as a continuous subject that lives through all its acts of representification: “I find it [the transcendental I] as the continual Ego in the ‘I now experience this thing, I remember, I expect’, and so on, be it ⟨as the I⟩ of the respective individual experience, be it in a thoroughgoing ⟨continuity⟩ in the transition of one to the other [experience], while the phenomenon that just ran off is still alive intentionally” (Husserl 2019, 562). The wording “I find it” alludes to the fact that it is only through my reflective gaze that I can literally find myself in every experience – provided that the syntheses of time (especially retention) render possible the grasping of the elapsed phases of the flux in which my acts have been lived through. Thus, reflection is precisely that activity which allows us to recognize the I as continuous among all its experiences. At this point, one may raise the objection that it is odd to speak of a split in the first place where there is nothing to be split. How could one intend an Ego-splitting, if the splitting is at the basis of the constitution of the I itself? To answer this objection, it is sufficient to take a closer look at the concept of “constitution [Konstitution]” at stake here. In Husserl’s understanding of the word, constitution is not synonymous with “production [Erzeugung]” (cf. Landgrebe 1974). The I does not have to be identified directly with the real product of a synthesis of coincidence between different acts of consciousness. What constitution refers to is rather a form of manifestation or, better, self-manifestation of the I, which can take place only if the synthesis of coincidence underlying several acts has been carried out. Thus, the splitting renders possible not the coming to being of the I, but its self-manifestation. However, because in phenomenology as well as in general in transcendental philosophy the mode of appearing of an object, in this case the I, is essential to the definition of the object itself, we may renew the thesis for which the splitting, as the condition for the manifestation and appearing of the I, belongs to the most essential  Julien Farges (2015, 99) emphasizes how reflection according to Husserl opens up a verticality in the essence of the I, a sort of original depth which produces a qualitatively infinite diffraction of the original split. I agree that the Ego-splitting allows difference and thus verticality to penetrate the essence of the I. However, I cannot see why this splitting should proceed ad infinitum, as Farges seems to suggest. The split must be recognized as the condition of possibility of the self-thematization of the I. This self-thematization, if we consider it in a non-methodological sense as selfconsciousness which accompanies (or must be able to accompany) every and each experience, needs to be completed: in other words, its realization entails that the Ego-splitting finds eventually an end and becomes reunified by the synthesis of coincidence. In this precise sense, one might draw a distinction between reflection as a methodological means for Husserl’s phenomenological analyses and reflection as transcendental condition of possibility for experience. A distinction Farges’ article fails to draw. Christoph Durt (forthcoming) correctly pointed out that the splitting of the I is not a peculiarity  of transcendental consciousness, but it  occurs also in ordinary consciousness. 25

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features of the I. Thus, to reframe our thesis in eidetic terms, we must conclude that the splitting is a necessary character of the eidos ‘Ego’ along with self-consciousness and self-identity.26

References Bernet, Rudolf. 2004. Conscience et existence. Perspectives phénoménologiques. Paris: PUF. Broekman, Jan M. 1963. Phänomenologie und Egologie. Faktisches und transzendentales Ego bei Edmund Husserl. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff. Brook, Andrew. 2013. Kant’s View of the Mind and Consciousness of Self. Available online at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-mind/#4, checked on 12/29/2016. Cavallaro, Marco. 2016. Das “Problem” der Habituskonstitution und die Spätlehre des Ich in der genetischen Phänomenologie E. Husserls. Husserl Studies 32 (3): 237–261. ———. 2017. The Phenomenon of Ego-Splitting in Husserl’s Phenomenology of Pure Phantasy. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 48 (2): 162–177. Cramer, Konrad. 2011. Ich und Ichbewusstsein. Überlegungen zu Edmund Husserls Theorie der Subjektivität in der ersten Auflage seiner Logischen Untersuchungen von 1900/01. In Konrad Cramer, Christian Beyer (Ed.): Edmund Husserl 1859–2009. Beiträge aus Anlass der 150. Wiederkehr des Geburtstags des Philosophen. Berlin: De Gruyter, 3–25. Depraz, Natalie. 1995. Transcendance et incarnation. Le statut de l‘intersubjecitivité comme altérité à soi chez Husserl. Paris: Vrin. Durt, Cristoph. Forthcoming. The Embodied Self and the Paradox of Subjectivity. Farges, Julien. 2015. Réflexivité et scission originaire du sujet chez Husserl. Discipline filosofiche XXV (2): 93–112. Fernández, Jordi. 2006. The Intentionality of Memory. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (1): 39–57. Ferrarin, Alfredo. 1994. Husserl on the Ego and Its Eidos. Journal of the History of Philosophy 32 (4): 645–659. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb. 1982. Science of Knowledge, with the First and Second Introductions, edited by Peter Heath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fink, Eugen. 1966. Vergegenwärtigung und Bild. Beiträge zur Phänomenologie der Unwirklichkeit (1930). In Eugen Fink: Studien zur Phänomenologie 1930–1939, 1–78. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff. Frank, Manfred. 2002. Selbstgefühl. Eine historisch-systematische Erkundung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Hart, James G. 2009. Who One Is. Book 1: Meontology of the “I”: A Transcendental Phenomenology. Berlin: Springer. Heidegger, Martin. 1997. Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

 I am thankful to Tim Burns, Emanuela Carta, Christoph Durt, Nikos Soueljis, and Paul Zipfel for their insights into a previous version of this paper. In particular, Emanuela motivated me to dig much deeper into Kant’s philosophy of self-consciousness, whereas Nikos’ comments helped me a lot to clarify in my mind some central issues in Husserl’s phenomenology of the I. I want to thank also Andrea Staiti and the participants of the Writing Seminar at Boston College for their helping suggestions in improving my argument. The work for this paper has been carried out in the context of a Ph.D. program generously funded by the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne: I am very much indebted for its support during this time. The English has been revised by Penelope Allsobrook, to whom I finally wish to express my gratitude. 26

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Henrich, Dieter. 1982. Fichte’s Original Insight. In Contemporary German Philosophy, ed. Darrel E. Christensen, vol. 1, 15–53. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Husserl, Edmund. 1975. Experience and Judgement. Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic , Trans. James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. ———. 1989. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution, Trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer. Husserliana: Edmund Husserl  – Collected Works, III.  Dordrecht, London: Kluwer. ———. 1960. Cartesian Meditations. An Introduction to Phenomenology , Trans. Dorion Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1973a. Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Erster Teil: 1905–1920, ed. Iso Kern. Husserliana, XIII. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1973b. Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität.Texte aus dem Nachlass. Zweiter Teil: 1921–1928. Hrsg. von Iso Kern. Husserliana, XIV. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1983. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, Trans. Fred Kersten. Husserliana: Edmund Husserl – Collected Works, II. The Hague/Boston/Hingham: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1987. Aufsätze und Vorträge (1911–1921), ed. Hans Reiner Sepp. Husserliana, XXV. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1991. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917), Trans. John B. Brough. Husserliana: Edmund Husserl – Collected Works, IV. Dordrecht: Kluwer. ———. 2001. Logical Investigations. Volume 2, ed. Dermot Moran, Trans. John N. Findlay. London/New York: Routledge. ———. 2005. Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898–1925), Trans. John B. Brough. Husserliana: Edmund Husserl – Collected Works, XI. Dordrecht: Springer. ———. 2006a. Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934). Die C-Manuskripte, ed. Dieter Lohmar. Husserliana Materialien, VIII. Dordrecht: Springer. ———. 2006b. The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. From the Lectures, Winter Semester, 1910–1911, Trans. Ingo Farin and James G. Hart. Husserliana: Edmund Husserl – Collected Works, XII. Dordrecht: Springer. ———. 2019. First Philosophy. Lectures 1923/24 and Related Texts from the Manuscripts (1920–1925), Trans. Sebastian Luft and Thane M. Naberhaus. Husserliana: Edmund Husserl – Collected Works, XIV. Dordrecht: Springer Kant, Immanuel. 1902-. Kants gesammelte Schriften, Akademie Ausgabe. 29 vols. Berlin/Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter and predecessors. ———. 1974. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798). Translated, with an Introduction and Notes, by Mary J. Gregor. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1987. Critique of Judgment (1790). Translated by Werner S. Pluhar, with a Foreword by Mary J. Gregor. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett. ———. 1997. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785, 17862). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1998. In Critique of Pure Reason (1781, 1787 ), ed. Paul Guyer and Allen W.  Wood. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2001. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science, with Kant’s Letter to Marcus Herz, February 27, 1772. The Paul Carus translation extensively revised by James W. Ellington. 2nd ed. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett. Keller, Pierre. 1998. Kant and the Demands of Self-Consciousness. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. Kern, Iso. 1964. Husserl und Kant. Eine Untersuchung über Husserls Verhältnis zu Kant und zum Neukantianismus. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff. Kitcher, Patricia. 1982. Kant on Self-Identity. Philosophical Review 91 (1): 41–72. ———. 1999. Kant on Self-Consciousness. Philosophical Review 108 (3): 345.

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Klemme, Heiner F. 1996. Kants Philosophie des Subjekts. Systematische und entwicklungsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis von Selbstbewusstsein und Selbsterkenntnis. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag. ———. 2012. Spontaneität und Selbsterkenntnis. Kant über die ursprüngliche Einheit von Natur und Freiheit im Aktus des ‘Ich denke’ (1785–1787). In Sind Wir Bürger Zweier Welten? Freiheit Und Moralische Verantwortung Im Transzendentalen Idealismus, ed. Mario Brandhorst, Andree Hahmann, and Bernd Ludwig. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag. Kockelmans, Joseph J.  1977. Husserl and Kant on the Pure Ego. In Husserl. Expositions and Appraisals, ed. Frederick A. Elliston and Peter Mc Cormick, 269–285. Notre Dame/London: University of Notre Dame Press. Kumar, Apaar. 2014. Kant’s Definition of Sensation. Kant Studies Online 2014 (1): 262–311. Landgrebe, Ludwig. 1974. Reflexionen zu Husserls Konstitutionslehre. Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 36 (3): 466–482. Lohmar, Dieter. 2012. Ego and Arch-Ego in Husserlian Phenomenology. In Life, Subjectivity & Art. Essays in Honor of Rudolf Bernet, ed. Roland Breeur and Ullrich Melle, 277–302. Dordrecht: Springer (Phaenomenologica, 201. Mach, Ernst. 1914. The Analysis of Sensations, and the Relation of the Physical to the Psychical (1897). Translated by Cora May Williams and Sydney Waterlow. Chicago/London: Open Court. Makkreel, Rudolf A. 1994. Imagination and Interpretation in Kant. The Hermeneutical Import of the Critique of Judgment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Marbach, Eduard. 1973. Ichlose Phänomenologie bei Husserl. Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 35 (3): 518–559. ———. 2012. Edmund Husserl: Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898–1925). Husserl Studies 28 (3): 225–237. Melnick, Arthur. 2009. Kant’s Theory of the Self. New York: Routledge. Mohanty, Jitendra N. 1997. Phenomenology. Between Essentialism and Transcendental Philosophy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Naylor, Andrew. 2011. Remembering-That. Episodic vs. Semantic. Philosophical Psychology 24 (3): 317–322. Patočka, Jan. 1991/1971. Der Subjektivismus der Husserlschen und die Förderung einer asubjektiven Phänomenologie. In Die Bewegung der menschlichen Existenz, ed. J. Patočka, 286–309. Stuttgart: Klett. Powell, C.  Thomas. 1990. Kant’s Theory of Self-Consciousness. Oxford/New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press. Sturma, Dieter. 1985. Kant über Selbstbewusstsein. Zum Zusammenhang von Erkenntniskritik und Theorie des Selbstbewusstseins. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag. Varga, Peter Andras. 2011. The Architectonic and History of Phenomenology. Distinguishing between Fink’s and Husserl’s Notion of Phenomenological Philosophy. In Phenomenology 2010. Traditions, Transitions and Challenges, ed. Dermot Moran and Hans Rainer Sepp, 86–114. Bucharest: Zeta Books (Phenomenology 2010, v. 4). Zahavi, Dan. 1999. Self-Awareness and Alterity. A Phenomenological Investigation. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

What Is Productive Imagination? The Hidden Resources of Husserl’s Phenomenology of Phantasy Saulius Geniusas

Abstract  The paper strives to clarify the essential structures of productive imagination using the resources of Husserlian phenomenology. According to my working hypothesis, productive imagination is a relative term, whose meaning derives from its opposition to reproductive imagination. One thus first needs to clarify what makes imagination into a reproductive mode of consciousness, and in this regard, Husserl’s phenomenology proves exceptionally fruitful. My analysis unfolds in four steps. First, I fix the sense in which phantasy is an essentially reproductive mode of consciousness. Secondly, I argue that phantasy cannot be conceived as an ingredient of perceptual consciousness. Thirdly, I show that both memory and phantasy generate patterns of sense, which can subsequently be transcribed into the field of positional experience. Finally, I conclude with a suggestion that the plurality of cultural worlds can be conceived as diverse configurations of sense, which are the constitutive accomplishments of productive imagination. Keywords  Phenomenology · Husserl · Reproductive imagination · Productive imagination · Perception · Memory · Constitution · Cultural worlds

1  Introduction It seems hardly promising to address productive imagination in the context of Husserlian phenomenology, and for three fundamental reasons. First, Husserl never spoke of productive imagination and he consistently qualified imagination as essentially reproductive; secondly, in the critical literature on Husserl’s phenomenology of imagination, we do not come across a single study exclusively dedicated to the analysis of productive imagination; and thirdly, according to a claim often voiced in the literature on productive imagination, classical phenomenology in general, and

S. Geniusas (*) Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Apostolescu (ed.), The Subject(s) of Phenomenology, Contributions to Phenomenology 108, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29357-4_8

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Husserlian phenomenology in particular, have nothing to say about productive imagination. It thus seems that, to borrow James Morley’s vivid metaphors, classical phenomenology pushes productive imagination into “the outer darkness of intellectual irrelevance” in that it treats productive imagination as a “Mischling”—a “bastard child,” who has no place within the “image family” (Morley 1998). These reservations notwithstanding, I would like to show that Husserlian phenomenology of phantasy can make a highly significant contribution to philosophy of productive imagination. The reason for this is quite paradoxical: precisely because of its “obsession” with reproductive imagination, Husserlian phenomenology enables us to determine the concept of productive imagination with great precision. It is not so uncommon to suggest that only a paradigm shift in philosophy of imagination can lead to the recognition of the productive capacities of imagination.1 Yet such a paradigm shift, conceived either as an ontological or as a hermeneutical turn in the phenomenology of imagination, constitutes only certain ways—and certainly not the only ways—in which one can meaningfully speak of productive imagination. My goal here is to show that on the basis of Husserl’s phenomenology of phantasy, one can work out an alternative and a highly compelling approach, which takes its departure from the insight that productive imagination is a relative term, whose meaning derives from its opposition to reproductive imagination. Thus to find out what productive imagination is, we first and foremost need to fix the meaning of reproductive imagination and in this regard, Husserlian phenomenology proves indispensable. In what follows, I will take four steps. First, I will address the concept of reproduction in Husserl’s phenomenology and fix the sense in which phantasy should be conceived as an essentially reproductive type of consciousness. Secondly, I will address the relation between perception and phantasy and argue that once phantasy is determined as a reproductive mode of consciousness, it cannot be conceived as an ingredient of perceptual consciousness. In the third part I will focus on the relation between memory and phantasy and I will maintain that not only memory, but phantasy also can generate patterns of meaning, which can subsequently be transcribed into the field of positional experience. In the fourth part, I will further show how the outlined approach opens the possibility of interpreting the plurality of cultural worlds as diverse configurations of meaning, which are the constitutive accomplishments of productive phantasy.

 As Paul Ricoeur has argued in his noteworthy studies of productive imagination, insofar as one conceptualizes imagination alongside perception as a distinct type of intentional consciousness, one inevitably ends up limiting imagination to its reproductive function. Ricoeur thus asks: “if an image is not derived from perception, how can it be derived from language?” (Ricoeur 1991: 121). So also, in the in the framework of his analysis of Husserlian phenomenology of imagination, John Salis speaks of a “reorientation prompted by several of Husserl’s analyses … despite the massive constraints that Husserl thus employs to restrict imagination to the horizon of perception. It is preeminently a matter of reorienting the analysis to the site of appearing …. It is, then, at this site, in the appearing of the image-object, that the hold of presence is broken and imagination is drawn to spacing” (Sallis, 212–213). 1

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2  W  hat Is Reproduction and What Is Reproductive Imagination? Productive imagination is a relative term whose meaning derives from its opposition to reproductive imagination. One thus first needs to ask: What exactly does it mean to qualify imagination as reproductive? Think of Sartre’s Peter walking through the streets of Berlin (Sartre 2004). When Peter was still in Paris, he was given to me in flesh and blood. Yet when I now imagine him in Berlin, through his image I intend his irreal presence; in Paul Ricoeur’s words, I relate to an image that is “more or less a picture of something that already existed” (Ricoeur 1975, 15:1).2 Imagination thus seems to be reproductive in the sense that it replicates copies of actual objects, which could also be given in actual experience.3 It will soon become clear that such a conception of reproductive imagination, its widespread acceptance notwithstanding, is not only questionable, but also unjustifiable. Few other philosophers have been as attentive to reproductive imagination as Husserl and few of them have been as sensitive to the far-reaching equivocations that accompany the concept of reproduction.4 With the aim of clarifying the sense in which imagination could be said to be essentially reproductive, I would like to turn to Text Nr. XIV from Hua XXIII.5 Hardly any of Husserl’s other texts provides as detailed a study of reproduction as this manuscript, whose central goal is to fix the strict concept of reproduction. Just like in many of his other manuscripts on time and imagination, Husserl begins his analysis at the limits of language—in this case, by focusing on the act for which “we do not have the right word” (Hua XXIII, 301/363). Husserl qualifies such an act as “the act of mere apparency,” (“der bloss apparenziale Akt”) and “the act of appearing” (“der Akt des Erscheinens”). These expressions refer to a merely perceptual act, yet taken in isolation from any positing act of meaning. They refer to mere perception, conceived as a substrate on which the act of meaning is founded.  Ricoeur’s Lectures on Imagination, which were delivered at the University of Chicago in 1975 and to which I am here referring, still remain to be published. The volume is scheduled to appear in print in the near future. I am grateful to George Taylor, the editor of Ricoeur’s Lectures on Imagination, for the permission to quote Ricoeur’s lectures. When citing this work, I will indicate the lecture number before the manuscript page number. 3  Besides being merely reproductive, as in Peter’s case, imagination can also be combinatory, as in the case of mermaids or unicorns. Yet combinatory imagination is essentially reducible to reproductive imagination: its fundamental elements (a horse and a horn, in the case of a unicorn, or a woman and a fish, in the case of a mermaid) are reproductive copies of pregiven reality. 4  In Text No. 20 in Hua XXIII, after indicating that “‘phantasy’ is already related to the sphere of reproduction in Aristotle,” Husserl further remarks that the history of philosophy has not succeeded in clarifying the meaning of reproduction: “To be sure, the linguistic usage at present is not entirely univocal” (Hua XXIII 575/692). 5  Here I will follow the established custom in phenomenological literature and quote Husserl’s works, which have been published in the Husserliana edition, using the following abbreviations: Hua  +  volume number  +  page number in the original German / page number in the English translation. 2

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To make sense of what Husserl has in mind here, consider the following scenario: after a long and sleepless trip to another continent, you wake up in the middle of the night in a pitch-dark hotel room. As your hand is searching for the light switch, it touches various objects on the bedside table. However, you do not yet recognize these tactually given objects for what they are. All you have are mere appearances given in what Husserl here calls “the act of mere apparency.” These acts of mere apparency are more original than and independent from the act of meaning. By founding acts of meaning upon the act of mere apparency we constitute full-fledged objects of experience. In Appendix XXXIII Husserl further conceptualizes such an act of mere apparency as time-constituting consciousness. Husserl suggests that the act of mere apparency could be also qualified as an impression, yet only if we understand impressions in a broad sense. In the narrow sense, the concept of impression applies to those experiences in which an act of meaning obtains a present, a now, an actually present process. In this regard, impressions must be distinguished from retentions and protentions. In the broad sense, the concept of impression marks the unity of the originary present, the originary just-having-been and the originary yet-to-come. In this broad sense, the concept of impression excludes reproductions, conceived as reiterations of impressions, retentions, and protentions.6 In this broad sense, the concept of impression signifies the act of mere apparency. In the manuscript under consideration, Husserl introduces such an unusual concept as “the act of mere apparency” with the aim of analyzing its re-presentational modifications (Vergegenwärtigungsmodifikationen). Moving within the sphere of actuality, Husserl suggests that “memory in the widest sense” is the re-­presentational modification of the simple perceptual appearing. By extension, once we move from the sphere of actuality to that of inactuality, phantasy in the broadest sense could be qualified as the re-presentational modification of such simple perceptual appearing. “The question to be asked first here is: What does re-presentational modification mean?” (Hua XXIII 305/367). We face here an ambiguous concept, first and foremost because it can be understood both in a noetic and in a noematic way. It is by clearing this ambiguity that Husserl introduces the concept of reproduction. “Normally we say re-presentation with respect to something objective” (Hua XXIII 305/367). Let us retain such a noematic conception of representation and let us supplement it with noetically conceived reproduction. Thus in the case of a recollection of a perception, we should say that we represent what was previously perceived and that we reproduce the act of perceiving. In the case of phantasmatic perception (“seeing as though”), we can further say that we represent the perceptual objects intended phantasmatically while we reproduce the perceptual acts. In short, acts are reproduced, while objects intended in these acts are represented. It thereby becomes understandable why in the section of the manuscript, entitled “Definition of a Strict Concept of Reproduction,” Husserl argues against the view, which suggests that reproduction is a new production of the same objects which were once already given in experience, yet which now  In this regard, see Appendix XXXIII in Hua XXIII (315–316/381).

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reappear as their pale echoes or afterimages. On the one hand, the representation of objects intended in experience should not be called reproductions. On the other hand, “we still need a separate term for the separate re-­presentation of internal consciousness, and this re-presentation may be called reproduction” (ibid). Such a sharp distinction between reproduction and representation suggests that we draw a no-less sharp distinction between phantasy modification, on the one hand, and empty presentations, on the other hand.7 We all know that a full-fledged perceptual act is not reducible to the act of mere apparency. When we are turned to the front of a perceptual object, a determinate appearance awakens a series of non-­given appearances that belong to the object’s unseen sides. The question to be asked is whether or not these unseen sides are given through an act of phantasy. Husserl, much like Sartre after him, rejects such a view as nonsensical. Consciousness of the rear aspects belongs to perception, taken in its unity with the act of meaning that is founded upon it. To use Husserl’s own neologisms, when I prehend a profile of the object, it is given to me within the horizon of apprehension: I intend the appearing object through a direct act of apparency and I also emptily co-intend the object’s non-given sides through the acts of “co-meaning.” This founding of the act of meaning upon the act of mere apparency results in an enrichment of the intentional object’s noematic sense. By contrast, phantasy is a reproductive modification of an original act of mere apparency, a reproduction which is essentially noetic, not noematic. Yet even such a noetic/noematic clarification of the concept of “re-presentational modification” does not clear it of all ambiguity. In Appendix XXXV Husserl distinguishes between three different senses of reproduction. By reproduction, one can either mean a reproduction of an object of experience (der intentionale Gegenstand des Erlebnisses), say, a clear or vague memory of an object that was previously given in original experience; or one can mean a reproduction of experience (das Erlebnis), for instance, a clear or vague memory of an experience, which was given originally; or, finally, one can also mean a reproduction of an act of experiencing (das Erleben), say, a reproduction of an act of seeing, hearing, touching, thinking, loving, hating etc., taken in isolation from the concrete flow of experience and from the object of experience, to which it was previously intentionally related. This threefold distinction allows one to conceptualize the difference between memory and mere phantasy as two different forms of reproductive modification. “Memory is a reproductive modification of perception, but it has the remarkable peculiarity that it is also re-presentation of perception and not simply re-presentation of what was perceived” (Hua XXIII 305/367). That is, recollection is a reproductive form of consciousness in the first two of the above mentioned senses: it is a reproduction of an object of experience and of experience. By contrast, mere phantasy can be (although, admittedly, it need not be) a reproductive form of consciousness only in the third sense: it can be a reproduction of the mere act of experiencing, taken in isolation from the full experience as well as the object of experience.

 This distinction is essential not only to Husserl’s but also to Jean-Paul Sartre’s account of imagination, which we come across in Sartre’s The Imaginary. 7

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Thus when Husserl qualifies phantasy as essentially reproductive, he means thereby that the acts of phantasy are essentially reproductive acts. When I phantasize seeing Pandora opening her box, I reproduce an act of seeing, although without reproducing a former experience or a formerly given object of experience: I see her, yet it is only as though I see her. When I phantasize hearing the sound of her box being opened and of all the evils flying out of it, I reproduce the act of hearing, although without reproducing a former experience or a formerly given object of experience: it is only as though I hear it. One should therefore stress that despite all its powers, phantasy lacks the capacity to produce an original relation to objects or the world at large: in phantasy, I can see, hear, touch, think, remember, anticipate, love or hate an object, yet always as though. Precisely because this as though is irreducible, phantasy is a reproductive mode of consciousness. Husserl appears to be fully justified to characterize phantasy as a reproductive mode of consciousness in the above-mentioned sense. I simply do not see how phantasy could produce an original relation to the world at large in the sense of forming originally intuitive types of acts, such as seeing or hearing. I would further contend that those critiques, which have accused Husserl for being blind to the productive powers of imagination (Castoriadis 1997; Drost 1990; Ricoeur 1975; Sallis 1992) have misunderstood the exact sense in which, for Husserl, phantasy is reproductive. Imagination is reproductive not because it can only intend copies, or replicas, of something that already existed and because, supposedly, “there was always somewhere an original for the picture” (Ricoeur 1975, 15:1). Rather, phantasy is essentially reproductive because the acts of phantasy can only be reproductive acts. As a response to the skeptical worry that Husserl’s conception of reproductive phantasy conceals phantasy’s productive characteristics, I would suggest that precisely because phantasy can be said to be reproductive in many ways, Husserlian phenomenology leaves the space open for diverse determinations of phantasy’s productive capacities. Phantasy cannot be productive in the sense that it cannot produce an original relation to the world at large: in phantasy, I can either see as though, or hear as though, or think as though, and this as though is irreducible. This means that phantasy is essentially reproductive in the noetic sense, which does not exclude the possibility that phantasy might be productive noematically. Yet before spelling out the different noematic senses in which phantasy could be said to be productive, the time is ripe to address some doubts concerning what one might see as an excessively generous interpretation: is it really true that Husserlian phenomenology of imagination so easily lends itself to be transformed into a phenomenology of productive phantasy?

3  Perception and Imagination It is not by chance that virtually every theorist who has aimed to develop a model of productive imagination agrees with Kant’s famous remark that “imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself” (Kant 1996: A120, fn). By qualifying phantasy as an essentially reproductive mode of consciousness, Husserl introduces

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an indissoluble breach between perception and phantasy, which excludes any possibility of identifying phantasy as a moment of perceptual consciousness, and vice versa. The question to be asked, then, is whether Husserl’s phenomenology of phantasy necessarily proscribes the recognition and analysis of productive imagination. In contrast to a large number of philosophers who argue that perception is “animated by,” “infused with,” “shot through with” or “soaked in” imagination (Kant 1996; Wittgenstein 1986; Strawson 1974; Warnock 1994; Nanay 2010), Husserl retorts that such a view presupposes a passive and static notion of perception, which lacks phenomenological justification. As Julia Jansen has insightfully remarked, “there is no such passive and bare perception, which would require an infusion with imagination, in the first place” (Jansen, unpublished, 6). As she argued elsewhere, “contributions [that] make use of the phenomenological evidence … highlight the differences between perception and imagination and thus reject the hypothesis of a ‘grand illusion,’” i.e., of the view that imagination might be an ingredient of perception” (Jansen 2010, 152). The analysis I have offered above clarifies why, from a Husserlian standpoint, this hypothesis needs to be rejected. Nonetheless, such a response leaves the relation between perception and phantasy undetermined, and this is unfortunate, especially in light of recent neuroscientific findings. Consider a recent study undertaken by Christopher C.  Berger and H.  Henrik Ehrsson.8 In this investigation, which they qualify as “an unparalleled example of how imagination can change perception,” these two neuroscientists from Karolinska Institute in Stockholm have recently argued that imagining hearing changes what one sees, just as imagining seeing changes what one hears. Their study heavily relied upon three classical examples in psychology, which had demonstrated that sensory information in one perceptual modality affects one’s perception in a different modality. First, consider the so-called cross-bounce illusion: this experiment (which has its roots in Gestalt psychology) demonstrates that the presentation of an unrelated sound at the moment when two objects coincide promotes the illusory perception that the objects collide (Sekuler et al. 1997). In their study, Berger and Ehrsson turned to an intriguing modification of this classical experiment: they substituted the actually heard sound with a merely imagined sound. This modification resulted in the realization that not only actually heard sounds, but also imaginary sounds modify visual phenomena. Secondly, consider the ventriloquist illusion, which demonstrates the dominance of vision over other senses in sensuous perception. In its classical presentation (Alais and Burr 2004), this experiment ­demonstrates that consciousness determines the location of sound largely depending on visual stimuli, so much so that with each and every shift in visual stimuli, the determination of sound’s location shifts as well. In short, visual variation transforms the auditory stimuli one is exposed to. Berger and Ehrsson modified the ventriloquist illusion by replacing actually perceived visual shapes with merely imaginary ones. Such a modification resulted in the realization that the meaning of auditory stimuli is co-constituted not only by actual visual perceptions, but also by imaginary  See Christopher C. Berger and H. Henrik Ehrsson (2013), “Mental Imagery Changes Multisensory Perception,” in Current Biology, 23/14, 1367–1372. 8

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visualizations. Finally, the third experiment they offered was a modified version of “McGurk illusion” (McGurk and MacDonald 1976). In one of its classical presentations, an auditory stimulus of the phoneme “ba” was paired with a visual stimulus of someone’s lip movements articulating “ga”, resulting in a fused illusory percept “da.” Berger and Ehrsson modified this experiment by replacing an actually heard phoneme with an auditory imagery of the same phoneme. The participants in this experiment see the person’s lips uttering “ga,” they imagine hearing “ba,” yet they end up hearing “da.” This means that auditory imagery can be integrated with visual speech stimuli, thereby promoting illusory speech percept. These recent neurological findings support the view that imagination is productive in the sense that it largely shapes our perceptual relation to the world at large. In light of these findings one can maintain that what we see and what we hear is largely shaped by phantasy. Nonetheless, these findings do not corroborate the widespread view that “imagination is an ingredient of perception itself,” for clearly, the participants in these experiments must have been conscious of the distinction between phantasy and perception, for otherwise they would simply not have been able to imagine sounds while being exposed to visual phenomena, or imagine visual phenomena while being exposed to sounds. These participants must have been at least implicitly aware that while perception marks their immediate access to actually existent phenomena, in phantasy they could only see as it were or hear as it were. Thus strangely, Berger’s and Ehrsson’s experiments contest the view that phantasy is a perceptual ingredient, while they nonetheless demonstrate that perception is largely formed by phantasy. How, then, is one to understand the intricate relationship between phantasy and perception? In this regard, Husserl’s passing remark in Text No. 20  in Hua XXIII proves highly important: “perception as apperception is itself a particular sort of ‘memory’” (Hua XXIII 582/700). This claim appears counterintuitive, given that for Husserl memory is a type of reproductive consciousness, while perception is original experience. Yet Husserl here refers to perception as apperception, which means that in this framework perception is not reducible to the act of mere apparency, since it also incorporates the act of meaning that is founded in the act of apparency. This opens a further and highly promising possibility to conceptualize the relation between phantasy and perception: even though perception and phantasy are irreconcilable attitudes of consciousness, phantasy can nonetheless affect perceptual consciousness indirectly, viz., by constituting those resources of sense from which the founded act of meaning draws its sustenance. Thus even though I cannot both perceive and quasiperceive the same object at the same time, nonetheless, imagination can supply dimensions of sense, which are subsequently transferred from the field of phantasy to the field of actuality. To return to Berger and Ehrsson’s modified version of the cross bounce illusion, the participants in the experiment do not take the imagined sound for a real sound; they are fully conscious that the sound is irreal, for otherwise, they could not participate in the experiment. Nonetheless, as they imagine the sound of a crash at the moment when one visual body crosses the other, they transfer the meaning of the sound form the field of phantasy into the perceptual field and on this basis they transform the meaning of the visual phenomenon: what they see is a crash.

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Imagination is thus not an ingredient of perception itself. I can either perceive or quasi-perceive an object, but not both simultaneously. Nonetheless, the meaning of a perceptual object, which is constituted in the act of apprehension, can incorporate dimensions of sense which have their origins in phantasy consciousness. Perception and imagination can join hands at the level of meaning-constituting consciousness. In this extended sense, perception is a particular sort of memory, i.e., a particular sort of phantasy. What, then, could productive phantasy be, when it is conceptualized on the basis of Husserlian phenomenology? As noted above, Husserlian phenomenology invites us to admit that phantasy is essentially reproductive in the noetic sense, yet this does not exclude the possibility that it might be productive noematically. I would like to single out three fundamental senses in which phantasy could be said to be productive in the framework of Husserlian phenomenology. First, one can qualify phantasy as productive in that it can intend “original” appearances—of course, not in the sense of perceptual appearances, but in the sense that the phantasized appearances do not “reproduce” perceptual appearances. This is the minimal and the least interesting sense in which one can speak of productive phantasy on the basis of Husserlian phenomenology. Secondly, phantasy could be qualified as productive in that it opens the field of pure possibilities and thereby provides consciousness with access to the field of the a priori, conceived as the field of essences. This productivity of phantasy is of fundamental importance for Husserlian phenomenology, so much so that Husserl qualifies fiction as the vital element of phenomenology and as the source “from which the cognition of ‘eternal truths’ takes it nourishment” (Hua III 1950, 148). In the secondary literature on Husserl’s phenomenology of imagination, this aspect has been granted central attention, although admittedly, it is uncommon to identify phantasy’s capacity to intend pure possibilities as a form of productive imagination. As Jansen, for instance, puts it, “a phenomenology of phantasy therefore truly is first philosophy” (Jansen 2005, 127) in that it enables phenomenology as an a priori science of pure possibilities and thereby prescribes a priori rules for reality. Thirdly, phantasy can be productive insofar as it intends configurations of sense, which consciousness can subsequently transfer from the field of phantasy into the field of actuality. In this third fundamental sense, phantasy is productive in that it co-determines the meaning of perceptually given phenomena: phantasy is productive, for it is one of the essential powers that constitutes reality. In what follows, I will focus exclusively on this third determination of productive phantasy and on this basis respond to a number of critiques, which deny phantasy such constitutive powers.

4  Memory and Phantasy One might object that in my foregoing interpretation, I was too quick to interpret the claim that “perception as apperception is itself a particular sort of ‘memory’” as a claim that perception is a particular sort of phantasy. To be sure, Husserl qualifies

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“memory in the widest sense” as the re-presentational modification of the simple perceptual appearing (cf. Hua XXIII, 302/363) and thus, in a broad sense, as phantasy. Nonetheless, a closer look at Husserl’s concept of apperception makes clear that for good reasons, the concept of memory is not interchangeable with the concept of phantasy. In Husserl’s phenomenology, “apperception usually refers to the co-present but unseen viewings of objects entering one’s visual field” (Biceaga 2010, 104). In the course of experience these implicit viewings can be either confirmed or disconfirmed, which means that these empty perceptual intendings can, in principle, be transformed into originary presentations.9 The question to be asked is how and why the act of mere apparency is lived along with an apperceptive horizon of sense. Husserl’s answer points to motivation10: it is the actual appearance itself, as it is given to consciousness, that motivates consciousness to apperceive it as an appearance of a certain type of objectivity. What is actually given in the act of mere apparency when I see a person swimming in the sea? Although I see nothing more than the back of a human-like head as well as the movement of two human-like arms, what I see nonetheless motivates me to apperceive the given appearance as an appearance of a human body. Yet why do these particular appearances in the sea motivate me to apperceive them as the movement of a human body and not, say, of a fish, a dog, or a mannequin? In light of this question, Husserl’s passing remark that “perception as apperception is itself a particular sort of ‘memory’” (Hua XXIII 582/700) gains its significance. According to Husserl, mere appearances motivate consciousness to apperceive them as appearances of particular types of objectivities. One can describe a type as an idea, which derives from experience and which joins together, in a rather loose way, various modes of appearances characteristic of a particular kind of objects of experience. Thus I recognize what appears to me in the water as an object of a certain type, be it a human being, a fish, or a dog. Herein lies the answer to the question raised above: to claim that appearances awaken particular motivations is to suggest that they awaken particular types of experience. These types admit of various levels of generality: besides very general types of “something in general” or “substrate of determinations,” there are more specific types of general objects of experience, such as human beings, dogs, or fish; last but not least, there are also types of singular objects, which characterize a particular person or a particular thing (cf. Lohmar 2003, 2005, 2008). It is especially important to stress that types are not just passively pregiven structures of experience. Rather, “types come into being in concrete experience and they change constantly in further experience” (Lohmar 2005, 158). In Husserl’s words, “with each new kind of object constituted for the first time (genetically speaking) a  Transformation of this nature can take place in the framework of perceptual consciousness, while when it comes to analogical apperception, which is constitutive of the Other, such a transformation is in principle excluded. The constitution of intermonadic community will be the focus of the next section. 10  For a detailed analysis of the concept of motivation in phenomenology, see Ideen II, 56. 9

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new type of object is permanently prescribed, in terms of which other objects similar to it will be apprehended in advance” (Husserl 1973b, 38). It thereby becomes understandable why perception, conceived as apperception, is a particular type of “memory”: as apperception, perception reawakens the “memory” of the preconstituted types of experiences, which in their own turn determine the sense of appearing objectivities. Thus Husserl’s phenomenology of typifying consciousness corroborates the view that consciousness bridges the gaps that separate diverse fields of experience by means of transference of sense, which occurs not at the founding level of the acts of mere apparency, but at the founded level of the constitution of meaning. In the case of consciousness of typification, what is at stake is not a concrete memory of a particular event that took place in past experience but the reawakening of a horizon of sense, whose origins derive from past experience. It is thus not by chance that when Husserl qualifies apperception as a type of “memory,” he uses the term “memory” in quotation marks. What is reawakened is not a set of concrete experiences, but a more or less general sense that seems to fit the currently given experience. This realization, however, introduces some doubts concerning my claim that phantasy is productive in the sense that it constitutes dimensions of sense, which are subsequently carried over into the field of actuality. Is it not obvious that consciousness of typification can only originate in positional and not in neutralized experiences? Clearly, the mere fact that I like to phantasize mermaids or unicorns might affect how these magical creatures are given in my phantasy in the future, yet they will not form a typifying consciousness, which will absorb my subsequent positional experiences. Thus when I see the back of the head and the moving arms in the water, I will quite likely apperceive these appearances as the movement of a human body, yet I will not apperceive them as appearances of a mermaid. The world of phantasy is cut off from the world of actual experience. How, then, can phantasy be productive in the sense of co-constituting the world of actual experience? A twofold response is in place. First, this objection presupposes a restricted conception of phantasy. It seems obvious that besides “seeing” mermaids or unicorns, I can also “see” Peter wandering the streets of Berlin; besides “seeing” unicorns, I can also (as the modified version of the ventriloquism illusion demonstrates) “see” various shapes that will affect my apperception of actually heard sounds. Just as it is incontestable that phantasy can intend objectivities, which have never been and, most likely, never will be given in actual experience, so it is also undeniable that phantasy can intend appearances, which are, at least in principle, actualizable. Secondly, the outlined objection is largely an instance of a misplaced criticism. I do not claim that phantasy is productive in the sense that it shapes phantasmatic appearances, which can be subsequently transferred into the field of actuality. Rather, my claim is that phantasmatically formed unities of sense can be transferred from the field of phantasy into the field of actuality in that they can co-constitute the sense that absorbs actually appearing objectivities. In this regard, Text No. 20 from Hua XXIII once again proves highly helpful. After drawing a sharp distinction between acts of phantasy, conceived as purely neutral acts, and perceptual acts, conceives as positional experiences, Husserl goes

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on to suggest that “there are, however, mixed experiences, and they are very common” (Hua XXIII 578/696).11 According to one type of these mixed experiences (gemischte Erlebnisse), “every phantasy consciousness, hence every pure phantasy consciousness as well, can be converted into a positional act…” (ibid). Conversions of this nature occur when one transforms a neutralized experience into a consciousness of pure possibility. Under such a scenario, what was initially given phantasmatically (as something fundamentally neutral) is subsequently converted into a positional experience (as something fundamentally possible). To this one can further add that while all phantasies can be transformed into pure possibilities, some of these possibilities are conceived as actualizable (as in the case of Peter wondering the streets of Berlin), while others as non-actualizable (as in the case of mermaids swimming in the sea). I should especially stress that such mixed experiences do not result from an intermingling of acts of phantasy and perceptual acts. Rather, mixed experiences occur at the level of meaning-constituting consciousness. They are accomplishments of what I have called above a transference of sense. In the case under consideration, the sense of a phantasmatic object is transferred from the field of phantasy into the field of actuality. Unities of sense, which derive from meaning constituting acts, form the bridge that binds perception to phantasy, and vice versa. Yet what sense are we to make of Husserl’s claim that such mixed experiences “are very common?” In the next section, I want to defend a perspective, which I believe Husserlian phenomenology motivates one to support, even though, admittedly, Husserl has not explicitly presented such a perspective himself. Arguably, such mixed experiences, which derive from a transference of sense from the field of phantasy into that of actuality, perform an essential and irreducible role in the constitution of personalistic worlds, conceived both as homeworlds and alienworlds. To put my thesis otherwise, in the absence of productive imagination, consciousness could not constitute intersubjective cultural worlds, within which we always already find ourselves. This means that it is not perception, conceived as peculiar form of consciousness, but rather the experienced world, conceived as a constitutive accomplishment of consciousness, that is soaked in productive imagination.

5  T  he Role of Phantasy in the Constitution of the Cultural Worlds The proposed thesis sounds not only paradoxical, but also dubious. How can imagination, conceived as a capacity of consciousness to neutralize reality, perform a role (and not just any role, but a fundamental and irreducible role!) in the constitution of actual reality? Yet what exactly is actual reality, when conceptualized in the framework of Husserlian phenomenology? It is well known that Husserlian 11

 For a detailed discussion of such mixed experiences, see Ferencz-Flatz 2009.

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phenomenology reduces all philosophical questions to questions of meaning and further clarifies these questions in terms of intentional accomplishments of consciousness. This means, among other things, that phenomenology conceptualizes actual reality as a particular configuration of meaning, and more precisely, as a configuration that derives from and finds its support in a peculiar unanimity of experience.12 All claims to actual existence are grounded in evidence, which has its basis in transcendental subjectivity: “every imaginable adequation originates as our verification, is our synthesis, has in us its ultimate transcendental basis” (Hua I 95/60). This passage brings to conclusion Husserl’s all-too-brief analysis of actuality in the Third Cartesian Meditation. Here actuality is conceived as the correlate of evident verification. One should not, however, overlook that Husserl qualifies verification as our and not just as my own verification. As his further analysis of the constitution of monadological intersubjectivity in the Fifth Cartesian Meditation makes clear, the constitution of actuality cannot be carried through successfully within the boundaries of what Husserl identifies as the sphere of ownness (Einheitssphäre). In §48 of the Cartesian Meditations Husserl remarks that actual being is originally constituted in the unanimity of experience, yet to this he adds that the unanimity in question embraces not only my own experiences, but also the experiences of other subjectivities. For Husserl, objectivities constituted only in my own experience are not yet fully objective. They are objectivities, which belong to what Husserl identifies as “immanent transcendence” and “the primordial world.” Only insofar as these objectivities are corroborated by the unanimous experience of other subjectivities can they be qualified as objective at a higher level of constitution, that is, as actual objectivities. Thus in order to constitute the objective world, consciousness must constitute not only an alter ego, but also itself as a member of a community of subjectivities, or to put the matter in more familiar language, consciousness must apperceive itself as a member of a particular community. My thesis is that in order to enter a particular cultural world—be it my own or that of another—I must appropriate the way a particular community sees the world, and this acts of appropriation calls for imagination. As is well known, Husserl’s account of the constitution of the alter ego has its basis in the givenness of the Other’s body—a body which is like my own, yet which is not my own. The Other’s body emerges in the field of my own primordial experience as an object, which is simultaneously more than a mere object. I apperceive the Other’s body through analogizing apperception (analogische Apperzeption): it is both a Körper and a Leib—both a material object as well as an organ of the will and free movement, yet the will in question is not my will just as the power of movement is not my own. The Other is thus given as a subject of experiences, which for principal reasons cannot be transmuted into my own original experiences. Any attempt to transform the Other’s experiences into one’s own, hopeless as it is, would prove  As Husserl remarks in §26  in the Third Cartesian Meditation, “we can be sure something is actual only by virtue of a synthesis of evident verification, which presents rightful or true actuality itself” (Hua I 95/60). As he further remarks, “it is evidence alone by virtue of which an ‘actually’ existing, true, rightly accepted object of whatever form or kind has sense for us” (ibid). 12

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to be the most narcissistic act imaginable, which one could liken to an act of “transcendental enslavement”: it would equal the reduction of the Other’s life to a moment of one’s own selfhood. Thus the Other’s experiences cannot be lived through, but can only be appresented: they are given in the manner of transcending the field of one’s own givenness. The Other is thus accessible as originally inaccessible: the Other’s physical givenness appresents a psychical life, which transcends the boundaries of my original experience. The Other is thus constituted not as a duplication, but as a modification of my own sphere of ownness: The Other is constituted precisely as Other. Insofar as any object is constituted in the unanimity of my own original experience, it cannot yet be qualified as an actual object existing in an actual world, since such a qualification presupposes the object’s givenness not just to me, but also to other subjectivities. Every object, insofar as it is an actually existing object, must transcend my sphere of ownness in that it must entail a dimension of sense, which derives from an appresentative level of constitution—that level, which lies in the synthetic unity of synthesis between what is given to me in original promordiality and what is given to other subjectivities. Thus to claim that an actual object exists in the actual world is to maintain that the object in question, whatever it might be, is given not just to me, but also to other subjectivities. Yet let us not forget that the Other’s experiences are given as originally inaccessible. Despite its fundamental original inaccessibility, I must nonetheless presuppose some kind of access to these experiences of the Other if I am to qualify any object as an actual object, existing actually in the actual world. What, then, is this non-original access that is presupposed in the process of world-constitution? With regard to the constitution of a common nature (Gemeinsamkeit der Natur), which Husserl conceives as the first form of Objectivity, one is right to maintain that mere communication suffices as a non-original point of access to the Other’s experiences.13 Here mere communication refers to the function of corroboration, in the absence of which the constitution of a common nature would not be possible. The natural objects actually experienced by the Other are the same natural objects that are actually or potentially experienced by me: what is actually given to the Other is potentially given to me “as if I were standing over there, where the Other’s body is” (Hua I 152/123). Moreover, as far as the constitution of mere nature is concerned, the world of Others, that is, “the world belonging to their appearance-systems, must be experienced forthwith as the same as the world belonging to my appearance-­ systems; and this involves an identity of our appearance-systems” (Hua I 154/125). Thus the constitution of a common nature is to be understood as the establishment of a sense of identity between my own primordial nature and that nature, which is constituted in the Other’s experience. Even though I cannot originally access the Other’s experience, I can nonetheless establish a synthesis of identification on the basis of communication. In virtue of such a synthesis of identification, every natural  Fur Husserl’s own discussion of the significance of communication in the constitution of a common world, see Ideen II, §51.

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object, which is either actually or potentially experienceable by me in the lower stratum as “immanent transcendence,” now receives an appresentational stratum, which is united in an identifying synthesis with the lower stratum. In short, the sense that belongs to common nature derives from harmonious intersubjective experience, established on the basis of communication. While corrections might be required to preserve the harmoniousness in question, these corrections only reinforce the congruence that guides over the intersubjective experience of nature. Insofar as communication performs primarily a corroborative function, the constitution of common nature can be accomplished without any support of imagination. Within such a constitutive framework, imagination appears out of place. Yet the situation proves significantly different when we turn from the constitution of mere nature to the constitution of cultural worlds (cf. Cartesian Meditations §55-§58). Although at this new constitutive level, communication continues to be the non-original point of access to the Other’s experiences, its significance cannot be reduced to the mere performance of a corroborative function. I cannot enter into any cultural world if the Other only corroborates what I have already experienced. As mentioned above, the constitution of common nature presupposes that the Other’s appearance-systems are the same as my own. By contrast, only if the appearance-systems of a particular community diverge from my own and only if, despite this divergence, I find a way to appropriate these extraneous appearance-­ systems, can I constitute myself as a member of this community. To enter into a cultural world, I need not only be exposed to large “depository of meaning,” which is fundamentally not of my own making, but I also need to find a way to appropriate this meaning, render it my own. We are not exposed to this “depository of meaning” when we turn away from objects given to us in our everyday experience. Quite on the contrary, it is these very objects that are filled with dimensions of sense that transcend the boundaries of my own sphere of ownness. The objects I am exposed to in my daily experience are filled with axiological and practical characteristics: things are given as enjoyable, admirable, likeable, beautiful, venerable, etc. I can recognize these and other axiological and practical characteristics if, and only if, I appropriate the axiological and practical systems of appearance that are not of my own making. It is my thesis that this act of cultural appropriation rests on the grounds of productive imagination. To be spellbound by the beauty of the sunset is not just a matter of seeing the sunset but rather a wholly new attitude of being captivated by the enjoyment of the scene. So also, to be burning with desire for an x, aversion for a y, or admiration for a z is not just a matter of intending x, y, or z. Building on the basis of a Brentanian legacy, already in the Logical Investigations Husserl conceptualizes the structure of experiences concerned in terms of a relation between founding and founded intentional acts. Our exposure to value characteristics, such as the beautiful, the desirable, the aversive or the admirable, is built upon two fundamentally different acts: the founding act, due to which the “natural” object is given to us, and the founded act, due to which this object obtains its value characteristics. Such a model of constitution invites one to maintain that we enter into cultural worlds when we absorb

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the objects given in the founding acts with configurations of meaning, which are fundamentally not of our own making. We constitute ourselves as members of cultural communities when our founded acts project dimensions of sense, which are appropriated from other subjectivities. This means, however, that my elementary capacity to see objects as filled with axiological and practical qualities already presupposes my appropriation of particular systems of value, which guide my subsequent experience. Yet how exactly can these systems of value, conceives as systems of appearances, be appropriated? Such an act of appropriation cannot be clarified on the basis of mere communication, even though communication provides the foundation for it. While communication transcends the boundaries of intuition, the act of appropriation is conceivable only as an intuitive capacity, namely, as the capacity to see the world the way a particular community sees it. Communication must therefore be supplemented with a further point of access to the Other’s experience, which would be intuitive, even though it cannot be originary. What could such a non-original yet intuitive access be? I would contend that there are only four possibilities to consider: such supplementary access could be provided either by perception, or by memory, or by anticipation, or by phantasy. It is clear that perception cannot provide access to the Other’s experience for the simple reason that it is an original form of consciousness. Yet it is just as clear that neither memory, nor anticipation can provide such access either. Memory cannot fulfill such a function since it is bound to my own former experience; anticipation cannot fulfill such a function either, since while the act of appropriation relates to the past and the present, the act of anticipation is linked to the future. When so much is said, it becomes clear that imagination must be this supplementary point of access to the Other’s experience, a point of access without which transcendental subjectivity could not appropriate particular systems of value, conceived as systems of appearance and thereby constitute itself as a member of a particular community. While through communication I am exposed to how the Others see the world, when communication is supplemented with imagination, I am capable of intuitively reproducing their way of seeing it. Fundamentally, this capacity to reproduce, no matter how accurately or inaccurately it is carried through, already entails the capacity to apperceive intuitively given phenomena within a specific configuration of sense—apperceive phenomena as suitable for this or that use or as beautiful, ­enjoyable, admirable, etc. So as to constitute higher levels of intermonadic community, subjectivity must recognize itself as a member of an intersubjective community, and this recognition already rests upon one’s capacity to transfer the reproduced configuration of sense from the field of phantasy into the field of one’s actual experience. Put otherwise, I am capable not only of understanding as well as intuitively reproducing how the Others see the world; I am also capable of appropriating this manner of seeing, that is, of transferring the apperceptive layers of sense, from the field of Others (as it is given through my own imagination) into the field of my own experience. One might object that while the proposed conception of “transcendental socialization” clarifies how subjectivity appropriates the established systems of appear-

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ance, it appears to say nothing about the possibilities of either modifying or transforming the sedimentations of meaning, which make these systems into what they are. Yet the very fact that these systems of appearance can only be appropriated on the basis of imagination provides support for the view that the appropriation of the systems of appearance should be conceived in a highly loose sense, which admits not only of variations, but also of modifications. One can thus say that the cultural worlds are indeed historical through and through: the systems of appearance through which they are constituted admit of almost endless corrections, transformations and variations. In Husserl’s own words, “that every such predicate of the world accrues from a temporal genesis and, indeed, one that is rooted in human undergoing and doing, needs no proof…. With this continual changes in the human life-world, manifestly the men themselves also change as persons, since correlatively they must always be taking on new habitual properties” (Hua I 162/135).

6  Conclusion According to a common objection raised against Husserl’s phenomenology of phantasy, Husserl degrades phantasy to a frail replica of perception. Allegedly, it can do no more than open up the inferior and incomplete presence, which is fundamentally secondary when compared to the full bodily presence, characteristic of perceptually given reality (cf. Ricoeur 1975; Drost 1990; Sallis 1992). Supposedly, in his reflections on phantasy, “Husserl has virtually reconstituted one of the oldest oppositions, that between image and original, reconstituted it precisely in its traditional role of serving for the differentiation of presence” (Sallis 203). Yet even though Husserl qualifies phantasy as an essentially reproductive mode of consciousness, this widespread critique is unwarranted. Husserl conceives of phantasy as essentially reproductive in the noetic sense of the term, yet he leaves the space open to conceptualize it as productive noematically, and at least in three different ways. First, phantasy can intend objects and scenes, which refuse to be clarified as copies of perceived reality. Secondly, it opens the gate to pure possibilities, which make up the field of phenomenology. Thirdly, it is indispensable for the constitution of cultural reality. Admittedly, Husserl has not left us with a systematic analysis, which demonstrates the exact role that imagination plays in the constitution of cultural worlds. He has, however, left us with a set of clues, which suggest that imagination performs a vital role in the process of constitution. My goal here was to follow these clues in a way that highlights the central role reserved for imagination in Husserlian phenomenology. One of the great achievements of Husserlian phenomenology of imagination lies in its capacity to clarify the structure of productive imagination. According to the structural interpretation I here offered, productive imagination should not be conceived as a phantasmatic intending of sensuous objects within the perceptual field, but as a transference of meaning from the field of phantasy to the field of actuality.

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On such basis rests my claim that phantasy is productive not because of its alleged capacity to permeate perceptual consciousness, but rather because it can generate patterns of meaning, which can subsequently shape our subjective and intersubjective experiences of things and the world at large. It is this transference of meaning from the field of phantasy to the field of actuality that justifies the Wittgensteinian insight that seeing always involves “seeing as,” yet without abandoning the Sartrean claim that phantasy and perception represent two incompatible attitudes of consciousness. In his early works, Husserl held the view that Kant’s concept of productive imagination lacked phenomenological justification. However, by the time he turned to genetic phenomenology, and especially when he was working on the Paris Lectures and subsequently on the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl explicitly spoke of Kant’s great discovery of the “twofold operations of understanding” (cf. Jansen 2010, 145). In the genetic framework, Husserl reinterpreted Kant’s distinction between sensibility and understanding as the distinction between passive and active synthesis. No less importantly, Husserl’s reflections on the constitution of monadic intersubjectivity open the possibility to claim that in the absence of productive imagination transcendental subjectivity would remain largely enclosed within its sphere of ownness in the sense that it could not constitute higher level objectivities, conceived as unities of sense that arise in the unanimity of intersubjective experience. Thus the approach I have here presented opens the possibility of interpreting the plurality of cultural worlds as diverse configurations of meaning, which are the constitutive accomplishments of productive phantasy. Despite Husserl’s explicit worries that Kant’s transcendental imagination cannot find phenomenological justification, his phenomenology of productive phantasy provides a highly intriguing reinterpretation of the Kantian insight, which invites us to view imagination as the secret power hidden in the depths of the human soul, whose true operations is to be divined from the cultural world itself.

References Alais, D., and D.  Burr. 2004. The Ventriloquist Effect Results Form Near-Optimal Bimodal Integration. Current Biology 14: 257–262. Biceaga, Viktor. 2010. The Concept of Passivity in Husserl’s Phenomenology. Dordrecht: Springer. Castoriadis, Cornelius. 1997. Radical Imagination and the Social Instituting Imaginary. In The Castoriadis Reader, 319–337. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Drost, Mark P. 1990. The Primacy of Perception in Husserl’s Theory of Imagining. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research L/3: 569–582. Ferencz-Flatz, Christian. 2009. Gibt es Perzeptive Phantasie? Als-ob-Bewusstsein, Widerstreit und Neutralität in Husserls Aufzeichnungen zur Bildbetrachtung. Husserl Studies 25: 235–253. Husserl, E. 1950. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. Ed. Walter Biemel. Den Haag: M. Nijhoff. (cited as Hua III). Husserl, Edmund. 1973a. Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge. Den Haag: M. Nijhoff. (cited as Hua I)

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———. 1973b. Experience and Judgment. Trans. J.  Churchhill, and K.  Ameriks. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. 1980. Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung (Hua XXIII). Den Haag: M. Nijhoff. (cited as Hua XXIII) Jansen, Julia. 2005. On the Development of Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology of Imagination and Its Use for Interdisciplinary Research. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4: 121–132. ———. 2010. Phenomenology, Imagination and Interdisciplinary Research. In Handbook of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science, ed. S.  Gallagher and D.  Schmicking. Dordrecht: Springer. ———. Forthcoming. Imagination  – Phenomenological Approaches. In Routledge Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Kant, Immanuel. 1996. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Werner Pluhar. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hacket. Lohmar, Dieter. 2003. Husserl’s Type and Kant’s Schemata: Systematic Reasons for Their Correlation or Identity. Trans. J. Jansen, and G. Zavota. In The New Husserl: A Critical Reader, ed. Donn Welton. Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. ———. 2005. On the Function of Weak Phantasmata in Perception: Phenomenological, Psychological and Neurological Clues for the Transcendental Function of Imagination in Perception. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4: 155–167. ———. 2008. Phänomenologie der schwachen Phantasie: Untersuchungen der Psychologie, Cognitive Science, Neurologie und Phänomenologie zur Funktion der Phantasie in der Wahrnehmung. Dordrecht: Springer. McGurk, H., and J. MacDonald. 1976. Hearing lips and seeing voices. Nature 264 (5588): 746–748. Morley, James. 1998. The Private Theater: A Phenomenological Investigation of Daydreaming. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 29 (1): 116–134. Nanay, Bence. 2010. Perception and Imagination: Amodal Perception as Mental Imagery. Philosophical Studies 150: 239–254. Ricoeur, Paul. 1975. Lectures on Imagination. Ed. George Taylor. (Unpublished). Ricoeur, P. 1991. “Imagination in Discourse and Action.” Trans. Kathleen Blamey & John B. Thompson. In From Text to Action. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP. Sallis, John. 1992. Spacing Imagination: Husserl and the Phenomenology of Imagination. In Eros and Eris, ed. P.J.M. van Tongeren et al., 201–215. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 2004. The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination. Trans. Jonathan Webber. London/New York: Routledge. Sekuler, R., A.B. Sekuler, and R. Lau. 1997. Sound Alters Visual Motion Perception. Nature 385: 308. Strawson, Peter F. 1974. Imagination and Perception. In Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays, ed. P.F. Strawson, 45–65. London: Methuen. Warnock, Mary. 1994. Imagination and Time. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1986. Philosophical Investigations. Trans. G.E.M.  Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd.

Does Husserl’s Phenomenological Idealism Lead to Pluralistic Solipsism? Assessing the Criticism by Theodor Celms Rodney K. B. Parker

Abstract The present paper looks at the relationship between Edmund Husserl and Theodor Celms, and Celms’ criticisms of Husserl’s transcendental-­ phenomenological idealism. Celms argues that despite his account of intersubjectivity, Husserl cannot escape the threat of solipsism. First, I argue that there is evidence which supports the hypothesis that Husserl’s Fifth Meditation is a response to Celms. If this is the case, then reading Celms puts us in a better position for interpreting the Fifth Meditation and evaluating the success of Husserl’s argument therein. Second, in defense of Husserl, I suggest that the transcendental theory of intersubjectivity presented in the Fifth Meditation is an attempt to neutralize the threat of transcendental solipsism, but it does not necessarily preclude some form of pluralistic-epistemic solipsism. However, this is not necessarily a problematic result. Keywords  Edmund Husserl · Theodor Celms · Solipsism · Transcendental idealism · Monads · Intersubjectivity · Empathy

1  Introduction Among Husserl’s early critics, one of the most important is his Freiburg student Theodor Celms. In Der phänomenologische Idealismus Husserls (Celms 1928), Celms argues that transcendental-phenomenological idealism cannot escape the solipsistic starting point from which it begins. This text was warmly received by the Munich phenomenologists (Pfänder 1929; Beck 1930; Geiger 1933) and the Southwest Neo-Kantians (Kreis 1930; Zocher 1932),1 and arguments similar to  Other references which speak to the reception and influence of Celms book are and others at the time (Muth 1931; Folwart 1936; Osborn 1934). A Spanish translation of the text by José Gaos was published in 1931 (Celms 1931) and influenced the reception of Husserl in the Spanish speaking world. 1

R. K. B. Parker (*) Faculty of Philosophy, Dominican University College, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Apostolescu (ed.), The Subject(s) of Phenomenology, Contributions to Phenomenology 108, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29357-4_9

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those presented by Celms are still pervasive among critics of Husserl today (Bell 1990; Mulligan 2003; Smith 2003). Focusing on Ideas I §§46–55 (Husserl 1982) along with Husserl’s then unpublished manuscripts and lecture notes, Celms argues that Husserl’s theory of empathy either (1) reduces other pure egos to nothing more than constructions of my own consciousness, or (2) results in a pluralistic solipsism. According to Celms, Husserl might be able to escape this dilemma by positing the existence of other transcendental egos and endorsing a form of Leibnizian idealism, but in doing so transcendental phenomenology fails to be the metaphysically neutral, rigorous science it proports to be. This paper begins with a brief explanation of the charges of solipsism leveled against Husserl. Following this, I sketch the relationship between Celms and Husserl, and present an overview of the main criticisms of Husserl’s transcendental-­ phenomenological idealism put forward in Der phänomenologische Idealismus Husserls. In short, Celms writes that Husserl believes empathic experience motivates us to posit other psycho-physical subjects, just as ordinary perceptual experience leads us to posit external objects. This entails that other egos exist as immanent transcendencies – that is, as things which are constituted in one’s consciousness as transcendent – which may not actually exist. In fact, since they are merely empirical unities on Husserl’s own account, other egos have no absolute existence. Hence, Husserl’s theory of intersubjectivity faces a problem. If, as Celms maintains, any “true” account of intersubjectivity must demonstrate the existence in-themselves of other subjects, then the transcendental-phenomenological account of other subjects fails. Husserl has, at best, only explained “one’s own consciousness of other subjects. The other subject as transcendent […] has remained, as in all purely phenomenological reflection, completely disregarded.” (Celms 1928, 396)2 Husserl has accounted for the empirically founded existence of other subjects as things in the world, but not their existence in-themselves. He thereby reduces others to harmonious unities of experience, which are constituted in and by consciousness. “Everything that [Husserl has] said about intersubjectivity,” Celms writes, “is true in fact only of intersubjectivity as presented in the solus ipse.” (Celms 1928, 397) Thus, Husserl’s transcendentalphenomenological idealism has not, and in principle cannot, escape solipsism. In light of Celms’ criticisms, my aim is to argue in favor of the following two theses – one historical, and one philosophical. First, I suggest that there is evidence to support the hypothesis that Husserl’s Fifth Meditation is a response to Celms – if not directly, then indirectly. If this is the case, then reading Celms puts us in a better position for interpreting the Fifth Meditation and evaluating the success of Husserl’s argument therein. Second, in defense of Husserl, I show that the transcendental theory of intersubjectivity presented in the Fifth Meditation is an attempt to neutralize the threat of transcendental solipsism, though it does not necessarily preclude  References throughout will be to the original 1928 edition of Celms’ text, rather than Der phänomenologische Idealismus Husserls und andere Schriften 1928–1943, ed. Juris Rozenvalds (Celms 1993). I have chosen to refer to the 1928 edition since citations of Celms by Husserl’s contemporaries use the original pagination, which is not preserved in the 1993 edition. All translations of Celms are my own. 2

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some form of pluralistic-epistemological solipsism. However, unlike Celms, I argue that this is not a problematic result, since it appears to avoid the pitfalls that make solipsism so abhorrent.

2  Husserl the Transcendental Idealist/Husserl the Solipsist It is widely known that many of Husserl’s students were critical of and rejected the “idealist” elements of his phenomenology. However, few know the specific details of these criticisms or what motivated them.3 A quick survey of the writings by Husserl’s early critics reveals that problems arose within the phenomenological movement in the wake of the publication of Ideas I in 1913, wherein Husserl endorses a form of transcendental idealism.4 This led to a deep and protracted division among the early phenomenologists. Heidegger explains the shift in Husserl’s thinking, and the schism that ensued, as follows: The thematic domain which had been designated with the term “consciousness” and thereby included the totality of the real and intentional content of the stream of experience was held fast. The horizon for posing questions about it and the basic approach to it came in from elsewhere: what came from the Marburg school was the posing of epistemological questions (characteristic of both is a return to Descartes), and Dilthey was consulted on the issue of laying the foundation of the human sciences (nature and mind). Thus transcendental idealism entered into phenomenology. And the countermovement to this also arose in phenomenology by taking up traditional realism. These opposites became the guiding foci for academic discussions within the different directions phenomenology took. (Heidegger 2009, 57)

With its motto “back to the ‘things themselves’” (Husserl 1901, 7), the Munich Circle had understood phenomenology as it was presented in the first edition of the Logical Investigations (Husserl 1900/01) as a type of descriptive psychology and science of essences compatible with metaphysical realism. To them it represented “an object-oriented phenomenology that holds that we are in possession of a priori […] knowledge relating to certain fundamental structures in a wide range of different spheres of objects (for example, colors, tones, values, shapes)” (Embree 1997, 586). The pure phenomenology of Ideas I, bearing the influence of Kant’s critical philosophy, was met with resistance by this group. These realist phenomenologists interpreted Husserl as now rejecting the existence of a real external  Rudolf Bernet writes that “no critical appraisal of the validity of these earlier critiques of Husserl’s transcendental philosophy has been developed [...and this] neglect threatens the continuation of Husserlian phenomenology.” (Bernet 2015, 115) 4  The publication of Ideas I neither marks Husserl’s first acceptance of transcendental idealism, nor the first criticisms of phenomenology among Husserl’s followers. Husserl does not explicitly discuss his phenomenological idealism in transcendental terms until 1918, though we can trace his acceptance of transcendental idealism back to at least 1908 (Husserl 2003, ix). The students who attended his lectures were well aware of this. But the appearance of Ideas I in the middle of this decade long conversion marks Husserl’s first attempt to publicly articulate his phenomenology as a form of transcendental idealism. 3

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world. While not himself a member of the Munich Circle, it is in this milieu that Celms’ criticism of Husserl takes shape. According to the standard interpretation, Husserl’s transcendental idealism can be summarized as the thesis that, “the existence of real objects, and thus the existence of the real world, is unthinkable without reference to a consciousness which is currently experiencing them” (Husserl 2003, ix).5 The purpose of transcendental phenomenology is, therefore, “a radical epistemological clarification of our consciousness of the world [des erkenntnistheoretisch radikal aufgeklärten Weltbewusstseins]” (Husserl 2003, xix). Dan Zahavi helps to clarify the upshot of this position when he writes: “Husserl’s transcendental idealism doesn’t deny the existence of mind-independent objects in the uncontroversial sense of empirical realism, but only in the controversial sense of metaphysical realism. The fact that transcendental idealism has more affinities with (a certain form of) externalism than with internalism should be less of a surprise the moment it is realized how little in common it has with any garden variety of idealism” (Zahavi 2008, 372). However, the form of idealism we get on the standard interpretation is not universally accepted as a tenable position. For instance, David Bell writes, in an overtly pejorative tone, that the overall framework of Ideas I is “transcendental solipsistic idealism. It concerns  […]  the a priori conditions of the possibility of objective experience in general; and, it turns out, the conditions on which that possibility depends make no essential ineliminable reference either to the independent existence of an extra-mental world, or to the existence of a plurality of conscious beings” (Bell 1990, 198). Husserl’s effort to rectify this situation in the Fifth Meditation is the unconvincing and impossible attempt at “a solipsistic escape from solipsism” (Bell 1990, 215). In a similar vein, Arthur David Smith asserts that the Cartesian Meditations culminate in “an out-and-out idealism […] with which very few today will have any sympathy at all” (Smith 2003, 107). Husserl’s confrontation with the problem of solipsism is inextricably linked with his interest and epistemological questions. As Heidegger correctly points out, his epistemological concerns and his re-reading of Kant prompted his move toward transcendental philosophy on the one hand, and philosophical idealism on the other. In his attempt to establish philosophy as a rigorous science, Husserl saw the problem of the relationship between the external world and cognition, or the problem of objectivity in general, as the fundamental problem concerning transcendental philosophy. In his 1924 lecture Kant and the Idea of Transcendental Philosophy, Husserl writes that we unquestioningly believe that “the being-in-itself of the world is an indubitable fact” (Husserl 1974, 23), by which – according to the transcendental philosopher – we can mean nothing other than that the world is constituted in experience as existing in-itself. Like all objects of cognition, the world receives its sense from cognition. “But how is the ‘being-in-itself of the world’ to be understood now,” Husserl asks, “if it is for us nothing other, and can be nothing other, than a

 This interpretation is endorsed by Roman Ingarden (1975), Iso Kern (1964), and Dermot Moran (2005). 5

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sense taking shape subjectively or intersubjectively in our own cognitive achievement [...]?” (Husserl 1974, 23) He continues: if the substratum of these questions is understood, can there still be any kind of philosophical consideration of the world that proceeds as though talk of a “world existing in itself” could have a legitimate sense that would still be completely different from the sense formations in cognition, from the sense concretely taking shape by synthesis in the multiplicity of acts of insightfully cognitive consciousness-as though it could mean “metaphysical transcendence,” which through the “transcendent” regulation by a “metaphysical” causality could be connected with the “merely subjective” cognition formation as if with a “picture of cognition” effected inside subjectivity? Would that not be a sense which, having been torn from the primal place of all sense in the sense-bestowal of consciousness, is precisely nonsense? (Husserl 1974, 23–24)

The notion that the existence in-itself of an external world is nonsensical is one that the Munich phenomenologists found troubling, and which Husserl attempted to clarify and defend through his career. Husserl’s early critics had difficulty accepting both the phenomenological reduction and the theory of constitution. According to Husserl, these reservations stemmed from a confused attempt to reconcile the theory presented in Ideas I with the Logical Investigations. Attempting to clear up these confusions, Husserl penned an Epilogue to the Ideas.6 In the Epilogue, Husserl admits that Ideas I lacked a proper discussion of the foundations of his phenomenological idealism, as well as “an explicit taking of a position on the problem of transcendental solipsism, the problem of transcendental intersubjectivity” (Husserl 1989, 417). In other words, it lacked any substantial account of the objectivity of the world, and thus appeared to collapse into a dogmatic and subjective form of idealism. Because of this, Husserl’s work was understood as falling victim to what Kant had called the “scandal of philosophy”, i.e., the inability to offer a satisfactory proof of the existence of an external world (Kant 1998, 121–22). Husserl lamented that the “scandal” caused by the idealism nascent in Ideas I and its alleged solipsism “considerably impeded [its] reception” (Husserl 1989, 417). In the face of this, Husserl insisted that, “the objection of solipsism would never have been raised, given a deeper understanding of my presentation, as an objection against phenomenological idealism itself; the objection would only be against my incomplete presentation of it” (Husserl 1989, 418). Husserl uses the Epilogue as an occasion to assert that the objection of metaphysical solipsism against his theory lacks any intelligible meaning given a proper understanding of the phenomenological-transcendental reduction. The controversial claim of transcendental-phenomenological idealism is that the phenomenological reduction, or the “bracketing” of our naive acceptance of the natural world, reveals that the world and its objects have no absolute or “real” existence.7  Husserl’s Epilogue or Nachwort was originally published in the Jahrbuch (Husserl 1930), and then later added as a foreword to W. R. Boyce Gibson’s English translation of Ideas I (Husserl 1931). 7  “Reality is not in itself something absolute which becomes tied secondarily to something else; rather, in the absolute sense, it is nothing at all; it has no ‘absolute essence’ whatever; it has the 6

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The reduction does not bring into doubt the “factual being” of the world. It merely sets aside, or neutralizes any judgments about this factual being: “we parenthesize the realm of the in-itself and everything in itself” (Husserl 1982, 61 n29). From this standpoint, all objects have an intentional existence, insofar as they are immanent objects of experience and thus they exist for a subject, but they are nothing beyond this, or, at least, nothing that we can cognize. Here we see the basis for what Roman Ingarden calls the “fundamental thesis” of Husserl’s transcendental idealism: what is real is nothing but a constituted noematic unity (individual) of a special kind of sense which in its being and quality (Sosein) results from a set of experiences of a special kind and is quite impossible without them. Entities of this kind exist only for the pure transcendental ego which experiences such a set of perceptions. The existence of what is perceived (of the perceived as such) is nothing “in itself” (an sich) but only something “for somebody,” for the experiencing ego. “Streichen wir das reine Bewusstsein, so streichen wir die Welt” (“If we exclude pure consciousness then we exclude the world”) is the famous thesis of Husserlian transcendental idealism which he was already constantly repeating in lectures during his Göttingen period. (Ingarden 1975, 21)

In other words, the radical aspect of the phenomenological reduction consists in the observation that all being is nothing other than intentionally constituted being. All objects receive their entire being-sense from consciousness. Husserl writes that pure phenomenology is the “final form of transcendental philosophy” (Husserl 1970, 70), where transcendental philosophy is defined as the epistemological endeavour of inquiring back into the ultimate source and ground of all formations of knowledge, the ego, and investigating its relation to the world (Husserl 1970, 97–98). Thus, the foundation of pure phenomenology is transcendental subjectivity – “the primordial locus of all meaning-giving and validation of being” (Husserl 1989, 406) – which the reduction lays bare. The task of Ideas I is to outline a science that investigates the a priori structures of transcendental subjectivity, by arguing from appearances – factual being taken first in phenomenological reflection as “pure possibilities” and then as “transcendental clues” – to the universal conditions of the possibility of all objects of cognition (Husserl 1989, 409). This results in a radical clarification of the meaning-bestowing intentional structures out of which consciousness constitutes its objects. Husserl is charged with being a solipsist due to his denial that there is any meaningful sense to the notion of a mind-independent external world – a claim at the heart of his phenomenological idealism. In particular, Ideas I §49 fuelled many of the criticisms aimed at Husserl’s phenomenological idealism. Herein we find the notorious passage where Husserl argues that the external world is nothing more than a unified multiplicity of appearances for some conscious. [C]onsciousness considered in its “purity” must be held to be a self-contained complex of being, a complex of absolute being into which nothing can penetrate and out of which nothing can slip, to which nothing is spatiotemporally external and which cannot [itself] be within any spatiotemporal complex, which cannot be affected by any physical thing and cannot exercise

essentiality of something which, of necessity, is only intentional, only an object of consciousness” (Husserl 1982, 113).

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causation upon any physical thing – it being presupposed that causality has the normal sense of causality pertaining to Nature as a relationship of dependence between realities. On the other hand, the whole spatiotemporal world, which includes [the] human being and the human Ego as subordinate single realities is, according to its sense, a merely intentional being, thus one has the merely secondary sense of a being for a consciousness. It is a being posited by consciousness in its experiences which, of essential necessity, can be determined and intuited only as something identical belonging to motivated multiplicities of appearances: beyond that it is nothing (Husserl 1982, 112).

Here Husserl makes numerous bold claims that seem to commit him to some form of solipsism. First, the transcendental ego is characterized as a monad, that is, a self-­ contained unit into which nothing can penetrate and from which nothing can escape. Second, he bolsters this remark by asserting there is no “outside” of consciousness from which something could penetrate or into which anything could escape. He also argues that the transcendental ego itself is not a part of the world – it is prior to the world. The world, along with me myself in the world as a human ego and a human being, is the harmonious achievement of constituting consciousness. Finally, Husserl claims that the external world and all the objects in it have merely intentional being, that is, they exist for a consciousness as essentially unified multiplicities of appearance.8 Beyond this, worldly objects are “nothing,” by which he means that such objects having being beyond being-for-a-consciousness is “a countersensical thought” (Husserl 1982, 112). Only the pure, transcendental ego exists absolutely, since its existence is not contingent upon the existence of some other real entity, as his thought experiment concerning the annihilation of the world demonstrates. What is radical in Husserl is, as Dermot Moran puts is, “the recognition of sense-­ giving [Sinngebung] and constitution everywhere at work, and this recognition is possible only through rigorous and vigilant application of the epoché” (Moran 2005, 187). Rather than shrink away from the controversial position presented in Ideas I, Husserl insists on its truth. In the Formal and Transcendental Logic, he writes: Whatever I encounter as an existing object is something that […] has received its whole being-sense for me from my effective intentionality; not a shadow of that sense remains excluded from my effective intentionality. Precisely this I must consult, I must explicate systematically, if I intend to understand that sense and consequently to understand also what I am allowed, and what I am not allowed, to attribute to an object. (Husserl 1969, 234) It is hardly necessary to say that this whole many-leveled problem of the constitution of the Objective world is, at the same time, the problem of dissolving what may be called the transcendental illusion that from the outset misleads, and usually paralyzes, any attempt to start a consistent transcendental philosophy: the illusion that such a philosophy must lead to a transcendental solipsism. If everything I can ever accept as existent is constituted in my ego, then everything that exists does indeed seem to be a mere moment of my own transcendental being. (Husserl 1969, 241)

 The appearances are said to be constituted rather than caused, since the latter implies the existence of mind independent things-in-themselves. 8

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While this may invite the spectre of solipsism, Husserl argues that instead of fleeing from such a thought, we should instead investigate this phantom for what it really is. The Epilogue attempts to explain why the charge of solipsism against the position outlined above is absurd. Transcendental phenomenology neither aims at nor needs to provide a proof of the existence in-itself of a mind-independent external world. It is not a skeptical position with respect to the external world per se. Husserl’s phenomenology aims to systematically uncover the sense of the external world taken as phenomena, as a constitutional achievement of intentional consciousness. It seeks to do so as a genuinely presuppositionless and autonomous science of phenomena, the science proper to philosophy, something he felt none of the various philosophical “systems” and “trends” before his were able to do (Husserl 1989, 428–29). One point which critics seemed to overlook is that transcendental phenomenology is not at all concerned with traditional metaphysical questions (Husserl 1989, 419–20). Problematically, the charge of solipsism against phenomenology rests on a dichotomy between realism and idealism that the epoché dispels. Disregarding this point led to the characterization of phenomenology as an out-and-out idealism, rather than transcendental idealism – which Husserl believes is primarily an epistemological endeavor (Husserl 1982, 66). Husserl writes: [W]e must not fail to clarify expressly the fundamental and essential distinction between transcendental-phenomenological idealism versus that idealism against which realism battles as against its forsworn opponent. Above all: phenomenological idealism does not deny the actual existence of the real world  […]  as if it maintained that the world were mere semblance […]. Its sole task and accomplishment is to clarify the sense of this world, precisely the sense in which everyone accepts it-and rightly so-as actually existing. That the world exists […] is entirely beyond doubt. But it is quite another matter to understand this indubitability […] and to clarify the ground of its legitimacy. (Husserl 1989, 420)

The task of transcendental phenomenology is thus to uncover the universal a priori conditions of all possible cognition, and clarify thereby the sense of the objects of cognition, not to argue for or against their “existence.” But whatever the particular being-sense of individual objects might be, objects only have such a sense with reference to some transcendental subjectivity.9 Husserl’s remarks in the Cartesian Meditations help to put this in perspective. Phenomenological idealism is not the product of a struggle between realism and idealism. It is the result of phenomenological analysis, which is the methodology of a transcendental philosophy that brackets both the real and the ideal in order to understand their sense, not to champion one  “The result of the phenomenological sense-clarification of the mode of being of the real world, and of any conceivable real world at all, is that only the being of transcendental subjectivity has the sense of absolute being […] whereas the real world indeed exists, but has an essential relativity to transcendental subjectivity, due, namely, to the fact that it can have its sense as being only as an intentional sense-formation of transcendental subjectivity” (Husserl 1989, 420, translation modified). When discussing the being-sense of objects, Husserl is not always clear on the distinction between the conditions of the possibility of experience of that object and the conceptual categories that individual object of cognition is subsumed under. However, this distinction need not concern us here. 9

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over the other (Husserl 1960, 86). If Husserl’s critics have not properly understood the phenomenological reduction, then they have not understood the sense of this transcendental idealism. As a result, no matter how well motivated or researched these critics might consider their arguments against transcendental phenomenology to be, Husserl finds that he “cannot acknowledge any kind of justification” to their objections (Husserl 1989, 407), including the metaphysical problem of solipsism.

3  From Disciple to Detractor: Theodor Celms The Fifth Meditation begins with the following line of questioning: As the point of departure for our new meditations, let us take what may seem to be a grave objection. The objection concerns nothing less than the claim of transcendental phenomenology to be itself transcendental philosophy and therefore its claim that, in the form of a constitutional problematic and theory moving within the limits of the transcendentally reduced ego, it can solve the transcendental problems pertaining to the Objective world. When I, the meditating I, reduce myself to my absolute transcendental ego by phenomenological epoché do I not become solus ipse; and do I not remain that, as long as I carry on a consistent self-explication under the name phenomenology? Should not a phenomenology that proposed to solve the problems of Objective being, and to present itself actually as philosophy, be branded therefore as transcendental solipsism? (Husserl 1960, 89)

David Carr refers to an “imaginary critic” (Carr 1987, 50–51) lurking in the passaged quoted here, who charges Husserl with adopting a form of solipsism, and to whom the Cartesian Meditations is a reply. What I aim to show now is that Husserl is not responding to some imagined interlocutor, but to his student Theodor Celms. Celms’ Der phänomenologische Idealismus Husserls has been cited as one of the best early criticisms of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology (Mulligan 2003, 283),10 and was read by both Husserl and his contemporaries.11 While there is no explicit evidence that Husserl was responding specifically to Celms in the Fifth Meditation, there is good reason to believe that Celms was the intended target. There does not appear to be any earlier publication labelling Husserl a solipsist or a Leibnizian as Celms does. After presenting the case for regarding Celms as the unnamed critic that the Fifth Meditation is meant to address, I argue that while Husserl can easily avoid the traditional problem of solipsism, his transcendental theory of intersubjectivity does not necessarily preclude some form of pluralistic-epistemological solipsism. That is to say, Husserl’s theory of empathy does not entail that I have knowledge of other  Along with Celms, Mulligan considers the arguments in Ingarden’s Schriften zur Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls (Ingarden 1998) and Carl Stumpf’s “Kritik der Husserlschen Phänomenologie” (Stumpf 1939, 188–200) the best early criticisms of Husserl’s phenomenological idealism. 11  Along with Celms’ book, Mulligan considers the various essays included in Roman Ingarden’s Schriften zur Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls (Ingarden 1998) and Carl Stumpf’s “Kritik der Husserlschen Phänomenologie” (Stumpf 1939, 188–200), to be the best early criticisms of Husserl’s phenomenological idealism. 10

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concrete subjects as they are in-themselves. However, unlike Celms, I do not believe this is a problematic result for Husserl. In fact, experience seems to corroborate this result in Husserl’s favour. Moreover, re-reading Husserl’s response to the problem of solipsism helps us to better understand his Objectivity, which is his lasting contribution to transcendental idealism. While Celms’ Der phänomenologische Idealismus Husserls was widely read soon after its appearance, and was endorsed by figures such as Alexander Pfänder and Maximilian Beck,12 history has not been so kind. With the exception of a handful of book chapters and papers (Seebohm 1962; Kūle 1996, 1998; Buceniece 1996, 2002; Rozenvalds 2000; Vēgners 2012) – most of which are by Latvian authors – prolonged discussions of Celms’ critique of Husserlian phenomenology are scarce. Despite the lack of attention paid to Celms in contemporary literature on Husserl, in his work we find the first systematic presentation of one of the most common criticisms of pure phenomenology, namely, that it cannot escape the solipsistic starting point from which it begins. As the Fifth Meditation shows, Husserl’s response to this threat, even if he rejects the conclusion, is quite subtle. Celms began his philosophical career in Moscow from 1913 to 1920. During this time, he studied first under the Moscow Neo-Kantians Pavel Novgorodcev and Georgii Chelpanov (Kūle et al. 2009, 37–38).13 He quickly developed an interest in philosophical idealism, particularly the works of Plato and Kant. Around 1917, Celms was introduced to Husserl’s thought via the Russian translation of the Logical Investigations (Husserl 1909). He immediately took an interest in phenomenology, and eventually relocated to Freiburg to study with Husserl. Celms attended Husserl’s lectures from the summer of 1922 through to the summer of 1923, most notably his seminars on Lotze’s Logik and Einleitung in die Philosophie (Schuhmann 1977, 259).14 In 1923 Celms received his doctorate from the University of Freiburg with the thesis Kants allgemeinlogische Auffassung vom Wesen, Ursprung und der Aufgabe des Begriffes (Celms 1923) under the supervision of Joseph Geyser, and Husserl serving as Korreferat. In the summer of 1925, Celms returned to Freiburg to conduct research for his habilitation thesis. He attended Husserl’s lectures on Phänomenologische Psychologie (Husserl 1962),15 and was given access to the manuscripts for Husserl’s  In his review of Celms’ book, Pfänder writes: “Phenomenology, as a science of pure consciousness, explicitly and according to its essence, forbids any judgment about what might be transcendent to consciousness. However, Husserlian idealism performs just such judgment in declaring that the physical world transcendent to consciousness has no being in itself, but only a being for a consciousness; beyond that, it is nothing. This idealism does not necessarily follow and cannot follow from phenomenology; on the contrary, it forsakes its necessary foundations.” (Pfänder 1929, 2049. My translation.) Here Pfänder clearly refers to Ideas I §49. 13  Chelpanov is perhaps better known for being the teacher Gustav Shpet. Before studying with Husserl in Göttingen, Shpet attended Chelpanov’s lectures on phenomenology from 1902–05. Novgorodcev was the teacher of Ivan Ilyin, who studied with Husserl briefly as well. 14  See also the Appendix to this article. 15  Cf. (Schuhmann 1977, 290; Celms 1928, 254). In Husserl’s Nachlass, Celms’ name seems to be the third entry found in the list of participants in the Übungen in der Analyse und Deskription rein geistiger Akte und Gebilde (im Anschluß an die Vorlesungen über phanomenologische Psychologie) in the summer of 1925 (see X VII 4 – Quästurakten der Universität Freiburg). 12

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lectures on The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (Husserl 2006), Erste Philosophie II (Husserl 1959), and the London lectures (Husserl 2002, 311–40).16 Celms went back to Latvia to write his habilitation thesis, Prolegomena zu einem transzendentalen Historismus (1926), and the project was met with much praise from Husserl. It is amazing how deeply your thought has entered into the spirit and aims of my life’s work, of which you have only learned fragments […]. They are even a continuation of this work, exactly following the secure and necessary objectives that I myself have followed since the Ideas (even since 1910). Of course, a transcendental phenomenology is also a “transcendental historism” […]. You are on the right path. Only a few of my students have seen, as you have, how much has been opened up to us by the transcendental reduction, and what commitment and sacrifice [entsagender] our work demands. On your detailed work, your ingenuity, your energy, I shall put my hopes (Husserl 1994, 67).17

Husserl was impressed by Celms’ understanding of the phenomenological reduction and of transcendental phenomenology, and had high hopes for his Latvian protégé. Unfortunately, Husserl’s hopes ended up being sorely misplaced. After completing his habilitation thesis, Celms began to have doubts about the consequences of transcendental phenomenology. While both student and teacher agreed that “phenomenological philosophy turns out to be phenomenological monadology” (Celms 1939, 154), Celms worried that this devolved into pluralistic solipsism. The exact reason for Celms’ change of heart with respect to transcendental phenomenology is not fully understood. Shortly after finishing Prolegomena zu einem transzendentalen Historismus, Celms received a scathing review from Rudolph Jirgens. Much of the content of Celms’ 1928 book may well be an elaboration of

 Aside from the London lectures, the other manuscripts Celms read are referred to only by date. However, we can deduce that the lectures from October to November of 1910 are  The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (or GPP) by the following passage from the Celms book: “Oder, wie Husserl selbst das in seinen Vorlesungen vom Okt.-Nov. 1910 formuliert hat: ‚Mögliche Einfühlung ist die »Spiegelung« jeder Monade in jeder anderen und die MögIichkeit dieser Spiegelung hängt an der Möglichkeit einer übereinstimmenden Konstitution einer raum-zeitlichen Natur, eines in alle Iche hineinreichenden Index für entsprechende Erkenntniskonstitutionen‘” (Celms 1928, 404). This passage is from a revision Husserl made to GPP §39, found at (Husserl 1973, 229). As for the lectures from WS 1923/24, there is ample evidence in Celms’ book that he had read the manuscript for Erste Philosophie II. For instance, compare his discussion of patent and latent acts (Celms 1928, 290) with (Husserl 1959, 90), and the distinction between actual and habitual validities [Geltungen] (Celms 1928, 297) corresponds to that which we find throughout (Husserl 1959). Lastly, Celms quotes the manuscript: „nichts anderes als eine klärende Herausbildung der in den scheinbar so trivialen ersten Meditationen des Descartes verborgenen, und Descartes selbst verborgenen tiefen Gehalte“(Celms 1928, 300–301; Husserl 1959, 80); „In seinen Vorlesungen im W. S. 1923/24 bezeichnete Husserl diese Idee des »An-sich-Seins« der Welt als ‚ein in der universalen Verlaufsgestalt der Erfahrung motiviertes und solange diese Gestalt gegeben ist, notwendig zu setzendes und nicht abzulehnendes Ideal‘“(Celms 1928, 359; Husserl 1959, 48); and „Die Welt braucht nicht unbedingt notwendig zu sein, braucht nict gewesen zu sein, und braucht selbst wenn sie war und ist, nicht weiter zu sein“(Celms 1928, 369; Husserl 1959, 67). 17  Historism here refers the idea that an argument or concept can only be understood by considering it within its historical context, and cannot be properly evaluated based on its form or content alone. 16

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points made by Jirgens.18 But it might well be that these critical remarks merely calcified worries that had been in the back of Celms’ mind for some time which he had inherited from other sources. Celms later aligned himself with the realist phenomenologists, particularly Pfänder, to whom he dedicated Lebensumgebung und Lebensprojektion (Celms 1933). Despite the widespread influence of Ideas I, Celms opens Der phänomenologische Idealismus Husserls by noting that, due to its basic and decisive idealist tenets, “many researchers on opposing sides (even some supporters of phenomenology) have wanted to reject it” (Celms 1928, 251). He then argues that because of the impact of Husserl’s work, philosophers have a duty to correctly grasp the nature of pure phenomenology. This is the task Celms sets for himself. He then outlines three main questions that will guide his assessment of Husserl’s work: 1. Does Husserl’s phenomenological idealism follow with logical necessity from the phenomenological method alone? 2. Does this idealism meet Husserl’s goal of being the one true philosophy, that is, a rigorous science of pure and absolute cognition? 3. Is Husserl’s transcendental idealism consistent with, or does it correspond to, the transcendental idealism of Kant? (Celms 1928, 251–52) Drawing on Ideas I and Philosophy as Rigorous Science (Husserl 1911), as well as the unpublished works he had accessed while visiting Freiburg, Celms attacks Husserl on two fronts. First, he argues that there are two distinct senses of the phenomenological reduction, and that one leads phenomenology to subjective idealism. Second, he argues that Husserl’s theory of empathy either reduces “other pure egos” to nothing more than constructions of my own consciousness, or a “pluralistic solipsism.” Husserl might be able to escape these problems by stipulating the existence of other monadic transcendental egos, and by adopting the Leibnizian doctrine of pre-established harmony, but at the cost of being dogmatic and unscientific. Let us briefly consider the first argument. Following Husserl, Celms identifies the phenomenological reduction as the main pillar of phenomenology. This radical, universal application of the epoché is “nothing more” than a clarification of the method laid out by Descartes at the beginning of his Meditations (Celms 1928, 300–301; Husserl 1959, 80). But Celms thinks there is a “dangerous equivocation” in Husserl’s use of the phenomenological reduction. This is not simply a terminological problem, but one that has serious metaphysical consequences. James Mensch summarizes Celms’ distinction between the two senses of the phenomenological reduction as follows:

 While no copy of Celms’ habilitationschrift seems to have survived, there is a draft of Jirgens’ review. The handwritten manuscript, which consists of 13 sheets and 2 addendum sheets, is kept in the Rare Books and Manuscripts department at the National Library of Latvia, in the signature “Atsauksmes par citu autoru (T.  Celma, A.  Mesera u.c.) darbiem, 1926/27,” A 240, V. Škiltera fonds N 26. This manuscript is in the process of being edited and translated into English by Uldis Vēgners and myself. 18

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As first noted by Theodor Celms, the reduction has two senses. It is “a leading back of every objectively (transcendentally) directed consideration into a consideration of the corresponding modes of consciousness.” It is also “the leading back of objective (transcendent) being to the being of the corresponding modes of consciousness” (Der phenomenologische Idealismus Husserls, Riga, l928, 309). In its first sense, it signifies a reduction of our consideration of an object to a consideration of the experiences and experiential connections through which the object is given to consciousness. As Celms writes, the second sense signifies “the denial of any positing of what is reduced” - i.e., objective, transcendent being – “as absolute” (Mensch 1988, 11–12).

Celms distinguishes between the reduction of consideration [Zurückführung der Betrachtung] and the reduction of being [Zurückführung des Seins]. The first of these Celms identifies as phenomenological reflection, and the second with a full-­ fledged phenomenological reduction. According to Celms, the second sense involves not only an intentional analysis of the objects and their corresponding modes of consciousness, but a reduction of objects to those modes of consciousness, and a denial of their existence in-themselves. On the first reading, Husserl remains neutral with respect to the idealism-realism question. But in this case, Celms claims that it does not constitute a true philosophy (Celms 1928, 317). Alternatively, if we accept the second interpretation, then Husserl is an out-and-out idealist (Celms 1928, 309). For Celms, what is valuable in Husserl is his method of phenomenological reflection. But he is also of the opinion that, insofar as this method is silent with respect to questions about the genuinely transcendent (the world as it is in-itself, God, and other egos), it is simply unable to constitute a philosophical system in the true sense of the word. Philosophy, in the sense of a universal science which encompasses every possible thing and every special science (and this is the sense Husserl has in mind), must, according to Celms, also pass judgment about what is transcendent. Insofar as Husserl accepts the phenomenological reduction, which does not follow from the method of phenomenological reflection alone, he decides in favor of idealism. According to Celms, we find two basic arguments for Husserl’s idealism in Ideas I. The first is found in Ideas I §47, and the second is the infamous passage from §49 discussed above (Celms 1928, 370–71).19 Celms finds one major problem with Husserl’s phenomenological idealism: as a result of its theoretical underpinnings, phenomenology is unable to escape the solipsistic standpoint from which it  The passage from Ideas I §47 reads: “It must always be borne in mind here that whatever physical things are – the only physical things about which we can make statements, the only ones about the being or non-being, the being-thus or being-otherwise of which we can disagree and make rational decisions  – they are as experienceable physical things. It is experience alone that prescribes their sense […]. As a consequence, one must not let oneself be deceived by speaking of the physical thing as transcending consciousness or as “existing in itself.” The genuine concept of the transcendence of something physical […] can itself be derived only from the proper essential contents of perception or from those concatenations of definite kinds which we call demonstrative experience. The idea of such transcendence is therefore the eidetic correlate of the pure idea of this demonstrative experience. This is true of any conceivable kind of transcendence which could be treated as either an actuality or a possibility. An object existing in itself is never one with which consciousness or the Ego pertaining to consciousness has nothing to do” (Husserl 1982, 106). Moran identifies passages near this that commit Husserl to idealism as well (Moran 2005, 178–79).

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begins, despite Husserl’s attempt at a theory of intersubjectivity and his discussions of empathy in his unpublished manuscripts. According to J. N. Mohanty, Husserl’s critics “never make it clear why they think that Husserl’s account remains committed to solipsism, when it is precisely by empathy that I experience the other as a wholly transcendent other.” (Mohanty 2011, 132) In the case of Celms, this statement is entirely inaccurate. Aside from Edith Stein, Celms probably knew more about Husserl’s theory of empathy and the intersubjective elements of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology than anyone else before the publication of the Cartesian Meditations, based on the manuscripts he had access to while in Freiburg in 1925. Celms gives us the first comprehensive critical commentary on this aspect of Husserl’s thought. There is no indication of precisely when Husserl received his copy of Der phänomenologische Idealismus Husserls, although Celms presumably sent it off shortly after its publication in 1928. The dedication Celms inscribed on the inside cover at least suggests that he did not hesitate to send the book to Husserl.20 Given the praise expressed by Husserl in his letter to Celms from October of 1926 noted above, it is also likely that Husserl read the book shortly after it arrived in Freiburg. If these speculative claims are correct, then Husserl was perhaps aware of Celms’ criticisms before he began writing the Paris lectures in January of 1929, and almost certainly before he authored each of the Epilogue to Ideas I, the version of the Cartesian Meditations published in 1931, and “Typescript C” in 1932. Husserl does not mention Celms in the Cartesian Meditations, but the clarificatory remarks Husserl makes concerning the divergence between his method and that of Descartes, his relationship of phenomenology to the transcendental idealism of Kant, the discussion of the problem of solipsism, and the allusions to Leibniz, while not new to Husserl’s writings, are presented in a manner that support the hypothesis that he is responding to Celms. There are also extensive annotations in Husserl’s copy of the book which show that he read it with great interest. Therefore, there is good reason to think that certain aspects of the Cartesian Meditations are aimed at Celms.21

 The inscription in the front of Husserl’s copy of the text – preserved as item BP 31 in Husserl’s personal library preserved in the Husserl Archives in Leuven – reads: “Herrn Prof. Dr. Edmund Husserl, in tiefster Verehrung und herzlichen Liebe.” I would like to thank Prof. Julia Jansen, director of the Husserl Archives in Leuven, for allowing me to publish Husserl’s marginal notes from this book, and to Dr. Thomas Vongehr for his assistance with their transcription. 21  Long before Celms wrote his book, Husserl was aware that solipsism posed a threat to his philosophy. It was an established problem concerning the “principle of consciousness” in post-Kantian philosophy (Staiti 2016, 135–37). It is possible that Celms based his criticisms on worries that Husserl had expressed in his unpublished manuscripts. That said, if anyone prior to Celms charged Husserl with being a solipsist in print, I have not found evidence of this. Another possible candidate for being Husserl’s unnamed critic is Georg Misch, but the mention of the problem of solipsism by Misch is quite brief (Misch 1930, 214–15). If the Cartesian Meditations were meant as a response to Celms, he was certainly not convinced by Husserl’s attempt at rephrasing his position. In 1939, Celms writes that “the Cartesian Meditations do not present anything new but confirm once again how close Husserl is to Descartes” (Kūle 1998, 298–99). 20

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4  C  elms’ Claim that Phenomenological Idealism Leads to Solipsism Celms’ second criticism of phenomenological idealism centres on Husserl decision to equate the transcendental ego with the Leibnizian monad, and, subsequently, with describing transcendental phenomenology as a monadology.22 Understood in this way, Celms believes that Husserl invites a host of problems to haunt phenomenological idealism. For the sake of brevity, we will confine our discussion of Der Phänomenologishe Idealismus Husserls to Part II: Chap. IV, wherein Celms attacks Husserl’s phenomenology of intersubjectivity. Husserl makes two marginal comments in this portion of the text. Celms argues that Husserl’s theory of intersubjectivity, and an intersubjective world, can only be established if we presuppose pre-established harmony. This is a result of Husserl’s phenomenological idealism and the problematic sense of the reduction. First, Celms calls into question what ‘other subjects’ even are for Husserl. He writes that, according to Husserl, empathic experience motivates us to posit, with presumptive certainty, other psycho-physical subjects, just as ordinary perceptual experience leads us to posit external objects. However, unlike sense perception, empathy is a type of indirect or secondary experience.23 Celms draws our attention particularly to Ideas I §46 (Celms 1928, 362–363; 388–389), where Husserl argues for the indubitability of anything which I experience as immanent and the absolute dubitability of anything which I experience as transcendent. From this, Husserl argues, in Cartesian style, for the absolute existence of my cogito, i.e., my pure ego. The sort of existence that we can attribute to other egos is similar to that of physical things. On Celms’ interpretation, this means that other egos exist as immanent transcendencies, that is, as things which are constituted in ones’ consciousness as transcendent, but which may not actually exist. In fact, since they are empirical unities, other egos, by Husserl’s own account, have no absolute existence. (Husserl 1982, §53–55) While Husserl seems to claim that other egos exist in- and for-themselves just as I exist absolutely for myself, what follows from his theory is actually solipsism. (Celms 1928, 362–63). If the above is Husserl’s account of other subjects, then his theory of intersubjectivity faces a problem. Celms maintains that any “true” account of intersubjectivity must demonstrate the existence in-themselves of other subjects. Phenomenological analysis of other subjects has, at best, only been concerned with “one’s own consciousness of other subjects. The other subject as transcendent […] has remained, as in all purely phenomenological reflection, completely disregarded.” (Celms 1928, 396) All Husserl has done is account for the empirically founded existence of other subjects as things in the world, but not their existence in-themselves. Like all other  Cf. (Husserl 1959, 190); (Husserl 1962, 216–17); and (Husserl 2002, 280–84), all of which Celms read. As Luft notes (Luft 1997, 63), Celms also believes that Husserl’s position is similar to Berkeleyan idealism (Celms 1928, 337; 435), but we will not discuss this here. 23  Cf. (Husserl 1969, 233). 22

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worldly objects, Husserl has reduced them to a harmonious unity of experiences which are constituted in and by a conscious subject. “Everything that [Husserl has] said about intersubjectivity,” Celms writes, “is true in fact only of intersubjectivity as presented in the solus ipse.” (Celms 1928, 397).24 Husserl makes special note of Celms’ claim that “intersubjectivity in the true sense” must be a theory of the “intersubjectivity of subjects which are ‘in-­themselves’ not reducible to one another.” (Celms 1928, 397) Here we see a metaphysical presupposition built into Celms’ argument, namely, that intersubjectivity in the “true sense” relies on the existence in-themselves of other subjects. Celms makes this the centerpiece of his criticism, claiming that Husserl cannot move from the account of intersubjectivity sketched above to an account of intersubjectivity in the natural or “true” sense – that is, intersubjectivity as it is understood from within the natural attitude – without the help of some additional metaphysical presupposition, “which under no circumstances can be considered a rigorously scientific proposition.” (Celms 1928, 397) Perhaps Celms is correct that intersubjectivity in the natural sense cannot be established by transcendental phenomenology without some unwarranted metaphysical presuppositions. But Celms’ criticism overlooks the fact that Husserl has no intention of defending intersubjectivity in the natural sense, just as he has no intention of defending the existence of the world in the natural sense. Nonetheless, even if Celms’ may be confused as to Husserl’s intentions, Husserl still has to make good on his claims from Ideas I §29 that we share a single intersubjectively constituted world with other human beings whom I accept as other Ego-subjects. (Husserl 1982, 55–56). Husserl believes that we cannot possibly have an originary intuition of another ego. What we experience originarily are other bodies [Körper] which we constitute as other living-things [Leibdinge]. According to Celms, the experience of other living-things is the basis for the empathic experience of other subjects. If the experience of anything “transcendent” ultimately refers back to the presence of particular hyletic data which is considered to be objective, then the experience of other lived bodies serve as this data in the case of empathic experience. It follows from this that: “All questions concerning the correct grounds for the positing of other subjects thus ultimately lead back to the presence of particular hyletic data in one’s own consciousness, by virtue of which the other living-thing comes to be given in perceptual experience for one’s own self.” (Celms 1928, 397–98) But how do we come to have this curious type of hyletic data? Does it come from outside of consciousness, or from within? Celms argues that Husserl cannot sufficiently answer this question. On this point, Husserl explicitly takes issue with Celms.  In the margin next to this passage, Husserl has written “388”, referencing an earlier section from Celms’ book which he has annotated. It reads: „Die Gewissheit des Dingrealen ist, Husserls idealistischer Überzeugung nach, nur als die Gewissheit eines im eigenen Bewusstsein konstituierten Seins anzusehen. Demnach kann auch die Gewissheit des fremden Ich, als eines auf Grund der eigenen Wahrnehnmng des fremdem Leibdinges »eingefühlten« Ich, nur die Gewissheit eines im eigenen Bewusstsein vorgestellten Ich sein. Wie es sich mit der Gewissheit eines as sich, d. h. unabhängig vom eigenen Bewusstsein bestehenden fremden lch verhalten mag, bleibt noch offen.“(Celms 1928, 388) 24

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If the transcendental ego is not reified, Celms argues that “it cannot possibly act on other pure streams of experience, nor can it possibly be influenced by others. An interaction between the individual subjects would only be possible if they suppose a substantial being, which would, however, abandon the absolute character of pure consciousness.” (Celms 1928, 398–99)25 Celms goes on to write that taken in the absolute sense: consciousness is a ‘windowless and doorless’ monad. All action and interaction, all causality and so on, is then only possible on the part of intentional objects of consciousness, and therein only with one another as a relationship between intentionally constituted moments. In other words, it is clear that, for Husserl, consciousness ‘must be regarded as a self-­ contained complex of being, a complex of absolute being into which nothing can penetrate and out of which nothing can escape (Ideas, §49, S.93). (Celms 1928, 399)

Husserl makes two comments here. First, he writes that while at the beginning of phenomenological investigation it seems that my consciousness and Ego are solipsistic, it turns out that “‘windowlessness’ means only that something lying outside of transcendental intersubjectivity is nonsense.”26 Second, regarding the passage cited from Ideas §49, Husserl writes that consciousness must be considered in two senses: first egologically, and then intersubjectively.27 While these statements anticipate and are elaborated in the Cartesian Meditations from §41 onward, we will turn our attention instead to the lectures on The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (Husserl 2006, hereafter abbreviated as GPP) and Husserl’s discussion of empathy and intersubjectivity therein, to contextualize both Celms’ remarks and Husserl’s response. In GPP §38, Husserl describes empathy as “a special form of empirical experience. In empathy, the empathizing I experiences the inner life [Seelenleben] or, to be more precise, the consciousness of the other I. He experiences the other I, but no one will say he lives it and perceives it in inner perception […] just like his own consciousness” (Husserl 2006, 82–83). Empathy is therefore an empty intention, not an intuiting of the inner life of another subject. Neither the other Ego in-itself nor the contents of its consciousness are directly experienced by the empathizing I. In the immediately ensuing section, Husserl goes on to state that we can perform the phenomenological reduction in a twofold manner with respect to empathy. First, we can investigate empathy in-itself as a mode of consciousness, like perception, remembering, etc. Second, given that “empathy is experience about an empathized consciousness,” we can investigate this empathized other consciousness as a phenomenological datum – in terms of the noesis and noema of an intentional act – and the conditions on the possibility of this experience. Husserl warns, however, that we  On these points, Celms seems to be aware of Husserl’s discussion of ‘causation’ at Ideas I §52. Here Husserl denies that presentifications are “caused” by things-in-themselves, and insists that causation is a concept that only applies to the objects of experience. 26  „zuerst scheint das mein solipsistisches Bewusstsein und sol Ego zu sein – dann aber zeigt sich, dass die,Fensterlosigkeit‘nur der Intersubjektivität zu kommt und die Bedeutung hat, dass ein ausserhalb der transz Int ein Unsinn ist?“(Husserl, BP 31, 399) 27  „Derselbe Sinn für das Ego und in einem anderen Sinn für die Int “(Husserl, BP 31, 399). 25

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should not confuse my empathic experience with the other stream of consciousness posited in empathy. The concrete contents of that other stream of consciousness cannot, in principle, belong to mine (Husserl 2006, 84–85). Nor is the other Ego some inherent part of my own consciousness. What Husserl then needs to explain how one’s own consciousness and the other consciousness posited in empathy both constitute and share the same Objective spatio-temporal world. It seems that this is the question which the transcendental theory of empathy, rather than a descriptive analysis of “empirical empathy,” must strive to answer. When I perform the phenomenological reduction with respect to the existence of the thing-world [Dingwelt], and therefore also other lived-bodies, all being is reduced on the one hand to: one (to “my”) phenomenological I […]  and, on the other hand, to other I’s, posited in empathy, and posited as looking, remembering, and perhaps empathizing I’s  […].  [T]he empathized I’s are posited as belonging to their lived bodies, as center-points of the thingly surroundings, which expand towards the universe at large (Allnatur). This universe is the very same that exists for me, too, which I too perceive and also experientially posit. (Husserl 2006, 86)

Every ‘thing’ which I consider from the phenomenologically reduced standpoint “is also an index for the empathized I, an index of the experiential contexts and possibilities of experience belonging to it, and which are empathized in it by me – and so it is for every I” (Husserl 2006, 86).28 Of course, as Husserl states in Ideas I, there is no countersense in the thought that my own transcendental I might be the only one. Husserl’s remarks about empathy from GPP seem to corroborate at least part of Celms’ argument. The empathizing subject does not experience the concrete inner life of the other subject. Also, in empirical empathy the other I is posited based on my experience of another lived-body, just as, in ordinary perception, I posit the object of perception. But when I consider these objects of intentional consciousness from the phenomenologically reduced standpoint, the existence of these objects which I posit as transcendencies existing in-themselves is put in brackets. All of this is, in fact, a discussion of other subjects from the solipsistic standpoint characteristic of the initial phase of phenomenological enquiry. However, Celms is wrong if he believes that other transcendental I’s are thereby reduced to nothing more than some (inherent) part of my own ego. This is not what Husserl claims, nor does it follow from what he has written. (Husserl 1960, 26) His point has been to uncover the being-sense of other subjects as they are constituted in empathy. What we discover is that they are constituted as subjects related to a lived-body as I am to my own, themselves capable of performing the ­phenomenological reduction, and with whom we share an intersubjective, Objective world which we mutually constitute. As Husserl remarks in the margin of Celms’  In an appendix to GPP §39, Husserl writes: “Each particular stream of consciousness is something completely separate, a monad, and it would remain without windows of communication if there were no intersubjective phenomena, etc. This is also the condition for the possibility of a world of things that is one and the same for many I’s.” (Husserl 2006, 158) Celms read this excerpt (Celms 1928, 404), and takes issue with precisely the claim Husserl alludes to in his marginal note. 28

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book, insofar as the Objective world is itself constituted in this way, something lying outside of transcendental intersubjectivity, not just transcendental subjectivity, is nonsense. There is no world “outside” of the world constituted in transcendental intersubjectivity. Even if we grant all of this to Husserl, the spectre of solipsism, in some form, still seems to loom over his phenomenological idealism. Let us suppose that there are other subjects which exist absolutely, in- and for-themselves, just as my own ego does. Celms continues by stating that, if we assume, as Husserl does, that it is impossible for other subjects to be given in immediate intuition, and only come to be given in empathic experience grounded in the perception of other living-things, and if we also assume that this perception depends on hyletic data which is present to consciousness without being caused by the influence of another ego on my own, then we can only get beyond solipsism by positing a Leibnizian pre-established harmony. According to Celms, it is obvious that, “only with the help of the metaphysical presupposition of a pre-established harmony can we get beyond the solus ipse, namely a harmony as a predetermined agreement [Übereinstimmung] between the ideas of other subjects formed in one’s own absolutely closed ego through empathetic experience, with these subjects themselves, which exist “in-themselves.” (Celms 1928, 399) Again, we can find support for such an argument in the manuscripts which Celms would have read in Freiburg. In the third London Lecture, Husserl writes that the only conceivable absolutely and independently existing thing is the ego, that is, the concrete transcendental subject, which we might refer to by the Leibnizian name “monad”. It is the subjectivity for which everything else is an Object. No other thing can possibly exist in and for itself. (Husserl 2002, 334–35) Husserl also claims that pure phenomenology is a monadology, and that there is an essential “harmony” among monads, whereby each monad necessarily constitutes the same world, with and for each other. But, at the same time, he is clear that he rejects the metaphysical monads in the Leibnizian sense. (Husserl 2002, 304) Husserlian monads are not substances, they are transcendental egos constrained by certain categorial forms such that they each constitute and share the same Objective world. Their apparent harmony is explained by these forms. In a sense, the world, and all possible perspectives on it, exist in each pure monad potentially or ideally, while each concrete ego is absolutely unique. In Celms’ defense, this is an aspect of Husserl’s theory that he had not yet fully explained.29  If we consider the Cartesian Meditations to be Husserl’s final word on this issue, it is clear from his later publications that Celms was not satisfied by this response. Nor was Nikolai Lossky, who had likely read Celms’ book. With the theory of intersubjectivity from the Fifth Meditation in mind, Lossky presents an argument very similar to that of Celms: “The failure of Husserl’s epistemological idealism is […] clearly revealed in his theory of other egos. He places great importance on the notion of the alter ego and the related concept of “an intersubjective world, actually there for everyone, accessible with respect to its Objects for everyone.” (CM, ) “Without this idea,” says Husserl, one cannot have the experience of “the Objective world.” (CM, ) […] [Husserl] began with the requirement that philosophy be built on the basis of evidence, which consists in the fact that an object [предмет] is present to conscious29

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While Husserl stops short of denying the existence of other transcendental egos, his theory of intersubjectivity only addresses the sense of other subjects as they are given in empathic experience, not their existence in themselves. In Celms’ mind, Husserl’s position seems to not only deny that we can know the particular concrete contents of the mental lives of others, but that we can even know with certainty that genuine other subjects exist. Empathic experience forces us only to conditionally posit the existence of other psycho-physical subjects based on the perception of lived-bodies. Supposing that there are other subjects that exist in- and for-­themselves, independent of my own ego, lest they be “merely imagined subjects in one’s own consciousness,” Celms repeats that Husserl must assume pre-established harmony. (Celms 1928, 400) However, the results of “pure” phenomenology are meant to apply universally; not only to my own phenomenologically reduced ego, but to any ego whatsoever. If these supposed other egos were to perform the reduction, they would see that they constitute the same world as I do in the same manner, and they too would posit my existence based on the experience of my lived-body. Even with this harmony, at best what we get then from Husserl’s theory of intersubjectivity is, according to Celms, nothing more than a pluralistic solipsism. For Celms, this does not represent a “true” theory of intersubjectivity at all. Celms refers to Ideas §48 where Husserl writes that certain conditions on the possibility of cognition for the pure ego guarantee that every concrete ego  – an “open plurality [offene Vielheit]” of monads (Celms 1928, 402)30 – constitutes the ness originarily [подлиннике] and attests to itself; but he ends his Cartesian Meditations with the assertion that without the idea of intersubjectivity it is impossible to have the experience of the “Objective world”. At the same time, Husserl immediately announces that an alien monad and its mental life cannot be given to me directly in experience: if it were given originarily, then “it would be merely a moment of my own existence, and ultimately it itself and I myself would be the same.” (CM, ) If this is the case, how is it possible for a presentation of the other I to appear and do we know anything about it with certainty? Without this, the idea of intersubjectivity vanishes into thin air. We have already discussed above what Husserl thinks about this: another monad is “constituted in my monad,” (CM, ) by way of an apprehension by analogy, transcendental intersubjectivity “is constituted purely within me, the meditating ego, purely by virtue of sources belonging to my intentionality.” (CM, ) And this merely imaginary intersubjectivity, constructed by means of empathy, is a condition for the idea of Objectivity [объективности]!” (Lossky 1939, 54–55, translated from the Russian with the help of Uldis Vēgners). 30  Celms’ reference to an “open plurality” of monads is likely a reference to Ideas §151, which reads: “The next higher level is then the intersubjectively identical physical thing – a constitutive unity of a higher order. Its constitution is related to an open plurality [offene Mehrheit] in relation to subjects ‘understanding one another.’ The intersubjective world is the correlate of intersubjective experience, i.e., mediated by ‘empathy.’ We are, as a consequence, referred to the multiple unities of things pertaining to the senses which are already individually constituted by the many subjects; in further course we are referred to the corresponding perceptual multiplicities thus belonging to different Ego-subjects and streams of consciousness; above all, however, we are referred to the novel factor of empathy and to the question of how it plays a constitutive role in ‘Objective’ experience and bestows unity on those separated multiplicities” (Husserl 1982, 363). In his ‘Copy D’ from the fall of 1929, Husserl uses the phrase offenen Vielheit in an addition to Ideas I §48, suggesting that, perhaps, he was reading or had read Celms’ book at the time. Husserl also uses this phrase in the outline of his London Lectures (Husserl 2002, 373) and in an appendix

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same world, although each subject has a unique perspective on the world. Husserl writes: what is cognizable by one Ego must, of essential necessity, be cognizable by any Ego. Even though it is not in fact the case that each stands, or can stand, in a relationship of ‘empathy,’ of mutual understanding with every other […] nevertheless there exist, eidetically regarded, essential possiblities of effecting a mutual understanding and therefore possibilities also that the worlds of experience separated in fact become joined by concatenation of actual experience to make up the one intersubjective world, the correlate of the unitary world of mental lives […]. When that is taken into account the formal-logical possibility of realities outside the world, the one spatiotemporal world [of experience...] proves to be a countersense. If there are any worlds, any real physical things whatever, then the experienced motivations constituting them must be able to extend into my experience and into that of each Ego. (Husserl 1982, 108–9)31

Husserl claims here that while the actual experiences of each individual monad are essentially separated, they somehow join to create the Objective world. But Celms is suspicious of how this process is supposed to occur in fact. Not only has Husserl argued that no two subjects can share the same individual moments of mental-­ content, but if the transcendental egos are not reified, they cannot possibly communicate at all. If this is true, then the Husserlian concept of the transcendental ego not only deserves to be called a monad, but his conception of monads is, according to Celms, even stronger than that of Leibniz (Celms 1928, 403–4).32 Finally, Celms refers to a note Husserl added to GPP §39. Husserl writes that: “Any possible empathy is the ‘mirroring’ of each monad in the other, and the possibility of such mirroring depends on the possibility of a concordant constitution of a spatial-temporal nature, as an index for the respective constitutive lived experiences which extends into all I’s.” (Husserl 2006, 156)33 Celms takes this as an open acknowledgment of the fact that the possibility of the constitution of a single spatio-­ temporal world in each absolutely closed ego depends on pre-established harmony. Intersubjectivity is simply an illusion: “Only with the help of the metaphysical assumption of pre-established harmony is Husserl able to achieve his phenomenological monadology. This is, strictly speaking, no overcoming of solipsism, but only an extension of ‘monistic solipsism’ to ‘pluralistic solipsism’.” (Celms 1928, 404) For Celms, Husserl has argued for the possibility of an open plurality of completely isolated and independent monads. For Husserl, the “real” world is much broader than the world as it directly perceived or constituted by each individual consciousness. However, he fails to show that the supposed “community” of monads is a community in the “truest sense.” Husserl’s monads to not depend on each other for their existence, nor do they depend on each other in order to constitute the world. to GPP (Husserl 1973, 234). So, while Celms would have seen this phrase used by Husserl in a number of places, its inclusion at §48  in ‘Copy D’ is conspicuous, or at least an interesting coincidence. 31  Cf. (Celms 1928, 403) 32  Husserl takes note of this passage in BP 31. 33  Cf. (Celms 1928, 404)

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“Each monad is thus ‘self-sufficient’ in every respect,” writes Celms. “Instead of an interdependence of its members, without which a community can hardly be thought,” and instead of a single solus ipse, Husserl’s phenomenology gives us a plurality of them (Celms 1928, 404–5). To recapitulate, Celms’ first criticism centres on his claim that Husserl equivocates on two senses of the ‘phenomenological reduction.’ Insofar as Husserl’s claims are merely epistemological they can be understood in the sense of ‘phenomenological reflection’, a method which is metaphysically neutral. However, phenomenological reflection cannot produce the kind of ‘rigorous philosophical science’ that Husserl thinks it can. The second sense of ‘phenomenological reduction’ (reduction of being) is not metaphysically neutral, according to for Celms. It rests on certain metaphysical assumptions, particularly those of a Leibnizian idealism, that are extraneous to mere phenomenological reflection. Celms’ second argument is that in order for Husserl’s theory of intersubjectivity to work, he must presume metaphysical idealism. The method of pure phenomenology seems to account for the experience of someone else, but not the existence of someone else. Others are reduced to nothing beyond moments in one’s own consciousness. Insofar as the existence of genuine others cannot be established according to the methodology of pure phenomenology alone, and given their central role in Husserl’s account of the external world, Husserl simply posits others and accepts the doctrine of pre-­established harmony. This move, however, does not allow Husserl to avoid some form of epistemological solipsism. At best, he can argue for a kind of pluralistic solipsism among monads.

5  In Defense of Husserl Rather than go line-by-line through Husserl’s arguments from the Fifth Meditation and show how they correspond and respond to Celms, I will sketch a brief defense of Husserl. The main misunderstanding on the part of Celms is his conviction that Husserl’s theory of experiencing someone else is in any way meant to prove the existence in-themselves of other subjects, or that Husserl’s project requires such a proof. This is the sort of claim which Husserl’s Fifth Meditation is meant to correct. In the Fifth Meditation Husserl is concerned first with explaining the sense of someone else, and then with constructing some sort of transcendental argument, based on empathy, for the possibility of Objective knowledge. This becomes a critical juncture in Husserl’s philosophy, as such an integration of intersubjectivity is a major advancement upon the Kantian project of transcendental idealism. But these are transcendental problems, not metaphysical ones. Questions concerning the actual existence of other subjects in-themselves is beyond the scope of a transcendental theory of empathy or a transcendental theory of intersubjectivity. In his first criticism of transcendental phenomenology, Celms touts the opinion that any “true” philosophy needs to take a stand with respect to the metaphysical reality or ideality of transcendent things. Celms’ argument against Husserl is based

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precisely on this dichotomy. If we are forced to choose between these two possibilities, and if we choose idealism, then Husserl’s pure phenomenology leads to solipsism – either monistic solipsism or pluralistic solipsism. Assuming Celms is correct, what we need to show is that Husserl is not an idealist, or more precisely, that transcendental idealism does not entail a form of metaphysical idealism. Celms also assumes the natural – and metaphysically loaded – sense of “genuine” or “true” other subjects, and of a “true” theory of intersubjectivity in advance. Insofar as he remains bound to the natural attitude here, it is no wonder that he is never satisfied with Husserl’s responses. Celms’ insistence that other subjects must be things-in-­ themselves in the usual sense is question begging. Celms is assuming the proposition that other subjects are things-in-themselves exist, and demanding that Husserl demonstrate their existence, when this is the very proposition which Husserl is calling into question. It may well be that Husserl’s transcendental idealism leads to a type of epistemological solipsism, and that his claim that “‘windowlessness’ means only that something lying outside of transcendental intersubjectivity is nonsense,” does not disarm the threat of such a solipsism but only qualifies it. However, it is not clear why this position is inherently problematic or philosophically unpalatable. According to Celms, it is one thing to have a plurality of subjects, but it is quite another to have intersubjectivity. This pre-established harmony among monads does not establish the possibility of any real “community” of monads. Husserl’s monads, even if they constitute the same world, do not “share” this world in any sense that we would want. For Celms, this is no theory of intersubjectivity in the “true sense”. Solipsism is a problem of isolation, and Husserl has not solved this. But this presupposes that we are not isolated, and that Husserl needs to account for this non-isolation. Celms has not established that Husserl’s account has failed to accommodate some indubitable phenomena, but only that it does not get the results we might want/expect. In particular, it does not account for the existence of other subjects as “genuine transcendencies.” While we may indirectly posit other subjects as possible given our empathetic experiences of other lived-bodies, we still do not know others exist, and even if they do there is still no way to engage them directly. The assumption here is that this is either inherently problematic, or that it is problematic in that it leads to skepticism. But Husserl’s theory is not a form of skepticism. In responding to the problem of solipsism, Husserl is forced to tease out an important subtlety in his theory. While pure phenomenology might start from a solipsistic standpoint, if Husserl’s theory of transcendental intersubjectivity is tenable, then it can still account for Objectivity and explain the sense of other subjects. Perhaps we might still call this a solipsistic theory, but it is not solipsism in any familiar sense of the word. Husserl is able to maintain that the objection of metaphysical solipsism against him has no intelligible meaning. He has an account of an Objective and intersubjective world, and of other subjects, even if they might not mesh nicely with traditional metaphysics. But the sort of epistemological or transcendental solipsism that we might still want to level against Husserl is a different problem, or perhaps no real problem at all from Husserl’s standpoint.

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6  C  onclusion: The “Special Sense” of Transcendental Idealism In his commentary on Ideas I, Paul Ricoeur writes: “The phenomenology which is elaborated in the Ideas is incontestably an idealism and even a transcendental idealism […]. But it is ultimately impossible on the basis of the Ideas alone to characterize definitively this idealism which is only a project, a promise or claim, depending on the point of view” (Ricoeur 1996, 47). Husserl is clear that he considers the root cause of many of the criticisms of his position after 1913 to be a misunderstanding of the sense of this transcendental idealism. He believes that critics have failed to appreciate the two main features of his philosophy: the transcendental reduction and the theory of constitution. In the Fourth Meditation, Husserl writes: phenomenology is eo ipso ‘transcendental idealism,’ though in a fundamentally and essentially new sense. [...] [It is not] a Kantian idealism, which believes it can keep open, at least as a limiting concept, the possibility of a world of things-in-themselves. On the contrary, we have here a transcendental idealism that is nothing more than a consequentially executed […] explication of my ego as subject of every possible cognition, and indeed with respect to every sense of what exists, wherewith the latter might be able to have a sense for me, the ego. This idealism is not a product of sportive argumentations, a prize to be won in the dialectical contest with ‘realisms.’ It is sense-explication achieved by actual work, an explication carried out as regards every type of existent even conceivable by me, the ego [... along with the] systematic uncovering of the constituting intentionality itself. The proof of this idealism is therefore phenomenology itself. Only someone who misunderstands either the deepest sense of intentional method, or that of transcendental reduction, or perhaps both, can attempt to separate phenomenology from transcendental idealism. (Husserl 1960, 86)

In Erste Philosophie we find a similar assertion: Taken fundamentally, there lies indicated already in advance in the phenomenological reduction, correctly understood, the route into transcendental idealism, as the whole of phenomenology is nothing other than the first, strictly scientific form of this idealism. (Husserl 1959, 181)

Insofar as pure phenomenology is transcendental philosophy, its concern is primarily an epistemological one. Through the rigorous eidetic-analysis of consciousness from the transcendentally reduced standpoint, it seeks to explain the conditions of all possible cognition. What we discover, rather than prove by way of argumentation alone, is precisely the controversial claim made in Ideas I §49 and which he repeats again in Formal and Transcendental Logic §94: that my ego exists absolutely, and that everything else receives its entire being-sense from me, and beyond that is nothing. Husserl’s critique of cognition begins from this fundamental insight. According to the standard interpretation of Husserl’s transcendental idealism, “the being of the real world, given to us in an experiential way is dependent on the being and processes of the pure constituting consciousness without which it would not exist at all and, secondly, that it is generally awkward even to ask about the existence of the world ‘in itself’ as it transcends the real sense of transcendental constitution whose results create the basis for every inquiry and determine the

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sense of our questions.” (Ingarden 1975, 27) From this standpoint, it is not only awkward to ask about what the world might be like in-itself, it is complete nonsense to do so. As I have argued, in Husserl’s framework, the physical objects we encounter in the external world through sense perception do not belong to a mindindependent sphere of “autonomous being in-itself; they are only something that exists […] ‘for’ the conscious subject performing the perceptive acts. They are only intentional units of sense and beyond that ‘ein Nichts’ (nothing)” (Ingarden 1975, 32). In other words, one cannot conceive of the existence of an object without reference to some conscious subject for whom it exists. Even those objects that we constitute as essentially transcendent receive their entire being-sense from intentional consciousness. While the standard interpretation of Husserl’s transcendental idealism is not wrong, it needs to be elaborated in more detail. Some work has been done in developing our understanding of Husserl’s transcendental idealism by way of comparing and contrasting his writings to those of Kant and various Neo-Kantians. However, this work also needs to be supplemented by research into Husserl’s exchanges with other peers and students, such as Theodor Celms. The lack of such discussions has had a negative effect on contemporary literature regarding Husserl’s theories of empathy and intersubjectivity.34 All too often these discussions lapse into either disputes about psychological theories of empathy, or attempts to prove the existence of other subjects in-themselves. As I have argued above, those disputes are not ones in which Husserl is engaging. Husserl himself recognized the importance of understanding his special sense of transcendental idealism for interpreting his work in these areas, i.e., in order to understand his transcendental theory of empathy (the conditions of the possibility of experiencing someone else), and transcendental intersubjectivity (as a condition for the possibility of Objectivity). I hope that amidst the largely historical and exegetical discussions above, these points have been brought to the forefront. Let us now consider a definition of transcendental idealism that Husserl himself offers in a text from 1921 which bears the title Argument für den transzendentalen Idealismus. Transcendental idealism means: a world [Natur] is not thinkable without co-existing subjects of possible experience of it; possible experiential subjects are not sufficient. If we leave it at merely possible subjects of possible world-experiences [Naturerfahrungen], then infinitely many incompatible worlds are equally possible. (Husserl 2003, 156)

In light of what I have argued above, I take the meaning of this passage to run as follows: the existence of other subjects is a condition of the possibility of experiencing an Objective world. This is not an explanation of what it means to be an object of consciousness, but to be the sort of object that we label from the standpoint of the natural attitude as “real.” One cannot conceive of an object actually existing in 34  Even if Husserl’s Fifth Meditation was not written as a direct response to Celms, we would certainly do well to read it in light of Celms’ criticism. All too often, the Fifth Meditation is regarded by commentators as either an outright failure or entirely opaque. When juxtaposed with Celms’ criticism neither of these two interpretations are fair.

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space and time without simultaneously conceiving it as being a possible object of experience for other subjects. This is just what it means for an object of consciousness to be an Object. The Objective world here must not be confused with a mind-­ independent external world that exists in-itself. Husserl is arguing that the world is the constitutional achievement of subjects in community, not that it exists in-itself. Now, does this mean that Husserl needs to demonstrate the existence of other transcendental subjects that exist in-themselves? I do not think so. It simply means that I cannot cognize a world without cognizing it as the same possible world of experience for other subjects like myself. As Arthur David Smith writes, we might interpret Husserl as claiming here that an intersubjective community of monads “must exist given that my transcendental ego enjoys harmonious empathetic experience.” (Smith 2003, 234) For Husserl, the sense of such a community of monads, “is implicit in my experiencing a world with an objective sense, and that the actual existence of such a community is conditionally apodictic – being inconsistent with an ultimately harmonious experience.” (Smith 2003, 234). While there are an infinite number of possible perspectives on the world, Husserl argues that there is only one Objective world. There cannot be an infinite number of possible worlds, since these worlds would be incompossible with one another. Husserl writes: A world is only conceivable as a unity of possible harmonious experiences of an experiencing subject; and we see, evidently, that one and the same subject – when we assume that it experiences a world and consequently in such a way that the presumptive experiential positing is harmoniously confirmed etc. – cannot also have a second world given in this way. There, two different worlds, which are incompatible possibilities in a single subject, could only be compatible if we presuppose two subjects as subjects possible and confirming experience”. (Husserl 2003, 160)

We can only think of a world if we think of it as a harmonious unity of experience, and this means harmonious experience across all subjects which constitute that world (Husserl 2003, 160). This coincides with what we find in §60 of the Fifth Meditation. There Husserl explains that different monadic subjects each have their own unique “surrounding worlds” of experience over which they have sole ownership, but these are “aspects of a single Objective world, which is common to them” (Husserl 1960, 140). Husserl exclaims that the results of this are wonderful: “the possibility of a subject in coexistence with me (as I am absolute given to myself) prescribes laws to my essential content and prescribes a common world, first in the very general and indeterminate form of a ‘common’ sphere of transcendent objects transcendent to each of us and still identical and identifiable” (Husserl 2003, 166). If Husserl is correct, then even if we agree with Celms that his position is solipsistic in some sense, it is unclear that phenomenological idealism is solipsism in any problematic sense.

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 ppendix: Theodor Celms’ Course Enrollment Lists A from Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, SS1922–SS192335 Sommer-Semester 1922 Geschichte der neueren Philosophie – Edmund Husserl Phänomenologische Übungen – Edmund Husserl Geschichte der Philosophie von Hegel bis Bergson – Georg Mehlis Einführung in die Philosophie – Georg Mehlis Erkenntnistheorie – Joseph Geyser Metaphysik – Joseph Geyser Die Religionsphilosophie des deutschen Idealismus – Richard Kroner Psychologische Arbeiten – Jonas Cohn Winter-Semester 1922/23 Phänomenologische Übungen – Edmund Husserl Einleitung in die Philosophie – Edmund Husserl Geschichtliche Grundtypen der Philosophie – Joseph Geyser Übungen über Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft – Joseph Geyser Psychologische Übungen – Jonas Cohn Praktische Nationalökonomie auf wirtschaftsgeschichtliche Grundlage – Gerhart von Schulze-Gaevernitz Besprechen zur Weltwirtschaft und Aussenpolitik  – Gerhart von Schulze-Gaevernitz Sommer-Semester 1923 Logik und Erkenntnistheorie – Joseph Geyser Die Englische Empiristen – Joseph Geyser Übungen über die phänomenologische Religions-Philosophie der Gegenwart – Joseph Geyser Psychologische Arbeiten – Jonas Cohn Weltwirtschaft und Aussenpolitik – Gerhart von Schulze-Gaevernitz Das ökonomische System des Marxismus – Eduard Heimann

References Beck, Maximilian. 1930. Der phänomenologische Idealismus, die phänomenologische Methode und die Hermeneutik: im Anschluss an Theodor Celms “Der phänomenologische Idealismus Husserls”. Philosophische Hefte 2 (2): 97–101. Bell, David. 1990. Husserl. The arguments of the philosophers. New York: Routledge.

 This list is based on the Abgangszeuignis for “Herrn Theodor Zelms” held at the Universitätsarchiv Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg (UAF B0044 0146). 35

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Bernet, Rudolf. 2015. Transcendental Phenomenology? In Phenomenology in a New Key: Between Analysis and History, Contributions to Phenomenology 72, ed. Jeffrey Bloechl and Nicolas de Warren, 115–133. Dordrecht: Springer. Buceniece, Ella. 1996. The Early Edmund Husserl and the Late Teodors Celms or Vice Versa: The Themes of the Environs of Life and of Historicity in the Philosophy of Celms. Phenomenological Inquiry 20: 40–54. ———. 2002. Teodors Celms, Kurt Stavenhagen and Phenomenology in Latvia. In Phenomenology World-Wide: Foundations, Expanding Dynamisms, Life-Engagements, ed. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, 312–315. Dordrecht: Springer. Carr, David. 1987. Interpreting Husserl: Critical and Comparative Studies. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff. Celms, Theodor. 1923. Kants allgemeinlogische Auffassung vom Wesen, Ursprung und der Aufgabe des Begriffes. Inaugural Dissertation, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. ———. 1928. Der phänomenologische Idealismus Husserls. Riga: Acta Universitatis Latviensis. ———. 1931. El idealismo fenomenológico de Husserl. Madrid: Revista de Occidente. Trans. José Gaos. ———. 1933. Lebensumgebung und Lebensprojektion. In Neue Münchener Philosophische Abhandlungen: Alexander Pfänder zu seinem sechzigsten Geburtstag gewindet von Freunden und Schülern, ed. Ernst Heller and Friedrich Löw, 69–85. Leipzig: Barth. ———. 1939. Patiesiba un škitums: Filozofisku, psihologisku un sociologisku rakstu krajums. Riga: Valters un Rapa. ———. 1993. Der phänomenologische Idealismus Husserls und andere Schriften 1928–1943. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Ed. Juris Rozenvalds. Embree, Lester, ed. 1997. Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. Dordrecht: Springer. Folwart, Helmut. 1936. Kant, Husserl, Heidegger: Kritizismus, Phänomenologie, Existenzialontologie. Breslau: Eschenhagen. Geiger, Moritz. 1933. Alexander Pfänders methodische Stellung. In Neue Münchener Philosophische Abhandlungen: Alexander Pfänder zu seinem sechzigsten Geburtstag gewindet von Freunden und Schülern, ed. Ernst Heller and Friedrich Löw, 1–16. Leipzig: Barth. Heidegger, Martin. 2009. Ontology  – The hermeneutics of facticity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Trans. John van Buren. Husserl, Edmund. 1900. Logische Untersuchungen. Vol. 2 vols. Halle: Niemeyer. ———. 1901. Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Theil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis. Halle: Niemeyer. ———. 1909. Logitscheskiya iszlydovaniya. St. Petersburg: Knigoisdatelyno. Trans. E.  A. Berstein, ed. Semyon L. Frank. ———. 1911. Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft. Logos 1: 289–341. ———. 1930. Nachwort zu meinen “Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie”. Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung 11: 549–570. ———. 1931. Ideas: General introduction to pure phenomenology. New York: Macmillan. Trans. William Ralph Boyce Gibson. ———. 1959. Husserliana VIII. Erste Philosophie (1923/4). Zweiter Teil: Theorie der phänomenologischen Reduktion. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Ed. Rudolf Boehm. ———. 1960. Cartesian meditations: An introduction to phenomenology. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Trans. Dorion Cairns. ———. 1962. Husserliana IX.  Phänomenologische Psychologie: Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1925. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Ed. Walter Biemel. ———. 1969. Formal and Transcendental Logic. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Trans. Dorion Cairns. ———. 1970. The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Trans. David Carr. ———. 1973. Husserliana XIII.  Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität: Texte aus dem Nachlass. Erster Teil, 1905–1920. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Ed. Iso Kern.

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———. 1974. Kant and the Idea of Transcendental Philosophy. The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 5 (3): 5–56. ———. 1982. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book. General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Trans. Fred Kersten. ———. 1989. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitutin. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer. ———. 1994. Husserliana Dokumente III.4. Die Freiburger Schüler. Dordrecht: Kluwer.. Ed. Elisabeth Schuhmann and Karl Schuhmann. ———. 2002. Husserliana XXXV. Einleitung in die Philosophie. Vorlesungen 1922/23. Dordrecht: Springer. Ed. Berndt Goossens. ———. 2003. Husserliana XXXVI: Transzendentaler Idealismus. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1908– 1921). Dordrecht: Springer. Ed. Robin Rollinger and Rochus Sowa. ———. 2006. The Basic Problems of Phenomenology: From the Lectures, Winter Semester, 1910– 1911. Dordrecht: Springer. Ed. Ingo Farin and James Hart. Ingarden, Roman. 1975. On the Motives which led Husserl to Transcendental Idealism. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Trans. Arnór Hannibalsson. Kant, Immanuel. 1998. Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trans. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. Kern, Iso. 1964. Husserl und Kant: Eine Untersuchung über Husserls Verhältnis zu Kant und zum Neukantianismus. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Kreis, Friedrich. 1930. Phänomenologie und Kritizismus. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Kūle, Maija. 1996. The Understanding of Subject and Intersubjectivity in Theodors Celms’ Philosophical Works. Phenomenological Inquiry 20: 16–39. ———. 1998. Theodor Celms: Forerunner of the Phenomenology of Life. Analecta Husserliana 54: 295–302. Kūle, Maija, Līva Muižniece, and Uldis Vēgners. 2009. Teodors Celms: fenomenologiskie meklējumi. Riga: Filozofijas un socioloģijas institūts. Lossky, N.O. 1939. Husserl’s Transcendental-Phenomenological Idealism. The Way 60: 37–56. Luft, Sebastian. 1997. [Review] Theodor Celms, Der phänomenologische Idealismus Husserls und andere Schriften 1928–1943. Journal Phänomenologie 7: 61–63. Mensch, James. 1988. Intersubjectivity and Transcendental Idealism. Albany: SUNY Press. Misch, Georg. 1930. Lebensphilosophie und Phänomenologie (Schluss): Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Heidegger und Husserl. Philosophische Hefte 3/4: 181–330. Mohanty, J.N. 2011. Edmund Husserl’s Freiburg Years: 1916-1938. New Haven: Yale University Press. Moran, Dermot. 2005. Edmund Husserl: Founder of Phenomenology. Cambridge: Polity. Mulligan, Kevin. 2003. Searle, Derrida, and the Ends of Phenomenology. In John Searle, ed. Barry Smith, 261–286. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Muth, Franz. 1931. Edmund Husserl und Martin Heidegger in ihrer Phänomenologie und Weltanschauung. Temeswar: Schwäbische. Osborn, Andrew. 1934. Some Recent German Critics of Phenomenology. The Journal of Philosophy 31 (14): 377–382. Pfänder, Alexander. 1929. [Review] Theodor Celms, Der Phänomenologische Idealismus Husserls. Deutsche Literaturzeitung 43: 2048–2050. Ricoeur, Paul. 1996. A Key to Husserl’s Ideas I. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press. Trans. Bond Harris, Jacqueline Bouchard Spurlock, ed. Pol Vandevelde. Rozenvalds, Juris. 2000. Phenomenological Ideas in Latvia: Kurt Stavenhagen and Theodor Celms on Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology. In Phenomenology on Kant, German Idealism, Hermeneutics and Logic: Philosophical Essays in Honor of Thomas M. Seebohm, ed. O.K. Wiegand, 67–82. Dordrecht: Springer.

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Schuhmann, Karl. 1977. Husserliana Dokumente I.  Husserl-Chronik: Denk- und Lebensweg Edmund Husserls. Dordrecht: Springer. Seebohm, Thomas. 1962. Die Bedingungen der Möglichkeit der Transzendentalphilosophie: Edmund Husserls transzendental-phänomenologischer Ansatz dargestellt im Anschluss an seine Kant-Kritik. Bonn: Bouvier. Smith, Arthur David. 2003. Husserl and the Cartesian Meditations. New York: Routledge. Staiti, Andrea. 2016. Max Frischeisen-Köhler’s Vindication of the Material Component of Cognition. Philosophia Scientiæ 20 (1): 119–142. Stumpf, Carl. 1939. Erkenntnislehre, Band I. Leipzig: Barth. Vēgners, Uldis. 2012. Theodore Celms’s Critique of Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology. Quaestiones Disputatae 3 (1): 48–64. https://doi.org/10.5840/qd2012315. Zahavi, Dan. 2008. Internalism, Externalism, and Transcendental Idealism. Synthese 160: 355–374. Zocher, Rudolf. 1932. Husserls Phänomenologie und Schuppes Logik: Ein Beitrag zur Kritik des intuitionistischen Ontologismus in der Immanenzidee. Munich: Reinhardt.

Finding a Way Into Genetic Phenomenology Matt E. M. Bower

Abstract  The relation of genetic phenomenology and the project of phenomenological reduction is the primary concern of this paper. Despite Husserl’s occasional loose references to “the” reduction, performing the reduction actually refers to numerous interrelated techniques. I want here to delve into these intricacies with the aim of determining the place of genetic phenomenology within the whole of phenomenological technique. It will be necessary to both state in general terms what the aim of the reduction is and what the different “ways” to the reduction are before highlighting their inadequacy for dealing with genetic matters, which then brings us face to face with the underexplored possibility that there might be a peculiar novel from of reduction or transformation of the reduction that is needed to deal with genesis on properly transcendental ground. Following this line of thought, I attempt to elaborate a way into genetic phenomenology, which, I suggest, begins to appear most clearly in Husserl’s later reflections on “abnormal” forms of consciousness. Keywords  Phenomenology · Edmund Husserl · Phenomenological reduction · Genetic phenomenology · Normality and abnormality

1  The Reduction(s) From the very early introduction of the technique of reduction in Ideas I, Husserl maintains that there is not just one reduction. In that text he explains that phenomenological practice is to be carried out in numerous reductions which together form a “systematic doctrine of all the phenomenological reductions” (Hua III, 115/139). Despite the plurality of reductions, some undertaken and some merely projected, there are certain general characteristics of proper phenomenological technique that

M. E. M. Bower (*) Texas State University, San Marcos, TX, USA © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Apostolescu (ed.), The Subject(s) of Phenomenology, Contributions to Phenomenology 108, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29357-4_10

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give the practice of multiple reductions a kind organization and systematic coherence while at the same time legitimating phenomenology’s transcendental stance. The first trait is universality. Carrying out reductions has a universal aim. That means they must cover the whole of mental life, all possible forms of consciousness. This is achieved by making the radical and in principle distinction between the immanent and the transcendent, or what belongs to consciousness and what belongs to the world. This universal distinction is a hallmark of all forms of the reduction. It means not just that there are two kinds of things that exist, which would be an unremarkable assertion. It means that the two stand in a particular relation, an “a priori of correlation.” This correlation is a constitutive correlation: Consciousness constitutes, the world is constituted. Thus formulated, the validity of this distinction implies the validity of the transcendental stance, since consciousness has to perform constitutive accomplishments in order for the world to be given, to have any sense or meaning to it. Any blurring of the consciousness/world distinction – like the psychologistic theories of logic or the naturalistic accounts of the mind that so vexed Husserl – would amount to a compromise of the transcendental stance. The second trait of the reductions is that they disclose how this mental life functions constitutively, providing precise details about how in each instance something can be “given” to consciousness by virtue of certain lived-experiences. All manner of constitutive functions are uncovered in this way, e.g., those having to do with perception, interpersonal experience (“empathy”), and judgments about what exists, what is valuable, what is practical. These functions can form a system to the extent that one is sensitive to the dependence (or “founding”) relations that hold among them. Proceeding in this way is essential because it supports the pretention of universality, allowing one to proceed from the simplest kinds of experience that depend on no others (i.e., original time-consciousness) up to the most complex (perhaps the “higher-order personalities” of social institutions), (ideally) leaving nothing out along the way. The generic distinction between constituting consciousness and the world is made in vain if it is not accompanied by analyses that show how the world is actually constituted by consciousness. To the extent that one carries out each reduction under the guidance of these principles, one can justly speak in general of the various operations undertaken as the practice of “the” reduction. There is, however, another sense in which there are multiple reductions. As Husserl begins to show less than a decade after the publication of Ideas I, one can do “the” reduction in more than one way. That is, the principles just described are really somewhat loose parameters within which one can operate in various ways. The way Husserl initially proposed (famously (more or less) repeated in the Cartesian Meditations) comes to be called the “Cartesian way.” This way of doing the reduction is supposed to be of singular pedagogical value because it allows one to achieve the aim of universality in “one stroke” (Hua VI, 154). It rests on a Cartesian inference drawn from the observation that consciousness is essentially different from things in the world (whatever sort of entities these may be). Things in the world are always given in a piecemeal fashion. They are “adumbrated.” I see an object by observing it from various sides. I secure a mathematical truth through a

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demonstration that requires multiple steps. Because such entities are necessarily adumbrated, their givenness in consciousness is fallible. It is in principle true that further steps could reveal error in previous steps. The same is not true of consciousness. What is adumbrated can turn out to be otherwise, but not the adumbrations themselves. That I had such and such a perceptual experience or reasoned in such and such a way will remain true even if the experience turns out not to be veridical or the argument fallacious. This move is universal in that it guarantees in advance the nature of any lived-­ experience or form of consciousness. Consciousness is absolutely (wholly, without remainder) given. It is not given in adumbrations. No further investigation is necessary to clarify the essential nature of consciousness. Universality is achieved at once, but at the expense of gaining insight into the shapes constitution can take. The work left to do therefore consists of a series of further reductions that fill in the details by exploring determinate forms of consciousness, explaining their constitutive characteristics above all (i.e., the details of just how they adumbrate things that are experienced). Husserl never gives up on this way of doing the reduction. That is manifest from its very late repetition in the Cartesian Meditations (1929), a text, moreover, intended for mass consumption. Nevertheless, Husserl discusses other ways to carry out the reduction. These alternate ways of performing the reduction differ from the Cartesian reduction in being epistemologically (relatively) lax. As Robert Sokolowski (2010, 16–21) has argued, this is possible because Husserl distinguishes two kinds of evidence: adequate and apodictic (Hua I, §§5–6). The Cartesian reduction provides both forms, revealing consciousness without remainder (adequacy) and beyond the shadow of a doubt (apodicticity). The other reductions become possible when Husserl holds them to the standard of apodicticity without adequacy. They must compel one to the transcendental stance, but not with the pretention of total transparency and exhaustive clarity. Among these alternatives, Husserl proposes a psychological reduction in the Crisis.1 Where the Cartesian reduction begins by achieving universality in one simple step followed by an infinite series of steps that explicate the constitutive functions of consciousness, the psychological reduction runs in the opposite direction. It begins with a focus on the details of constitution, since intentionality is what is characteristic of the mind, examining the variety of shapes conscious experience can assume. This focus, consistently maintained, is transformed into a universal project to clarify all constitution. Psychology – in the sense idiosyncratic to Husserl of the methodical description of intentional experience from the vantage point of first person reflection2  – has consciousness for its subject matter. Thus, the exhaustive consideration of its sub See also Hua VIII, §§44–48. Cf. Bernet et al. (1993), 72–75 and Welton (2000), 158–160.  See, for instance, the Amsterdamer Vorträge (in Hua IX) on phenomenological psychology, Sect. 3 (“The method of pure psychology (intuition and reflection). Intentionality as the basic characteristic of the psychical.”). 1 2

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ject matter is tantamount to the reduction. The shift from a compartmentalized, specialist attitude to a thoroughgoing commitment to analyze consciousness as such in all its forms – without either “taking a position” on the conscious subject matter or attempting to naturalistically explain away its intentionality – achieves the profound shift from an empirical stance to a transcendental stance (Hua VI, 244–257, Hua XXXIV, 107–109). The psychologist who takes this turn, therefore, “has taken leave of the ground of the world” (Hua VI, 258), since consciousness is no longer just one entity in the world among others, but the universal guarantor for there being any sense to the world at all. Even if its laboriousness presents a pedagogical challenge, this approach is attractive because it is epistemologically more relaxed and puts concrete constitutive analysis at the forefront. The same is true of another kind of reduction also proposed by Husserl in the Crisis, namely, the “way into phenomenology […] from the pregiven life-world,”3 also called the ontological reduction.4 This reduction is formed under a Kantian influence, and begins with the structures of the world and attempts to reveal the constitutive operations of consciousness as the condition for the sense of such structures, similar to the way Kant, in the Prolegomena, points to certain domains of knowledge (i.e., mathematics, the natural sciences) and argues that the contribution of consciousness (its a priori “forms” and rules or concepts) are necessary preconditions for such knowledge. But, Husserl argues, the transcendental perspective must reveal the contribution of consciousness to the life-world (i.e., the world of everyday experience, with a “human face,” to borrow Hilary Putnam’s phrase) more generally and not merely the world as viewed by the natural sciences in an idealized way in order to be truly universal and, hence, transcendental (Hua VI, 118–121 and 123–135). This reduction, like the psychological reduction, is accomplished gradually. But where the psychological reduction begins with constitution and runs with that theme, the ontological reduction arrives at constitution indirectly by its reflection of the sense of the ontological structures of the world, and runs with this until (in principle) all ontological structures of the world have been constitutively accounted for. Husserl explains the point thus: Although these headings [i.e., ego – cogitatio – cogitata] are inseparable from one another, one must pursue them one at a time and in an order opposite to that suggested by the Cartesian approach. First comes the straightforwardly given life-world, taken initially as it is given perceptually… When the new direction of interest is established, and thus also its strict epochē, the life-world becomes a first intentional heading, an index or guideline for inquiring back into the multiplicities of manners of appearing and their intentional structures. (Hua VI, 171; cf. all of §50)

Such an approach thus lands, after its even more elaborate journey, at the same destination as the psychological reduction and the starting point of the Cartesian reduction.

 This is the title of section A of Part III of the Crisis (Hua VI).  Cf. Bernet et al. (1993), 69–72, Steinbock (1995a), 79–85, and Welton (2000), 160–164.

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2  I nability of the Different “Ways to the Reduction” to Illuminate Genetic Constitution All of these forms of reduction are ways into the transcendental attitude. Yet none of them have any obvious special light to shed on the issue of genetic constitution. In fact, two of them are especially ill suited for that. The Cartesian and the ontological reduction are carried out with a special kind of interest that especially precludes them from getting into the genetic problematic. To see why, it is first necessary to state a general truth about genetic phenomenology. Genetic phenomenology is interested in the genesis not of things in the world, but the genesis of consciousness, of various structures of experience. This forces a distinction within constitution. There is, on the one hand, the constitution that makes possible various forms of experience of the world. When one examines this kind of constitution, one is interested in consciousness insofar as it constitutes the world. On the other hand, genetic constitution is consciousness’ self-constitution, consisting of the transformations it undergoes in acquiring new forms for experiencing the world. These transformations also take place by means of certain conscious interactions with the world. Yet, to be concerned with such constitution is to be primarily occupied with developments within consciousness, which shed light on consciousness more than on the world, even if the world is a part of the equation. Genetic constitution is thus primarily an intra-consciousness affair. It is due to this fact that the “ways to the reduction” tend to obscure the problem of genetic constitution. The Cartesian reduction misses the realm of genetic constitution because of its epistemological pretensions. The motivation for this reduction is not just to lead to the transcendental attitude, but to highlight the epistemological superiority of consciousness over things in the world. Consciousness is known adequately, and things in the world are known inadequately or fallibly. Due to this epistemological bent, the Cartesian reduction has a one-sided view of constitution. Consciousness is defined exclusively by contrast to things in the world. If this path is taken, one will learn much about the correlation between consciousness and the world, but one will miss out on the constitutive relations within consciousness. In other words, one will miss out on the whole of genetic constitution. Indeed, the very idea that consciousness is itself constituted is anathema to this reduction, since it only understands constitution as givenness through adumbration. Saying consciousness is constituted would then be the same as saying it is like any other thing in the world. The genetic constitution of consciousness, as we will see, is not adumbration, but it is constitution all the same. The ontological reduction suffers from essentially the same one-sidedness. It begins from ontology, from the structures of the world, and discovers from there how consciousness necessarily gives the world its sense. The motivation for this reduction is to make sense of the constitution of the world. The work of this reduction is over when one has considered all ontological structures of the world and found the correlative constitutive functions of consciousness. All that matters to inaugurate this reduction is to transform the world into a phenomenon, to d­ emonstrate

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that consciousness is needed to constitute the world. That means it will not have anything to say about genesis, because its sole aim is to make a claim about consciousness’ relation to the world. Intra-consciousness matters are unnecessary details that do not connect with the driving motive of the ontological reduction. One might suppose that psychology would include an account of psychological development, so that the psychological reduction would make good on the deficiencies of the others and become the methodological stance needed for undertaking genetic analysis. And, of course, outside of the present context it is primarily within the field of actual psychology that development is of interest. The psychologist cannot avoid the empirical fact of that development: Children are born lacking the ability to exercise many cognitive feats that adults perform as a matter of course. Gradually, they come to acquire these abilities. Since each one of us began in the same way, the problem is a universal one. Indeed, before Husserl himself ever took development to be a phenomenological problem, he was familiar with it as an empirical issue for a “genetic psychology.”5 One will not be surprised, then, that in his to-do list for phenomenological or descriptive psychology, Husserl gestures at6 and explicitly includes the problem of development and, hence, genesis. As to the latter point, Husserl remarks in the Crisis: Thus it appears obvious that a necessary universal reduction has in advance the significance of a resolve henceforth to reduce all of men’s ways of behaving, one by one, so as to describe scientifically […] the psychic sphere of acts according to its empirical types […]. Will anyone become somehow doubtful if we remark here that the notion of ‘ways of behavior’ must ultimately include […] all associations and also the variations of acts which can indeed be followed descriptively in their obscured forms, sedimentations – and even all instincts and drives, not to mention the ‘horizons’? (Hua VI, 246, translation modified)7

Nevertheless, the psychological reduction does also exhibit the same one-­ sidedness of the other two kinds of reduction. It is, after all, only interested in consciousness in order to show that consciousness is a realm distinct from the world it constitutes. The pattern that has emerged with the other kinds of reduction continues with this one as well. This time the problem is not that it has some epistemological bias, as with the Cartesian reduction, or that it has a subject matter that makes it  Hua XXXVIII, 204 (my translation): “It could be that at the beginning of psychical development sensations form a chaos, [or] we [could] say better, form a loose unity in which, as concerns the intimacy of the connection, no connection would be preferred over the others, and only in the course of ‘experience’ , the process, would [a connection] develop into an apprehension, [and then,] by means of the unity of apprehension, fusion of the sensation into particular unities would occur in such a way that ultimately the sensation has unity that is induced by the apprehension or through the process by means of which the apprehension developed, but [which] does not simply consist of it. These two questions however belong to genetic psychology. But it seems that the first question must be affirmed.” 6  Hua VI, 239 (translation modified): “Here we construe the concept of a descriptive psychology just as broadly as that of the other descriptive sciences, which after all are not bound only to the data of direct intuition, but make their inferences to those things which cannot be made present as actually existing through any actually experiencing intuition but which must be capable of representation through analogous variations of intuition.” 7  See also Hua IX, §§42–43. 5

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entirely unnecessary to get into intra-consciousness matters, like the ontological reduction. The problem has to do with the fact that this reduction is a “way into phenomenology,” which has completed its task as a reduction when it reveals the world as a phenomenon.8 Thus one cannot say without qualification that the psychological reduction – or any of the others – puts us straightaway in a position to study genetic constitution. Given the simple concern of turning the world into a phenomenon, genesis is not obviously of interest under the aegis of the familiar ways to the reduction except – at least in the case of the psychological reduction – in a restricted sense, namely, as an intra-worldly event. So it is not apparent in this context how genesis could come into focus from a transcendental point of view, one concerned with laying bare the conditions of the emergence of our forms of directedness to the world, the world’s very sense.

3  The Possibility of a “Genetic Reduction” The way to genetic phenomenology is indirect, and is at least one step removed from the familiar “ways to the reduction.” What needs clarification, then, is the nature of this remove. While the Cartesian reduction is an absolute dead end, insofar as it insists on adequate evidence, either of the other two ways to the reduction may serve as a springboard into genetic phenomenology.9 The ontological reduction, on the one hand, leads indirectly to genetic constitution through a consistent “regressive inquiry” (Rückfrage), and the psychological reduction finds its way there through its depth analysis of consciousness as concrete personality. This indirectness is not at all a characteristic unique to the project of genetic phenomenology, since Husserl often speaks of a need to advance beyond the work of the initial reductions. They are means for taking up the transcendental stance in the first place and not its consummation.

 Hua VI, 253–254: “The psychologist will naturally have to carry out the epochē and reduction from his own vantage point […]; he must begin with his original self-experience and his own original world-consciousness […]. [H]e has original consciousness of all this, consciousness which, as reduced, is primary; and it includes his world-consciousness in its flowing particularity and its historicity, with everything that he attributes to the world and by way of spatiotemporality and content through his acts of meaning. Through this reduction, this world… becomes a mere phenomenon for him.” Equivalently, Hua VI, 258 has it that: “But if the universal epochē, which encompasses all having-consciousness-of-the-world, is necessary, then the psychologist loses, during this epochē, the ground of the objective world. Thus pure psychology in itself is identical with transcendental philosophy as the science of transcendental subjectivity.” See also Hua IX, 461. 9  I thus cannot entirely agree with Lee that it is the psychological reduction in particular that leads to the genetic analysis of the instincts. For this view, see Lee (1993), 65. By the same token, I cannot agree with Steinbock either, when he suggests that it is the ontological reduction in particular that leads to genetic phenomenology. For his presentation of that view, see Steinbock (1995a), 79–85. 8

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To give two other examples, the phenomenology of intersubjectivity (Hua I,  124–130/92–98; Hua VI, 182–186, 259; Hua VIII, 173–181; and Hua XXXV, 103–110) and the phenomenology of phenomenological practice itself (a meta-phenomenology) (Hua VI, 186–189, 208–210 and Hua XXXIV, Beilage XII) only come about as the result of secondary methodological maneuvers.10 Husserl will sometimes refer to these as more refined ways of doing the reduction, or even as distinct reductions themselves, rather than as particular domains of constitutive research. This ascription is entirely justified – one can sensibly speak of an “intersubjective reduction,” for instance – and, I suggest, a similar ascription is likewise justified in the present case, because a certain naïveté (analogous to the naïveté of the natural attitude that the different ways to the reduction expose) requires shedding, leading one to view the whole of constitution in a different light. Husserl holds even in his earliest formulations of the nature of genetic phenomenology that it has the potential to deepen our understanding of the whole of conscious life, a potential that is implied in its task of explaining the “[l]awful regularities that regulate the formation of apperceptions” (Hua XI, 336/624), which amounts to nothing less than a “‘history’ of consciousness” (Hua XI, 339/627; Hua XVII, 278/316). Later, in the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl boldly claims that genetic constitution reveals “universal laws of genesis” that “produce a unity of universal genesis of the ego” (Hua I, 109/75). Given this universality, it would be appropriate to say that a genetic epochē – a dramatic change of attitude resting on critical considerations – follows from the psychological or ontological reduction. It is equally fair to call this turn a kind of reduction, since its entire aim is to redeem the claim of the ways into the reduction to explain constitution. It is not necessary to show that there are two separate ways of turning to genetic constitution, one from the starting point of the ontological reduction and another from the starting point of the psychological reduction. Indeed, the two are not so different. One might even say that they are really the same, only with different emphases. It is not surprising, then, to find that in certain early formulations Husserl lays out his psychological reduction within the context of a reflection of the whole of ontology. Husserl makes this move, for instance, in a manuscript from 1923 (Hua VIII, 219–228), which he titles “[The] way into transcendental phenomenology as absolute and universal ontology through positive ontologies.” The procedure in this case is to first begin with an ontology of the world, highlighting, first of all, material nature and its essence. A second step is to critique the evidence for this ontology, which amounts, naturally, to a critique of “external perception.” The second step reveals that even an adequate reflection on ontological concepts like “material thing” necessarily lead us to reflect on the nature of subjectivity. Husserl’s own summary of this “way into the reduction” is perspicuous: [It is,] namely, the [following] way: [beginning from the] given world; the universal ontology of the world with all particular ontologies leads to a universal intuition of the world as an eidetic reflection on the world [Weltbetrachtung]… In this way, nature leads to ­corporeality, to the psychical, to mental operations of subjectivity [die geistig leistende 10

 See also Lohmar (2012).

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Subjektivität], to the insight that subjectivity is world-constituting, transcendentally absolute. (Hua VIII, 225; my translation)

The ontological reduction only succeeds if it takes the “psychical” into account. One reflects on ontological concepts, then, in critiquing these concepts, finds oneself in the narrower project of an intentional psychology that, fully carried out, ultimately takes one into the transcendental stance. In short, the only difference between the ontological and the psychological reduction is that, whereas the descriptive psychologist is interested from the start in intentional consciousness, when one theorizes about other ontological regions one first has to discover their “insufficiency” (Hua VIII, 223–224). Only then is one referred necessarily to the subject matter of the descriptive psychologist and subsequently carried over into the transcendental stance. To get to genetic constitution is then a matter of making a distinction within constitution. There are multiple possible motives for making such a distinction.11 A quite general motive would be simply the need to draw out the implications of the fact that conscious life evidently develops and reconcile that with the transcendental standpoint. This development of consciousness has to be recast from its modest empirical beginnings in the simple observations of the descriptive psychologist about individuals within the world into a theory of how consciousness comes to constitute a world in the first place and of the major transformations in which particular constitutive domains arise. Genetic phenomenology is really a matter of revealing the transcendental significance of events commonly recognized in descriptive psychology (Hua Mat VIII, 155).12 It lets us move from asking about the general constitutive condi-

 For instance, Husserl introduces genetic phenomenology in texts like Hua XI and Hua XVII in order to clarify the nature of evidence within the theory of judgment (e.g., Hua XVII, Appendix II, §§1–4). In other instances, Husserl will often engage in discussions of genesis without considering the motive for doing so. This is typical of the texts collected in the C-Manuskripte (Hua Mat VIII) and some of the texts in Hua XXXIX, where Husserl has a simpler, more elegant approach to the static/genetic constitution distinction, but one lacking in motivation. In those texts Husserl speaks of two broad steps of performing the reduction. First, one does an “Abbau-Reduktion” (Hua Mat VIII, No. 23, 394, Hua XXXIX, Nos. 26, 40). This is strikingly similar to the regressive procedure of the ontological reduction, but with more systematic overtones. One takes the regional categories and gradually analyzes these categories one at a time, beginning with the most complex and going back to the constitutively simplest components, the hyletic data in the primal present. Then one is in a position to turn around and ascend that same path in an Aufbau (Hua Mat VIII, Nos. 16, 17, 49, 74). This theme not only lacks motivation, but also lacks concreteness, since it leaves out of consideration problems of normality/abnormality and operates as if it is describing “consciousness in general.” Understanding the Abbau/Aufbau analyses in this way, which seems the most natural, I have to disagree with Georgy Chernavin’s view that the Abbau reduction itself is already a procedure of genetic reconstruction. It certainly sets the stage for the latter, but surely one has not truly entered the field of genetic analysis until one analyzes, in the Aufbau, the temporal linkages of the different strata first disclosed in the Abbau reduction. See Chernavin (2011), especially 34–40. 12  I am taking a somewhat narrow perspective on genetic phenomenology due to the problems that are presently of interest. Genesis is not just a matter of individual development. It is also about society, whether it be the society of scientists, of practical agents, of ethical agents, of political agents, etc. This is clear from texts like the Kaizo articles, the Crisis, and the “Origin of Geometry.” 11

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tions for experiencing reality to asking about the constitutive conditions of those very conditions, i.e., about how they can possibly come into being. The attempt at such a reconciliation is signaled by Husserl’s frequent claim that genetic phenomenology gives us a more concrete understanding of subjectivity, an understanding that has to follow an initial, more abstract understanding carried out in “static” terms. In one later manuscript, Husserl has problems of genetic constitution as the final of four phases of carrying out the reduction (Hua XXXIX, No. 13, especially 118–120). The first is the initial “bracketing” of the world, drawing the great contrast between the world as constituted and consciousness as constituting. A second step consists of a critique of the (relative) apodicticity of various forms of consciousness. A third step embraces the analysis of the correlation of consciousness and world, categorizing such structures and clarifying the manners of givenness that comprise these forms of constitution. These analyses are characteristically eidetic, and would encompass both a comprehensive ontology and descriptive psychology. Lastly, in the fourth step one tackles issues of genesis. This step is final because the others are its “presupposition”: “I must first have the a priori of the static correlation in order to be able to inquire about the ‘genesis of this a priori” (Hua XXXIX, 120; my translation). The analytical blockage that keeps one from making this step consists of a special naïveté. When one initially performs the reduction and takes up the transcendental stance, there is a natural tendency to model that stance (i.e., the kinds of constitution one takes into account) in the light of a certain picture of normal conscious life, of which one is oneself, presumably, an exemplar. This picture, Husserl states, is one’s self-conception as a “mature, normal, rational, scientific person [Menschen]” (Hua XXXIX, 485, my translation; cf. Hua Mat VII, 107–108). Here is how he summarizes the issue: The initial path of the explication of the world as world of experience abstractly reveals only one level. Experience as self-giving has in a necessary way the significance of normality, at first the “normal person” [Menschen]. But horizonal [types such as that] of the horizon of ‘abnormal’ people, that of children, [and] finally of animals also belong to the ontic sense [Seinssinn] of the world. The inclusion of this as ‘intentional modification’ reveals [a] second level. (Hua XXXIX, 466; my translation)

Even if the characteristic constitutive abilities embodied in this normal form of consciousness have some sort of privilege (i.e., as ideals of rationality), it would be a serious oversight to ignore other “abnormal” forms of subjectivity, such as infants and young children, the mentally ill, animals, “primitives,” etc.13 Until an  For a discussion of Husserl’s notion of normality and abnormality (Husserl often uses the word Anomalität and its cognates), see Steinbock (1995a, b), Wehrle (2010), and Taipale (2012). The sense of “normality” at play in the present discussion is intimately related to that explicated in the just-cited authors, namely, as an optimum governing, e.g., perception by defining its success or failure. For instance, if I want to read a book, I must situate myself in suitable lighting conditions, pick it up and hold it at the right distance for the words to appear clearly and distinctly, and such (admittedly vague) parameters as lighting, bodily position, distance of the book, etc., all figure in the optimum or normal perceptual condition involved in reading a book. In the present context, normality concerns not an individual perceptual act (or even a norm governing some relatively 13

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e­ xamination of such forms of consciousness is carried out, not only is “the phenomenon ‘world’ not explicated in its full concreteness” (certain “regional structures” belonging to the “psychical” are missing) (Hua XXXIX, 485, my translation), but the full transcendental community has not been accounted for (Hua XV, 612). For, as Husserl states, “the constitutive significance of animals is not to be forgotten. As intentional modifications of world-constituting people in the first level of normality [Normalstufe], they co-function in the further constitution of the world” (Hua Mat VIII, 395; my translation).14 We thus begin to see, although the point needs clarification, what a way into genetic phenomenology might look like.

4  Eidetically Realizing the Genetic Reduction Now, introducing the problematic of abnormality does not immediately lead to the problem of genesis. The study of animals, “primitives,” and those who suffer severe mental illness,15 for instance, does not necessitate that shift. The problematic of abnormality is first a more general topic that can be approached statically (Hua I, 108/74 and Hua XXXIX, 478). Of course, it is primarily with infants and young children that the developmental problem really shows up, although Husserl flirts in one manuscript with the idea, perhaps only of metaphorical significance for Husserl, of a Leibnizian theory of “involution and evolution,” of human consciousness emerging from animal consciousness (Hua Mat VIII, 169). The reflection on the “abnormal” periods of infancy and early childhood open up a uniquely systematic inquiry when one takes note of the obvious but curious fact that they are predecessors of normality, that in conscious life first there is abnormality, then normality. That observation need not remain a singular empirical one, if taken as the starting point for a special kind of static investigation within the problematic of abnormality that expressly prepares the way for the analysis of genetic constitution. This investigation concerns the “compossibility” of different forms of consciousness narrow class of acts), but a conscious being’s total subjective make-up. The concept here applies to the entire subject at a given point in time or a given time-period and concerns how the subject’s capacities enable a certain way of life, cognitive, practical, emotional, social, ethical, etc. A subject’s normality is determined by the way its various capacities make possible a more or less coherent and “rational” way of engaging its environment (in the sense of Umwelt). A subject is abnormal just in case it fails to participate in or is in some respect deficient in participating in a form of life guided by ideals of reason. See Heinämaa (2013) for a discussion of normality/abnormality at this level. 14  For a clarification of the constitutive role of animals and other “abnormal” varieties of conscious subject, see Heinämaa (2013). 15  Mental illness and other forms of abnormal experience do usually presuppose a preceding condition of normality, so inquiring about such cases may lead to genetic considerations, but not necessarily in the encompassing and systematic manner that taking infancy and early childhood into account does. See Hua IV, 276/288. The psychology of personality in general can also lead to a less systematic genetic inquiry (Hua IV, 270–276/282–289).

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(Hua I, 107–108/73–75). This normality reduction, as it were, exploits the fact that normal constitution is but one way of constituting a world. Analyzing normality and its abnormal variants can then be considered in their compatibility (or lack thereof). A single subject cannot be both normal (i.e., rational) and abnormal (e.g., an infant, a non-human animal) at the same time. These ways of constituting the world are mutually exclusive, since the abnormal cases are missing (partially or altogether) something essential to normal constitution, namely, full possession of their rational abilities. (That means not just logical reasoning, but also, perhaps, practical and ethical reasoning.) Likewise, normal consciousness inevitably lacks something present in abnormal constitution. Non-human animals, for instance, have their own forms of inter-­animal relations and are guided by their own species-specific instincts (Hua Mat VIII, 172). It is more than likely that there are positive features to the conscious life of children and abnormal adults, as well, that elude normality.16 Husserl at least recognizes that certain individuals can be marked by a “facticity, in itself beyond our comprehension,” thanks to which they see the world in a different way (e.g., “This child takes an original joy in sounds, that child does not. One is inclined toward temper, the other toward patience.” (Hua IV, 275–276/288, translation modified)). But, more interestingly, one can ask not only about compatibility at a given moment, but also about compatibility over time, sequentially. In the span of one conscious life, the consciousness of a non-human animal cannot give way to that of a mature human, but that of an infant or young child can, and that of a mature human can give way to that of any of a range of abnormalities peculiar to humans. Summing up the principle behind this observation, Husserl states that “in a unitarily possible ego not all singly possible types are compossible, and not all compossible ones are compossible in just any order, at no matter what loci in that ego’s own temporality” (Hua I, 108/174). The turn to sequential compossibility is necessary because the various states of human normality and abnormality are essentially phases, moments, periods within a life. Some abnormal states have the sense of being periods of a life leading up to normal conscious life, while others have the sense of being exceptional cases stemming from a prior normal state. In short, childhood makes no sense without reference to “normal” adulthood, and mental illness makes no sense without reference to normal or “healthy” mental life. The eidetically derived concepts themselves point the way to the genetic investigation. It allows one to arrange the shapes of abnormal consciousness into a series of states that are not simultaneously compatible, but are sequentially compatible, yielding an ontogenetic index for investigations into the genetic links and transformations from phase to phase. This index will remain ambiguous for two reasons (Hua XI, 339, Hua XV, 608–609). First, because we are only interested in general structures, like those implicated in the abilities to perceive, remember, expect, evaluate, understand other people, intervene practically in the world, etc. The index, for  This is a point emphasized by Merleau-Ponty (2010) in his discussion of development (131– 132), and the idea also features in current empirical work on development. See, for instance, Alessandro Minelli (2011). 16

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our purposes, will only include these sorts of broad consciously exercised abilities and leave out the myriad other details of what goes on in any factual process of cognitive development. The index will not reflect all the refinements of these abilities or the development of other abilities not essentially connected with these, let alone any individually idiosyncratic traits. Second, for that same reason the index does not aim to track and reflect the actual timing of the development as an event in the world. The only time that will count here is “immanent time,” which simply refers to the general kinds of dynamic processes leading from phase to phase in consciousness without any reference to the measurement of chronological time. The turn to sequential compossibility, tracking the single thread of a conscious life, finally brings us fully into the realm of genetic constitution. Indeed, one of Husserl’s earliest and most important manuscripts on static/genetic constitution puts great stress on how we get to genetic constitution when we shift our interest to the concrete unity of conscious life (Hua XIV, 34–42, appearing in the English translation of Hua XI, 635–645). The task is to understand the general laws of sequential compossibility, which just are the laws of genesis, the forms of genetic constitution (Hua I, 109/175). Now we can consider what is peculiar about genetic constitution. Instead of being about the givenness of the world, genetic constitution is about the relations between successive conscious experiences.17 And it concerns not principally the dynamics of how particular experiences relate to one another over time, but the dynamics at work in the emergence of types of experience, of whole domains of conscious life (Hua XI, 338–339/627). The relations or laws that govern such occurrences are motivational laws. Relating this back to the problematic of normality, we can analyze the sequential compossibility of these different states by discerning the possible relations of motivation between them, “the relation of conditionality obtaining between the motivating and the motivated” (Hua IV, 41/644). Motivations, taken as the impulse propelling conscious life forward and the tissue holding it together in its peculiar temporal unfolding, are of essentially two types, namely, passive and active. Let us only summarily delve into the phenomenon of motivation here. Beginning with the latter, active sort, Husserl provides some simple examples to illustrate the nature of motivation in active genesis: “in collecting, the collection [is constituted]; in counting, the number; in dividing, the part; … in inferring, the inference” (Hua I, 111/77; see Hua XI, Hua XXXI and Husserl 1973).18 In all these cases, one’s actions engender new constitutive possibilities. Laying out a series of well-understood premises motivates the inference of a certain conclusion. In a much different context, there are certain motives within one’s life (the way one conducts oneself) that might motivate an act of “ethical renewal” and self-transformation (Hua XXVII, 29–33, Hua XXXVII, 244–258, 339–341). Or, again, there are particular practical endeavors (e.g., in architectural practices) that motivate the enterprise of geometry (“The Origin of Geometry” in  Hua XIV, 41, in the English translation of Hua XI, 644: “But attending to constitution is not attending to genesis, which is precisely the genesis of constitution.” 18  The theory of purely cognitive motivation and genesis is developed more thoroughly in Hua XI and Husserl (1973). 17

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Hua VI, 365–386/353–378). These are all characteristically active forms of motivation because they are deliberate acts carried out with insight into the norms that lead from the motivating terms to the motivated term(s). Passive forms of motivation, by contrast, lack this deliberateness and insight into norms. They are forms of indication embodied in associative experience (Hua I, 113–114/80–81, Husserl 1973, 72–76). As an example, we can consider how the experience of one thing recalls another, or perhaps points ahead to some anticipated experience. Motivations of this sort from one experience to another are associative in that the similarity (primarily) or contiguity of the former with the latter awakens one’s interest to include the latter or perhaps turn to it as an exclusive theme. Associative motivation not only governs these small-scale events, but also the largescale ones whereby the faculty for memory or expectation, to keep with the preceding examples, are first instituted by means of associative motivations stemming from the perceptual present. The same is true, Husserl claims, for all passive forms of intentionality (Hua XI, 339/627, Hua XIV, 38/640). The normality reduction is the way into genetic phenomenology. It broadens the phenomenologist’s horizons to encompass a plurality of types of conscious life, both normal and abnormal (in Husserl’s specific sense). With the abnormal and normal conditions both in view, the question can finally be raised of their interrelation, not just statically (which states are incompatible with which), but genetically, i.e., by ascertaining which conditions – which broad shapes of conscious life – have the sense of engendering which other states. With both the various forms of human normality/abnormality as an ontogenetic index and the general principles of motivation, one can conduct a systematic investigation that will track the development of conscious life from infancy to maturity, and perhaps developments of other abnormalities as well. All of this is carried out eidetically and within the transcendental stance. In fact, what Husserl does in turning to this problematic, as we have seen, is a necessary refinement and advance of the reduction.

References Bernet, R., I.  Kern, and E.  Marbach. 1993. An Introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Chernavin. 2011. Transzendentale Archäologie, Ontologie, Metaphysik: Methodologische Alternativen in der phänomenologischen Philosophie Husserls. Nordhausen: Verlag Traugott Bautz. Heinämaa, S. 2013. Transcendental subjectivity and normality: Constitution by mortals. In The Phenomenology of Embodied Subjectivity, ed. R.T. Jensen and D. Moran, 83–104. Dordrecht: Springer. Hua I. Husserl, E. 1973. Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, ed. S. Strasser. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology. Trans: D. Cairns. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999. Hua III.  Husserl, E. 1950. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenlogie und phänomenlogischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, ed. W. Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to

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a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book. Trans: F. Kersten. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1983. Hua IV Husserl, E. 1977. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführungin die reine Phänomenologie, ed. K.  Schuhmann. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Second Book. Trans: R. Rojcewicz, & A. Schuwer. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989. Hua VI. Husserl, E. 1976. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie, ed. W. Biemel. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Trans: D.  Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970. Hua VIII. Husserl, E. 1959. Erste Philosophie (1923/24). Zweiter Teil: Theorie der phänomenologischen Reduktion, ed. R. Boehm. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Hua IX. Husserl, E. 1968. Phänomenologische Psychologie. Vorlesungen Sommersemester. 1925, ed. W.  Biemel. The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff. Phenomenological Psychology: Lectures, Summer Semester 1925. Trans: J. Scanlon. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977. Hua XI.  Husserl, E. 1966. Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten, 1918–1926, ed. M.  Fleischer. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis: Lectures on Transcendental Logic. Trans: A. Steinbock. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001. Hua XIV. Husserl, E. 1973. Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität: Texte aus dem Nachlass, Zweiter Teil: 1921–1928, ed. I. Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Hua XV. Husserl, E. 1973. Zur Phänomanologie der Intersubjektivität: Texte aus dem Nachlass, Dritter Teil (1929–1935), ed. I. Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Hua XVII.  Husserl, E. 1969. Formal and Transcendental Logic. Trans: D.  Cairns. Kluwer: Dordrecht. Hua XXVII. Husserl, E. 1989. Aufsätze und Vorträge (1922–1937), ed. T. Nenon, & H. R. Sepp. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Hua XXXI.  Husserl, E. 2000. Aktive Synthesen. Aus der Vorlesung “Transzendentale Logik” 1920/21. Ergänzungsband zu “Analysen zur passiven Synthesis”, ed. R.  Breeur. Dordrecht: Springer. Hua XXXIV.  Husserl, E. 2002. Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1926–1935), ed. S. Luft. Dordrecht: Springer. Hua XXXV. Husserl, E. 2002. Einleitung in die Philosophie. Vorlesungen 1922/23, ed. B. Goossens. Dordrecht: Springer. Hua XXXVII. Husserl, E. 2004. Einleitung in die Ethik: Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1920 und 1924, ed. H. Peucker. Dordrecht: Springer. Hua XXXVIII.  Husserl, E. 2004. Wahrnehmung und Aufmerksamkeit: Texte aus dem Nachlass (1893–1912), ed. T. Vongehr, & R. Giuliani. Dordrecht: Springer. Hua XXXIX. Husserl, E. 2008. Die Lebenswelt: Auslegungen der vorgegebenen Welt und ihrer Konstitution, Texte aus dem Nachlass (1916–1937), ed. R. Sowa. Dordrecht: Springer. Hua Mat VIII. Husserl, E. 2006. Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934): Die C-Manuskripte, ed. D. Lohmar. Dordrecht: Springer. Husserl, E. 1973. Experience and judgment: Investigations in a genealogy of logic. Trans: J. S. Churchill, K. Ameriks, & L. Eley. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Lee, N. 1993. Edmund Husserls Phänomenologie der Instinkte. Dordrecht: Springer. Lohmar, D. 2012. Ego and Arch-Ego in Husserlian Phenomenology. In Life, Subjectivity, Art: Essays in Honor of Rudolf Bernet, ed. R. Breeur and U. Melle, 277–302. Dordrecht: Springer. Merleau-Ponty, M. 2010. Child Psychology and Pedagogy: The Sorbonne Lectures 1949–1952. Trans: T. Welsh. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Minelli, A. 2011. Animal Development, an Open-Ended Segment of Life. Biological Theory 6: 4–15.

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Sokolowski, R. 2010. Husserl on First Philosophy. In Philosophy, Phenomenology, Sciences, ed. Filip Mattens, Hanne Jacobs, and Carlo Ierna. Dordrecht: Springer. Steinbock, A. 1995a. Home and Beyond: Generative Phenomenology after Husserl. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. ———. 1995b. Phenomenological Concepts of Normality and Abnormality. Man and World 28 (3): 241–260. Taipale, J.  2012. Twofold Normality: Husserl and the Normative Relevance of Primordial Constitution. Husserl Studies 28 (1): 49–60. Wehrle, M. 2010. Die Normativität der Erfahrung: Überlegungen zur Beziehung von Normalität und Aufmerksamkeit bei E. Husserl. Husserl Studies 26 (3): 167–187. Welton, D. 2000. The Other Husserl: The Horizons of Transcendental Phenomenology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

The Allure of Passivity Randall Johnson

Abstract  Any effort to think passivity to some extent undoes itself by its own intentional activity. This inevitable and ambiguous paradox is explored by a reading of the allure of passivity in Husserl’s passive synthesis lectures and is paired with a reading of Merleau-Ponty’s course notes on passivity and his late course on Husserl. The uncanny fragmentation of passivity, and indeed of the efforts of any genetic phenomenology to think its own origins, brings to the forefront for thought the problematic space between noema and noesis. Borrowing Merleau-Ponty’s characterization, we will suggest calling this a diaphragmatic relation of a center of egoic activity that cannot hold, that fragments. The essay concludes with a brief fragment on love that shatters in its passivity. Keywords  Passivity · Husserl · Merleau-Ponty · Allure · Affection · Uncanny · Genetic phenomenology

1  Introduction Inasmuch as thinking is an activity, there is already a slip-sliding away in any effort to say, to write, passivity. Words about it may be the best that we can hope for. Perhaps, however, in its recursivity, the trace of thinking to which one can only allude is the traversal of the very passivity from whence this thinking, which can never find its way home, emerges. The trace of writing, at least, bears the possibility of being more legible—and hence of being as much a closure from as an opening towards passivity. Thinking itself, as uncanny, unheimlich, not-at-homeness, may be more a happening of passivity than we would wish to know. That which we call “I” is both subtended and fragmented by passivity, and there is an affective allure about it—both in being put together and in being torn apart. The living experience of passivity fragments us, shatters us; and perhaps in a vain effort to follow in the footsteps of Blanchot, Nietzsche even, we will begin and end with some fragments on passivity and, in the always double risk of vanity, name R. Johnson (*) Psychiatry, Private Practice, Chapel Hill, NC, USA © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Apostolescu (ed.), The Subject(s) of Phenomenology, Contributions to Phenomenology 108, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29357-4_11

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these expressions fragmentations.1 In a more sustained discursive style, we will attempt to understand the allure of passivity by thinking with Husserl during the time of his passive synthesis lectures and with Merleau-Ponty during the time of his lectures on passivity and, a few years later, his course on Husserl.

2  Birth Is passivity written on the body? Is the umbilicus, perhaps, the ultimate (a word risked even though it invites closure) corporeal mark—material trace of some imagined immaterial, temporal point in the genesis of the singular life of each of us in our own anonymity—the lived but not experienced phenomenal trace of emergence from passivity? This abyssal invagination of skin, which at best catches lint, seems to evoke the experience of body-as-thing rather than the sublimity of the phenomenal body of living flesh loving. And if the “belly button,” as this more than symbolic quilting point of embryonic temporality is often named for children, appears in its less frequent manifestation as a protruding healed mass of cut skin, it seems even more an alien, uncanny marker as Thing for an origin to which this singular one cannot return. There is a mournful aspect to passivity—loss of that which we never had.

3  Death On the fragmentation of being torn apart, many of us heard these words as children: Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, All the King’s horses and all the King’s men Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again. I wish this as a fragment of comic relief, but what it reminds us of is that as children we may have had a greater affective awareness than we do as more completely subjectivized, more fully sedimented adults that even sovereign activity comes upon limits in its efforts to master the passivity of Death’s gravity. Imagine the edge of the

 Maurice Blanchot’s The Writing of the Disaster is a text which comes perhaps as close as possible to writing passivity itself and is haunting in its beauty. While I do not refer to it directly, it is a writing which no doubt lurks in my own thinking and its fragmentation. In addition, Thomas Carl Wall’s Radical Passivity, which has as interlocutors not only Blanchot but also Levinas and Agamben, is a text which is beautifully evocative of passivity and is also no doubt in the background of my thinking. 1

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cliff or similar scenes in cinema. Perhaps skydiving is a way both to experience and to gain some mastery of the allure of the passivity of the pull of gravity.

4  Sleep In one of those moments of congruency, which can only be felt as uncanny, during the odd time-out-of-time duration of a singular therapy, a patient who had been in treatment for about two years revealed, in a session which occurred during my day job between the weekends of writing—another time-out-of-time—these words on passivity, a phantasy with the purported purpose of aiding the hypnogogic transition to sleep. This phantasy, which seems to have remained in that murky realm of the pre-conscious until the week prior to the session, had originated with the collective trauma of 9/11, as it has become named. The phantasy, at that edge of sleep always peculiar to us when we allow ourselves to think about it and only now for this patient allowed to approach an attentive level of conscious awareness, is of jumping out of one of the Twin Towers and falling—with the intervening moments of terror—to death. And, if the phantasy is successful in its psychic labor, the liminal moment to sleep arrives—as if, literally, one falls to sleep. I will not go into any particulars of how this comes to have sense in the singularity of this life; and while I experience qualms of this stealth of phantasy out of what must remain a safe, as well as safeguarded, relation, the intensity of its demonstration that the simultaneous repulsion from/pull towards passivity persists in us into our sedimented adulthood seems to invite, again uncannily, its sharing.

5  Husserl on Passivity In “Three Notes on the Freudian Unconscious,” included as an appendix to the course notes on passivity, Merleau-Ponty characterizes the unconscious as Freudian poetry, as a Baroque system of a node of significations which are traces of events manifest as behaviors of excrescences and lacunae. This unconscious, which is “having in the mode of not having,” is characterized as a schema of praxis whose application in a current situation is not knowledge, but relation. Merleau-Ponty continues: “This diaphragm being allowed, which is pre-objective, between noesis and noema, remains (between) to understand 1) of what sort is the center, the one to whom all this comes 2) of what sort is its liberty and its ‘choice,’ in what relation with the organization of its duration.” (Merleau-Ponty 2003) If we take this diaphragm to be a corporeal metaphor, then, to be compatible with life, this must always be a moving relation, which may at times be a movement with intention, but which is usually a movement that occurs outside of conscious awareness. I suspect that Husserl, especially at the time of writing Ideas I, first published in 1913, would not have been pleased to have this pre-objective, Baroque system of the

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unconscious as a diaphragm between his noesis and noema. He writes in Ideas I: “A parallelism between noesis and noema is indeed the case, but it is such that one must describe the formations on both sides and in their essentially mutual correspondence. The noematic is the field of unities, the noetic is the field of ‘constituting’ multiplicities.” (Husserl 1982) The marked emphases are Husserl’s, but what I would choose to highlight in this described relation between is the phrase essentially mutual correspondence. It is as if at this point in the development of static, descriptive phenomenology, as Husserl himself later describes it, there is only the slimmest between, as if the noesis and noema are the correlative, parallel faces of a virtually inseparable coin. As evoked in the writing of Ideas I, phenomenology as a transcendental idealism seems to remain, for the most part, a subjective solipsism, a golden coin of consciousness, engaged in an unending approach to “the pure X,” as he names it, which is only determinable in the noematic sense. (Husserl 1982) The felt response in reading this text is that one is primarily safely within the thinking ego of Descartes who had strengthened its foundation against the shatterings of the doubts of skepticism and safely within the line-in-the-sand limits to Reason which Kant had sketched against any mystical union with the Thing itself. But also in Ideas I, there is a sense on the periphery of reading of glimmerings, hints of “marvelous rays” as Husserl might have phrased it, that the disciplined way of thinking named phenomenology can exceed its Cartesian and Kantian ground and still remain both disciplined and thinking, and can maintain a place in the great realm of Reason. Of course, Husserl’s thinking was far from static, and he clearly had reservations about letting a text slip from the grasp of his writing fingers to become some final, published product. Most of the texts which we now have were published after his death and, by the testimony of those devoted students working with him, were read and corrected again and again in an effort which perhaps expresses some desire to keep his pages at that edge where his thinking had arrived and a wish to say all at once. The fact that he left behind at his death some forty thousand such pages of notes in shorthand may be the best attestation to the impossibility of such a writing wish. In a footnote to the essay given the title “Consciousness and Sense—Sense and Noema,” dated 1920, and included in the section of related essays in the English translation of the passive synthesis lectures, Husserl explicitly and bluntly states his own difference form his previous descriptions of noema: “Here I stand in contradiction to the Ideas and deny that noematic unities, objective senses, are transcendent to the lived-experience.” (Husserl 2001) He ends the body of the essay with this emphasis somewhat more positively stated than in the footnote: “Thus, this shows once again that there is no basis for dissociating the ‘noema’ from the lived-­ experience, and for contesting its character as an intimately inherent moment.” (Husserl 2001) That relation which had previously seemed to be a virtual adherence locked away within consciousness with no space for thinking between noesis and noema—as transcendent ideal—has now become a field inherent in the intimacies of lived-experience—a moving diaphragmatic space open to phenomenological exploration. And it seems to me that it is within this now almost abyssal between that the thinking of Husserl’s lectures on passive synthesis in his beginning articulation of a genetic phenomenology finds its place, its time.

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The lectures on passive synthesis were delivered in Freiburg a number of times from the year of this essay through 1926. The aim of Husserl’s thinking explicitly remains to establish a phenomenological logic which would be a transcendental, universal theory of all sciences as such. However, the focus of the reduction in these lectures, if we may put it this way, is not on what has emerged, what has been constituted, but on the emergence itself, the very originating again and again, which is interlaced, perhaps irreducibly so, with our ongoingness within our thick temporality. In glancing back through the pages of these lectures, I did not come across any passage which seems to characterize genetic phenomenology directly in what could be viewed as its undoing of intentionality, but it seems to me that the phenomenology of genesis is the intentional activity to think its own pre-intentional givenness— in some ways to un-intend itself. And here, with the phrase “to think its,” the referent of it remains vague and carries many names—the ego, at times qualified as transcendent, absolute, or pure; the phenomenologizing I; the monad—so for now we will repeat and elaborate on Merleau-Ponty’s question and borrow the designation “center” for this it: What sort is this center, the one which in its passivity finds itself amidst this primordial givenness and proceeds in its occurrence in plurality to make sense of it? “We want to deal,” Husserl says, as if in answer, “with the great, universal theme of sense-giving.” (Husserl 2001) This risk of a method unraveling itself by attempting to apperceive its origin is perhaps most alluded to in his referring to what is phenomenologically revealed in this theme of sense-giving as “an intentional empty horizon…that is not a nothingness, but an emptiness to be filled-out; it is a determinable indeterminacy.” (Husserl 2001) The intentionality of determination spares us the full brunt of (passive) indeterminacy. With this shift of focus from intentionality to the intuitions of primordial and self-giving perception, it is as if we have broken out of the confines of some skeptic solipsism and, in the flesh of our lived bodies, find ourselves in some marvelous and enigmatic world with others. And what alluringly emerges for me in these lectures is what I will name a Husserlian call: affection as Reiz, in this text translated as allure rather than stimulus. While a stimulus by definition is provocative, one can only name its reception as a response, as in a sexology from a purely behaviorist perspective. In appealing contrast, the allure of the sensible seduces, and its very reception is a sensuous opening, to a phenomenology of the erotic, perhaps.2 But we get ahead of ourselves, as this call is quietly first presented as an object speaking to us. However, with my somewhat coyly sly introduction to this quote, we may imag Jean-Luc Marion has written such a phenomenology, The Erotic Phenomenon. At its best, it is a beautifully expressed, even sensuously so, phenomenology of the erotic. However, perhaps in its need to be Catholic, it manages quietly to express the requisite anti-homosexuality and anti-abortion stances of that theology, which in my opinion are not judgments that a phenomenology that is practiced with integrity would make. And, not dissimilar to his earlier major work, Being Given, which at times is an illuminatingly original phenomenologizing, this text does not fully bracket God and seems, finally, to become an onto-theology rather than to remain a phenomenology. However, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge that Marion’s astute writing on the call had attuned me to noticing this aspect of Husserl’s writing. I would also be remiss if I did not acknowledge my use of his term intergivenness as an elucidation of intersubjectivity. 2

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ine a certain seductive sexiness in the words Husserl gives this unidentified, generic object: “And it calls out to us, as it were, in these referential implications [and while the as it were lets us know that these implications are metaphorical, Husserl plays with the phantasy to the point of giving quotes to the words which the object says]: ‘There is still more to see here, turn me so you can see all my sides, let your gaze run through me, draw closer to me, open me up, divide me up; keep on looking me over again and again, turning me to see all sides. You will get to know me like this, all that I am, all my surface qualities, all my inner sensible qualities,’ etc.” (Husserl 2001) Sparing us the full jouissance of (impossible) merger, Husserl ends with the polite “etc.” outside of the object’s appeal to us. In describing that an object may exert its “rays of force”—to employ a Husserlian phraseology which, if irreducible, invites a deconstructive reading—towards a belief in some certainty rather than towards the always becoming possibilities of openness, Husserl, not disavowing another passion which may dwell in any call, states: “…we also speak here of enticements to be, which is to say that affection issues from the side of the object, that the object exerts on the ego an enticing demand to be, just as if the object were its hostile partner.” (Husserl 2001) The sudden appearance in the lecture of this hostile partner, who demands rather than gently awakens, surprised me, and it seems uncharacteristic of Husserl to speak so directly of the darker side of emotions. However, it does underscore that this increasingly abyssal gap is passional as well as pulsional and may be as aggressive as it is erotic. (This not so subtle reference to the thinking of psychoanalysis—that other great realm of thought of the previous century with desires of science—presages our comments on Merleau-Ponty’s making use of Freud’s writing in his lectures on passivity.) This affection as allure is characterized by Husserl as both the very vivacity of lived-experience in its ongoingness as well as the salience of affection itself, which “has the special sense of a specific affection on the ego, and in doing so meets the ego, excites it, calls it to action, so to speak, awakens and possibly actually rouses it.” (Husserl 2001) The Husserlian call, then, in its very happening as the awakening of this variously described center, begins the undoing of the passivity as primordial source from whence it arises. As manifest in this awakening by the call, receptivity itself is at this liminal interface of passivity and the activity which emerges from it. This now motivated ego has the liberty to be in active play with self-giving perception, which Husserl interestingly characterizes as having its own intentionality. For this play between not to remain at the skeptical, sheer surface of consciousness, remembering must happen, including “memories of the future,” as he describes expectation; and this temporality as manifest in the capacity for remembering is interwoven at this interface of passivity and activity. (Husserl 2001) He also discusses in these lectures the process of the formation of associations into a dormant horizonal field of sedimentations which await awakening by rememberings. These associative unities may perhaps be described as the very sense-giving of this creative play between the awakened center and its givenness within this “original ­passivity,” as he names it, of sensibility. (Husserl 2001, his emphasis) From the workings of this original passivity, Husserl’s thinking continues forward with phe-

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nomenological analyses of active synthesis along the way to the wished for clarity of a transcendental logic as the basis for all sciences. I will refrain for now from any adjudicative commenting on this always repeating wish which already seems to be undoing itself in the striving towards it.

6  Merleau-Ponty on Passivity Based on H. L. Van Breda’s account of Merleau-Ponty’s visit to the Husserl Archives in 1939 and documentation of which manuscripts were available to him while they were being housed in Paris from 1944 until 1948, as well as those he later borrowed, it seems unlikely that Merleau-Ponty was able to read the passive synthesis lectures. (Van Breda 1992) However, he read Ideas II, which Husserl continued to re-work during the years of the passive synthesis lectures, and in addition, he had access to a number of later works, including the Crisis manuscripts, which further the thinking of genetic phenomenology. The translators write in the introduction to the English version of Ideas II: “Merleau-Ponty was a very reserved man, but one of us can remember clearly a conversation with him in which he, with sudden animation, spoke so rapturously of the second Ideas and described his study of it as ‘une expérience presque voluptueuse.’” (Husserl 1989) There is no doubt that Husserl’s thinking called to Merleau-Ponty—a call received viscerally at the edge of the voluptuous—and it is clear that Freud’s thinking called to him as well. It seems to me that Merleau-Ponty is the first thinker to dwell in and write from that interwoven realm of the openings revealed by the thinking of Husserl and of Freud. “Phenomenology and psychoanalysis are not parallel,” he says in the preface to Hesnard’s text, “much better, they are both aiming toward the same latency.” (Merleau-Ponty 1993) And perhaps only a soul (if I dare use this word) as open and generous as Merleau-Ponty seems always to be would have the ongoing endurance to think the intersecting hinge of these two great realms without having to choose between them and without having to become a disciple—whether positively by remaining an adherent or negatively by disavowing the master—of either. And perhaps Merleau-Ponty could just as well have chosen the term passivity as the aim of these two ways of thinking which, at their best, retain a capacity to un-do themselves: latency as that very passivity which inheres in the strivings of both phenomenology and psychoanalysis to understand passivity, as well as to protect themselves from it, as perhaps manifest in the shared wish of science of these disciplines which are now “too easily accepted in an ‘idealist’ form,” as Merleau-Ponty phrases it.3 The need is to un-sediment the form and to return to the singular risks in the writings of Husserl and of Freud—reviving the very risks of latency.

 While in the context of the essay Merleau-Ponty is referring only to psychoanalysis in expressing this concern, it seems that inasmuch as phenomenology has become an institutionalized discipline of study that it also may be at times accepted too easily in some idealist form. 3

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It is mainly towards this elucidation in the thought of Freud that Merleau-Ponty aims in his own lectures on passivity in 1954–1955. His explorations on sleep and dreaming, on the past and memory, and on the unconscious are intended not as a search for some inductive solutions, as if these are separate problems, but are explorations described as offering “an emergent truth and possessed by no one” and as “the opening to the truth establishing itself.” (Merleau-Ponty 2003) His lectures give close readings of two of Freud’s texts, “Delusions and Dreams in Jensen’s Gradiva” and the case on Dora, and make frequent references to The Interpretation of Dreams. Not being able to be approached frontally, as he says a number of times in the lecture notes, the field of passivity is traced in the lateral happenings of these processes. A section of these lectures of particular interest is entitled “For an Ontology of the Perceived World” and seems clearly to be a line of thinking which he continues in the manuscript written a few years later with the final, posthumous title, The Visible and the Invisible. In the efforts of the passivity lectures to articulate—again, only laterally—the coupling of passivity and activity, Merleau-Ponty describes the process as a tertiary dialectic, perhaps the preliminary term for what is later called a hyperdialectic; and towards the end of his lecture notes he further clarifies the approach as a philosophy of ambiguity. This ontology of the perceived world is characterized as a phenomenological ontology; and I would suggest that this philosophy of flesh, as it might have been later named, could equally be described as a psychoanalytic ontology, manifest perhaps in a similar manner to Merleau-Ponty’s last sentence in the essay on the Freudian unconscious: “Promiscuity of these perceptions: the horizonal structure justly expresses that as soon as one clarifies a perception one is sent back to others.” (Merleau-Ponty 2003) The giving of sense in this ontology of perception is understood as divergence (écart) in its manifestations as lacunae, ellipses, and allusions; and genesis is grasped in its double immediacy “of the given to us, and also of us to the given.” (Merleau-Ponty 2003) This ontology thinks perception, Merleau-Ponty says, “as revelation of a new sense of truth: not as adequation which suppresses the plurality of subjects and of perspectives, but as movement towards integration, opening.” (Merleau-Ponty 2003) Perhaps this is the intentionality of perception which Husserl mentions in his passivity lectures, as some free-floating, pre-personal, intersubjective intentionality which happens at the hinge of “me-others” and “me-my body,” as Merleau-Ponty describes this horizon of sensibility in his lectures. (Merleau-Ponty 2003) If there is some aptness in suggesting that his passivity lectures reawaken the risks in thinking with Freud, then a similar revival in thinking with Husserl could be suggested about the course Merleau-Ponty gave in 1959–1960, Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology, as even the title itself implies. Much of this course is comprised of close readings of a number of late essays of Husserl, primarily “The Origin of Geometry.” This essay on geometry (and who would have dreamed that any writing on mathematics could so closely approach the voluptuous) could be considered, as Merleau-Ponty called Cartesian Meditations, an occasional piece, which e­ xemplifies the methodology of the passive and active syntheses lectures, their grapplings with

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genesis, with sedimentation, with rememberings, and with intersubjectivity, focused on the origin and ongoingness of this particular science of logic. The description that Merleau-Ponty had given of the unconscious and of perception in the earlier essay now becomes the description of thinking itself, as psychoanalysis and phenomenology become ever more interlaced in the movement of Merleau-Ponty’s thought: “…the universe of thought, like that of perception, is lacunary and baroque in itself, that there is lateral evidence, between the acts, and not only a progressive and frontal evidence, and all of this follows because to think is not having but not having;” and, as he says earlier in the lectures, “this nonknowledge is a knowledge.” (Merleau-Ponty 2002) This nonknowledge, this knowledge of ignorance, as he also phrases it, is the very working of passivity inhering in activity: “Simply, ideal objectivity [and it may be useful to think this as sedimentations which have become institutionalized; say, for example, the written, the book] is not in something before me; it is the lateral connection, the hidden and internal attachment of different ideations which are identified with one another across memory, conjugation of passivity and activity, equivalence of a passivity and an activity, encroachment of one on the other: passivity as mold or negativity of an activity.” (Merleau-Ponty 2002) And this passivity-activity system, as he calls it a number of times, finds its expression in the language with which it is intertwined. In addition to his reading of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty also read Eugen Fink’s Sixth Cartesian Meditation and, at the beginning of the course, he states that in this particular text Fink is “writing only in Husserl’s margin.” (Merleau-Ponty 2002) The inception of a phenomenology of phenomenology that Fink articulates in this thinking forward of the Cartesian Meditations—and Merleau-Ponty already repeats the need for such an approach in Phenomenology of Perception—is one with which Husserl, as expressed in his own marginalia in the manuscripts of this sixth meditation, clearly struggled. There is a certain un-doing with this necessary aim of latency and in its lateral apprehension there is inevitably paradox. While Husserl’s writing weaves these paradoxes so beautifully within his own phenomenologizing, and I suspect this was part of the appeal of his style for Merleau-Ponty, there is a certain tension towards them. Nevertheless, I was surprised to read his so direct and trenchant disavowal of paradox in the introduction written in 1931 for the first English translation of Ideas I: “A philosophy with problematic foundations, with paradoxes due to the unclarity of its fundamental concepts, is not philosophy and contradicts the very sense of philosophy.” (Husserl 1989)4 As if in answer, Merleau-Ponty says in the concluding notes to his course: “Perhaps Husserl would evade the objection and the complaint of paradox, if he had not enclosed his own discovery in the dimension of the ‘consciousness’ of the absolute Ego.” (Merleau-Ponty 2002) It is as if Husserl could not allow himself to be fully seduced, even momentarily, by that generic object of the world which spoke to him, and to us, earlier. The center, as this  Perhaps, given the year in which this preface was written, the intensity of the statement may be associated with Husserl’s disenchantment with Heidegger and, given his distress over what he felt to be the misdirection of phenomenology in Being and Time, may even be aimed particularly and intentionally at Heidegger. There seem to be so many lines to read between in philosophy. 4

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absolute Ego, cannot hold. In the essay from which we borrowed the term, Merleau-­ Ponty already describes this as “the point where all is in suspense, the center of indetermination.” (Merleau-Ponty 2003) Merleau-Ponty’s writing seems always fully at play within the allure of passivity.

7  Love It has dawned on me, in these necessarily vain efforts to think the passivity which undoes us, that one reason the working notes of Merleau-Ponty have such an allure for me and are experienced in the reading with such joy, if not voluptuousness, is that they function as fragments—they are, as written, the always already passivity which fragments. In one of the notes dated November, 1959, this simple and direct statement provoked one of those rare moments in the jouissance of reading thinking during which it is as if one suddenly needs to remind oneself to breathe: “…it is not I who makes myself think any more than it is I who makes my heart beat.” (Merleau-­ Ponty, 1968) And I would want to add: It is not I who makes myself love any more than it is I who makes my heart beat. Love shatters.5 The at times too ready for activity body of love, even if phenomenal, can all too quickly become an alien, foreign body to be extruded if the allure of the horizon of passivity goes un-experienced, un-acknowledged, un-able to be endured. It is no wonder that there are so many so-­ called fallings in and out of love. And at the level of intersubjectivity, a politics that wishes to employ love as a concept, as so much of the thought of religions has demonstrated, is at risk of losing the tie to this anonymous, shared horizon of passivity and at risk of having love become an ideal and, therefore, alienating form. However, any politics that disavows the shared as the intergivenness of this horizon of love in its ongoing originating passivity may be an even greater risk for us in our plurality.

References Husserl, Edmund. 1982. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book (trans: Kersten, F.). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. ———. 1989. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Second Book (trans: Rojcewicz, Richard and André Schuwer). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. 2001. Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis (trans: Steinbock, Anthony J.). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1968. The Visible and the Invisible (trans: Lingis, Alphonso). Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

 Here, if there were time, we would read Jean-Luc Nancy’s essay, “Shattered Love.” Love in its shattering has perhaps never been written so sublimely. 5

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———. 1993. Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis: Preface to Hesnard (trans: Fisher, Alden L.). In Merleau-Ponty and Psychology, ed. Keith Hoeller, 67–72. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press. ———. 2002. Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology (trans and ed: Lawlor, Leonard with Bettina Bergo). Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. 2003. L’Instituion, la passivité. Paris: Belin. My translation. Van Breda, H. L. 1992. Merleau-Ponty and the Husserl Archives at Louvain (trans: Michelman, Stephen). In Texts and Dialogues: Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ed. Hugh J. Silverman and James Barry, Jr., 150–161. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press.

Part III

At the Limits of Phenomenology: Towards Phenomenology as Philosophy of Limits

Time and Oblivion: A Phenomenological Study on Oblivion Benjamin Draxlbauer

Abstract  The following paper aims to offer a phenomenological analysis of the phenomenon of oblivion. For Husserl oblivion is a true limit-case emerging on the edge of time-consciousness. The paper elaborates two distinct views of Husserl on the topic of oblivion in conjunction with some broader considerations on the topic and its relationship to intentional consciousness. In his early view, the retentional modification of a past experience continues ad infinitum even when a totally forgotten experience bears no relationship to the current moment. In his later manuscripts Husserl rejects his early view and claims that the retentional modification itself ceases. It reaches its nil-value within the remote past. All past experiences remain preserved and sedimented within an ossified horizon. In the last part of the paper I draw the conclusion that Husserl’s conception of a universal consciousness of the past bears no phenomenological evidence. Keywords  Time-consciousness · Temporality · Oblivion · Forgetting · Retentionality · Limit-case · Limit-phenomenon

1  Introduction The following paper aims to offer a phenomenological analysis of the phenomenon of oblivion. I will start with a short clarification of the preconception of oblivion so as to provide a basis for understanding the phenomena in question. I will then investigate Edmund Husserl’s conception of oblivion, being a so-called “marginal-­ problem” within his conception of time-consciousness. In Husserl’s texts oblivion arises as a problem when retentional modification comes to an end. A certain tone is anticipated in protention and comes to full intuition in the primordial-presentation (German Urpräsentation). After this process a new tone arises and the old one is B. Draxlbauer (*) Universität Wien, Wien, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Apostolescu (ed.), The Subject(s) of Phenomenology, Contributions to Phenomenology 108, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29357-4_12

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retentionally modified. It is “held in grip” until the whole melody has been fully given. This “consciousness of the past” is constituted by the retentional modification of a former given impressional stock (within primordial-presentation). As long as we do not access our consciousness of the past by remembering certain experiences, the formerly present stock is forgotten and immersed in retentional consciousness. In the first part of the analysis I will investigate Husserl’s early view on this process of forgetting. I will then proceed to his later view. After some big changes within Husserlian phenomenology, which can be summed up as the switch from static to genetic phenomenology, Husserl gives a different description of the role of retention with regard to oblivion. The last part of the paper consists of a critical evaluation of Husserl’s view on the consciousness of the past and oblivion. I will argue that phenomenologically speaking the past is an incomplete horizon, which is full of holes and obscured areas. Husserl’s construction of the past as a complete and universal horizon misses the point of this phenomenological insight.

2  Preliminary Remarks on the Phenomenon of Oblivion Although phenomenological research has done a lot of work on the explication of time-consciousness, analyses of phenomena connected to oblivion are still missing. Hence the first step is to give a tentative description of oblivion and its role within phenomenological time-consciousness. Oblivion can be described as a lack or loss of memories. We are unable to recollect certain memories or information, which should be available within our stock of memories. By actively trying to recollect the missing parts, we are encountering a certain “I cannot”, a deficient mode of the “I can”. Our presentifying consciousness is unable to bring the past presence back to intuition – it is either blocked by something, or the past presence is not there anymore. For example, it is impossible for our (active) consciousness to recollect the specific position of the front door key. On the one hand it might be the case that our consciousness has grown so tired, that the mode of recollection is not working anymore. On the other hand it is possible, that the past presence of the position of the key has not been stored properly within consciousness, or was stored and has been removed or covered by other intuitions. This brief description of the phenomenon of oblivion shows that oblivion, understood as the inability of our consciousness to recollect specific past presences or ossified presences (as opposed to the living-­ present), falls within the wider topic of phenomenological time-consciousness, insofar as our retentional consciousness is either empty (so that it is not possible for us to recollect a specific phase) or the active access to a certain retentional stock is blocked. Hence oblivion can be described as “forgetting of past memories or retentions” or in short: “forgetting of the past”. Being a very common phenomenon in everyday life, this understanding of oblivion is closely connected to our active ego-­ sphere. The ego’s willful striving – connected to the “I can” – is trying to establish

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an active synthesis of recollection and hence to re-presentify certain past intuitions before the mind’s eye. But this process is blocked, when oblivion is at work. The above mentioned preconception of oblivion is located within the active sphere and the ego is participating within this whole process. But we also can locate oblivion on the passive level of phenomenological time-consciousness and its famous triadic structure (retention  – primordial-presentation/impression  – protention).1 The constitution of time and internal time-objects includes a passive sphere of consciousness, which is the foundational layer for higher-level phenomena (acts of the ego), like the one mentioned above. This is not the place to consider the role and relatedness of passivity and activity within Husserl’s framework, but the relation of these topics to oblivion. Within original time-consciousness oblivion can be described as the loss of presentness and givenness. Let us consider the melody-­example in perception. A certain tone is fully given within my active consciousness – I am currently hearing the tone. I am fully aware of this tone but in a split second the tone has slipped into retention, where it is still connected with the new tone. By this retentional “holding in grip”, consciousness has synthesized the tones to the enduring object “melody”. But after a few minutes the tone will be totally forgotten in the sense that it is not present anymore. The intuition or givenness of the tone within the original field of time-consciousness (which is also called the living-present2 in late Husserl) has vanished. This whole process of falling into oblivion seems to pass “by itself”, without the ego being involved  – I am not “actively forgetting” the tone or pushing it out of the present. Compared to the first preconception, the latter notion has to do with the passive realm of inner time-­ consciousness and perception. It is this notion of oblivion which will be discussed with respect to Husserl in the following chapter.

3  H  usserl on Oblivion: The Finiteness of the Retentional Process 3.1  Husserl’s Early View: The Endless Retentional Process Husserl’s remarks on the topic of oblivion are neither systematically developed nor final. Generally speaking, one can find these remarks only within footnotes or at the end of some broader considerations of topics connected to time-consciousness within his manuscripts. Early views can be found in Husserl’s Lectures on Internal Time-consciousness (Husserl 1991, called Lectures henceforth) but remain rather preliminary. In later manuscripts3 Husserl tries to give some new answers to the  Cf. Husserl 2001a, §18. and §27.  For a detailed description of the notion of the living-present cf. Held 1966, Kortooms 2002, 231–237 and Brand 1969, 75–101. 3  These are mainly the L-manuscripts (Husserl 2001b), Experience and Judgment (Husserl 1939), the C-manuscripts (Husserl 2006) and the recently published Grenzprobleme (Husserl 2013). 1 2

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problem, but as far as I can see, he never managed to give a consistent and final answer or develop any systematic approach to the problem of oblivion. In his Lectures Husserl is mainly concerned to outline the triadic structure of internal time-consciousness and explain how it is able to constitute temporal-­ enduring objects (like a melody), which transcend the now-phase of the actual giving consciousness. At the heart of the analysis is the relationship between primordial-impression and retentional consciousness, which he also calls “primary memory”.4 A primordially given tone in the “now” (a currently perceived tone) is transformed into the recent past, where the tone is held in consciousness by a retentional modification. This modification “ensures” that the tone does not step out of the present into the forgotten past, which would lead to a loss of the connection to the actual now-presence of perceiving consciousness – intentionality could not be established.5 Every now-phase within perception is accompanied by a comet’s tail of retentions. The process of retentional pushing-back is starting immediately after the now-givenness of the tone and leads the tone from the present into recent past and further on into a remote or “forgotten” past. It implies a weakening until the tone-retention has entirely disappeared. “The original temporal field is manifestly limited, precisely as in perception’s case.” (Husserl 1991, 32) Hence, the problem of oblivion starts beyond this realm of the original field of time, when a retentional stock is entering the remote past.6 The only thing which Husserl tells us about the “fate” of the retentions within this remote realm is the following: The limitation of the temporal field is not taken into consideration in the diagram. No ending of retention is foreseen there, and idealiter a consciousness is even possible in which everything remains preserved retentionally. (Husserl 1991, 32)

This gives us a more or less clear picture on how Husserl thinks about totally forgotten stock which has no connection to the present anymore. Such totally forgotten stock might for example be a melody I was listening to in a concert a year ago. This experience has no connection to my actual conscious, as long as I am not remembering it or a sudden association pops up. The passage quoted above leads to the view that – despite being “inactual” or “forgotten” – these retentions are related to the original presence in the sense, that the retentional modification is idealiter still at work. In principle, a long forgotten retention of a tone is still retentionally modified. This is the case because the process of retentional pushing-back principally has no end. With each new moment a new retentional modification is taking place, which is also a retention of its preceding retentions. This phenomenon is called the interlacing (German Verschachtelung) of retentions.7 It does ideally not  Cf. Husserl 1991, 33f.  Of course the matter is not as simple as described, but for the present purpose this description should suffice. For the topic of retentionality as intentionality cf. Husserl 1991, 33f., 55f and 122ff. 6  Husserl will later find a new terminology for this temporal field of original givenness – the livingpresent. Cf. footnote 2. 7  Cf. Husserl 1991, 84ff. As to the topic, that our factual consciousness has contingent limitations cf. Husserl 2001b, 45–47. Husserl states quite clearly in this passage, that all the factual limitations to consciousness are nothing more than mere contingent limits. 4 5

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stop beyond the original field of time, because in each moment a new now is appearing, which is pushing all the preceding retentions further back into the past. This leads to the early view of Husserl, that the retentional process is unlimited and stretching back into the remote past ad infinitum. On the other hand Husserl seems to be quite aware that the original field of time is factually limited and that the retentional pushing-back is accompanied by a continual weakening until its disappearance. It would seem that Husserl holds the opinion that the weakening of the retentional modification is a contingent phenomenon which is not essential to consciousness. On the other hand the infinite pushing-back process is essential to time-­ consciousness. The phenomenon of oblivion seems to be unproblematic to Husserl, because time-consciousness is the universal and endless horizon of original givenness and memorizing. Everything which has ever been given to consciousness is retained and thereby “stored” within time-consciousness. The foundational moments are memory and primordial-givenness, which founds the retentional process and its remote mode in the past, oblivion.8 Via this conception Husserl manages to explain the possibility of recollecting a certain past experience.9 But let’s be clear on the point, that this view of Husserl is an ideal view and derived from his principal considerations concerning time-­ consciousness. In principle (and for a god-like creature) the retentional process is endless, implies, that everything which has ever been given is retained in consciousness. Of course for us imperfect beings, there are contingent limitations to this process, which lead to the irreproducible loss of memories and oblivion. In my view it was the relationship between retentionality and intentionality that lead Husserl to rethink his view on oblivion and in particular his description of retentional consciousness being a form of intentional consciousness. If we consider the problem of oblivion, we do not see an intentional relation to the actual presence. On the contrary if a certain stock has stepped out of the original field of time, this stock seems to be “deintentionalized”, although it must still have a certain relation to the present consciousness, because it can be “intenionalized” when we recollect a retained stock (if we are able to). So on the one hand Husserl is saving the possibility of recollection by assuming that the retentional modification is still at work in the remote past, but on the other hand, it is unclear to what extent retentionally modified experiences in the remote past are still intentionally related to the present consciousness, when we are currently in no way engaged with these past experiences. If a certain past experience is truly forgotten, this seems to imply, that our current consciousness-of is  Cf. Held 1981, 205f. Klaus Held criticizes Husserl for attributing the foundational mode to memory. Held argues that the foundational mode is oblivion and not memory, because the original field of time is not just factually but principally limited. Due to the finiteness of the field of presence we can memorize a certain content again. Hence oblivion, and not memory, is founding the possibility of reproduction in his view. Generally speaking, Held is trying to give an (rather Heideggerian) account on time-consciousness in his paper. He is doing this by replacing the center-mode of primordial-impression. What I find difficult in Held’s approach is that it sometimes lacks concrete phenomenological description. Rudolf Bernet also criticizes Husserl for his metaphysics of presentism. Cf. Bernet 1983, 45ff. 9  Cf. for example Husserl 1991, 37f. 8

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not a consciousness-of this experience anymore and this would mean, that it is not retentionally modified anymore (if retentionality is a form of intentionality, which I hold to be true). But how is this past experience “stored” within consciousness, when it seems to be out of intentionality? On my view, such crucial questions show that Husserl’s early view raises serious questions to our intentional consciousness and some of them are addressed in his later view, which I now present.

3.2  H  usserl’s Late View: The Finite Retentional Process and Sedimentation Husserl’s late view on the process of sinking into oblivion differs in two major points from his early view. Firstly, he arrives at the conclusion that the retentional modification comes to an end. Secondly, he differentiates between different types of retentionality and, doing so, this directly addresses the topic of oblivion.10 This shift in opinion clearly is embedded in some major changes in the broader framework of his phenomenology.11 A first step in the direction of his new view can be found within the L-manuscripts. At the end of “Text No. 7” where Husserl is concerned with the modalities of time12 and time’s flow, Husserl directly asks himself: The primordial presenting process and its correlate, the primordial presence. How do we know, that the modification of the past is extending ad infinitum? The primordial presence is on the contrary limited, although “floating“ in its limits. How does it happen, that we come to regard time’s flow, the flow of the modalities of time and time itself infinite?13 (Husserl 2001b, 141, author’s translation)

 Cf. Kortoom 2002, 243 f.  These changes and the new framework will only enter the forthcoming discussion if they are relevant to the current topic. 12  Husserl distinguishes between the temporal form of a given tone in perception and how the given tone is given through the temporal modes of retentional, primordial and protentional consciousness. In short: the tone might be given now, an hour ago or yesterday, meaning, that the tone is embedded in a temporal system which has a fixed and non-streaming form. But the givenness of the tone within the original field of time or within the living-present, as Husserl calls it, is temporally modified through the triadic structure of constituting time-consciousness from the L-manuscripts on. A perceived tone is protended, primordially given in the present now-point and retentionally modified in the past tone-points. The modalities of time in contrast to temporal forms or tenses are stream-forms. Cf. Husserl 2001b, “Text No. 7”, §3. 13  “Der ursprüngliche präsentierende Prozess und sein Korrelat, die ursprüngliche Präsenz. Woher wissen wir, dass die Wandlung von Vergangenheit ins Unendliche reicht? Die ursprüngliche Präsenz ist doch begrenzt, obschon “fließend” den Grenzen nach. Wie kommen wir dazu, den Fluss der Zeit, den Fluss der Zeitmodalitäten und die Zeit selbst unendlich zu setzen?” 10 11

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Although the L-manuscripts can be considered as a continuation of the Lectures,14 it is quite remarkable that Husserl directly asks this question, because many p­ assages in favor of his earlier view can also be found within these manuscripts.15 In this passage the difference between the factual limitation of the original field of time (or the primordial presence, as Husserl calls it here) and the ideal infinity of the retentional modification seems to be problematic to Husserl. He does not refer to the old distinction between the ideal and the factual process, but seems to hold the position, that retentional modification comes to an end, which implies that the primordial stream of consciousness comes to a standstill. Up to this point Husserl remains silent about the specific nature of this standstill, but confirms his conviction in his Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis: Earlier I thought that this retentional streaming and the constitution of the past would continue to go on incessantly even within complete obscurity. But now it seems to me that one can dispense with this hypothesis. The process itself ceases. (Husserl 2001a, 226)

As far as I can see, it was Husserl’s “genetic turn” and the introduction of the ego and its activity, which lead him to the opinion that the retentional process comes to an end. If we consider closely the possibility within formal time-consciousness, which Husserl had already developed before his “genetic turn”, it seems impossible that the stream of the living-present should come to an end at some point in the remote past. The stream is endless in its formal proceeding, because every new now is pushing all the preceding retentions further back into the past. But as Husserl sometimes mentions, this abstract-formal view is something that must be elaborated by a more concrete view within genetic phenomenology.16 The role of the ego and its acts within the living-present leads to a different view on oblivion and retentionality. Within the living-present the ego is striving for the full17 givenness of a certain object. Its acts are directed towards the givenness of the object and therefore object-formation itself is in progress. Anticipations are formed within protentional consciousness and become fulfilled in primordial presence as long as the ego is interested in a certain object. The object in all its aspects comes alive in this process. But not only expectations or protentions are formed within the actual givenness of  Of course, that does not mean that Husserl is not gaining some new and very important insights with regard to the interweaving of retentional and protentional consciousness for example, but his phenomenological style is mainly within the style of the Lectures. Hence genetic topics (like association, affections and actions etc.) are just peripherally discussed. 15  Cf. footnote 7. 16  For the difference between an abstract-formal and a concrete analysis of the living-present in its temporality cf. Husserl 2002, 384–387. The topic of affectivity in particular required new concrete analysis of the constitution. Cf. Husserl 2001a, §34 and §35. 17  On my view, we should better speak of “optimal” than “full”, because a certain apprehension of an object is led by the interest of the ego. As long as the ego is interested in grasping the object in different aspects, the object-apprehension has not come to the optimal givenness of the object. Our consciousness is satisfied by the actual givenness of the object, when the object is given optimally. 14

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the object, but also retentions and the retentional past. Within the stream of the living-­present, certain aspects of givenness of the actual object are already acquired by the ego and held in grip within retention. This acquisition which is retained within “active retentionality” is still alive and within the living-present.18 It is still holding for the present moment and its object-apprehension – the living-present in its breadth is a unity of validity: In the retained [stock] lies the retained directedness, and every persisting validity contains a modified mode of attention as a direction of the ego in the manner of a persisting directedness in itself. But it is not merely a being-directed, as if that would be anything on its own, as little as the contentful conscious of passive retentionality is acquisition on its own, but in the streaming of the living now-accomplishment of the act lies a continual now-being-­ directed and [in addition], via off-streaming, a continual past-accomplishment and a still-­ being-­valid – a having-been-directed and a being-still-directed. The concrete living act is, as a concrete one, a directed accomplishment. In activity is the ego attending the valid […].19 (Husserl 2006, 311, author’s translation)

All the past moments of givenness are retained and in grip within retentional consciousness, they are still valid for the present object-apprehension. Through this whole active ego process, consciousness constitutes all its objects in their manifold aspects.20 But the interest of the ego comes to an end and by this the constitution and givenness of the object is completed. The directedness of the ego is dissolving at some point.21 It is exactly at this point that Husserl’s early view would claim that retentional modification would still proceed beyond the living-present, although the apprehension of the object has already been completed. The completed object is not in formation (or retentionally modified) anymore but has become a required stock for consciousness. The whole process of primordial givenness of the object within the living-present has stopped and the required object is preserved but not formed anymore. I think this is the central idea which lead Husserl to the view that the retentional process itself is stopping at some point. The given object is not modified anymore and hence the retentional modification has come to a standstill just as the process of the constitution of the object itself. We will now further describe this standstill in line with Husserl’s thought. If we take the genesis of the object within the living-present into account, we see that it offers a concrete analysis of the fully fleshed out object in its becoming as  Cf. Brand 1969, 96.  „Im Behaltenen liegt das behaltene Gerichtetsein, und jede Noch-Geltung enthält den modifizierten Aufmerksamkeitsmodus als Richtung des Ich in der Weise des Noch-Gerichtetseins in sich. Aber es ist nicht bloß Gerichtetsein, als ob das etwas für sich wäre, so wenig das in passiver Retentionalität noch als inhaltlich Bewusste Erfassung für sich ist, sondern im Strömen des lebendigen Jetzt-Vollziehens des Aktes liegt ein stetes Jetzt-Sich-Richten und verströmend ein stetiges Vollzogen-Haben und Noch-in-Geltung-Haben, Gerichtet-gewesen-Sein und Noch-Gerichtetsein. Der konkret lebendige Akt ist als konkreter, gerichteter Vollzug. Aktuell ist das Ich bei dem Geltenden […]“. 20  Of course, a certain passive background is required in this process, but this is not relevant for the present purpose. 21  In my view this is the point of optimal givenness. The object is fully given and nothing is demanded from the object anymore. 18 19

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well as in its completion. The purely formal-abstract view on phenomena of time is put aside by Husserl and its results are presented in a new light. We can now come back to the remote past and ask the question, how the process of oblivion and stepping out of the living-present works. As has been mentioned above, the living-present is a unity of validity. When the ego has lost its interest in a certain object-acquisition, the corresponding retended act and its (now completed) object is rendered invalid for the living-present. The object is released into the realm of passive retentionality. As time goes on and the living-present flows into the future, the former acquisitions and its constituting consciousness are released from the living-present. The retentions are sinking into the remote past, a dark realm, where they rest without being modified. The judgement in its retentional attenuation can be released from its grip. It is constantly sinking back into the background and by this becoming more and more vague […] until it has entirely slipped out of the actual consciousness and been “forgotten”. It is henceforth incorporated into the passive background, into the “unconscious”, which is not a dead nothingness but a limit mode of consciousness and can accordingly affect us anew like another passivity in the form of whims, free-floating ideas, and so on.22 (Husserl 1939, 336, author’s translation)

Analogous to the judgment, completed objects are also released into this dark realm of unconsciousness. But if they are not retentionally modified anymore, it raises the question of how they reside within this remote past. On the one hand, they must still be available for consciousness (due to the possibility of recollection) but on the other hand they are invalid for the actual living-present and their modification has come to an end. Husserl tries to master this complexity by introducing the concept of sedimentation. That, which has become, is continuously sinking back into the nil-horizon, each phase of the finite liveliness which has become a nil-phase is “sedimented”, entering the reservoir of sedimentation, which remains entirely without transformation in its already existing sedimented stocks.23 (Husserl 2013, 63, author’s translation)

Within total oblivion, a formerly given stock is sedimented into the dead realm, where it rests for as long as it remains untouched by association or reawakened by the living-present. As a sediment a former stock rests on all previous stock and forms the substrate of the actual consciousness. Our life of consciousness with all its habitualities and developments rests on the unconsciousness and its forgotten  “Das Urteil kann […] in seinem retentionalen Abklingen aus dem Griff gelassen werden. Es sinkt dann immer weiter zurück in den Hintergrund und wird in eins damit immer verschwommener […] bis es schließlich ganz dem Bereich des aktuellen Bewußtseins entschwindet, “vergessen” wird. Es ist nun dem passiven Hintergrund, dem “Unbewußten” einverleibt, das kein totes Nichts, sondern ein Grenzmodus des Bewußtseins ist, und kann von daher wie eine andere Passivität wieder affizieren in Form von Einfällen, vorschwebenden Gedanken usw.” Cf. also Husserl 2002, 472f. 23  “Das, was geworden , sinkt kontinuierlich in den Nullhorizont ein, jede Phase der endlichen Lebendigkeit, die zur Nullphase geworden ist,” sedimentiert“, eingehend in das Reservoir des Sedimentierten, das völlig wandellos verharrt in seinen schon sedimentierten Beständen.” Cf. also Husserl 2001a, §37. 22

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stock of sedimentations, which form the phenomenon of the remote past.24 Beyond the living-present with its apperceptions, apprehensions and intentional acquisitions lies a temporal underground, which is forming the shore of the vivid stream of ­consciousness. Analogous to the background of our visual field, certain stimuli can affect the ego’s interest and hence awaken former experiences (i.e. memories). But, in contrast to the visual background, the realm of sedimentation seems to be more akin to an underground than a background. Elsewhere Husserl describes the process of sinking back into the remote past as an internalization of the patent being into its intentional modification, the latent being. The patent being is the living-present, where the objects are fully disclosed in their phenomenal givenness. Their fate is to vanish into the latent past: The unconscious is not modified through inclusion of a still valid stock, because no active validities originate from the ego, from its actuality, which would proceed as modes of the unconsciousness. Within the waking-period we have – expressed in a wordplay – onstreaming “memory”, the process of streaming into the “inwardness” of the unconscious from the active “outwardness” (from patency into latency).25 (Husserl 2006, 307, author’s translation)

Before we take a closer look at the limes and its correlate the nil-horizon let us compare Husserl’s late view with his early remarks. What hasn’t changed is that all latency and forgotten stock is a modification of a preceding patency or the primordial presence. In his Lectures this was already mentioned, when Husserl states that every retention is derived from a primordial impression. The constitution of the latent past is bound to the center-mode of the living-present, the realm of patent being.26 All oblivion is derived from this center-mode, which– as a primordial mode – is intentionally unmodified and originally given. Furthermore, everything which is given to consciousness stays within consciousness and does not become a nothingness (or step out of consciousness). The primordial givenness within the living-present and its retentional modification is also held within consciousness in its extreme limit-mode the unconsciousness or the realm of sedimentation. In contrast to these continuities in Husserl’s remarks on oblivion, the limes-­ construction and the constitution of the nil-horizon has replaced the old concept of endless retentional pushing-back. When the retentional modification has reached its  It might be worth pointing out that Husserl’s conception of sedimentation seems to be compatible with the notion of imprinting used in psychology (behavioural science) and genetics. Especially if one is thinking of the sedimentation of experiences, which form habitualities. Cf. Husserl 1939, §24 and §25. 25  “Das Unbewusste wandelt sich nicht durch Aufnahme von Fortgeltungen, da keine aktiven Geltungen vom Ich, von seiner Aktualität ausgehen, sich als Unbewusstheitsmodi fortsetzend. Innerhalb der Wachperiode haben wir also, in einem Wortspiel gesprochen, fortströmend “Erinnerung”, den Prozess des in die “Innerlichkeit” des Unbewussten Hineinströmens aus der aktiven “Äußerlichkeit” (aus der Patenz in die Latenz).“Unfortunately it is hard to find an appropriate translation for „Erinnerung“(memory/recollection), which would fit in the German wordplay. Maybe something like “interiorimemorization” (interiorization by memorization). Cf. also Husserl 1973: 608f. 26  Cf. Husserl 1973: 608f. 24

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extreme value, the modification preserves its mode with a nil-value. It stays within retentional consciousness but without being modified into the past anymore. It rests on the limes without modification. The unconsciousness would then be a liminal-­ consciousness with the modification value 0. This liminal-consciousness cannot be exceeded into a realm of the unconsciousness, which is principally independent from consciousness and the living-present. All sedimentation and its deep-structure must be built up within this form of liminal-consciousness. If we go back to the question of intentionality, we can conclude that a de-­ intentionalization of any past stock within the remote past still seems impossible. Although retentional intentionality has come to its nil within the limes, it has not vanished or degenerated. The remote past and total oblivion is then identical with the liminal-consciousness. Oblivion is a true limit-case for Husserl which means that we are dealing with appearances on the extreme limit of givenness.27 Our whole experience, which is bound to the center-mode of the living-present, is on its limits within liminal-experience. If we compare the above mentioned limit-phenomenon of oblivion with Anthony Steinbock’s the general description of limit-phenomena we find that oblivion in Husserl’s sense is not a limit-phenomenon in Steinbock’s sense. Steinbock gives the following description of limit-phenomena: By limit-phenomena, I understand those matters [Sachen] that are on the edge of accessibility in a phenomenological approach to experience, and not simply those matters that have historically been at the border of phenomenological discourse […] I will characterize limit-­ phenomena as those “phenomena” that are given as not being able to be given. (Steinbock 1998, 275)

By this characterization, we see that oblivion in Husserl’s terms is not a limit-­ phenomenon in Steinbock’s sense, because a certain sedimented experience can be reawakened. A forgotten experience is able to be given or re-given within reproductive modes. But on the other hand, if we consider oblivion in a more radical sense, it most likely is a limit-case in the sense that I can remember that there must have been a certain experience but I am not able to remember the experience anymore. We mentioned the front door key example above and saw that this is a case where a certain experience is totally forgotten – a past givenness which is missing in our consciousness of the past. But, unlike other limit-phenomena (like, for example, death), oblivion can be described as a factual limit-case. A forgotten stock is not in principle unable to be given – we can remember some past experiences and others stay inaccessible. The experience of death is in principle unable to be given. Within our conscious life, we will never be able to experience our own death. What is the same for both limit-cases is the fact that Husserl is using a certain construction to explain its constitution. Liminal-consciousness and oblivion are principally at the edge of the phenomenal field and their temporal expression the living-present. This means that Husserl doesn’t have to struggle with a limit-case in Steinbock’s sense, because Husserl does not state that oblivion is a non-given givenness. Oblivion is on 27

 Cf. Husserl 2013, XXIII.

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the edge of the phenomenal field and consciousness, but it is not a givenness that is principally unable to be given. Husserl’s endeavor is to make the limit-case of oblivion as clear as possible.28 So far, I have not touched on the topic of Husserl’s own struggles with the problem of the unconsciousness, sedimentation and oblivion. I tried to give a coherent answer on the basis of recently published manuscripts, but in fact, if one runs through Husserl’s writings, it leaves the impression, that Husserl was never fully satisfied with his answers to the questions posed by the limit-case of oblivion. Confusion, unclarity. It is said that it is impossible for the retentional modifications to carry on ad infinitum, they reach their nil, and by this the momentary liveliness of the stream […] is completed: it terminates retentionally in the nil, which enters into the reservoir of all nils, into the nil-horizon of sedimented stocks.29 (Husserl 2013, 62, author’s translation)

Elsewhere, Husserl asks the crucial question concerning intentionality and obscuration of the retentional process again: “Does it make sense, is it conceivable, that the retentional modification ceases?”30 (Husserl 2013, 45, author’s translation) Above we explained that, within the realm of dark intentionality, this is not the case and if one gathers Husserl’s remarks on the topic I do think, that Husserl’s last word would be in favor of this option. What is it then that makes Husserl so unsure about the limit-case of oblivion? Earlier I thought that Husserl’s allegiance to transcendental idealism must have been the problem. A being, independent from consciousness, which could principally not been given to consciousness – a true limit-case in Steinbock’s sense (an inaccessible non-givenness)31 – is non-sense in the light of transcendental idealism.32 And hence a forgotten stock, which becomes a nothingness, must have been non-sense. In my view, this is not the question that Husserl is considering, because it simply is not a valid possibility for him (as a transcendental

 On the one hand it is true for oblivion that it is on the edge of accessibility, as Steinbock calls it, but on the other hand, oblivion in Husserl’s terms seems to be more a limit-case (German Grenzfall) than a limit-phenomenon (German Grenzphänomen). In my view Husserl does not think of a phenomenon or a givenness, when he is speaking of oblivion. He hardly ever speaks of limit-phenomena (German Grenzphänomene) but usually uses the term limit-cases (German Grenzfälle). A detailed analysis of this topic would go beyond the scope of the present paper. 29  “Verwirrung, Unklarheit. Man sagt, die retentionalen Abwandlungen können nicht ins Unendliche gehen, sie kommen an ein Null, und so ist die jeweilige momentane Stromlebendigkeit […] endlich abgeschlossen: Sie endet retentional im Null, das eingeht in das Reservoir aller Null, in den Nullhorizont, den des Sedimentierten.” 30   “Hat es überhaupt einen Sinn, ist es denkmöglich, dass die intentionale Modifikation verschwindet?” 31  Cf. Galán 2014, 260. 32  Cf. Husserl 2001a, 57: “An object that is, but is not and in principle could not be an object of a consciousness, is pure non-sense.” I conclude from statements like this, which can be found in Husserl from time to time, that a true limit-case is not possible and hence non-sense. It would be non-sense, to hold, that a former given experience can become a totally forgotten and hence inaccessible experience. 28

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idealist).33 To me, it seems that Husserl was unhappy about the fact that oblivion poses serious questions to intentional consciousness and the living-present, being the primordial field for phenomenological analysis and demonstration. In the end, intentionality seems to be the answer for him. A forgotten stock does not lose its intentional modification, but the modification arrives at a nil-value. As to the question of intentionality, it is indeed the specific complexity of oblivion and ­liminal-­consciousness that they cannot be put into the center of the phenomenal field and be phenomenologically investigated. To capture its characterizations we need to focus on the fringes of consciousness. In the end, Husserl’s best attempt to answer the problem of oblivion is the construction of the nil-horizon which, as we will see in the last part of this paper leads to a problematic account on the consciousness of the past and oblivion.

4  Past-Lines and the One Past The picture of the consciousness of the past, which Husserl offers, is that of a continuous and dense past. The continuity of the stream of consciousness in the living-­ present is adopted for the realm of retentional consciousness, which is a form of the consciousness of the past. Be it the limes-construction or its correlate, the nil-­ horizon, this construction (and the construction of a limit 0 of retentionality and its affective force is certainly a construction) leads to the impression, that the past is a universal horizon on our demand. If we want, we can remember a certain experience within this dense and complete structure. Oblivion and forgetting is just a contingent weakness of our imperfect consciousness. But, following Mead’s argumentation in his paper The Nature of the Past, it is hard to find continuities in the past and even harder to recover them in their details.34 To me it seems to be a mistake in Husserl to assume that our consciousness of the past has the same continuous form as the living-present. On the contrary, the past seems to be a holey figure and in no way continuous, complete, and gapless. Most of it falls prey to oblivion and remembering certain experiences is a function within the living-present, which is trying to reconstruct a specific past evoked by the current living-present. It is not the one retentional past which is constructed out of the present, but our current engagements require our consciousness to form a specific past-line which is meeting a special requirement of the present. The missing front door key in the present  That means, that the problem of oblivion cannot appear in a transcendental sense. Of course the problem can be formulated in transcendental terms. Cf. Eugen Fink 1966, 11f, where he is talking about the reduction being a suspension of the natural attitude. The reduction is a reversion of the oblivion of the natural attitude and by this opening the field of transcendental subjectivity. 34  Mead is mainly arguing against Bergson’s conception of the imagination as a vast and enormous storage of past “images”. Of course Husserl is clearly distinguishing image-consciousness from memory and other forms of consciousness, but I think that Mead’s argumentation also holds for Husserl’s conception of retentional consciousness. Cf. Mead 1929, 238. 33

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moment requires me to reconstruct the position of it and hence a specific past is constructed to meet the requirements of this moment. There are many past-lines which we can reconstruct, but there seems to be no such thing as the one continuous past as a universal horizon, as Husserl assumes.35 One might argue (as Husserl does), that this is still a problem to a contingent consciousness, but within a godlike consciousness, oblivion would be replaced by a full and continuous past, which could be remembered in all its details.36 My objection to this would be that in this case it seems that the present and past consciousness would collapse into each other and hence even a godlike consciousness would be impossible – it would be no consciousness at all. Past and present offer different modes of experience and in my view they differ exactly on the point that the present is continuous in its stream-form and the past does not appear in this manner. The living-present principally has its limits within its stream-form and by this it gains the possibility to intentionally relate to a certain finite object.37 If there were a continuous flow from the present into the past, there would be no limits of the living-present, which (the finiteness of the living-present) I hold to be the possibility to intentionally relate to one finite object. Intentionality requires finiteness on the side of the object and on the side of consciousness. Our consciousness would hardly manage a temporal overflow of past experiences into the presence and hence probably lose its focus on the present object and become chaotic. Luckily, this is not the case in experience and perception, which leads to the conclusion that oblivion might have an essential constitutive role. Oblivion is not a mere contingent border of our imperfect consciousness, but an essential mode of consciousness, to keep experiences in the past and thereby “free up” the living-present for new finite objects and experiences to appear.

References Bernet, R. 1983. Zeit und Zeitlichkeit bei Husserl und Heidegger. Freiburg: Alber. Brand, G. 1969. Welt, Ich und Zeit: Nach unveröffentlichten Manuskripten Edmund Husserls. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Fink, E. 1966. Studien zur Phänomenologie 1930–1939. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Galán, I. 2014. Generative Sinngenesis und konstruktive Phänomenologie. Eikasia: revista de filosofía 56: 255–261.  This might imply, that phenomenological construction and its abstract (or “substruct”) character, may easily seduce the phenomenologist into speculative explanations remote from the phenomenal field. On the other hand, arguing for the conception of past-lines, which seems to me closer to the phenomenon of the past, it seems difficult to explain coincidence within the reproductive mode. How can we be sure that the memory of a friend’s face from yesterday’s meeting is actually a memory of yesterday’s experiencing and not a mere product of imagination? Husserl’s abstract option of the one retentional past seems tempting for this case, because it retains not just the content of the experience but also its time position. Via time positions, our consciousness would then be able to re-identify the past position of a certain experience. Cf. Husserl 1991, §30. 36  For this argument cf. Husserl 2001b, 45f. 37  Held also criticizes Husserl with regard to this point. Cf. Held 1981, 205f. 35

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Held, K. 1966. Lebendige Gegenwart. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1981. Phänomenologie der Zeit nach Husserl. Perspektiven der Philosophie 7: 185–221. Husserl, E. 1939. Erfahrung und Urteil. In Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik, ed. Ludwig Landgrebe. Prag: Academia Verlagsbuchhandlung. ———. 1973. In Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität: Texte aus dem Nachlaß: Dritter Teil: 1929–1935, ed. Iso Kern. Dordrecht: Springer. ———. 1991. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time. Trans: John Barrnet Brough. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publisher. ———. 2001a. Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis. Lectures on Transcendental Logic. Trans. Anthony Steinbock. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. 2001b. In Die Bernauer Manuskripte über das Zeitbewusstsein (1917/18), ed. Rudolf Bernet and Dieter Lohmar. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. 2002. In Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1926–1935), ed. Sebastian Luft. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. 2006. In Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934): Die C-Manuskripte, ed. Dieter Lohmar. Dordrecht: Springer. ———. 2013. In Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie: Analysen des Unbewusstseins und der Instinkte. Metaphysik. Späte Ethik, ed. Rochus Sowa and Thomas Vongehr. Dordrecht: Springer. Kortooms, T. 2002. Phenomenology of Time: Edmund Husserl’s Analysis of Time-consciousness. Boston, Mass.: Kluwer Academic Publisher. Mead, G.H. 1929. The Nature of the Past. In Essays in Honor of John Dewey, ed. John Coss, 235–242. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Steinbock, Anthony J. 1998. Limit-Phenomena and the Liminality of Experience. Alter 6: 275–296.

On the Verge of Subjectivity: Phenomenologies of Death Christian Sternad

Das Ich stirbt nicht. (Husserl 2014, 18) Edmund Husserl If there is no experience of death, the interpretation of death as intentionality must be put in question. (Lévinas 2000, 21) Emmanuel Lévinas

Abstract  This article analyzes various phenomenological approaches to death and articulates how these approaches affect their respective conceptions of subjectivity. Since death interrupts the correlation between the subject and the object, it puts into question the fundamental premises of the phenomenological method. If a phenomenon can only appear for a subject, then how can phenomenology deal with a phenomenon that ends subjectivity? By going through classical positions, I seek to demonstrate that one can only gain a full picture of human mortality by a thorough account of intersubjectivity. Since death is not only one isolated experience at the end of our lives, I will argue that it is death that structures the ways in which we engage with others and our lifeworld. Keywords  Death · Mortality · Subjectivity/Intersubjectivity · Limit-phenomena · Scheler · Heidegger · Husserl · Fink · Lévinas · Derrida

C. Sternad (*) Husserl Archives, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Apostolescu (ed.), The Subject(s) of Phenomenology, Contributions to Phenomenology 108, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29357-4_13

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1  Introduction Heidegger’s analysis of death in Sein und Zeit is one of the most influential and controversial topics in phenomenology and existential philosophy. Many of the most important figures of phenomenology have taken a theoretical position on this topic. However, an analysis of death entails more than just a phenomenological analysis of death itself. It also raises the deep and vexing question of how death can be a subject of a phenomenological investigation at all if it is precisely death that disrupts the fundamental correlation between the subject and the object. Already Husserl struggled with this seemingly irresolvable phenomenological problem. How can phenomenology account for a certain phenomenon within consciousness if it is precisely this phenomenon itself which interrupts the constant stream of consciousness? Given this, it is no wonder that Husserl in his late manuscripts from the 1930s designated birth and death (and further: sleep and unconsciousness) as “limit-phenomena” (Limesgestalten),1 which from the point of the subject seem to be phenomenologically inaccessible. It is interesting, however, that death as a phenomenon becomes phenomenologically attainable again through Martin Heidegger’s transformation of Husserlian phenomenology, laid out in the introduction of Sein und Zeit.2 This hermeneutic phenomenology and its departure from the transcendental subject as the unshakable basis of all knowledge, enabled a different take on the problem. Rather than focusing on how death is given to consciousness as an experience, death now appears in the complex hermeneutical structure of human mortality, i.e. the very way in which man relates to this experience, which in the narrow sense is never experienced as such. In his Heretical Essays, Jan Patočka saw very clearly this deep transformation and enhancement of the phenomenological method when he accused Husserl of being incapable of going beyond the inner sphere of the constitutive subjectivity and meaning-bestowing intentions.3 In Patočka’s account, it becomes apparent that the things which show and reveal themselves by and through themselves necessitate a hermeneutic approach in which non- or even a-subjective phenomenal structures can be captured. Husserl’s “mentalism”, as he calls it, does not allow for properly situating the constitutive subject within a-subjective structures of meaning. Even if one moves away from the – narrowly understood – foundational sphere of subjectivity and takes into account a transformation of the phenomenological method as such, the phenomenon of death still proves itself to be an evanescent “subject” of investigation. Emmanuel Lévinas put this paradox very clearly into perspective when he stated that death is “a movement opposed to phenomenology”. Whereas phenomenology is concerned with appearances and the meaningful preconditions in which these appearances take place, death seems to be the “reversal of  Husserl 2006, 154ff.  Heidegger 1977, § 7. 3  Patočka 1996, 7. 1 2

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appearing” as such. As Lévinas writes: “Contrary to what appears, death is like a return of being in itself, where that which beckoned turns back into itself, and can no longer respond.”4 If it is true that the history of phenomenology is, as Paul Ricœur famously put it, the history of Husserlian heresies,5 then these heresies are particularly visible in the various phenomenologies of death wherein the phenomenological understanding of the constitutional subjectivity is sometimes put forth, revised or even abandoned. It becomes clear that the failure or success of such an analysis is inherently dependent on which trail one follows into the phenomenological method and which stance towards the understanding of foundational subjectivity one is willing to take.

2  Death as a Phenomenological Problem Phenomenology is a philosophical method or attitude that puts theoretical emphasis on experience and its systematic articulation. Hence, all theoretical knowledge is always bound to experience and the experiencing subject. Phenomenology does not indulge in contingent and speculative claims of whatever sort (cultural, social, religious, etc.) but rather only accepts that which, according to Husserl’s “principle of all principles,”6 is originarily offered to us in experience and also only within the limits in which it is presented there. Insofar as phenomenology puts its methodological emphasis on experience as the transcendental condition of possibility of philosophical knowledge, it proves itself to be first and foremost an exploration of human consciousness in all its finiteness and its possibilities of experience. Since death is an all-encompassing problem of human existence, it is hence a topic in almost all branches of science, religion and culture. A phenomenology of death however separates itself by means of its methodic rigor from all these approaches since it focusses solely on how death is given to us in experience. It brackets all assumptions which cannot be rendered explicit within the limits of experience. All beliefs in hidden worlds, deities, the afterlife, reincarnation, metaphysical conceptions of being in general, etc. are a priori suspended in this phenomenological approach. Moreover, phenomenology does not consider medical approaches to death as its primary source of knowledge. In fact, the medical explanation of death (cardiac arrest, cerebral zero activity, etc.) does little to help answer the question how death is given to us and what it means for our very existence.7 An operative concept is not a meaningful concept, nor is a meaningful concept automatically an operative concept.8  Lévinas 2000, 50.  Ricoeur 1967, 4. 6  Husserl 1982, § 24, 44. 7  See Scherer 1985, Chapter 1. 8  In fact, one could argue that all medical explanations are ways to render visible death for our human experience. Here again, the “causes” of death do not define death’s nature or essence – if there is any. For a discussion of this issue, see Schumacher 2011, Chapter 1. 4 5

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This does not mean that these concepts do not contribute to our understanding of death, but it means that we do not consider them as primary but rather as an additional stance or attitude towards the problem whose premises and preconceptions have to be rendered visible. Phenomenology deals with death as a phenomenon. This generates the problem that phenomenology has to think about how to bring death into its phenomenality. Death is not one phenomenon among others, it is a phenomenon on the borderline of being phenomenal at all. In one of his late manuscripts, Husserl found the very apt description of a “total phenomenon”9 (Totalphänomen) which he attributed to phenomena that neutralize phenomenality as such. Here, he focusses on the so called “limit phenomena”10 (Limesphänomene), such as birth, death and sleep. What theses phenomena have in common is that they, from the first-person perspective, do not appear to consciousness at all or, put differently: the appearance of these phenomena eradicate the possibility of every other phenomenon to appear. These phenomena pose as some kind of hiatus in consciousness in which the constant streaming of consciousness is either inhibited or totally interrupted. In birth, consciousness is not yet (fully) there; in sleep, especially in dreamless sleep, consciousness is temporarily inhibited; and in death, consciousness is irrevocably interrupted. The complex interrelations between these phenomena are the subject of Husserl’s ponderings in these manuscripts. Without going further into the question of their respective features or their differences to one another, it should be kept in mind that they all share a common problem: these somewhat “a-phenomenal” phenomena put into question the constitutive subjectivity which is the cornerstone of every phenomenological analysis. However, these limit-phenomena cannot be ignored since they nevertheless seem to have a constitutive role for human existence.

3  Death as a Phenomenon Husserl’s reflections in his manuscripts seem to echo the main insights and problems of Heidegger’s analysis of death in Sein und Zeit. Although Heidegger shifts the focus of the phenomenological analysis from the transcendental phenomenological approach (Husserl) to his hermeneutics of Dasein, he still struggles with the question of how to deal with death in an adequate manner. In paragraphs §§46–53, Heidegger proceeds in his typical propaedeutic manner by ruling out how we do not get to the bottom of the phenomenon of death. He first discusses the problem that death is never an experience of Dasein since death interrupts the very relation to the object in question itself. As seen later in Husserl too, Heidegger very quickly dismisses a narrowly understood “experience of death” from the first-person perspective as a starting point. Instead, and this is the starting point of a long discussion in

 Husserl 2008, 591.  Husserl 2006, 154ff.

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phenomenology, he turns to the death of the other, which he nevertheless, as the critiques say, dismisses too hastily.11 The death of the other seems to be a suitable starting point for a phenomenological analysis because this phenomenon lacks all the disadvantages of Dasein’s own death. Whereas death interrupts the correlation between the subject and the object, this does not seem to be the issue in the case of the death of the other. No matter how painful this experience might be, we can observe the process of another person’s dying without being lifted out of the possibility of experience ourselves. At the same time, this seems to be exactly the problem. Although we can experience death as it unfolds phenomenologically, we do not get an insight into what death means to us. We lose a loved person, we experience loss, we can observe this process phenomenally or symptomatically but we do not seem to get an inner insight into how death appears to us. This culminates in the Heidegger’s infamous claim: Death does indeed reveal itself as a loss, but a loss such as is experienced by those who remain. In suffering this loss, however, we have no way of access to the loss-of-Being as such which the dying man ‘suffers’. The dying of Others is not something which we experience in a genuine sense; at most we are always just ‘there alongside’.12

Provocatively put, one could say that there is nothing to learn from the death of the other, beyond the fact that it is inadequate for gaining phenomenological insight into what death means for us or for furthering Heidegger’s endeavor into the question of being. Whereas the death of the other thus seems to be an inadequate starting point for Heidegger, for Husserl it is precisely the death of the other and the death of others in general from which we are even introduced to death. For him, it is clear that death is a problem that enters into our lifeworld through others. In the manuscripts collected in the volume Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie, Husserl writes: “My death as worldly incident can only be constituted for me after I have experienced the death of others […]. The death of others is the death which is constituted prior.”13 (ger. “Mein Tod als Weltvorkommnis kann erst für mich konstituiert sein, wenn ich Tod von Anderen erfahren habe […]. Der Tod der Anderen ist der früher konstituierte Tod.”)

For Husserl, death is an experience which takes place in a generative and not in a static context. This is also the case for our birth. Although we do not experience our own birth/death, we experience this ownmost possibility through others. We experience people being born and growing up, and we experience ourselves as perceiving ourselves in hindsight as going through the same experience of aging and getting older. In the same manner, we see others age and eventually die, and we perceive the same process happening to us. Thus, death is present in our experience through the death of others.  One of the earliest critiques was put forth by Dolf Sternberger who in 1931 wrote his dissertation Der verstandene Tod under Paul Tillich solely on §47 in which the question of the death of the other becomes virulent. See Sternberger 1981. 12  Heidegger 2001, 282. 13  Husserl 2014, 3. 11

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It was Lévinas in his lectures from 1975 to 1976 Dieu, la mort et le temps who took Husserl’s idea even further against Heidegger and claimed that there is no relation to my own death which is not always already marked by the death of the other. Lévinas writes: “The death of the other: therein lies the first death.”14 Lévinas’ claim that the death of the other is the first death rids the discourse on death from the idea that something like a neutral theoretical stance towards death is even possible. In turn, my understanding of my own death depends on the experience of the death of the other, hence my understanding of my own death is my understanding of the death of the other. Without paying much attention to Lévinas’ crucial further claims (e.g. the responsibility of the survivor(s), etc.), it is vital to remember what ontological consequences follow from Husserl’s idea that we experience death only through the death of others.

4  The Phenomenality of Death Although Husserl’s analysis certainly anticipates many arguments which later play an important role, first and foremost in the French context, he fails to account for some principal arguments already made before him by Scheler and Heidegger  – arguments with which he was familiar. In Scheler’s rather short text Tod und Fortleben, which he started in 1911 and finished during the First World War, Scheler develops the idea that death is not given to us in the way of a solid form of knowledge derived from experience. He argues that “for consciousness, death is given in a manner completely incomparable to every knowledge based on experience.”15 (“[So] ist auch für das Bewußtsein der Tod in einer mit allem Erfahrungswissen unvergleichlichen Art gegeben.”) For Scheler, death is not a form of knowledge; it is, what he calls an “intuitive certainty” (intuitive Gewißheit). This expression captures the idea that even though we are not aware of death theoretically, we are nevertheless certain of it. We do not have to know about death in order for death to grab us and hence to be an integral part of our finite life. Instead of merely knowing about death as an empirical fact, we deal with death, and in this manner, death is a part of every aspect of our lives. Or as Scheler writes: In the form of this certainty, death is not at the real end of life, or would not be only one anticipation of this end which is based on the experience with other beings, but death rather accompanies the whole life as constituent of all of its moments.16 (ger. In der Form dieser Gewißheit steht der Tod nicht am realen Ende des Lebens, oder wäre nur eine auf die Erfahrung an anderen Wesen gegründete Erwartung dieses Endes, sondern er begleitet das ganze Leben als ein Bestandteil aller seiner Momente.)

It is precisely this model of a knowledge of death that comes under attack by many phenomenologists. Nevertheless, Scheler’s lucid study seems to mark the birth  Lévinas 2000, 43.  Scheler 1957, 26. 16  Scheler 1957, 26. 14 15

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place of the idea that death is not so much a fact of knowledge but rather given in the form of a certainty that does not need empirical facts in order to be given to us. Heidegger follows up on this when he differentiates between the empirical knowledge of the “case of death”17 (Todesfall) and death in its existential understanding as a possibility of Dasein. The case of death belongs to knowledge, but knowledge has little to do with our relation to our own death. For Heidegger, the amount of knowledge about death does not correlate with the certainty about death, rather the opposite is the case. In our everyday lives, we witness deaths in manifold ways, but we (choose to) treat them as cases of death which in the end do not belong to us but “happen” to others. One could even make the claim that the more knowledge we have about death and the deaths of others, the more we tend to treat death as an outer fact and decouple it from the horizon of our own life. Since these experiences are exterior cases of death, they do not necessarily relate to our own mortality. In Metaphysik und Tod, Eugen Fink formulated this argument very clearly: Man does not understand himself as ‘mortal’ by accident. Not because all humans have died since, it is expected that also in the future humans will die. Mortality is not an exterior, only trailing determination of human existence; it rather defines the being of that entity which we always already are in its essence.18 (ger. Der Mensch versteht sich nicht zufällig als ‘sterblich’. Nicht weil bisher alle Menschen gestorben sind, steht zu erwarten, daß auch künftig alle Menschen sterben werden. Die Sterblichkeit ist keine äußerliche, bloß anhängende Bestimmung des Menschseins, sie macht vielmehr das Sein des Seienden, das wir je sind, wesenhaft mit aus.)

Scheler, Heidegger, Fink and many other phenomenologists have made the case that our relation to death does not depend upon a factual knowledge of death, be it through analogy, empirical probability or simply the death of others. In turn, they claim that we have an intuitive relation to death which explicates itself in all of life’s areas and not only in isolated moments where death is present or to be experienced. What makes this argument remarkable is not so much the rejection of an empirical relation to death but rather the fact that they shift the very meaning of the “phenomenon” of death in this case. In the passages above, the question was how death could become an experience when it is precisely death that interrupts the correlation between the subject and the object of experience. This problem arose since the very character of the phenomenon of death consists in the permanent interruption of the stream of consciousness, i.e. death removes the possibility to experience the phenomenon of death. As also seen above, the death of the other shows the problem of an exterior viewpoint which does not allow for an inner insight into death but rather an outer observation of the process of a person dying. In the present case however, the notion of phenomenon shifts insofar as the experience of death is decoupled from the experience of death itself. Rather, what is the case here is that death

17 18

 Heidegger 2001, 296.  Fink 1969, 110f.

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becomes a complex hermeneutical structure in which the question of how death is experienced in the exact moment of death itself becomes irrelevant.19

5  Death Within the Horizon of Subjectivity In Scheler as well as in Heidegger, we can observe a shift in how death is given to us. It is not given as an experience in the very moment of death itself. Rather, we experience death as something impending, as something which is ahead of us and which at some point will happen to us. Hence, death is transposed from its “experientiality” to its possibility. In doing so, death becomes a part of the subject’s life and the meaningful structures of this life. This shift is remarkable because it goes against the very common argument that death is something anonymous which happens to man from the outside. Nobody else has put this argument as clearly as Jean-Paul Sartre when he states in L’être et le néant: “Death is a pure fact as is birth; it comes to us from outside and it transforms us into the outside.”20 (“La mort est un pur fait, comme la naissance; elle vient à nous du dehors et elle nous transforme en dehors.”21) In fact, Sartre’s whole argument aims to show that death is not, as stated by Heidegger, a constitutive part of our existence and hence does not limit our freedom – this is the ultimate aim of Sartre’s treatise on Heidegger’s analysis of death. In fact, it seems that Sartre’s claim is in line with the premise of Husserl’s thoughts on death. In many instances, Husserl claims that death does not touch the constant stream of consciousness. It might of course cause our factual body to cease its activity, cause our brains to stop functioning, but it does not terminate the constant stream per se. This culminates in Husserl’s somewhat provocative claim: “The I does not die.”22 (“Das Ich stirbt nicht.”) Death might be a fact of worldly existence but this does not imply that it is also a fact of transcendental existence. The somewhat strange questions that Husserl asks in all honesty contribute to the idea that death might not have the last say in the realm of transcendental subjectivity. Husserl asks at the end of one of his manuscripts: Are the worldly incidents of ‘birth and death’ transcendental indices for an unworldly, supernatural mode of being of the monades, for a transition into a style of being which by the methods of worldly knowledge is inaccessible by principle? (ger. Sind die  Some commentators, as for example Bernard N. Schumacher, argued that this lazy use of the term “death” creates a semantic confusion which has to be cleared up terminologically. He proposes to differentiate between “dying”, “mortality”, “passing away” and “death as a state”. See Schumacher (2011), Chapter 1.1. However reasonable this demand of terminological clarity might seem, I would argue that one loses the complexity of the problem in respect to what – phenomenologically considered – is precisely given. I would hold that we do not experience “dying” in dying, “mortality” in mortality, etc. but we do in fact experience death in its many facets. Hence, the seeming clarity in terminology obscures the complex hermeneutic matrix in which death is given. 20  Sartre 1971, 545. 21  Sartre 1943, 590. 22  Husserl 2014, 18. 19

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Weltvorkommnisse ‘Geburt und Tod’ transzendentale Idizes für eine unweltliche, übernatürliche Seinsweise der Monaden, für einen Übergang in einen Seinsstil, der in den Methoden der weltlichen Erkenntnis prinzipiell unzugänglich ist?)

These thoughts from Husserl and Sartre show an effort to “preserve” the subject from death in some way or the other. The reasons for this differ. Whereas Sartre wants to hold on to the idea of a free subject which is not determined by “outer” facts such as death (for Sartre, this of course also has political implications), the reasons for Husserl are more complex. Firstly, Husserl is driven by his methodic rigor. What cannot be made clear by what is originarily offered to us in experience and also only within the limits in which it is presented there, should not be obscured by strategic or impatient reasoning. In a manuscript from 1936 with the title Die anthropologische Welt, he explicitly turns against Heidegger and his treatise on death in the fundamental-ontological framework. Husserl writes: Death will hardly acquiesce in the marvelous and profound ways in which Heidegger deals with death.23 (ger. Die blendenden, tiefsinnigen Weisen, in denen Heidegger mit dem Tod umspringt, wird sich der Tod schwerlich gefallen lassen.)

It is in this very same text, were one gains insight into a second reason for why Husserl does not want to let the transcendental subject slip into an all-encompassing mortality. There, Husserl clearly differentiates between the worldly and the transcendental subject. Whereas the worldly subject can die, the transcendental subject cannot. As Husserl writes: Man cannot be immortal. Man dies inevitably. Man has no worldly preexistence; in this tempo-spatial world, he once was nothing and he will be nothing thereafter. But the transcendental life, the ultimately world-creating life and its ultimate ego cannot come from nothing and pass over into nothing; it is ‘immortal’ because dying has no meaning for it, etc. (ger. Der Mensch kann nicht unsterblich sein. Der Mensch stirbt notwendig. Der Mensch hat keine weltliche Präexistenz, in der zeit-räumlichen Welt war er früher nichts, und wird er nachher nichts sein. Aber das transzendentale Leben, das letztlich weltschaffende Leben und dessen letztes Ich kann nicht aus dem Nichts werden und ins Nichts übergehen, es ist ‘unsterblich’, weil das Sterben dafür keinen Sinn hat etc.)

Taking both quotes together, one can now understand Husserl’s effort to prevent his analysis from immersing itself in Heidegger’s all-encompassing mortality. First, his methodic rigor prevents him from positing an all-encompassing mortality given the fact that death itself is not to be captured by the phenomenological method without severe problems. Secondly, the fact that the worldly subject dies does not imply that the transcendental subject also vanishes. Speaking from the viewpoint of generativity, it is the case that human lives reach past death and create a world which sur-­ vives24 the deaths of its individuals. Scheler too puts a special emphasis on this genuinely human act of reaching beyond death which he called the “reaching out and further”25 (Fort- und Hinausschwingen).

 Husserl 1993, 321-338, 332.  Derrida 2007. 25  Scheler 1957, 47. 23 24

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To briefly recapitulate: it was the aim of this section to show that the attempt to phenomenalize death brings about a serious transformation of the very phenomenon of death. Whereas Husserl held on to a narrow view of death, which only accepts how death is given to us within experience and should only be investigated within the very limits of this experience, other phenomenologists such as Scheler, Heidegger and Fink broke loose from these methodological restraints and tried to develop an understanding of death which focusses on the very ways in which death is impending on us and what that impending means for our relation to death. Rather than focusing on the exact moment in which death is given – with all the problems that such an approach entails –, they analyze the very ways in which death is given and what that permanent givenness means for the meaningful structures in which our lives take place.

6  Death within the Horizon of Intersubjectivity If death is a pressing problem for subjectivity, it is an even more pressing problem for intersubjectivity. The very theoretical debate about how death is given to us in experience, the exact order in which death comes to our attention, etc. obscures the very practical and meaningful relation that we uphold in our encounters with the world and with others. Since we not only ponder how death is given to us within experience but how to deal with it when it happens to us or our beloved others, the question regarding how this anticipation structures our (intersubjective) life-world becomes pressing. Heidegger’s breakthrough idea, namely to interpret death as a possibility of our lives prepares for a further-reaching question, i.e. how we organize our lives in the shadow of this ever-present threat, or to use Fink’s expression: how do we “dwell in the shadow of death?”26 In this respect, Jacques Derrida provides invaluable insights into the structure of how we await and anticipate death together. In Apories: Mourir – s’attendre aux limites de la vérité, Derrida ponders how we deal with this permanent possibility of death, which in a way is the impossibility of possibility as such. In a close analysis of the passages in which Heidegger talks about death as possibility but also about death as the possibility of an impossibility, Derrida tries to show the intimate connection between possibility and impossibility in the case of death. He writes: “It is not only the paradoxical possibility of a possibility of impossibility: it is possibility as impossibility.”27 In Derrida’s view, dealing with death hence means that we deal with a radical impossibility. Although we organize death in a multitude of ways from burial rites to the politics of remembrance, we nevertheless stand in awe of that opaque event. And even when we have lived through the loss of beloved people around us many times, we still cannot grasp the very meaning which death bestows to this life  – if it bestows meaning to life at all or, as Sartre emphasized rather 26 27

 Cf. Fink 1969, 9.  Derrida 1993, 70.

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wrenches all meaning from life: “[D]eath is never that which gives life its meanings; it is, on the contrary, that which on principle removes all meaning from life.”28 Hence, Derrida approaches death in terms of an aporia which he does not want to resolve; he instead wants to analyze the ways in which one lives with this aporia and further how we live with this aporia together. This aporia is confronted in a war between denial and acceptance and it shows itself in a very human sentiment that we all know too well, and that is mourning. In turning against Sigmund Freud’s very influential study Trauer und Melancholie,29 Derrida tries to show that this mourning is in fact twofold and does not merely follow death but also precedes it and structures the very way in which we relate to death. In one of his many obituaries, he writes: This clandestine war of denial would thus be waged in the shadows, in that twilight space of what is called mourning: the mourning that follows death but also the mourning that is prepared and that we expect from the very beginning to follow upon the death of those we love. Love or friendship would be nothing other than the passion, the endurance, and the patience of this work.30

This “originary mourning”31 as he also calls it, manifests itself in a certain gravity of life which does not treat life’s events indifferently. The chain of events, of actions, of relations, etc. is not arbitrary but belongs to the very structure of a mortal life. As Derrida shows in the case of friendship, it is this gravity which is always at play and shows itself in the very bond between friends. Taking up the loose ends of Husserl’s generative approach to death, the consequence that someone has always died before me and that I will die before somebody else, introduces a radical asynchronicity into the intersubjective sphere. In his obituary to Hans-Georg Gadamer, he puts the inevitability of this asynchronicity into words when he writes: As always with friendship, […] this melancholy no doubt stems from [tenait à] a sad and invasive certainty: one day death will necessarily separate us. Fatal and inflexible law: one of two friends will always see the other die. The dialogue, as virtual as it may be, will forever be wounded by an ultimate interruption. Comparable to no other, a separation between life and death will defy thought right from a first enigmatic seal, that which we will endlessly seek to decipher.32

What makes this quote so interesting is that it ties together everything that has been thematized so far. Derrida interprets the certainty as a certainty that not only belongs to my relation to my own death but reaches over to the death of the other. I confront this opaque event of the death of the other with a certain kind of gravity which expresses itself through the sentiment of mourning and which bestows the full existential meaning to my relation to the other, as for example in friendship, love,  Sartre 1971, 539.  Freud 1975, 193-212. 30  Derrida 2001, 146. 31  Derrida 2007, 26. 32  Derrida 2004, 3-19, 7. 28 29

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family and any other human relation in proximity. As inevitable as it is, the event of death still rests in its opaqueness but the focus of this question has turned. Now, the question is not so much how death is given or what exactly is given with this enigmatic event of death, but rather how this enigmatic event impacts our meaningful life.

7  Death, Put Differently Death is one of the most difficult problems in phenomenology. Although every phenomenological description wrestles with specific problems of how to adequately account for the nature of the phenomenon, it is in death that the whole method of phenomenology is at the verge of being operable. Death seems to fundamentally interrupt the basic correlation between the subject and the object of experience and hence puts a method based on experience in question. Thus, the question has to be raised how one could account for a phenomenon if that phenomenon does not show itself through the method of phenomenology. In the course of a rich debate which now stretches over 100 years, the question of death still remains one of the limit-problems (Grenzprobleme) of phenomenology. It is not only different descriptions of this phenomenon that seem to be at odds with each other but also different conceptions of the phenomenological method as such. Here, the fundamental difference between Husserl’s transcendental and Heidegger’s hermeneutic approach seems to be only one of the many aspects in this complex debate. The more difficult and vexing question seems to be how one could conceptualize the phenomenological subject in order to account for these fundamentally constitutive but strangely opaque phenomena without putting everything into question that the phenomenological method has established through long and intensive work. However one approaches this question, one is confronted with certain problems dependent on the respective approaches. It was the aim of this article to show how these different approaches reverberate and what consequences they have on our (phenomenological) conceptions of subjectivity. The further aim of this article was to show that, as in almost all phenomenological thinkers, the question of subjectivity is tightly connected to the question of intersubjectivity. As I tried to show above, I would hold that the question of death in phenomenology only gets its full momentum and richness if it is connected to the question of intersubjectivity, i.e. the mutual sharing of the permanent threat of death in love, friendship, family and other forms of intersubjective relations. The question of how death is given in experience and what definitive form it might take is theoretically interesting but the specifically human dimension is only added when the whole question gets grounded in the intersubjective sphere.

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References Derrida, J.  1993. Aporias: Dying--Awaiting (One Another at) the “Limits of Truth”. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. 2001. The Work of Mourning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2004. Uninterrupted Dialogue: Between Two Infinities, the Poem. Research in Phenomenology 34 (1): 3–19. ———. 2007. Learning to Live Finally. The Last Interview. New York: Melville House. Fink, E. 1969. Metaphysik und Tod. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Freud, S. 1975. “Melancholie und Trauer”, in: Studienausgabe (Band III), 193–212. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Heidegger, M. 1977. Sein und Zeit, (GA 2). Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. ———. 2001. Being and time. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Husserl, Edmund. 1982. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. The Hague: Martinus Nijjhof. ———. 1993. Die anthropologische Welt. In Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Ergänzungsband: Texte aus dem Nachlaß 1934–1937, 321–338 (Hua XXIX), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. 2006. Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934). Die C-Manuskripte (Hua M VII). Dordrecht: Springer. ———. 2008. Die Lebenswelt. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1916–1937) Die Lebenswelt. Auslegungen der vorgegebenen Welt und ihrer Konstitution. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1916–1937) (Hua XXXIX). New York: Springer. ———. 2014. Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie. Analysen des Unbewusstseins und der Instinkte. Metaphysik. Späte Ethik. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1908–1937). Vol. Hua XLII. New York: Springer. Lévinas, E. 2000. God, Death, Time. Trans: Bettina Bergo. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Patočka, J. 1996. Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History. Trans: Erazim Kohák. Chicago: Open Court. Ricoeur, P. 1967. Husserl. An Analysis of his Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1943. L’être et le néant. Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique. Paris: Éditions Gallimard. ———. 1971. Being and nothingness. New York: Citadel Press. Scheler, M. 1957. Tod und Fortleben. In: Schriften aus dem Nachlass. Band I: Zur Ethik und Erkenntnislehre, 9–64. (GW 10). Bern: Francke Verlag. Scherer, G. 1985. Sinnerfahrung und Unsterblichkeit. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Schumacher, Bernard N. 2011. Death and Mortality in Contemporary Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sternberger, D. 1981. Über den Tod. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main.

Spiritual Expression and the Promise of Phenomenology Neal DeRoo

Abstract  This paper argues for the centrality of expression for the project of phenomenology. It shows, first, that the concept of expression grows out of the debate with Frege concerning meaning that led to Husserl’s distinct phenomenological project. Specifically, expression is Husserl’s first attempt to more rigorously define ‘sense’ as the essential connection between subjective acts of meaning and ‘objective’ meanings. This account of expression is then taken up in Husserl’s later work on spirit, which thereby makes expression central to Husserl’s entire analysis of the lifeworld. Insofar as Husserl saw phenomenology growing out of his dispute with Frege on meaning, and working toward the ability to clarify the sense of all scientific knowledge, expression names the promise inherent to phenomenology itself, that which defines the very project of phenomenology. Keywords  Expression · Sense · Frege · Husserl · Spirit · Promise · Meaning · Being

1  Introduction This paper has three interrelated goals: (1) to begin to articulate a phenomenological account of expression; (2) to sketch an argument that such an account of expression is the promise1 of phenomenology; and (3) to suggest what implications this might have on the proper subject(s) of phenomenology. My hope in doing so is to revive an old Husserlian term (expression) for the future of phenomenological research. Once expression is understood on an ontological level—and not merely as a matter for philosophy of language—it will become apparent that, in order to remain true to the spirit of phenomenology, a substantial engagement with expression is a

 For why I prefer to speak of ‘promise’ here rather than essence, see DeRoo 2013a.

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necessity. It is through expression that phenomenology can best understand itself and contribute to questions of religion, ontology, epistemology, and the socio-political. To do this, the paper begins by exploring the question of meaning that led to Husserl’s break with Frege and the beginning of his phenomenological philosophy (Sect. 1). In response to this question of meaning, Husserl develops the concept of expression as a way to more rigorously define the ‘sense’ that is the essential connection between subjective acts of meaning and ‘objective’ meanings (Sect. 2). While this concept is employed almost exclusively in linguistic and logical terms in the Logical Investigations, we will see that the later Husserl’s use of ‘spirit’ is, in fact, a development and broadening of the earlier account of expression (Sect. 3). As such, we will conclude that (spiritual) expression, as the fundamental response to the question of meaning at the very heart of the phenomenological enterprise, constitutes the very promise of phenomenology. As such, the future of genuine phenomenological research cannot be divorced from further exploration of this concept of (spiritual) expression (Sect. 4).

2  Frege, Meaning, and the Husserlian Logical Project The origin of the phenomenological project lies in mathematics.2 It was questions of numerality and arithmetic that first occasioned Husserl’s forays into philosophy. In his first book, The Philosophy of Arithmetic, Husserl strenuously objects to Frege’s (early) definition of number as a “second-order concept.” Frege, in turn, object’s to Husserl’s “psychologistic” definition of number as an abstraction derived from and founded upon experience.3 At stake in this difference is not only the question of number, but also issues of logic, philosophical method and, ultimately, of meaning itself. Central to Frege’s theory of meaning is his distinction between sense and reference.4 This distinction first emerges in the context of explaining how the ‘=’ is to be understood in mathematics. Some theorists were propounding the view “that, e.g., 2 + 5 and 3 + 4 are equal but not the same,” a view that Frege sought to “combat” (Frege 1891, 131). On those theorists’ view, while the results or outcomes of the two equations each produce a number that is equal in value to that produced by the other equation, the two equations could still not yet be considered the same since they  For a detailed attempt to support this claim, see Hartimo 2006.  Good, accessible introductions to the Frege-Husserl debate can be found in the first chapter of Cisney 2014 and the first chapter of Chase and Reynolds 2010. More academic evaluations of the debate are offered in Cobb-Stevens 1990; Dummett 1991, 1993; Duke 2015. 4  For simplicity’s sake, I have followed normal precedent in translating Frege’s Sinn-Bedeutung distinction by the English terms sense-reference. It must be noted, of course, that Bedeutung is, in most contexts, translated simply as ‘meaning.’ For more on the difficulty of translating this term in the Fregean context, including an argument for why meaning is not the best translation of Bedeutung as Frege uses it, see Bell 1980. 2 3

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were not identical in formulation. For Frege, this is the result of a “confusion of form and content, sign and thing signified” (Frege 1891, 131). To combat this confusion, Frege’s insists on the distinction between a sign’s reference (Bedeutung) and its sense (Sinn). This distinction is then developed further in his famous essay “Sense and Reference.” There, “that to which the sign refers—which may be called the referent of the sign” must be distinguished from “what I would like to call the sense of the sign, wherein the mode of presentation is contained” (Frege 1948, 210). The referent of the two preceding equations is clearly identical: it is the number 7. What distinguishes the two equations is how that number is presented, determined, or picked out—each equation’s respective sense. In “Sense and Reference” that distinction between sense and referent is expanded to include all linguistic expressions.5 This is easy when the expression is a proposition with a “definite object” as its referent (Frege 1948, 210).6 In such cases, the ‘sense’ of that proposition is simply what we understand when we understand the proposition. Frege calls this a “thought,” which is “not the subjective performance of thinking but its objective content” (Frege 1948, 214). Frege is therefore adamant that a ‘thought’ in this particular sense—i.e., as the sense of an expression—must be distinguished from a ‘conception’ or an ‘idea’. The former “may be the common property of many and therefore is not a part or a mode of the individual mind,” while the latter “is subjective: one man’s conceptions is not that of another” (Frege 1948, 212). There is, then, for Frege a three-fold distinction one must make when thinking about what a term or proposition ‘means,’ in the broad sense: (1) the referent as “the object itself which we designate” by means of the term; (2) the “conception, which we thereby have” and which is “wholly subjective”; and (3) “in between lies the sense, which is indeed no longer subjective like the conception, but is yet not the object itself” (Frege 1948, 213). He uses the analogy of viewing the moon through a telescope to help explain this tripartite distinction: the moon itself is the referent, “the object of observation mediated by the real image projected by the object glass  We must be careful here to note that Frege uses ‘expression’ often in this sense, to mean a broader category that could include propositions, predicates, etc. within it. But he also uses it in a more precise way to speak specifically of the relation between a name and its sense, as opposed to its referent. Both senses are captured in the following quotation: “A proper name (word, sign, sign combination, expression) expresses its sense, refers to or designates its referent. By means of a sign we express its sense and designate its referent” (Frege 1948, 214). 6  Clearly, not every linguistic expression (nor, for that matter, every mathematical expression) is of this type. Some, Frege notes, have as their referent a “concept”; indeed, a concept is simply defined logically as “the Bedeutung of a grammatical predicate” (Frege 1892, 182). While an object is a singular entity, a concept is universal insofar as it can stretch over multiple cases. For example, the concept of “square root” can be used in multiple cases (i.e., when filled out or ‘completed’ in different ways) to yield different objects: “the square root of 4” has, as its referent, the object “2”; “the square root of 9” has, as its referent, the object “3”; etc. But the referent of the expression “the square root (of X)” is the ‘concept’ of a ‘square root’ itself. A concept, then, is the referent of a predicate in which at least one term is missing and must be filled out if the predicate is to become a proposition that can have an object proper as its referent. In cases where the predicate has multiple terms in need of being filled out, the referent is known as a “relation.” For example, the referent of the expression “X > Y” is the ‘relation’ of “being greater than.” 5

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in the interior of the telescope, and by the retinal image of the observer.” The retinal image is analogous to the conception/idea, while the real image projected by the object glass is analogous to the sense, since it “is indeed one-sided and dependent upon the standpoint of observation; but it is still objective, inasmuch as it can be used by several observers” (Frege 1948, 213). The need to rigorously distinguish between the sense and the conception/idea is indicative of a broader Fregean concern, one he names explicitly in his The Foundations of Arithmetic. There he elucidates some “fundamental principles” guiding his work, one of which is to seek “always to separate sharply the psychological from the logical, the subjective from the objective” (Frege 1950, x). Husserl’s account of meaning, on the other hand, is concerned precisely with the relation between the subjective and the objective. His attempt to explain this connection—and thereby the methodological refusal to keep them wholly distinct—is what occasions the charge of ‘psychologism’ from Frege.7 The point of difference here lies in an understanding of ‘psychology,’ its relation to logic, and ultimately the basis of the concepts of number, of logic, and of philosophical and conceptual thought more broadly. To root these in psychology is, for Frege, to ignore the possibility of thought (i.e., of sense), and to reduce everything merely to ideas, to conceptions, to the purely subjective (Frege 1956, 308). Rather, for Frege, logic, mathematics—indeed the entire scientific enterprise—must be rooted in thought, that is, rooted in the (objective) sense of sentences. To reduce logic and mathematics to psychology is to confuse the individual’s act of thinking with the content of what is thought. It is to reduce concepts to ideas, thereby removing any possibility of objectivity whatsoever. Husserl, on the other hand, is adamant that “It is only with reference to the phenomena that insight into the essence of the concept of number is to be won” (Husserl 2003, 136). The difference here is stark. For Husserl, as we will see, the concept of number—and, indeed, idealities more generally—are ‘constituted’ by individuals in their subjective acts of thinking. As scientists, we ‘make sense’ of the world.8 For Frege, this is anathema: “we do not produce thoughts but we apprehend them”9;  The charge is, perhaps, understandable even if, ultimately, it is debatable. Considering the subtitle of Husserl’s Philosophy of Arithmetic is Psychological and Logical Investigations, Frege might have thought his critique of Husserl as ‘psychologistic’ to be wholly uncontroversial. 8  The term ‘making sense’ is not used loosely here. Instead it names one of the principle differences between Husserl and Frege: while for Frege we discover the truth, for Husserl we make sense of (‘constitute sense within’ is probably a more accurate formulation) the world. The focus on sense as ‘made’ or ‘constituted’ is crucial in Husserl’s project of better understanding the relationship between the subjective and the objective. 9  The phrase ‘apprehend’ is, as Aquila puts it, “somewhat ambiguous” here (Aquila 1974, 380). Frege himself deems the phrase “metaphorical,” comparing it to the equally metaphorical “content of consciousness.” In the latter case, the pen in my hand can be seen as the ‘contents’ of my hand, but is so in a very different way than the bones and muscles which make up my hand (Frege 1956, 307n.1). But if apprehension is analogously similar to ‘content of consciousness,’ then what is holding what? It is seemingly not a case of individual minds holding thoughts; perhaps it is “the mind” holding thoughts (see Frege 1956, 308), but then we must ask what is ‘the mind’ (as opposed to individual minds), and also what is a ‘thought’ (as opposed to the content of individual acts of thinking)? 7

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“The work of science does not consist of creation but of the discovery of true thoughts” (Frege 1956, 307).10 Yet these ‘thoughts’ are “not something which it is usual to call ‘real,’” at least in part because the ‘real’ world is a temporal world, while thoughts are timeless (Frege 1956, 309)—though “even the timeless, if it is to be anything for us, must somehow be implicated with the temporal” (Frege 1956, 310). While I certainly come into a relation with a thought that I apprehend, a relation that must therefore be temporal insofar as it occurs at and in time, this does not alter the “essential properties” of the thought, which acts only passively, that is, “by being apprehended and taken to be true” (Frege 1956, 310). Frege’s attempts to rigorously separate the subject and the objective, then, appears to work only by the invocation of a third term—sense—that operates in a vaguely termed and poorly explicated manner: ‘apprehension.’ Without further explanation, this either: avoids entirely the problem of how I (as an empirical agent) mean something (objective) when I speak11; answers it via recourse to precisely that which Frege claims never to do (i.e., by connecting the subjective an the objective); or posits meaning as something that is not accomplished (at least not ‘really’) by empirical and subjective agents. For Husserl, by contrast, the invocation of the phenomena as providing insight into the essence of the concept makes clear that he cannot answer this issue by defining meaning as essentially distinct from the operations and actions of empirical agents. We mean things when we speak, when we do mathematics, when we negotiate our lives in the world. If our account of meaning cannot answer how it is that we do so, then we have failed to provide an adequate account of meaning. As such, Husserl is compelled to try to explain—rigorously and scientifically—the relation between the subjective and the objective. He tries to do this, already in the Philosophy of Arithmetic, through what he calls a “phenomenologico-constitutional analysis” (Husserl 1969, § 27a; see also Hartimo 2006, 328). Indeed, providing such an account of the relationship between the subjective and the objective seems to be the project of phenomenology itself. This attempt to explain the connection between the subjective and the objective—and, in some sense, to ground the objective in acts of the subject—explains why Husserl seeks, in Philosophy of Arithmetic, to provide an account of the ‘origin’ of the concept of number, an account that begins from the (for Husserl “completely rigorous”) concept of number and multiplicity as it operates in everyday living (Husserl 2003, 16). Taking this unproblematic12 use of number as a given, Husserl goes on to analyze the way in which such a concept is ‘constituted’ by a subject. ‘Constituted’ here does not mean ‘constructed’ (a distinction without which  Though it is said that Frege himself sought to construct a notion of number solely within the Bergriffschrift; see Hartimo 2006, 335. How this notion of construction (within the concept-script) fits with Frege’s own claims of merely “apprehending” or “discovering” true thoughts is not our concern here. 11  As Aquila argues; see Aquila 1974, 381. 12  “Unproblematic” insofar as if I, e.g., ask for two pancakes at a diner, there is no confusion from anyone involved over what I mean by ‘two.’ 10

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the charge of psychologism becomes much more plausible). Rather, a “constitutional explanation is an analysis of the ideal structures involved in our meaningful experience of the world” (Hartimo 2006, 327). What Husserl seeks to do, then, is to provide an account of what ideal structures are at work in empirical experience; to look at what is given in our experience, and analyze the various ways in which those things are given. It is worth quoting Husserl at length here, to show how he understood his own early attempts13 at ‘making sense’ of number: [Philosophy of Arithmetic] presented an initial attempt to go back to the spontaneous activities of collecting and counting, in which collections (‘sums’, ‘sets’) and cardinal numbers are given in the manner characteristic of something that is being generated originaliter, and thereby to gain clarity respecting the proper, the authentic, sense of the concepts fundamental to the theory of sets and the theory of cardinal numbers. It was therefore, in my later terminology, a phenomenologico-constitutional investigation; and at the same time it was the first investigation that sought to make ‘categorial objectivities’ of the first level and of higher levels (sets and cardinal numbers of a higher ordinal level) understandable on the basis of the ‘constituting’ intentional activities, as whose productions they make their appearance originaliter, accordingly with full originality of their sense. (Husserl 1969, § 27a)

In this quote we see clearly that Husserl is trying to make (categorial) objectivities understandable “on the basis of the ‘constituting’ intentional activities” of the subject. Indeed, it is in those intentional acts that objectivities first appear with the “full originality of their sense.” The first such objectivity to be analyzed by Husserl in Philosophy of Arithmetic is that of multiplicity. In intuiting a multiplicity, we “abstract” some common characteristic from a multitude of objects before us, such that we see them precisely as a multitude of a particular object. That is, “in that abstraction the isolating interest is not directed upon the contents, but rather exclusively upon their linkage in thought—and that linkage is all that is intended” (Husserl 2003, 83). In intuiting a multiplicity, we come to take a series of objects precisely as a collection or combination of some type of something. When that multiplicity can be given a definite delimitation—when we can answer precisely the question of ‘how many’—we employ the concept of number (Husserl 1970, 83). Now, certain numbers (those less than 12, for Husserl) can be intuited directly. That is, with some numbers, the definite number itself can be immediately given in our experience: I can intuitively grasp that there are three chairs in front of me, but I cannot intuitively grasp—I am not intuitively given—the number of keys on a piano. In Philosophy of Arithmetic, the former are called ‘authentic representations,’ while the latter can be given to us only via ‘inauthentic’ or ‘symbolic’ presentations. Through the latter, things are given to us “only indirectly, through signs that univocally characterize” them (Husserl 2003, 205). Through these signs, we are able to talk about objects in their absence—as well as to grasp and deal with numbers larger than we could ever hope to intuit directly. But we are able to do this only because  But this understanding comes later—the quote comes from Formal and Transcendental Logic talking about his earlier work in Philosophy of Arithmetic.

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we are able to intuitively grasp the signs, and then take them to ‘characterize’ numbers. Husserl then sets these up as parallel systems of concept (number) and sign (numeral).14 The way in which we use each system varies; the two systems ‘give themselves’ in different ways. We interact with concepts via conceptualization and with signs via calculation. Any mathematical solution obviously decomposes into one calculational part and two conceptual parts: Conversion of the initial thoughts into signs—calculation—and conversion of the resulting signs back into thoughts. In the domain of numbers where the conceptualization and separation of the concepts (disregarding, of course, the few ‘authentic’ ones) rests upon the symbolization running parallel to it as its indispensable support, that first step consists merely in this: that in the complexes of concepts and names that are given in each case, one abstracts from the former and only holds to the latter (Husserl 2003, 273–274).

Husserl very quickly became unsatisfied with this account of ‘calculation’ espoused in Philosophy of Arithmetic, especially in regards to its logical implications. In that work, he defines calculation as “Any rule-governed mode of derivation of signs from signs within any algorithmic sign-system according to the ‘laws’—or better: the conventions—for combination, separation, and transformation peculiar to that system” (Husserl 2003, 273). In time, Husserl came to see the need for even logic to be grounded in experience (as Experience and Judgment and Formal and Transcendental Logic make plain). But this insight is already available in the first part of Philosophy of Arithmetic.15 The invocation of ‘abstraction’ in the first part of Philosophy of Arithmetic has been described as “an early version of the attempt to clarify the tacit or passive achievements of our intentionality due to which we can talk about the concept of number” (Hartimo 2006, 328). As such, it highlights again the difference between Husserl and Frege in regards to the very fundamentals of meaning. For Frege, meaning can only be accessed when we ‘rigorously’ keep separate the subjective and the objective and ensure that our focus remains solely on the latter. It is only in the objectivity of concepts—and ultimately in the purely formal logic of the concept-script—that meaning is to be discovered. However, this commitment did not keep Frege from highlighting the distinction between sense and reference, and positing ‘sense’ as a crucial part of meaning. Insofar as ‘sense’ is objective, this is not problematic for  The extent to which this early set of parallel systems remains influential on how Husserl deploys the concept of expression—especially vis-à-vis indication—is worth pursuing, though we cannot do so here. To put it briefly, I would contend that, while this “parallel system” account seems operative in the Logical Investigations, it does so primarily as a linguistic theory, that is, as a theory of the relation between signs and meanings. As we will see, this is the context in which ‘expression’ first emerges as a significant concept for Husserl—but it does not exhaust the significance of the concept of ‘expression.’ Indeed, some of the significance of the concept of expression is lost when it is couched in the (seemingly representational) account of language employed in the Logical Investigations. It is only in the later adoption of expression in and as spirit that the true significance of expression emerges for the phenomenological project. 15  Even if it, perhaps, is subordinated in the more Weierstrassian-inspired second part. For more on the relation between Weierstrass and the second half of Philosophy of Arithmetic, see Hartimo 2006, 333–334. 14

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Frege; but insofar as sense cannot be wholly separated from subjects either (think of how he acknowledges, in the ‘moon analogy,’ that sense is “indeed one-sided and dependent upon the standpoint of observation” though it “is still objective, inasmuch as it can be used by several observers”; Frege 1948, 213), Frege himself seems to raise the necessity of a deeper exploration of the connection between the subjective and the objective if one is to provide a truly rigorous basis for logic and for meaning. It is precisely in trying to understand this relationship between the subjective and the objective that Husserl’s phenomenological project arises.16 We must now turn to the crucial role expression plays in Husserl’s account of that relationship.

3  Husserl’s Notion of Expression In the Logical Investigations, Husserl sets as his task “to give firm clarity to notions and laws on which the objective meaning and theoretical unity of all knowledge is dependent” (Husserl 2001a, I, 166).17 He takes it as a given that one of the fundamental units of knowledge—at least of scientific knowledge—is “verbal expression or complete statement[s]”: “it is at least plain,” Husserl claims, “that judgements stemming from higher intellectual regions, and in particular from the regions of science, could barely arise without verbal expression” (Husserl 2001a, I, 166–167). By the Logical Investigations already, then, Husserl is willing to claim that “the objects which pure logic seeks to examine […]come before us embedded in concrete mental states which further function either as the meaning-intention or meaning-­ fulfillment of certain verbal expressions […] and form […] a phenomenological unity with such expressions” (Husserl 2001a, I, 167; emphasis original). Here already we see, cloaked in several ambiguities, the kernel of Husserl’s account of ‘expression’: expression is a fundamental element of meaning insofar as it presents itself as a phenomenological unity with either meaning-intention or meaning-­ fulfillment and thereby allows the mental states of a particular knower to become something ‘objective’, i.e., to transcend merely the subjective act (the ‘idea’ or ‘conception’ in Frege’s terminology) and “become an abiding possession of science, a documented, ever available treasure for knowledge and advancing research” (Husserl 2001a, I, 166), that is, to become something like a ‘thought’ in Frege’s terminology. Expression, then, is precisely the mechanism of sense,18 that which  Though he is clear that the ‘subjective’ cannot be equated with the naively empirical when it comes to the kind of phenomenology that is a necessary precursor to a logical examination of meaning. This type of phenomenology “has, as its exclusive concern, experiences intuitively seizable and analysable in the pure generality of their essence, not experiences empirically perceived and treated as real facts” (Husserl 2001a, I, 166).I 17  All references to Logical Investigations are cited by Investigation number and then page number from the Findlay translation. Hence this citation is to Investigation I, page 166. 18  Which Husserl describes, at this early stage, as “indwelling” in mental states; Husserl 2001a, 168. 16

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relates the subjectivity of the knower with the objectivity of what is known. Expression is Husserl’s rejoinder to Frege.

3.1  Clarifying Some Ambiguities in Expression But this rejoinder is not without its ambiguities, especially in the Logical Investigations. Two such ambiguities appear in nuce already in the quote above. The first is the failure to radically distinguish between an expression as a semantic unit (e.g., as Husserl uses it above synonymously with “complete statement”) and expression as a function or act carried out by those semantic units (this function, as we will see, comes to be something like ‘forming a phenomenal unity with’).19 Second is the failure to consistently mark the relationship between expression and meaning-intention. Above, expressions—as a semantic unit—are said to be united with certain mental states which “function either as the meaning-intention or the meaning-fulfillment” of the (verbal) expression. Here, it is mental states that make up both meaning-intention and meaning-fulfillment, and expressions seem merely to be the ‘vehicle’ by which those mental states are carried into language.20 However, a few pages later, Husserl seems to equate meaning itself primarily with meaning-­ fulfillment, while expression is used synonymously with meaning-intention (Husserl 2001a, I, 173). It is the task of the Logical Investigations to clarify some of these ambiguities, since it is “an important matter for logic that the relation between expression and meaning should be made analytically clear” (Husserl 2001a, I, 173). An essential element of this task, as carried out through those investigations, is “to see what essential phenomenological or logical distinctions apply a priori to expressions” and to describe and “place in pure categories, the experiences—to deal first with the phenomenological side of expressions—that have an a priori fitness for the meaning function” (Husserl 2001a, I, 173). He begins to carry out this task, as is well known, by explaining that ‘expression’ and ‘sign’ cannot be used synonymously. While “[e]very sign is a sign for something,” Husserl is adamant that “not every sign has ‘meaning’, a ‘sense’ that the sign ‘expresses.’” (Husserl 2001a, I, 183). Expressions are unique insofar as they bear a unique relation to meaning, a relation that is characterized predominantly by a certain task or function (expressing sense). This is different from another subset of signs, indications.21 Indications do not ‘mean’ anything, properly speaking, though it is certainly the case that most of the time22 meaning is “bound up with such an indicative relation” (Husserl 2001a, I,  An ambiguity that also befalls Frege, as we noted already; cf. note 5.  This would echo Frege’s understanding of how sense functions; see, e.g., Tito 1990, 229–231. 21  Though not all indications are signs, properly speaking (Husserl 2001a, I, 184). Therefore, indication as a subset of signs is itself only a subset of indications, more broadly speaking. 22  Derrida will argue ‘all of the time’; see Derrida 2010. 19 20

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183). Rather, an indication is something that merely motivates belief in the reality of something else, whether this motivation is purposeful (as in indicative signs) or not purposeful (as, e.g., when the discovery of fossil vertebrae motivate in us the belief that prediluvian animals existed). This motivation provides a “descriptive unity” between the indicator and the thing indicated, a unity that, as “a unity of judgement,” is “taken as a descriptively peculiar way of combining acts of judgement into a single act of judgement” (Husserl 2001a, I, 184). The indicative function, then, “amounts to just this: that certain things may or must exist, since other things have been given” (Husserl 2001a, I, 184). Expressions, on the other hand, are “meaningful signs.” What marks expressions as expressions, strictly speaking, is that an expression is “phenomenally one with the experience made manifest in them in the consciousness of the man who manifests them” (Husserl 2001a, I, 188). This account of phenomenal unity (vis-à-vis the “unity of judgement” found in indications) helps us understand the first ambiguity named above: it is common for us to use ‘expression’ to refer both to a semantic unit and to the act or function of ‘being-phenomenally-one-with-an-experience’ precisely because the act or function of ‘expressing’ constitutes a phenomenal unity between the expression and the expressed. The essence of expression is found in the act of constituting a phenomenal unity, an act which results, necessarily, in the existence of something that is, in and of itself, inherently meaning-full. Meaning does not here merely attach to a separately existing physical substrate or ‘vehicle.’ Rather, the meaning is phenomenally one with the expression which expresses it. The expression can be called an expression, properly speaking, if and only if it expresses, that is, if it constitutes a phenomenal unity with what is expressed. Here, one could argue, is the entirety of Husserl’s difference from Frege, in a nutshell. For Frege, sense is merely a ‘vehicle,’ a way of presenting the Bedeutung, the referent (Frege 1948, 210), which remains essentially distinct from both the referent and the sign. Husserl is interested in the “phenomenal unity” that makes the ‘vehicle’ metaphor no longer tenable. Explaining why that metaphor is no longer tenable requires a great clarification of the elements involved in sense and meaning. For example, the “phenomenal unity” of expression is a unity between what? Traditionally, one is inclined to think of an expression as the phenomenal unity between “the expression physically regarded” and “a certain sequence of mental states, associatively linked with the expression, which makes it to be the expression of something” (Husserl 2001a, I, 188). We then call these mental states “the ‘sense’ or ‘meaning’ of the expression” (Husserl 2001a, I, 188). But this distinction between “physical signs and sense-giving experiences is by no means enough” (Ibid.). Instead—and here, at least in part, Husserl seems to be building on Frege— Husserl distinguishes between: (1) what an expression “‘shows forth’ (i.e. mental states)”; (2) what it means; and (3) “what it names (the object of that presentation)” (Husserl 2001a, I, 188), what Frege would call the referent. Husserl further ­distinguishes, within meaning, between “the meaning-conferring acts or the meaning intentions” and the “meaning-fulfilling acts” which become fused with the meaning-­conferring acts only in “the unity of knowledge or fulfillment” (Husserl

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2001a, I, 192). Only the former—meaning-intentions—are essential to the expression as such.23 Here, then, we see Husserl addressing the second ambiguity we noted above, namely the relationship between expression, meaning-fulfillment and meaning-­ intention. Meaning is, at times, used interchangeably with all three terms, while expression is sometimes distinguished from meaning-fulfillment and meaning-­ intention and at other times is equated with meaning-intention. To clarify this nexus, Husserl begins by distinguishing between the physical appearance of the expression, the sense-giving act, and the sense-fulfilling act (Husserl 2001a, I, § 9). It is the latter two that make an expression meaningful, and it is its meaning that enables it to relate “to what is objective” (Husserl 2001a, I, 192). But this relation to what is objective is not always realized, and when it is not realized “mere meaning is all there is” to the expression (Husserl 2001a, I, 192). Meaning is therefore explicitly tied to the meaning-intending acts and the relation to the object to the meaning-­ fulfilling acts. Since expression is the phenomenal24 unity of meaning or sense and physical appearance (including verbal sound, written mark, etc.), we can see clearly why it is only meaning-intention that is “essential to the expression if it is to be an expression at all” (Husserl 2001a, I, 192). The meaning-fulfilling acts25—which “actualize” the relationship to the object—are necessarily fused with the meaning-­ intending acts in instances of knowledge, but are not inherently necessary for expression as it is “normally understood […] as the sense-animated expression” (Husserl 2001a, I, 192). There is then a two-fold unity in expressions in which the relation of the expression with its Gegenständlichkeit is realized: “The sounded word is first made one with the meaning intention”—this can be called expression qua expression—“and this in its turn is made one (as intentions in general are made one with their fulfillments) with its corresponding meaning-fulfillment” (Husserl 2001a, I, 192). We have seen that only the first unity—that between the sounded word and its meaning-­ intention—is characteristic of expression as such; the second unity is characteristic of fulfillment.

 Indeed, this seems to be a primary difference between expressions and indications: in the former, only meaning-intentions are essential, while meaning-fulfilling acts “constitute the inmost core of intimation” insofar as, in an indicative sign, that is, in communicative speech, the fulfillment of my meaning intention is essential to my meaning-intention—in communicative speech, I speak with the “prime aim” of being understood by another; Husserl 2001a, I, 193. 24  Husserl sometimes calls the unity of expression “phenomenological” and sometimes “phenomenal.” While the unity is brought to reflection only through phenomenology, it seems to me more accurate to call the unity “phenomenal” insofar as the unity occurs distinct from the (phenomeno-) logical reflection that makes it explicit in reflection. 25  These acts must be kept logically distinct from “the whole experience in which a meaningintention finds its fulfillment in its correlated intuition” (Husserl 2001a, I, 192). That is, meaningfulfilling acts are not the same as intuitive fulfillment. 23

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3.2  Essential Characteristics of Expression It remains now to clarify precisely the nature of the type of unity that is characteristic of expression. The “phenomenal unity” of expression is seen most clearly in the experienced unity of a sign, in which our interest is drawn through the physical appearance of the sign given in the perceptual presentation to another presentation— that of the sense-giving act—and through that presentation “our whole interest centres upon the object intended in our intention” (Husserl 2001a, I, 193). Hence, the elements of the unity are asymmetrical: the physical appearance of the expression is “lived through,” but it is the meaning-intention and possible meaning-­fulfillment, or rather the enacting of the sense contained therein, that are “lived in” (Husserl 2001a, I, 193; see also Husserl 1952, 236). One essential characteristic of the phenomenal unity of expression, then, is the asymmetry of the parts, manifest in the fact that we live through one part so as to live in the (sense enacted by) the other part. The second essential characteristic of expression is that this asymmetry is not experienced as asymmetrical—as A motivating one to live in or enact B—but rather as a unity. I do not experience the two parts of the expression as two parts, but rather precisely as one. That I can later, through reflection, distinguish the parts is essential to the nature of this unity—the unity I experience is precisely an experienced unity, not an ontological unity or a unity of substance. “To be an expression is rather a descriptive aspect of the experienced unity of the sign and thing signified” (Husserl 2001a, I, 193). The relation between these two essential characteristics of the expression are what mark the meaning-intention as the primary—indeed, in a certain sense the constitutive26—element of expression, vis-à-vis its physical appearance or the act of meaning-fulfillment. For an expression is marked primarily by the change in intention by which the physical appearance is no longer taken merely in its perceptual intuitive sense but rather is taken to mean something that is intuitively bound up with that physical appearance by an intuitive act that is not merely perceptual, but expressive. That is, in expression our intention points “exclusively to the thing meant in the sense-giving act” (Husserl 2001a, I, 193) without that sense-giving act being distinct from the intuitive presentation of the physical appearance (for if the physical appearance and the sense-giving act are wholly distinct, we have an instance of indication rather than expression). Perhaps it is best to let Husserl explain himself at some length here, to help clarify rigorously the phenomenological nature of expression: [P]henomenologically speaking […] the intuitive presentation, in which the physical appearance of the world is constituted, undergoes an essential phenomenal modification when its object begins to count as an expression. While what constitutes the object’s appearing remains unchanged, the intentional character of the experience alters. There is ­constituted (without need of a fulfilling or illustrative intuition) an act of meaning which  See, for example, Mohanty 1964, 37: “a genuine expression qua expression is constituted by a meaning-intending act.” This is not to say that Mohanty thinks the meaning-intending act is sufficient to make something an expression, as the rest of his analysis makes clear. 26

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finds support in the verbal presentation’s intuitive content, but which differs in essence from the intuitive intention directed upon the word itself. (Husserl 2001a, I, 193–194)

To summarize, then, we can say that expression is that in which a physical appearance is phenomenally united with a sense such that the sense is intuited in and through the physical appearance itself,27 though later reflection is able easily to distinguish the physical appearance from the sense intuited thereby. An expression therefore causes an intentional shift whereby my intention is directed not at the object appearing but at the sense that is intuitively presented with or ‘in’ the object appearing; hence, the primary intention attaching to expression is not perceptual, but rather a “meaning-intention.” However, this intention occurs immediately in the intuitive presentation of the object and decidedly not as a distinct intuition requiring a distinct act of “fulfilling of illustrative intuition” (Husserl 2001a, I, 194).28 There is not a perceptual-intention that leads us to a distinct meaning-intention—in expression, the two are given as one, in a phenomenal unity.

4  Spirit and/as Expression The concept of meaning-intention plays a central role in Husserl’s early theory of meaning. For many readers of Husserl, it is the focus on intention that is significant in this theory, and the function of expression is either overlooked or employed only in a reduced view. Expression becomes equated either with something like a proposition (i.e., expression is used exclusively in the sense of the statement that bears a meaning) or with the meaning-intention. As mentioned above, both of these tendencies can be found in Husserl, but they are equivocations that Husserl’s most rigorous phenomenological distinctions endeavor to undo. The more robust, phenomenologically-­clarified account of expression as a particular type of unity between a physical appearance and a sense that is intuitively presented with that appearance seems, for the most part, to be lost.29 Because of this, the significance of expression for Husserl’s later work—and, indeed, for the larger phenomenological project—has often been overlooked.

 Husserl seems to suggest a strong relationship between expression and a presentation in marginalia of a manuscript of Ideas II (Husserl 1952, 341n.). While further study is needed to examine this relation in more detail, ultimately the difference seems to involve the role of meaning/sense in expression; see Flynn 2009, section 3.4. Likely, this difference is tied in some essential way to the asymmetrical relationship of the two terms in the unity. 28  Though we do not have time to pursue this at any great length here, Husserl argues for this notion in the second chapter of the first investigation by arguing against the conception that equates ‘sense’ with some type of ‘mental imagery’ such that an expression would be that in which a physical appearance causes me to intend a distinct intuitive appearance (i.e., the mental image). While such a fulfilling act often accompanies sense in an expression, Husserl is at pains to show that sense requires no such mental picture. 29  One notable exception here is the work of Merleau-Ponty; see Foti 2013; Landes 2013. 27

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Evidence of this oversight can be found in the fact that Husserl’s later account of spirit receives very little attention in the phenomenological literature.30 Once we see that Husserl’s account of spirit is the outgrowth of his earlier account of expression, we can see that spirit and spiritual expression (which, I posit, are synonymous terms for Husserl) ought to be seen as central to Husserlian phenomenology.

4.1  Husserl’s Account of Spirit Husserl’s account of spirit is laid out most explicitly in the Vienna Lecture. There, ‘spirit’ refers to the life, accomplishments and products of human living. Such ‘spirit’ is therefore personal (insofar as it pertains to persons), but also communal (Husserl 1970, 270). This personal, communal spirit is not merely reducible to the physiological lives of individual human bodies, though it is operative in and upon the “surrounding world” in which humans live, and which “is the locus of all our cares and endeavors,” and as such “is a spiritual structure in us and in our historical life” (Husserl 1970, 272). In saying this, Husserl is making manifest at least two claims: first, that spirit is not merely produced by us, but is also in us, constituting us even as it is constituted by us31; and second, that spirit is the driving force of our lives, determining both what we care about and what we do. It is, therefore, through spirit that “character is given to the persons” (Husserl 1970, 273). This ‘character’ is not merely a set of personal character traits, moods, or dispositions, however. It is the outgrowth of a spiritual teleology (Husserl 1970, 273),32 the acting-out of an inherent entelechy33 that actively guides development “toward an ideal shape of life” (Husserl 1970, 275). In this way it is analogous to an Idea in the Kantian sense34—an infinite regulative ideal that “has [not] ever been reached or could be reached,” but which rather provides “an infinite idea toward which, in concealment, the whole spiritual becoming aims, so to speak” (Husserl 1970, 275). The two seemingly parenthetical insertions in the last quote cannot be overlooked or dismissed if we are to properly grasp the notion of spirit at stake here: first, spirit, while deeply constitutive of persons in their personal and communal life,

 One notable exception to this is the work of the “Subjectivity, Historicity, Communality” research community at the universities of Helsinki and Jyväskylä. 31  Those interested in a deeper understanding of what I mean by the phenomenological subject as constituting and constituted should consult DeRoo 2010b, 2013a, b. 32  A teleology that cannot be divorced from the notion of sense; see Husserl 1970, 269. 33  The intensive interest in modern philosophy at work in other parts of the Crisis suggests that ‘entelechy’ should here likely be read more in its Leibnizian than in a strictly Aristotelian sense. Such a reading further reinforces the vitality and relation to life that are characteristic of spirit, in its Husserlian sense. 34  For more on the use of the Kantian Idea in the work of the later Husserl, see Derrida 1989. 30

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operates in “concealment,”35 which is to say, at least in part, that it operates without the persons in whom it is operative being aware that it is operating; second, describing this spirit as an ‘idea’ toward which something ‘aims’ is merely a figure of speech, and is not to be taken literally. Spirit is not primarily rational, and it is not a goal toward which one strives. It does not merely provide us a utopian ideal or a desired end-point—it is a dynamic, motivating force, a power that simultaneously is “living in finitude …toward poles of infinity” (Husserl 1970, 277), which is also to say that, while “every spiritual shape…has its history” (Husserl 1970, 274), it inhabits this history, or is inhabited by this history, in a way that “bears within itself the future-horizon of infinity” (Husserl 1970, 277).36 Husserl summarizes this account of spirit by referring to it as a “vital presentiment” (Husserl 1970, 275). This highlights two key elements of Husserl’s account of spirit: first, spirit is essentially living, that is, tied to life.37 This is to say that spirit is, as mentioned above, a dynamic force and not merely a concept, position, or goal. Spirit is affective, not merely effected. It moves people, shaping the very way they engage with the world around them in profound and innumerable ways, while at the same time being constituted in or by the (surrounding) world(s) in which it finds itself. This is the ‘vital’ part of spirit as a ‘vital presentiment’. Secondly, in calling spirit a “presentiment,” Husserl, building on the notion of horizons, means to indicate that spirit provides the very basis of sense itself: presentiment is an “intentional guide for seeing […] significant interconnections” (Husserl 1970, 275–6). In pursuing these connections, we are able to confirm for ourselves these presentiments, and so establish “confirmed certainty” (Husserl 1970, 276). In saying this, Husserl places spirit at the core of his entire epistemology. Central to that epistemology, founded as it is upon the relationship between intentionality and intuition, is the notion of fulfillment.38 Without taking us too far afield here,39 one can say fulfillment is what enables us to synthesize our various perceptions of an object into a single experience of a single object that we can know to be this object. This synthetic unity—distinct from the phenomenal unity of expression—is only possible because of a distinction in modes of bringing to intuition. Husserl distinguishes between ‘clarifying’ and ‘confirming’ modes of intuition. The first of these  There are clear resonances here with the Heideggerian notion of ‘concealment’ elaborated in Being and Time (Heidegger 1996); see also Marion 1998. 36  For a more thorough account of this complex temporality and its implications for philosophical investigation, see DeRoo 2013a. 37  Though the “word life here does not have a physiological sense; it signifies purposeful life accomplishing spiritual products: in the broadest sense, creating culture in the unity of a historical development” (Husserl 1970, 270). For more on Husserl’s use of ‘life’ as a philosophical trope, see Derrida 2010. 38  And here we must be careful to avoid contradiction: we have already said that fulfillment is not essential to Husserl’s theories of meaning and expression. But in epistemology we are talking about knowledge, not merely about meaning, and Husserl has always maintained the significance of fulfillment for any act of knowledge. 39  I explore the relationship between fulfillment, intentionality and intuition in Husserl’s thought in much more detail in DeRoo 2010a, 2013a. 35

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modes seeks to clarify, picture, or pre-figure the intended objective sense (Husserl 2001b, 79–80). This clarifying mode helps narrow the range of possibilities via the horizon of expectations out of which we operate. By filling some of the emptiness of the intended object, the clarifying mode enables the intended object to coincide with a confirming-fulfilling intuition in a synthesis. The second mode of bringing to intuition, then, is “the specific fulfillment of intuition” that is the “synthesis with an appropriate perception” (Husserl 2001b, 79). Here, “the merely expected object is identified with the actually arriving object, as fulfilling the expectation” (Husserl 2001b, 79). It is in this fulfilled expectation that the object is not only constituted as an object, but is constituted as this particular object of my experience: in fulfillment, I encounter this thing before me as a desk that, like other desks I’ve previously encountered, I am able to work at, place things upon, etc.40 It is in the first of these modes of bringing to intuition, the clarifying mode, that we see the epistemological significance of pre-figuring or of presentiment, which, as pre-objective [Gegenstandlich; see Husserl 2001b, § 28 and Husserl 1969, 69], is a pre-condition of rational or theoretical thought and is therefore more felt then thought, more a product of passive than active synthesis (Husserl 2001b). In calling spirit a “vital presentiment,” then, Husserl is saying that spirit is an active, dynamic force that shapes how we bring the world to intuition. This possibility of experience always occurs in a horizon of expectations that is not always confirmed, but that is always operative in any and all experience. Without such pre-figured expectations, experience would simply not be possible. Hence, “presentiment is the felt signpost for all discoveries” (Husserl 1970, 276), and spirit, as “vital presentiment,” is a necessary element of any and all experience. To speak of “spirit,” then, is to talk of a dynamic, vital force that shapes our pre-­ theoretical horizons in a way that is necessary for experience itself, but of which we may not be consciously aware, even as we are being guided by it.

 This is doubly true when we account for the temporal nature of my experience: I not only encounter this thing as a desk, but as a desk that I come across after having walked into my office and before I pull out my computer and place it upon the desk. Husserl’s essential breakthrough was in explaining that temporality is not added on to my experience proper (i.e., I have an experience [‘desk’] and then work that experience into the stream of my temporal life [‘I encounter the desk after I enter my office’]), nor is my experience secondary upon the ‘form’ of my temporal life (I am just a temporal stream into which some experience or other must come into and occupy). Rather, Husserl’s notion of double-intentionality (as both transverse and horizontal) gives him the means to explain how my experience is always already inherently constituted as temporal. This double-intentionality is essential to Husserl’s notion of ‘absolute consciousness,’ and hence to his entire phenomenological approach to philosophy (see Husserl 1991, 380–381; Kortooms 2002). And the notion of fulfillment is what makes possible that double intentionality: in fulfillment, what I expect is simultaneously experienced as itself and as what was expected (or what disappointed the expectation, etc.), thereby uniting the stream of experienced objects with the stream of temporal experience. And this fulfillment is only possible with the two modes of bringing to intuition discussed above: the clarifying and the confirming. See DeRoo 2010a. A similar account of double-intentionality may be at work also in Husserl’s account of expression and sense, though there is no time to pursue that hypothesis here. 40

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4.2  Spirit, Sense and Expression But we must acknowledge, in what has already been presented, the continuation, and indeed the further clarification, of the problematic of sense, meaning, and expression. By tying spirit to sense and to the clarifying mode of bringing to intuition, we have at least suggested how Husserl thinks sense functions in the constitution of knowledge. By providing the narrowed range of possibilities that allow an object to be intuited as this or that particular object, we see one possible explanation of the function of a meaning-intention—perhaps even of meaning itself—in the constitution of knowledge: meaning or sense is that which paves the way for knowledge,41 making possible the fulfilling act of intuition by creating the intuitive conditions whereby an intuition can fulfill a pre-figured expectation. By equating spirit with such a presentiment, Husserl not only deploys spirit explicitly within the realm of sense, but also shows the inherently communal nature of such sense. Even as it is constituted within an individual act of consciousness, any act of knowledge, as drawing on clarifying intuitions, must thereby deploy sense in its act of knowing. And because this sense is drawn from the surrounding world, and more specifically from the vital functioning of spirit in and upon that surrounding world, any individual act of knowing necessarily draws upon tools that, in principle, are available to other individual knowers as well. Here, we see spirit playing the key role of connecting individual, subjective acts to the ‘objective’— Husserl might prefer “suprasubjective” (Husserl 1970, 270) or perhaps even ‘spiritual’—claims necessary for scientific or mathematical objectivities. That is, here we see spirit playing the role that Husserlian phenomenology was launched to play: exploring and explaining rigorously the connection between the subjective and the objective.

 This is obviously different from an account in which our expressions merely ‘give form to’ what we first ‘know’—an account that seems, at times, to be at work in the Logical Investigations. However, the entire problematic of sense in Husserl is much more complicated than any simple equation, even that between ‘sense’ and ‘meaning.’ Despite the fact that Husserl himself uses Sinn and Bedeutung interchangeably, D. Pradelle has shown that “It is necessary to draw a sharp distinction between the sense that rests on the pre-logical or pre-conceptual stratum and the meaning that belongs to the logical stratum in the strict sense” (Pradelle 2016, 190). But the ‘pre-logical’ here is not non-logical or non-conceptual. Rather, sense must be understood as initiating the entire project of the ‘genealogy of logic’ carried out in Experience and Judgment, a project hinted at already in Ideas I’s discussion of the need for a “‘systematic and universal doctrine of the forms of sense [Formenlehre der Sinne],’” whose aim is to distinguish between different fundamental species of sense and, in particular, between ‘senses of the first and higher levels [Sinne erster und höherer Stufe]’” (Pradelle 2016, 194; see also Husserl 1976, § 133). The full elaboration of Husserl’s concept of sense, then, must lie outside the scope of this paper. For now, I remain content to offer one suggestion of how sense rests on the ‘pre-logical or pre-conceptual stratum’; a further engagement between Pradelle’s account of phenomenological sense and the account of sense at work in Husserl’s notion of spiritual expression must be put off, for the time being. 41

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That spirit plays this role will not surprise us, if we pay proper attention to Husserl’s use of expression.42 In Formal and Transcendental Logic, for example, Husserl claims that the ideality of expression is that of an “objective spiritual entity” (Husserl 1969, 19). If expression is ideal—that is, universal, objective, iterable across multiple subjects in multiple times and spaces43—as an “objective spiritual entity,” this is perhaps because spirit is itself inherently expressive. Recall our definition of expression: something is expressive when a physical appearance is phenomenally united with a sense such that the sense is intuited in and through the physical appearance in such a way that one’s intentional focus is directed, through the appearance, to the sense that is intuitively presented with or ‘in’ the object appearing. To claim that spirit is inherently expressive, then, is not to say that through it something else is made manifest. Nor is it to say that spirit is made manifest through something else. As ‘inherently expressive,’ spirit can be equated with neither the ‘physical appearance’ nor the ‘sense’ of an expression, for no single element of an expression is itself inherently expressive—it is only the whole of the expression that can be called ‘inherently expressive.’ There is, e.g., nothing inherently expressive about the physical appearance of a word (as mark, phoneme, grapheme, etc.). Certainly, such an appearance can be expressive, when it is united with the sense-giving act and the sense-fulfilling act (Husserl 2001a, I, § 9)—but the appearance is not itself inherently expressive. The sense-giving act—the meaning-­ intention—is sometimes used synonymously with ‘expression’, and we have seen both why it is significant for expression, but also why it is not, properly speaking, expression itself. As such, we cannot even say that the meaning-intention is ‘inherently expressive.’ Rather, it is only the expression as a whole, functioning expressively, that can be said to be ‘inherently expressive.’ As such, to say that spirit is ‘inherently expressive’ would be to say, not only that spirit always functions expressively, but that this expressive function is an essential part of spirit’s very being.44 That is to say, spirit must be the kind of thing in which an appearance and a sense-giving act (or a meaning-intention) are presented ­simultaneously  I do not mean to suggest that Husserl’s notion of expression remains static throughout his oeuvre. There are certainly changes in how he deploys the concept of expression (as Flynn 2009 clearly shows), but I think in large part this is because he perhaps initially fails to appreciate the significance of his own account of expression in Logical Investigations. Though there isn’t time to do so here, I think something like Flynn’s project of tracing the notion of expression from the Investigations to the later works (in her case Ideas II, though I have tried to use others here as well) can help us see that Derrida’s criticisms of Husserl’s concept of ‘expression’ in Voice and Phenomenon are neither incorrect nor fatal to Husserl’s account of ‘expression.’ If anything, they reveal a deeper, ontological notion of expression—a use of expression “beyond signification in general” (Flynn 2009, 68) that Husserl already seems to employ in the concept of spirit in his later works. 43  See Husserl’s claim that “persons bound together in direct mutual understanding cannot help experiencing what has been produced by their fellows in similar acts of production as being identically the same as what they themselves produce” after having already made clear that these acts of production of sense in understanding can occur “in any number of acts of production by one person or any number of persons”; Husserl 1970, 278. 44  A point Husserl makes explicitly about words as expressive entities; cf. Husserl 1973, 268. 42

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in intuition (even if it is possible to later separate them via various acts of thematic judgment, i.e., various reductions). Such a claim is consistent with Husserl’s use of spirit in the Crisis, the “Vienna Lecture” and other works from that time. For example, the notion of the inherent expressivity of spirit helps make sense of Husserl’s claims of a “spiritual meaning” that is “embodied” in the environment of the lifeworld (Husserl 2008, 427).45 This meaning is embodied especially in cultural objects such as “houses, bridges, tools, works of art, and so on” (Husserl 1959, 151) that he sometimes calls “spiritual products” (Husserl 1970, 270). These objects, according to Husserl, are not merely “present to us,” they “address themselves to us” in the context of our lives, and hence are said to have a “spiritual” meaningfulness (Husserl 1962, 111; 118; 384f.; 408f.; see also Husserl 1952, 236 ff.). As such, Husserl claims that, for these cultural objects “a reference to subjectivity belongs to that ownmost essential substance of the object with which it is meant and experienced” and therefore “a relatedness to personal community belongs to the very sense of all cultural objects” (Husserl 1962, 118; see also Pulkkinen 2013, 124). This sense, this “spiritual meaning,” is “not externally associated, but internally fused within as a meaning belonging to [the cultural object] and as expressed in it” (Husserl 1962, 112; Pulkkinen 125). Here we see clearly Husserl describing spiritual meaning as being ‘expressed’ in cultural objects. Both the ‘meaning’ and the ‘products’ or objects are deemed “spiritual” and are experienced, not distinctly, but as “internally fused,” that is, in an experiential unity. And this unity is not merely a matter of some particular attitude, some particular intention. That is, spirit is not merely the meaning-intention, nor is the expressive quality of spirit merely one possible way in which spirit can function, nor is it tied explicitly to its reception by a particular subject. Spirit is not expressive because I take it to be such, since “the attitude [in which spiritual meaning is seen] does not itself constitute the spiritual entity, the material-spiritual is already preconstituted, prethematic, pregiven” (Husserl 1952, 238 n. 1; see also Pulkkinen 2013, 127). Rather, spiritual expression is at work communally, in the suprasubjective horizons in which particular subjects operate.

5  Expression: The Promise of Phenomenology For Husserl, then, spirit is essentially expressive insofar as its very being is constituted in and by expression, and through this expressive nature of spirit we get the ultimate answer to Frege. Mathematical expressions are meaningful insofar as they are cultural artifacts, and therefore spiritual products. Their meaning is a product of culture—but this is not merely subjective, or even intersubjective. It is spiritual, and as such, it is objective—but spiritually objective, which is to say, suprasubjective and expressive.  This theme is examined at much greater length in Pulkkinen 2013 than I can do here. I think the notion of expression would be a helpful addition to Pulkkinen’s analysis. I draw heavily on Pulkkinen’s translations of material from Husserl 2008; unless otherwise cited, all translations from that volume are Pulkkinen’s. 45

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The sense that is crucial in connecting (subjective) ideas/conceptions with (objective) knowledge for Frege is explained, by Husserl, in terms of its ability to express the spirit that is operative, not just within one person (as if spirit were an individual soul), but within (cultural) life. This suprasubjective sense operates within horizons of expectation as the clarifying mode of intuition, which thereby makes possible the confirming mode of intuition necessary for the fulfillment that is itself necessary for knowledge. The suprasubjective is thereby established as that which transcends (in a certain way)46 any particular individual subjectivity while remaining operative within (and not secondarily to) that individual subjectivity. In seeking to clarify the subjective-objective relation that Frege left ambiguous, Husserl finds the purpose for phenomenology. In expression, he achieves that purpose. However, the early use of expression in specifically significative ways—a necessary moment in Husserl’s attempt to find a rigorous basis for logic and mathematics—end up concealing the deeper truth of the phenomenological account of expression. When welded to a traditional account of representation—something like the parallel systems of concept and sign established in the second part of The Philosophy of Arithmetic—expression lost the phenomenal unity that is essential to its phenomenological understanding. Instead it was understood merely as a vehicle for one thing (a concept) to be communicated from one person to another. Husserl sought to avoid this by his distinction between indication and expression, but his early attempts to explain the unique function of expression within the subject (in ‘solitary mental life’ to use the language of the Logical Investigations) were clumsy, at best, and ultimately misguided (as Derrida shows in Voice and Phenomena). Husserl’s later discussion of spirit and its related concepts—lifeworld, surrounding world, cultural objectivity, etc.—offers a more robust attempt to explain how expression functions within and upon the subject. By offering a suprasubjective account of this function, spirit enabled Husserl to clarify the move from the subjective to the objective that occurs in meaning: this is not a one-way move—developed by one individual, then put ‘out there’ into the world—but rather a complex, dynamic force operating at once intra-, inter-, and trans-subjectively, and therefore capable of being both subjective (in the traditional sense) and ‘objective’ in the sense of being identically available to multiple subjects across time and space. Individuals do not create meaning via their subjective acts—they merely constitute it. If this account of spiritual expression therefore fulfills the promise inherent to the phenomenological project, it does not exhaust it. Much more remains to be analyzed and understood phenomenologically about the ultimate function of sense, meaning, spirit, and expression in and for the project of human knowing and, ultimately, of human living. The suprasubjective understanding of spirit, for example, shows that social, perhaps even political, concerns cannot be simply divorced from ­epistemological concerns: for if spirit—as a communal force—plays a significant epistemological role in intuition, then any epistemology that begins from the perspective of the individual will inevitably mischaracterize at least this one significant 46

 Namely, as transcendental, in the phenomenological sense.

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aspect of how we come to know. Conversely, questions of epistemology cannot be divorced from social or political concerns: our ‘post-truth’ world is not only manifest by the cultural phenomena of Trump, Brexit, the raise of the alt-Right across Europe, etc., but is perhaps expressed in them. The (phenomenal) unity of truthquestions and political realities requires a spiritual analysis, not merely an epistemological or political one (as Husserl already tried to show us in the Crisis, even if we may have some significant concerns about the details of the analysis he provides there). Several areas of concern seem especially important, to me, for future phenomenological research in light of this analysis of spiritual expression. 1. Spiritual expression raises the need to revisit the nature of the distinction between indication and expression. While Derrida argued that every expression is inherently indicative, and hence the notion of a ‘pure expression’ was phenomenologically untenable, little, if any, attention seems to have been paid to the countervailing claim: that every indication is inherently expressive. Yet, if Husserl’s analysis of spiritual products is correct, then our primary relation to materiality is that of meaningful engagement. But if this is true—if every material thing inherently is unified with a sense or meaning—then every material thing is first expressive, before it can function indicatively. This does not preclude the indication-expression distinction, but it does suggest it to be a functional distinction, rather than one between types of entities. And if the very instruments of indication are themselves already inherently expressive/meaningful—if their ability to function indicatively is predicated upon their first being meaningful in their own right—does this bring us closer to Derrida’s post-structural account of language, or farther from it? Are Derrida’s arguments in Voice and Phenomena thereby confirmed or contested? 2. But it is not just for questions of language that the inherently expressive quality of materiality is significant. The question of meaning and the question of being cannot, seemingly, be posed independent of each other any longer. If the material world is spiritually expressive, then, as mentioned above, we do not experience meaning subsequent to our experience of materiality, but simultaneous to it. And given that Husserl says that “the spiritual prevails everywhere in the concrete experiential world, it attaches itself to everything” (Husserl 2008, 273; emphasis added), this suggests that our meaningful engagement with the world is our primary engagement, not just hermeneutically, but even ontologically. If expression is ontological and not merely linguistic or significative, then Husserl’s claims about the being of words—namely, that for them sense or meaning “belong to their being itself” (Husserl 1973, 268)—seem to apply also to cultural products, and perhaps even to subjectivity itself, qua expressive.47 To say “meaning is  This last claim regarding subjectivity itself needs much more exploration. On the one hand, as Flynn shows, Husserl thinks that the individual spirit is expressed through the living body, but in a way distinct from how it is expressed through words, and precisely on this issue of the relation of sense or meaning to its being; see Flynn 2009, 69. On the other hand, it’s not clear how Husserl’s 47

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being” or “meaning is the being of beings” (Dooyeweerd 1953, 3)48 is to give a resounding answer to Heidegger. But the implications of that claim—as well as its veracity—need further exploration. Is this suggesting a “more radical hermeneutics” (Caputo 2000) or a move beyond hermeneutics? If the latter, what are we moving toward? 3. This account of spiritual expression raises significant questions and issues for an account of spirituality itself. While we have focused primarily on the cultural or social implications of this claim, the question of its implications for the study of religion must also be raised. Spirituality is a regular feature of religious life, sometimes viewed as the (pietistic) kernel of religion, other times viewed in opposition to the ‘institutional’ nature of ‘traditional’ religion.49 But if spirit is (phenomenally) one with the materiality in which it is expressed, then a simple distinction between ‘spirit’ and ‘practice’ is not possible. Spirituality can be neither a pietistic retreat from the necessary (evil?) of everyday life nor an individual critique of the loss of the religious impulse via its concretization in historical institutions.50 Rather, if spirituality, qua expressive, is inherently material—and vice versa—then religion is both a (spiritual) impulse and its (material) expression. Indeed, perhaps we only learn of the former via the latter, and perhaps the latter are only (religiously) meaningful because of the former. Regardless, a new account of the spiritual-material relationship must be further elaborated. The degree to which this will bear on discussions of “religious materialism”51 will depend, in large part, on the relationship that exists between spirituality and religion. This, too, must be further developed, as well as the relation between spirituality, religion, and the words by which the “religions of the book” seek to promulgate their religious teachings. How does the revelation by words relate to revelation by material? How do either relate to the revelation of divinity or of a deeper spiritual/religious impulse? Here, the work of Michel Henry needs not only a wider audience, but a deeper engagement: how might expression ‘flesh out’ his account of immanence and its relation both to materiality (Henry 2008) and to Biblical revelation (Henry 2012)? Given the epistemological function of expression, how does this affect religious conceptions of truth (Henry 2002)? 4. This account of spiritual expression, by making all bodily acts expressive and therefore meaningful, perhaps opens a door for rapprochement between phenomenology and psychoanalysis. For once the equation of meaning and conlater, more communal analysis of spirit might interrupt or problematize this distinction, a point seemingly anticipated in the phenomenological work of Levinas, from his early accounts of the “reversal of Sinngebung” [see Levinas 1969, 1998a) to its implications for our views on subjectivity [1998b]. 48  For more on the significance of this claim, and of Dooyeweerd’s thought more generally, for phenomenology, see DeRoo 2016. 49  For an example of the latter, think of the increasing number of people who demographically identify as “spiritual but not religious” (a phenomenon whose rise is especially notable in America; see Fuller 2005). 50  For the debate concerning the latter claim, see, e.g., Simmons and Minister 2012. 51  For an example of this discussion, see Crockett and Robbins 2012.

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scious intention is done away with, the possibility of non-conscious intentions returns to philosophical viability. Psychoanalysis has certainly been one discipline that has explored those intentions and their potential significance—including their philosophical significance in the Lacanian strand of psychoanalysis—at some length. I would suggest that Deleuze—whose early works on Expressionism in Philosophy (Deleuze 1992) and The Logic of Sense (Deleuze 1990)  seem especially pertinent here—might be a significant figure for thinking through this rapprochement. Is Deleuze’s account of sense perhaps a further elaboration of Husserl’s account of expressive sense suggested here? How, for example, does the account of parallel series in Logic of Sense relate to Husserl’s early account of “parallel systems” in Logic of Arithmetic and possibly in Logical Investigations52: does Deleuze’s account push us further down the phenomenological path concerning sense and meaning? The Fregean path? Or does it offer another alternative to that debate? Further, Deleuze’s sustained work with Spinoza, Leibniz and Hume paves the way for a non-Cartesian metaphysics. Is such a metaphysic consistent with phenomenology, or is the latter truly an extension of Cartesian meditations (Husserl 1995)? If phenomenology promises to more rigorously explore the relationship between the subjective and the objective—a promise that Husserl, at least, seems regularly and definitively to make—than it cannot seem to avoid dealing with precisely the types of questions and issues laid out above. Indeed, the reference to figures within each of those proposed avenues of future research suggests that phenomenology is already dealing with these issues. However, the reception of those figures in phenomenological circles has not always been a wholehearted embrace. One thinks especially of Janicaud (Janicaud 2000), but there have been plenty of other Husserlians who are loath to talk about Derrida, Henry, or Deleuze as phenomenologists (and some even wish to keep that title from Heidegger). Granted, several of those figures (especially Derrida and Deleuze) have made statements quite critical of phenomenology at times. But the extent to which we are willing to see those as self-critical statements, as movements within phenomenology’s own self-­ understanding, depends, at least in part, on what we understand the promise of phenomenology to be.

References Aquila, R.E. 1974. Husserl and Frege on Meaning. Journal of the History of Philosophy 12 (3): 377–383. Bell, D. 1980. On the Translation of Frege’s Bedeutung. Analysis 40 (4): 191–195. Caputo, J.D. 2000. More Radical Hermeneutics: On Not Knowing Who We Are. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

52

 See note 14 above.

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Chase, J., and J.  Reynolds. 2010. Analytic Versus Continental: Arguments on the Methods and Value of Philosophy. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Cisney, V. 2014. Derrida’s Voice and Phenomenon: An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Cobb-Stevens, R. 1990. Husserl and Analytic Philosophy. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Crockett, C., and J.  Robbins. 2012. Religion, Politics, and the Earth: The New Materialism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Deleuze, G. 1990. The Logic of Sense. Trans. M. Lester. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1992. Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. Trans. M. Joughin. New York: Zone Books. DeRoo, N. 2010a. A Positive Account of Protention and Its Implications for Internal Time-­ Consciousness. In Epistemology, Archaeology, Ethics: Current Investigations of Husserl’s Corpus, ed. Vandevelde and Luft, 102–119. London: Continuum. ———. 2010b. Re-Constituting Phenomenology: Continuity in Levinas’ Accounts of Time and Ethics. Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review 49 (2): 223–243. ———. 2013a. Futurity in Phenomenology: Promise and Method in Husserl, Levinas and Derrida. New York: Fordham University Press. ———. 2013b. Phenomenological Insights into Oppression: Passive Synthesis and Personal Responsibility. Janus Head 13 (2): 81–99. ———. 2016. Meaning, Being, and Time: The Phenomenological Significance of Dooyeweerd’s Thought. In Phenomenology for the Twenty-First Century, ed. J.A. Simmons and J.E. Hackett, 77–96. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Derrida, J. 1989. Edmund Husserl’s Origin of Geometry: An Introduction. Trans. John P. Leavey. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ———. 2010. Voice and Phenomenon: Introduction to the Problem of the Sign in Husserl’s Phenomenology. Trans. Leonard Lawlor. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Dooyeweerd, H. 1953. A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Volume 1: The Necessary Presuppositions of Philosophy. Trans. D.  H. Freeman, and W.S.  Young. Philadelphia: The Reformed and Presbyterian Publishing Company. Duke, G. 2015. Dummett, the Frege-Husserl Exchange and the Analytical Tradition. In Dummett on Analytical Philosophy, ed. Weiss, 211–231. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Dummett, M. 1991. Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ———. 1993. Origins of Analytical Philosophy. London: Duckworth. Flynn, M.B. 2009. The Living Body as the Origin of Culture: What the Shift in Husserl’s Notion of “Expression” Tells us about Cultural Objects. Husserl Studies 25: 57–79. Foti, V. 2013. Tracing Expression in Merleau-Ponty. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Frege, G. 1891. Function and Concept. Originally published as Funktion und Begriff Jena:Hermann Pohle. English translation by Peter Geach and Michael Beaney, 130–149. Accessed online 17 Nov 2016. http://passthrough.fw-notify.net/download/630713/http://fitelson.org/proseminar/ frege_fac.pdf. ———. 1892. On Concept and Object. English translation by Peter Geach, 181–193. Accessed online 17 Nov 2016. http://fitelson.org/proseminar/frege_ocao.pdf. ———. 1948. Sense and Reference. The Philosophical Review 57 (3): 209–230. ———. 1950. The Foundations of Arithmetic: A Logico-Mathematical Enquiry into the Concept of Number. Trans. J.L. Austin. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. 1956. The Thought: A Logical Inquiry. Trans. A.M. and M.  Quinton. Mind, 65:259, pp. 289–311. Fuller, R.C. 2005. Spiritual but not Religious: Understanding Unchurched America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hartimo, M. 2006. Mathematical Roots of Phenomenology: Husserl and the Concept of Number. History and Philosophy of Logic 27: 319–337. Heidegger, M. 1996. Being and Time. Trans. J. Stambaugh. Albany: SUNY Press. Henry, M. 2002. I am the Truth: Toward a Philosophy of Christianity. Trans. S. Emanuel. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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———. 2008. Material Phenomenology. Trans. S.  Davidson. New  York: Fordham University Press. ———. 2012. Words of Christ. Trans. C. Gschwandtner. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Husserl, E. 1952. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und Phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution, Husserliana Band IV. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1959. Erste Philosophie. Zweiter Teil: Theorie der phänomenologischen Reduktion, Husserliana Band VIII. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1962. Phänomenologische Psychologie. Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1925, Husserliana Band IX. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1969. Formal and Transcendental Logic. Trans. D. Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Trans. David Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. 1973. Experience and Judgment: Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic. Ed. L. Landgrebe and Trans. J.S. Churchill, and K. Ameriks. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. 1976. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Forschung. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. Husserliana Band III/1. The Hague: Nijhoff. ———. 1991. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time. Trans. J. B. Brough. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic. ———. 1995. Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenlogy. Trans. D.  Cairns. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic. ———. 2001a. Logical Investigations. Trans. J.N. Findlay. London/New York: Routledge. ———. 2001b. Analyses concerning Active and Passive Synthesis: Lectures on Transcendental Logic. Trans. A. J. Steinbock. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic. ———. 2003. Philosophy of Arithmetic: Psychological and Logical Investigations with Supplementary Texts from 1887–1901. Trans. D. Willard. Dordrecht: Kluwer. ———. 2008.Die Lebenswelt. Auslegungen der vorgegebenen Welt und ihrer Konstitution. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1916–1937), Husserliana Band XXXIX. Dordrecht: Springer. Janicaud, D. 2000. The theological Turn of French Phenomenology. Trans. B.G.  Prusak. In Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn”: The French Debate, ed. Janicaud et al., 16–103. New York: Fordham University Press. Kortooms, T. 2002. Phenomenology of Time: Edmund Husserl’s Analysis of Time-Consciousness. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic. Landes, D. 2013. Merleau-Ponty and the Paradoxes of Expression. London/New York: Continuum. Levinas, E. 1969. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Trans. A.  Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. ———. 1998a. The Ruin of Representation. In Discovering Existence with Husserl. Trans. R. A. Cohen, and M. B. Smith. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 111–121. ———. 1998b. Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence. Trans. A. Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Marion, J.-L. 1998. Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger and Phenomenology. Trans. T. A. Carlson. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Mohanty, J.N. 1964. Edmund Husserl’s Theory of Meaning. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Pradelle, D. 2016. On the notion of sense in phenomenology: Noematic Sense and Ideal Meaning. Research in Phenomenology 46: 184–204. Pulkkinen, S. 2013. Lifeworld as an Embodiment of Spiritual Meaning: The Constitutive Dynamics of Activity and Passivity in Husserl. In The Phenomenology of Embodied Subjectivity Contributions to Phenomenology, ed. Jensen and Moran, 71. Cham: Springer. Simmons, J.A., and S.  Minister, eds. 2012. Reexamining Deconstruction and Determinate Religion: Toward a Religion with Religion. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Tito, J.M. 1990. Logic in the Husserlian context. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Individuation, Affectivity and the World: Reframing Operative Intentionality (Merleau-Ponty) Elodie Boublil

When Malraux writes that style is the ‘means of re-creating the world according to the values of the man who discovers it’; or that it is ‘the expression of a meaning lent to the world, a call for and not a consequence of a way of seeing,’ or finally, that it is the ‘reduction to a fragile human perspective of the eternal world which draws us along according to a mysterious rhythm into a drift of stars’; he does not get inside the functioning of style itself. Like the public, he looks at it from the outside. […] The painter at work knows nothing about the antithesis of man and the world, of signification and the absurd, of style and ‘representation.’ Merleau-Ponty, Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence, 53

Abstract In Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence, Merleau-Ponty draws on Malraux’s theory, developed in Le Musée Imaginaire and Les Voix du Silence, according to which modern art is the achievement of subjectivity’s creative powers in its ability to achieve the metamorphosis of the world through her works. This essay aims to show that the idea of “coherent deformation” illustrates Merleau-­ Ponty’s attempt to rethink subjectivity’s individuation as a creative yet ontological pattern that recasts the dynamics of operative intentionality and its expressions. I show that in response to Malraux, Merleau-Ponty works out a diacritical sense of individuation as style that conveys existential possibilities. This conception proposes a “phenomenology from within” that relies on literary, psychoanalytic and artistic works to exhibit the metamorphosis of the subject in and through her world. Archives Husserl de Paris, Marie Curie Actions – To carry out her research, the author has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 657712. The author is sole responsible for the views defended in this essay. E. Boublil (*) University of Cologne, Köln, Germany © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Apostolescu (ed.), The Subject(s) of Phenomenology, Contributions to Phenomenology 108, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29357-4_15

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Keywords  Individuation · Affectivity · Imaginary · Unconscious · Operative intentionality · Merleau-Ponty · Corbin

1  Introduction In Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence (hereafter ILVS), Merleau-Ponty draws on Malraux’s theory, developed in Le Musée Imaginaire and Les Voix du Silence, stating that the museum is the historical space in which artists’ creations contrast each other and acquire their autonomy, and that modern art is the achievement of subjectivity’s creative powers in its ability to achieve the metamorphosis of the world through its works. Malraux calls this artistic process “the coherent deformation” of the world. If Merleau-Ponty agrees with this phrase, he nonetheless refutes the idea according to which this would reflect the artist’s conscious intention. The disagreement between Malraux and Merleau-Ponty therefore lies in the fact that their interpretations stem from different metaphysical perspectives. This essay aims to show that the idea of “coherent deformation” resumes Merleau-­ Ponty’s attempt to rethink subjectivity’s individuation as a creative yet ontological pattern that recasts the dynamics of operative intentionality and its expressions. The concrete subject, like the artist, would less affirm its individual difference than it would differentiate itself in and through its expressions. In the first part, we will outline Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological project regarding subjectivity and explain how his approach to perception as lateral vision depicts the carnal situation of the individual as the multifaceted and polymorphous expression of its ontological relation to the world. Then, we will argue that in order to portray individuation as the symbolic yet actual expression of a generative flesh that colors and shapes my relation to the world and others, Merleau-Ponty must rethink the imaginary and characterize the kind of intentionality that may operate in its realm. Thanks to a comparison with Henry Corbin’s notion of “mundus imaginalis” and an analysis of Merleau-Ponty’s reinterpretation of Jensen’s Gradiva, we will see that the “imminent visibility” that characterizes one’s relation to the world and to others is both ontological and phenomenological, and that personal and collective individuation processes could be thought anew based upon it. Finally, we will show that in response to Malraux, Merleau-Ponty works out a diacritical sense of individuation as style that conveys existential possibilities. This conception urges us to look at individuation and expression in light of what could be called a “phenomenology from within” that relies on literary and artistic works to laterally exhibit its “capacity of resistance.”

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2  The Plasticity of the Body- Subject and Perception 2.1  Merleau-Ponty’s Recasting of Intentionality Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception (1945; hereafter PP) could be interpreted as an attempt to recast the phenomenological notion of intentionality, in order to oppose both Husserl’s conception of intentional consciousness as fulfillment (Erfüllung) and Sartre’s contrasting description of it as nihilation.1 As such, his philosophical project aimed to uncover a new sense of subjectivity’s relation to the world by paradoxically showing the irreducibility of the perceptual field to representational consciousness. In the preface, Merleau-Ponty reminds us of Husserl’s definition of intentionality: Husserl distinguishes between intentionality of act, which is that of our judgments and of those occasions when we voluntarily take up a position – the only intentionality discussed in the Critique of Pure Reason – and operative intentionality (fungierende Intentionalität), or that which produces the natural and antepredicative unity of the world and of our life, being apparent in our desires, our evaluations and in the landscape we see, more clearly than in objective knowledge, and furnishing the text which our knowledge tries to translate into precise language. (PP, xx)

Merleau-Ponty is interested in making explicit the phenomena related to operative intentionality and expressing notions of perception and vision that escape theoretical frameworks. He opposes the objectification of the world and of life produced by consciousness in act-intentionality to the organic unity of the dynamics of life and world in the meaning-making process displayed by operative intentionality. He does not consider the antepredicative elements produced by operative intentionality as forming a sort of “in-itself” that would resist, yet perpetually challenge and revive the objectifications of reflective consciousness (Sartrean perspective). Nor does he think that the unity formed by these elements is constituted through the immanent process of passive synthesis2 (Husserlian perspective). In fact, while Husserl sub Merleau-Ponty delves into Husserl’s concept of operative intentionality in order to recast perception independently from consciousness. What is at stake is twofold: (1) deconstructing the positive identity sought by the theory of intentionality as fulfillment (on this topic, see the analysis of Emmanuel Lévinas in “Intentionalité et sensation”); and (2) rejecting as well the understanding of consciousness in terms of nihilation offered by Sartre in Being and Nothingness, according to which consciousness is defined by its “lack of identity” and its capacity to introduce negation in the opaque world of the “in-itself” and in the other’s fundamental project thanks to the possibilities it constantly creates for itself. 2  The process of passive synthesis is part of what Husserl describes in his later texts as “operative intentionality,” along with genetic constitution and unconscious processes. It cannot be thematized as such even though its products are ultimately constituted by the ego: “What is constituted for consciousness exists for the ego insofar as it affects me, the ego. Any kind of constituted sense is pregiven insofar as it exercises an affective allure, it is given insofar as the ego complies with the allure and has turned toward it attentively, laying hold of it.” Husserl, Analysis Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis, §34, 162. On this topic, see J.  N. Mohanty, “Husserl’s Concept of Intentionality.” 1

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sumes embodied experience and operative intentionality under the gaze of transcendental consciousness to account for subjectivity’s individuation in the world,3 Merleau-Ponty wants to look beneath this constituting process in order to reveal a field of perception which explores the ways in which the world and others affect and color one’s being in the world, and influence the sense of one’s individuation before any kind of conscious synthesis takes place. Merleau-Ponty’s innovative approach to individuation therefore consists in rethinking the phenomenological constitution of subjectivity—that is, the process through which consciousness gives meaning to itself and to its world—as a phenomenological embodied expression that cannot be objectified but that is yet to be described. Merleau-Ponty’s deconstruction of intentionality consists in ontologically reinterpreting this phenomenological concept4 as the perceptive process responsible for the advent of meaning and the development of the body-subject. Consequently, in the Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-­ Ponty draws on a criticism of idealism and empiricism, which both seem to have missed the phenomenon of perception, and notably the fact that all perceived qualities are perspectival and already overlaid with meaning in a way which structures our perceptual experience.5 The “phenomenal field” is an “ambiguous domain” in which embodied subjects are situated; it is not a background laid out for consciousness to merely survey. Reflection is therefore always tied to the concrete and to the prereflective movement of my own body (corps propre) and rooted in the perspectival and more fundamental situation that exceeds the grasp of my reflective consciousness. As Merleau-Ponty writes, “In fact, the thinking Ego can never abolish its inherence in an individual subject, which knows all things in a particular perspective” (PP, 71). Such a sentence blurs the distinction between ipseity (self-­ identity of the thinking Ego) and haecceity (concrete thisness that makes an individual different from all others), by suggesting that these two characteristics are intertwined in a third dimension that relies on a kind of “knowledge” or vision provided by my bodily perspectives. How does Merleau-Ponty account for this third dimension and how does he recast operative intentionality in a new conception of individuation?

 In Ideas II, §64, Husserl distinguishes between absolute and relative individuations. The former refers to the act-intentionality and the constituting activity of the transcendental ego while the latter are expressions through attitudes and life-styles of the more fundamental one. Merleau-Ponty tries to think here the self-grounding nature of expressions and individuations where Husserl made sense of subjectivation processes. 4  Despite having in common an emphasis on life and affectivity, Merleau-Ponty takes here a different path from Michel Henry, who disqualified the concept of intentionality by claiming that even in its “operative” form one might see the traces of representational thinking—the latter annihilating life’s auto-affection. See “Hyletic Phenomenology and Material Phenomenology,” in Material Phenomenology, 7–42. 5  The first section of the Phenomenology of Perception notably provides a criticism of the constancy hypothesis that presupposes the objective world and a constant connection between elements of it and a sensory perception apparatus that records them. According to Merleau-Ponty our perceptions always fail this consistency and science errs in conceiving of the body as an object of experience instead of an active embodied participant engaged in the process of experiencing. 3

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By criticizing both empiricist and idealist approaches to the subject and the world, Merleau-Ponty moves away from Cartesian ontology. Merleau-Ponty blurs the dichotomy between res cogitans and res extensa and weaves in the woof of my corporeity the intentional threads that achieve the immanent and necessary unity of my own body. Understanding perception itself as operative intentionality through my corporeal experience of the world leads him to consider individuation as a contingent and independent concrete process that does not rely on a transcendental principle, and to locate in bodily movements the sense of unity and difference experienced on a prereflective level: “The body is the vehicle of being in the world, and having a body is, for a living creature, to be intervolved in a definite environment, to identify oneself with certain projects and be continually committed to them” (PP, 94). Far from opposing its natural movement to an objectified world of constituted norms, my own body’s action in the world creates meaning and opens up a field that is a kind of “existential praxis” as Merleau-Ponty says in 1953,6 and that ties together the individuation process of my own body and the practical—rather than theoretical—visions and perspectives I have of the world. Influenced by the Gestalt theory and the works of Paul Schilder, Merleau-Ponty calls this third dimension “body schema”7 (schéma corporel). The notion of body schema refers to the configuration and expression of one’s own individuation since it guarantees my unity and structures my identity in the different places I inhabit: “My whole body for me is not an assemblage of organs juxtaposed in space. I am in undivided possession of it and I know where each of my limbs is through a body schema in which all are included” (PP, 112–113). This schema is not representational but rather relies on my own capacity (je peux)8 to constantly correlate and adjust the motility of my body to its meaningful expressions. The meaning radiated by the body schema is more similar to the “infrastructure of a landscape” (MSME, 49) than it is to a set of predetermined dispositions. This architectural metaphor shows that Merleau-Ponty is working out a concept of capacity that pertains more to the virtual than to the possible, should the latter be conceived as something that would need to be actualized in order to be operative. In this sense, individuation is not the instantiation or the particularization of an essence or a kind but the ongoing expression of a concrete generality that is the “individual subject.” Therefore, understanding the plasticity of the body schema calls for an  “The body schema is essentially the back of a praxis, pre-objective spatiality and the background from which take shape actual objects of action.” Merleau-Ponty, Le monde sensible et le monde de l’expression, 159 (my translation). Hereafter MSME. 7  On the influence of the works of Paul Schilder on Merleau-Ponty’s notion of schéma corporel, see Weiss, Body Images: Embodiment as Intercorporeity, Chap. 1. 8  Such conception reflects the influence of Maine de Biran on Merleau-Ponty as shown in his lectures: “[Maine de Biran] introduces the motor subject as a subject capable of having thought: the motor subject is thinking, ‘we find in ourselves the intelligence which operates through the will.’ Willing and understanding cannot be dissociated. Therefore, we can acknowledge that Biran wanted to show that the presence of the body was necessary for thought itself.” Merleau-Ponty, “Biran and the Philosophers of the Cogito,” in The Incarnate Subject: Malebranche, Biran, and Bergson on the Union of Body and Soul, 76. 6

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exploration of the world of the subject—in the double sense of the genitive—and urges us to replace the correlational phenomenological paradigm (constituting subject/constituted object) with a description of what Merleau-Ponty calls the “intentional arc” which coordinates and links together the diverse and reversible expressions of my existence: “The life of consciousness is subtended by an ‘intentional arc’ which projects round about us our past, our future, our human setting, our physical, ideological and moral situation, or rather which results in our being situated in all these respects. It is this intentional arc which brings about the unity of senses, of intelligence, of sensibility and motility” (PP, 157). There is no discrepancy between the domain of life and the comprehensive dimensions opened up by perception. They belong to the same circular movement and circulation of meaning that the metaphor of the arc illustrates by insisting on the curves, the plasticity of my bodily attitudes, the reversibility of my expressions and their individuated significance. The comprehension of my relation to the world is entirely corporeal and perceptive and it is vain, according to Merleau-Ponty, to oppose two kinds of intentionality, to contrast life and desire to the intellect and its representations. In his later works, Merleau-Ponty elaborates on this integrative process by extending the plasticity of the body-subject to the plasticity of the world itself through a phenomenological description of the analogical structure of perception that aims to supplant any teleological9 pattern of consciousness.

2.2  T  he Analogical Structure of Perception and the Differentiations of the Flesh In light of his conception of perspectival perception,10 Merleau-Ponty describes the process of individuation by referring to the “lateral” and “oblique” movement of my own body as opposed to the face-to-face, artificially set up by the objectifying gaze that particularizes things and reduces others to their observable behaviors. As a “pre-objective view,” the praxis of the body schema points to a new sort of visibility that orients the movement of individuation and conditions its expressions. The challenge is to find a vision that neither proceeds from the constituting activity of consciousness nor reproduces the phenomenological co-relational paradigm (subject/ object), while still being able to account for meaning-making processes. Merleau-­ Ponty suggests the idea of a vision in depth that plays a part in the individuation  In this sense, and in light of Merleau-Ponty’s working note of The Visible and the Invisible (hereafter VI), titled “Teleology,” it seems problematic to maintain the teleological terminology to describe the generativity that is here described as Ted Toadvine does in his article “Singing the World in a New Key: Merleau-Ponty and the Ontology of Sense.” 10  Some comparison could be made between Merleau-Ponty’s notion of vision and Nietzsche’s perspectival seeing and the way they are both sustained by the intertwining of Apollonian and Dionysian forces. See Johnson, “Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty: Art, Sacred Life, and Phenomenology,” in Nietzsche and Phenomenology. 9

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process of subjectivity and allows us to consider the differentiation at stake, independently from the delineation and separation usually attached to the notion of individuation. This vision points to a sort of “écart” within which could emerge differences and meanings that are mine as well as others’: “What is proper to the visible is, we said, to be the surface of an inexhaustible depth: this is what makes it able to be open to visions other than our own” (VI, 143). Vision and individuation do not follow a predetermined trajectory nor do they occur according to a well-­ defined plane. Rather, they express a certain sense of obliquity that seems to allow us to conceive of this connection between generality and generativity. The paradox lies in the possibility of even describing the generality and anonymous pattern that Merleau-Ponty calls “the flesh of the world” while asserting its generativity, that is, its ability to produce singularities and make room for ungraspable differences. We would argue that it is made possible by a conception of analogicity modeled upon the lateral movement previously described. It does not point to an analogy of proportionality that would presuppose a concept of identity, nor does it assume an analogy of participation (imitation) that would recall a representational framework. As we will show, it is rather an analogy of expression, able to manifest the sense of being thanks to the concrete generality that is the flesh and its imaginary powers. This will lead us to interpret the idea of “coherent deformation” not only with regard to the work of art but also with regard to Merleau-Ponty’s indirect11 ontological recasting of individuation through the notion of operative intentionality. To summarize, what makes intentionality “operative” is therefore twofold: (1) it is not a static process but a genetic dynamic that affects and runs through the dimensions of my perceptual life and its interpretations; and (2) it is characterized by its laterality, that is, the oblique sense (the French word “sens” referring to “meaning” but also “direction”) that perpetually decenters the subject’s perspectives of herself and the world. Moreover, this operative feature generates perceptual meaning by digging deep into the generality of what Merleau-Ponty calls the “flesh.” This concept is elaborated with regard to a reinterpretation of the truth-value of experience and a new understanding of the imaginary. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological ontology shows an attempt to overcome the indexation of reality to truth and to the Cartesian ontology, according to which “the Earth is only one body among the others” (Nature: Course Notes, hereafter CN, 77) and “we must understand God as the truth […] and take account of it differently according to whether we place ourselves in an essentialist thinking or an existentialist thinking” (CN, 128). Thinking reality independently from truth—or better said, reality’s polymorphism as the only truth of being’s manifestation—is therefore the ambition of Merleau-Ponty’s new understanding of intentionality. In this way, he would be able to overcome the Cartesian approach to nature, the world, and the divine while still accounting for primordial and existential experiences of the latter.  In a working note of The Visible and the Invisible, dated February 1959, Merleau-Ponty writes: “One cannot make a direct ontology. My ‘indirect’ method (being in the beings) is alone conformed with being – ‘negative philosophy’ like ‘negative theology’ […] What is philosophy? The domain of Verborgen (philosophy and occultism).” VI, 183. 11

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The point of his thematization12 of the own body (corps propre), and later on of the flesh, consists in breaking up with these artificial and Euclidian delimitations of space in order to come up with a topology of the figures that appear on life’s stage (VI, 210) and constantly remodel the space of opportunities. As exposed in Eye and Mind (hereafter EM), world is characterized by depth and its “reversibility” (EM, 13), which immediately puts down the intransitive nature of the metaphysical gaze. Truth is therefore connected to flesh’s visibility and manifestation. In the Visible and the Invisible Merleau-Ponty defines the flesh as follows: The flesh is not matter, is not mind, is not substance. To designate it, we would need the ancient term “element,” in the sense it was used to speak of water, air, earth and fire, that is, in the sense of a general thing midway between the spatiotemporal individual and the idea, a sort of incarnate principle that brings a style of Being, wherever there is a fragment of Being. The flesh is in this sense an “element” of Being.” (VI, 89)

The truth of being lies in its very peculiar and “elemental” phenomenality. This phenomenality relies on being’s epiphanies, on its shimmering through the flesh “and even that of the world, that radiates beyond itself.”13 What is the significance of this shimmering? What kind of perceptual imagination should be implemented? To what extent would this “elemental” truth aim to restore life’s sacrality through individuation and self-creation? The consequences of such a revaluation of truth and such praise of the perspectival nature of life lie in Merleau-Ponty’s rehabilitation of “the oniric world of analogy” (EM, 170) covered by Cartesian ontology. Thanks to an ontological characterization of the unconscious and the imaginary that surpasses Freud’s causal framework, Merleau-Ponty’s operative intentionality is better conceived as a configurative process that intertwines the “operative finitude”14 of the plastic force that makes the individual, an infinite that is indeterminate, and the non-­ teleological creativity that sustains the carnal subject’s “immanent sense of metamorphosis” (MSME, 166). Before understanding individuation as style, in light of Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of literary expression as manifesting “lateral relations,” we have to delve into what he calls the “imaginary texture of the real”15 in order to explain the projective nature and phenomenal features of the flesh that is “an element, a concrete emblem of a general manner of being” (VI, 147). In the next sect. I will argue that Merleau-­ Ponty’s conception of the imaginary can be understood in light of Corbin’s notion of “mundus imaginalis” and as a reinterpretation of the Freudian unconscious as an ontological and projective dynamism rooted in the flesh.

 On the non-representational or non-objectifying kind of thematization worked out by MerleauPonty, see Khan, “The Time of Flesh and the Memory of the World,” 238. 13  Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind, 17. 14  “For me the infinity of Being that one can speak of is operative, militant finitude: the openness of the Umwelt – I am against finitude in the empirical sense, a factual existence that has limits, and this is why I am for metaphysics. But it lies no more in infinity that in the factual finitude.” The Visible and the Invisible, May 1960, 251. 15  Merleau-Ponty writes: “It gives vision that which clothes it within, the imaginary texture of the real.” EM, 124. 12

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3  Merleau-Ponty’s Mundus Imaginalis and the Subject’s Deformation 3.1  F  rom “The Imaginary Texture of the Real” to the Mundus Imaginalis In the Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty is still influenced by Sartre’s conception of imagination as developed in L’imaginaire, which devaluated its function because of its inability to render the existential presence of the real object.16 In his Lectures on Institution and Passivity (1955; hereafter IP), Merleau-Ponty worked out a rehabilitation of the imaginative field that no longer relies on a faculty of consciousness (imagination) but rather is expressive of an ontological feature of the real. Such a conception will culminate in Merleau-Ponty’s last work, Eye and Mind, as well as in his working notes for The Visible and the Invisible. How could this be explained? Clearly, Merleau-Ponty’s study of literary works (Stendhal, Breton, Valéry), great familiarity with Bachelard’s epistemology,17 and interest in psychoanalysis may explain this shift. But a comparison between Merleau-Ponty’s description of the imaginary and Henry Corbin’s notion of “mundus imaginalis” is here relevant, especially considering Corbin’s friendship with both Malraux and Bachelard, who were direct interlocutors of Merleau-Ponty, thinking imagination in terms of “deformation.”18 This comparison would allow us to explain how Merleau-­ Ponty’s phenomenology of the imaginary conveys ontological commitments that bear a new approach to meaning-making as “coherent deformation” rooted in creative imagination. Affectivity is then shaped by operative intentionality understood in terms of creative imagination. Henry Corbin (1903–1978) was a French philosopher. His interests in Medieval and Arabic philosophy developed alongside his strong education in German philosophy. He attended Cassirer’s lectures in Hamburg and became very acquainted with his philosophy of symbolic forms. He also attended Kojeve’s lectures, like Merleau-Ponty, in the 1930s and had regular meetings with Gabriel Marcel and Alexandre Koyré. He met Heidegger at the same time, and is actually known for being the first translator of Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit and Was ist Metaphysik?— texts that he translated and published in France in 1938. Corbin would never deny his interest in phenomenology; in fact, he claimed that his research on Islamic  See Sartre, The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of Imagination.  In a working note of The Visible and the Invisible, dated November 1960, Merleau-Ponty explicitly refers to Bachelard’s notion of elements in order to challenge Sartre’s ontology of the imaginary. 18  On the relation between Bachelard and Corbin, see Cheetham, All the World an Icon, 84. Referring to Terre Céleste, Bachelard wrote to Corbin in May 1956: “It is the élan of verticality that I receive from each page of Terre Céleste. […] Reading you, I imagine that I yet could have the power to speak of the dynamicity of human verticality” In a note working note of The Visible and the Invisible dated April 1960, Merleau-Ponty refers to Bachelard’s notion of the imaginary— a notion that Bachelard himself defined as the “power of deforming the images given by the senses” in L’air et les songes, “Introduction: ‘Imagination et mobilité,’” 5 16 17

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mysticism and his comparative philosophy were largely influenced by the phenomenological and hermeneutic method he learned during his education and developed throughout his life. Although he has been relatively forgotten by French and German phenomenologists, Corbin became one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century in the field of Oriental Studies. He spent his career between the Middle East and Paris where he taught at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE) while Merleau-Ponty was teaching at the Collège de France. Although it seems plausible to think that Merleau-Ponty and Corbin met each other, there is no textual evidence of a direct communication between the two thinkers. Comparing their thoughts would not so much lead to asserting an obvious historical connection, as it would help us to see the possible paths along which Merleau-Ponty’s late philosophy might lead. Islamic mysticism is not to be assimilated with Merleau-Ponty’s ontology, but Corbin’s hermeneutics might help uncover a way to accurately portray the kind of unity and individuation, based on the notions of écart and Ineinander, that Merleau-Ponty is trying to depict. Henry Corbin’s approach to hermeneutics shows that his method, influenced by his reading of Heidegger, may resonate with that of Merleau-Ponty in the sense that it aims to uncover, as he said, a “(prophetic and poietic) active pathos,”19 meaning that truth and the sacred are, first of all, to be experienced. For both Corbin and Merleau-Ponty, the seer and what she sees (the visible) are fundamentally bound together and reflect back into one another. Their diagnosis about the world and its Cartesian ontology (the division between res cogitans and res extensa) also clearly converge. According to Corbin, “phenomenology consists in telling what is hidden, in telling us about the invisible which is beneath the visible.”20 It is therefore misleading to think being either in terms of a positive totality (theism), or in terms of an inaccessible and ineffable realm that could only be pictured aesthetically.21

 “Hermeneutics does not consist in deliberating about concepts, it essentially unveils what goes on inside us, what makes us build up such conception, such vision, such projection when our passion becomes action, an active pathos, prophetic and poeitc.” Corbin, “De Heidegger à Sohravardî,” 25 (my translation). 20  Corbin, Philosophie iranienne et Philosophie comparée, 23. 21  Two different interpretations of this ontological discourse have been presented in a collection published in 2010 entitled Merleau-Ponty at the Limits of Art, Perception and Religion. In this volume, Richard Kearney and Joseph S. O’Leary discuss the notion of sacrality in Merleau-Ponty and how it relates to Being’s life. According to Richard Kearney (158): “By relocating the moment of sacred transcendence in the immanence of nature, Merleau-Ponty is restoring logos to the flesh of the world. Deus sive Natura.” In his contribution Kearney offers a picture of the sacrality of Being as a fleshing out of transcendence in immanence, as a sort of pantheism (affirmed by the reference to Spinoza) reflecting the presence of God among beings thanks to what he would call a “relocation.” On the other hand, Joseph S. O′ Leary argues that Merleau-Ponty’s esoteric suggestions about Being should be limited to an aesthetic interpretation which puts the emphasis on depth as the existential pattern of the creative activity of life as Being. We argue here that the ontological and the aesthetic dimensions are not mutually exclusive and converge under the notion of “coherent deformation.” 19

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Corbin describes what he calls the paradox of monotheism. There are three steps in this paradox.22 The first step consists in the exoteric form of monotheism, which leads to metaphysical idolatry (positive Being). The second step is that of the esoteric form of monotheism that focuses on Being, but therefore risks mistaking its meaning and turning it into a substance (negative Being—paradoxically reified). The only viable way would be the last step, which solves the paradox and which Corbin called “integral ontology,” an ontology that is able to think being in beings, and which would be an antidote to nihilism. If the solution to this paradox seems dialectical, we will see after defining his notion of “mundus imaginalis” that the hermeneutic movement he described was a better fit with what Merleau-Ponty would call “hyperdialectic”—that is, “a thought that on the contrary [to a bad dialectic] is capable of reaching truth because it envisages without restriction the plurality of relationships and what has been called ambiguity” (VI, 144). This short description of Corbin’s diagnosis of the Western world and philosophy relies on its research on Islamic philosophy and Sufism (mostly Ibn’Arabi). According to the latter, as Corbin explains, there are not two worlds (the mind and the body, the spirit and the matter) but three: the sensitive world of matter, the intelligible world of ideas and, in-between, the world of perceptual and creative imagination, that is, the world of the soul which gives life and connects the two other dimensions. As Corbin states, there is therefore a “multidimensionality of being, whose levels are articulated vertically.”23 Let’s turn now more specifically to Corbin’s description of this third level, the mundus imaginalis. Corbin’s entire interpretation of the modern world draws on the concept of “mundus imaginalis” which for him refers precisely to that “in-between” within which Being and God hides and reveals itself. Commenting on Esoteric Islam and notably the works of Ibn’Arabi, Corbin writes: We observe immediately that we are no longer reduced to the dilemma of thought and extension, to the schema of cosmology and a gnoseology limited to the empirical world and the world of abstract understanding. Between the two is placed an intermediate world, which our authors designate as “alam-al-mithal”, the world of the Image, mundus imaginalis: a world as ontologically real as the world of the senses and the world of the intellect, a world that requires a faculty of perception belonging to it […] this faculty is the imaginative power, the one we must avoid confusing with the imagination that modern man identifies with “fantasy” and that, according to him, produces only the “imaginary.”24

By exhibiting a “presence-in-the-making,” the “imaginal” perception of this mundus, of this world, helps design an integral ontology able to link creation and human desires with the hidden expansion of Being.25 Sacrality is therefore inherent  See Le paradoxe du monothéisme, 14.  See Corbin, Philosophie iranienne et philosophie comparée, 17. 24  Corbin, Swedenborg and Esoteric Islam, 9. 25  “A second postulate, evidence for which compels recognition, is that the spiritual Imagination is a creative power, an organ of true knowledge. Imaginative perception and imaginative consciousness have their own noetic (cognitive) function and value, in relation to the world that is theirs – the world, we have said, which is the “alam al-mithal,” mundus imaginalis, the world of the mystical 22 23

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to life and is precisely that which allows “being” and “thought” to be brought together at the pre-reflective level of existence to which genuine philosophy confronts itself. It gives birth to an ontology that is “negative,” that is perpetually challenging itself, that is a gnosis, which, according to Corbin’s specific definition in an article meaningfully titled “Eyes of Flesh and Eyes of Fire,” is “knowledge that changes and transforms the knowing subject.”26 In light of Corbin’s description, it is then possible to think that the phenomenological interpretation of sacred being and the ontological one reflect back into one another when philosophy works out, as Merleau-Ponty writes: an “ontology from within” (VI, 237). Sacrality, displayed by the imaginary, is therefore another name for depth. Human life is individuated through flesh, but its meanings are individuated by human expressions and creations, the latter being guaranteed by the fundamental depth that characterizes the world and existence. In a working note of the Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-­ Ponty states that “the problem “self-other” is a Western problem” (November 1959, 270). For Corbin, commenting on Islamic mysticism: “It is the corporeal substance that resides in the spiritual substance; it is the soul that encloses and bears the body. This is why it is not possible to say where the spiritual place is situated; it is not situated, it is, rather, that which situates, it is situative. Its ubi is an ubique.”27 For Merleau-Ponty as well, the flesh as mundus imaginalis and expressive world (the spiritual substance Corbin is talking about) appears again to be the very realization of truth rather than what resists it and the style that makes its expression meaningful. Far from disrupting individuation as in Nietzsche’s preliminary interpretation of Dionysian forces in The Birth of Tragedy, the imaginary, through the activity of what appears to be the unconscious, participates fully in the subject’s individuation as “coherent deformation.”

3.2  Gradiva or the Oblique Vision of Desire The role of imagination in the “deformation” not only relies on ontological and phenomenological descriptions but is also tied to the structure of intersubjective relations and affectivity. Indeed, individuation is not only a metaphysical and philosophical category, it is also a psychological one used by Freud (and most notably Jung, who inspired Corbin’s works) to describe the genesis of personality and the way the individual becomes aware of its own self and separates itself from the other. Merleau-Ponty’s interest in Freud’s theory of the unconscious and his analysis of the role of imagination in love relationships reinforces our understanding of cities such as Hurqalya, where time becomes reversible and where space is a function of desire, because it is only the external aspect of an internal state.” Corbin, “Mundus Imaginalis, or the Imaginary and the Imaginal,” 16 26  Corbin, “Eyes of Flesh and Eyes of Fire,” quoted in Cheetham, The World Turned Inside Out, 47. 27  Corbin, Swedenborg and Esoteric Islam, 14.

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individuation in terms of metamorphosis and configuration. In the Lectures on Institution and Passivity, Merleau-Ponty considers Freud’s interpretations of the case of Dora and the character of Norbert Hanold in Jensen’s Gradiva. For argument’s sake, I will focus here on Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of Gradiva. MerleauPonty remarks: “The body as metaphysical being (Unconsciousness as negative hallucination: Gradiva; Unconsciousness as promiscuity: Dora)” (IP, 161). How shall we understand this redefinition? In what sense the body could be considered as a “metaphysical being”? What does Merleau-Ponty mean by “negative hallucination” when he qualifies the unconscious as such? Freud used the story of Gradiva to explain delusion and to show how phantasy and imagination could overtake reality under the influence of the repressed. What Freud takes to be a paradigmatic case of the return of the repressed is for Merleau-Ponty an example of this “imaginary texture of the real” woven by the body itself without the mediation of consciousness. Gradiva, who is “the girl splendid in walking,”28 expresses through her gestures and reliefs, through the movement of her body, a certain radiance which haunts Hanold’s mind and dreams, and which in fact echoes another vision coming from the past to color and shape his existence: Hanold’s first love, Zoë. According to Merleau-Ponty, the unconscious is therefore not a specific region where repressed representational contents remain opaque. Rather, the “unconscious is to be sought not at the bottom of ourselves, behind the back of our “consciousness”, but in front of us, as articulations of our field. It is “unconscious” by the fact that it is not an object, but it is that through which objects are possible, it is the constellation wherein our future is read – It is between them as the interval of the trees between the trees, or as their common level” (VI, 180). The imaginary is therefore conceived as this “imminent vision” (Signs, hereafter S, 187) that makes our individuation contingent on the other visions found at the intersection of my own spatiality and that of others. “Negative hallucination” means, then, a sort of indirect yet symbolic efficacy—the imaginary has an actual impact on my existence, and as Merleau-Ponty writes, “it causes a super-signification to vibrate” (IP, 165). The imaginary is the “perceptual horizon” that displays the oblique vision sustaining an inexhaustible individuation process. The negativity at stake here is not the negation of a specific meaning, the privation of a particular property, nor the symptom of a delusional attitude towards the real. It points to the generative process that digs into the generality of the flesh and which is nothing other than desire. This desire “achieves what vision sketches” (S, 17)29 and thereby always points to a super-signification that goes beyond the frame of consciousness yet resonates in the thick texture of my corporeal existence.30  “In order to bestow a name upon the piece of sculpture, he had called it to himself Gradiva, ‘the girl splendid in walking.’” From Jensen’s “Gradiva: a Pompeiian Fancy,” quoted in Freud, Delusion and Dream, 148. 29  Merleau-Ponty is reversing here the Freudian phrase according to which dreams achieve desires. 30  Merleau-Ponty writes: “Here we will truly see that oneirism is not non-being of the imagining consciousness qua imagining, but just beneath the surface of perceptual consciousness.” Lectures on Institution and Passivity, 161. 28

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With Merleau-Ponty’s reinterpretation of Gradiva, then, we reach a deeper understanding of what the philosopher means when he reinterprets Malraux’s characterization of creation as “coherent deformation.” The oblique directionality of the visions imagination displays—both ontologically (mundus imaginalis) and psychologically (Gradiva)—entails a comprehension of individuation as metamorphosis. Expression and style are sorts of “coherent deformation” (S, 82) that make sense of others and myself by incorporating and intertwining our desires and visions. The individual is perpetually shaped by a corporeal dialectic of projection and introjection that paradoxically differentiates her from and relates her to the other. The oblique vision of desire is therefore the fundamental structure of Merleau-Ponty’s existential chiasm. As he stated in one of the conferences held in Mexico in 1949: “As soon as I exist, I act, I seduce, I encroach over the other’s freedom. Practically as well as theoretically, it does not seem possible to assert plurality of consciousnesses, neither to say that the other and I are compatible […] I pass in and through the other and the other passes in and through me.”31 In Eye and Mind, Merleau-Ponty, referencing Paul Valéry, refers to “others who haunt me and whom I haunt; “others” along with whom I haunt a single, present, and actual Being” (EM, 122). My relation to others, as well as my relation to my own body, is made of promiscuity (indistinctiveness between subjective and objective poles) and “negative hallucination” (the coalescence of these poles in the imaginary). Operative intentionality, that is individuation, is metamorphosis and expression and entails a new characterization of the individuals as emblems, made of the intertwining of desire and contingency. Indeed, as mentioned earlier on, the obliquity indicates a movement that does not know its own end in advance. In this sense it is not “operational”32 or teleological. Rather, individuation as metamorphosis precisely reflects the fleeting and contingent moment when generality and generativity overlap, when I encounter the other from within, when we discover each other as corporeal beings-in-the-world, existing among things and united by common projects: The triple resumption which makes a sort of provisory eternity of the operation of expression is not simply a metamorphosis in the fairytale sense of miracle, magic, and absolute creation in an aggressive solitude. It is also a response to what the world the past and the completed works demanded. It is accomplishment and brotherhood. Husserl has used the fine word Stiftung—foundation or establishment—to designate first of all the unlimited fecundity of each present which, precisely because it is singular and passes, can never stop having been and thus being universally. (S, 59).

 See Saint Aubert, Du lien des êtres aux éléments de l’être, 64.  “Thinking ‘operationally’ has become a sort of absolute artificialism, such as we see the ideology of cybernetics, where human creations are derived from a natural information process, itself conceived on the model of human machines.” Merleau-Ponty, EM, 122. Merleau-Ponty’s approach differs here from Simondon’s conception of individuation. 31 32

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In the last section, we will turn to Merleau-Ponty’s recasting of Malraux’s “coherent deformation” and his analysis of literary and artistic expressions in order to demonstrate how Merleau-Ponty rethinks the style of being in the world and the new subject to come thanks to his conception of individuation.

4  Operative Intentionality, Creativity and the Life-World 4.1  A  rtistic and Literary Expressions as “Interrogative” Ontology of Individuation In a working note of the Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty writes: “Being is what requires creation of us for us to experience it. Make an analysis of literature in this sense: as inscription of Being” (June 1959, 197). The emphasis he puts on the imaginary and its role in ontological and intersubjective relations already confirms such a perspective. Nonetheless, it is to be stressed that literature—and not only painting—plays an important role to achieve this creation. Consequently, it is not only what Malraux writes in Le Musée Imaginaire about artistic expression that interests Merleau-Ponty in the Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence, but also his perspective, as a writer, on creative dynamics, and the kind of ontology that sustains the latter. If Merleau-Ponty agrees with Malraux that the painter exhibits through his works a “coherent deformation” that is a transfiguration conferring an irreducible meaning to the world, he also radicalizes this thought by criticizing the metaphysics of individuality that lies beneath Malraux’s interpretation. Rephrasing Malraux’s argument, Merleau-Ponty writes: The classical painters were unconsciously themselves; the modern painter wants first of all to be original, and for him his power of expression is identical to his individual difference. Because painting is no longer for faith or beauty, it is for the individual. “It is the annexation of the world by the Individual. The artist is thus supposed to be “in the tribe of the ambitious and the drugged,” and like them devoted to stubborn self-pleasure, to daemonic pleasure— that is, to the pleasure of all in man which destroys man. It is clear, however, that it would be hard to apply these definitions to Cézanne or Klee, for example. (ILVS, 51)

Merleau-Ponty challenges the idea according to which an individual would be aware of her difference and willing to express it through artistic creations. This interpretation relies on two misunderstandings: (1) Merleau-Ponty’s rejection of Cartesian ontology has shown that there could be no such thing as an Individual strictly separated from others and the world; and (2) his criticism of act-­intentionality and revaluation of the imaginary have also demonstrated that a representative framework for analyzing creative processes should be discarded and replaced by a conception of operative intentionality as transformative individuation and expression. Even if Malraux “says in his best passages: perception already stylizes” (ILVS, 54), the phenomenologist should move a step forward and elaborate a theory of expression and the imaginary that matches the ontological and phenomenological truth of

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individuation dynamics. It is in literature and poetry that Merleau-Ponty finds such a theory. In fact, by considering the works of Cézanne alongside with those of Proust or Valéry,33 Merleau-Ponty reveals that the kind of transfiguration and visibility at stake in literature could help counterbalance the domination of the representational framework upon visual works and understand paintings like those of Cézanne, who was “writ[ing] in painting what had never been yet painted.”34 What makes deformation “coherent” would then be the appropriative process of integration and expression that the poet, writer, or painter experiences in and through creation, and without considering intentions and results. As Merleau-Ponty writes, “There is signification when we submit the data of the world to a ‘coherent deformation’” (ILVS, 54). But this deformation is not a conscious process. According to Merleau-Ponty, it comes from the very work of individuation as a metamorphic process of becoming oneself, rooted in the morphological and perceptive imaginary that necessitates and orients it. In his unpublished lectures titled Recherches sur l’Usage Littéraire du Langage (hereafter RULL), Merleau-Ponty analyzes in depth Valéry’s theory of literature and notably his concept of “implex”35 presented in L’Idée Fixe. As emphasized by Jacques Derrida quoting Valéry, “the Implex is not an activity. Quite the contrary, it is a capacity […] a capacity for resistance.” Valéry’s notion, referring to both “capacity” and “resistance,” seems to echo Merleau-Ponty’s approach to individuation as literary expression and style. Characterizing the movement of such capacity, the phenomenologist speaks of “budding and lateral growth” (RULL, 132) and explains that its linguistic expression points toward a “total and lateral binding”, that is the “world in its pre-logical unity” (RULL, 72). In light of his description of the subject’s plasticity and his reflections on the ontological imaginary, it is clear that this “lateral growth” replicates the lateral and oblique movement of operative intentionality that needs to encounter “resistance,” non-sense, and a relative opacity in order   In the preface to the Phenomenology of Perception (xxiv), Merleau-Ponty states: “If Phenomenology was a movement before becoming a doctrine or a philosophical system, this was attributable neither to accident, nor to fraudulent intent. It is as painstaking as the works of Balzac, Proust, Valéry or Cézanne—by reason of the same kind of attentiveness and wonder, the same demand for awareness, the same will to seize the meaning of the world or of history as that meaning comes into being. In this way it merges into the general effort of modern thought.” 34  Merleau-Ponty quoting Cézanne’s words, in “Cézanne’s Doubt,” 68. 35  The lectures titled “Recherches sur l’usage littéraire du langage” (1953–1954) were given at the same time as the lectures titled “Le monde sensible et le monde de l’expression,” which focus on the body schema. Even if the course on literary expression aims to address the issues at stake in Sartre’s theory of literature (1947), it is interesting to note that Merleau-Ponty examines this concept in light of his developing ontology of the imaginary and his theory related to the body schema, motility, and expression. The description that Derrida gives of the Implex could well apply to Merleau-Ponty’s concept of expression in spite of the criticism addressed by post-structuralist thinkers (notably Foucault in chapter 9 of The Order of Things) to Merleau-Ponty’s concept of expression. On this topic see Lawlor, “Eschatology and Positivism: The Critique of Phenomenology in Derrida & Foucault.” Concerning the “implex,” Derrida writes that the concept “marks an implication that is not one, an implication that cannot be reduced to anything simple, an implication and complication of the source that in a certain way cannot be disimplicated: this, the IMPLEX.” Margins of Philosophy, 303. 33

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to preserve the very possibilities of its meaningful genesis. Consequently, the conjunction of creations is less to be found in an “imaginary museum” than it is to be experienced through the diacritical genesis of style that writers and painters exhibit in and through their lives. It is therefore not by chance that Merleau-Ponty mentions Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics36 and his concept of the “diacritical” on the opening page of The Language Indirect and the Voice of Silence. This notion helps explain what makes the deformation of the “implex,” resisting objectification, “coherent.” Indeed the notion of the diacritical shows that we “cannot base language upon a system of positive ideas. The unity [Saussure] is talking about is a unity of coexistence, like that of the sections of an arch which shoulder one another” (ILVS, 39). The diacritical points to a process of differentiation from which could emerge meanings that cannot be defined or conceived a priori and independently from the structure to which they belong. This differentiation of meanings repeats the movement of individuation that constantly differentiates the individual from herself and from others while confirming the common structure of experience and the genesis of sense that is to be shared and created. This confirms our interpretation according to which the analogicity produced by operative intentionality is expressive rather than imitative or representative. Speaking therefore of “coherent deformation” as diacritical style is not simply a metaphor but rather the accurate phenomenological description of the way one relates to oneself and to others by tracing the sense of our experiences in the flesh of the world.

4.2  The Style of Existence and the Subject to Come Merleau-Ponty’s reworking of the notion of individuation in light of Malraux’s concept of coherent deformation and the lateral presence of literary and artistic works points to a new approach of operative intentionality that conveys not only psychological and ontological dimensions but also some existential directions and considerations relative to the structure of the lifeworld. Against Sartre and the absolute meaning-making power granted to consciousness, against Camus and his acknowledgement of ontological nihilism,37 Merleau-Ponty urges the subject to resume its “capacity for resistance” by creating itself in and through the expression of being. He invites us to look at existence from “within,” like “the painter at work [who] knows nothing about the antithesis of man and the world, of signification and the absurd, of style and ‘representation’” (ILVS, 53).

 Merleau-Ponty provides a detailed analysis of Saussure’s theory in The Prose of the World. His unpublished lecture on speech contemporary to his work on literary language (1953–1954) has extensive passages on Saussure. 37  In the conclusion of the preface of Signs (35), Merleau-Ponty makes this implicit reference to Camus and Sartre: “The remedy we seek does not lie in rebellion, but in unremitting virtù. A deception for whoever believed in salvation, and in a single means of salvation in all realms.” 36

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We have with our body; our senses, our look, our power to understand speech and to speak, measurants [mesurants] for being, dimensions to which we can refer it, but not a relation of adequation or of immanence. (VI, 103). These “mesurants” direct our sight to a particular meaning without objectifying it precisely because they strive to maintain the irreducible “écart” and depth from which only a subjectivity free and able to compose itself could emerge: “What is proper to the visible is, we said, to be the surface of an inexhaustible depth: this is what makes it able to be open to visions other than our own” (VI, 143). The ethical possibilities involved here come from the precedence of the sacrality of being and its invisibility over the metaphysical setting of the life-world. The generativity and obliquity that sustain individuation as desire and metamorphosis bring to light a radical and innovative approach to contingency and therefore to social and political relationships. The intertwining of my existence and that of the other does not represent a relation of exchange between two separated entities, but rather indicates the possibility to undertake common projects whose lack of firm and transcendental grounds and conditions, whose vulnerability is also the promise of an imaginal coexistence which must be lived by every one. In light of Merleau-Ponty’s descriptions of the imaginary texture of the real, it can be said that individuals should be considered as emblems, insisting again on the paradoxical non-representational structure of the visibility we all share. The generality of the flesh and the contingent directionality of its generativity seem to be an ethical necessity in order to endure life’s adversity. One has to struggle against the crystallization and petrifying figurations of consciousness and resist against the systematizations, which risk to reduce us to our factual existence and to congeal the creative freedom of our corporeal existence. By implicitly describing a new understanding of individuation, philosophy itself becomes “not the reflection of a pre-­ existing truth, but, like art, the act of bringing truth into being” (PP, xxiv). In the last lines of “Cézanne’s Doubt,” Merleau-Ponty portrays this concrete individual whose existence is ruled by the lateral and invisible expressions of the world’s promise, which he calls freedom: Just as we may observe the movements of an unknown animal without understanding the law that inhabits and controls them, so Cézanne’s observers did not divine the transmutations he imposed on events and experiences; they were blind to his significance, to that glow from out of nowhere which surrounded him from time to time. But he himself was never at the center of himself: 9 days out of 10 all he saw around him was the wretchedness of his empirical life and of his unsuccessful attempts, the debris of an unknown celebration. Yet it was in the world that he had to realize his freedom. […] We never get away from our life— we never see ideas face to face.” (75).

Therefore, operative intentionality—as reframed by Merleau-Ponty, notably in his last works – could be considered as the vulnerability of reflexivity and objectifying intentionality. As such, it is also its very fecundity. Indeed, as a susceptibility to be harmed or wounded, vulnerability points to a specific kind of passivity that blurs the distinctions between interiority and exteriority, receptivity and generation. It opens up a space for mutual experiences, as one is always vulnerable before someone else and calls for a particular kind of presence. We do not choose to be

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vulnerable or exposed. Vulnerability is co-extensive to the subject’s individuation since we are already affected, at a prereflective level, by the world and by others. Such picture of freedom calls for a phenomenology of passivity and a phenomenological ethics of vulnerability to understand the relation between otherness and openness. Concern for others and for the world does not call for self-identification or projection but rather requires that the subject reconnect with the asymmetrical space, which is the sensible world, necessary to its expression and freedom.

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Husserl and America: Reflections on the Limits of Europe as the Ground of Meaning and Value for Phenomenology Ian Angus

Abstract  This paper investigates phenomenological philosophy as the critical consciousness of modernity beginning from that point in the Vienna Lecture where Husserl discounts Papuans and Gypsies, and includes America, in defining Europe as the spiritual home of reason. Its meaning is analyzed through the introduction of the concept of institution (Urstiftung) in Crisis to argue that the historical fact of encounter with America can be seen as an event for reason insofar as the encounter includes elements previously absent in the European entelechy. The conclusion shows that phenomenology must become a comparative, Socratic, diagnosis of the planetary crisis of reason. The entelechy of reason that becomes evident through the concept of institution should be understood less as a renewal of a pre-existing tradition than as an exogenic encounter and incursion of an outside that together define an instituting event as new in relation to its tradition. Keywords  Phenomenology · Modernity · Europe · Reason · Institution · America

1  Introduction In 1934 the organizing committee of the International Congress of Philosophy asked Husserl to comment on “the mission of philosophy in our time” (Carr 1970, xvi). His letter was read at the Congress and gave rise to further reflections that were delivered in 1935—in Vienna as “Philosophy and the Crisis of European Mankind” and in Prague as “The Crisis of European Sciences and Psychology.” In his preparation to publish these lectures in the yearbook Philosophia, Husserl’s revisions grew into an extensive manuscript. The first two parts of the current text of Crisis were published in Philosophia and the rest languished in manuscript until the publication of the complete text in German in 1954 (Husserl 1954). Attention to the problem of

I. Angus (*) Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Apostolescu (ed.), The Subject(s) of Phenomenology, Contributions to Phenomenology 108, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29357-4_16

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European crisis that characterized Husserl’s last period grew from letter, to lectures, to an unfinished book-length manuscript, representing an increasing depth and extent of reflection that remained incomplete during his lifetime. I want to address phenomenological philosophy as the critical consciousness of modernity, and what phenomenology must become now, beginning from one of the most well-known and problematic aspects of Husserl’s late work: that point in the Vienna Lecture where he discounts Papuan people, the Inuit, the indigenous peoples of the Americas, and the Romani, and includes America, in defining spiritual Europe in the sense that he wishes to recover. As I will argue, this discounting and inclusion cannot be simply dismissed or ignored but constitutes a fundamental gesture in his critique of the crisis into which European reason has fallen. Insofar as the crisis of which Husserl spoke not only remains with us, but has in some respects intensified, the capacity of phenomenological philosophy to address it, and also to reform itself in order properly to address the crisis, depends upon a fundamental constitutional analysis of this gesture of exclusion and inclusion. As we know, the crisis was for Husserl a crisis of reason. Husserl claimed in the last period of his work in the 1930s, that Europe had entered into a crisis that went to the heart of its conception as the home of reason. Modern reason, due to the hegemony of the paradigm of the mathematization of nature, had become a “relative, one-sided rationality, which leaves a complete irrationality on necessary opposite sides” (Husserl 1969b, 16–7). Such one-sided rationality “measure[s] the lifeworld—the world constantly given to us as actual in our concrete world-life—for a well-fitting garb of ideas, that of the so-called objectively scientific truths” (Husserl 1970a, 51). The crisis is thus internal to reason in that it is an insufficient conception of reason that provokes the crisis, but such a crisis of reason pertains, neither to the internal progress of a special science nor its technical efficacy, but to the foundation of such special sciences in philosophy, and thereby to the capacity of phenomenological philosophy to restore meaning and value in the experienced lifeworld. The crisis is provoked by the hegemony of Galilean science but manifested by its failed value-relation to the lifeworld. The fundamental problem posed by the crisis is that of objectivism and the solution to the crisis lies in the recovery of subjectivity in a new phenomenological form of reason. This is not to say that this was the first time that the problem of Europe and its current problems had appeared in Husserl’s work. In 1923 he had already referred to the need for a renewal of European culture, tracing the malaise back to the First World War, and seeking the solution in the “value-creating significance” that reason offers to humanity (Husserl 1981, 327). Indeed, his concern with devastation, decay, crisis and renewal can be traced back to the period of the First World War itself when Husserl began to re-think the tradition of German Idealism in order to confront “the exigency of our times … [with] the divine spirit of the Idea” (Husserl 1995, 131). It is not too much to say that the theme of crisis had been growing in significance within Husserl’s work since the First World War alongside and a philosophical diagnosis of the European failure to address its devastation with a cultural renewal of meaning and value.

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In all of these works, Husserl combined a reflection backward on the cultural-­ philosophical history of Europe with a defence and development of ­phenomenological philosophy as the source of spiritual renewal. While phenomenology always proposed reason as the source of new values, it laid no lesser emphasis on the source of the crisis in reason itself, thus proposing a revised and extended concept of reason tied to meaning and value. The diagnosis of crisis is thus internal to the history of reason and, since Husserl understood Europe to be tied essentially to the institution of reason, internal to Europe as a cultural formation. At the beginning of the Crisis, the concept of Europe is introduced through the ideal of universal philosophy in the Renaissance as the “primal establishment [or institution] (Urstiftung) of the philosophical modern age” that is also “the institution (Urstiftung) of modern European humanity itself” (Husserl 1970a, 12; Husserl 1954, 10). The concept of “Europe” for Husserl refers to the ideal of universal philosophy that allows for the diagnosis of crisis and the project of renewal. Renewal is renewal and neither invention nor discovery because the task of universal philosophy is already given in Europe, but it is given as a task and not as an acquisition so that any comparison of Europe to another cultural-civilizational form must pass through the infinite idea of universal philosophy. It is not an assertion that Europe in its current state is superior to another cultural-civilizational form.1 Since the internal diagnosis and recovery required an essential definition of spiritual Europe that tied it to reason, it depends upon a distinction of this spiritual-­ cultural form from others. In the Vienna Lecture Husserl makes this distinction in an oft-quoted, even notorious, phrasing, which I will quote at length: We pose the question, 'How is the spiritual shape of Europe to be characterized?' Thus we refer to Europe not as it is understood geographically, as on a map, as if thereby the group of people who live together in this territory would define European humanity. In the spiritual sense it is clear that the English dominions, the United States, etc., clearly belong to Europe, whereas the Eskimos or Indians presented as curiosities at fairs, or the Gypsies, who constantly wander about Europe, do not. … ‘The spiritual image of Europe’—what is it? [We must] exhibit the philosophical idea which is immanent in the history of Europe (spiritual Europe), or, the teleology which is immanent in it, which makes itself known, from the standpoint of universal mankind as such, as the breakthrough and the developmental beginning of a new human epoch—the epoch of humanity which now seeks to live … through ideas of reason, through infinite tasks. (Husserl 1970c, 273–4; Husserl 1954, 318– 9; paragraph separation removed; my italics; translation altered)

We may make several observations about this statement: First, Husserl’s claim for the uniqueness of Europe depends upon no comparative data. His claim that the infinite task of the idea of philosophy is immanent in the history of Europe may well be established by an inquiry into Greek philosophy and its Renaissance renewal, but the notion that it is a breakthrough into a new human epoch requires that it also be shown that philosophy, or something essentially equivalent or comparable to philosophy, is not equivalently immanent in other cultural unities. Indeed, he would  Both Gregory Cameron and Rodolphe Gasché emphasize that Husserl’s concept of Europe as the institutionalization of the entelechy of reason functions as a critique of actual Europe (Cameron, 107; Gasché, 21–2). 1

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have to show that it is immanent in no other cultural form—a comparative task beyond anyone’s ability, one would think.2 Second, not explicit in Husserl’s text but constituting the articulating critical moment of the European cultural form that motivates his inquiry: in referring to “Europe,” rather than any of the separate nations or cultural regions of Europe, Husserl’s inquiry moves to a higher level of universality than the prevailing aggressive nationalism of Nazi Germany (Moran 61). It would not have been sufficient to appeal, as he did in his Fichte lectures during the First World War, to “the divine spirit of the ideals which have found in our German people these most noble and divine representatives” (Husserl 1995, 131).  It is, even as inquiry and not yet as result, a posing that hooks the crisis of reason to a shared European destiny at a higher level of universality. Third, the distinctiveness of a cultural unity requires that some other such cultural unity not be included. The exclusion, or border, of the essence is intrinsic to its definition. While different does not necessarily mean lesser, when difference is combined with Husserl’s other statement that the European spirit constitutes a universal, epochal human breakthrough, a hierarchical ordering seems to be a necessary consequence. It is important to note that Husserl’s claim for the uniqueness of Europe depends upon no comparative data. He had for a long time, coincident with his critique of the decay of reason, undertaken detailed inquiry into the nature of the Greek beginning of philosophy that, in his view, defined the essence of the spirit of Europe. However, he undertook no comparative inquiry to establish that philosophy—or something parallel or equivalent to philosophy—did not appear in the history of other cultural forms. His claim that the infinite task of the idea of philosophy is immanent in the history of Europe may well be established by an inquiry into Greek philosophy, but the notion that it is a breakthrough into a new human epoch requires that it also be shown that philosophy, or something essentially equivalent or comparable to philosophy, is not equivalently immanent in other cultural unities. Indeed, he would have to show that it is immanent in no other cultural form—a comparative task beyond anyone’s ability, one would think. Last, there is what we might call an external inclusion of the former colonies of the British Empire that, as settler societies, have displaced and marginalized the aboriginal inhabitants. Husserl’s inclusion of settler societies into spiritual Europe fails to interrogate the colonial history of this integration and thereby invites the question of how it should be understood by phenomenology. We may proceed to notice three further ones in this quotation that deserve more detailed inquiry. The first is not explicit in Husserl’s text but constitutes part of the crisis of the European cultural form that motivates his inquiry: in referring to  Insofar as Husserl’s 1935 letter to Levy-Bruhl indicates that his anthropology was one of the sources of Husserl’s concept of lifeworld, this concern gains greater justification. Levy-Bruhl’s conception of non-Western people as “pre-logical,” “primitive” and “without history” suggests a hierarchical relation that Husserl might have seen himself as giving a philosophical foundation with the idea of Europe as philosophy’s home (Husserl 2008). In historical-intellectual terms, it is probably some such combination of 19th and early twentieth century anthropology with the nineteenth century idea of progress that motivated Husserl’s view. But no such ease is available to us at this juncture. 2

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“Europe,” rather than any of the separate nations or cultural regions of Europe, Husserl is, without stating it as such, moving to a higher level of universality than the prevailing aggressive nationalism of Nazi Germany. It would not have been sufficient to appeal, as he had in his Fichte lectures during the First World War, to “the divine spirit of the Ideals which have found in our German people these most noble and sublime representatives” (Husserl 1995, 131). It is, even as inquiry and not yet as result, a posing that hooks the crisis of reason to a shared European destiny at a higher level of universality. Second, the distinctiveness of a cultural unity requires that some other such cultural unity not be included. The exclusion, or border, of the essence is intrinsic to its definition. Husserl’s reference to Eskimos, Indians and Papuans to make this point is somewhat unsettling, not least since a few years later the Nazis would justify their treatment of Gypsies, or Roma, because of their supposedly lesser human form. While different does not necessarily mean lesser, when difference is combined with Husserl’s other statement that European spirit constitutes a universal, epochal human breakthrough, some hierarchical ordering seems to be a necessary consequence. Last, there is what we might call an external inclusion of the former colonies of the British Empire that, as settler societies, have displaced and marginalized the aboriginal inhabitants. Husserl’s inclusion of settler societies into spiritual Europe fails to interrogate the colonial history of this integration and thereby invites the question of whether it is being awarded philosophical justification by phenomenology.3 To put the point baldly, this passage demands that we ask whether Husserl’s notion of the spiritual essence of Europe commits phenomenology to a Eurocentrism that necessarily denigrates other cultures and attempts to justify philosophically a claim to European superiority.? If the claim to Europe as the home of reason is essential to the recovery of reason, it might serve at one point in time—the 1930s and the Nazi threat—to criticize destruction and irrational ethno-centrism only by establishing an idea of phenomenology that at another point seems to justify philosophically the hegemony of Europe, the denigration of supposedly lesser peoples within its borders, and its colonial expansion beyond them (Moran, 42, 63, 300; Derrida 2003, 154–7; Cameron, 107, 111). What would phenomenology look like if it were explicitly to shed such justification? This question must be asked if we are to take seriously Husserl’s conception of phenomenology as self-responsibility and the philosopher as the functionary of humanity. In contrast to most investigations of this problematic passage, my inquiry does not focus directly on Europe but rather on the inclusion of the United States and the English Dominions. But, before that, we need to consider what happens to these issues when they advance in Husserl’s reflection beyond the level achieved in his lecture to that of the Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology.

 Rodolphe Gasché goes so far as to assert that all critique of Eurocentrism depends on a European concept of critique, a position that not only fails to address directly the issue at hand but re-asserts the Husserlian position as if it were unproblematic (Gasché 7). 3

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2  The Role of the Concept of Europe in Husserl’s Crisis It is because “Europe” does not function as a geographical or positive concept in any sense, gaining meaning only as the location of an infinite spiritual striving for reason, that Husserl’s increasing depth and extent of reflection from letter, to lectures, to book-length manuscript involves also an increasing depth of the concept of Europe, and the history of reason that is the essence of spiritual Europe, as well as the constitutional analysis required to uncover its meaning. We can distinguish three ways in which the analyses of Crisis surpass those of the Vienna Lecture. One: adding the unprecedented Renaissance idea of “a rational infinite totality of being with a rational science systematically mastering it” (Husserl 1970a, 22) to the Greek beginning of philosophy in accounting for the European telos of reason. Two: “Europe” shifts from being an operative to a thematic concept (to use Eugen Fink’s distinction) in the Crisis. Three: the concept of institution (Urstiftung) is introduced. These three innovations appear simultaneously in the constitutive analysis of Europe. In his introductory remarks to The Vienna Lecture, Husserl sketches modern European dualism as an expression of crisis because the two realms of nature and spirit are not given equal status. Instead, “only nature can be treated by itself as a closed world” (Husserl 1970c, 271) whereas, for the humanist, spirituality is founded non-dualistically on corporeality. Humanistic knowledge is thus not self-­ enclosed and tends to remain at a descriptive level. In his displacement of this unequal dualism, Husserl’s first move is to introduce the spiritual, humanistic concept of the “surrounding world (Umwelt)” (Husserl 1970c, 272; Husserl 1954, 317) in order to speak of nature as experienced by the ancient Greeks as opposed to nature as conceptualized within modern science. He immediately asserts that natural science is itself a spiritual accomplishment in order to begin his overturning of the unequal dualism and clear a phenomenological foundation. Whereas the perspective of unequal dualism credits the modern exact sciences with a “revolution in the technical control of nature” (Husserl 1970c, 271), the phenomenological foundation renders the status of this technical control a question worthy of greater inquiry. While The Vienna Lecture presents no greater analysis of the relationship between unequal dualism, modern science, and technical control of nature, in the Crisis, the Renaissance reshaping of European rationalism is specified to consist in the Galilean mathematization of nature that underlies Cartesian and subsequent dualism by positing an exact mathematical index underneath qualitative perception. This index, by a reversal of method and ontology (Husserl 1970a, 51), posits exact magnitudes as real nature and, through the indirect mathematization of qualities, aspires to a self-enclosed formal science of nature. Mathematically-substructed nature thus achieves a “rational” priority to the surrounding world and modern European subjects become simultaneously distrustful of their immediate experience and incapable of a self-grounding humanistic science that would be based on subjectivity as a perception of the world. This incapacity constitutes the crisis of European humanity and phenomenology consists in the recovery of such grounding subjectivity.

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The Crisis thus goes much further than The Vienna Lecture in specifying loss of meaning and value through mathematical, or formal, abstraction. Formal abstraction is not simply abstraction from species to genus, from a specific chair to the idea “chair,” for example, or from a chicken to “bird.” It consists in a specific emptying-­ out to what Husserl calls an “anything-whatever” (Husserl 1969b, 77, 87, 93). If I can empty the concepts of a pencil, a chicken, and the idea of friendship to consider them anything-whatevers, then I can count them as three. For this reason, Husserl considers the European crisis of reason to be inherited necessarily from Galilean science since “the arithmetization of geometry leads almost automatically, in a certain way, to the emptying of its meaning” (Husserl 1970c, 44). The recovery of meaning and value by phenomenology consists in the reverse movement of grounding whereby the technical results made possible by formalization are returned to “concretely intuitive thinking actually directed at the subject matter itself” (Husserl 1970c, 46). This introduction of the Renaissance mathematical science of nature into the diagnosis of crisis immediately requires several additions to the analysis of The Vienna Lecture. The appeal to “Europe” in the prior analysis is broken into two stages of Greek philosophy and Renaissance universal science that, while certainly related, pose different issues for the crisis. The concepts of “crisis” and the recovery of meaning that are simply used in The Vienna Lecture are accounted for by the formal abstraction of modern mathematics. This inquiry motivates Husserl to introduce the concept of institution (Urstiftung) to account for the sense in which modern formal reason is an inescapable fact for contemporary philosophy that transforms the meaning and role of history in the investigation.4 In Husserl’s words, “[a] definite ideal of a universal philosophy and its method forms the beginning; this is, so to speak, the institution (Urstiftung) of the philosophical modern age and all its lines of development” (Husserl 1970c, 12; Husserl 1954, 10). Institution is a concept required by genetic phenomenology to refer to the constitution of an original phenomenon as an identity that allows of further predications and modalizations. The inquiry into modern mathematization of nature, for example, requires a reference back to its primal institution in the Renaissance such that its non-existence prior to then, its constitution at that time, and its inescapable perdurance locate the inquiry in a certain historical moment. Institution is an intrinsically temporal form of ­constitution according to the inner temporality of the phenomenon rather than its placing within a wider historical context.

 Urstiftung may also be translated as “primal institution” or simply “institution” as it was by Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Merleau-Ponty 1970, chapter 5; Merleau-Ponty 1962, 59). Aron Gurwitsch used the term “institutive inception” (Moran, 61, n23). The advantage of the term “institution” is that it can be used in two senses, both of which are relevant to the concept: it is both an establishing and a persisting structuring. Something is “instituted” in the primal sense of being brought into being and something is an “institution” in the sense of a persistent organized structure within which intersubjective relations and material culture are organized. In his Guide for Translating Husserl (1973) Dorion Cairns suggests that Urstiftung should be translated as “primal instituting” or “primal institution” in distinction from Stiftung for which he suggests “institution, instituting, something instituted, origination” but not “foundation” (Cairns, 119). 4

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Husserl’s early work rejected historical explanation due to the essential contingency of historical events in favour of transcendental constitution through necessary structures of ideal meaning. This judgment is never revoked. His later studies of genetic constitution introduce a way around the empirical-transcendental dualism. The use of mathematized geometry in Galilean science refers us back to its beginning in the Renaissance and the conditions for its development henceforward, which in turn refers us back to a first geometer who inaugurated the eidetic intuition of limit-shapes from empirical objects. If Husserl were to mean, at this point in his analysis of the institution of modern science, that the ideal meanings inherent to that science depend upon an empirical history of writing, then not only would he contradict his earlier assertion that his philosophy of history does not reduce transcendental history to the factuality of contingent history, but also the sphere of ideal meaning itself would be undermined; ideal meaning would be reduced to factual history such that science itself would no longer contain a claim to truth but would be as contingent as any other historical event. This is not Husserl’s claim, but the fact that the manuscript of The Origin of Geometry, in which this crucial claim is made, was not integrated into the main manuscript of Crisis means that the exact status of this claim is not clear in the larger context of his account of the institution of the mathematization of nature. Consequently, the majority of commentators analyze the question of Eurocentrism in The Vienna Lecture with reference to the empirical-transcendental, or contingent-­ necessary, distinction, usually in order to defend Husserl since his sense of Europe has a transcendental meaning, thus failing altogether to see the new concept of history that is introduced by Husserl in accounting for the geometry taken over by Galileo through the concept of institution (Urstiftung).5 In contrast, I want to suggest that Husserl’s concept of institution is a crucial addition to the empirical-­ transcendental alternative in approaching history. Husserl points out that the forward development of a science requires the accumulation and sedimentation of ideal meanings that can be reactivated in subsequent research. Such “sensibly embodying repetitions” (Husserl 1970b, 357) are possible through language in its historical capacity of recollection through documentation. In short, writing. Writing enables the repetition of prior investigation and its matching to present inquiry such that the history of inquiry produces, not a simple multiplicity of insights, but an ordered and progressive field of research.6 Writing, and all  Such as, for example, Gregory Cameron and Rodolphe Gasché (Cameron, 107; Gasché, 57). The work of Jacques Derrida has been significant, and highly influential, in arguing that an equivocation between reason as constituted in history and given only as its telos defines Husserl’s turn to history. This argument for equivocation rests on the duality of empirical-transcendental, or contingent-necessary, that the concept of institution overcomes (Derrida 2003, 176–8; Derrida 1978, 121). 6  Derrida’s argument for an equivocation in Husserl is one the bases for his claim that such equivocations are unavoidable for philosophy and an entry into his own philosophy through the concept of “delay.” He analyzes the supposedly necessary equivocation between empirical and transcendental as delay, connects delay and repetition to writing (as did Husserl), argues that Husserl is caught in a metaphysics of presence based on an auto-affection of the spoken voice, and introduces his own connection of delay to writing and difference (Derrida 1978, 150–3; Derrida 1973, 80–2). 5

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that writing suggests for the actual pursuit of modern science, is what solidifies the institution as an institution through its temporal uniting of differently-placed intuitions into a continuous progress of evidence. A contemporary inquiry into the crisis of the sciences is thus referred backward to their primal institution in the Renaissance and the Renaissance reformation and use of geometry in the mathematization of nature refers us back to a first geometer. This first geometer need not be a single person, and we may be unable to locate in empirical history the invention of geometry, but the idea of a first geometer is an essential concept for the understanding of the ongoing institution of science. The first geometer is thus not a concept of empirical history, but neither is it a purely transcendental concept because it is concerned not only with ideal meaning as such but with the historical ground that makes ideal meaning possible as an infinite task of ongoing research. Husserl’s inquiry into the origin of geometry is oriented toward, as he says, a “historical beginning [which] … must have an origin in an accomplishment: first as a project and then in successful execution” (Husserl 1970b, 356). It is this “must have” that is crucial in indicating that there is a third conception of history at work here. Husserl never gave it a name as such but I think that it is appropriate to call it an “event,” thereby bringing it into dialogue with contemporary philosophical language that aims at a similar, or at least comparable, concept. Empirical history consists of contingent facts that can never explain the genesis or sense of ideal meanings. Transcendental inquiry into ideal meaning deals with necessary structures whose instantiation in empirical history always remains arbitrary. The concept of institution, which pertains to the genetic constitution of that which is necessary to ideal meaning, is oriented to those events which must have taken place for ideal meaning to have come into being. Galilean science is an event instituted in the Renaissance but referring back to a first geometer. The crisis of modern science refers us both to the event of primal institution (Urstiftung) and to its completion (Endstiftung). It is through the event which persists in transcendental history that we are “assigned a task” in the diagnosis and recovery of reason (Husserl 1970a, 72). Factual, empirical history is thus lifted out of its contingency, so to speak, because an event must have occurred within factual history due to the structure of transcendental history. The event is the prior to which the diagnosis of crisis and the task of recovery refer. Meaning and value are recovered within the institution in question, and not newly invented, due to this prior event. It is with this sense of prior that we must address Husserl’s concept of Europe to measure the advance that the Crisis makes, and the further advances that it may imply, over the formulation in The Vienna Lecture. Europe becomes a question, rather than an answer, about the event of reason in its Renaissance and Greek moments inherent in the diagnosis of crisis and the task of phenomenological recovery. In Part I of the Crisis, Husserl says that if it had been shown that the entelechy of modern philosophy had become fully conscious of itself, “only then could it be decided whether European humanity bears within itself an absolute idea, rather than being merely an empirical anthropological type like ‘China,’ or ‘India’” (Husserl 1970a, 16). While there is still no comparative evidence to justify the relegation of others to merely contingent history, the claim of Europe to universality is now

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postponed until the full establishment of European reason itself—in other words, until after the resolution of the crisis. When the vague allusions to irrationality in The Vienna Lecture are rooted in their origin in Renaissance mathematization of nature, the concept of institution is introduced to show the primal establishment and continuing progress of that science. Institution requires a prior event that confers a continuing task, so that “Europe” becomes a question about the borders and location of this prior commitment to reason. Let us now return to the issues posed by The Vienna Lecture in the light of these advances made in the Crisis.

3  T  he Conflation of America with Europe in the Vienna Lecture Husserl’s claim in The Vienna Lecture that “[i]n the spiritual sense it is clear that the English dominions, the United States, etc., clearly belong to Europe” (Husserl 1970c, 273) does not appear in the Crisis. The inclusion of the Renaissance mathematization of nature alongside the Greek origin of philosophy poses a question for the crisis and recovery of European reason such that only the resolution of this crisis could settle the issue of whether Europe is distinct from other civilizational types due to bearing within itself an “absolute idea” (Husserl 1970a, 16). One consequence seems to have been that America and the remnants of the British Empire are no longer mentioned at all. But, logically speaking, we can say—parallel to Husserl’s remark about China and India—that their inclusion in the European entelechy of reason should also become a question pending resolution by the overcoming of crisis. So, we may ask, in what sense does the European crisis of reason implicate America and the British Commonwealth? From now on, I will use the name “America” for all of these new nations and states on the continent once called the New World. Mexican historian Edmundo O’Gorman has shown that the idea of the discovery of America is incoherent, since one cannot discover what one is not looking for, and that the invention of America refers us to the European cultural heritage within which it took on meaning. America was no more than a potentiality, which could be realized only by receiving and fulfilling the values and ideals of European culture. … This way of conceiving the historical being of the new lands found expression in the name of ‘New World,’ … The meaning of these two designations is now evident. If World in its traditional sense means that part of the earth providentially assigned to man for his dwelling, America was literally a ‘new’ world, which offered the possibility of enlarging man’s old cosmic home by adding a new portion of the universe conceived as capable of becoming another Europe (O’Gorman, 139).

Clearly, to the extent that these regions were, are, and remain European in the spiritual sense, they must share in Husserl’s analysis of both the European entelechy of reason and its crisis. And, to the extent that they are not, they do not share—or do not necessarily share—either.

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As a repetition of Europe, America could be drawn backward to the old dominations or could be pulled forward to realize the hope of freedom dreamed within the old dominations. But as America realized its own potential, the distinction between New and Old Worlds fell away, creating a new spiritual unity that O’Gorman calls “Euro-America” (O’Gorman, 145). It is this new spiritual unity to which Husserl must have been referring when he unproblematically included the United States and the English dominions into spiritual Europe. But understanding America as a repetition of Europe comes upon a limit. It was, and still is, populated by non-European people. There is one great historical fact— let us postpone for a second whether it is an empirical historical fact, a transcendental fact, or an event—by which America is tied to Europe but not identical to it: the displacement, encirclement and sometimes destruction of native peoples, European (and other) immigration, and the construction of settler societies and states. From the Aboriginal point of view, one might use Enrique Dussel’s concept of an “originary trauma of being dominated” (Dussel 1992, 55) or what I understand to be the Aztec concept of “disaster” (Beardsell 2000, 55). Simply including America inside Europe, as Husserl did in The Vienna Lecture suggests that there is no issue of the European entelechy raised by this displacement. If there is no issue raised, then America shares both the European crisis and the possibility of overcoming it. In this case, the Aboriginal peoples would share neither the entelechy of reason nor its crisis and their displacement would raise no questions for the spiritual meaning of Europe. Nelson Maldonado-Torres has put succinctly and clearly the ironical role of Husserl’s critique of reason in the context of America as “oriented more by the challenges posed by the barbarism of irrationality than by the barbarism of missionary Eurocentric rationality” (Maldonado-Torres, 44). Let us consider in a preliminary manner the meaning of this historical fact before returning to the meaning that America might be considered to have within the questioning expressed in Husserl’s Crisis. At the epistemic level the question is whether the New World constituted merely a repetition of the Old World or whether this repetition produced something essential to the spiritual meaning of the Old World itself—whether, as Walter Mignolo has asserted, “the term and the concept of a New World played in an interesting way since the very concept of modernity was defined in complicity with the Old World” (Mignolo 2002, 943). So that, perhaps, Husserl’s concept of European modernity as a crisis-embedded entelechy of reason would not have been possible as a purely endogenous phenomenon. Enrique Dussel has argued that Modernity appears when Europe affirms itself as the ‘center’ of a World History that it inaugurates; the ‘periphery’ that rounds this center is consequently part of its self-­definition. … According to my central thesis, 1492 is the date of the ‘birth’ of modernity, although its gestation involves a preceding ‘intrauterine’ process of growth. (Dussel 1993, 65–6)

If 1492 is the instituting event of European modernity, as Dussel argues, then the Aboriginal people of the New World could be written out of the spiritual meaning of America, so that it constitutes merely a repetition of Europe, only by a denial of an entelechy of reason to non-European cultures. Mignolo (2002) calls this an

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“epistemic privilege” whereby European spirituality becomes an epistemic enunciator, a speaker or subject of knowledge, in the same moment that non-European spirituality becomes only the enunciated, the spoken or object of knowledge. The enunciation produces science and philosophy of a subject capable of speaking truth, whereas the enunciated is known through anthropology as an object of knowledge. The distinction between a universal locus of enunciation and a regional one is precisely what is at issue in Husserl’s recourse to spiritual Europe as the prior event of reason that explains the entelechy upon which rests the diagnosis of the crisis of reason. “Europe” is split into its merely empirical, contingent meaning as geographical and cultural fact and its transcendental meaning as the home of reason, whereas other cultures lack epistemic privilege and are limited to geographic and cultural fact. These considerations suggest that the European modernity upon which Husserl relied for the entelechy of reason was itself constituted exogenously in relation to an outside represented by the New World and its non-European inhabitants—in other words, that those peoples that Husserl names as without reason are essential to his definition of Europe as the spiritual home of reason. I do not want to take these considerations as definitive but as the basis for a questioning of the role that America might take in the crisis of the European sciences as described by Husserl. With the disappearance of explicit mention of America in the Crisis due to a more careful and exploratory conception of European exceptionalism, the unproblematic inclusion of America into European entelechy must also disappear and, in its place, emerge a series of questions concerning the meaning of displacement and the origin of settler societies—questions that take us to the spiritual meaning of America and its entelechy.

4  What Is New in an Instituting Event? Let us state this question in a universal manner, emphasizing that which pertains specifically to the European ‘prior’ that grounds Husserl’s diagnosis of crisis: Does a new cultural context add nothing to a prior task elaborated elsewhere? Specifically, does America not add anything essential to the European entelechy of reason? Previously, we postponed the question of the status within phenomenology of the great historical fact of displacement, and even genocide, of the Indigenous people of America by which its history is inseparable from that of Europe. If it is merely a contingent historical fact, then it does not affect the essence of the European commitment to reason, which would be understood as an internal European institution. Husserl, in tracing the European entelechy of reason to the Renaissance mathematization of nature and the Greek beginning of philosophy, silently treats “the disaster” as contingent and therefore unworthy of discussion. And, we may also say, so do subsequent Husserlian phenomenologists, especially in America, who use the analysis of the Crisis but do not investigate its implications. Furthermore, this historical fact could not be considered transcendental since in that case it would be an essential, constitutive aspect of the historical genesis of any

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society whatsoever. Is it then possible to view the historical fact of conquest-disaster as a historical fact in the third sense of an event, or institution (Urstiftung) which must have happened within empirical history in order for the spiritual meaning of America to repeat that of Europe? Such an instituting event is in a sense one event, in the same sense that Husserl can speak of an “original geometer,” even though it was of course spread out in time and space and included different European nations who were at many times in conflict among themselves. The conquest-disaster is an event that gives meaning to this assemblage of contingent historical facts by referring to the beginning of an ongoing institution that remains with us to this day and points toward some sort of resolution or final goal (Endstiftung). We live within this institution and it assigns us a task. The conquest-disaster is an event constituted by at least three essential elements: One, humans of different cultural types encounter each other and must come to some reckoning of the humanity, and type of humanity, of the other.7 The purely Eurocentric option does its best to deny this encounter denying full humanity to the Aboriginal and follows through this denial with policies of genocide, displacement and encirclement. Two, the European is given new form through this encounter (as is also the Aboriginal). The world which each inhabits has become larger in the sense of containing more possibilities and smaller in the sense of making one’s own culture one possibility among others. Three, the event essentially can be viewed and interpreted from two opposing points of view. What is institutionalized is a conflict, a polemos, and this conflict structures the task that we are assigned to complete. One completion would be the utter destruction and silencing of the Aboriginal so that America would become thoroughly and simply an extension of spiritual Europe. The project of this genocidal completion has been within the New World since its origin. I am sad to say that Husserl’s quick and thoughtless words on America are complicit with this horrible task. But more important than the words themselves is why he felt compelled to say them and what function they play within his phenomenological diagnosis of the European crisis, and, even more important, how we might move beyond them to another conception of phenomenology. It is important to emphasize that this Eurocentric completion attempts to deny the originality of the event of encounter itself. This is not the place to recall important elements in the long empirical history of the instituting event. I will just ­mention the Two Row Wampum (1613), in which a birch-bark canoe and a European ship are depicted as sailing down the same river, that honours a 1613 treaty between the Dutch and the Mohawk (Haudenosaunee) people (Kahnawake Education Center). Europeans could not actually ignore the encounter with other human cultures and peoples that the New World involved and thereby entered into agreements with the  Enrique Dussel objects to the term “encounter” because “the new syncretistic, hybrid, predominantly mestizo culture was born neither from a freely entered alliance nor from steady cultural synthesis, but from an originary trauma of being dominated” (Dussel 1992, 55). While Dussel is correct to say that “encounter” does not capture the essence of the historical event insofar as it was not an “encounter” of equals, I have used it as a way of opening up a free variation of the possibilities of the event without denying the originary trauma in order to open contemporary rethinking and, perhaps, alternatives. 7

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original inhabitants. It would require a Marxist account of the significance of property combined with a psychoanalytic account of the half-conscious repression of the encounter in a fantasy of purity to begin to account for this genocidal fantasy of completion. Such an account would take us far from Husserl’s phenomenology, but only on this basis could we begin to substantiate fully that the purely Eurocentric completion is not a task but a fantasy that attempts to erase the originality of the encounter with the other in the conquest-disaster. Another completion becomes visible if we view the event as an encounter between two cultures, or higher-level personalities, in which each is changed by the encounter, and from which the encounter itself can be regarded in two ways—as conquest and as disaster. This other task appears when the instituting event is recognized as new, precisely as instituting in the sense of bringing-into-being, and thereby as persisting afterward in a manner that structures experience such as to assign a task. The subsequent task of we Americans is to carry through this encounter toward its completion in a manner that respects the duality of the encounter, and its persistence, but turns it toward a genuine encounter with the other. That is to say, recalling Husserl’s unfortunate words, to understand America as more than, or other than, belonging to Europe, and thereby to contest the understanding, and the social forces, that have led to “Eskimos or Indians [being] presented as curiosities at fairs” (Husserl 1970c, 273). The productivity of the institution of America is that fragments of old Europe in interaction with aboriginal cultures, under conditions dominated by European empires, have conveyed to us a task that was present in no previous history. Thus, while the original encounter was of specific European nations with Aboriginal ones, it has become inseparable from the instituting event that the settler population is from many parts of Europe and indeed the world, so that there is an issue throughout the New World of whether such heterogeneous groups can form new nations. This institution has become our ‘prior’ as we address the current crisis and destiny of reason. Let me refer quickly to the example of Canadian philosophy that is characterized by a persistent, characteristic Hegelianism (Burbidge; MacGregor; Meynell; Sibley). As Leslie Armour and Elizabeth Trott have shown, Canadian Hegelianism is characterized by a doubt about final reconciliation of conflicting views in the Absolute Idea and has tended to characterize it as a kind of agreement or consensus that leaves difference as difference, a “rationalist pluralism” that is sceptical that a single community possesses the truth entire but accepts that it expresses some part of, or perspective on, the truth (Armour 1994, 1997, 1989; Trott 1996, 2000). Canadian Hegelianism takes the form that it does because it is an attempt, adequate or not, to address the institution of America, especially with regard to some features that have shaped the Canadian experience. It is always possible, and has been done often enough, to argue that Canadian Hegelianism is not an accurate rendering of Hegel, especially with regard to the Absolute Idea. But the guiding assumption in all such attempts is that the original beginning of a philosophy is determinative for all subsequent uses and therefore that understanding is a return to beginnings. On the other hand, if one wants to understand the Canadian experience through Canadian

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philosophy, and contribute to understanding that experience philosophically, then what becomes interesting is not Germany’s or Hegel’s Hegel but precisely Canada’s Hegel. What is important is precisely that which differs and must differ from its origins. We might call this the productivity of the new context. If we focus on the productivity of the new context, three related phenomena come forward as eventually included in the institution of America: the original disaster-conquest with its Indigenous-settler duality, the mixing of immigrants in a settler society that may or may not solidify into a new people, and the changing nature but persistence of the structures of empire from the original encounter to contemporary capitalism (Angus 1997, 2008, 2013). Husserl’s unquestioned inclusion of America into spiritual Europe partakes of exactly such a denial of the productivity of the new context and the tracing of meaning back to its origins. It is this assumption that allows him to focus on two defining moments in European spiritual history—the Greek beginning of philosophy and the Renaissance idea of rational knowledge of the whole as an infinite scientific task— and to leap to the claim for Europe’s breakthrough into a “new human epoch” (Husserl 1970c, 274) with neither any analysis of the institution of America nor any comparative evidence from other civilizations or cultures. Let me be clear about what I am saying here, because it is actually not quite as simple as a contrast between understanding in the form of return to origins or the productivity of the new context. After all, the sketch that I have provided of the task of philosophizing “America” requires a return to an instituting original event not only parallel to Husserl’s but made possible precisely by the concept of event inaugurated by Husserl’s new investigation of history and crisis. The mystery of Husserl’s words is that a purely internal investigation is taken to justify a claim for spiritual distinctiveness that then allows the extension, or indeed denial, of that spiritual internality to other cultural forms. The failure to investigate the institution of America or any comparative evidence is a failure to circumscribe accurately the location of the crisis with which he is concerned. This failure can be traced back to the accounts that he gives of the two prior European moments. We can leave aside for present purposes the question of the Greek origin of philosophy, even though this inquiry does require that it be investigated in the same spirit, since it is the Renaissance “renewal” that is closest to the issue of crisis and which distinguishes the position of the Crisis from The Vienna Lecture. Let us return to the earlier suggestion by Enrique Dussel that the year 1492 is the beginning of the European Renaissance. Husserl interprets the Renaissance as the setting-aside of medieval existence in favour of a self-shaping freedom based on an ancient Greek model. He says, What does it hold to be essential to ancient man? After some hesitation, nothing less than the ‘philosophical’ form of existence; freely giving oneself, one’s whole life, its rule through pure reason or through philosophy. Theoretical philosophy is primary. A superior survey of the world must be launched, unfettered by myth and the whole tradition: universal knowledge, absolutely free from prejudice, of the world and man, ultimately recognizing in the world its inherent reason and teleology and its highest principle, God. And theoretical autonomy is followed by practical autonomy. According to the guiding ideal of the Renaissance,

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ancient man forms himself with insight through free reason. For this renewed ‘Platonism’ this means not only that man should be changed ethically [but that] the whole human surrounding world, the political and social existence of mankind, must be fashioned anew through free reason, through the insights of a universal philosophy. (Husserl 1970a, 8) Philosophy in this sense means “the science of the totality of what is,” but contains also an “elevation of the meaning of this universality” to include “all meaningful questions in a rigorous scientific manner, with an apodictically intelligible methodology, in an unending but rationally ordered progress of inquiry”. (Husserl 1970c, 8–9)

There are several historically verifiable elements occluded in this description: Renaissance Platonism works not with the real solid shapes of Plato but rather a mathematized geometry of formulae whose questionable applicability to real shapes required a new form of inquiry in Husserl’s Origin of Geometry; the idea that the world can be “surveyed,” what we might call a reflective regard on the world (überlegene Weltbetrachtung) (Husserl 1954, 5); the reference to God obscures the fact that there is no return to Greek gods and, to that extent, the Medieval is not merely set aside. All of these obscured elements play into Husserl’s description of what is actually new in the Renaissance institution: the mathematization of nature whereby an enclosed Galilean scientific form constitutes a progress of scientific knowledge toward infinity and in which the formal sign-system of arithmetized geometry brings the relationship between theoretical knowledge and the lifeworld into crisis. None of this can be understood as a mere renewal of Greek philosophy. While Husserl recognizes the new elements in the Renaissance reshaping in the course of his actual analysis, he nevertheless presents the Renaissance itself as if it were an endogenous reforming of Greek philosophy, even when these historically verifiable elements—formalizing abstraction; a reflective regard on the world as a whole, which presupposes a stance from outside the world; and the concept of infinite progress—are clearly not of Greek origin. If there was exogeny in the Renaissance reshaping itself, which was obscured by Husserl in his theoretical account, it is not surprising that he would miss the exogeny in the issue of America’s relation to Europe. One might want to investigate the European history of philosophy to ask whether this “inclusion of the outside” is itself what makes the tradition of reason, not the pure inside of tracing-back to Greece, which may apply, indeed, to the institution of the Greek origin itself. Husserl’s claim for the distinctiveness of Europe fixes on two prior moments of the European spirit that he analyzes in increasing detail as their importance for his diagnosis of the crisis of European reason becomes apparent. The leap to including America within spiritual Europe is able to pass over in silence the original institution of America and the need for comparative evidence because of the presumption of endogeny in his analysis of spiritual Europe. However, as the detailed analysis of the newness of the Renaissance in the Crisis shows, such endogeny cannot account for the newness in the renewal. The newness in the renewal stems from exogeny; the question becomes how to include the external within a new internal formation. The concept of institution (Urstiftung) that Husserl introduces in the Crisis to account for that which is primally instituted, temporally persistent, and assigns a task toward completion requires also this notion of internalization of exogeny to account for the newness in the institution.

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In this spirit we may return to our original question: in what sense does the European crisis of reason implicate America? We may answer: the event of conquest-­ disaster constitutes an event for reason insofar as the encounter includes elements previously absent in the European entelechy with the consequence that America cannot be simply included within Europe; the crisis of reason stems from the European side of the encounter; thus, while America cannot be straightforwardly included in Europe, neither can it be simply excluded. Perhaps, to somewhat overreach the evidence yet presented, one might attribute the exogeny of the encounter and the recovery of reason to the process of inclusion of the outside—less the drawing of a border to define a interior location of reason’s entelechy, than the permeability of this border in an exogenous renewal of reason.

5  Conclusion The concept of institution (Urstiftung) that Husserl introduced to diagnose the crisis of reason and propose its renewal through phenomenology required him to develop an idea of a prior commitment to reason that he found in the concept of “Europe.” The absence of any comparative evidence in Husserl’s claim for the distinctiveness of Europe’s “breakthrough” for humanity in its entelechy of reason, which means that the claim cannot in principle be validated as such, suggests that the comparative relation of ideas and claims instituted in one lifeworld to those of another must become a fundamental part of the phenomenological diagnosis of crisis.8 This task necessarily requires a double-pronged approach. One aspect is analysis of the European entelechy. In this context it pertains especially to the systematic institutionalization of Renaissance universal science with an infinite teleology toward complete knowledge. In the diagnosis of crisis, it is not so much the level of progress that is at issue but rather, at any level of scientific articulation, the pertinence of science to the lifeworld for meaning and value. This suggests that a comparative reflection on crisis requires a shift from an encyclopediac toward a Socratic conception of philosophy. What is the human knowledge—not the progress toward an infinite completion of science that reflects the mind of God (Husserl 1970a, 66)—through which currently available knowledge can be re-­ grounded in the lifeworld? When Socrates distinguished divine wisdom from human wisdom to explain the course of his questioning in the public places, it was precisely to define philosophy, in distinction from divine knowledge of the whole sway of Being, as the search for knowledge that is embedded in human action (Plato Apology, 22–3, 20d-e). The second aspect is the question of the institutionalization of reason in non-­ European cultures, especially in the context of its relation to meaning and value. A comparative study of the relation of the prior entelechy of reason to meaning and  Jan Patočka agreed with Husserl’s conception of the entelechy of reason as essentially tied to the European spirit but went on to claim that the export of reason might therefore do a violence to other civilizations (Patočka, 221–2). 8

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value in the lifeworld will need to investigate the contextual embeddedness of reason alongside neighbouring concepts. The specificity of such embeddedness is equally important to the concept of reason itself. This investigation has entertained the proposal that the entelechy of reason that becomes evident through the concept of institution should be understood less as a renewal of a pre-existing tradition than as an exogenic encounter and incursion of an outside that together define an event as new in relation to its precursors, so that the precursors become precursors precisely because their meaning becomes re-cast, sustained and extended in the institution of a new form. Nevertheless, it has not committed itself to such a (Hegelian) account of the exogeny of reason. In investigating the institution of America, it was found to be characterized by a polemical event of conquest-disaster, so that “our” institution is not that of Husserl. That is to say, while the event of America is a polemical event involving an encounter with an Other, this does not show that all such institutions are such, especially the event of Europe that Husserl addresses. For “us,” the event of America assigns the task of seeking a cultural renewal that embraces the Otherness of cultures and questions them for the nature of their prior commitment to reason—which will of course, as it did with Husserl, mean a questioning of the concept of reason itself. This investigation is based on an inquiry into the event by which an institution comes into being. It suggests that much more reflection is required on this late concept of Husserl’s which has significant implications for the tasks of phenomenological philosophy. Husserl’s appeal in the 1930s was an appeal over irrationalist nationalism toward a higher cultural unity containing a shared prior commitment to a common European entelechy of reason. While it is certainly legitimate to interrogate the claim to distinctiveness upon which the higher appeal rests from a later historical standpoint, as we have done here, it is also worthwhile to consider the possibility that it is not the ultimate truth of the claim to distinctiveness that is most important, but precisely the move to a “one higher” basis of shared meaning defined in this case as a commitment to reason. Given the essential connection of phenomenology to experiential validation, and also the crisis-prone nature of a discourse on universality that is not experientially rooted, one can say that the decisive phenomenological move in a historical crisis is “one step up” which maintains a ground in an established lifeworld but appeals above toward a greater universality that is yet to be established. The enactment of phenomenological philosophy as self-responsibility and the role of the philosopher as a functionary of humanity consists in the enactment of the universalizing step up to one higher level of commonality between different ­communities, or “personalities of a higher order” (Husserl 1969a, 132). Such a universalizing move is an essential component of the phenomenological concept of critique.9  As Dermot Moran has shown, Husserl does not in principle deny the possibility of critical reason to non-European peoples. Rather, “Husserl undoubtedly embraced the view that all cultures begin in some kind of non-historical, practical mythic stage before becoming historically differentiated. … there is no evidence that Husserl thinks that Indian or Chinese civilizations are essentially incapable of making the breakthrough from myth to the theoretical attitude, originally performed by “a few Greek eccentrics.” It is the great and irrational “fact” of history that this breakthrough took place only in Greece” (Moran 493–4). 9

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The encounter between Europe and aboriginal that defines the New World has now become the becoming-planetary of the crisis of reason. This planetary crisis refers to the reason understood as technology that is based on formal-mathematical science as the origination of crisis and phenomenological reason as the renewal of meaning and value through a recovery of a relation to the lifeworld. Meaning and value must be generated, not simply from looking back to prior institutions, but from events constituted by the planetary encounter of cultures that motivate an appeal upward one step toward greater universality.

References Angus, I. 1997. A Border Within: National Identity, Cultural Plurality and Wilderness. Montreal/ Kingston: McGill-Queen’s Press. ———. 2008. Identity and Justice. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ———. 2013. The Undiscovered Country: Essays in Canadian Intellectual Culture. Edmonton: Athabasca University Press. Armour, L. 1989. The Canadian Tradition and the Common Good. Études Maritainiennes 5: 23–37. ———. 1994. Canada and the History of Philosophy. In Canada: Theoretical Discourse/Discours théoriques, ed. Terry Goldie, Carmen Lambert, and Rowland Lorimer, 19–47. Montréal: Association for Canadian Studies. ———. 1997. Canadian Ways of Thinking: Logic, Society, and Canadian Philosophy. In Alternative Frontiers: Voices from the mountain West Canadian studies conference, ed. Allen Seager, Leonard Evenden, Rowland Lorimer, and Robin Mathews, 1–23. Montréal: Association for Canadian Studies. Beardsell, P. 2000. Europe and Latin America: Returning the Gaze. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Burbidge, J. 1994. Hegel in Canada. The Owl of Minerva 25 (2): 215–219. Cairns, D. 1973. Guide for Translating Husserl. The Hague: Nijhoff. Cameron, G. 2009. Wandering Across the Face of Europe. Topos 22 (2/3): 106–117. Carr, D. 1970. Translator’s Introduction. In The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Trans. David Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Derrida, J. 1973. Speech and Phenomena, and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs. Trans. David B. Allison. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. 1978. Edmund Husserl’s Origin of Geometry. Trans. John P.  Leavey. Stony Brook: Nicolas Hays. ———. 2003. The Problem of Genesis in Husserl’s Philosophy. Trans. Marian Hobson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dussel, E. 1992. The Invention of the Americas: Eclipse of ‘the Other’ and the Myth of Modernity. Trans. Michael D. Barber. New York: Continuum. ———. 1993. Eurocentrism and Modernity (Introduction to the Frankfurt Lectures). Boundary 2 20 (3): 65–66. Gasché, R. 2009. Europe, or the Infinite Task: A Study of a Philosophical Concept. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Husserl E. 1954. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie, her. Walter Biemel, Husserliana VI. Haag: Nijhoff. Husserl, E. 1969a. Cartesian Meditations. Trans. D. Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1969b. Formal and Transcendental Logic. Trans. D. Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

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———. 1970a. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Trans. D. Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Husserl, Edmund. 1970b. The Origin of Geometry. Appendix VI to The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Husserl, E. 1970c. “Philosophy and the Crisis of European Humanity,” or “The Vienna Lecture,” Appendix I to The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Trans. D. Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. 1981. Renewal: Its Problem and Method. In Husserl: The Shorter Works. Trans. P. McCormick, and F. Elliston. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press. Husserl, Edmund. 1995. Fichte’s ideal of Humanity (Three Lectures). Trans. James G.  Hart. Husserl Studies 12: 111–133. Husserl, E. 2008. “Letter to Levy-Bruhl.” Dermot Moran and Lukas Steinacher. Trans. With an introduction. The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy 8: 325–354. Kahnawake Education Center. 2013. The Two-Row Wampum. Downloaded July 2013. Available at: http://kec.qc.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/two-row-wampum.pdf. MacGregor, D. 1994. Canada’s Hegel. The Literary Review of Canada 3: 18–20. Maldonado-Torres, N. 2008. Views from the Underside of Modernity. Durham/London: Duke University Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. 1962. Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence. In: Signs. Trans. Richard C. McCleary. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. 1970. Themes from the Lectures at the College de France 1952–1960. Trans. John O’Neill. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Meynell, R. 2011. Canadian Idealism and the Philosophy of Freedom: C.B. Macpherson, George Grant and Charles Taylor. Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s Press. Mignolo, W. 2002. The Enduring Enchantment: (Or the Epistemic Privilege of Modernity and Where to Go from Here). South Atlantic Quarterly 101 (4): 927–954. Moran, D. 2011. ‘’Even the Papuan is a Man and not a Beast’: Husserl on Universalism and the Relativity of Cultures. Journal of the History of Philosophy 49 (4): 463–494. ———. 2012. Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. O’Gorman, E. 1961. The Invention of America: An Inquiry into the Historical Nature of the New World and the Meaning of its History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Patočka, J. 2002. Plato and Europe. Trans. Petr Lom. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Plato. 1997. Apology. Trans. G.M.A.  Grube. In Plato: Complete Works, ed. John Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Sibley, R. 2008. Northern Spirits: John Watson, George Grant, Charles Taylor, Appropriations of Hegelian Political Thought. Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Trott, E. 1996. Bradley and the Canadian Connection. In Philosophy After F.H. Bradley, ed. James Bradley, 57–72. Bristol: Thoemmes Press. ———. 2000. Caird, Watson, and the Reconciliation of Opposites. In Anglo-American Idealism, 1865–1927, ed. W.J. Mander, 81–92. Westport: Greenwood Press.

Husserl and His Shadows: Phenomenology After Merleau-Ponty Keith Whitmoyer

Abstract  This essay takes up Merleau-Ponty’s reading of Husserl as it is expressed in the essay Le philosophe et son ombre and his 1958–1959 course at the Collège de France, La philosophie aujourd’hui, in dialogue with Levinas’s 1948 essay, La réalité et son ombre. I argue that it is a Levinasian sense of the shadow that must be heard in Merleau-Ponty’s text, “the event of being’s darkening,” and that, correlatively, Husserl’s work must not be treated as a luminous canon, as a set of scriptures bereft of all darkness, but that the brilliance of the founder of phenomenology lies in his multiplicity: that Husserl was always otherwise than himself, haunted by his shadows. In this way, we can say with thinkers like Derrida, that at the point where Husserl was a thinker of strenge Wissenschaft he was also a thinker of that which resists reduction, “what resists phenomenology within us.” Keywords  Phenomenology · Merleau-Ponty · Husserl · Levinas · Derrida · Plato · Image · Shadow · Body · Flesh

1  Introduction It almost goes without saying that Merleau-Ponty’s relationship to Husserl has been a subject of debate. Merleau-Ponty is often accused of infidelity by Husserl scholars: of providing a mere caricature of Husserl’s philosophy by seeing in his texts a more existential thinker than Husserl was and of providing an image of Husserl’s thought that is too closely tailored to suite Merleau-Ponty’s own philosophical interests.1 Furthermore, unlike figures in the phenomenological tradition like  As Zahavi has noted, some of these readings come from Merleau-Ponty scholars, Madison and Dillon in particular, who tend to view Husserl unfairly as a solipsist, and he persuasively argues against reading Merleau-Ponty’s relationship to Husserl as overly critical. Others have claimed that Merleau-Ponty’s reading is largely cherry-picking, and that Merleau-Ponty finds an existential philosopher where there has only ever been a transcendental one. See the essays collected in 1

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Levinas and Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty himself confesses to having never studied directly with Husserl and to not having known him personally.2 One thus gets a sense that Merleau-Ponty was something of an outsider or even heretic among the most well-known figures in phenomenology and that, in spite of being the first person from outside the university to study at the Husserl archive in Leuven, he was not a faithful reader of his philosophy, indeed, “not an Husserl scholar by any stretch of the imagination.”3 It is not my intention here to defend Merleau-Ponty as a reader, interpreter, or scholar of Husserl’s thought nor to go into a great amount of detail unpacking and analyzing the texts that compose Merleau-Ponty’s engagement with him. This would exceed the boundaries of this study, and in any case, it has been done better elsewhere.4 Rather, my aim here is to explore what Merleau-Ponty’s reading of Husserl initiates: the Stiftung that his reading sets forth, particularly in his essay, Le philosophe et son ombre and his lecture at the Collège de France, La philosophie aujourd’hui. Merleau-Ponty’s relationship to Husserl, and perhaps to phenomenology in general, was one of agonized debt: from his visit to the newly established Husserl Archive in Leuven in 1939 until his death, Husserl was a constant source of inspiration. At the same time, however, it is clear that Merleau-Ponty was never interested in interpreting phenomenology on the terms that Husserl himself would have wished. With Merleau-Ponty, Husserlian phenomenology is set on its way to becoming something else. This seems to be both the advantage and disadvantage of Husserl scholars today and all of us who will have never have known him nor taken his courses: somewhere beyond questions of orthodoxy or heresy, we must consider Husserl’s writings not as the foundations of a system, nor as the outlines of a methodology, nor even as the results of pure research but as the markers and signs that direct us toward still unfamiliar territories. It is this unending process of interrogation, rather than any positively articulated body of thought, that is perhaps most proper to phenomenology. This is what is inspired by Husserl’s writings and where phenomenology is taken after Merleau-Ponty. When we look at the title of Merleau-Ponty’s last work on Husserl, Le philosophe et son ombre, we are immediately reminded of Emmanuel Levinas’s 1948 essay, La réalité et son ombre. This is perhaps no coincidence, as Levinas’s essay was originally published in Le temps modernes, the journal Merleau-Ponty co-­ founded with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and where Merleau-Ponty was the political editor until his abrupt resignation in 1955 because of his objection Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl, especially Zahavi, “Husserl and Merleau-Ponty: A Reappraisal” and Toadvine, “Leaving Husserl’s Cave: The Philosopher and His Shadow Revisited.” 2  According to Geraets, Merleau-Ponty attended the lectures Husserl gave at the Sorbonne in 1929, later to be published as the Cartesian Meditations, and that Merleau-Ponty even helped with the organization, though he also notes that these lectures were given in German, a language MerleauPonty understood only poorly at the time. See Vers une nouvelle philosophie transcendantale. 3  Embree, Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl, “Preface,” viii. 4  The various essays that compose Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl collectively constitute a thorough textual analysis of Merleau-Ponty and Husserl and a careful reconstruction of the former’s interpretation from a variety of perspectives.

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to the Korean War.5 Levinas’s essay is easily legible as a response to Sartre, Qu’est-ce que la littérature? and L’imaginaire being two clear points of reference.6 What may seem strange is that Merleau-Ponty should choose a debate about engaged literature and art to frame his discussion of Husserl.7 What, after all, could combing through the pages of Husserl’s Ideen and the ensuing discussion of phenomenological method have to do with the questions of freedom, responsibility, authorship, and criticism that concern Sartre and Levinas? The answer, I believe, is everything, and from another angle, Merleau-Ponty’s decision to frame his discussion of Husserl in this way already tells us a great deal about how we are to receive it. It is, I think, eventually a Nietzschean thought: to say that the philosopher must bear his shadow is to speak about the affirmation of life, of experience, and of πάθος. Husserl, in his own way, was a thinker of life which, as Derrida reminds us, is “defracted into all the fundamental concepts of phenomenology (Leben, Erlebnis, lebendige Gegenwart, Geistigkeit, etc.).”8 These references to life, what eludes the reduction in its flight, constitute a darkness that haunts the luminous space of Husserliean phenomenology, a darkness that Merleau-Ponty retrieves from Levinas, but which nonetheless marks out a territory for thinking for which it is up to readers of Husserl today to explore.

1.1  Philosophy and Its Shadow Philosophical concern with the shadow of course hearkens back to Plato, who in his εἰκών ἄτοπος, place-less image of the cave, insists that the prisoners, like us, would only see the σκιαί, the shadows: of themselves, each other, and the likenesses of the visible things that stage the θαύματα, the wonders, that capture their gazes.9 Plato, of course, places special emphasis on the play of σκότος and φῶς, darkness and light, and the difference—the distance—between the σκιαί and τὸ ἀληθὲς as such, truth disclosed in and by the light proper to it. The σκιά, the shadow, is only the dimmest reflection, the φάντασμα, the lingering trace of what lies above, outside, in the fullness of the light. As Heidegger points out, this provides the perhaps seminal moment in the history of Western metaphysics: the identification of the persona of the φιλόσοφος as the bearer of light and thus as the one who struggles, even in the  Levinas, Les Temps Modernes, 38 (1948), 771–89.  Qu’est-ce que la littérature? was published in its entirety in 1948, but the individual essays that constitute it had appeared earlier. The first installment appears in Les temps modernes in 1947. L’imaginaire was published in 1940. 7  Merleau-Ponty’s own response to Qu’est-ce que la littérature? begins as La prose du monde, which he abandoned and then published later in part as “Le langage indirect et les voix du silence” in Signes. 8  Merleau-Ponty, Signes, 290/178. All references to this text will be abbreviated as S using the French followed by the English translation; Derrida, Voice and Phenomenon, 9. 9  Plato, 514b. 5 6

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face of death, to be present at the event of ἀλήθεια.10 Nonetheless, the philosopher does not eliminate the shadow; what distinguishes her from her fellow prisoners is only that she recognizes them as such: she understands the distance between darkness and light because she has traversed it, both in being dragged out of the cave and in her return. It is the distance between the shadow (darkness) and the things themselves (light) that defines ἀλήθεια: unconcealment, truth; the ignorance of the prisoners consists only in their inability to recognize anything other than the manifest presence of the shadows, a fate, of course, to which they are bound. The φιλόσοφος offers them only an invitation to consider the shadows in a different light, and they repay her with death. Art, of course, becomes an issue for Plato because it is nothing but the σκιά, the φάντασμα, the ghost of what is. It is a λώβη, an insult to souls unless they possess the φάρμακον, the remedy, provided by light.11 Art is an insult to the φιλόσοφος and her message of freedom and illumination because it attracts the gaze and pulls it downward into the ephemeral passage of things in their generation and decay. It is thus furthest removed from the event of ἀλήθεια because it places before the eyes only an εἴδωλον, a phantom, and it is the distance between the εἴδωλον and the unconcealment of the εἶδος that apparently worried Plato. We dwell upon the εἴδωλον because it speaks to and seduces our bodies and thus we fail to see what is, in a sense, most manifest, clearest and most visible: the εἶδος. The passage to truth, this ascent, is opened by the luminosity that eliminates the darkness and shadow. Heidegger’s persistent concern with ἀλήθεια, for example, is to an extent organized around this Platonic principle: the motifs of Lichtung, clearing, Gelassenheit, letting-­be, Offenheit, openness, and Freiheit, freedom, that accompany his discussions of truth attest to the opposition, the struggle and antagonism between light and shadow, even at the point where Heidegger wishes to think their co-implication and co-belonging.12 Even the work of art, for Heidegger, who wishes to reverse the Platonic image, is the site, the event, of this ἀλήθεια: the work of art now serves the interests of truth, light, clearing, and illumination. It is this philosophical fascination with the luminous, perhaps most endemic to phenomenology, that seems to bother Levinas in La réalité et son ombre. The text, professing to be in dialogue with Sartre, is also easily legible as addressed to Heidegger—or at least a certain version of Heidegger that had appeared in France at the time: on Levinas’s reading, a Platonistic Heidegger who fears the darkness, bondage, and the delights of the cave and who longs for the pain and suffering that grant freedom and light, a Heidegger who like Socrates is a servant of Φοῖβος, the bright one, the god who holds sway over the shining forth of what is. We can ask, with Levinas, why have philosophers so feared the darkness? What would it mean for philosophy to allow, even to invite darkness into its discourse? What would it mean for philosophy to linger in the darkness, dwelling upon the shadow? Would it

 Heidegger, The Essence of Truth, 66 ff.  Plato, 595b. 12  Heidegger, The Essence of Truth, 104 ff. 10 11

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simply cease to be philosophy, as Plato seems have feared? Levinas does not answer these questions in detail in this text; he only provides indications but ones worth considering. It is this invitation to dwell upon the shadow that I believe is eventually taken up by Merleau-Ponty. This is particularly important when we note that it is this Levinasian gesture that frames the latter’s reading of Husserl. Levinas’s concern with art and truth, particularly as it is dramatized by Plato, is evident, and it is this concern that organizes the essay as well as his response to Qu’est-ce que la littérature?. Levinas wishes to allow for the darkness that is, that was, and that is yet to come, which lies “coiled like a worm,” as it were, in the heart of truth and its light.13 As he says, Art does not know a particular type of reality; it contrasts with knowledge. It is the very event of obscuring, a descent into the night, an invasion of shadow. To put it in theological terms, which will enable us to delimit however roughly our ideas by comparison with contemporary notions: art does not belong to the order of revelation.14

At first glance, Levinas’s position seems to be typically Platonic: the work of art marks the event of concealment since its currency is the εἰκών, the image, which it substitutes for the object—“an image and not a concept,” an image which “signifies above all a blindness to concepts.”15 There is a coincidence, a grasping and holding in the relationship of the philosopher to the concept, a final consummation of her attempt to penetrate and overcome the darkness in the fullness of the light. Philosophy, according to Levinas, is thus about activity and power, and which, therefore “does not involve Heidegger’s ‘letting-be,’ Sein-lassen, in which objectivity is transmuted into power.”16 The image, by contrast, “marks a hold over us rather than our own initiative, a fundamental passivity. Possessed, inspired, an artist, we say, harkens to a muse. An image is musical.”17 There is a Platonic motif here, but is from the Ion rather than the Republic, and Levinas must surely have it in mind.18 It is only on the basis of this passivity that the divine beauty of the work of art is able to shine forth through the body of the poet. Neither the artist nor the audience possess the image—it is we who are possessed by the image and through it the gods show their faces among the mortals. As Levinas says, “they [the images, the gods] impose themselves on us without our assuming them.”19 Art is a pathology: we undergo it; we are taken up by the ῥυθμός of the image; in becoming possessed we go out of our minds as our capacity for reason steals away. Rhythm, Levinas says, “represents a unique situation where we cannot speak of consent, assumption, initiative or freedom, because the subject is caught up and carried away by it … in rhythm there is no longer a oneself, but rather a sort of passage from oneself to  Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 21.  Levinas, “Reality and Its Shadow,” 132. Abbreviated RS henceforth. 15  Ibid. 16  Ibid. 17  Ibid. 18  Plato, 533e4-534d5. 19  RS, Ibid. 13 14

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anonymity.”20 In undergoing this subjection to the image, the sub-ject is de-­centered, torn outside of itself, and there is at this point no question of the liberal vocabulary of agency, freedom, deliberation and so forth. We are given over to the image in a position of fundamental passivity. All of this poses an important challenge to phenomenology, which has privileged revelation, disclosure, and unhiddenness. Phenomenology, Heidegger being an exemplary case, finds itself in the service of Φοῖβος and has thus neglected and even forgotten the shadow. The image, as Plato understood, opposes itself to the interests of phenomenology at the point where it is an obstacle to the gaze that wishes to render all that there is into an unproblematic transparency and arrive at the absolute source. Images are the marks and emblems indicating that truth itself is already doubled, already a duplicity, and that the gaze that wanted to render everything in its translucency will remain perpetually disappointed. Contrary to the Sartrean en soi that subsists silently in its own self-identity, for Levinas “Reality would not be only what it is, what it is disclosed to be in truth, but would be also its double, its shadow, its image.”21 In this sense, there is no secret truth concealed behind images, nothing hidden that we must reveal. Truth, such as it is, is already stretched, non-identical, and non-coincident, caught in an ek-stase that makes it otherwise: and if it were not otherwise, the image would be impossible.22 In this way, for Levinas, “Being is not only itself, it escapes itself…. It is what it is and it is a stranger to itself, and there is a relationship between these two moments,” and “an image, we can say, is an allegory of being.”23 In this way, there is a gap, an interstice inserted into the heart of being that precludes it from self-identity, and in this way it fails to catch up with itself; it fails to be merely what it is and not otherwise. It is rather always already an “otherwise” that is not mere nothingness. In this way, we may only speak of the “original” problematically, for “[t]he original gives itself as though it were at a distance from itself, as though it were withdrawing itself, as though something in a being delayed behind being.”24 It is this delay, this non-coincidence, the disappointment of a certain desire for truth, as Plato knew and understood, that the shadow represents: “an event of being’s darkening.”25

 Ibid., 133.  Ibid., 135. 22  This is of course an allusion to Levinas’s Otherwise Than Being and what both Levinas and Merleau-Ponty preferred to call “transcendence.” Levinas seems to find something like this in Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on Husserl in Le philosophe et son ombre, which he read as we know from a small text called “On Intersubjectivity: Notes on Merleau-Ponty.” At the end of this reflection, Levinas says: “In its excellence, which is probably that of love, the laws of being and its unity do simply continue to rule. The spirituality of the social would seem to signify precisely an ‘otherwise than being’” (80). 23  Ibid. This is clearly an allusion to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. 24  Ibid. 25  Ibid., 139, trans. modified. 20 21

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2  The Philosopher and His Shadow I believe it is this Levinasian sense of the shadow that Merleau-Ponty invokes in his 1960 essay, Le philosophe et son ombre. The title already reads as an homage to Levinas, and Merleau-Ponty was present on the editorial board of Les temps modernes in 1948 when La réalité et son ombre was published. The question of Merleau-­ Ponty’s essay—said to be the “introduction” to his incomplete ontology of la chair—is what does it mean to read a thinker? We may imagine that to interpret a philosopher and to assume the tasks of a tradition would require the reader to access the essence of the writer’s thought. Taking one’s place within the history of phenomenology would mean to touch that one true Husserl who was and who set forth a modality of thinking that would echo through twentieth century philosophy and beyond. But this is not the case, for the idea of laying hold of the thinker through his writings, to coincide with the author in the heaven of his ideas in their absoluteness assumes that the thinker is always identical with himself, that the writings left behind are points of access to his essence, and that to read is to pass outside of ourselves and meld into the author and his texts. But there is no such essence, according to Merleau-Ponty, for Husserl was not only Husserl, and the writings he left behind were never meant to constitute a canon. Phenomenology was not meant to be a doctrine or even a system of philosophy: it has only ever been, at best, a method, an entry way and invitation into a territory for thinking that has not yet been thought, an opening onto the thinking yet to come. Husserl, insofar as he was ever himself, was also his avatars, his images, and his shadows, and like being, the philosopher is perpetually delayed behind himself in a process of self-withdraw.26 It is in this sense that Merleau-Ponty will speak of the task of interpretation in a well-known passage: At the end of Husserl’s life there is an un-thought of Husserl, which is wholly his and yet opens out on something else. To think is not to possess the objects of thought; it is to circumscribe through them a domain for thinking that we do not think yet. As the perceived world endures only through the reflections, shadows, levels, horizons between things, which are not things and not nothing, but on the contrary themselves delimit the fields of possible variation in the same thing and the same world—so the works and thought of a philosopher are also made of certain articulations between things said, for which there is no dilemma of objective interpretation and arbitrariness, since they are not objects of thought, since, like shadow and reflection, they would be destroyed by being subjected to analytic observation or to insulating thought, and since we can be faithful to and find them only by thinking again.27

It is easy to criticize Merleau-Ponty for reading Husserl selectively or for constructing a Husserl that is merely a convenience for his philosophical ends: the “existential” Husserl Merleau-Ponty finds in the Ideen cannot be reconciled with the transcendental turn; his reading is faithless to the text, to what Husserl meant to  For a more developed account of the themes of lateness and delay in Merleau-Ponty’s thought, see my The Philosophy of Ontological Lateness: Merleau-Ponty and the Tasks of Thinking. 27  S 260-261/160. Translation modified. 26

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think, and at this point must been seen as nothing other than a betrayal. Such accusations, however, assume a great deal about the meaning of interpretation: that reading is an act of piety and that to engage with a thinker is to construct the monuments of praise and remembrance we call interpretations. As Merleau-Ponty understood, however, “any commemoration is also treason.”28 To become preoccupied with the “correctness” of a reading, with orthodoxy, for Merleau-Ponty, is to misunderstand the tasks of reading and interpretation. For the phenomenologist, it is not a question of “correctness” but the point at which engaging with a thinker opens us onto new paths of thought as of yet unexplored. The text is not a gospel but a Zeichen, a marker that points beyond our present manner of thinking, outside of the now toward what we have not yet imagined. To read Husserl in a way that reduces his thought to a dogma that we either grasp or fail to grasp is, for Merleau-Ponty, the grossest misunderstanding of what he invited us to undergo. This is the framework within which we must understand what might otherwise seem to be a selective reading of the Ideen. Merleau-Ponty dwells mainly on §18, “The subjectively conditioned factors of the constitution of the thing; the constitution of the Objective material thing,” and §49, “The personalistic versus the naturalistic attitude.” The texts cited by Merleau-Ponty are chosen in order to problematize the strictly idealist interpretation of the Ideen and find there another Husserl, one whose thought was more inconsistent, less sure of itself, and free to stray from the line of its own intentions.29 As Husserl makes clear in the Introduction to Ideen I, the tasks of this work include the constitution of a pure science of phenomena, which requires the reorientation of all subordinate attitudes toward being and beings—the naturalistic attitude in particular—in accordance with the primacy of the phenomenological attitude.30 This reorientation of the sense of the world and its regions of possible articulation requires the demonstration of the possibility of a pure phenomenological perspective from which one could then see and account for the naturalistic attitude and its attendant modalities of sense: things, realities, indeed, the whole of nature as it appears to the scientific gaze. Securing the possibility of the pure phenomenological perspective and thus the possibility of a pure science of phenomenology against the contamination of a subordinate attitude is the anxiety that seems to motivate Husserl over the course of the Ideen, particularly volume II, which was  Ibid., 259/159.  For his part, Levinas, in his note on Merleau-Ponty, seems to have approved of the reading of Husserl offered by Merleau-Ponty in Le philosophe et son ombre: “It is difficult for me to find terms adequate to express my admiration for the subtle beauty of the analyses in Merleau-Ponty’s work of that original incarnation of mind [esprit] in which Nature reveals its meaning in movements of the human body that are essentially signifying, i.e., expressive, i.e., cultural; from gesture to language, to art, to poetry and science: that original incarnation in which Nature reveals its meaning (or its soul?) in Culture. The French philosopher’s own quest doubtless permitted him to say the non-said (or at least the non-published) of Husserl’s thought, a thought whose ‘possibilities’ require an attentive ear throughout, despite the apparent immobility or restating of the main theses” (“On Intersubjectivity, 77). 30  See Husserl, Ideen I, especially the first chapter of part II, “The Positing Which Belongs to the Natural Attidude and Its Exclusion.” 28 29

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of special interest to Merleau-Ponty. Husserl wishes to establish the purity of the transcendental standpoint, to return to the absolute origin and ground of the possibility of sense: and it is of course precisely this desire for purity that, on Merleau-­ Ponty’s reading, is betrayed by his own text and thinking. We already get a clear picture of this stance with respect to Husserl from the lectures Merleau-Ponty gave at the Collège de France in the years leading up to the publication of Le philosophe et son ombre in Signes in 1960, particularly the 1958– 1959 course, La philosophie aujourd’hui and his remarks there on the Ideen.31 Merleau-Ponty seeks to understand the point at which Husserl’s project remains radical throughout, understanding its task as the renewal and rebirth of thought in the wake of “academic forms of nihilism,” as he says, “to reconstruct a philosophy after psychologism, historicism, positivism that followed the collapse of Hegel.”32 But if phenomenology is in fact able to provide an alternative to the nihilisms of the twentieth century, it must be the case that we can show that it does not degernate into just another version of essentialism or Platonism. This is how Merleau-Ponty understands his responsibilities as a reader of Husserl: to recover, perhaps even against Husserl’s own understanding of his thought, a philosophy that moves beyond itself, one that is not content to dwell within the borders of its own presuppositions and that exceeds its own limits. It is along these lines, for example, that we can understand the move toward transcendental idealism that characterizes the Ideen and the methodological motif of transcendental reduction. The transcendental reduction, at the point where it returns us to “subjectivity,” to the interior, does so only insofar as it brings us into contact with experience—and at this point precisely takes us beyond subjectivity, i.e., to the outside. It is on this basis that Merleau-Ponty will insist, from Phenomenology of Perception forward, on the primacy of the perceived world.33 The perceived world is there beneath and before the intentionality of acts and designates an “originary passivity at the heart of ourselves.”34 The transcendental reduction is an “unveiling of intentionality—but of an intentionality which is no longer immediate participation in an essence (First period) nor (in his difference from Kant) operation of active and purely spiritual connection.”35 It is an intentionality, rather, that recovers the “priority of the perceived, impressional world over the world of the Gebilde [structures]:” such an intentionality includes the “[imposition] of sense and essence,” to be sure, but nonetheless, “consciousness is not only this  The course, Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology, would be offered the following academic year of 1959–1960. 32  Merleau-Ponty, Notes de cours, 66. Translations of this text by the author. This will be abbreviated as NC henceforth. In a footnote here Merleau-Ponty remarks: “Husserl seems to have ignored Nietzsche and all irrationalism.” 33  See, for example, the documents he submitted as part of his candidacy to the Collège de France, “Un inédit de Maurice Merleau-Ponty,” as well as the lecture given at the Société française philosophique, Primat de la perception. Both of these are translated in the volume, The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays. 34  NC, 68. 35  Ibid, 68. 31

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activity,” and hence, according to Merleau-Ponty, we are brought before the problematic of hyle and morphe, matter and form, as it figures in Husserl’s thought. This problematic, accordingly, necessitates the recovery of an “Urerlebnis [originary lived experience] which is not Auffassungsinhalt-Auffasung [concept-content and concept], which is not objectification,” but is rather an “encounter with the non-­ thetic at the heart of consciousness,” “that which is before acts: act intentionality and operant or latent intentionality,” which of course does not disburden itself of all the “problems of passive syntheses.”36 It is not a question, with respect to such remarks, of calling into question the point at which or the extent to which Husserl was a thinker of an active, thetic, and positional consciousness for whom the world is the intentional correlate: Husserl was precisely this kind of thinker. What is important, for Merleau-Ponty, is that in spite of being such a thinker, Husserl nonetheless brings us to a point beyond that: his own thought already inscribes within itself something else, something other than what it perhaps meant to be. The mutation that develops within Husserl’s thought, the perpetuation of this tension between the active and the passive, matter and form, the thetic and pre-­ thetic, reverberates throughout his work to the very tasks assigned to reflection, thinking, and philosophy. Reflection, within the methodological auspices of the transcendental reduction, is no longer coincidence and fusion with its absolute source but peels back and discloses an infrastructure of intentional layers in which our reflections are immersed, indeed, which composes them and renders them possible as reflection in advance of our assumption of an attitude with respect to them. As Merleau-Ponty notes, [R]eflection or transcendental reduction … cannot be adequation with a universal constituting Mind, nor consist in replacing us in it, nor that which gets carried away with coincidence with it. It knows itself second. It discloses an unreflected which is not outside of its grasp, in principle, but which it neither reabsorbs. All reduction is eidetic: it does not put us in possession of our existence…. The subject escapes itself in seizing itself or seizes itself in its escape.37

It is in this sense that transcendental reflection carries itself to the outside. It does not consist in arriving at the scene of the advent of sense or being—nor should it be conceived as reflection’s absolute possession of itself. In returning to the subject, to the interior, the subject escapes, the inside finds itself on the way to the outside: it is a process of evisceration. Phenomenological reflection, in this way, only arrives insofar as it does not arrive, is able to take hold of some truth only at the point where such truth nonetheless remains beyond its reach. Across the pages of the Ideen, Husserl will insist over and over again on the primacy of absolute consciousness, its purity, and necessity for phenomenology— and yet, as Merleau-Ponty will insist in his lectures as well as in Signes, there is a thought functioning there, even if it only murmurs, that brings us closer to that fundamental passivity in which such consciousness is immersed, a scene of sense to

36 37

 Ibid.  Ibid.

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which it arrives late.38 This passivity, this delay, is crystalized, for Husserl, in the experiential body, the living body that functions as the “zero point” of my orientation and perceptual experience.39 The living body is oriented within a world with which it interfaces, that constitutes for it an environment and context to the point where the possibilities opened up for it through its organs respond to worldly indexes: vision, for example, does not set itself forth in a vacuum but, we “see in air,”40 which constitutes for us a level to which all subsequent deviations refer; if we were to wear colored lenses, if we were to suffer from jaundice, or take some santonin, the rose or yellow colored field of vision would count as new level, and our modified experience would eventually come to constitute the norm, the “orthoaesthetic” world from which all subsequent changes would deviate.41 The world in this way appears to bodies: along their contour, in accordance with their demands and the possibilities they open up as bodies, and in this way the world’s sensicality is the mirror of the primordial, material sense that our bodies already are. What is more, in referring itself to living bodies, the world appears intersubjectively to the point where even a ghost requires an ephemeral body that manifests itself to others besides myself. It is in this sense that Merleau-Ponty will argue that Husserl’s texts lead in opposite directions: “On the one hand, it descends toward Nature, the sphere of the Urpräsentierbare; whereas it is drawn on the other hand toward the world of persons and minds.” Phenomenological method does not merely take us to the interiority of immanence, but such an attempt at return is already an excursus in the sense of excurrere: to project, extend, to run out of. Its centripetality” that manifests itself to others besides myself.42 It is in this sense that Merleau-Ponty will argue that Husserl’s texts lead in opposite directions: “On the one hand, it descends toward Nature, the sphere of the Urpräsentierbare; whereas it is drawn on the other hand toward the world of persons and minds.”43 Phenomenological method does not merely take us to the interiority of immanence, but such an attempt at return is already an excursus in the sense of excurrere: to project, extend, to run out of. Its centripetality is already centrifugality. As Merleau-Ponty notes in Signes, transcendental reflection thus results in the realization that the movement of return to ourselves—of ‘re-entering ourselves,’ St. Augustine said—is as if torn apart [déchiré] by an inverse movement which it elicits [qu’il

 In a draft of the chapter of The Visible and the Invisible published under the title, “Interrogation and Reflection,” a brouillon d’une rédaction, Merleau-Ponty notes: “too late for knowing the naive world which was before it and too early for knowing everything precisely as initiative, optional operation, critical enterprise, and cultural second” (NC, 358). 39  Husserl, Ideen II, 56/61. 40  Ibid., 60/65. 41  Ibid., 62/67. Santonin is an old drug used to eliminate parasites, a side-effect of which is “yellow vision.” 42  Ibid., 96/101. 43  S 287/178. 38

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suscite]. Husserl rediscovers that identity of ‘re-entering self’ [rentrer de soi] and ‘going-­ outside self’ [sortir de soi] which, for Hegel, defined the absolute.44

In its sortir, the egress aroused by its own reflexivity, transcendental phenomenology, already in Husserl, becomes an inquiry into the sense of that which can appear, that which can take shape and make itself known since, as Husserl says, “all real unities are unities of sense.”45 But this inquiry into unities of sense, into the ­articulate, that which could be, could become, δύναμις, is nothing other than the task of ontology: an inquiry into nature, into φύσις.46 It is this project that, according to MerleauPonty, is foreshadowed in the Ideen even in spite of Husserl’s insistence on the purity and primacy of transcendental subjectivity. But all this is to say that the Ideen is a series of texts, meditations, even experiments, that lack the systemeticity and coherence the reader may have expected from them. The same could be said of all of Husserl’s writings, and that we have a perpetuation of preliminary studies and introductions for good reason. As Merleau-­ Ponty notes, “These adventures of constitutive analysis—these encroachments, reboundings and circularities—do not, as we were saying, seem to have bothered Husserl very much,”47 and, after all, why should we readers of Husserl be bothered by the spectre of inconsistency or by the author’s apparent need to perpetually begin the phenomenological project from scratch ad perpetuam? The disappointment we encounter in our search for the proper Husserl, for a Husserl finally divested of his flesh, “delivered from his life, given up to conversation with his peers,” is a spurious one: spurious because phenomenology, even as a discourse of essences, was never a search for the quietude and tranquility of the answer. In Husserl, phenomenology was always a diligent but restless searching, a constant call for rigor, not a solution but only ever “a question for itself.”48 As Merleau-Ponty notes in a famous passage, The ultimate task of phenomenology as philosophy of consciousness is to understand its relationship to non-phenomenology. What resists phenomenology within us—natural being, the ‘barbarous’ principle Schelling spoke of—cannot remain outside phenomenology and should have its place within it. The philosopher must bear his shadow, which is not simply the factual absence of future light.49

Precisely as ontology, a philosophy of φύσις, phenomenology is not a Platonic longing after the light, the wish to eliminate the darkness and the shadow, but the attempt to think shadow and light in their equiprimordiality and co-belonging, to make way for the chiaroscuro of the phenomena as they set themselves forth. As Levinas saw, nothing can shine forth in its luminosity if the darkness of the shadow is eliminated: bathed in the pure light of the εἶδος, there is only the undifferentiated  Ibid., 263/161.  Husserl, Ideen II, 106/128. Italics Husserl. 46  See Aristotle, Physics, 200b. 47  S 288/179. 48  Ibid., 289/178. 49  Ibid., 290/178. 44 45

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and empty contact of being with itself, its silent self-identity, changeless, eternal, without color, depth, and ambiguity, and we could probably only say of such pure being that it was nothing. Phenomenology, in opposition to this Platonism, is a making-visible that opens itself to light only at the point where it allows for the occlusion of darkness, shadow, and depth. It only makes way for truth, τὸ ἀληθὲς, at the point where it welcomes its other, and thus only becomes philosophy as such in the hospitality it shows toward non-philosophy. Merleau-Ponty’s reference to non-phenomenology in Signes is no coincidence but recalls the preoccupation with philosophy and non-philosophy in his lectures La philosophie aujourd’hui and Philosophie et non-philosophie depuis Hegel, 1958– 1959 and 1960–1961 respectively. In the former course, which includes the discussion of Husserl already touched upon, Merleau-Ponty speaks of “Our state of non-philosophy,” a reference to the crisis of rationality that worried Husserl at the end of his life, that concerned Merleau-Ponty decades later, and that should perhaps still concern us today. The crisis for Merleau-Ponty, as it was for Husserl, is signaled by the alienation of the sciences from their birth in the Lebenswelt but more broadly is also a crisis of relationships between people (Marx) as well as a crisis in our relationship to nature. Our state of non-philosophy today thus designates the “decadence of express, official philosophy,” on one hand, but at the same time, this decadence of philosophy is inessential; it is a certain manner of philosophizing (according to substance, subject-object, causality). Philosophy will find help in poetry, art, etc., in a much closer relationship with them, it will revive and reinterpret its own metaphysical past—which is not past. But, it remains that, for the moment, it is in crisis. What is taking shape is either stammering, or quasi-silence, or even what expressly presents itself as non-philosophy.50

Here in these lectures non-philosophy names what have historically been designated as philosophy’s others: literature, painting, music, and psychoanalysis. The express and official philosophy that holds sway today has abandoned the tasks of thinking, and this is what Merleau-Ponty has in mind when he refers to “academic forms of nihilism.” Indeed, for Merleau-Ponty, Husserl encountered this nihilism in the rise of fascism in Germany; Heidegger’s career coincides with “the development of public nihilism,” and Sartre “is already a child of the nihilistic period which begins with the war of 1914.”51 There is nonetheless hope for philosophy to stand in the face of this nihilism even if it is as of yet merely stammering or quasi-silence. It is this kind of hope that Merleau-Ponty finds a year later in what he calls “a-philosophy.” As he says at the beginning of the course on Hegel, It is not a matter of struggle between philosophy and its adversaries (positivism), but of a philosophy which wants to be philosophy by being non-philosophy—a ‘negative philosophy’ (in the sense of ‘negative theology’), which opens access to the absolute, not as ‘beyond,’ second positive order, but as another order which must be on the other side, the double, only accessible through it—true philosophy mocks philosophy, is a-philosophy.52  NC, 39.  Ibid., 156–57. 52  Ibid., 275. For commentary on this text and Merleau-Ponty’s later thought, see Carbone. 50 51

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A-philosophy, the reverse, the negative of express and official philosophy, includes the modes of non-philosophy that assume the tasks of thinking abandoned by positivism: painting, literature, music, and psychoanalysis. It takes this thinking further, however, as Merleau-Ponty elaborates through reference to a series of passages from the preface of Nietzsche’s The Gay Science.53 In his remarks on this text, Merleau-Ponty says that true philosophy is beyond: great suspicion, abyss, a-philosophy by fidelity to what we live; this is ended not by ‘knowing everything’ (new positivism) and not by depression, but by will to appearance—cf. Hegel: appearance and depth are not contraries—Nietzsche holds to the quality of the ‘philosopher:’ the absolute of appearance.54

Art and philosophy assume the tasks of thinking at the point where they demonstrate their fidelity to life, to the experience undergone, to the πάθος, the suffering of our dwelling here on Earth. Where the old philosophy longs to die easily, a-­philosophy holds its feet to the surface of the earth and wishes only for breath and life; where philosophy longs to give itself over to the absolute outside, a-philosophy sees that the absolute is not beyond but that thought is already enveloped within it—not the absolute of the unchanging divine, but the absolute of that which makes itself manifest, the absolute of the phenomena. If phenomenology is a return, it is the return to the breath, to ψυχή, and to its experiri and its flight.55 It seems to be this Nietzschean worry—a worry about philosophy’s predilection with the outside of life, what is beyond the vicissitudes of generation and decay— that provokes Merleau-Ponty’s encounter with Husserl and the Ideen specifically. Already in these texts we see the tension that would increasingly come to the foreground in the later texts in the period of the Krisis: the Husserl who is a thinker of strenge Wissenschaft, in his commitment to scientific rigor, to clarity and precision in his commitment to philosophical absoluteness, and the Husserl who was a thinker of Erlebnis, of the necessity and primacy of the living—in its Ablauf, its flow, and perhaps even in its chaos. These two Husserls mark out the play between the “transcendental” and “empirical” in his thought, though these terms are almost certainly inadequate. Merleau-Ponty’s perhaps agonized engagement with Husserl insists that we not occlude the latter Husserl while paying attention to the former, even if at some point the former is the one professed by the letter of his writings. In spite of the rise of fascism and anti-Semitism, in spite of the death of his son in the First World War, in spite of himself, Husserl manages to not give up on life. Derrida eloquently articulates this the tension between these two Husserls, even though there are almost certainly more than two, in the careful reading he offers in Voice and Phenomenon:

 The Preface to the Second Edition.  NC 278. 55  I have developed this motif more elsewhere. See Whitmoyer, “The Sense of the Transcendental: Ψυχή in Heraclitus, Husserl, and Merleau-Ponty.” Chiasmi International, Mimesis/Vrin/Penn State, 2016. 53 54

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‘Living’ is … the name of what precedes the reduction and escapes finally from all the distributions that the reduction brings to light. Life, however, is its own distribution and its own opposition to its other. By determining ‘living’ in this way, we just therefore named the resource of the insecurity of discourse, the point at which precisely it can no longer re-­ secure its possibility and its rigor in the nuance. This concept of life is then grasped in an agency which is no longer that of pre-transcendental naiveté, in the language of everyday life or in the language of biological science. But if this ultra-transcendental concept of life allows us to think life (in the everyday sense or in the sense of biology) and if has never been inscribed in any language, this concept of life perhaps calls for another name.56

It is this that Merleau-Ponty wishes to name when he refers to the “barbarous source” that Schelling spoke of, what in The Visible and the Invisible he will refer to as l’être brut or simply as la chair, the “pure life of the living,” to invoke a phrase of Derrida,57 that disrupts philosophy’s attempt to secure itself as philosophy, the écart, the interstice or gap, the différance inscribed in the heart of thought and in virtue of which it remains delayed behind itself. It is the “image of thought,”58 the shadow and darkness at the heart of thinking that, since Plato, philosophy has sought to repress if not excise in its preoccupation with the luminous. What Merleau-Ponty’s reading shows us is that this darkness, this shadow, already resides within the discourse of Husserlian phenomenology—and that we should be grateful that there is a point where Husserl’s writings and thought have yet to become absolutely luminous, even 80 years after the philosopher’s death. It is this lingering darkness at the center of phenomenology that indicates for us today that there is yet much to be thought, that Husserl’s writings continue to indicate territories of thought yet to come. It is also in this sense that readers of Husserl today follow those who have lived under his shadow: Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, and Derrida, to name a few, and that philosophy today has not yet eliminated this shadow, as Toadvine has remarked, “the primordial carnal contact of flesh with flesh, the fold of the earth.”59 Readers of Husserl today and perhaps all phenomenologists may be grateful to be present, not at the dawn, not at the coming of the light, but at the penumbra, the twilight, the “event of being’s darkening.”60

 Derrida, Voice and Phenomenon, 13.  Derrida, On Touching: Jean Luc Nancy, 19. 58  This phrase is now invariably associated with Deleuze and Difference and Repetition. What we have tried to indicate under the name “shadow” here Deleuze names “encounter,” and I place this here as a provocation: “Something in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition but of a fundamental encounter…. It is not an aistheton but an aistheteon. It is not a quality but a sign. It is not a sensible being but the being of the sensible. It is not the given but that by which the given is given” (Deleuze, 140). 59  Toadvine, 94. 60  RS, 139. 56 57

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References Carbone, Mauro. 2004. The Thinking of the Sensible: Merleau-Ponty’s A-Philosophy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1994. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. New York: Columbia University Press. Derrida, Jacques. 2005. On Touching: Jean Luc Nancy. Translated by Christine Irizarry. New York: Fordham University Press. ———. 2011. Voice and Phenomenon. Translated by Leonard Lawlor. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Geraets, Theodore. 1971. Vers une nouvelle philosophie transcendantale. La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff. Heidegger, Martin. 2002. The Essence of Truth. Translated by Ted Sadler. London: Continuum. Husserl, Edmund. 1983. Husserl, Edmund. Ideen zur einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Philosophie: erstes Buch, allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976. Translated into English as Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenology Philosophy, Book I: Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology. Translated by Fred Kersten. The Hague: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ———. 1989. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: Second Book, Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution. Translated by Richard Rojcewitz and Andre Schuwer. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1989. Reality and Its Shadow. In The Levinas Reader, ed. Sean Hand, 129– 143. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 2008. On Intersubjectivity: Notes on Merleau-Ponty. In Outside the Subject. Translated by Michael B. Smith. New York: Continuum Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1964a. Signes. Paris: Gallimard, 1960. Translated into English as Signs by Richard McCleary. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. 1964b. Primat de la perception. Grenoble: Cynara, 1989. Translated into English as The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays, edited by James, M. Edie. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. 1996. Notes de cours 1959–1961. Paris: Gallimard. ———. 2000. Parcours deux: 1951–1961. Lagrasse: éditions Verdier. Plato. 2013. Republic, Vol. I–II. Translated by Chris Emlyn-Jones and William Preddy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1956. Being and Nothingness. Translated by Hazel Barnes. New  York: Washington Square Press. Toadvine, Ted, and Lester Embree, eds. 2002. Merleau-Ponty’s Reading of Husserl. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Whitmoyer, Keith. 2016. The Sense of the Transcendental: Ψυχή in Heraclitus, Husserl, and Merleau-Ponty. Chiasmi International, Mimesis/Vrin, Penn State. ———. 2017. The Philosophy of Ontological Lateness: Merleau-Ponty and the Tasks of Thinking. Bloomsbury.

Phenomenological Crossings: Givenness and Event Emre Şan

Abstract  Contemporary phenomenology intends to explore the territories perhaps indicated but mostly ignored or abandoned by Husserl and Heidegger. However, it can be considered an heir to historical phenomenology when understood as a general path of inquiry into phenomenality. Its common goal is to study phenomena like invisible, totality, affectivity, le visage or Saturated Phenomena which escape the givenness of meaning determined by consciousness and its correlative noetic-­ noematic structure. This pathos of thought proceeds from a change of paradigm, the modification of the concept of phenomenon now considered as the event of meaning. The phenomenon as occurring, its transpiring as and in an event, brings together several of its features: the spontaneous formation of meaning, the nonobjective excess (ungegenständlicher Überschuss) at the heart of the phenomenon and the paradoxical character of the given. I will examine three protagonists of this new movement, Michel Henry, Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Luc Marion, in order to understand the modification of the concept of phenomenon as givenness and event. Keywords  Givenness · Intentionality · Life · World · Event · Henry · Merleau-­ Ponty · Marion

1  Introduction There is no phenomenology without problem, and the fertility of phenomenological research can be determined only by the questions that it raises. The ambition of this essay is precisely to re-address the question: what is the phenomenological definition of the phenomenon? Instead of interpreting or presenting the conceptions of phenomenology that have been elaborated by the major authors of the

E. Şan (*) Istanbul 29 Mayis University, Istanbul, Turkey © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Apostolescu (ed.), The Subject(s) of Phenomenology, Contributions to Phenomenology 108, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29357-4_18

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phenomenological movement, I will discuss the interactions between the implicit ideas of the legacy of Husserlian phenomenology in France. In Neue Phänomenologie in Frankreich (2011), László Tengelyi and Hans-Dieter Gondek descripe a new phase of the phenomenological movement as a third form of phenomenology, distinct from Husserl’s transcendental inquiry and Heidegger’s hermeneutic thinking. Contemporary French phenomenology intends to explore the territories perhaps indicated but mostly ignored or abandoned by Husserl and Heidegger. However, it can be considered an heir to historical phenomenology when understood as a general path of inquiry into phenomenality. Its common goal is to study phenomena like invisible, totality, affectivity, le visage or Saturated Phenomena which escape the donation of meaning determined by consciousness and its correlative noetic-noematic structure. This new phenomenology is cross-­ germinated with diverse outsides—and diverse types—that constitute poles of both resistance and fecundity. This pathos of thought proceeds from a change of paradigm, the modification of the concept of phenomenon now considered as the event of meaning. The evenmentiality of the phenomenon brings together several of its features: the spontaneous formation of meaning, the nonobjective excess (ungegenständlicher Überschuss) at the heart of the phenomenon and the paradoxal character of the given. In this sense, the phenomenality of the phenomenon can gain consistency on the condition that it surpasses itself in an event of meaning. In order to understand the modification of the concept of phenomenon as givenness and event, I will examine three protagonists of this new movement, namely, Michel Henry, Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Luc Marion. This undoubtedly poses some methodological problems. Thus, I will not demonstrate here, in the manner of a historian of philosophy, a panaroma of contemporary French phenomenology. Rather, I will focus on the phenomenological crossings between their major problematics. What makes Henry’s, Merleau-Ponty’s and Marion’s works stand out among contemporary phenomenologists, is their critique of intentionality. Their primary goal can be summarised as the following: to radicalize Husserl against Husserl’s own text and to re-examinate the possibilities and limitations of Husserl’s method and project. Despite the difference in the strategies they propose, they exceed the universal a priori correlation, the intentional correlation between the experienced object and its subjective modes of givenness, towards a deeper asymmetric correlation which neutralizes intentional distance and demonstrates the autonomy of the phenomenon. In this regard, the sense of phenomenality does not refer to the manifestation of the lived experience to itself. The lived experience is “the place of givenness” and it is “not its origin but rather its point of arrival” (Marion 2002, 20). Their insistence on the primacy of apparition in phenomenality leads to rethinking both the phenomenon itself and the subject to whom it appears. Despite their investment in radically different phenomenogical projects (phenomenology of life, ontology of the flesh, phenomenology of givenness), I argue that these post-Husserlian thinkers can be reinterpreted in terms of their emphasis on the limits of intentionality (i.e. of givenness) and the modification of the concept of phenomena as event.

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2  I ntentionality with Reference to the Lack or Excess of Appearance First of all, I’d like to interrogate the phenomenological reason defined by an ideal of adequation which thematizes the intentionality with reference to a lack or excess of appearance in the doctrine of givenness by adumbration (Abschattungen). In §41 of Ideas I, Husserl points out that all spatial things can only be seen through changing adumbrations (Husserl 1962: 87). Rudolf Bernet reformulates this argument: “This well-known Husserlian insight can be further articulated in terms of a ‘lack’ and an ‘exces’ that characterize all intuitive givenness of perceptual things. Such a lack and exces make that the relation between a perceiving subject and perceived thing is never ‘quite right’. Despite their intentional ‘correlation’, perceiver and perceived never perfectly match or mirror one another. This non-coincidence or difference is what Husserl means by the ‘inadequate intuitive fulfilment’ of all thing perception. According to this first scenario, the lack is entirely on the side of the givenness of the thing perceived and the excess is on the side of the intentions of the perceiver” (Bernet 2012, 565). From this point of view, Husserl understands intuition as the presence of the thing in itself, as proof of an adequacy; in contrast with empty intentionality, Husserl’s intuition is grasping of the thing according to the plenitude of its determinations, and therefore excludes any kind of lacuna or indeterminacy. Fulfillment in this context is ‘filling up’ an emptiness. This relation of emptiness and fulfillment possesses a dynamic structure that corresponds to the fundamental orientation of intentionality toward knowledge. On that basis, the non-­ intuitive is pure and simple absence and the emptiness is non-givenness rather than a specific mode of givenness. The non-intuitive moments (strictly speaking: ‘non-­ sensed’) implied in perception—everything about the thing which is not given— could have only a subjective existence, as if the subjective were the index of the non-intuitive. Such is without question the deepest root of the subjectivation of appearance in Husserl’s world: the inability of conceiving of absence or deficiency as a constitutive moment of phenomenality and as an “objective” moment. Husserl understands absence as the reverse of presence rather than as constitutive of presence; put in another way, emptiness is what cannot be, what does not have a reality, which is why an absence from the objective point of view can only refer to a subjective reality. In effect, to deprive emptiness of the status of a mode of given is to postulate that a thing is not present if it does not present itself (so to speak, exhaustively) in its manifestations; it is to posit that there is fulfillment only as adequate possession of the object. Thus the denial of the phenomenological positivity of emptiness is merely an expression of the assimilation carried out by Husserl between the structural relation of empty intentionality and fulfillment. It is also an expression of the contrast between the deficient mode of givenness and the presence of the object. To conceive of fulfillment as the presence of the thing itself is ipso facto to interpret all partiality or indetermination as a deficient mode of givenness. It is to understand the focus on emptiness as a lack, to deny any positivity to absence.

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From this, it is clear that for Husserl perception is submitted to the horizon of a givenness in the flesh and adequate to the thing which maintains the primacy of form over matter and of meaning over sensation. Thus, givenness is restricted to the determination of presence in the interdependent figures of intuition and objectivity. He supposes a reciprocity between existence and adequate donation, intuitiveness and originarity. It is vital to emphasize that Husserl refuses to juxtapose non-­ givenness with phenomenology, because for him perceptive inadequation is always caught within the horizon of a full adequation functioning as a regulatory idea for perception. This ideal pole requires a telos of a process which, in principle, is endless. By doing so, intentionnality has been conceived from the outset as intending an ideal object. In other words, by locating lack on the side of givenness of the thing, Husserl requires further givenness of the experienced object to describe the structure of our experience by a theoretical relation to the world allegedly established through intuition. But there is also another way. What shows itself to the subject is always more than what he/she can grasp. Rudolf Bernet adds, “the thing shows qualities and meanings the subject did not expect and its shining appearance carries a ‘comet tail’ of other possible appearances and other things possibly appearing. In this second scenario, the lack is thus on the side of the perceiver and excessive richness on the side of the appearing phenomena” (Bernet 2012, 565). In my opinion, this second scenario calls for a critical deconstruction of the Husserlian concept of givenness. The specificity of this phenomenological approach resides in the fact that it definitively gives up the certainty of progress, a certainty that for Husserl was nourished by the hope that, even if it is in the name of the ideal regulator, the plenitude of givenness is accessible. This new phenomenological movement moves toward a description of a hyper-phenomenon or counter-phenomenon which exceeds the field of appearance. As Merleau-Ponty writes, “that to see is always to see more than one sees” (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 247). Merleau-Ponty characterizes the visible through its intrinsic invisibility, an invisibility which is not a negation but a synonym of visibility. Thus the seen always remains withdrawn from its manifestation and therefore its transcendence is constitutive of its phenomenality. The task of this post-Husserlian phenomenology consists in the conception of the structure of phenomenality with respect to its originality. It imposes a disjunction between originarity and the horizon of adequation and deals with all phenomena whose originarity excludes fulfillment and implies a constitutive dimension of non-presence. Being interested in this constitutive dimension of non-presence is thus, precisely, being concentrated on what exceeds and what is prior to intentionality: an originary subjectivity for Henry and an originary anonymity for Merleau-­ Ponty. The phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and that of Henry seem to be opposed just like the radical needs for transcendence and for immanence are opposed, leading to the destruction of the Husserlian matrix of transcendence within immanence. Nonetheless, they share the intimate proximity of the obverse and the reverse. It should be pointed out that the significant progress made by the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty (no subjective self-givenness would be possible without worldly hetero-givenness) and by the phenomenology of Henry (no worldly hetero-­givenness

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would be possible without subjective self-givenness) are distinguished not so much by the positing of new problems but rather by the reformulation of the question of the ground of intentionality that fueled the entire phenomenological tradition. It is striking that despite the different solutions they offer, these two approaches have the same critical orientation regarding phenomenology (they characterize intentionality in terms of its failure to ensure its own foundation), and they have the task of testing phenomenology in a confrontation with its various outsides by granting a central place to the non-intentional. For it is only by starting from such an enterprise of showing the limits of intentionality that the possibility of a true overcoming of the Husserlian perspective according to which the given is the measure of all things can be opened.

3  T  he Problem of Givenness as the Problem of the Phenomenality of the Phenomena In Henry’s and Merleau-Ponty’s views, the notion of hyper-phenomenon or counter-­ phenomenon not only expresses an attitude of rejection of the noetic orientation of intentionality which developes a theory of intentionality on the basis of the concept of lived experience, but a rupture in phenomenological practice and also a radical change in its concept of experience and phenomenon in terms of self-givenness. It is thus a matter of going back to a pre-originary stage of experience, paralyzed by intuition and objectivity. In this regard, experience does not refer primarily to itself, it does not affirm itself as a self-identical beginning of thinking. These thinkers find a moment in experience when experience refers to something which it is not. It is related to an experience of an essential non-actuality or invisibility (the revelation of the life or flesh of the world) in which an object cannot be experienced in a direct intentional relationship. According to Henry, the problem of givenness or the problem of the phenomenality of the phenomena is the ultimate problem of phenomenology. In Henry’s view, no worldly hetero-givenness would be possible without subjective self-­ givenness. In other words, “[s]elf-manifestation is the essence of manifestation” (Henry 1963, 173). Nevertheless, this subjectivity no longer contains anything of the conscious Urregion’s absoluteness, nor of the constitutive powers of the transcendental ego. Henry shows us a subjectivity that is not a constitutive power, an originary that is no longer supported by a base. It manifests itself without ever leaving itself, without producing or presupposing any kind of fracture or alterity. The original self-manifestation of subjectivity excludes intentional distance and exteriority. It is an immediate, non-objectifying and passive circumstance. On that basis, the ek-static appearance of the World, the appearance of transcendance is opposed to auto-appearance of self immanence, which he calls life. He thinks that immanence is the original foundation of transcendence: “immanence is the essence of transcendence because it reveals it; more precisely, because it reveals it in such a

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way as to render it possible in its essence” (Henry 1963, 312). In his view, immanence has two fundamentally connected characteristics: its absence of distance from self and, thus, its inability to show itself in any sort of ‘outside’. Contrary to transcendance which has a relative phenomenality, immanence is defined by Henry as an autonomous and irrelative form of manifestation: one that does not depend on another form of manifestation to be manifested; one that is identical with its own manifestation (Henry 1963, 289–290). He notes that: “Life is not affected first by something else, by objects or by the horizon of a world. It is affected by itself. The content of its affection is itself, and it is only in this way that it can be ‘living’. To live is to experience oneself and nothing else. The phenomenality of this pure experience of oneself is an original affectivity, a pure ‘pathos’ that no distance separates from oneself” (Henry 2015, 120). This is indeed what Henry has in mind when he qualifies his phenomenology as material phenomenology, in other words, it owes nothing to form or to essence. Henry does not place himself beyond intentionality but arrives at its limits in and through phenomenology. He displays the limits of Husserlian intentionality, incapable of revealing the hyper-phenomenon of life as pure presence. From this viewpoint, Henry clearly pushes phenomenology and its central theme, intentionality, to their limits. As François-David Sebbah noticed, Henry has exceeded intentionality in the direction of a Self older than the knowledge of intentionality (Sebbah 2012, 6). Similarly, the Husserlian idea of intentionality is absent from Merleau-Ponty’s vocabulary, and within his frame of thought, intentionality can no longer be described only as a derivative phenomenon. In other words, intentionality is revealed to itself in the dissolution of what it thought it was. The aim of this a-subjective phenomenology is to obtain the autonomy of the phenomenal field by freeing the transcendence of the world from every form of objectivity and freeing the existence of the subject from every form of immanence. It is on this sole condition that the autonomy of the phenomenal field can be guaranteed. If the Husserlian language of transcendence were to be translated into ontological language, it would be possible to speak, with Merleau-Ponty, of an “intentionality within being” (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 244) which is the ante-predicative relation between the world and our life. Thus the incarnation of sense in the sensible supposes the incarnation of the subject who apprehends this sense. The dimension of the subject’s belonging to the world is immediately considered in terms of corporeality. As he writes: “the flesh of the world is of the Being-seen, i.e. is a Being that is eminently percipi, and it is by it that we can understand the percipere” (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 250). The phenomenon— that is, the flesh—is pregnant with all possible perceptions, hence, the being-seen makes it possible to understand the perceiving, the percipere. We can no longer tie the meaning of being back to a consciousness; on the contrary, the meaning of the being of consciousness depends on the meaning of being of phenomenality. Transcendence is no longer a transcendence of a transcendant de jure accessible through knowledge. Transcendence is assumed as such; absolute invisibility is a “pure transcendence without an ontic mask” (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 229): that is, as nothing of the present (and consequently as no part of a presence to self, of consciousness). From now on, it is the irreducible excess of the world over the moments

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which composes it. It is clear that, qua phenomenal being, the world cannot exist like a thing, fully positive and self-identical. More precisely, if it is true that the whole is nothing more than its parts without being the sum of them, we must acknowledge that nothingness has a certain reality. If that which is nothing more than its parts has an efficacy, we can no longer contrast nothingness to being, and we must admit that the phenomenal totality is a singular form of nothingness, a negativity that is not absolutely opposed to positivity. For if the world is nothing more than the parts, that is to say, a totality immanent in the parts, it follows that it is not different from things, because it is not another thing. What we call world is this difference without distance or duality, transcendence in Merleau-Ponty’s language. The totality reveals a transcendence that is not the transcendence of a transcendent, or a reducible distance, and conversely the transcendence of the world is understood as an inexhaustible whole. The ultimate determination of the phenomenon of the world implies not to be, but to appear as anti-phenomenon or dephenomenalisation instead of an over-phenomenon. This fact is described by Merleau-Ponty as specifically ontological: “[T]he transcendence of the thing compels us to say that it is plenitude only by being inexhaustible, that is, by not being all actual under the look—but it promises this total actuality since it is there…” (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 191). Even if the relation is intentional, it signifies that the total actuality exists only as a promise, the zero degree of visibility, opening of a dimension of visible. It is therefore a promise without a promiser, a totality in a non-positive sense. This is not a promise made with an intention on the promiser’s part to convince a hearer, or to give up going back to the things themselves. On the contrary, this is a call to give to the things what essentially belongs to them. “Givenness as promise is not limited to the determination of presence in the interdependent figures of intuition and objectivity” (Şan 2012, 302). The invisible is not beyond the visible, nothing other than the visible. Henry’s hyper-phenomenon of life and Merleau-Ponty’s counter-phenomenon of world escape the distinction between presence and absence in their Husserlian sense. It is not a statement of intention because it is not ordered by the telos of adequation or fulfillment. Unlike Husserl who presupposes a possible fulfillment, Henry and Merleau-Ponty integrate a new dimensions into givenness (space of ‘Ur-’ or over-presence for Henry and an irreducible absence for Merleau-Ponty). According to Henry, the horizontal givenness, the object-manifestation is possible only on the basis of a self-revealing life. It is only because we are already given to ourselves that we can be affected by the world. Life is affectivity and it is an event which is strictly non-horizontal and non-ekstatic. Affectivity reveals the absolute in its totality because it is nothing other than its perfect adherence to self, nothing other than its coincidence with self, because it is the autoaffection of Being in the absolute unity of its radical immanence. In contrast, Merleau-Ponty argues that, as an inexhaustible totality, the world cannot be present in itself (otherwise, it would no longer be a totality, but a worldy thing among others): it is, to be precise, present as absent. That which manifests itself, that which comes to light in every concrete perception, at the same time withdraws from its presence: it presents itself by remaining absent.

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Nevertheless, in both cases, the experience of the description of the hyper-­ phenomenon or counter-phenomenon highlights the disjunction between givenness in person and the possibility of fulfillment. Thus, starting from the horizon of givenness itself, we should give up the economic horizon of exchange in order to interpret the zero degree of visibility. The interest of such a description lies in our getting something which can still be described although it does not amount to either an object or a being. We cannot explain, and we have no access to, any hyper-­ phenomenon or any counter-phenomenon so long as we keep it within the horizon of fulfillment. This insistence on excess offers a new paradigm for phenomenology, and a revised understanding of phenomenality. In the following paragraph, I will show how phenomenology moves from a description of hyper-phenomenon or counter-phenomenon toward a new paradigm of phenomenon as event. Event marks a primordial point of invisibility that allows for the visible to show itself as such.

4  The New Paradigm of Phenomenon as Event Phenomenology is governed by rules that are completely different from those that are applied to the object or to being because the world of phenomena, the world of any phenomenally lawful order, is independent from the world of realities and the world of actuality. This rupture with the horizon of the object and being requires a new perspective for understanding the phenomenality of the phenomenon. Thus we need a change of paradigm for understanding the unity of phenomenality. The leading idea of this kind of phenomenology is that we cannot determine phenomena according to prior conditions but rather we can determine conditions according to phenomena. It is striking to observe how Marion differs from Henry and Merleau-Ponty by relating the discoveries of this pathos of thought to the phenomenon as such and not just to certain special hyper-phenomenon or counter-phenomenon. If for Henry and Merleau-Ponty, the description of a hyper-phenomenon or counter-phenomenon is a state of exception in Husserlian phenomenology, Marion confers a philosophical significance and legitimacy to this state of exception and universalises it. The strength of Marion’s thinking is based on his description of saturated phenomena as part of his project to extend phenomenality “as far as possible”—an ambition that he justifies by an injunction: “[I]n phenomenology, even the least possibility obliges” (Marion 2002, 199). This widening is not an excessive use of the method of phenomenology. In opposition to both poor and common phenomena (phenomena whose weakness in intuition is compensated by the strength of the concept to fill it out), Marion describes phenomena that are rich in intuition (phenomena without concepts, the intuition of which surpasses intention). He calls these phenomena “saturated phenomena,” where the “intuition sets forth a surplus that the concept cannot organize, therefore that the intention cannot foresee” (Marion 2002, 225). In this sense, he shares an affinity with Henry. As Marion writes: “one must, without question, attribute the elaboration of a phenomenology appropriate to the

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paradox (saturated phenomenon) inasmuch as absolute to the remarkably steadfast thought of Michel Henry” (Marion 2002, 373 note 86 of Book IV). Following Henry’s three principles, (1) “so much appearance, so much being,” (2) “the principle of principles” of Ideas I, (3) “to the things themselves!” (Henry 2003, 81), Marion states a new and final principle for phenomenology: “autant de réduction, autant de donation”, so much reduction, so much givenness (Marion 1998, 203). This principle equates reduction to givenness or pure given in order to give primacy to the phenomenon itself. Any reduction to the pure given aims to break any other condition imposed on the self-showing of the phenomenon and thereby grants to the phenomenon the possibility of appearing without preceding or managing it. The phenomenon “shows itself first insofar as it is given, before possibly being qualified as a being or as an object” (Marion 2002, 161). Like Henry, Marion searches for the excess of plenitude in givenness. But the manner in which he searches it, and his goal in doing so is different. Contrary to Henry, in Marion’s phenomenology, the excess of the presence of the saturated phenomenon reverses but does not cancel intentionality. In order to invert Husserlian priority and relieve consciousness of its absolute character, Marion’s appraoch reveals the excess of plenitude in givenness as primary within the intentional correlation. He begins with identifying the intentional correlate of a phenomenon as and with a given which does not immediately find itself on the path toward the object or being and which does not borrow its phenomenality from them. According to him, Husserl has inherited a dualistic view of the phenomenon that posits a fundamental ambiguity in the correlation between the appearing and what appears, composed in several pairs: intention/intuition, signification/fulfillment, noesis/noema. As a consequence, an ideal of perfect adequation between these two terms unquestionably imposes itself on phenomenality. In order to counter this perspective in phenomenology, he discovers a unique moment in the intentional correlation between the experienced object and its subjective modes of givenness: the central difference between subjective constitution of a thing and the thing itself disappear in the face of givenness because the appearance of a thing gives the thing itself to consciousness. In other words, the correlation developed by Marion is not intended to relate to a specific type of givenness and a consciousness that receives it. He tilts the correlation and focuses on the source of the autonomy of the phenomenal, designated by the term givenness which is the primordial ground of all and any horizon of meaning, being, or visibility. There is a correlation between givenness and apparition in such a way that everything that appears must first be given. In this sense the Husserlian universal a priori correlation became an ultimate and inconditioned correlation lying within phenomenality which must be explained on the basis of its own possibility. On the ground of givenness, Marion claims that “appearances no longer mask what appears” because givenness offers the appearing and that which appears in the same moment: “this is to say that the two sides of the phenomenon arise at one and the same time because the two givennesses are always but one. And this is indeed the givenness: that of transcendence in immanence. So long as the two givennesses remain scattered, indeed separate, givenness does not yet intervene with all its profundity” (Marion 2002, 25). In other words, in the correlation between appearing

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and that which appears, appearing is not considered as a datum for the conscious subject but as “the givenness of what appears.” In this sense, givenness precedes both intuition and intention because the sense they make is only for and through an appearance. Since givenness precedes everything, for Marion intuition is a mode of givenness and it does not contradict the autonomy of signification established by Husserl. Marion’s radical reading of Husserl harmonizes the primacy of intuition with the autonomy of signification by way of the more originary notion of givenness. In this regard, the subject, l’adonné, does not expect the given from the outset but discovers itself as given at the very same moment as it discovers the given itself. Thus, to say that in the saturated phenomenon, more is given than it is aimed, it is certainly not to subtract such a phenomenon from the aim and therefore from the order of meaning. It is rather to affirm its belonging to an irreducible plurality of meanings, to place it under the horizon of an open multiplicity of aims. The experience of saturation is a saturation of meaning. Therefore, the dimension of meaning is not the exclusive monopoly of a transcendental subjectivity in Husserlian sense. The ego can no longer maintain its transcendental pretension of origin, but must be limited to receive what is given, without setting the conditions of possibility of experience. In this way, attributing primacy to givenness means accepting phenomena as given rather than in any way constituted, and excluding any suggestion of phenomena appearing under conditions imposed on them by a subject. Thus Marion asserts that givenness must free itself from the justification and limit of the horizon of phenomenality and from any attempt on the part of the I at positing itself as subject and condition of experience in the constitution of the phenomenon. As Marion writes: “[I]n order that any phenomenon might be inscribed within a horizon (and to find its condition of possibility there), it is necessary that that horizon be delimited (it is its definition) and therefore that the phenomenon remain finite. In order for a phenomenon to be reduced to an obviously finite I who constitutes it, the phenomenon must be reduced to the status of finite objectivity. In both cases, the finitude of the horizon and of the I is indicated by the finitude of the intuition itself” (Marion 2008, 31). Marion’s work goes a step further and claims that unconditioned and irreducible phenomena could become possible only if a nonfinite intuition ensured their givenness because givenness is the ultimate principle of phenomenology. In the case of a saturated phenomenon, its excess of intuition prevents it from being limited by a subject or a horizon. Such a phenomenon, which is “unconditioned (by its horizon) and irreducible (to an I),” is given simply as itself, and is therefore “a phenomenon par excellence” (Marion 2002, 189). It is the saturated phenomenon which saturates intention; that is to say, the intended concepts are saturated by intuition; it gives much to intention, so the concept cannot bear this excessing of limits which reduce and condition intuition. Marion seeks to push Kant’s fundamental assertion in the Critique of Pure Reason that “thought without concepts are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind,” demonstrating that knowledge obtained through the union of intuition and concepts does not suffice as the true measure of the phenomenality of all possible phenomena. Super-presence of saturated phenomenon (idol, icon, flesh and event) is not comparable to my sense

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of it: it can no ­longer be measured; excess and plenitude coincide in it. In one of the more emphatic statements from Being Given, Marion declares: “my entire project, by contrast [to metaphysics], aims to think the common-law phenomenon, and through it the poor phenomenon, on the basis of the paradigm of the saturated phenomenon, of which the former two offer only weakened variants, and from which they derive by progressive diminishment. For the saturated phenomenon does not give itself apart from the norm, by way of exception to the definition of phenomenality; to the contrary, its own most property is to render thinkable the measure of manifestation in terms of givenness and to recover it in its common-law variety, indeed in the poor phenomenon” (Marion 2002, 227). With Marion’s meditation on givenness, the pure phenomenality of phenomena, “what metaphysics rules out as exception (the saturated phenomenon), phenomenology here takes for its norm” (Marion 2002, 227). An event is a one type of saturated phenomenon, the phenomenon saturated according to quantity. The event saturates the category of quantity insofar as it gives itself. By showing itself (without recourse to any measure of visibility) as much as it gives itself (without recourse to any horizon of meaning or being) the event ensures for itself a quantity, the quantity of givenness as measure of its own phenomenality. The event saturates the category of quantity by giving too much, more than could ever be measured, its parts infinitely exceeding their sum by continually being given. By imposing itself or giving itself absolutely—landing by surprise— the event cannot be anticipated, thus cannot be aimed at, measured, nor intended. As such it is ‘unforeseeable’ according to quantity. As Marion writes: “the saturated phenomenon is attested first in the figure of the historical phenomenon, or the event carried to its apex. It saturates the category of quantity” (Marion 2002, 228). The phenomenon of the historical events gives too much information, it can never be quantified, never be recreated. The event allows the phenomenon to appear without being limited to a finite horizon or reduced to concepts that are imposed by a subject. However, it might be justly objected that it is an exceptional phenomenon, and it is limited to a region lying at the margins of phenomenality. Marion’s discussion of events is not limited to their saturation. He argues that the event escapes metaphysics, inasmuch as it is not subjected to any principle of sufficient reason. This is because we cannot recognize the event, or more precisely the original eventfulness of the phenomenon, for as long as we think according to metaphysics, since metaphysics always speaks in the name of the cause. In the case of the event, comprehension always arrives late, but above all comprehension itself constitutes this delay, producing it and provoking it. The event cannot be foreseen or made intelligible. Event-ness characterizes phenomena more profoundly than object-ness. It is precisely because it accomplishes its actuality more perfectly than the object, with more autonomy, clarity, and better results, and because it proves itself to be infinitely more actual than the object. Marion argues that, “[I]n fact, the event appears only by already disappearing, since it becomes visible only with, and thus after, its bursting forth: we only discover the event as having always-already happened, ex eventu, when it is already too late to catch sight of its bursting forth. Consequently, possibility, which does not precede the event in our intentionality

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toward it, comes as a result of the event’s effect on us: even when it is still incomprehensible (although known, or rather precisely because clearly and distincly known and seen), the event decides sovereignly upon the possibles that will henceforth be imposed on us. The impossible and the unforeseeable for us open our only and unforeseen possibles: their facticity possibizes us” (Marion 2015, 186). An event is that which precedes any determination of its cause. It surges forth without expectation, radically changes the given order of things, then disappears, leaving its mark without return. An event exceeds the laws of cause and effect. Effects produce as much as — often more than— the cause. Effects can never be fully absorbed by the cause. The effect is preeminent to the cause. It is the effect that grants status to the cause as an object of inquiry: without effect, no reason to go looking for the cause. The effect imposes itself, arrives unpredictably on its own terms, and in so doing, permits identification of the cause as an after effect. Consequently, transcending any measure and all understanding, the event exhibits three general characteristics. First, the event is unrepeatable. According to Marion, “[I]f it comes from itself and without precedent, the event of unknown cause remains a found event, absolutely unique” (Marion 2002, 170). An event comes upon us only once, without sufficient antecedents and without recurrence. To be sure, there are circumstances that may have led up to the event. But the event stands out from whatever came before it; hence its second characteristic, excessiveness. The event stands out, posits itself at a distance from all possible causes—“ex-sists,” in the Heideggerian sense—gives itself in excess of all possible attributes. Giving too much ever to conceive the whole in terms of the sum of its parts, the event is excessive, and as such, unrepeatable. The final characteristic of the event is its possibility. The event is impossible from a metaphysical point of view because its possibility is not exercised in relation to any essence (the event exsists outside of all that precedes it), nor can it be actualized according to a concept which allows us to foresee it. However, the metaphysical impossibility of the event points paradoxically to the absolute possibility of it as given as a saturated phenomenon. Giving itself without cause, concept, or essence other than itself, the event is possible in as much as it shows itself by imposing itself on a gaze which receives it. As a result, the event achieves the destruction of the a priori conditions or principles and the evenmentality of the phenomenon brings together the spontaneous formation of meaning, the nonobjective excess (ungegenständlicher Überschuss) at the heart of the phenomenon, and the paradoxal character of given.

References Bernet, Rudolf. 2012. Phenomenological and Aesthetic Epoché: Painting the Invisible Things themselves. In The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Phenomenology, ed. Dan Zahavi. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gondek, Hans-Dieter, and László Tengelyi. 2011. Neue Phänomenologie in Frankreich. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Henry, Michel. 1963. L’essence de la manifestation. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

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———. 2003. Phénoménologie de la vie, vol. I. De la phénoménologie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. ———. 2015. Material Phenomenology. In The Quiet Powers of the Possible Interviews in Contemporary French Phenomenology, ed. Tarek R. Dika and W. Chris Hackett. New York: Fordham University Press. Husserl, Edmund. 1962. (Ideas I) Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Translated by W. R. Boyce Gibson. New York: Collier. Marion, Jean-Luc. 1998. Reduction and Givenness. Translated by Thomas A. Carlson. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. 2002. Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness. Translated by Jeffrey L. Kosky. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. 2008. The Visible and the Revelead. Translated by Christina M. Gschwandtner. New York: Fordham University Press. ———. 2015. Negative Certainties. Translated by Stephen E. Lewis. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1968. The Visible and the Invisible. Translated by Alphonso Lingis: Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Şan, Emre. 2012. Transcendance comme problème phénoménologique: Lecture de Merleau-Ponty et Patočka. Prefaced by Renaud Barbaras. Paris: Mimesis. Sebbah, François-David. 2012 Testing the Limit: Derrida, Henry, Levinas, and the Phenomenological Tradition. Translated by Stephen Barker. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Politicising the Epokhé: Bernard Stiegler and the Politics of Epochal Suspension Ben Turner

Abstract  For Husserl, the phenomenological epoché is primarily methodological, allowing access to the structures of transcendental consciousness by way of suspending worldly influence. This chapter will demonstrate how this methodological principle is rethought as political in the work of Bernard Stiegler. For Stiegler the epokhé is both the suspension of existing social systems, and a moment of critical redoubling, where the source of disruption is integrated into a new ‘epoch’. In particular it will be shown how Stiegler develops this double understanding of the epokhé through his reading of retentionality as found in the lectures On the Consciousness of Internal Time to develop an understanding of the epochal framing of temporality by technics. By drawing connections between this version of retentionality and the pharmacological character of technics, as simultaneously poisonous and curative, the political stakes of the epokhé lie in the need to fight the poisonous aspects of epochal suspension. Keywords  Bernard Stiegler · Edmund Husserl · Epokhé · Retentions · Technics · Pharmakon

1  Introduction According to Bernard Stiegler we live in ‘the epoch of the absence of epoch’, an epoch characterised by the disruption of the heritage and tradition that forms epochality (Stiegler 2016, 18). For Stiegler, the agent of this disruption is a poisonous political economy which short-circuits social systems with the aim of replacing them with products and services, subject to the need to calculate profit (Stiegler 2010a). Systems of care, which form the ideas that characterise an epoch, are replaced with mere consumer services. The political response to these conditions,

B. Turner (*) School of Politics and International Relations, Rutherford College, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Apostolescu (ed.), The Subject(s) of Phenomenology, Contributions to Phenomenology 108, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29357-4_19

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for Stiegler, requires the re-founding of a political economy and of social systems capable of establishing the conditions of a new ‘epoch’. To understand Stiegler’s apocalyptic proclamation we must view ‘epochality’ in a double sense, entailing a politicisation of what Edmund Husserl introduced into phenomenology as a methodological principle (Husserl 2002, 51–59). Stiegler rethinks the epokhé as part of what he calls an ‘epokhal redoubling’ (Stiegler 2013b, 34–36). On the one hand, this encompasses the suspension of reference to any natural attitude found within Husserl’s original formulation. On the other, it requires us to draw conclusions that are only implicit within Husserl’s strictly methodological consideration of the epokhé. Not only must we re-enter into these worldly conditions, but  we must also engage in their re-constitution and re-invention. Hence, Stiegler develops the notion of suspension to include both the Husserlian epokhé and the reconstitution of an epoch understood as the ideas, institutions and social norms that form a particular period of time. The political challenge of the epoch without epoch, therefore, is to follow suspension with a judgement on what social systems should be implemented in the face of their possible liquidation. To understand how Stiegler politicises the epokhé, we must first come to terms with how his philosophy of technics draws on Husserl to condition his thinking of epochality. Stiegler re-reads Husserl’s understanding of retention from a Heideggerian perspective in order to conceive of technics as the condition of both senses of the epoch. Technical systems support social systems, as epochs, but can also disrupt these established ways of life, suspending them in an epokhé. Stiegler’s relationship to Husserl is thus twofold. It is characterised, first, by a philosophical engagement with the phenomenological tradition–particularly the work of Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Jacques Derrida–in order to situate the conditions of experience within technical objects. However, this philosophical mediation on the nature of the relationship between technics and experience is subordinate to a broader political project. Thus, the second aspect of Stiegler’s relation to Husserl is the development of political consequences from his work regarding the capacity for the manipulation of experience that arises from its external, technical foundations. Our aim will not be to explore the basis of this argument by reconstructing the former, philosophical aspects of Stiegler’s reading of Husserl alone.1 Rather, it will be to show that it is the politicisation of the epokhé that plays a key role in Stiegler’s political thought, and that this involves drawing conclusions that are latent within Husserl’s own writing. Our methodological approach, then, will not be phenomenological, but instead reconstructive. We will trace how Stiegler draws political conclusions that are latent but not fully present in Husserl’s work. If, according to Stiegler, ‘[t]he consequences of a thought, if it is genuine thought, which is to say a conceptual invention, always extend beyond the person who thought it’, then our approach will be to trace how he draws these political conclusions from Husserl’s work in this way (Stiegler 2015b, 5). In particular, we will see how this contributes to the pharmacological character of technical objects. As pharmaka they are both  These have been well established by a number of authors (Crogan 2012; Bradley 2011, 132–33; Hansen 2012; James 2010, 210–17; Lechte 2007, 60–70; Ross 2013, 250–52). 1

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poisonous and curative, the condition of social systems but also the agents of their destruction. In Stiegler’s words: ‘the pharmakon is at once what enables care to be taken and that of which care must be taken…its power is curative to the immeasurable extent that it is also destructive’ (Stiegler 2013b), 4). What this pharmacological condition means for the epokhé is that suspension disrupts social systems. But, the exposure to otherness in the suspension of established patterns of behaviour can lead to the redoubling of the epoch; re-establishing social systems on the basis of the encounter with otherness. Stiegler’s politicisation of Husserl founds a politics that is charged with producing social systems that can incorporate the encounter with the otherness that engenders the suspension, the epokhé, of existing forms of life. Crucially, it is by developing themes that Husserl left untapped that Stiegler generates such an understanding of epochality.

2  From Heidegger to the Theory of Retentions The Heideggerian perspective that Stiegler adopts to reconsider Husserl is far from orthodox, taking place through a fundamental reconsideration of the basis of temporality and facticity within the existential analytic. Stiegler’s reading can be understood by way of his modification of the central point of the Heidegger of Being and Time (Stiegler 1998, 234). The basis of Dasein is its facticity, its existence is conditioned by its outside, and as such it only exists outside itself. It experiences temporality through tradition and a system of factical supports of its being-in-the-world (Heidegger 1962, 174). For Stiegler this facticity is based upon an originary prostheticity; the factical basis of Dasein is found in systems of technical objects which act as external forms of memory through which time is experienced. There is no authentic time outside of the inauthentic time of the factical; the indeterminacy of Dasein’s running ahead of itself is conditioned by its situating of itself within the determinate.2 Stiegler re-interprets the exposition of facticity in Being and Time through Heidegger’s 1924 lecture published as The Concept of Time, in which the temporality of Dasein is understood in reference to clock-time. In this lecture Heidegger begins the existential analytic of the who by reference to the fixing of the now by the what of the clock (Heidegger 1992, 2E–5E). While Heidegger eventually separates the authentic temporality of the who (Dasein) and the inauthentic temporality of the what (Heidegger 1992, 21E), Stiegler takes from this that the existential analytic begins from a consideration of the who in reference to the what. He attempts to fix what he sees as Heidegger’s retreat from the ramification that Dasein ‘can only test its improbability pro-grammatically’ (Stiegler 1998, 234). The indeterminacy of temporality is only possible on the condition of determined programs of time,  This exposition of Stiegler’s reading of Heidegger is, due to limitations of space, brief. For more extensive and critical engagements, see the work of Richard Beardsworth (1995) and Tracy Colony (2010). 2

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e­ stablished through technical objects. Through a re-orienting of the basis of the existential analytic, it is not so much the originary temporality of being-in-theworld that is forgotten by Dasein (Heidegger 1962, secs. 12–18), but rather the ineliminable technical basis of authenticity (Stiegler 2016, 32). It is this that conditions the existence of the Human for Stiegler: it has no basis outside of these technical supports of time which make possible the periodisation of Being (Stiegler 2014b, 84). In this reading, Heidegger’s critique of Husserl, that the reduction led to a subject isolated from its world, is turned back against him (Heidegger 1988, 21). Heidegger does not think that the authentic temporality of Dasein is based in technicity, and thus does not think the conditions of being-in-the-world. Stiegler turns to Husserl’s exposition of retentionality, as both a form of memory and the basis of the experience of time, to expand on this position. This allows him to do two things. First, to make technics the condition of memory, marking the impossibility of any full presence of the phenomenological subject to itself. Second, to make technics the basis of any epochality as a particular understanding of time, and therefore the basis of any social system, as mnemotechnics (Stiegler 2009c, 43). The condition of Stiegler’s thought on this matter is what Paul Ricoeur referred to as ‘the two great discoveries of the Husserlian phenomenology of time…the phenomenon of retention and its symmetrical counterpart, protention, and the distinction between retention (or primary remembrance) and recollection (or secondary remembrance)’ (Ricoeur 1990, 25–26). As such, to understand Stiegler’s reading we will focus on Husserl’s main exposition of this theme as found in his lectures On The Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time, rather than in his work at large.3 In the first of these discoveries, Husserl argues that primary retention refers to the shading into the past of primal impressions. Temporal experience is not a set of connected instants, but rather a large now in which instants become retentions attached to the intuition in the manner of a comet tail. The experience of an intuition is retained in immediate memory: the primal impression, passes over into retention…[e]very actual present now of consciousness…is subject to the law of modification. It changes into retention of retention, and does so continuously. Accordingly, a fixed continuum of retention arises in such a way that each later point is retention for every earlier point. (Husserl 1991, 31)

Primal impressions that have just passed take on the character of primary retentions, receding into a field of temporal perception. This shading of experienced instants constitutes the perception of time as a continuum of receding impressions, retained in the horizon of perception rather than being reproduced by consciousness.4 Correlative to retentions are protentions. Primal impressions are received only on the condition of an already existing continuum of instants: ‘every process that con For example, he anticipates this discussion of retentionality in the second volume of Logical Investigations (Husserl 2001, 86). 4  Here Husserl is reacting against Brentano, who claimed that the experience of temporality arises from the reproduction of past instants in consciousness, rather than a gradual shading into the past (Husserl 1991, 13–20). 3

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stitutes its object originally is animated by protentions that emptily constitute what is coming as coming, that catch it and bring it towards fulfillment’ (Husserl 1991, 54). Any intuition is perceived within an anticipation arising from a series of already perceived retentions. As such, the large now is constituted on the basis of the composition of the just-past (primary retention), now (primal impression), and the future (protention) that makes up the experience of temporality. Husserl’s second discovery is the secondary retention, referring to the reproduction of temporal duration within perception: ‘the phantasied now represents a now but does not give a now itself’ (Husserl 1991, 43). While primary retentions refer to the fading into memory of just past primal impressions, secondary retentions refer to the reproduction of these instants within consciousness. A secondary retention is a reproduction of a particular now-point in the flow of consciousness, with its antecedent primary retentions and protentions adjoined to it. This forms the flow of time, signifying that the unity of the subjects experience of temporality is constituted rather than given (Husserl 1991, 54). The past, as opposed to the just perceived, is reproduced. A secondary retention is the memoration and reproduction of the temporal field that surrounds an intuition, made up of primary retentions and protentions. It is the memory, rather than perception, of an intuition which retains its identity as it sinks into the past (Husserl 1991, 64–65).

3  Beyond Derrida’s Reading of Retentionality Stiegler’s intention in his reading of Husserl on these points is to establish that this constitution of the temporal flux: begins with a failure that leads to the draft of an effectively finite conception of retention, introducing passivity into a temporal synthesis, which also becomes transcendental history. Such a constitution is thus always already the already as such: it can only be a (re)constitution (Stiegler 2009b, 191).

There is a finitude at the basis of the experience of temporality; it cannot be self-­ sufficient and requires something upon which its synthesis is based. Stiegler’s key expansion of the work of Husserl, then, is that the synthesis of temporality takes place with reference to a history of technical objects that determine the contents of consciousness and the experience of time; the transcendental conditions of the subject are determined by an empirical history of memory supports. Stiegler’s historicisation and de-transcendentalisation of the theory of retentionality relies heavily upon Derrida’s reading of Husserl. This will not be reproduced in full, but two pertinent points need to be summarised.5 First, Derrida argues that the primacy of the impression and its shading into the past as primary retention is indistinguishable from secondary retention, as the large  I have published a more extensive engagement with Stiegler’s relationship to Derrida elsewhere (Turner 2016). For other important work on their relation, see Ben Roberts (2005) and Daniel Ross (2013). 5

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now of temporal experience is a re-constitution of an object which intrudes upon consciousness. Referring to the basis of Husserl’s analysis of the hearing of tone and melody, Derrida claims that ‘must it not “announce” a real object,’ as ‘the unreality of the “quasi” sound in retention constitutive of the phenomenological temporality...is in its origin founded on the reality of the real sound’ (Derrida 2003, 61–62). As phenomenology studies the intuition rather than the object in itself, primal impressions, primary retentions, and secondary retentions are all forms of re-­ constitution of the intuition in consciousness because objects are not perceived directly. Hence, ‘the temporality of immanent lived experience must be the absolute beginning of the appearance of time, but it appears to itself precisely as absolute beginning thanks to a ‘retention’…[t]he act of exclusion cannot be pure; it is originally retentional’ (Derrida 2003, 64). This leads Derrida to reject in principle the distinction between primary and secondary retentions for they are both forms of reproduction. The second, related point is that this requires something which constitutes the experience of the flow of time. If the difference between primary and secondary retention is merely ‘a difference between two modifications of nonperception’ (Derrida 1973), 65), then there must be something which is unaffected by these originary modifications of perception. This is, on the one hand, the purity of the impression: ‘every now, in sinking back into the past, maintains its strict identity’ (Husserl 1991, 64). On the other, it is the positing of an a-temporal flux which acts as the constituting rather than constituted basis of the experience of time, and as such cannot be experienced within temporality: ‘for all of this we lack names’ (Husserl 1991, 79). These are the sources of the metaphysics of presence in Husserl, according to Derrida, to be found in the identity of the instant and the absolute subjectivity which constitutes time. Derrida’s aim is to draw attention to an indistinction between primary and secondary retentions and Husserl’s reliance on the purity of both the impression and the constituting flux. Stiegler takes these points on, but modifies them in crucial manners. First, he agrees with Derrida that primary and secondary retentions are both forms of reproduction. He achieves this through an analysis of the place of tone within a melody. While for Husserl primal impressions take on a character of objective purity, for Stiegler: [an] emergent tone…would already be a rereading of all (just-having-been) tones in primary memory, and thus a modification of all past tones–but in such a way that this modification in return retro-acts on the passage of tones actually heard as originary impressions. The originary impression would only have been composed as ‘originary’, then, as a loop, as the après-coup of an already-composed, impressional, primarily-retained already-there, itself in perpetual modification. (Stiegler 2009b, 203)

Primary retention is not so much the shading into the past of primal, pure impressions, but rather the originary modifications of these impressions on the basis of just-past impressions. No impression is pure, but reproduced on the condition of its insertion within a stream of primary retentions. Stiegler deviates from Derrida, however, by maintaining the Husserlian distinction between primary and secondary retention. Rather than opposing perception and

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imaginary reproduction, Stiegler sees them as two forms of reproduction which influence each other: the difference between primary and secondary retention is not a radical difference insofar as primary retention is unceasingly composed with secondary retention, that is to say, insofar as perception is always projected by, upon, and in imagination. (Stiegler 2009d, 105)

Primary retentions are the composition of the experience of the impression with past-impressions, whereas secondary retentions are the reproduced forms of these experiences which impact upon the formation of primary retentions. Primary and secondary retentions differ insofar as they compose together to receive primal impressions. The forming of a tail of primary retentions that follow primal impressions is composed under the influence of a bank of secondary retentions and their respective protentions. Primary and secondary retentions are distinguished to better understand how they compose to form experience. As primary retentions are always articulated within these compositions, there is no ‘pure’ instant that sinks back into memory but rather an originary selectivity that constitutes the experience of time. Memory is selection, and, as such, forgetting (Stiegler 2009b, 227). It is this originary finitude that is brought to bear on the second problem of presence in Husserl; the absolute subjectivity of the constituting flux. If forgetting and selectivity are the basis of the experience of time, then a constituting subject or a-temporal flux would break this selectivity. Instead, the commencement of temporal experience is predicated on a technical support of memory which supplements this forgetting. Stiegler refers to Husserlian image-­consciousness to think this. Tertiary retentions are the exteriorisation of lived experience, which when experienced again, become image-consciousness, something not lived by the subject yet reproduced by it (Stiegler 2001, 244). Image consciousness is the condition of the intersubjective sharing of meaning, for it allows the passing on of experience beyond the limits of perception, something which Derrida will go on to call writing, influenced by Jean Hyppolite’s ‘subjectless transcendental field’ (Derrida 1989, 88–89). For Stiegler, this field is a historical system of technical, tertiary retentions which form the basis for the composition of primary and secondary retentions as an exteriorised set of retentions and protentions (Stiegler 2009b, 222–23). The very possibility of lived experience is not a transcendental flux, but a technical system of sedimented tertiary retentions which compose with primary and secondary retentions to form the subject. The experience of temporality is conditioned by these archi-protentions, technically supported memories which compose with the memories of individuals (Stiegler 2013b, 62–63). As such, Stiegler takes on Derrida’s critique of Husserl by using it to develop two themes that are not drawn to their full conclusion in the lectures on the consciousness of internal time. These are, first, the composition of retentionality in a manner that prevents the purity of impressions. It is only on the basis of the anticipation formed by secondary retentions that primary retentions are formed. Second, that this very field of anticipation is not reliant on a transcendental flux, but rather a materialized set of memories or tertiary retentions arising from collective experience, internalised by individual subjects.

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4  T  echnics, Organology and Pharmacology Within the Epoché This collective ground of memory means that for Stiegler all who’s are conditioned by a system of what’s, this system being the sum of externalised retentions of individual who’s. The technical default at the basis of memory, that memory is forgetting and needs a support, means the experience of time is communal. Commenting on The Origin of Geometry, Stiegler argues that the sedimentation of the experience of individuals is the condition of the disciplinarity of geometry, providing a fund of experience which is transmitted beyond their individual deaths (Stiegler 2001), 246). These memories are in turn intuited by individuals through their own particular experiences (as a bank of primary and secondary retentions), singularising a group memory while contributing to it. Unity, of the I and the We, is always projected, expected through protentions but never reached, due to this constant process of differentiation in the experience of tertiary memory (Stiegler 2009a, 4–5). Drawing on the work of Gilbert Simondon, Stiegler calls this a process of trans-­ individuation: that the individual and the collective are constituted in a dynamic relation, a process that takes place upon a fund of technically supported memories (Simondon 2009; Stiegler 2006). This is the significance of epochality for the experience of time; new forms of tertiary retention open up new modalities of temporal experience, which inform primary and secondary retentions, and the trans-­ individuations which can occur. To return to our discussion of epochality, the first sense of the epoch is developed by Stiegler in this adoption of the Husserlian theory of temporal experience. The technical support of finitude makes a history of forms of consciousness possible: ‘memory in general always supposes some technological modalities of its inscription’ (Stiegler 2014b, 77). This default is the condition of law, understood not in purely juridical terms, but rather as the system of retentions that direct collective experience, individualised through differentiation in individual temporal experience (Stiegler 2009a, 35). Technics conditions epochality, making possible, for example, the literal revolution and the legal and historical practice specific to the Western philosophical tradition. Importantly, Stiegler’s understanding of law is of a unity that is always to come, projected into the future, precisely because of the default at the basis of temporal experience (Stiegler 2001, 258–60). Law does not confine individuals to a strict, determined set of conditions within a particular epoch, but instead opens this epoch up to transformation because of the inadequation at the heart of temporal experience. Here we reach Stiegler’s second understanding of epochality, which is closer to Husserl’s use of the epokhé. The epohké refers to the disruption and suspension of established systems of retentions and the social relations that they support. Stiegler describes the epokhé as ‘the suspension of the world, of the thesis of the world, that is, of the spontaneous belief in the existence of the world, which constitutes in Husserl’s language the natural attitude’ (Stiegler 2009a, 22). This is not a methodological premise, but rather the condition of history: ‘Epokhé…is first the very

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a­ ctuality of historical time’ (Stiegler 2014b, 84). It refers to the suspension of established behaviours by some form of disruption by technical innovation which intervenes within an established epoch. It stems from the encounter between an established technical system, and the disruption of this system: epokhé is always double and always supposes an epokhal techno-logical ground. Tekhnē suspends an epoch from tekhnē; tekhnē makes epokhé, and, in this suspension, there is an improbable response, a linkage, a making of time: it is epokhé that makes an epoch (Stiegler 2014b, 85).

There are three key points to be unpacked here. First, the existence of an established ‘techno-logical ground’ upon which all human existence is built, which forms epochs. Second the suspension of tekhnē by tekhnē, the disruption of these systems by new technical innovation. Third, the ‘improbable response’ or linkage that constitutes an epoch is improbable because the intuition and perception of instants is always within a particular arrangement of primary and secondary retentions, inadequate to themselves. Stiegler utilizes these three claims to argue that the very condition of epochality is a form of prior disruption, debunking any claim to purity or to origins. This duality of the sense of epochality, as systematicity and suspension, can be expanded upon with reference to two terms integral to Stiegler’s philosophy of technics. The first is that these epochs of technical organisation are understood through a general organology. This is that all human existence is structured by successive, epochal adjustments and disadjustments between biological, social and technical organs (Stiegler 2014c, 5). The memories that structure the experience of temporality are understood in conjunction with an understanding of the biological as a system of traces of memory. Symbolic (social) memory and genetic (biological) memories play out within specific epochs structured by technical systems. Literal tertiary retentions provide a good example of this principle. The invention of writing provides the basis for new forms of social organisation, making possible social systems grounded in particular exteriorisations of memory. It also makes possible an alteration of the circuits of the brain which learns to read (Stiegler 2014a, 193–94). Circuits of tertiary retention impact upon synaptogenesis, displacing any possibility of a purely cerebral or biological understanding of the human, in favor of one that can only be understood within the context of its technical supports (Stiegler 2013b, 67–70). As such, writing (as technique) displaces and suspends existing social systems, making space for new interpretations of the law of inheritance. This is precisely because memory, whether it be genetic or phenomenological, only ever unfolds within the constraints of a technical system (Stiegler 2001, 258–59). General organology is supplemented with what Stiegler refers to as pharmacology. Each technical object is considered as both a poison and a cure, with each technical system actualising these tendencies in distinct ways. The pharmakon refers to the simultaneous possibilities of the singularisation of collective funds of memory, or their homogenisation (Stiegler 2010a, 29–36). It makes possible long circuits of individuation, where an individual can singularise the collective funds of an epoch, while also providing the conditions for the short circuiting of this possi-

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bility, reducing individuals to the conditions of their individuation. Once again referring to the invention of writing, Stiegler cites Plato’s struggle against sophistry, where philosophical knowledge (anamnesis) is pitched against writing as a mere aid of memory (hypomnesis) (Stiegler 2012, 6–8, 2013b, 2–3).6 Where Stiegler differs, is that writing in this case is not so much a weak form of memory, but as a tertiary retention, a condition of memory. The pharmakon is the condition of knowledge, and of the experience of time (Stiegler 2015a, 29–33). Crucially, this distinction between poisonous and curative aspects of the pharmakon means that for the unity of an epoch to be upheld it must make possible the singularisation of its ideas rather than their homogenisation. Stiegler calls for a delicate balance between epochal synchrony and individuating diachrony (Stiegler 2009a, 41–42). As such, the unity of the experience of any individual is always fractured, reconstituted through the composition of primary, secondary and tertiary retentions. The unity of the collective is always projected through these singular interpretations of a collective fund, and therefore the homogenisation of individual retentions makes this projection impossible. This condition may seem to be paradoxical insofar as an epoch is only possible on the condition of its openness to transformation. Stiegler’s point is, however, that under conditions of homogenisation such novel responses to the suspension of the epokhé cannot be made. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze (1983, 105–8, 1994, 149–53), he calls the pharmacological tendency towards the inability to singularise a collective fund of retentions ‘stupidity.’ This is not error, but rather the inability to determine a problem and give it a form within a singular projection into the future (Stiegler 2015a, 45–46). In the absence of such singularity there is a powerlessness to respond to the suspension of the epokhé. Where technical objects, as the condition of history can both suspend, as epokhé, and integrate, as epoch, there is a second duality that Stiegler’s conception of the pharmakon adds to the Husserlian understanding of the epokhé. It can either suspend social systems, making space for novel inventions and new modes of existence, or induce stupidity, the inability to produce this re-integration and invention. Stupidity occludes the artificial and contingent character of human existence, naturalising and essentialising an organological situation.7

5  Conclusion: The Politics of Epochality It is the possibility of technical objects to both allow and bar this second moment of re-integration that politicises the epokhé. While the suspension of existing social systems is part of the motor of history, the political question is whether these  Stiegler leans heavily on Derrida’s reading of the Phaedrus in ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’ (Derrida 1981).  Stiegler understands this operation as central to ideology (Stiegler 2013a). I have explored this theme and provided a longer exploration of Stiegler’s relation to Deleuze and post-stucturalism elsewhere (Turner 2017). 6 7

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particular suspensions act only to induce stupidity, or whether they make possible the integration and invention of new forms of existence (Stiegler 2015a, 60–61). The epokhé must give rise to the institution of a new epoch, which will always be the projection of a unity of individuals who experience it in a particular manner. What Stiegler refers to as the contemporary epoch without epoch is an epoch which homogenises retentions through the spread of marketing and its naturalisation of behaviours. The experience of the impossibility of the unity of consciousness is eradicated by the manipulation of the collective bank of tertiary retentions through the hegemony of the culture industries (Stiegler 2010a, 58–60, b, 2011, 82–130, 2015b, 46–49).8 The attempt to calculate the experience of individuals, in the name of profit, reduces the projection of law to a naturalised condition of fact, occluding the possible singularisation of collective funds of memory.9 It is this poisonous pharmacological possibility that Stiegler argues we must fight, in order to open up a new future defined by the improbability, and undecidability of the ideas of a particular epoch. Thus, while Stiegler’s reading of Husserl is limited to certain texts and themes (Hansen 2012), this politics is deeply influenced by his development of Husserl’s accounts of phenomenological temporality and the epokhé. Crucially, Stiegler draws these aspects of Husserl’s work to conclusions that he himself does not make. In closing, these influences can be summarised before showing how they contribute to a particular form of politics. First, Stiegler utilises Husserl’s phenomenology of time to establish tertiary retentions as the basis of epochs of human existence, and the impossibility of unifying either individual consciousness or the collective. It is this inadequation which makes the incompletion of ideas originary, and therefore open to transformation. Second, the epokhé is understood as the intervention or disruption of an existing state of affairs by technical innovation. This can either make space for the establishment of a new epoch, by keeping ideas open, or homogenise epochal retentions by short-circuiting existing organological systems and positing themselves as natural. Stiegler’s position can be seen as a modification of Husserl’s in The Crisis of The European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: merely fact minded technics make merely fact minded people, rather than opening up the conditions of a new epoch.10 The double use of epochality, as epokhé and epoch, politicises it so as to argue for the implementation of new social systems which make space for the indetermination at the heart of temporal experience, rather than exploiting its technical basis to impose the hegemony of marketing. The indetermination of temporal experience means individuals are always in a condition of being ‘myself-an-other,’ finding their  For analyses of Stiegler’s critique of consumerism, see the work of Abbinnett (2018), Stephen Barker (2012) Miguel de Beistegui (2013) and Roberts (2013). 9  The pharmacological analysis of retentions is influenced on this point by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s famous claim that the culture industry turns reason against itself, by externalising and eliminating the powers of reason through the calculation of culture (Adorno and Horkheimer 1972). 10  ‘Merely fact minded sciences make merely fact minded people’ (Husserl 1970, 6). 8

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subjectivity as a result of a system of tertiary retentions, and contributing to the transformation of this system (Stiegler 2009a, 20). Re-reading Husserl on retentionality as epochality, and on the political rather than methodological stakes of the epokhé, Stiegler claims that the heart of temporal experience is this originary inadequation. This ‘default’ is not a flaw, so much as the very condition of human experience. Temporal experience is always experience of an idiom, a particular expression of epochal conditions (Stiegler 2009b, 149). The epoch without epoch, therefore, is an epoch that has not established a system that responds to disindividuation with an epochality that can make room for this indetermination. It is an epoch without ideas, for ideas are always expressed indeterminately. Making space for this improbability, through the implementation of social systems and programs that encourage both synchrony and diachrony, rather than pure synchrony, is the political challenge that Stiegler’s reading of Husserl poses.

References Abbinnett, Ross. 2018. The Thought of Bernard Stiegler: Capitalism, Technology and the Politics of Spirit. London: Routledge. Adorno, Theodor W., and Max Horkheimer. 1972. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. John Cumming. London: Continuum. Barker, Stephen. 2012. Enchantment, Disenchantment, Re- Enchantment: Toward a Critical Politics of Re-Individuation. New Formations 77: 21–43. Beardsworth, Richard. 1995. From a Genealogy of Matter to a Politics of Memory: Stiegler’s Thinking of Technics. Tekhnema 2. http://tekhnema.free.fr/2Beardsworth.htm. Accessed 27 Sept 2017. Beistegui, Miguel De. 2013. The New Critique of Political Economy. In Stiegler and Technics, eds. Christina Howells and Gerald Moore, 181–191. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Bradley, Arthur. 2011. Originary Technicity: The Theory of Technology from Marx to Derrida. London: Palgrave. Colony, Tracy. 2010. A Matter of Time: Stiegler on Heidegger and Being Technological. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 41 (2): 117–131. Crogan, Patrick. 2012. Editing (and) Individuation. New Formations 77: 97–110. Deleuze, Gilles. 1983. Nietzsche & Philosophy. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson. New  York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1994. Difference & Repetition. Trans. Paul Patton. London: Continuum. Derrida, Jacques. 1973. Speech and Phenomena: And Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs. Trans. David B. Allison. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. 1981. Plato’s Pharmacy. In Dissemination. Trans. Barbara Johnson, 61–172. London: The Athlone Press. ———. 1989. Edmund Husserl’s Origin of Geometry: An Introduction. Trans. John P. Leavey Jr. Lincoln: Bison Books. ———. 2003. The Problem of Genesis in Husserl’s Philosophy. Trans. Marian Hobson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hansen, Mark N. 2012. Technics Beyond the Temporal Object. New Formations 77: 44–62. Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Cambridge: Blackwell. ———. 1988. The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

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———. 1992. The Concept of Time. Trans. William McNeill. Cambridge: Blackwell. Husserl, Edmund. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Trans. David Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ———. 1991. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917). Trans. John B. Brough. Dordrecht: Springer. ———. 2001. Logical Investigations II. Trans. J. N. Findlay. London: Routledge. ———. 2002. Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Trans. W. R. Boyce Gibson. London: Routledge. James, Ian. 2010. Bernard Stiegler and the Time of Technics. Cultural Politics 6 (2): 207–227. Lechte, John. 2007. Technics, Time & Stiegler’s ‘Orthographic Moment. Parallax 13 (4): 64–77. Ricoeur, Paul. 1990. Time & Narrative Vol. 3. Trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Roberts, Ben. 2005. Stiegler Reading Derrida: The Prosthesis of Deconstruction in Technics. Postmodern Culture 16 (1). https://muse.jhu.edu/article/192267. Accessed 27 Sept 2017. ———. 2013. Memories of Inauthenticity: Bernard Stiegler and the Lost Spirit of Capitalism. In Stiegler and Technics, ed. Christina Howells and Gerald Moore, 225–239. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Ross, Daniel. 2013. Pharmacology and Critique After Deconstruction. In Stiegler and Technics, ed. Christina Howells and Gerald Moore, 243–258. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Simondon, Gilbert. 2009. The Position of the Problem of Ontogenesis. Parrhesia 7: 4–16. Stiegler, Bernard. 1998. Technics & Time 1: The Fault of Epimetheus. Trans. Richard Beardsworth. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. 2001. Derrida & Technology: Fidelity at the Limits of Deconstruction and the Prosthesis of Faith. In Derrida & The Humanities: A Critical Reader, ed. Tom Cohen, 238–270. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2006. Nanomutations, Hypomnemata and Grammatisation. http://arsindustrialis.org/ node/2937. Accessed 27 Sept 2017. ———. 2009a. Acting Out. Trans. David Barison, Daniel Ross, and Patrick Crogan. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. 2009b. Technics & Time 2: Disorientation. Trans. Stephen Barker. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. 2009c. Teleologics of the Snail: The Errant Self Wired to a WiMax Network. Trans. Couze Venn. Theory, Culture & Society 26 (2–3): 33–45. ———. 2009d. The Magic Skin; or, the Franco-European Accident of Philosophy After Jacques Derrida. Qui Parle: Critical Humanities & Social Sciences 18 (1): 97–110. ———. 2010a. For a New Critique of Political Economy. Trans. Daniel Ross. Cambridge: Polity. ———. 2010b. Taking Care of Youth and the Generations. Trans. Stephen Barker. Stanford: Stanford University press. ———. 2011. Technics & Time 3: Cinematic Time & The Question of Malaise. Trans. Stephen Barker. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. 2012. Relational Ecology & The Digital Pharmakon. Trans. Patrick Crogan. Culture Machine 13: 1–19. ———. 2013a. Pharmacologie du front national: Suivi du vocabulaire d’Ars Industrialis. Paris: Flammarion. ———. 2013b. What Makes Life Worth Living: On Pharmacology. Trans. Daniel Ross. Cambridge: Polity. ———. 2014a. Afterword: Web Philosophy. In Philosophical Engineering: Toward a Philosophy of the Web, ed. Harry Halpin and Alexandre Monnin, trans. Harry Halpin and Louis Morrel, 187–198. Cambridge: Wiley Blackwell. ———. 2014b. Programs of the Improbable, Short Circuits of the Unheard Of. Diacritics 21 (1): 70–108. ———. 2014c. Symbolic Misery Vol 1: The Hyper-Industrial Epoch. Trans. Daniel Ross. Cambridge: Polity.

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———. 2015a. States of Shock: Stupidity and Knowledge in the 21st Century. Trans. Barnaby Norman. Cambridge: Polity. ———. 2015b. Symbolic Misery Vol 2: The Katastrophē of the Sensible. Trans. Barnaby Norman. Cambridge: Polity. ———. 2016. Dans le disruption: Comment ne pas devenir fou? Paris: Éditions les liens qui libèrent. Turner, Ben. 2016. Life and the Technical Transformation of Différance: Stiegler and the Noopolitics of Becoming Non-Inhuman. Derrida Today 9 (2): 177–198. ———. 2017. Ideology and Post-structuralism After Bernard Stiegler. Journal of Political Ideologies 22 (1): 92–110.

Not Phenomenology’s ‘Other’: Historical Epistemology’s Critique and Expansion of Phenomenology David M. Peña-Guzmán

Abstract  While there are important tensions between French historical epistemology and classical phenomenology as modes of thought, fixation on these differences has obstructed recognition of their similarities. Using the writings of Jean Cavaillès and Gaston Bachelard as case studies, this chapter shows that historical epistemology may be read as simultaneously critiquing and expanding the phenomenological project originated by Husserl in the early twentieth century. The author rebuffs the widespread conception that historical epistemology is phenomenology’s ‘Other’ and calls for further research on their historical and philosophical relationships. Keywords  Phenomenology · Historical epistemology · Science · Subjectivity · Edmund Husserl · Jean Cavaillès · Gaston Bachelard

1  Introduction French historical epistemology often presents itself before the broader philosophical community as the negation of classical phenomenology, which is to say, as phenomenology’s ‘Other.’1 According Cassou-Noguès (2010), this aversion to phenomenology is so deeply engrained in the self-understanding of French historical epistemology that that the latter might very well be defined “by the very existence of this opposition” (217). While it cannot be denied that historical epistemologists

 By ‘historical epistemology,’ I have in mind a loose association of Francophone authors who specialized in the history and philosophy of the sciences. This includes, most notably, Gaston Bachelard, Jean Cavaillès, Georges Canguilhem, and Michel Foucault. Other figures connected to this tradition include Abel Rey, Léon Brunschvicg, Alexandre Koyré, Louis Althusser, and JeanToussaint Desanti. 1

D. M. Peña-Guzmán (*) School of Humanities and Liberal Studies, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Apostolescu (ed.), The Subject(s) of Phenomenology, Contributions to Phenomenology 108, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29357-4_20

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from Jean Cavaillès to Michel Foucault spent a great deal of energy distancing themselves from the phenomenological project first initiated by Edmund Husserl and subsequently embraced by the ‘gods’ of 1960s French thought (Jean-­Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, and JeanLuc Nancy, among others), we should not view the differences between these camps—that is to say, between an épistémologie indigenous to France and a Phänomenologie born in Germany—as insurmountable. As this chapter demonstrates, it is possible to read historical epistemology as a particular approach to phenomenology rather than as its indisputable negation. On this view, the strength of historical epistemology cannot be solely a function of the distance that separates it from phenomenology; it is also a function, at least in part, of its proximity to it. This, to be clear, is not to say that there are no substantive disputes between these traditions. There are plenty. For instance, historical epistemology and phenomenology generally adopt diametrically opposed interpretations of the foundations of knowledge and of the relationship between knowledge and subjectivity. Phenomenologists typically approach epistemology from the double-standpoint of the philosophy of consciousness and transcendental philosophy, seeing all knowledge as constituted by a transcendental ego. By contrast, historical epistemologists reject transcendental subjectivity and frequently admonish those who defend it. Unlike their phenomenological counterparts, they adopt a fervidly anti-subjectivist approach that foregrounds the role of history rather than subjectivity in the constitution of knowledge, especially scientific knowledge. As such, they denunciate projects, Husserl’s included, that ground the knowledge relation on the faculties of the knowing subject, such as the faculties of intuition and imagination. This chapter explores the relationship between phenomenology and historical epistemology and argues that although the latter sees itself as the antithesis of the former, it cannot fully sever its historical and philosophical ties to it. In spite of its denunciation of the philosophy of the  subject, historical epistemology remains a phenomenological project of sorts, albeit one purged of the subjectivist inclinations of the Husserlian approach.2 The argument is divided into five sections. Section one explains the importance of transcendental subjectivity for classical phenomenology. Section two looks at two philosophical reactions to phenomenology that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century: ‘the detractors’ (who rejected phenomenology wholesale because of its commitment to transcendental subjectivity) and ‘the naturalizers’ (who sought to salvage phenomenology by re-aligning it with naturalist philosophies). On my reading, historical epistemologists belong to neither of these camps as they strive to neither naturalize nor, technically, abolish phenomenological inquiry. Instead, they critique phenomenology’s infatuation with transcendental subjectivity while expanding the horizons of phenomenological theory itself. Sections three and four develop this insight in more detail, looking at how historical

 Thompson (2008) recognizes important similarities between historical epistemology and phenomenology, especially in the works of Foucault and Cavaillès. 2

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epistemology critiques (section three) and expands (section four) phenomenology. More concretely, section three illustrates the historico-epistemological critique of phenomenological subjectivity using the writings of Gaston Bachelard and Jean Cavaillès as case studies. Bachelard and Cavaillès both critique Husserl’s transcendental project as excessively subjectivist and replace it with what they see as a historically educated philosophy of science. Yet, as section four shows, this call to replace classical phenomenology with a historicist philosophy of science ends up inadvertently interfacing with the phenomenological project it aims to supersede in philosophically interesting ways. The chapter concludes by calling, in section five, for further scholarly research the relationship between these schools of thought.

2  Phenomenology’s Primitive Whether framed as Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception, Hegel’s consciousness, Husserl’s transcendental ego, or Merleau-Ponty’s embodied cogito, transcendental subjectivity is often given pride of place in phenomenological philosophy. If one asks a classically trained phenomenologist why this is so, the answer is likely to involve a description of either the “founding” force of consciousness or the “originating” power of subjectivity. Only consciousness, or so the argument goes, can found and originate experience because only consciousness (or subjectivity, more broadly construed) is capable of synthesizing appearances and of constituting any and all objects of experience and, therefore, experience itself. Thus, at the heart of what Spiegelberg and Schuhmann (1976) call “the history of the phenomenological movement” we find an irreducible affinity between phenomenological discourse and the philosophy of the subject that stems from a cascading set of inferences according to which: (i) without consciousness or subjectivity there can be no synthesis, (ii) without synthesis, there can be no constitution (iii) without constitution there can be no world of experience, and finally (iv) without experience, by definition, there can be no science of experience, no phenomeno-logy. For classical phenomenologists—including Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Sartre, Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty and, to a more limited degree, the Heidegger of Being and Time (1927)—subjectivity represents a primitive term (the word ‘primitive’ taken here in its etymological rather than anthropological sense as that which is primary, principal, chief or of the first rank; from the Latin primas). It is an unexplained explainer that “originates” and “founds” not only the domain with which phenomenology concerns itself but also phenomenology itself. But is this “primitive” truly vital for phenomenological inquiry? Or can phenomenology, at least in principle, do without it? And, if so, what future lies in store for phenomenology in a world in which the so-called ‘death of the subject’ has come to denote not only the death of the author in writing, as Barthes (1967) famously claimed, but also the death of the transcendental ego in epistemology as Derrida (1978) affirms?

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This chapter suggests that while the death of the subject might entail the death of the author and the death of the transcendental ego, it need not entail as a correlate the death of the phenomenologist as well. The death of the subject, the obituary of that “most originary originality” (Husserl 1960, 19), need not render phenomenology obsolete, although it does summon us to reimagine what phenomenology can become. In the works of historical epistemologists we catch a glimpse of what such re-envisioning might look like. To be clear, my aim here isn’t to argue that historical epistemology is a simple continuation of classical phenomenology. My aim is to consider how historical epistemology can be said to bring some aspects of phenomenology to a halt while still keeping alive the overall spirit of phenomenological inquiry. My interest, in other words, is to follow historical epistemology in its attempts to present itself as the ‘Other’ of phenomenology while documenting, along the way, its failure to rid itself of the phenomenological influences that color its frame.

3  Pulling Phenomenology in Different Directions From 1970s Yale-style literary theory to more recent developments in speculative realism and object-oriented ontology, several ‘continental’ projects have circulated a hermeneutics of suspicion regarding the viability of subjectivity as a philosophical category. Once  subjectivity–and related concepts such as ‘consciousness’ and ‘ego’–is removed from the philosophers’ vocabulary, the question becomes: What happens to those philosophical pedigrees that historically  presupposed it? What happens to existentialism? What happens to Critical Theory? What happens to certain branches of aesthetics and epistemology? And, more importantly for us, what happens to phenomenology? Sociologically, the twentieth century has given us at least two answers to this last question. On the one hand, there are ‘the detractors’ who, convinced that the affinities between phenomenology and the philosophy of the subject run so deep that the former cannot live without the latter, have chosen to abandon the mission and promise of phenomenological description altogether. In this camp, we find figures like Deleuze and Meillasoux. On the other hand, there are ‘the naturalizers’ who instead of relinquishing the post of phenomenology have decided to salvage it with the aid of philosophical naturalism. As a general rule, naturalizers believe that phenomenology can retain its philosophical potency as long as it either (a) becomes a naturalized epistemology closely federated with behavioral and empirical psychology (in the vein of Quinean epistemology) or (b) morphs into a neuro-phenomenology with close ties to cognitive psychology and neuroscience (in the vein of Thompson (2007), Malabou (2009), and Malabou and Miller (2012)). Whereas detractors treat the ruins of subjectivity as the tomb of phenomenology, naturalizers see in these ruins a possible abode for a phenomenology to come, for a phenomenology with robust empirico-naturalist credentials.

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What is at stake in the disagreement between these camps seems to be a question of life and death, at least as far as professional phenomenologists are concerned. Should phenomenology naturalize its conception of subjectivity and, as Derrida (2007) would put it, learn to live? Or should it remain inflexible in its commitment to a transcendental subject and, as Montaigne (1957) would have it, learn to die? This certainly puts phenomenologists between a rock and hard place. But perhaps it doesn’t have to be this way. I, for one, suspect that, at least as it is currently framed, this choice between death and naturalism is a false one. Why couldn’t phenomenology be purged of its attachment to transcendental subjectivity without, thereby, having to surrender to the currents of naturalist thought? Isn’t there a third option that these two eclipse? And, if so, what might this third possibility be? What might it entail? In the following two sections, I investigate the extent to which French historical epistemology might constitute such a ‘third’ since, as I suggested earlier, it neither naturalizes nor rejects phenomenology.

4  H  istorical Epistemology as Critique of Phenomenology: A Case Against the Transcendental Subject From Althusser3 to Canguilhem4 to Foucault,5 historical epistemologists don an anti-subjectivist approach to the problem of knowledge. This section explores the anti-subjectivism of two thinkers: the French philosopher of physics Gaston Bachelard and the French philosopher of mathematics Jean Cavaillès. Both share the view that Husserl gives subjectivity “an excessive centrality” (Bachelard 1963, 11) in his philosophy. From Cartesian Meditations (1931) to The Crisis of the European Sciences (1936), Husserl conceives of subjectivity as the foundation of all objectivity and, concomitantly, as the starting point for the theory of knowledge. This means, at least according to them, that he conflates ‘the objective’ with ‘the merely subjectively objective’ and thus turns his back on the possibility of articulating of a theory of knowledge capable of accounting for the more-than-merely-­ subjectively-objective character of scientific knowledge.

 Althusser’s reading of Marx hinges on an anti-subjectivist interpretation of the nature of capitalism. For Althusser, Marx becomes Marx only when he liberates himself from Hegel’s anthropological concepts (e.g., ‘consciousness,’ ‘alienation,’ and ‘experience’) and replaces them with structuralist ones (e.g., ‘norms,’ ‘systems,’ ‘forms’) (Althusser and Balibar 1997). 4  Readers should consult Badiou (1998) for an analysis of Canguilhem’s work in this respect. 5  Foucault rejects phenomenology for its emphasis on experience and intentionality, and for giving “absolute priority to the observing subject” (Foucault 1994), xiv). For an analysis of Foucault’s criticisms of phenomenology, see May (May 2005). 3

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4.1  Gaston Bachelard (Case Study #1) In a series of books devoted to the history and philosophy of the sciences published between the 1920s and 1950s—including Essai sur la connaissance approchée (1928), Le nouvel esprit scientifique (1934), La formation de l’esprit scientifique: contribution à une psychanalyse de la connaissance objective (1938), Le Rationalisme appliqué (Applied Rationalism, 1949), L’activité rationaliste de la physique contemporaine (1951), and Le matérialisme rationnel (1953)—, Bachelard developed a way of thinking about the nature, structure, and limits of knowledge that differed in meaningful ways from Husserl’s.6 While Bachelard hadn’t yet read Husserl when he began working in this direction in the 1920s, he stumbled upon his works in the 1940s and immediately recognized the tension between his historical approach to scientific reason and the Husserlian approach that sought, as Levinas (1979) put it, “[to] re-discover our naiveties.” Bachelard locked horns with Husserl in various ways,7 but the core of his opposition to Husserl was  expressed in his critique of the universal ambitions of the Husserlian philosophy and in his critique of Husserl’s assertion that all objects of scientific experience spring forth from the  faculties of intuition and imagination and  are  therefore transcendentally constituted by consciousness. These positions quickly gave Bachelard a reputation not only as one of France’s leading philosophers of science in the postwar period, but also as one of Husserl’s most avid critics west of the Rhine. 4.1.1  Husserl’s Universal Ambition Husserlian phenomenology is an ambitious philosophy. It does not merely claim to be ‘a’ theory of lived experience. It claims to be ‘the’ theory of it. Indeed, in its original cast, it claims to be ‘the science of experience’, which is to say, the science of all possible forms of lived experience. Built into phenomenology’s original architecture, therefore, is the assumption that the phenomenological method is an  For an extended discussion of Bachelard’s critique of Husserl, see Barsotti, Bernard. Bachelard critique de Husserl: aux racines de la fracture épistémologie, phénoménologie (Editions L’Harmattan, 2002); and Vydra, Anton, “Gaston Bachelard And His Reactions To Phenomenology” Continental Philosophy Review 47.1 (2014): 45–58. 7  Bachelard, for example, offers a materialist interpretation of systems of scientific knowledge. For him, these systems include (a) ideational objects without spatio-temporal identities (concepts, ideas, hypotheses, principles) and (b) material objects with spatio-temporal identities (measurement machines, observational apparatuses, laboratory equipment, experimental techniques, and so on). These two kinds of scientific objects, moreover, are inseparable. The meaning of even the most abstract/ideational objects is shaped by their material conditions of discovery, while the meaning of even the most rudimentary of scientific tools (such as an abacus or a petri dish) reflects the theoretical principles that aided in its discovery and construction. All scientific ideas are materialities idealized; all material objects are theories materialized. See Lecourt Dominique, Marxism and Epistemology: Bachelard, Canguilhem and Foucault (Vrin 1975), 75ff. 6

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all-­purpose tool that can be applied to any and all facets of human experience, including perceptual, cognitive, embodied, aesthetic, political, and religious experiences. As early as The Formation of the Scientific Mind: A Contribution to a Psychoanalysis of Objective Knowledge (1938), Bachelard challenged this universalism by claiming that there is a region of human experience that exceeds the limits of classical phenomenology and reveals the poverty of its method. This is scientific experience. Bachelard posits a radical ‘break’ (Fr. décalage) between scientific and subjective experience. Subjective experience is the experience we have of everyday objects like chairs, tables, and cups, and which can be explained in terms of the interaction between two basic forces: the force of the subject (our cognitive and embodied capacities) and the force of the world (our being-affected by something external to ourselves). Subjective experience occurs when the external world acts upon the senses of a subject and this subject, in turn, transcendentally orders sensible content in a rule-bound manner, thus conjuring up a phenomenal world. But, according to Bachelard, the interaction of these forces is not sufficient to give birth to scientific experience, which requires the introduction of a third force: the force of a “rational system of knowledge”. For a subject to experience the world scientifically means for that subject to find itself spread out between a world that exerts its own pressures on the cogito’s sensory organs and an established system of knowledge that helps the cogito navigate this world but that is ultimately irreducible to the cogito’s own generative activity (its sensory organs, its faculties, its capacities, etc.).8 Unlike subjective experience, then, scientific experience is constituted by the triangulation of three terms: the subject that thinks and acts, the world in which this subject is embedded, and the system of knowledge through which the subject-world relation acquires epistemological significance. Because his thought is circumscribed on all sides by the philosophy of the subject, Bachelard says, Husserl cannot comprehend this third element and, as a result. His philosophy is useless as a philosophy of science.9 8  Davis (2000) differentiates between ‘lived’ and ‘scientific’ experience by observing that the former is a conversation with mid-sized, three-dimensional, physical objects, whereas the latter frequently involves “intangible phenomena far outside common experience.” Hyder (2003) says “we inherit both the vocabulary and grammar of the languages we speak, including those of formal scientific languages. And this fact puts pressure on the transcendental theorist: since a speaker of these languages may never consciously have fixed their meanings, the theorist must explain where the meanings of such expressions are to be found, and such explanations run the risk of extravagance” (115). “It is evident that the fields of ideal objects that make up scientific ontologies are not given in immediate experience” (ibid.). This is why Bachelard says that the objects that appear to the scientific mind, such as the appearance of certain patterns of lamination on a backboard in a double-slit experiment, do not have the same status as the things that appear to a Husserlian ego. “The point is that a quantitative organization of reality has more, not less, content than a qualitative description of experience” (Bachelard 1984, 68). 9  Goldhammer (1984) notes that, for Bachelard, “phenomenology is not enough” (xx). The systematic description of lived experience must be accompanied by “a way of producing experience of the right kind” (ibid.).

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The introduction of this third term enables Bachelard to formulate a theory of ‘object-constitution’ according to which objects of scientific experience aren’t constituted (as phenomenologists would say) by the transcendental activity of an ideal subject, but by the internal movement of a system of rational thought, by what Louis Althusser describes as “a process without a subject” (Callinicos 1976). This is why the objects that appear to me in everyday experience (e.g., the cup, the house, the chair, the tree) cannot be equated with the objects that appear in the highly regimented field of scientific practice (e.g., electrons, photos, cells, waves, etc.) because the latter are ‘given’ to me in a different manner. Husserl may be right that objects of subjective experience are constituted by the world-building activity of an ideal consciousness, but the objects of scientific experience are not. They are constituted by the activity of historical and impersonal systems of knowledge, by what Foucault calls ‘epistemological fields’. This means, in turn, that scientific objects aren’t given to me by means of synthetic subjective acts (i.e. acts whereby the subject synthesizes sensible content) but by means of operational acts (i.e. acts that take place not in the sphere of subjective consciousness but in the sphere of an epistemological field). Incoherent as this may sound to phenomenological ears, Bachelard sees all objects of scientific experience as achievements of these impersonal fields.10 Bachelard, therefore, moves away from Husserl by pointing to scientific experience as an object that escapes the supposedly universal reach of his method and by holding that objects of scientific experience are constituted by a complex dance that Husserl is not equipped to follow, a dance that involves the subject (mind), the world (nature), and impersonal systems of rational thought (scientific history). 4.1.2  Husserl’s Impoverished Method Farber (1966) argues that Husserlian phenomenology rests atop two methodological  pillars. The first is the act of bracketing through which the phenomenologist discloses a whole new domain of investigation (‘the things themselves’). The second is the process of eidetic variation through which consciousness, by route of the imagination and intuition, reduces sets of appearances to their eidetic forms (57). Mohanty (1991) echoes this claim. “Insofar as the phenomenologist [seeks] to describe the essence or essential structures of regions of phenomena,” he says, “the method he [sic] employs [is] the method of imaginative variation. The domain whose essential structure [is] to be described may be material nature, works of art, moral experience, or, as is more importantly the case, conscious experience itself.” “In any case,” he continues, “application of the method requires the following steps”:

 Tiles (1984) claims that scientific domains are “independent […] of the constitution of the subject” (49–50). By shifting the foci of concept-formation from the cogito to rational domain, Bachelard reverses phenomenology’s critical formula concerning the relationship between science and experience. As Pariente (1987) notes, it is from science that we derive experience and not from experience that we derive science. 10

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(i) Start with an actual or imagined instance of the sort under consideration. This arbitrarily chosen example will serve as the model for projecting (ii) an infinitely open multiplicity of variants upon it, which are to be produced in imagination voluntarily and arbitrarily. (iii) As step ii proceeds, a unity, an invariant structure shows itself as that but for which the example arbitrarily chosen as example (of the sort of thing under consideration) would not be thinkable as an example of its kind (Mohanty 1991). Eidetic variation appears here as a purifying process. Through it, the phenomenologist carries out “the all-embracing transition from the factual to the essential form, the eidos” (Husserl 1999, 326). The phenomenologist begins from an instantiation of a phenomenon and then imaginatively generates other instances ‘like’ the first. This process continues until the phenomenologist  attains a “non-empirical intuition” of the eidos on account of which the first instance of the phenomenon and all subsequent variations of it can be said to belong to the same universal or kind (Husserl 2012). Notice that this method hinges on the faculties of imagination and intuition. Bachelard believed this reliance on the operations of  subjective faculties enshrined the kind of subjectivism that the philosophy of science should actively evade. On his view, any philosophy that professed to describe or explain scientific experience had no choice but to steer clear of this kind of subjectivism, especially because recent developments in the history of science demonstrate that the knowing subject doesn’t hold scientific progress on a leash. The opposite is, in fact, the case. It is the historical progression of science that holds the subject (and its faculties) on a leash—and a relatively tight one. Elsewhere, I have argued that Bachelard was profoundly influenced by what I call the ‘second scientific revolution.’ The second scientific revolution is a period of European history, spanning roughly from the 1830s to the 1920s, in which science acquires unparalleled cultural capital and […] bears witness to a succession of scientific revolutions that shatter the classical frame of almost every branch of science, including mathematics, biology, chemistry, geology, physics, and even logic. […] In direct defiance of philosophy’s self-appointed legislative authority, [these revolutions] disfigure philosophical conceptions of ‘time,’ ‘space,’ ‘substance,’ and ‘causality’ and show speculative thought to be incapable of accommodating the latest achievements of the sciences. (Peña-Guzmán 2016, 171–2)

This revolution “altered our understanding of intuition” (Bachelard 1984, 141). The advances in knowledge that took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—from Lobachevsky’s non-Euclidian geometry to Einstein’s special relativity—cut so finely and so deeply against the grain of human intuition that it was no longer possible to ground the theory of knowledge on any doctrine of intuition. The sciences of this period secreted concept after concept that no theory of intuition could explain and that baffled philosophers who insisted on putting the faculty of intuition on a pedestal. Because scientific innovations all too often exceed the bounds of human intuition, we would make a mistake were we to follow Husserl in thinking that we can

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grasp their meaning using the phenomenological method. The only way to understand the meaning of scientific concepts and discoveries, especially those that are particularly counter-intuitive, is by tracking their movement within larger economy of scientific thought, which the Husserlian method cannot help us do. Consider the discovery of particle-wave duality in physics at the start of the twentieth century. The double-slit experiment that prompted the articulation of the theory of light as complementarily particle-like and wave-like upset core tenets of modern epistemology from Descartes to Hegel, including the notion that reality is observer-independent and the notion that all theories of nature must presuppose some concept of ‘substance’.11 To illustrate how Bachelard mobilizes this scientific discovery against Husserl, let us as a relatively straightforward question: Can we intuit the meaning of complementarity? Can we have an intuition of light as simultaneously particle-like and wave-like? Husserl, it seems, would have to answer yes. But Bachelard (1951) puts pressure on this answer by arguing that this concept cannot be intuited at all. Even if limited ourselves to trying to intuit the meaning of just one side the complementarity hypothesis (the meaning of, say, the concept of ‘wave’), the entire exercise would keel over before setting sail because our subjective faculties are simply not strong enough, not fast enough, and not dynamic enough to follow physics into the uncanny world of micro-objects. To understand Bachelard’s point, let’s play this scenario out in more detail. What would a Husserlian phenomenology of the physical concept of wave look like? Schematically, it would look something like this: Step 1: Bracket any positive belief in the existential reality of waves and re-­channel our attention to our experience of waves. Step 2: Bring to mind the image of a particular wave and, using the productive imagination, start the process of eidetic variation. Step 3: Attend to the process of eidetic variation until reaching an intuition of the essential form (eidos) of wave. Step 4: Once in possession of this essential form, perform a second bracketing operation that will eventually disclose the world-constituting power of the transcendental ego, revealing the latter as the ultimate source of all meaning, including of the meaning of the concept of wave. According to Bachelard, this exercise will crash and burn as soon as the faculty of imagination enters the scene to produce an image of a wave (at step 2), and it will crash and burn once more when the faculty of intuition is asked to extract an essence from the hyletic data (at step 3). Either way, the procedure stalls. Whenever we imagine a wave, we imagine a movement. In itself, this isn’t a problem since, from the standpoint of physics, waves are motions. But alas, whenever we imagine a movement we spontaneously imagine the movement of a body from one place to another, even if this body is merely an ideal point in space. We  In the 1940s, Niels Bohr argued that the complementarity thesis makes impossible “any sharp demarcation between the behavior of atomic objects and the interaction of the measuring instruments which serve to define the conditions under which the phenomena occur” (Bohr 1949, 209). 11

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find it nearly impossible to imagine a movement “in which there is no body that is displaced” (Bachelard 1951, 253). A Husserlian phenomenology of the wave-like character of light, therefore, culminates in the intuition not of a wave (as understood by contemporary physics) but of a substance in motion. And therein lies the problem! To represent a wave as the displacement of a substance is to misunderstand the scientific meaning of the concept of wave and to miss what is truly groundbreaking about the scientific claim that light is “wave-like”—namely, that it problematizes the assumption that light is a ‘substance’ or a ‘thing’.12 If we wanted to visualize the wave-like character of light in pictorial terms (and, on some readings, Husserl’s method would require this), our best strategy would be to summon an image of a ‘dynamized milieu’ rather than a picture of a ‘body displaced.’ Unfortunately, it is not clear that the imagination can generate this image without surreptitiously sneaking into it a substantialist component once more.13 For Bachelard, a scientific wave is literally un-imaginable. It cannot be represented pictorially because it isn’t an image. It is a concept, which is to say, a site of experimental and inductive significance whose meaning comes from the place it occupies in an epistemological field. This  concept, as Bachelard (1968) says, is a “non-­ image” (139).14 Just as imagination fails us when it comes to scientific concepts, so does intuition. Even if our imagination were  strong enough to generate the right kind of images needed to get the process of eidetic variation off the ground, Bachelard believes this phenomenological exercise would still miscarry because the faculty of intuition would never be able to extract from the series of images produced by the imagination the meaning or essence (eidos) these images share in common. And the reason is that Husserl’s philosophy is, when it comes to the relationship between intuition and essences, viciously circular. It assumes that we intuit the universal from the particulars, but it does not explain how the imagination generates the particulars prior to having the universal. How can the phenomenologist know whether a particular is a legitimate member of a series before having access to the series’ principle of unification? And how can she, in turn, get her hands on  this principle before going  through the process of eidetic variation that, according to Husserl, produces it? To intuit an essence, we must already have the eidos so we can discriminate between members and non-members; yet we cannot have this eidos

 When the physics teacher tells her student that light can be viewed as a wave, what she means is not that there is some Aristotelean ousia (οὐσία) that moves in a wave-like pattern. What she means is that wave-like behavior is one of light’s various experimentally realizable properties, a property that (like its complementary ‘other’) is only revealed under specific experimental conditions. 13  The imagination is ridden with prejudices that yield aberrant intuitions. Substantialism is one of these prejudices, but certainly not the only one (Bachelard 2002). 14  Bachelard (1968) also uses the term ‘sur-object’ to describe those objects of contemporary science that, like the physical concept of wave, are “non-images.” For an analysis of the Bachelardian notion of ‘sur-objects’, see Caws (1993). 12

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until after have created the series and intuited the former from the latter. Husserlian intuition presupposes what it claims to produce. Additionally, Bachelard belongs to a group of thinkers who view intuition as a derivative phenomenon that can never give us access to genuinely universal essences. Intuition is derived from natural language and is shaped by the categories afforded by the natural language in which we are socialized and habituated.15 When we intuit an essence, what we are actually intuiting are linguistic categories and the culturally specific (but always arbitrary) pictorial representations associated with them. Husserl’s philosophy has no mechanism to ‘de-linguistify’ intuition and thus ensure its reliability as a generator of objective essences. At the root of his  philosophy, therefore, we find a ‘latent nominalism’ that Husserl cannot openly embrace but that he also cannot fend against.

4.2  Jean Cavaillès (Case Study #2) Like Bachelard, whom he met at conference in Prague in 1934, Jean Cavaillès never accepted phenomenology’s pretensions as a theory of science.16 In Sur la logique et la théorie de la science (1947), he outlined his reasons for rejecting the phenomenological approach to scientific rationality and, more specifically, the theory of mathematics that Husserl sketched out in his 1929 book Formale und transzendentale Logik. In this text, Husserl argued that only transcendental subjectivity can found a theory of science. “A theory of science that explicates on all sides the essential possibility of genuine science as such and is therefore able to guide the development of genuine science can grow up only in the nexus of a transcendental phenomenology” (Husserl 1969, 13). This meant that any successful theory of science, including any theory of mathematics, would necessarily have to “go back to noetic intentionality (since, after all, logical formations originate from [subjective] activity)” (11). Cavaillès (1986) believed that this flight to noetic intentionality, this retreat into what Husserl calls “transcendental inwardness” (16), undermined the articulation of a truly objective theory of mathematics. To do justice to the dynamic and emergent properties of mathematical systems, the philosophy of mathematics would have to oppose the egological and transcendental tendencies of Husserlian phenomenology. It would also have to supersede, in its internal organization, the two philosophical frameworks that have dominated debates about the nature of mathematics ever since the publication of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason in 1781: formalism and intuitionism.

 Bachelard offers a version of the ‘Sapir–Whorf hypothesis’, except that he focuses on the impact of language on intuition rather than thought or perception. 16  At the time Cavaillès met Bachelard, Cavaillès was only 31 years old but had already done extensive work on the history of mathematics. By 1934, he had also met Heidegger and Husserl and had begun thinking more seriously about the relationship between mathematics and phenomenology. 15

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4.2.1  The Janus-Faced Legacy of Kant’s Philosophy of Mathematics In Sur la logique, Cavaillès expose a fundamental tension in Kant’s interpretation of mathematics. Kant aimed to preserve the objectivity of mathematical truths and described mathematics as a formal system whose objectivity could not be reduced to subjectivity. At the same time, he was unwilling to detach mathematics from the operations of the transcendental subject. As a result, mathematics ended up having a confused ontological status in the Kantian corpus. It appeared at one and the same time as formal and objective (because Kant wanted it so) and as intuitive and subjective (because his system made it so). This tension did not die with Kant. It trickled down the history of philosophy, shaping the evolution of the philosophy of mathematics across the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, and forcing post-Kantian philosophers to choose which side of Kant’s Janus-faced legacy they will embrace as their own. Thus, the history of the philosophy of mathematics since Kant can be interpreted, to a large extent, as the history of two essentially Kantian lineages: a formalist-objectivist lineage that makes mathematical truths subjectivity-independent (exemplified by Rudolf Carnap and Bernard Bolzano) and a intuitionist lineage that interprets mathematical truths as byproducts of subjective intuition (exemplified Luitzen Brouwer and Léon Brunschvicg). Cavaillès writes: Two possibilities are still open for the theory of science along Kantian lines, depending on whether the accent is put on the notion of demonstrative system or on that of mathematical organon. To the first belongs the logical conception inaugurated by Bolzano and continued simultaneously and in different ways by the formalists and by Husserl. To the second belong the epistemological philosophies of immanence, as the philosophies of Brunschvicg and Brouwer may be labeled. (Cavaillès 1986, 367)

Neither lineage is superior to the other in all respects; each has its vices as well as its virtues. For instance, intuitionism allows mathematical reason to be historical and generative, but it also mystifies mathematics’ claim to objective necessity. If mathematics derives its content from the workings of the structures of subjectivity, as Kant affirms in the Critique of Pure Reason and Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, then its content would have to be contingent upon these structures and would lack objective necessity.  One could argue that mathematical content could still claim objective standing if the subjective structures from which it emanates turned out to be objective necessities themselves. But this doesn’t seem to be the case. The structures involved in the generation of mathematical content under intuitionist frameworks may be necessary at the level of rational thought (since we cannot, or at least Kant couldn’t, imagine rational agents who don’t possess them), but they aren’t necessary at the level of being (since we can easily imagine a world without rational thought and without rational subjects). Intuitionism inherits this ambivalence concerning the status of mathematics from Kant’s ‘Transcendental Aesthetic’ and offers no viable solution to it. Formalism, by contrast, frees mathematics from the chains of the philosophy of the subject, but it faces a problem of its own. Formalist philosophers safeguard the objectivity of mathematics by conceiving of mathematical reason as a closed and

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static system, as a hermetic structure without an engine. Their impulse is to treat mathematics as a system of relations that  never change. But in Sur la logique Cavaillès reminds us that this stance is self-defeating because, as Roubach (2010) puts it, “there is no philosophy of mathematics apart from the historical development of the mathematical concepts” (244). The philosophy of mathematics must learn to see its object as an open and dynamic system that mutates with time. Instead of petrifying it, it must follow its movements and carefully document the endless transformations it undergoes “as it elaborates itself and demonstrates itself” (Cavaillès 1986, 374). Because they allow the Kantian corpus to set the terms of the debate, intuitionism and formalism cannot overcome the tension that ruined Kant’s philosophy of mathematics and consequently make different, but equally tragic, Faustian bargains whereby they save and sacrifice different aspects of mathematical discourse. Intuitionism preserves historicity while sacrificing objectivity. Formalism preserves objectivity while forfeiting historicity. In striking these bargains with the devil from Königsberg, both approaches betray mathematics itself. According to Cavaillès, only Husserl’s transcendental approach in Formale und transzendentale Logik manages to challenge the original Kantian tension rather than getting mired in it. Husserl’s philosophy of mathematics is different from most of its predecessors. It isn’t a formalist theory in the manner of Carnap’s or Bolzano’s, but it also isn’t a traditional intuitionist proposal in the manner of Brouwer’s or Brunschvicg’s. Yet, it blends aspects from both camps. Indeed Husserl’s position is the blend of these principles, the “synthesis of logicism and the theory of consciousness” (386). But even this synthesis, Cavaillès concludes, proves sterile as it inherits all of the vices, and none of the virtues, of the traditions it unifies. The synthesis is, ironically, worse than what it synthesizes. 4.2.2  Husserl’s Sterile Philosophy of Mathematics Cavaillès’s critique of Husserlian phenomenology appears in section III of Sur la logique, where he argues that Husserl’s attempt to find in the philosophy of consciousness all the elements necessary for a theory of science only reveals the limitations of his phenomenological approach. In Formale und transzendentale Logik, Husserl divided transcendental logic into two branches: ‘formal ontology’ and ‘apophantics’. Formal ontology deals with objects as objects. It concerns itself with the laws responsible for the production of most general and structural properties of objects of experience, which is to say, with their “a priori conditions of attainment.” Apophantics deals with the ways in which the objects generated by formal ontology are made to interact with one another at the level of judgment. It “fixes everything which is constitutive and determining for a valid statement” (389). The key to Husserl’s transcendental logic lies in the interaction of these branches, in the interplay between a formal theory of ‘object-forms’ (formal ontology) and the formal theory of ‘judgment forms’ (apophantics).

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Cavaillès is suspicious of the role mathematics is called upon to play in this interplay. For Husserl, mathematics is merely the science of the “a priori conditions of [object] attainment” that constitute the domain of formal ontology. It  is the “organ” of formal ontology—nothing more. As Tito (1990) notes: Husserl explains that what formal ontology is and how it relates to formal logic could not be grasped until pure mathematics, algebra, had been developed. Only then could mathematics be seen to be dealing not with number and quantity per se but with relations between any object whatsoever—for example, relation of whole to part, identity, equality, unity, totality, property, and so forth […] For example, while the determining concept in the theory of cardinal number is that of unit and in set theory that of element, each is “any object whatever.” (18)

Cavaillès (1986) similarly observes: What in fact is number, what are the higher order operations, however complicated their superposition may be, if not those determinations to which the modes of appearance of any object whatsoever are necessarily subject, with a necessity which is related to the very necessity of mathematical development? What does the mathematician do if not describe or fix that which concerns every object, as an abstract element of a manifold? (367, my emphasis)

For Husserl, mathematical relations are the most elementary properties of any and all possible objects of subjective experience, which is to say, of any and all objects possibly constituted by subjective ‘acts.’ These objects, to be sure, can have properties beyond those captured by pure mathematics, but these other properties would be a function of judgment (not object-attainment) and thus fall under apophantics. The determinations captured by pure mathematics remain only these objects’ most basic conditions of possibility, the conditions to which any object in any mode of subjective appearance is necessarily subject. They are, as Husserl would say, the a priori conditions of subjective object-presentation itself. Although he recognized the originality of the Husserlian position, Cavaillès ultimately rejected it on the grounds that defining mathematics as the science of the most abstract and general properties of presentive objects denied mathematics its rightful objective status by transforming it into a tentacle of the philosophy of consciousness. In Formale und transzendentale Logik, mathematics only exists as “an analysis of all the claims and all the acts of knowledge, […] of all the contents aimed at or intended by consciousness” (Cavaillès 1986, 394). This leads Cavaillès to accuse Husserl of basing his philosophy upon a problematic ‘principle of reducibility’17 that folds the philosophy of mathematics under the philosophy of consciousness, thereby reducing mathematical content to the acts of a transcendental ego. In a sense, Cavaillès’s thesis is that Husserlianism is worse than formalism and intuitionism since it exhibits all the defects of both. On the side of formalism, Husserlian depicts mathematics as a closed system similar to the mathesis universalis

 The ‘principle of reducibility’ ensures the reduction of and of mathematics to a priori rules of subjective object-formation (Cavaillès 1986, 397).

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of Leibniz,18 which mutes the epistemological significance of the history of mathematics. If Husserl is right that mathematics is the branch of transcendental logic responsible for determining objects at the level of appearance, then its e­ pistemological content is fenced in on all sides by transcendental subjectivity.19 Only this would explain why Husserl could claim to have found “in the correlation of the noetic and noematic the means for resolving all the problems which are not false problems,” including the problems of the philosophy of mathematics. To accept that mathematics is the organ of formal ontology is to accept that one never has to leave the domain of consciousness when tackling philosophical problems about mathematics. One of the most unpleasant implications of Husserl’s position, as far as Cavaillès was concerned, was that consciousness would never have to look anywhere outside itself to find philosophical right answers because “everything is only in its very life” (394). Among other things, this would mean  that the philosophy of mathematics could get by without ever giving the history of mathematics a second thought. This muting of history may not be a problem for those who see mathematics as a petrified system of immovable first principles.20 But it is a problem for those who recognize that mathematics is more than a compendium of eternal first-order truths, that it has a dynamic, inner logic—an “internal coherence,” to quote Cavaillès—that prevents it from neatly fitting into an ahistorical framework. Like all other sciences, mathematics is a historical enterprise with a progressive arc. “Its progressive character is essential,” and any perspective that ignores this will inevitably “lose [itself] in the void” (404). This is the reason Cavaillès closes Sur la logique by saying that what mathematics needs from philosophy is not a philosophy of consciousness that reduces mathematics to a series of transcendental ‘acts’, but a dialectical theory that tunes into, and follows, the historical movement of mathematical rationality. “It is not the philosophy of consciousness but a philosophy of the concept that can yield a doctrine of science. The generative necessity [of mathematics] is not that of an activity but of a dialectic” (409). Formalists often defend themselves against the charge of ahistoricity by noting that at least they avoid the pitfalls of their intuitionist rivals. “Perhaps we destroy the historicity of mathematics, but we save its objectivity, which intuitionists cannot do,” they say. But  Husserl does not even have  Husserl (1969) differentiates himself from Leibniz by noting that the latter failed to take the transcendental turn. Transcendental logic, therefore, “does not intend to be a mere pure and formal logic—conceived most broadly, in the Leibnizian sense, a mathesis universalis” (16). However, one could argue that what Husserl does is recapitulate Leibniz’s formalism within the sphere of the transcendental since mathematics remains a closed system of rules that doesn’t change with time and whose only function is to determine the most generic properties of presentive objects. 19  Cavaillès (1986) says that in Husserl’s framework mathematics can only exist either in an applied mode (as mathematical physics) or in a theoretical mode (as formal ontology), but in neither is it truly autonomous. “Mathematics, conscious of it original meaning, of what truly is, divides itself into two parts: applied mathematics which is physics, and formal mathematics which is logic. It is only because he has forgotten his vocation that the mathematician can claim to be self-sufficient” (393). 20  Speaking of Husserl’s formal ontology, Cavaillès (1986) says: “This is really the idea of a universal syntax as Carnap tried to describe it in a single stroke” (403). 18

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recourse to this line of defense since his project also pivots on the faculty of intuition. For him, all objects of mathematical experience are transcendentally intuited. “The possibility of objectivities belonging in [the mathematical] sphere must be established by intuition,” he says  (Husserl 1969, 12). This traps phenomenology between the Scylla of formalism and the Charybdis of intuitionism, leaving it unable to claim the benefits of either. Another effect of Husserl’s denial of history is that, according to Cavaillès, it puts his theory of mathematics at odds with the actual development of mathematics. Recall that in the early twentieth century, various neo-Kantian philosophers realized that Kant’s interpretation of time and space as pure forms of intuition was incompatible with developments in post-Newtonian physics that called into question the separation of time and space. These developments had such a radical impact on philosophy that many philosophers felt they had to choose between (a) keeping the intuitionist doctrine outlined in the ‘Transcendental Aesthetic’ of the first Critique and dogmatically rejecting any scientific findings that contravened it or (b) embracing the findings of positive science and tossing out those parts of the architectonic, especially the ‘Transcendental Aesthetic,’ that clashed with new scientific knowledge. Most neo-Kantians chose (b) as the best way of reconciling the spirit of Kantian critique with, in this case, the body of Einstein’s theory of space-time. Yet, it seems as if Husserl, confronted with the same choice in relation to mathematics, repeatedly chooses (a), which Cavaillès says is always the wrong choice. To highlight the tension between Husserl’s intuitionist philosophy of mathematics and post-Kantian developments in mathematics, Cavaillès points to Georg Cantor’s discovery of set theory in 1874.21 Although an extended discussion of this subject is beyond the scope of this chapter, Peden (2014) explains that set theory introduced into mathematical discourse a number of ideas (e.g. the idea that there are infinities of different magnitudes) that intuitionist philosophies couldn’t handle. “Set theory […] drove a rift between demonstrable justification and intuitive experience by privileging the conceptual, and interminable, development of mathematical knowledge over the fixed categories, be they transcendental or existential, of a priori intuition,” he writes (31). By the time Cavaillès started writing Sur la logique in the 1940s, he had already written a whole book about set theory, entitled Remarques sur la formation de la théorie abstraite des ensembles (1938), in which offered a piercing critique of mathematical intuitionism and argued that the proper method of modern mathematics is not ‘intuition’ but ‘construction.’ In this work, he note that there are plenty of scientific innovations that do not depend upon the faculty of intuition and that scientists accept in spite of the objections of intuition. One example is the infinitesimal calculus of Newton and Leibniz, which rests on the counter-intuitive concept of infinitesimal change. Another is Cantorian set theory, whose concept of transfinity sends our intuitions into a tailspin. Intuitionist frameworks only render these develop Cantor (1874) altered the landscape of mathematics by showing that a fully articulated theory of sets could serve as a foundational theory in mathematics. For an account of the history of set theory, see Ferreirós (2008) and Grattan-Guinness and Bos (2000). 21

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ments incomprehensible and create false philosophical problems (e.g. “Are there as many pairs of numbers as numbers in an infinite series?”). In 1938, Cavaillès argues that the only solution was to abandon intuitionism altogether (Ferrières 1950). A few years later, in Sur la logique, he recycled this basic argument from Remarques to argue that, because it rested on intuitionist principles, Husserl’s philosophy of mathematics could never  make sense the actual progressive arc of mathematical thought, Cantorian set theory included (Peden 2014, 59). Cantorian set theory did not merely challenge Husserl’s assertion that all mathematical objects are the children of intuition. It empirically refuted it. In Sur la logique Cavaillès offered two additional criticisms of Husserl’s transcendental logic: one dealt with the nature of logic; the other, with the nature of subjectivity. Formale und transzendentale Logik was written in the hopes of bringing to historical fruition Western philosophy’s dream of unifying all science under a single doctrine of logic that would serve at the ‘antecedent norm’ to all the sciences and thus as the ground of scientificity itself.22 To fulfill this mission, however, the doctrine of logic would have to prove its absoluteness, which is to say, it would have to prove that it grounded everything while being grounded by nothing. According to Husserl, classical logic couldn’t succeed in this regard because it is puerile and immature (Peden 2014, 13). But according to Cavaillès (1986), Husserl’s transcendental logic couldn’t either because it gets stuck in the following dilemma (398). Logic is either (a) transcendental (in which case it depends upon consciousness and cannot be absolute) or (b) absolute (in which case it cannot depend upon consciousness and cannot be transcendental). But logic could  never be (c) transcendental and absolute (which is exactly what Husserl’s logic claims to be). “If transcendental logic really founds logic, there is no absolute logic (that is, governing the absolute subjective activity). If there is an absolute logic, it can draw its authority only from itself, and then it is not transcendental” (400–401). Cavaillès (1986) also observed that Husserlian phenomenology leads to an infinite regress. Husserl never tired of saying that transcendental subjectivity grounds all possible experience and all possible knowledge, but he never explained what grounds transcendental subjectivity itself. Since he believed that only subjectivity has “grounding” power, it would seem as if transcendental subjectivity could itself be grounded only by a higher-order subjectivity, and this higher-order subjectivity would itself have to be grounded by a subjectivity of an even higher order, and so on ad infinitum. This creates yet another  dilemma. Either Husserl lets the infinite regress run its course and accepts the conclusion that phenomenology itself is un-­ grounded (which he would find intolerable), or he puts a stop to this regress by embracing a non-idealist (e.g. evolutionary, psychological, anthropological) theory  Husserl (1969) argues that after the seventeenth century classical logic lost its unifying power and “became [merely] a special science.” As a result, all the sciences, which had turned to logic for a goal or a sense of purpose, “lost their great belief in themselves” (5). They became autonomous and mutually isolated fields of human action, rather than parts of the great journey of human reason. Husserl hoped that his transcendental logic would fill the conceptual vacuum left behind by the implosion of classical logic. 22

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of the origins of subjectivity itself (which would violate some of his most deeply held idealist commitments). Of these two options, the second is arguably the only viable one, but Husserl never took it up as a task at any stage of his career. As a result there is a question mark that hovers over his entire project: What founds the being that founds?  What constitutes the being that constitutes? “What is […] needed,” Cavaillès writes, “is a logic to give norms not only for the constitution of the constituted being but also for the constitution of the constituting being” (400, my emphasis). Who grounds the grounder?

5  F  rom Critique to Expansion: Historical Epistemology as Phenomenology? Up until now, we have focused on the anti-subjectivist orientation of historical epistemology as reflected in the works of Bachelard and Cavaillès. The received view is that this orientation makes historical epistemology the ‘Other’ of phenomenology, its exact inverse. My proposal is that while it’s possible to read historical epistemology in this manner, this is not the only way to interpret the relationship between these philosophical traditions. One can also read historical epistemology as kind of phenomenological enterprise—namely, as an objectivist phenomenology of scientific experience. While my remarks in this regard will necessarily be schematic, it is important to note that some experts, such as Thompson (2008), have already hinted at this possibility. Thompson interprets figures as diverse as Cavaillès and Foucault as calling not so much for the decommissioning of phenomenology as for its de-­ subjectivization. What these thinkers give us, he says, is a shot at “a new way of doing phenomenology” (11), one in which phenomenology is no longer subordinate to the philosophy of the subject. But how should we understand this possibility? To begin, we must clarify that the dispute between historical epistemology and phenomenology is not, as some have indicated, a dispute over the value of experience as a philosophical category, but a quarrel over whether the transcendental ego truly  “constitutes everything without exception,” as Husserl (1960) dramatically puts it (85). To be more precise, the dispute is about the role of transcendental subjectivity in the constitution of scientific experience and, by extension, about how classical phenomenology should interact with the philosophy of science. If this is correct, then both traditions see value in the philosophical investigation of experience, but disagree about whether scientific experience is continuous with subjective experience or whether it requires that we de-couple phenomenological investigation from the philosophy of consciousness. One important clue in this context is that historical epistemologists frequently define their object in terms of experience: the experience of madness (Foucault), the experience of illness (Canguilhem), the experience of scientific rationality (Bachelard), and so on. In the 1961 “Preface” to History of Madness, for instance, Foucault explains that his is not an inquiry into the nature of madness itself. It is an

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investigation of our experience of it. Khalfa (2013) has taken this claim to mean that Foucault’s archaeological method “is phenomenological” since “its avowed object is a particular experience, that of the other as mad.” For Foucault, “specific structures of power determine experience differently at different moments” (xiv); it is just that these structures are historical rather than transcendental. In a similar vein, Cortois (1996) says that Cavaillès’s core objective always was to  describe the ­experience of mathematical proofs and demonstrations rather than the anatomy of the proofs and demonstrations themselves. By looking at the “mechanisms of mathematical abstraction,” he hoped to make intelligible “the very character of mathematics as an experience.” The same hope motivated Bachelard, except he chose to target the physical sciences. Tiles (1984) has said of Bachelard what Cortois (1996) says of Cavaillès—that if we peel off the top layers, the only thing that remains is a burning desire to “understand the ways in which experience and theory are interconnected in scientific thought” (11). Just as Foucault’s object in History of Madness is the experience of the other as mad, Bachelard’s object in all his early writings is the experience of “striv[ing] towards rationality” (27). Aside from focusing on the description of experience, historical epistemologists expose what Thompson (2008) calls their “phenomenological heritage” in their constant use of phenomenological concepts such as ‘constitution’. While their interpretation of the meaning of this concept isn’t the same as Husserl’s, they seem to agree with Husserl that the philosophical investigation of experience should ideally shed light on the process responsible for the constitution of objects of experience, which is to say, on the various kinds of ‘acts’ that make objects of experience appear as objects. Where they depart from Husserl is in refusing to view these ‘acts’ as synthetic-subjective acts that take place inside the sphere of noetic intentionality. For historical epistemologists, the acts that give rise to objects of scientific experience are historico-objective events that occur in the sphere of scientific history. They are acts of an epistemic field, not of consciousness.23 This interpretation of object-constituting acts allows historical epistemologists to stress the pliability of scientific experience—because, for them, this experience is forged in archaeological rather than egological time (Kockelmans and Kisiel 1970, 318). Some readers, of course, may grant that historical epistemology resembles phenomenology by virtue of its attentiveness to experience and its use of concepts that have a clear phenomenological ring to them, but they may still refuse to call it ‘phenomenological’ on the basis that this title should be strictly reserved for intellectual endeavors that take as their object the experience of a subject. Aside from being possibly question-beggining, this position is inconsitent with how contemporary phenomenologists carve at the joints of their own discipline. If one were to insist too strongly on excluding from the domain of phenomenology any project that challenges the primacy of subjectivity, one would  have to exclude projects that are already recognized as belonging to the phenomenological canon, including those  Khalfa (2011) says Cavaillès’s theory of mathematics anticipated “the post-World War II replacement of a consciousness-based philosophical analysis of truth and intelligibility with a processbased one” (258). 23

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of Reinach,24 Patočka,25 Heidegger,26 and (arguably) even Merleau-Ponty.27 The only way to avoid excommunicating the beatified, it seems, is to expand the horizons of phenomenology and recognize that a project need not be anchored in the philosophy of the subject in order to count as phenomenological. Curiously enough, nobody is more opposed to reading historical epistemology as “a new way of doing phenomenology” than historical epistemologists themselves.28 The irony here, of course, is that nothing frustrates their adamant efforts to draw a clear line in the sand than their own writings, which often express what their authors repress. A particularly telling example is Bachelard, who has nothing but contempt for Husserl’s phenomenology but whose relationship to Husserl constantly oscillates between “respect, total rejection, [and even] ironic critique” (Barsotti 2002, 16). It is almost as if the more Bachelard pushes Husserl away, the more he is pulled back within the orbit of Husserl’s thought. And the same can be said of other figures. Canguilhem berates phenomenology for focusing too much on lived experience, yet the work that made him famous in France, The Normal and the Pathological (1943), is a study of the lived experience of disease.29 In a similar vein, Han (2002) convincingly argues that even as Foucault vilified phenomenology he was unable to keep it

 Although Reinach studied under Husserl in Gottingen and helped found the Yearbook for Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, he rejected Husserl’s idealist interpretation of ‘phenomena’ in favor a realist one in which the phenomena are not subject-dependent. This was a direct attack against Husserl’s declaration that the transcendental ego is arche and telos of all that is. 25  Mensch (2016) argues that Patočka’s oeuvre gives us an ‘asubjective phenomenology’. 26  In his early works such as Being and Time (1927), Heidegger deemphasizes the role of transcendental subjectivity, while in his late ones he seems to discard it altogether to make room for an outlook rooted in the world-disclosing power of poetic language (Gosetti-Ferencei 2004). 27  Merleau-Ponty’s The Structure of Behavior (1947) is guided by a materio-evolutionary conception of organisms in which experience is organized by material principles, not transcendental ones. His late works, especially the Nature lectures, a chiasmatic nature supersedes the transcendental subject as the ultimate source of meaning in the world (Mazis 2016). 28  Historical epistemologists sometimes frame their disagreement with phenomenology as a conflict between two ethical characters: one that acts in the world like a war hero (the French epistemologist) and one that is politically apathetic like Hegel’s ‘beautiful soul’ (the French existentialist phenomenologist). In a speech given at the inauguration of L’Amphithéâtre Jean Cavaillès at the Sorbonne in 1967, Canguilhem mobilizes this framework to suggest that there is something inherent to historical epistemology (he hints at its emphasis on necessitation, normativity, and structures) that turns its followers into agents of action, while there is something inherent to existentialist phenomenology (its focus on contingency, subjectivity, and radical freedom) that turns its disciples into passive figures who cannot leap from political consciousness to political action. Speaking about Cavaillès’s participation in the French resistance movement, Canguilhem polemically says: “Let the supporters of phenomenology and existentialism do better than Cavaillès did, next time, if they can!” (Peden 2014, 21). 29  The Normal and the Pathological bears an uncanny resemblance to the writings of Henri Bergson and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. For a comparison of Canguilhem’s work and Merleau-Ponty’s, see Peña-Guzmán (2013). For an analysis of Canguilhem’s ‘reckoning’ with Bergson, see Feldman (2016). 24

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entirely at bay.30 At one point, he even directly binds himself (and Bachelard and Canguilhem) to Husserl by tracing the origins of French historical epistemology to the début of Husserlianism in France in the 1920s.

6  Further Research For much of the late twentieth century, the story of the relationship between historical epistemology and phenomenology was told monotonously as one of tensions, splits, and divergences, which is to say, as one of inimical opposition. While this isn’t false, it is one-sided. The narrative I prefer to tell is one of tensions and affinities, splits and commonalities, divergences and homologies—one, in short, with a more nuanced understanding of how these pedigrees flourished alongside, fed off of, and competed with, one another from the 1930s onward. In this story, there are real tensions between them, but these tensions acquire significance only against the backdrop of a complex matrix of historical, conceptual, and biographical connections that cannot but give rise to similarities, parallelisms, and isomorphisms. When these traditions are interpreted through the lens of  this matrix, it becomes clear that historical epistemology isn’t ‘the Other’ of phenomenology. It is simply ‘an other’ that happened to be contemporaneous, and in constant close dialogue, with it. The benefit of this narrative is that it enables us to pose new questions about the relationships (historical, biographical, institutional, conceptual, etc.) between these modes of thought. From a historical point of view, for instance, is it significant that some historical epistemologists, such as Alexandre Koyré, were first trained as phenomenologists31 and, conversely, that some vocal critics of phenomenology, such as Jacques Derrida, were first trained under French epistemologists?32 How did these thinkers whose intellectual formation took place between these frameworks negotiate their doctrinal and methodological differences? And how did they understand both of these discourses in relation to the numerous other traditions that were part of the philosophical landscape at that time, including the logical positivism of the Austrians, the neo-Kantianism of the Germans, the empiricism of the British, and even the Annales-style historicism of the French? Pushing this one step further, how should we interpret the works of second- and third-generation historical epistemologists, such as Suzanne Bachelard, whose work cannot be pigeonholed into any one

 Two of Foucault’s most important concepts—the ‘historical a priori’ and ‘philosophical archaeology’—were first coined by Husserl. 31  Alexandre Koyré was a Russian-born, Francophone philosopher who studied directly under Husserl from 1908 to 1911, during Husserl’s famous ‘Göttingen period.’ When Husserl (along with David Hilbert) rejected his dissertation on Zeno’s paradoxes in 1912, Koyré left Göttingen for Paris, where he became a student of Leon Brunschvicg and went on to play a critical role in the French tradition of epistemology. 32  Derrida was Canguilhem’s assistant from 1960 to 1964. 30

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category precisely because it blurs the line between historical epistemology and phenomenology?33 Taking these questions seriously may illuminate what McCumber (2014) calls “the history of continental thought” and give us some new ideas about how to approach contemporary philosophical debates (in epistemology, the philosophy of science, phenomenology, etc.) that require epistemic, historical, and phenomenological considerations.34 I conclude by noting that although it is impossible to ‘de-phenomenologize’ historical epistemology on account of the many ligaments that tie it to the phenomenological movement, it is also impossible to ‘phenomenologize’ it through and through. Nothing in this chapter is intended to suggest that historical epistemology is a straight-forward application of Husserlianism to the history of science. Historical epistemology represents a way of thinking about scientific knowledge and scientific experience that, at least on the reading I am advocating, can be reasonably described as phenomenological. It is a phenomenology of scientific rationality, albeit a phenomenology that due to the demands and exigencies of its object has been purged of transcendental subjectivity or, to quote Foucault (1989), “cleanse[d] of all transcendental narcissism” (203). Tracing, documenting, and processing the ramifications of this cleansing operation, however, remains a task to be achieved.

 Like her predecessors, Suzanne Bachelard is critical of Husserl’s theory of science and attempts to go beyond “the horizon of transcendental research that has marked the originality of Husserlian phenomenology.” Unlike many of her predecessors, she seems to be more aware of the extend to which this ‘going beyond’ is more of a reformation than a rejection. In La conscience de la rationalité. Étude phénoménologique sur la physique mathématique (1958), she calls for the articulation of a “phenomenological epistemology” that recognizes, on the one hand, that subjectivity cannot be eliminated from the study of science (since “the experience of rationality” is essential to the unfolding of scientific history) and, on the other, that scientific subjectivity often effaces itself in its own results. The philosophy of science must, therefore, be conversant with, but ultimately independent from, the philosophy of the subject (6). This results in a non-classical phenomenology that nonetheless has a claim to phenomenological status. In fact, she claims that any phenomenological project that speaks about science must become epistemological in order to be truly phenomenological. In what amounts to a philosophical coup d’état, Bachelard defines as ‘phenomenological’ only those phenomenologico-epistemological projects that overcome the crude subjectivism of Husserl and the equally crude anti-subjectivism of first generation French epistemologists. “If we effect an ‘eidetic variation’ of the possible forms of phenomenology, we see that among the invariant characters that subsist in this variation the following one offers itself: a phenomenological inquiry must be an inquiry with a double orientation, it must have an objective orientation and a subjective orientation” (5). 34  Various debates in the philosophy of science highlight the importance of blending epistemological, historical, and phenomenological insights, including debates about the nature of mathematical beauty (Montaño 2012; Rota 2008; Wells 1988), debates about the nature of historical experience (Díaz-Maldonado 2019), and the now decades-old debate that continues to shape theoretical discussions in social sciences about whether supra-individual structures jeopardizes the freedom of the individuals who come to grief with them (Dreyfus and Rabinow 2014). 33

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