Précis of “Las Meninas” chapter one of The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (Les Mots et les choses), by Michel Foucault
Lindsay Farinella
November 12, 2008
“In this book I wanted to write a history of order, to state how a society reflects upon resemblances among things and how differences between things can be mastered, organized into networks, sketched out according to rational schemes…The Order of Things [is] the history of resemblance, sameness, and identity.”
—Foucault Live
“I should like to know whether the subjects responsible for scientific discourse are not determined in their situation, their function, their perceptive capacity, and their practical possibilities by conditions that dominate and even overwhelm them. In short, I tried to explore scientific discourse not from the point of view of the individuals who are speaking, nor from the point of view of the formal structures of what they are saying, but from the point of view of the rules that come into play in the very existence of such discourse.”
—Foreword to the English edition of The Order of Things
Context of Foucault’s philosophy:
Foucault’s philosophy, often labeled post-structuralism, emphasizes the importance of the construction of reality while rejecting the value of the subject. His work is generally divided into three phases, the first of which includes The Order of Things and is deemed his Archaeologies (Oksala 3). This means he intends his work to analyze all the factors influencing (or structuring) past time periods and the conditions they placed on knowledge. For Foucault, individual subjects alter experiences much less than the structure that invariably governs them. The experience of the subject is informed by hidden (or unconscious) structures and their order of things. However, Foucault does not intend to analyze from the point of view of structure in itself—instead he wants to eventually focus on the rules that allow, disallow, or just classify the notion of truth. Foucault seeks to identify what he calls an episteme; in which the history of knowledge is traced by the various conditions placed on its boundaries. There is always a certain amount of space the individual is allowed to think with. The subject is therefore never the primary explanatory factor—philosophy can (and should) go farther.
Context of the Painting:
Las Meninas, or “The Ladies-in-Waiting,” was painted in 1656 by Diego Velázquez. Originally titled La Familia de Felipe IV, the work depicts the artist himself painting while the Infanta Margarita, her ladies in waiting, a dwarf, servants, and a dog stand nearby. As the work became more well-known through the 19th century, it was widely referenced by both Spanish and French artists. The combination of visual discrepancies, psychological interaction, and its use of light was very unique. The name of the painting was changed to Las Meninas in 1843, as critics attached purpose to the more unconcealed representation of the ladies-in-waiting as opposed to the royal family. The quality and the naturalism/realism of the work remained under admiration, while the mystery of its construction of perception remained under study. Countless theories (including mathematical) were put forth in an attempt to explain the location of the painter, the mirror, the Infanta, as well as the meaning behind the perspective it uses (Luxenberg 25).
Foucault’s Analysis:
Foucault spends the majority of the first part of Las Meninas analyzing with great detail (and fascination) the placement of virtually every element within the painting. He observes the arrangement of the work it shows being painted: though it is quite large and takes up the entire left portion of the image, reasonably giving it some kind of significance, its content is facing away from the viewer. Adding to the irony is the sunlight illuminating the Infanta, her meninas, and the concealed front of the painting—thus the only side available to the viewer remains in the dark.
The light also allows, however, enough of a gleam on a mirror—located slightly left of the work’s center—for the viewer to see the reflections of the King and Queen. Foucault notes their position in reference to the painting’s composition: their actual forms are implied to be in the same location as that of the viewer. In comparison with the unseen, “ironic” canvas and the would-be illuminating light, the mirror is the only visible double, or representation. Yet it duplicates nothing within the parameters of the entire painting.
He also makes note of the captured movement of the work. The painter has just presumably stepped into the light from behind his work to examine his subjects: “And yet this slender line of reciprocal visibility embraces a whole complex network of uncertainties, exchanges, and feints. The painter is turning his eyes towards us only in so far as we happen to occupy the same position as his subject… the observer and the observed take part in a ceaseless exchange. No gaze is stable, or rather, in the neutral furrow of the gaze piercing at a right angle through the canvas, subject and object, the spectator and the model, reverse their roles to infinity” (4).
Therefore the mirror orders two forms of representative identity: the figures the artist is viewing within the context of the painting, and the actual figures in the place the composition of the work opens up the room. Their actual figures are both made unattainable and ultimately implied; only their representations are ordered with placements at each end of the composition. The visibility only speaks to what is invisible: “In this way, the spatial game becomes linguistic in so far as it is related to the formation of subjectivity” (Diego 159). There are two scenes that are sitting as subjects for the other; the spectator notices these two subjects and is forced to reflect on how structure influences this situation.
The spectator of the painting does not see the painting as simply their own viewpoint of whatever speaks to them within the experience. Instead they are forced to take note of the rules controlling the structuring of what they see and what they cannot, or what they can only assume or guess. Instead of noticing or only being aware of the supposed subject of the painting, the King and Queen, the viewer is forced to consider their own place as a spectator in reference to the painter—including the structures that are controlling what they are allowed to apprehend.
For Foucault, Las Meninas represents not an overtly subject-oriented understanding of existence, but one that forces the consideration of how structures are influencing virtually everything. Foucault notes that the nature of the image—or of existence—does not allow “the pure felicity” of what is taking place to be wholly experienced: it is impossible to ignore the fact that there are multiple representations at stake, including the fact that there are structures controlling this circumstance. Focusing on any kind of experience in this manner will result in the spectator ignoring the palpable structures that remain the ultimate influence. In this present time period, the subject has ultimately gone astray in favor of the structures that will invariably provide rules for its experience.
Discussion Questions:
In the foreword to the English edition of The Order of Things, Foucault ends his closing paragraph with a frustrated plea to the English reader not to follow in the French academic world’s (or “half-witted commentators”) footsteps by labeling him a structuralist of any kind. However, he then goes on to admit the existence of certain similarities between his work and that of structuralism. Does Foucault’s work indeed read as a form of post-structuralist philosophy?
How does this compare with Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, especially in view of his own account of what the experience of a painting is like?
Works Cited:
Foucault, Michel. Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 1961-1984. ed., Lotringer. Trans. Hochroth and Johnston. New York: Semiotexte, 1989.
Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Random House, 1970.
Diego, Estrella De. Valazquez’s Las Meninas, “Representing Representation.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Luxenberg, Alisa. Idbid., “The Aura of a Masterpiece: Reponses to Las Meninas in Nineteenth-Century Spain and France.”
Oksala, Johanna. Foucault On Freedom. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Lyotard's Phenomenology
Katie O'Donnell
Jean Francois Lyotard’s Phenomenology
Introduction
Lyotard, most widely known for his elaboration on the postmodern condition, was a student of Merleau-Ponty and of phenomenology, and in his first book of philosophy he is concerned with explicating and critiquing phenomenology as both a style and a system. Written in 1954, Phenomenology is a document of the political and philosophical climate in postwar France, and its conclusions have seemingly little claim on Lyotard’s later work. Indeed, in his monographic work Lyotard: Writing the Event Geoffrey Bennington writes only that this early work was “criticized and displaced” (1) in Lyotard’s next major work, Discours, Figure. In a three-volume collection of Lyotard scholarship, the task of mentioning Phenomenology as part of the Lyotard corpus is left to the editor, Derek Robbins, who makes a relatively brief reference to the work in his introduction. Yet in the introduction to the text itself, Gayle Ormiston maintains that this work is a preliminary piece to Lyotard’s more well established ideas, emphasizing the episodic character of history that “signifies the necessity of linking, making connections, and noticing it could be otherwise” (13), and appropriating the language of The Differend to explain Lyotard’s philosophical approach within the text. Though I am certainly no Lyotard scholar, I opt for the middle ground, as it seems evident that while Lyotard is not, as Ormiston occasionally seems to claim, anticipating conceptual work that remains twenty years in the future, the concepts at play within Phenomenology, as well as phenomenology itself, exerted an influence on Lyotard’s work beyond this particular study.
Phenomenology is structured explicitly to examine both the status of phenomenology as a critical tool (like Marxism) and as a philosophical system. Lyotard writes, “that philosophy must not only be grasped as event, and ‘from the outside,’ but worked through as thought—that is, as problem, genesis, give-and-take movement of thought” (31). It is this temporal, historical nature of phenomenology that attracts Lyotard and motivates his desire to situate phenomenology itself within history. As Derek Robbins writes, “What Lyotard likes in phenomenology, or what he adds to it and in part derives from it, is that it represents the complete antithesis of static, systematic philosophy” (xvii). With its intentional consciousness and focus on lived experience, phenomenology is involved in a process of recovering humanity itself, in legitimating our application of the description “human sciences” to disciplines like psychology, sociology, and history. To attempt this recovery phenomenology proposes an, if not new, than at least philosophically revolutionary conception of the human subject in which subject and object are entangled in a mutually defining relationship of intentionality. Though Husserl’s phenomenology may suffer too strong a Cartesian influence, the fluidity of the relation between self and world, self and other, self and society, at least provides a needed stepping stone for Lyotard’s later assertions concerning the decentering of the self. However, in Phenomenology Lyotard is still concerned with the unity of the subject. He uses this conception of the phenomenological subject to critique relativist notions like psychologism and historicism, and to combat objectivism. Our historicity is not a problem to be dealt with in order to achieve an objective account of history; rather, it is the condition of our being able to do history, to recognize the historical.
Though the phenomenological style proves a useful tool for clarifying the role of lived experience within the human sciences, Lyotard is unsatisfied with the “philosophy of history hastily constructed by Husserl in Crisis” (133), specifically, with phenomenology’s ambiguous nature. He argues that phenomenology poses an ambiguous history and thus imposes its own ambiguity on history, which ends in manifesting the actual ambiguity of phenomenology itself (133). According to Marxism. Which is an approach much better suited to thinking history politically and concretely, since, as Lyotard asserts, Marxism will never strip matter of its meaning, since matter is already meaning. He argues that because the “phenomenality of the phenomena is never itself a phenomenal datum” (134) phenomenology is unable to phenomenologically explain the decision to identify being and phenomena and thus needs to “establish the right to do phenomenology” which can only be established, according to Lyotard, by philosophical systematization. As Lyotard writes in his “Note on Husserl and Hegel,” “This double proposition—that Being is already meaning and that there is no origin which founds knowledge—permits a clear distinction between the Husserlian and Hegelian positions, apart from their common criticism of Kant” (66). While Husserlian phenomenology agrees with the first part of this proposition, but refuses to give up on the originary, formulating an originary lifeworld that comes close to resembling a transcendence similar to that of the Kantian in-itself. No discourse can “properly say anything about it” (67). Thus Husserl is, throughout his philosophical career, engaged in a “battle of language against itself aimed at attaining the originary” (68), a battle which philosophy can never win since “the originary, once described, is as described no longer originary” (68). Phenomenology as proposed by Husserl can never live up to its own standards, though its attempt to recover humanity remains noteworthy in Lyotard’s eyes, and its return to lived experience remains essential to explicating the human sciences.
Possible Discussion Questions
-All that being said, what role do the concepts of “radical beginning” and “originality” play within phenomenology, to either its benefit or detriment?
-In her book Beyond Postmodern Politics Honi Fern Haber writes that, “All political theories begin from assumptions about the nature of the person and society. A political theory will be judged useful or true or convincing to the extent to which it matches one’s background beliefs regarding the quiddity and parameter of the self and society” (9). In this book Haber is examining the structuralist/poststructuralist accounts of the self. How does phenomenology articulate the self? Is this articulation sufficient?
Jean Francois Lyotard’s Phenomenology
Introduction
Lyotard, most widely known for his elaboration on the postmodern condition, was a student of Merleau-Ponty and of phenomenology, and in his first book of philosophy he is concerned with explicating and critiquing phenomenology as both a style and a system. Written in 1954, Phenomenology is a document of the political and philosophical climate in postwar France, and its conclusions have seemingly little claim on Lyotard’s later work. Indeed, in his monographic work Lyotard: Writing the Event Geoffrey Bennington writes only that this early work was “criticized and displaced” (1) in Lyotard’s next major work, Discours, Figure. In a three-volume collection of Lyotard scholarship, the task of mentioning Phenomenology as part of the Lyotard corpus is left to the editor, Derek Robbins, who makes a relatively brief reference to the work in his introduction. Yet in the introduction to the text itself, Gayle Ormiston maintains that this work is a preliminary piece to Lyotard’s more well established ideas, emphasizing the episodic character of history that “signifies the necessity of linking, making connections, and noticing it could be otherwise” (13), and appropriating the language of The Differend to explain Lyotard’s philosophical approach within the text. Though I am certainly no Lyotard scholar, I opt for the middle ground, as it seems evident that while Lyotard is not, as Ormiston occasionally seems to claim, anticipating conceptual work that remains twenty years in the future, the concepts at play within Phenomenology, as well as phenomenology itself, exerted an influence on Lyotard’s work beyond this particular study.
Phenomenology is structured explicitly to examine both the status of phenomenology as a critical tool (like Marxism) and as a philosophical system. Lyotard writes, “that philosophy must not only be grasped as event, and ‘from the outside,’ but worked through as thought—that is, as problem, genesis, give-and-take movement of thought” (31). It is this temporal, historical nature of phenomenology that attracts Lyotard and motivates his desire to situate phenomenology itself within history. As Derek Robbins writes, “What Lyotard likes in phenomenology, or what he adds to it and in part derives from it, is that it represents the complete antithesis of static, systematic philosophy” (xvii). With its intentional consciousness and focus on lived experience, phenomenology is involved in a process of recovering humanity itself, in legitimating our application of the description “human sciences” to disciplines like psychology, sociology, and history. To attempt this recovery phenomenology proposes an, if not new, than at least philosophically revolutionary conception of the human subject in which subject and object are entangled in a mutually defining relationship of intentionality. Though Husserl’s phenomenology may suffer too strong a Cartesian influence, the fluidity of the relation between self and world, self and other, self and society, at least provides a needed stepping stone for Lyotard’s later assertions concerning the decentering of the self. However, in Phenomenology Lyotard is still concerned with the unity of the subject. He uses this conception of the phenomenological subject to critique relativist notions like psychologism and historicism, and to combat objectivism. Our historicity is not a problem to be dealt with in order to achieve an objective account of history; rather, it is the condition of our being able to do history, to recognize the historical.
Though the phenomenological style proves a useful tool for clarifying the role of lived experience within the human sciences, Lyotard is unsatisfied with the “philosophy of history hastily constructed by Husserl in Crisis” (133), specifically, with phenomenology’s ambiguous nature. He argues that phenomenology poses an ambiguous history and thus imposes its own ambiguity on history, which ends in manifesting the actual ambiguity of phenomenology itself (133). According to Marxism. Which is an approach much better suited to thinking history politically and concretely, since, as Lyotard asserts, Marxism will never strip matter of its meaning, since matter is already meaning. He argues that because the “phenomenality of the phenomena is never itself a phenomenal datum” (134) phenomenology is unable to phenomenologically explain the decision to identify being and phenomena and thus needs to “establish the right to do phenomenology” which can only be established, according to Lyotard, by philosophical systematization. As Lyotard writes in his “Note on Husserl and Hegel,” “This double proposition—that Being is already meaning and that there is no origin which founds knowledge—permits a clear distinction between the Husserlian and Hegelian positions, apart from their common criticism of Kant” (66). While Husserlian phenomenology agrees with the first part of this proposition, but refuses to give up on the originary, formulating an originary lifeworld that comes close to resembling a transcendence similar to that of the Kantian in-itself. No discourse can “properly say anything about it” (67). Thus Husserl is, throughout his philosophical career, engaged in a “battle of language against itself aimed at attaining the originary” (68), a battle which philosophy can never win since “the originary, once described, is as described no longer originary” (68). Phenomenology as proposed by Husserl can never live up to its own standards, though its attempt to recover humanity remains noteworthy in Lyotard’s eyes, and its return to lived experience remains essential to explicating the human sciences.
Possible Discussion Questions
-All that being said, what role do the concepts of “radical beginning” and “originality” play within phenomenology, to either its benefit or detriment?
-In her book Beyond Postmodern Politics Honi Fern Haber writes that, “All political theories begin from assumptions about the nature of the person and society. A political theory will be judged useful or true or convincing to the extent to which it matches one’s background beliefs regarding the quiddity and parameter of the self and society” (9). In this book Haber is examining the structuralist/poststructuralist accounts of the self. How does phenomenology articulate the self? Is this articulation sufficient?
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Dr. Whitmire's comments about our class
Thank you so much for inviting me to join such a great group of students. I would love to reach the point of having 15 students registering for a class on phenomenology at WCU – much less a group that is prepared to discuss the really important issues in the texts! Your students are clearly very bright, and beyond that, I also understand now what Cal meant in his comments to you about them asking genuinely meaningful questions. It was a real pleasure to be able to sit down with them....
Monday, October 20, 2008
More comments from Prof. Schrag
Here is what Prof. Schrag wrote to me about our seminar and meeting with some of you afterward:
"I much enjoyed chatting with you on issues that matter and was happy for the opportunity to engage some of your students. They impressed me as quite gifted for college undergraduates. My brief encounters with them reminded me of Tillich's assessment of his encounter with the Purdue students when he came for the Franklin Matchette Lecture. He told me: 'My colleagues at Harvard asks questions that are technically correct. Your students ask questions that are meaningful'. And so also with your students! Be well, continue to do good work."
And so I implore you to take Prof. Schrag's advice and continue the good work with Dr. Whitmire this week as we discuss Merleau-Ponty and Caputo.
"I much enjoyed chatting with you on issues that matter and was happy for the opportunity to engage some of your students. They impressed me as quite gifted for college undergraduates. My brief encounters with them reminded me of Tillich's assessment of his encounter with the Purdue students when he came for the Franklin Matchette Lecture. He told me: 'My colleagues at Harvard asks questions that are technically correct. Your students ask questions that are meaningful'. And so also with your students! Be well, continue to do good work."
And so I implore you to take Prof. Schrag's advice and continue the good work with Dr. Whitmire this week as we discuss Merleau-Ponty and Caputo.
graded philosophical reports & term paper projects
I will return your graded philosophical reports in class this Wednesday evening. I want to encourage you to speak with me about your term paper projects this week if possible, since I have surgery this Friday and will be unavailable for meeting early next week.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Dr. Whitmire joins us 10/22
Prof. John Whitmire will be joining us in our next class on October 22nd for our discussion of Merleau-Ponty's essay "The Primacy of Perception" and John Caputo's essay "Jewgreek Bodies." Dr. Whitmire is a talented and accomplished scholar of contemporary philosophy, and it will be a wonderul pleasure and a distinct honor to have him participate in our seminar. Let's be ready for this discussion. I will open with few remarks about the Preface to Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception.
Thanks from Prof. Schrag
Dear Class:
Dr. Schrag told me that he very much appreciated being able to meet with us last week. I know that he was impressed at the level of our discussion and the quality of work of everyone who participated. [The conversation continued later informally at the Brew & View, of course.] Congratulations!
Dr. Schrag told me that he very much appreciated being able to meet with us last week. I know that he was impressed at the level of our discussion and the quality of work of everyone who participated. [The conversation continued later informally at the Brew & View, of course.] Congratulations!
Thursday, October 2, 2008
about the philosophical reports
There is a web address on the right top corner of this blog page that you should use to go to the philosophical reports. Please take a look at all of your hard work!
Being and Time, Division I, chapter III
Jacob Kountz
Précis of Being and Time, Division I, chapter III
In this chapter Heidegger attempts to discover the worldhood of the world. For phenomenology, this does not mean the scientific study of nature. Instead, Heidegger characterizes being-in-the-world as constitutive of part of Dasein’s being—“If no Dasein exists, there is no world,” and, “World is a characteristic of Dasein itself.” To clarify the world will mean to describe Dasein’s immediate experience of it (cf. Husserl’s Lebenswelt). The question, then, is how we exist in the world, not what the world is (Schrag 27).
¶ 14. The Idea of the Worldhood of the World in General
- If we are to reach the worldhood of the world, we must first recognize the path our investigation should take. Investigating nature, the way that mathematical sciences do, or taking inventory of objects in the world, will never reveal the world as such, because nature and objects presuppose the world.
- Because Dasein’s type of being is Existenz, Dasein is primordially standing out toward the world (Schrag). Being-in-the-world, then, is a fundamental part or existentiale of Dasein’s being.
- Heidegger distinguishes four ways the word ‘world’ is used:
1. As an ontical concept that signifies the totality of entities
2. As an ontological concept that signifies the Being of intraworldly entities
3. In another ontical sense, as the ‘wherein’ a factical Dasein lives
4. As an ontologico-existential concept of shared worldhood. This is the path Heidegger is after, and in this sense, only Dasein can be said to be worldly.
- If one fails to see Being-in-the-world as a state of Dasein, the phenomenon of worldhood likewise gets passed over. Philosophy has traditionally passed over worldhood because it has failed to see Dasein as in the world.
- “The world of everyday Dasein which is closest to it, is the environment.”
- “We shall seek the worldhood of the environment by going through an ontological Interpretation of those entities within-the-environment which we encounter as closest to us.”
¶ 15. The Being of the Entities Encountered in the Environment
- The kind of dealing which is closest to us is not any sort of discursive or theoretical thinking, but rather that kind of concern which manipulates things and puts them to use; and this has its own kind of existentiel ‘knowledge’ that Heidegger designates as concern. Concern designates our dealings with intraworldly beings, and is the foundation of theoretical knowledge.
- Equipment: essentially serves in-order-to. “…Dasein finds itself always amidst an already existing world of equipment, consisting of significant things each of which is experiences as something. The readiness-to-hand of a piece of equipment consists in its having a certain significance” (Brandom, 217). Equipment is always in reference to a totality of equipment, and necessarily includes a reference and assignment to materials and to the person who will use it, although this is not thematically grasped. In our concernful dealing with the world we encounter not mere things or things with values, but equipment. The kind of ‘sight’ which sees this is called circumspection.
- “The kind of Being which equipment possesses—in which it manifests itself in its own right—we call ‘readiness-to-hand’ [Zuhandenheit].” Readiness-to-hand must, in a way, withdraw in order to be authentically ready-to-hand: only when we are focusing on the work, using the tool and not thinking about it is it primordially ready-to-hand.
- The work to be produced, as the “towards-which” has the kind of Being that belongs to equipment.
- “The system of ongoing purposes and projects he refers to as hierarchical ‘towards-which,’ ‘in-order-to,’ and ‘for-the-sake-of’ relations between our activities and our short- and long-term goals” (Hall 127).
¶ 16. How the Worldly Character of the Environment Announces itself in Entities Within-the-world
- Dasein is ontically constituted by Being-in-the-World and an understanding of its own being, no matter how indistinct, belongs to Dasein, and thus Dasein has a pre-ontological understanding of the world. Investigating the intraworldly character of things will help us investigate the worldhood of the world.
- The intraworldly character of things becomes apparent when the equipmental order is disturbed, “when things go wrong in the right sort of way” (Hall 127).
1. when equipment is unusable it is called conspicuous
2. when missing it is called obtrusive
3. when what we don’t need is in the way, unneeded it is called obstinate
In these cases a being that should be ready-to-hand appears as ‘merely there’, stuff, or as Heidegger calls it, present-at-hand.
- The structure of the being of what is ready-to-hand as equipment is determined by references or assignments. When an assignment has been disturbed, then it becomes explicit. The totality of the ‘towards-this’ is uncovered and lights up worldhood.
- When something goes wrong with our dealings with equipment, the world of practical activity shows up. The world is this network of relations which contains equipmental totalities with their internal relations—that is, references—and their external relations—assignments—to the ones who use them.
- Being-in-the-world amounts to a non-thematic circumspective absorption in references or assignments constitutive for the readiness-to-hand of a totality of equipment. Thus Heidegger wants to look at references and signs more closely.
¶ 17. References and Signs
- As discovered above, a piece of equipment has meaning only within a totality of references, and it has become clear also, but only in a preliminary way, that there must be a relation between this referential totality and the worldhood of the world.
- “A sign is not a Thing which stands to another Thing in the relationship of indicating; it is rather an item of equipment which explicitly raises a totality of equipment into our circumspection so that together with it the worldly character of the ready-to-hand announces itself.”
- Referring is, formally, a relating. But relation is not a genus for kinds or references which may somehow become differentiated as sign, symbol, expression, or signification. Referring as indicating is grounded in the Being-structure of equipment, in serviceability for….
- Dasein is always somehow directed by signs or references and on its way; standing and waiting are only limiting cases of this directional ‘on-its-way’.
- “The sign is not only ready-to-hand with other equipment, but in its readiness-to-hand the environment becomes in each case explicitly accessible for circumspection. A sign is something ontically ready-to-hand, which functions both as this definite equipment and as something indicative of the ontological structure of readiness-to-hand, or referential totalities, and of worldhood.” Signs signal the world.
¶ 18. Involvement and Significance; the Worldhood of the World
- The character of Being which belongs to the ready-to-hand is an involvement (Bewandtnis which Kockelmans translates as ‘being destined’ or ‘destination’). If something has an involvement or destination, this implies letting it be involved with or destined for something. This relationship is called assignment or reference. This involvement or destination is ontological, not ontical.
- The being proper to the ready-to-hand is characterized by a referential structure, it has in itself the character of ‘being relative to….’ For instance, the hammer is essentially relative to, involved in, or destined for hammering. This ‘being relative’ defines the essence of something ready-to-hand.
- The involvement or destination reveals the proper being of something ready-to-hand. Dasein is the ultimate ‘what…for’ in which all references included in destination find their final term. In other words, every equipmental totality is ultimately for Dasein.
- This a priori letting-something-be-involved is the condition for the possibility of encountering anything ready-to-hand. In other words, to discover the readiness-to-hand of a being, Dasein must first discover its destination by ‘letting it be’, for instance, a hammer, which means letting it hammer. Science doesn’t ‘let things be,’ but phenomenology does.
- “The ‘wherein’ of an act of understanding which assigns or refers itself, is that for which one lets entities be encountered in the kind of Being that belongs to involvements; and this ‘wherein’ is the phenomenon of the world. And the structure of that to which Dasein assigns itself is what makes up the worldhood of the world” (119). We can say, then, that worldhood is that referential totality which constitutes significance.
- The significance thus disclosed is an existential state of Dasein—of its being-in-the-world; and as such, it is the ontical condition for the possibility that a totality of involvements can be discovered at all.
- Hall argues that we should not understand worldhood as merely a sort of practical comportment towards the world, but rather as something more primordial, “which precludes any use of the subject-object model…” (124). This is a fundamental split from Husserl’s emphasis on cognitive acts of consciousness.
- Three types of being in the chapter:
1. ready-to-hand, a category: equipment, assigned or referred to something, involved
2. presence-at-hand, a category: ‘objective, person-independent, causally interacting subjects of scientific inquiry’ (Brandom).
3. the being of that ontical condition which makes it possible for entities within-the-world to be discovered at all—the worldhood of the world: an existentiale
- In relation to the previous section: The being of equipment is involvement. And it is such involvement that comprises a system of references or assignments. An entity is discovered when it is assigned or referred to something.
¶ 19. The Definition of the ‘World’ as res extensa ¶ 20. Foundations of the Ontological Definition of the ‘World’ ¶ 21. Hermeneutical Discussion of the Cartesian Ontology of the ‘World’
- As Heidegger argued in his introduction, one of phenomenology’s chief methods is the destruction of the history of ontology. Another is the use of hermeneutics in order to understand. This is precisely what he is doing in this section.
- Descartes’ conception of the world has a number of problems:
1. Descartes understands the world as corporeal, extended substance.
2. Descartes only understands things as entities
3. The meaning of being is held to be universal and self-evident, and thus, as the Heidegger’s introduction maintains, Descartes misinterprets being.
4. Descartes reaches neither an ontological explication of the world nor does he characterize entities in such a way that they can lead toward the phenomenon of the world. Instead Descartes fails to destroy the history of his problem and only interprets Nature.
5. Descartes sees Dasein as ultimately the same type of being as res extensa—namely, as substance
- Descartes’ influence on modern philosophy is unfortunately enormous, according to Heidegger. Consequently, modern philosophy tends to falsify our immediate interactions with the world and hypostatizes Dasein and the world into substances (Schrag 28).
¶ 22. The Spatiality of the Ready-to-hand Within-the-world
- What is ready-to-hand in our everyday dealings has the character of closeness. According to the use we make of it, equipment is more or less close to us. “The worldliness of Dasein puts it in a position to encounter things; their physical nearness does not” (Vycinas 32).
- Equipment has a place it belongs, its region. The region is the a priori condition for the assignment of places. “The readiness-to-hand which belongs to any such region beforehand has the character of inconspicuous familiarity, and it has it in an even more primordial sense than does the Being of the ready-to-hand. The region itself becomes visible in a conspicuous manner only when one discovers the ready-to-hand circumspectively and does so in the deficient modes of concern.” As with equipment, often we don’t notice the region until something is disturbed or missing.
- “To encounter the ready-to-hand in its environmental space remains ontically possible only because Dasein itself is ‘spatial’ with regard to its Being-in-the-world.”
¶ 23. The Spatiality of Being-in-the-world
- Dasein is not a being-present-at-hand in the way a hammer is. Yet Dasein is a priori in the world spatially. Dasein’s spatiality shows the characters of de-severance and directionality.
- De-severance (or de-distancing): a constitutive state or existentiale of Dasein’s Being; it circumspectively makes farness vanish, brings close. “The circumspective de-severing of Dasein’s everydayness reveals the Being-in-itself of the ‘true world’—of that entity which Dasein, as something existing, is already alongside.”
- Something can be very close to us and yet be environmentally more remote.
- “As Being-in-the-world, Dasein maintains itself essentially in a desevering.” “Dasein is essentially de-severance—that is, it is spatial.”
- Dasein is also directional. Every de-severing is directional, that is, it gives a place to things.
¶ 24. Space and Dasein’s Spatiality
- Encountering entities within the world means giving them space, making room for them, freeing the ready-to-hand for its spatiality. Making room is an existentiale and belongs to being-in-the-world
- Space is not in the subject, nor is the world in space. Kockelmans expresses this by saying that Dasein, itself neither subjective nor objective, spatializes. This is a major break with Kant: “Space is nothing else than the form of all phenomena of the external sense, that is, the subjective condition of the sensibility under which alone external intuition is possible.”
- Space itself does not have the kind of being of something present-at-hand or the kind of being that Dasein has. Note that Heidegger is okay with this. There can be a multitude of ways of being.
What is the Ultimate Significance of Worldhood?
Heidegger reveals the world as the most basic and common structure of involvements that are intimately related to human being. We do not normally focus on our amazing familiarity and skillful dealing with the world. What is beautiful about Heidegger’s account is that things appear to us as what they are only against this worldly background of familiarity, skillfulness, and concern. Pieces of equipment are in their very being the roles they serve their users, and those users (Dasein) are in their very being (although not exhaustively) the practical roles into which they cast themselves. Disturbances in this practical activity allow us to take hold of the substratum of our dealings with the world. “All human activity is worldly; that is, it requires a background of implicit familiarity, competence, and concern or involvement” (Hall).
Questions:
1. Heidegger makes it clear that he is aiming at a priori structures of Dasein. However, unlike Kant, he doesn’t want to base these a priori conditions as structures of the mind. ‘Where’ are they, then? In our pre-ontological understanding of the world (as Schrag implies, 33)? Coinciding with the type of being we are, i.e., existential? Or what?
2. What status does the body receive in Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein? He seems to have an ambivalent stance toward it. Dasein is embodied for Heidegger, yet he never mentions that body.
3. “ [Phenomenology] tries to give a direct description of our experience as it is, without taking account of its psychological origin and the causal explanations which the scientist, the historian or the sociologist maybe able to provide…yet the whole of Sein und Zeit springs from an indication given by Husserl and amounts to no more than an explicit account the ‘natürlicher Weltbegriff’ or the ‘Lebenswelt’…. (Merleau-Ponty vii). I think Heidegger would hate this because he believes he is doing something deeper by revealing the being of beings, and that this is a ‘deeper’ level. Do you think Heidegger accomplishes this task; is he going any deeper?
References:
Brandom, Robert. “Heidegger’s Categories in Being and Time.” From A Companion to Heidegger. Ed. Dreyfus & Wrathall. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005.
Hall, Harrison. “Intentionality and world: Division I of Being and Time.” From The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger. Ed. Charles Guignon. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Kockelmans, Joseph. Martin Heidegger: A First Introduction to His Philosophy. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1965.
Schrag, Calvin. Existence and Freedom: Towards an Ontology of Human Finitude. Northwestern University Press, 1983.
Vycinas, Vincent. Earth and Gods: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger. The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969.
Précis of Being and Time, Division I, chapter III
In this chapter Heidegger attempts to discover the worldhood of the world. For phenomenology, this does not mean the scientific study of nature. Instead, Heidegger characterizes being-in-the-world as constitutive of part of Dasein’s being—“If no Dasein exists, there is no world,” and, “World is a characteristic of Dasein itself.” To clarify the world will mean to describe Dasein’s immediate experience of it (cf. Husserl’s Lebenswelt). The question, then, is how we exist in the world, not what the world is (Schrag 27).
¶ 14. The Idea of the Worldhood of the World in General
- If we are to reach the worldhood of the world, we must first recognize the path our investigation should take. Investigating nature, the way that mathematical sciences do, or taking inventory of objects in the world, will never reveal the world as such, because nature and objects presuppose the world.
- Because Dasein’s type of being is Existenz, Dasein is primordially standing out toward the world (Schrag). Being-in-the-world, then, is a fundamental part or existentiale of Dasein’s being.
- Heidegger distinguishes four ways the word ‘world’ is used:
1. As an ontical concept that signifies the totality of entities
2. As an ontological concept that signifies the Being of intraworldly entities
3. In another ontical sense, as the ‘wherein’ a factical Dasein lives
4. As an ontologico-existential concept of shared worldhood. This is the path Heidegger is after, and in this sense, only Dasein can be said to be worldly.
- If one fails to see Being-in-the-world as a state of Dasein, the phenomenon of worldhood likewise gets passed over. Philosophy has traditionally passed over worldhood because it has failed to see Dasein as in the world.
- “The world of everyday Dasein which is closest to it, is the environment.”
- “We shall seek the worldhood of the environment by going through an ontological Interpretation of those entities within-the-environment which we encounter as closest to us.”
¶ 15. The Being of the Entities Encountered in the Environment
- The kind of dealing which is closest to us is not any sort of discursive or theoretical thinking, but rather that kind of concern which manipulates things and puts them to use; and this has its own kind of existentiel ‘knowledge’ that Heidegger designates as concern. Concern designates our dealings with intraworldly beings, and is the foundation of theoretical knowledge.
- Equipment: essentially serves in-order-to. “…Dasein finds itself always amidst an already existing world of equipment, consisting of significant things each of which is experiences as something. The readiness-to-hand of a piece of equipment consists in its having a certain significance” (Brandom, 217). Equipment is always in reference to a totality of equipment, and necessarily includes a reference and assignment to materials and to the person who will use it, although this is not thematically grasped. In our concernful dealing with the world we encounter not mere things or things with values, but equipment. The kind of ‘sight’ which sees this is called circumspection.
- “The kind of Being which equipment possesses—in which it manifests itself in its own right—we call ‘readiness-to-hand’ [Zuhandenheit].” Readiness-to-hand must, in a way, withdraw in order to be authentically ready-to-hand: only when we are focusing on the work, using the tool and not thinking about it is it primordially ready-to-hand.
- The work to be produced, as the “towards-which” has the kind of Being that belongs to equipment.
- “The system of ongoing purposes and projects he refers to as hierarchical ‘towards-which,’ ‘in-order-to,’ and ‘for-the-sake-of’ relations between our activities and our short- and long-term goals” (Hall 127).
¶ 16. How the Worldly Character of the Environment Announces itself in Entities Within-the-world
- Dasein is ontically constituted by Being-in-the-World and an understanding of its own being, no matter how indistinct, belongs to Dasein, and thus Dasein has a pre-ontological understanding of the world. Investigating the intraworldly character of things will help us investigate the worldhood of the world.
- The intraworldly character of things becomes apparent when the equipmental order is disturbed, “when things go wrong in the right sort of way” (Hall 127).
1. when equipment is unusable it is called conspicuous
2. when missing it is called obtrusive
3. when what we don’t need is in the way, unneeded it is called obstinate
In these cases a being that should be ready-to-hand appears as ‘merely there’, stuff, or as Heidegger calls it, present-at-hand.
- The structure of the being of what is ready-to-hand as equipment is determined by references or assignments. When an assignment has been disturbed, then it becomes explicit. The totality of the ‘towards-this’ is uncovered and lights up worldhood.
- When something goes wrong with our dealings with equipment, the world of practical activity shows up. The world is this network of relations which contains equipmental totalities with their internal relations—that is, references—and their external relations—assignments—to the ones who use them.
- Being-in-the-world amounts to a non-thematic circumspective absorption in references or assignments constitutive for the readiness-to-hand of a totality of equipment. Thus Heidegger wants to look at references and signs more closely.
¶ 17. References and Signs
- As discovered above, a piece of equipment has meaning only within a totality of references, and it has become clear also, but only in a preliminary way, that there must be a relation between this referential totality and the worldhood of the world.
- “A sign is not a Thing which stands to another Thing in the relationship of indicating; it is rather an item of equipment which explicitly raises a totality of equipment into our circumspection so that together with it the worldly character of the ready-to-hand announces itself.”
- Referring is, formally, a relating. But relation is not a genus for kinds or references which may somehow become differentiated as sign, symbol, expression, or signification. Referring as indicating is grounded in the Being-structure of equipment, in serviceability for….
- Dasein is always somehow directed by signs or references and on its way; standing and waiting are only limiting cases of this directional ‘on-its-way’.
- “The sign is not only ready-to-hand with other equipment, but in its readiness-to-hand the environment becomes in each case explicitly accessible for circumspection. A sign is something ontically ready-to-hand, which functions both as this definite equipment and as something indicative of the ontological structure of readiness-to-hand, or referential totalities, and of worldhood.” Signs signal the world.
¶ 18. Involvement and Significance; the Worldhood of the World
- The character of Being which belongs to the ready-to-hand is an involvement (Bewandtnis which Kockelmans translates as ‘being destined’ or ‘destination’). If something has an involvement or destination, this implies letting it be involved with or destined for something. This relationship is called assignment or reference. This involvement or destination is ontological, not ontical.
- The being proper to the ready-to-hand is characterized by a referential structure, it has in itself the character of ‘being relative to….’ For instance, the hammer is essentially relative to, involved in, or destined for hammering. This ‘being relative’ defines the essence of something ready-to-hand.
- The involvement or destination reveals the proper being of something ready-to-hand. Dasein is the ultimate ‘what…for’ in which all references included in destination find their final term. In other words, every equipmental totality is ultimately for Dasein.
- This a priori letting-something-be-involved is the condition for the possibility of encountering anything ready-to-hand. In other words, to discover the readiness-to-hand of a being, Dasein must first discover its destination by ‘letting it be’, for instance, a hammer, which means letting it hammer. Science doesn’t ‘let things be,’ but phenomenology does.
- “The ‘wherein’ of an act of understanding which assigns or refers itself, is that for which one lets entities be encountered in the kind of Being that belongs to involvements; and this ‘wherein’ is the phenomenon of the world. And the structure of that to which Dasein assigns itself is what makes up the worldhood of the world” (119). We can say, then, that worldhood is that referential totality which constitutes significance.
- The significance thus disclosed is an existential state of Dasein—of its being-in-the-world; and as such, it is the ontical condition for the possibility that a totality of involvements can be discovered at all.
- Hall argues that we should not understand worldhood as merely a sort of practical comportment towards the world, but rather as something more primordial, “which precludes any use of the subject-object model…” (124). This is a fundamental split from Husserl’s emphasis on cognitive acts of consciousness.
- Three types of being in the chapter:
1. ready-to-hand, a category: equipment, assigned or referred to something, involved
2. presence-at-hand, a category: ‘objective, person-independent, causally interacting subjects of scientific inquiry’ (Brandom).
3. the being of that ontical condition which makes it possible for entities within-the-world to be discovered at all—the worldhood of the world: an existentiale
- In relation to the previous section: The being of equipment is involvement. And it is such involvement that comprises a system of references or assignments. An entity is discovered when it is assigned or referred to something.
¶ 19. The Definition of the ‘World’ as res extensa ¶ 20. Foundations of the Ontological Definition of the ‘World’ ¶ 21. Hermeneutical Discussion of the Cartesian Ontology of the ‘World’
- As Heidegger argued in his introduction, one of phenomenology’s chief methods is the destruction of the history of ontology. Another is the use of hermeneutics in order to understand. This is precisely what he is doing in this section.
- Descartes’ conception of the world has a number of problems:
1. Descartes understands the world as corporeal, extended substance.
2. Descartes only understands things as entities
3. The meaning of being is held to be universal and self-evident, and thus, as the Heidegger’s introduction maintains, Descartes misinterprets being.
4. Descartes reaches neither an ontological explication of the world nor does he characterize entities in such a way that they can lead toward the phenomenon of the world. Instead Descartes fails to destroy the history of his problem and only interprets Nature.
5. Descartes sees Dasein as ultimately the same type of being as res extensa—namely, as substance
- Descartes’ influence on modern philosophy is unfortunately enormous, according to Heidegger. Consequently, modern philosophy tends to falsify our immediate interactions with the world and hypostatizes Dasein and the world into substances (Schrag 28).
¶ 22. The Spatiality of the Ready-to-hand Within-the-world
- What is ready-to-hand in our everyday dealings has the character of closeness. According to the use we make of it, equipment is more or less close to us. “The worldliness of Dasein puts it in a position to encounter things; their physical nearness does not” (Vycinas 32).
- Equipment has a place it belongs, its region. The region is the a priori condition for the assignment of places. “The readiness-to-hand which belongs to any such region beforehand has the character of inconspicuous familiarity, and it has it in an even more primordial sense than does the Being of the ready-to-hand. The region itself becomes visible in a conspicuous manner only when one discovers the ready-to-hand circumspectively and does so in the deficient modes of concern.” As with equipment, often we don’t notice the region until something is disturbed or missing.
- “To encounter the ready-to-hand in its environmental space remains ontically possible only because Dasein itself is ‘spatial’ with regard to its Being-in-the-world.”
¶ 23. The Spatiality of Being-in-the-world
- Dasein is not a being-present-at-hand in the way a hammer is. Yet Dasein is a priori in the world spatially. Dasein’s spatiality shows the characters of de-severance and directionality.
- De-severance (or de-distancing): a constitutive state or existentiale of Dasein’s Being; it circumspectively makes farness vanish, brings close. “The circumspective de-severing of Dasein’s everydayness reveals the Being-in-itself of the ‘true world’—of that entity which Dasein, as something existing, is already alongside.”
- Something can be very close to us and yet be environmentally more remote.
- “As Being-in-the-world, Dasein maintains itself essentially in a desevering.” “Dasein is essentially de-severance—that is, it is spatial.”
- Dasein is also directional. Every de-severing is directional, that is, it gives a place to things.
¶ 24. Space and Dasein’s Spatiality
- Encountering entities within the world means giving them space, making room for them, freeing the ready-to-hand for its spatiality. Making room is an existentiale and belongs to being-in-the-world
- Space is not in the subject, nor is the world in space. Kockelmans expresses this by saying that Dasein, itself neither subjective nor objective, spatializes. This is a major break with Kant: “Space is nothing else than the form of all phenomena of the external sense, that is, the subjective condition of the sensibility under which alone external intuition is possible.”
- Space itself does not have the kind of being of something present-at-hand or the kind of being that Dasein has. Note that Heidegger is okay with this. There can be a multitude of ways of being.
What is the Ultimate Significance of Worldhood?
Heidegger reveals the world as the most basic and common structure of involvements that are intimately related to human being. We do not normally focus on our amazing familiarity and skillful dealing with the world. What is beautiful about Heidegger’s account is that things appear to us as what they are only against this worldly background of familiarity, skillfulness, and concern. Pieces of equipment are in their very being the roles they serve their users, and those users (Dasein) are in their very being (although not exhaustively) the practical roles into which they cast themselves. Disturbances in this practical activity allow us to take hold of the substratum of our dealings with the world. “All human activity is worldly; that is, it requires a background of implicit familiarity, competence, and concern or involvement” (Hall).
Questions:
1. Heidegger makes it clear that he is aiming at a priori structures of Dasein. However, unlike Kant, he doesn’t want to base these a priori conditions as structures of the mind. ‘Where’ are they, then? In our pre-ontological understanding of the world (as Schrag implies, 33)? Coinciding with the type of being we are, i.e., existential? Or what?
2. What status does the body receive in Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein? He seems to have an ambivalent stance toward it. Dasein is embodied for Heidegger, yet he never mentions that body.
3. “ [Phenomenology] tries to give a direct description of our experience as it is, without taking account of its psychological origin and the causal explanations which the scientist, the historian or the sociologist maybe able to provide…yet the whole of Sein und Zeit springs from an indication given by Husserl and amounts to no more than an explicit account the ‘natürlicher Weltbegriff’ or the ‘Lebenswelt’…. (Merleau-Ponty vii). I think Heidegger would hate this because he believes he is doing something deeper by revealing the being of beings, and that this is a ‘deeper’ level. Do you think Heidegger accomplishes this task; is he going any deeper?
References:
Brandom, Robert. “Heidegger’s Categories in Being and Time.” From A Companion to Heidegger. Ed. Dreyfus & Wrathall. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005.
Hall, Harrison. “Intentionality and world: Division I of Being and Time.” From The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger. Ed. Charles Guignon. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Kockelmans, Joseph. Martin Heidegger: A First Introduction to His Philosophy. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1965.
Schrag, Calvin. Existence and Freedom: Towards an Ontology of Human Finitude. Northwestern University Press, 1983.
Vycinas, Vincent. Earth and Gods: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger. The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
sad news
STATE COLLEGE, PA
Kockelmans — Joseph J. Kockelmans, 84, died Sunday, Sept. 28, 2008, at Mount Nittany Medical Center. Arrangements, by Koch Funeral Home, 2401 S. Atherton St., State College, will be announced
Kockelmans — Joseph J. Kockelmans, 84, died Sunday, Sept. 28, 2008, at Mount Nittany Medical Center. Arrangements, by Koch Funeral Home, 2401 S. Atherton St., State College, will be announced
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Precis of Edmund Husserl’s The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (p. 121-189)
Precis of Edmund Husserl’s The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (p. 121-189)
Michael Culbreth
September 10th, 2008
Context:
In The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Edmund Husserl is still continuing his quest to a pure phenomenology that places our immediate experience at the base of any future science. In Part I, he lays out his idea of the crisis that faces Europe. Although Husserl lends praise to science’s recent accomplishments, he takes aim at the positivist slant of “objective” science, which reduces all human experience back to objective facts that determine the validity of our experiences for us.
In Part I, we see Husserl modifying his path to phenomenology, by using a historical reflection to illustrate how this crisis came to befall European culture. The crisis has it’s roots as far back as the Renaissance, although thinkers then used the ancients as the mold which they wished to recreate themselves in. We inherited from the ancients a philosophy that encompassed all modes of science and knowing. This philosophy, handed down through the years to us, is concerned with problems of reason, and becomes the positivism that plagues Husserl, and ultimately, all of us.
However, this positivistic philosophy could only find success in the positivist realm. It could tell us facts, but had little to offer us in the area of questions of being. Stepping back for a moment, however, we would amiss not to heed the words of translator David Carr. Carr asks, how do we approach history through phenomenology? It seems contradictory, for us to take history as handed down to us from others, instead of referring back to it’s pre-giveness to know of it. Husserl’s use of history in Crisis is a thorny topic that is not fully reconciled with the fundamental approach of the phenomenological method.
Carr further warns about the difficulty of translating a text into a foreign language, and recounts some of the difficulties he encountered working on Crisis. First of all, Husserl died before he could complete Crisis. He was planning additional chapters which were never fully produced. Part III was never fully completed. When Husserl departed, Part III was essentially an unfinished typescript littered with his corrections (in longhand and shorthand), and even corrections by Eugen Fink, Husserl’s research assistant at the time. So what we’ve managed to piece together as Part III reads differently, as the hurried nature in which Husserl wrote it and edited it has left segments of it logically and grammatically incomprehensible. So, Carr was forced to interpret what Husserl was trying to say, and translate it into English accordingly.
So in Part I Husserl lays out the task at hand, based on examples in history. Part II gets more specific. Here Husserl discusses the mathematization of nature. This happens, historically, when nature is able to be described most accurately by math. Husserl faults Galileo for this, as beginning with him the validity of a thing or experience is placed in it’s geometrical structure. And since this, the validity of our experience is predetermined for us by facts and numbers, not by us or our perspective. This is the crisis of which Husserl speaks, the crisis that disregards our subjectivity in favor of an objective that doesn't account for our individual experience.
Part III: The Clarification of the Transcendental Problem and the Related Function of Psychology
A. The Way Into Phenomenological Transcendental Philosophy by Inquiring back from the Pregiven Life-World
The first few sections of this chapter address Immanuel Kant in detail. Husserl establishes that Kant's theories all have "an unquestioned ground of presuppositions which which codetermine the meaning of his questions (Crisis, 104)". Husserl also attacks Kant's notion of the transcendental-subjective, which, by the way Kant defines it, is unable to make itself intuitive to us. For Kant, the transcendental-subjective can "never be transformed into a formation of meaning which is direct and procures self-evidence (Crisis, 115)". Even though Kant's philosophy takes into account our perception, it doesn't grant it the same status as Husserl. Husserl rejects Kant, and seeks to validate self-evidence and intuition.
33. Science presupposes the intuitive, surrounding world. All scientific inquiry rests on the foundation of this world. Somewhere in history though, an idea of “objective truth” was formulated and given a higher value than natural, straightforward existence. This creates the idea of a universal science which aims to envelop the sum of all knowledge. Husserl proposes that we inquire back to the pre-given world, as it is the ultimate grounds of all validity. However, special precautions must be undertaken before a rigorous investigation of the pre-given world is attempted. Objective science is excluded, because all it does it reference back to the life-world. Also, when scientists are performing 'objective science', they still rely on the pre-given life-world for their lab equipment (for example), which they don't have to prove exists through objective science, they just accept it as it manifests at them. So in this regard the life-world can be only a partial subject in the sphere of the object and theoretical sciences. The life-world is not just a point of interest for those looking for a self-evident foundation for the sciences; it's a point of interest for all, as we all live in the life-world.
34. a. The pre-given world (the life-world) is always there for us through experience. In pre-scientific life, knowledge is gained on the basis of experience and induction. Scientific knowledge seeks to create a universal truth applicable to everyone, but that idea of the objective sciences is merely handed down to us, and not obtained through experience. There has never been a study of how the life-world functions as a basis for all experience, and the study of it requires a special methodology. We can’t start with the “objective” handed down science of the modern era, but instead with our subjective intuition about how things appear to us.
34. b. The “objective” sciences which use the giveness of the life-world as a foundation for all of their goals take it for granted. In other words, while scientists seek objective truths, there are ‘subjective-relative’ experiences which ground them while they work. Husserl uses the example of Einstein relying on data verified by other scientists. These scientists' existence, that Einstein experiences, presuppose the objective undertaking of Einstein's work. To the objective scientist, most of this world's existence has not been theoretically verified yet, so it is subjective-relative to them, yet their experiments to find 'truth' and 'objectivity' and founded on this subjective-relative world. The subjective relative world is always functioning for the scientist, as "the source of self-evidence, the source of verification (Crisis, 126)".
34. c. Questions of the relative-subjective realm are usually regulated to psychology. But in this case, psychology is an avatar of the objective realm, as it aims to be an objective science of the subjective realm.
34. d. The spectre of objectivity looms so large, that all science now implies an objective approach. Objective, scientific truth is generally thought of in advance of nature and the natural world. The objective world is a theoretical-logical substruction, vs. the subjective life-world which is directly experiencable. “The life-world is a realm of original self-evidences (Crisis, 127)”. What is experienced as being self-evident is considered to be ‘the thing itself’, whether in immediate presence, memory, or other mode of intuition. Every mode of intuition is, in fact, a manifesting of the thing itself. However, ‘the-thing-itself’ lies in the mode of induction itself though, the way it is made self-evident, and substructions only have truth by being related back to these self-evidences. To properly study the life-world we must recognize the validity of these self-evidences. Also, it must be shown how objective-logical self-evidences have their grounding in "the ultimately accomplishing life, the life in which the self-evident giveness of the life-world forever has, has attained, and attains anew its prescientific meaning (Crisis, 128)". So all objective-logical accomplishments lead back to life-world. He then critiques various other philosophies of science, first empiricism, whose results are all based on the experience of an objective nature,
34. e. Science is rooted in the life-world. As such, objective science can always reference back to the pre-given world. The ideas of objective science exist in the life-world not as things like stones or trees, but rather as “representations-in-themselves” or “propositions in themselves”. The concreteness of the life-world, consequently, extends beyond the world of things. However, scientists can come to conclusions, and make theories based on their experiences that are grounded in life-world. But these ideas belong to the unity of the life-world, as the life-world encompasses them in it's universality, while, simultaneously, is the foundation of these ideas and their objective truth world. The life-world is the foundation of and the encompasser of. So how are we to reconcile the life-world with the existence of the objective-truth world? This throws the project into doubt, and we cannot use any handed down idea or theory to figure out the best way to solve the problem.
34. f. A new scientific approach is required to study the life-world. Husserl suggests that if we were only making contrasts, than objective science could suffice. He then posits two types of truths: practical situational truths, and scientific truths. The situational truths are subjective, and scientific truths just point back to the situational truths. This is clearly another way for him to talk about the objective/life-world split. The life-world encompasses, "both directly and in the manner of horizons (Crisis, 133)", all the multiplicities of validity. We begin to find the method for studying the life-world through reflection. Husserl posits the problem facing phenomenology another way: "the relation between objective-scientific thinking and intuition (Crisis, 134)".
35. Husserl employs an epoche to overcome objective science, which serves to suspend all theoretical interests, in order to directly interact with the life-world. The objective sciences still exist however, as do our other life interests, it’s just that they have ‘their proper time’. We jump through our various different vocational interests, and focus on them, and the life-world is one of our vocational interests when we direct our attention to it. Of course, life-world as a vocation is not equal to any other vocation, as it is beyond any other mere theoretical interest, and aims to see the basis for how the world makes itself known to us, and, as Husserl suggests, could trigger a personal/existential transformation of great magnitude. He also states that sometimes we are in the life-world vocation, and sometimes it works, and sometimes we visit upon other vocations, but our directedness at other vocations never implies that the life-world has vanished, nor the results of our inquiry invalid. The vocation may change, but our subjective interests can remain in tact, so if we jump from phenomenologist-life-world vocation to cobbler vocation we don't loose the previously mentioned transformation.
36. The life-world is the spatiotemporal world in which we interact with/perceive things. Everything we experience, things, for example, or even other people for that matter, are subjective and relative. In practical matters we arrive at a consensus with others as to what something might be, but only when finding said consensus meets our purposes. However, individuals of starkly different cultural orientations are more likely to perceive things in very different ways… So Husserl posits that we should set up as goal of truth which is unconditionally valid, i.e. what makes objects in the life-world identifiable to us, regardless of culture or creed. The life-world has a general structure, which encompasses everything that is relative, although the general structure itself is not relative. Physicists have projects in the life-world, and their conclusions and theories are the straightforward results. Every objective a priori must reference back to an a priori of the life world; this creates validity. Husserl suggests a division of the universal life-world a priori and the universal "objective" a priori, in order to gauge how the ontic validity of objective a priori is determined, i.e. what makes math ‘real’, or, within the scope of Husserl’s project, how math makes itself known to us.
37. Husserl proposes we take a reflection in order to discern the possible ways in which the pre-given world can become thematic for us. In doing so, we find the world is always pre-given to us as subjects. “To live is always to live-in-certainty-of-the-world (Crisis, 142)”. There is a difference between how we are conscious of the world and how we are conscious of objects in the world. All objects have varying modes by which they are considered valid, and all of these objects and these modes presuppose the world. They all mean the world exists, because they are able to be perceived by us, regardless of their individual mode by which they give themselves to us.
38. There exist two different methods in which we are ‘awake’ to the world and to the objects in it. The first one is the life in which we are straight-forwardly living towards objects as they are presented to us. Here, the horizon contains all of our goals, and we past through it in a ‘synthetic coherence’. None of our goals can extend beyond the reach of this world, as all perceptions lead us to another, and another. Everything seems to make itself known to us in a fairly obvious and comprehensible manner.
Conversely, the other mode of living entails a life where things make themselves given to us in ways we are not always directly aware of. This leads to a shift in focus, from merely what makes itself known to us, but how it makes itself known to us. This brings the universally valid world into being for us, as we are no longer focused on things as set and in-themselves, but on their various alterations and modes of validity as they become known to us as they appear in the world-horizon. When these validities that appear on the horizon overlap with each other, they give us new knowledge, by either verifying existences or refuting them. This is what Husserl refers to as the ‘universal accomplishing life’, where the world comes to us constantly pre-given. Also, the overlapping validities form a ‘synthetic totality’. This synthetic totality represents the life-world’s ontic structure, as our world is a connected series of experiences, that lead to others, and others, and pull us over the horizon by the pre-given.
This second method by which we are awake in the world forces us to look at the how of things. Husserl wants to focus on things that not actually are, but moreso on the manner of giveness of things, and how these manners can change. We shall focus exclusively on the subjective, as it is only through the subjective that the world exists straightforwardly for us. We need to create a method to investigate the how of the pregiveness of the world, that explains how it serves as the basis for all of our experiences. Now, we should only be concerned with the world and it’s pregiveness, and any knowledge derived from the “objective” sciences serves as mere historical facts, and can in no way be looked at a premise for what we do. The only sort of objective investigation still to be employed is that of history, but historians still base their foundings on the foundation of the life-world.
39. As we interact with the validity of world, we are not allowed to study it. A new epoche is required, so we can fully step out of the natural attitude and observe it’s pre-giveness.
40. We create the transcendental epoche. This is necessary, as we are always directed towards something in the life-world, whether it be objects or retentions. As we interact with their validities, their individual validities imply a horizon of infinite (inactive) validities. Even if these inactive validities do not become the center of our attention, they still affect the direction of our attention, and shape the giveness of things to us, and could potentially awaken as active validities. The horizon of life-world has a horizontal character, as every validity extends into other validities.
If we try to abstain from validity, in order to step back and observe the natural character of the life-world, we are only creating a new mode of validity, and are rebound in the life-world. A method is required which puts out of play the pregiveness of the world, which always finds us chained to validities extending into validities which shape our perception in ways we can’t always perceive. And this is what the transcendental epoche is intended to do, as it cuts off the flow of infinitely connected validities which synthesize into ontic meaning for us, enabling us to step above the pre-giveness of the life-world, and observe.
41. When we perform the transcendental epoche, we become aware of the correlation between world and world consciousness. World consciousness is the subjectivity which interacts with the validities of the life-world, and always has the life-world as the subject of it’s focus. After we perform the transcendental epoche, we find ourselves situated above this world consciousness, as the nature of this epoche prohibits us from asking questions which are bound up in the world, rather, the world is now appearing before us as a phenomenon.
42. The observations about the world following the epoche must be from an ‘experiencing gaze’, which witnesses the world as phenemenom. This presents difficulties however, as we no longer move along the path of the world, but rather outside of it, thanks to the transcendental epoche. Also, the infinite possibilities for experience in the world becomes the infinite possibilities for ‘transcendental experience’, following the epoche. Husserl again reiterates that we refine our approach to the new science.
43. Husserl comments on his path to the transcendental epoche, as described in Ideas, as it leaves the transcendental ego void of content. This leaves the transcendental unsure what has been gained by the epoche, or how it was carried out. Husserl notes this shortcoming, and our new transcendental epoche should have a way around this problem. In the epoche laid out in Crisis, we (somehow) immediately understand to start our investigation with the pre-given world, after it has been performed. We understand this because the pre-giveness of the world is all we have left, after the epoche has been performed.
44. We focus ourselves on the life-world and it’s relativity, and how it reveals itself to us in straightforward living, and also the ways we are uncertain of it’s validity. We are not concerned with what the things of the world actually are, or what the world actually is. Our main focus is to grapple with the ‘Heraclitean Flux’ of the life-world, taking everything we perceive as existent, and inquire into how things appear to us.
45. “…Our aim shall be, not to examine the world’s being and being-such, but to consider whatever has been valid and continues to be valid for us as being and being-such in respect to how it is subjectively valid… (Crisis, 157)”. When we experience anything, we are often times experiencing it several ways, by touching, tasting, etc. All senses are the same, they only differ in modes of ‘sensible exhibition’. Even when we are seeing something though, every seeing is not the same. Over a session of seeing, I can see a thing from one side, and then another side, and these different seeings merge into an ontic certainty of the dimensions of the thing, even though we are not directly seeing all the sides of the thing at once. All of our perceptions unify into ‘the thing’, as it’s meaning continues to develop through the acquisition of further validities.
46. The world we are in is a spatiotemporal world, and perception only concerns the present. However, this present implies an endless past behind it, and a future ahead of it. We access the past and future as ‘retentions’ and ‘protentions’, as they create a continuity through which objects are constituted to us.
47. Kinesthesis (defined as the ability to feel movements or actions of the body) illuminates an interesting point. Naturally, when I move my leg, I am aware of both the fact that I am moving my leg, and the fact that my leg is moving. The body is two-sided, in this regard. The internal kinesthesis always precedes the external physical kinesthesis.
Another interesting point. If I believe that I am witnessing a certain thing, I open myself to the validities connected with I think I am seeing. There is a ‘if-then’ relationship at play her, where something (in this case, our perception) begets something else (in this case, validities). Objects must exhibit themselves to us in a certain systematic order; in this respect, they are indicated in advance. Husserl gives the example of a mannequin, mistaken for a man. When we witness the mannequin from afar, we expect man, and leave ourselves vulnerable to all the retentions and whatnot associated with what we think is going on. When we realize that it’s actually a mannequin, we are forced to make a correction, and alter our “expectation-horizon of the multiplicities anticipated as normal (Crisis, 162)”. Every thing that presents itself to us has an intentional background, filled with all possible events flowing harmoniously behind.
The perception of a thing is always perception of the thing within a perceptual field. And the thing has two horizons, internal and external. The external horizon is the other things that the thing in question co-exists with. The internal horizon is the all the possible ways we could perceive a thing by itself. The external horizon is not the world, but the world manifests in it, with all the possible perceptions we could have of this sector of the world.
The world “always flows on in the unity of my perceptual conscious life (Crisis, 163)”. The flow of multiplicities which constitute our consciousness of things does not always happen though, as we stop occasionally, to correct ourselves, and adjust our expectation-horizon.
Husserl then moves on to talk about intersubjectivity. We all encounter each other along the always flowing world-perceiving, and we can interact with the lives of others, as the giveness of anything perceivable is communalized. As we interact with others in this world, we may even be forced to perform correction to adjust our validities, as contact with other humans can be like the interaction between different experiences of the same thing within the individual’s life. And these different experiences flow together to form a unity that we all have access to. We are all linked to the same experienced things, we just see different sides or aspects of it, and all these perspectives flow into a knowable unity through the community. There is still the issue of manners of appearance, as we usually experience things as “originally one’s own”, but through the intersubjective community experience, we are able to experience things by “empathizing” them from others. In the intersubjective community experience, the ‘thing itself’ is never really seen, as we all grasp it differently, and the thing really becomes a unity of all the various perceptions directed at it, always in motion as it constitutes all of our shifting validities.
48. Everything that we can perceive is an index of it’s systematic multiplicities, all of it’s actual and possible modes of giveness, each mode a different way of perceiving the entity. Everything has it’s own modes of validity, it’s own manners of synthesis, and everything exists in correlation with its own individual manners of giveness. Everything also has it’s own manners of intention, which in turn accounts for “the manners of subjective variation of these modes in syntheses of individual-subjective and intersubjective harmony and discrepancy (Crisis, 166)”. Husserl states that this confusing web of correlations can’t easily lead to any clear cut factuality, but instead to over-arching generalities that could constitute a system of a priori truths.
49. Our experience constitutes a massive intersubjectivity, embodying ‘what is’, syntheses, and manners of giveness. The manners by which the unifying multiplicities appear are unities of multiplicities themselves, which reside deeper than the manners and constitute them, leading us to what Husserl calls ‘an obscure horizon’. Husserl uses the term “intersubjective constitution of the world”, which encompasses the total system of manners of giveness and the modes of validity for all egos. If we were to discover the constitution in it’s entirety, the world as we perceived it would become comprehensible to us as “a structure of meaning formed out of elementary intentionalities (Crisis, 168)”. Intentionalities themselves are simply meaning-formation working in tandem with one another, leading to a new meaning through their syntheses. Also, meaning is always determind by it’s modes of validity, and it’s relation ego-subjects that can influence validity. Intentionality is the only way for us make anything intelligible. And so, our inquiry takes us back to the intentional origins and unities, which, according to Husserl, will leave no worthwhile question unanswered.
Our perception is bound in the present. The temporal mode of this world points to it’s two horizons: past and future. However, the past still has manners of giveness by which it can present itself to us now. Intentional synthesis is what synthesizes our continuity, allows us to direct ourselves to the past through recollection and the access of retentions.
Husserls deems pure subjectivity to be intentionality in it’s pure form, and also proclaims the through intentionality ontic meaning is formed. As such, any truth or ‘grounds’ that we come to in our inquiry will only point to more grounds. This isn’t because we couldn’t ever grasp the world though, instead Husserl suggests that were we to ever fully comprehend the depths of meaning-formation and whatnot, the meaning uncovered would risk becoming a totality, much like the ‘objective’ reason Husserl blames for the crisis in the first place.
50. Husserl mentions the object-pole, and uses it to further illustrate how an object displays different manners of giveness. Assigning a pole structure to the object enables it to put off different manner of giveness, possibly even at the same time. Like the earlier mentioned idea of how an object is an index of all it’s manners of giveness. But it seems like Husserl is suggesting that all manners of giveness for an object can be found in it’s object pole.
The ego is “the performer of all validities (Crisis, 171)”. Husserl then employs the concept of the ego-pole, to display how we can spontaneously hold something in our mind, while correcting illusions, deciding things, etc. The ego-pole is likely useful in constituting temporality, as it could observe the preserve while sifting through retentions and protentions. Even though Husserl anoints the ego-pole as the performer of all validities, he still thinks the subjective life-world should be studied first and foremost. Subjectivity is an “ego functioning constitutively—only within intersubjectivity (Crisis, 172)”. The intersubjective world-life is something of an intentional index, for all the multiplicities of appearance, unified through an intersubjective synthesis.
51. Here, Husserl shows how looking at the life-world through the lens of the pre-epoche “objective” sciences would inevitably misconstrue it. Now Husserl isn’t interested in what really or really doesn’t exist, and he even states that ontology’s a priori differs greatly from phenomenology’s. But if we perform an ontology after the epoche, we are able to look at the essential structures of the life-world as they are pre-given to us, in a slightly different perspective than the phenomenologist’s. Then, you’re not looking at life-world as it presents itself to you in direct experience, but instead, looking to see what’s real and what isn’t.
52. A mode of reflection is needed to understand all presuppositions, and how theories take their meaning from them. The epoche removed us from all aspects of the world-life, and all interests pertaining to it. The natural world-life is only one particular mode of overarching ‘transcendental life’ which encompasses and constitutes our being and the world we are beings in. However, when transcendental subjectivity is existing in the mode of the natural life, it is oblivious to the horizons that present things to us, and can never be aware of them.
The epoche seems to turn us away from the natural world-life. This is not true, Husserl asserts. The philosopher in the epoche still lives through the natural life in a way, although it radically reshapes knowledge and it’s ontic meaning. In the natural world-life, all goals and purposes are terminated within the world-horizon “termini”, which objectively validates all that can proven in the natural life. There is no inquiry outside of this mode from within it. In the epoche however, the philosopher is not looking for a horizon that validates what is, but moreso how: how do things make themselves known to us?
The philosopher in the epoche (or phenomenologist) is free to carry out any sort of praxis, but not to it’s logical outcome for his own gain, as it’s outcome does not terminate his quest, for these outcomes are all subject of his investigation of the world.
The ‘Heraclitean Flux’ produced by the synthesis of the infinite multiplicities in the manners of pregiveness is also problematic. How do we describe this world in it’s ‘individual facticity’? That isn’t a problem to Husserl though, as we should not try and place the subjective sphere in an objective context. There can be no analogue in empirical “objective” science to the subjective experience of the life-world. That’s not to say that it is in no way possible to grasp the transcendental/subjective, as Husserl feels that an eidetic method can get at the life-world.
53. How can humans and their subjectivity, as components of the life-world, constitute the life-world as an ‘intentional formation’, one which is formed by the universal intersubjectivity of humans and their connections? Humans are only partial aspects of this whole life-world that they are constituting. The subjective world grows to encompass the objective world, apparently.
Husserl is aware of paradoxes that his philosophy weaves. Human beings appear to subjects for the consciousness of the world, while at the same time existing as objects in it. To really investigate this problem, Husserl, in predictable fashion, asserts that there is no way to proceed by going on the theories of others, instead, we must begin without any underlying ground. We reflect, and constantly re-immerse ourselves in the paradoxes that confuse us, as they appear to us as incomprehensible phenomenon.
54. a. How can we be both human beings and “phenomena” in the perspective of others?
54. b. There are various different modes of “I”. We can somehow, individually, constitute a transcendental intersubjectivty, and add ourselves to it as a member alongside other “I”’s. We are already in the business of constructing different “I”’s, as we gather retentions of past “I”’s in our accumulation of perspectives that craft unity. The original “I” always belongs to the present though. Hence, “I” can also constitute itself as the other, which can be validated as “phenomena” in the perspectives of others.
55. When we perform the transcendental epoche, we are reduced to the absolute ego. It is not pre-supposed but valid, for the ego can verify itself. Now we must investigate the ego. The concrete-world ego has to somehow meet it’s transcendental ego, and analyze it. Husserl closes with a brief summary of his mission statement, by affirming that he isn’t trying to secure objectivity, but understand it.
Works Cited
1. Edmund Husserl, Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Translated by David Carr. Northwestern University Press, 1970. ISBN-13: 978-0810104587.
Works Consulted
1. Joseph J. Kockelmans. A First Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology. Duquesne University Press, 1967.
2. Matheson Russell. Husserl: A Guide for the Perplexed. Continuum, 2006.
Michael Culbreth
September 10th, 2008
Context:
In The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Edmund Husserl is still continuing his quest to a pure phenomenology that places our immediate experience at the base of any future science. In Part I, he lays out his idea of the crisis that faces Europe. Although Husserl lends praise to science’s recent accomplishments, he takes aim at the positivist slant of “objective” science, which reduces all human experience back to objective facts that determine the validity of our experiences for us.
In Part I, we see Husserl modifying his path to phenomenology, by using a historical reflection to illustrate how this crisis came to befall European culture. The crisis has it’s roots as far back as the Renaissance, although thinkers then used the ancients as the mold which they wished to recreate themselves in. We inherited from the ancients a philosophy that encompassed all modes of science and knowing. This philosophy, handed down through the years to us, is concerned with problems of reason, and becomes the positivism that plagues Husserl, and ultimately, all of us.
However, this positivistic philosophy could only find success in the positivist realm. It could tell us facts, but had little to offer us in the area of questions of being. Stepping back for a moment, however, we would amiss not to heed the words of translator David Carr. Carr asks, how do we approach history through phenomenology? It seems contradictory, for us to take history as handed down to us from others, instead of referring back to it’s pre-giveness to know of it. Husserl’s use of history in Crisis is a thorny topic that is not fully reconciled with the fundamental approach of the phenomenological method.
Carr further warns about the difficulty of translating a text into a foreign language, and recounts some of the difficulties he encountered working on Crisis. First of all, Husserl died before he could complete Crisis. He was planning additional chapters which were never fully produced. Part III was never fully completed. When Husserl departed, Part III was essentially an unfinished typescript littered with his corrections (in longhand and shorthand), and even corrections by Eugen Fink, Husserl’s research assistant at the time. So what we’ve managed to piece together as Part III reads differently, as the hurried nature in which Husserl wrote it and edited it has left segments of it logically and grammatically incomprehensible. So, Carr was forced to interpret what Husserl was trying to say, and translate it into English accordingly.
So in Part I Husserl lays out the task at hand, based on examples in history. Part II gets more specific. Here Husserl discusses the mathematization of nature. This happens, historically, when nature is able to be described most accurately by math. Husserl faults Galileo for this, as beginning with him the validity of a thing or experience is placed in it’s geometrical structure. And since this, the validity of our experience is predetermined for us by facts and numbers, not by us or our perspective. This is the crisis of which Husserl speaks, the crisis that disregards our subjectivity in favor of an objective that doesn't account for our individual experience.
Part III: The Clarification of the Transcendental Problem and the Related Function of Psychology
A. The Way Into Phenomenological Transcendental Philosophy by Inquiring back from the Pregiven Life-World
The first few sections of this chapter address Immanuel Kant in detail. Husserl establishes that Kant's theories all have "an unquestioned ground of presuppositions which which codetermine the meaning of his questions (Crisis, 104)". Husserl also attacks Kant's notion of the transcendental-subjective, which, by the way Kant defines it, is unable to make itself intuitive to us. For Kant, the transcendental-subjective can "never be transformed into a formation of meaning which is direct and procures self-evidence (Crisis, 115)". Even though Kant's philosophy takes into account our perception, it doesn't grant it the same status as Husserl. Husserl rejects Kant, and seeks to validate self-evidence and intuition.
33. Science presupposes the intuitive, surrounding world. All scientific inquiry rests on the foundation of this world. Somewhere in history though, an idea of “objective truth” was formulated and given a higher value than natural, straightforward existence. This creates the idea of a universal science which aims to envelop the sum of all knowledge. Husserl proposes that we inquire back to the pre-given world, as it is the ultimate grounds of all validity. However, special precautions must be undertaken before a rigorous investigation of the pre-given world is attempted. Objective science is excluded, because all it does it reference back to the life-world. Also, when scientists are performing 'objective science', they still rely on the pre-given life-world for their lab equipment (for example), which they don't have to prove exists through objective science, they just accept it as it manifests at them. So in this regard the life-world can be only a partial subject in the sphere of the object and theoretical sciences. The life-world is not just a point of interest for those looking for a self-evident foundation for the sciences; it's a point of interest for all, as we all live in the life-world.
34. a. The pre-given world (the life-world) is always there for us through experience. In pre-scientific life, knowledge is gained on the basis of experience and induction. Scientific knowledge seeks to create a universal truth applicable to everyone, but that idea of the objective sciences is merely handed down to us, and not obtained through experience. There has never been a study of how the life-world functions as a basis for all experience, and the study of it requires a special methodology. We can’t start with the “objective” handed down science of the modern era, but instead with our subjective intuition about how things appear to us.
34. b. The “objective” sciences which use the giveness of the life-world as a foundation for all of their goals take it for granted. In other words, while scientists seek objective truths, there are ‘subjective-relative’ experiences which ground them while they work. Husserl uses the example of Einstein relying on data verified by other scientists. These scientists' existence, that Einstein experiences, presuppose the objective undertaking of Einstein's work. To the objective scientist, most of this world's existence has not been theoretically verified yet, so it is subjective-relative to them, yet their experiments to find 'truth' and 'objectivity' and founded on this subjective-relative world. The subjective relative world is always functioning for the scientist, as "the source of self-evidence, the source of verification (Crisis, 126)".
34. c. Questions of the relative-subjective realm are usually regulated to psychology. But in this case, psychology is an avatar of the objective realm, as it aims to be an objective science of the subjective realm.
34. d. The spectre of objectivity looms so large, that all science now implies an objective approach. Objective, scientific truth is generally thought of in advance of nature and the natural world. The objective world is a theoretical-logical substruction, vs. the subjective life-world which is directly experiencable. “The life-world is a realm of original self-evidences (Crisis, 127)”. What is experienced as being self-evident is considered to be ‘the thing itself’, whether in immediate presence, memory, or other mode of intuition. Every mode of intuition is, in fact, a manifesting of the thing itself. However, ‘the-thing-itself’ lies in the mode of induction itself though, the way it is made self-evident, and substructions only have truth by being related back to these self-evidences. To properly study the life-world we must recognize the validity of these self-evidences. Also, it must be shown how objective-logical self-evidences have their grounding in "the ultimately accomplishing life, the life in which the self-evident giveness of the life-world forever has, has attained, and attains anew its prescientific meaning (Crisis, 128)". So all objective-logical accomplishments lead back to life-world. He then critiques various other philosophies of science, first empiricism, whose results are all based on the experience of an objective nature,
34. e. Science is rooted in the life-world. As such, objective science can always reference back to the pre-given world. The ideas of objective science exist in the life-world not as things like stones or trees, but rather as “representations-in-themselves” or “propositions in themselves”. The concreteness of the life-world, consequently, extends beyond the world of things. However, scientists can come to conclusions, and make theories based on their experiences that are grounded in life-world. But these ideas belong to the unity of the life-world, as the life-world encompasses them in it's universality, while, simultaneously, is the foundation of these ideas and their objective truth world. The life-world is the foundation of and the encompasser of. So how are we to reconcile the life-world with the existence of the objective-truth world? This throws the project into doubt, and we cannot use any handed down idea or theory to figure out the best way to solve the problem.
34. f. A new scientific approach is required to study the life-world. Husserl suggests that if we were only making contrasts, than objective science could suffice. He then posits two types of truths: practical situational truths, and scientific truths. The situational truths are subjective, and scientific truths just point back to the situational truths. This is clearly another way for him to talk about the objective/life-world split. The life-world encompasses, "both directly and in the manner of horizons (Crisis, 133)", all the multiplicities of validity. We begin to find the method for studying the life-world through reflection. Husserl posits the problem facing phenomenology another way: "the relation between objective-scientific thinking and intuition (Crisis, 134)".
35. Husserl employs an epoche to overcome objective science, which serves to suspend all theoretical interests, in order to directly interact with the life-world. The objective sciences still exist however, as do our other life interests, it’s just that they have ‘their proper time’. We jump through our various different vocational interests, and focus on them, and the life-world is one of our vocational interests when we direct our attention to it. Of course, life-world as a vocation is not equal to any other vocation, as it is beyond any other mere theoretical interest, and aims to see the basis for how the world makes itself known to us, and, as Husserl suggests, could trigger a personal/existential transformation of great magnitude. He also states that sometimes we are in the life-world vocation, and sometimes it works, and sometimes we visit upon other vocations, but our directedness at other vocations never implies that the life-world has vanished, nor the results of our inquiry invalid. The vocation may change, but our subjective interests can remain in tact, so if we jump from phenomenologist-life-world vocation to cobbler vocation we don't loose the previously mentioned transformation.
36. The life-world is the spatiotemporal world in which we interact with/perceive things. Everything we experience, things, for example, or even other people for that matter, are subjective and relative. In practical matters we arrive at a consensus with others as to what something might be, but only when finding said consensus meets our purposes. However, individuals of starkly different cultural orientations are more likely to perceive things in very different ways… So Husserl posits that we should set up as goal of truth which is unconditionally valid, i.e. what makes objects in the life-world identifiable to us, regardless of culture or creed. The life-world has a general structure, which encompasses everything that is relative, although the general structure itself is not relative. Physicists have projects in the life-world, and their conclusions and theories are the straightforward results. Every objective a priori must reference back to an a priori of the life world; this creates validity. Husserl suggests a division of the universal life-world a priori and the universal "objective" a priori, in order to gauge how the ontic validity of objective a priori is determined, i.e. what makes math ‘real’, or, within the scope of Husserl’s project, how math makes itself known to us.
37. Husserl proposes we take a reflection in order to discern the possible ways in which the pre-given world can become thematic for us. In doing so, we find the world is always pre-given to us as subjects. “To live is always to live-in-certainty-of-the-world (Crisis, 142)”. There is a difference between how we are conscious of the world and how we are conscious of objects in the world. All objects have varying modes by which they are considered valid, and all of these objects and these modes presuppose the world. They all mean the world exists, because they are able to be perceived by us, regardless of their individual mode by which they give themselves to us.
38. There exist two different methods in which we are ‘awake’ to the world and to the objects in it. The first one is the life in which we are straight-forwardly living towards objects as they are presented to us. Here, the horizon contains all of our goals, and we past through it in a ‘synthetic coherence’. None of our goals can extend beyond the reach of this world, as all perceptions lead us to another, and another. Everything seems to make itself known to us in a fairly obvious and comprehensible manner.
Conversely, the other mode of living entails a life where things make themselves given to us in ways we are not always directly aware of. This leads to a shift in focus, from merely what makes itself known to us, but how it makes itself known to us. This brings the universally valid world into being for us, as we are no longer focused on things as set and in-themselves, but on their various alterations and modes of validity as they become known to us as they appear in the world-horizon. When these validities that appear on the horizon overlap with each other, they give us new knowledge, by either verifying existences or refuting them. This is what Husserl refers to as the ‘universal accomplishing life’, where the world comes to us constantly pre-given. Also, the overlapping validities form a ‘synthetic totality’. This synthetic totality represents the life-world’s ontic structure, as our world is a connected series of experiences, that lead to others, and others, and pull us over the horizon by the pre-given.
This second method by which we are awake in the world forces us to look at the how of things. Husserl wants to focus on things that not actually are, but moreso on the manner of giveness of things, and how these manners can change. We shall focus exclusively on the subjective, as it is only through the subjective that the world exists straightforwardly for us. We need to create a method to investigate the how of the pregiveness of the world, that explains how it serves as the basis for all of our experiences. Now, we should only be concerned with the world and it’s pregiveness, and any knowledge derived from the “objective” sciences serves as mere historical facts, and can in no way be looked at a premise for what we do. The only sort of objective investigation still to be employed is that of history, but historians still base their foundings on the foundation of the life-world.
39. As we interact with the validity of world, we are not allowed to study it. A new epoche is required, so we can fully step out of the natural attitude and observe it’s pre-giveness.
40. We create the transcendental epoche. This is necessary, as we are always directed towards something in the life-world, whether it be objects or retentions. As we interact with their validities, their individual validities imply a horizon of infinite (inactive) validities. Even if these inactive validities do not become the center of our attention, they still affect the direction of our attention, and shape the giveness of things to us, and could potentially awaken as active validities. The horizon of life-world has a horizontal character, as every validity extends into other validities.
If we try to abstain from validity, in order to step back and observe the natural character of the life-world, we are only creating a new mode of validity, and are rebound in the life-world. A method is required which puts out of play the pregiveness of the world, which always finds us chained to validities extending into validities which shape our perception in ways we can’t always perceive. And this is what the transcendental epoche is intended to do, as it cuts off the flow of infinitely connected validities which synthesize into ontic meaning for us, enabling us to step above the pre-giveness of the life-world, and observe.
41. When we perform the transcendental epoche, we become aware of the correlation between world and world consciousness. World consciousness is the subjectivity which interacts with the validities of the life-world, and always has the life-world as the subject of it’s focus. After we perform the transcendental epoche, we find ourselves situated above this world consciousness, as the nature of this epoche prohibits us from asking questions which are bound up in the world, rather, the world is now appearing before us as a phenomenon.
42. The observations about the world following the epoche must be from an ‘experiencing gaze’, which witnesses the world as phenemenom. This presents difficulties however, as we no longer move along the path of the world, but rather outside of it, thanks to the transcendental epoche. Also, the infinite possibilities for experience in the world becomes the infinite possibilities for ‘transcendental experience’, following the epoche. Husserl again reiterates that we refine our approach to the new science.
43. Husserl comments on his path to the transcendental epoche, as described in Ideas, as it leaves the transcendental ego void of content. This leaves the transcendental unsure what has been gained by the epoche, or how it was carried out. Husserl notes this shortcoming, and our new transcendental epoche should have a way around this problem. In the epoche laid out in Crisis, we (somehow) immediately understand to start our investigation with the pre-given world, after it has been performed. We understand this because the pre-giveness of the world is all we have left, after the epoche has been performed.
44. We focus ourselves on the life-world and it’s relativity, and how it reveals itself to us in straightforward living, and also the ways we are uncertain of it’s validity. We are not concerned with what the things of the world actually are, or what the world actually is. Our main focus is to grapple with the ‘Heraclitean Flux’ of the life-world, taking everything we perceive as existent, and inquire into how things appear to us.
45. “…Our aim shall be, not to examine the world’s being and being-such, but to consider whatever has been valid and continues to be valid for us as being and being-such in respect to how it is subjectively valid… (Crisis, 157)”. When we experience anything, we are often times experiencing it several ways, by touching, tasting, etc. All senses are the same, they only differ in modes of ‘sensible exhibition’. Even when we are seeing something though, every seeing is not the same. Over a session of seeing, I can see a thing from one side, and then another side, and these different seeings merge into an ontic certainty of the dimensions of the thing, even though we are not directly seeing all the sides of the thing at once. All of our perceptions unify into ‘the thing’, as it’s meaning continues to develop through the acquisition of further validities.
46. The world we are in is a spatiotemporal world, and perception only concerns the present. However, this present implies an endless past behind it, and a future ahead of it. We access the past and future as ‘retentions’ and ‘protentions’, as they create a continuity through which objects are constituted to us.
47. Kinesthesis (defined as the ability to feel movements or actions of the body) illuminates an interesting point. Naturally, when I move my leg, I am aware of both the fact that I am moving my leg, and the fact that my leg is moving. The body is two-sided, in this regard. The internal kinesthesis always precedes the external physical kinesthesis.
Another interesting point. If I believe that I am witnessing a certain thing, I open myself to the validities connected with I think I am seeing. There is a ‘if-then’ relationship at play her, where something (in this case, our perception) begets something else (in this case, validities). Objects must exhibit themselves to us in a certain systematic order; in this respect, they are indicated in advance. Husserl gives the example of a mannequin, mistaken for a man. When we witness the mannequin from afar, we expect man, and leave ourselves vulnerable to all the retentions and whatnot associated with what we think is going on. When we realize that it’s actually a mannequin, we are forced to make a correction, and alter our “expectation-horizon of the multiplicities anticipated as normal (Crisis, 162)”. Every thing that presents itself to us has an intentional background, filled with all possible events flowing harmoniously behind.
The perception of a thing is always perception of the thing within a perceptual field. And the thing has two horizons, internal and external. The external horizon is the other things that the thing in question co-exists with. The internal horizon is the all the possible ways we could perceive a thing by itself. The external horizon is not the world, but the world manifests in it, with all the possible perceptions we could have of this sector of the world.
The world “always flows on in the unity of my perceptual conscious life (Crisis, 163)”. The flow of multiplicities which constitute our consciousness of things does not always happen though, as we stop occasionally, to correct ourselves, and adjust our expectation-horizon.
Husserl then moves on to talk about intersubjectivity. We all encounter each other along the always flowing world-perceiving, and we can interact with the lives of others, as the giveness of anything perceivable is communalized. As we interact with others in this world, we may even be forced to perform correction to adjust our validities, as contact with other humans can be like the interaction between different experiences of the same thing within the individual’s life. And these different experiences flow together to form a unity that we all have access to. We are all linked to the same experienced things, we just see different sides or aspects of it, and all these perspectives flow into a knowable unity through the community. There is still the issue of manners of appearance, as we usually experience things as “originally one’s own”, but through the intersubjective community experience, we are able to experience things by “empathizing” them from others. In the intersubjective community experience, the ‘thing itself’ is never really seen, as we all grasp it differently, and the thing really becomes a unity of all the various perceptions directed at it, always in motion as it constitutes all of our shifting validities.
48. Everything that we can perceive is an index of it’s systematic multiplicities, all of it’s actual and possible modes of giveness, each mode a different way of perceiving the entity. Everything has it’s own modes of validity, it’s own manners of synthesis, and everything exists in correlation with its own individual manners of giveness. Everything also has it’s own manners of intention, which in turn accounts for “the manners of subjective variation of these modes in syntheses of individual-subjective and intersubjective harmony and discrepancy (Crisis, 166)”. Husserl states that this confusing web of correlations can’t easily lead to any clear cut factuality, but instead to over-arching generalities that could constitute a system of a priori truths.
49. Our experience constitutes a massive intersubjectivity, embodying ‘what is’, syntheses, and manners of giveness. The manners by which the unifying multiplicities appear are unities of multiplicities themselves, which reside deeper than the manners and constitute them, leading us to what Husserl calls ‘an obscure horizon’. Husserl uses the term “intersubjective constitution of the world”, which encompasses the total system of manners of giveness and the modes of validity for all egos. If we were to discover the constitution in it’s entirety, the world as we perceived it would become comprehensible to us as “a structure of meaning formed out of elementary intentionalities (Crisis, 168)”. Intentionalities themselves are simply meaning-formation working in tandem with one another, leading to a new meaning through their syntheses. Also, meaning is always determind by it’s modes of validity, and it’s relation ego-subjects that can influence validity. Intentionality is the only way for us make anything intelligible. And so, our inquiry takes us back to the intentional origins and unities, which, according to Husserl, will leave no worthwhile question unanswered.
Our perception is bound in the present. The temporal mode of this world points to it’s two horizons: past and future. However, the past still has manners of giveness by which it can present itself to us now. Intentional synthesis is what synthesizes our continuity, allows us to direct ourselves to the past through recollection and the access of retentions.
Husserls deems pure subjectivity to be intentionality in it’s pure form, and also proclaims the through intentionality ontic meaning is formed. As such, any truth or ‘grounds’ that we come to in our inquiry will only point to more grounds. This isn’t because we couldn’t ever grasp the world though, instead Husserl suggests that were we to ever fully comprehend the depths of meaning-formation and whatnot, the meaning uncovered would risk becoming a totality, much like the ‘objective’ reason Husserl blames for the crisis in the first place.
50. Husserl mentions the object-pole, and uses it to further illustrate how an object displays different manners of giveness. Assigning a pole structure to the object enables it to put off different manner of giveness, possibly even at the same time. Like the earlier mentioned idea of how an object is an index of all it’s manners of giveness. But it seems like Husserl is suggesting that all manners of giveness for an object can be found in it’s object pole.
The ego is “the performer of all validities (Crisis, 171)”. Husserl then employs the concept of the ego-pole, to display how we can spontaneously hold something in our mind, while correcting illusions, deciding things, etc. The ego-pole is likely useful in constituting temporality, as it could observe the preserve while sifting through retentions and protentions. Even though Husserl anoints the ego-pole as the performer of all validities, he still thinks the subjective life-world should be studied first and foremost. Subjectivity is an “ego functioning constitutively—only within intersubjectivity (Crisis, 172)”. The intersubjective world-life is something of an intentional index, for all the multiplicities of appearance, unified through an intersubjective synthesis.
51. Here, Husserl shows how looking at the life-world through the lens of the pre-epoche “objective” sciences would inevitably misconstrue it. Now Husserl isn’t interested in what really or really doesn’t exist, and he even states that ontology’s a priori differs greatly from phenomenology’s. But if we perform an ontology after the epoche, we are able to look at the essential structures of the life-world as they are pre-given to us, in a slightly different perspective than the phenomenologist’s. Then, you’re not looking at life-world as it presents itself to you in direct experience, but instead, looking to see what’s real and what isn’t.
52. A mode of reflection is needed to understand all presuppositions, and how theories take their meaning from them. The epoche removed us from all aspects of the world-life, and all interests pertaining to it. The natural world-life is only one particular mode of overarching ‘transcendental life’ which encompasses and constitutes our being and the world we are beings in. However, when transcendental subjectivity is existing in the mode of the natural life, it is oblivious to the horizons that present things to us, and can never be aware of them.
The epoche seems to turn us away from the natural world-life. This is not true, Husserl asserts. The philosopher in the epoche still lives through the natural life in a way, although it radically reshapes knowledge and it’s ontic meaning. In the natural world-life, all goals and purposes are terminated within the world-horizon “termini”, which objectively validates all that can proven in the natural life. There is no inquiry outside of this mode from within it. In the epoche however, the philosopher is not looking for a horizon that validates what is, but moreso how: how do things make themselves known to us?
The philosopher in the epoche (or phenomenologist) is free to carry out any sort of praxis, but not to it’s logical outcome for his own gain, as it’s outcome does not terminate his quest, for these outcomes are all subject of his investigation of the world.
The ‘Heraclitean Flux’ produced by the synthesis of the infinite multiplicities in the manners of pregiveness is also problematic. How do we describe this world in it’s ‘individual facticity’? That isn’t a problem to Husserl though, as we should not try and place the subjective sphere in an objective context. There can be no analogue in empirical “objective” science to the subjective experience of the life-world. That’s not to say that it is in no way possible to grasp the transcendental/subjective, as Husserl feels that an eidetic method can get at the life-world.
53. How can humans and their subjectivity, as components of the life-world, constitute the life-world as an ‘intentional formation’, one which is formed by the universal intersubjectivity of humans and their connections? Humans are only partial aspects of this whole life-world that they are constituting. The subjective world grows to encompass the objective world, apparently.
Husserl is aware of paradoxes that his philosophy weaves. Human beings appear to subjects for the consciousness of the world, while at the same time existing as objects in it. To really investigate this problem, Husserl, in predictable fashion, asserts that there is no way to proceed by going on the theories of others, instead, we must begin without any underlying ground. We reflect, and constantly re-immerse ourselves in the paradoxes that confuse us, as they appear to us as incomprehensible phenomenon.
54. a. How can we be both human beings and “phenomena” in the perspective of others?
54. b. There are various different modes of “I”. We can somehow, individually, constitute a transcendental intersubjectivty, and add ourselves to it as a member alongside other “I”’s. We are already in the business of constructing different “I”’s, as we gather retentions of past “I”’s in our accumulation of perspectives that craft unity. The original “I” always belongs to the present though. Hence, “I” can also constitute itself as the other, which can be validated as “phenomena” in the perspectives of others.
55. When we perform the transcendental epoche, we are reduced to the absolute ego. It is not pre-supposed but valid, for the ego can verify itself. Now we must investigate the ego. The concrete-world ego has to somehow meet it’s transcendental ego, and analyze it. Husserl closes with a brief summary of his mission statement, by affirming that he isn’t trying to secure objectivity, but understand it.
Works Cited
1. Edmund Husserl, Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Translated by David Carr. Northwestern University Press, 1970. ISBN-13: 978-0810104587.
Works Consulted
1. Joseph J. Kockelmans. A First Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology. Duquesne University Press, 1967.
2. Matheson Russell. Husserl: A Guide for the Perplexed. Continuum, 2006.
Précis of Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, pp. 17-36
Précis of Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, pp. 17-36
Jessica Rugh
24 September 2008
Context
This section is the first introduction to Heidegger’s exposition of the problems of understanding existence. What does it mean to be? In this introduction he points out problems with the traditional understanding of Being and begins to posit what is needed in order to reconstruct and move forward with a correct understanding. Being and Time was originally meant to be two main parts, each divided into three divisions. He hastily completed the first two divisions of part one for publication. The work earned him a position at Freiburg University. At this point he seems to shift his focus (Kockelmans, in “Being-True…”) and does not seek to complete the remaining sections but develops other concepts in his later works.
John Sallis cites the origin of Heidegger’s thought as influences by Husserl’s phenomenology and Greek ontology. Being and Time is meant to be, according to Sallis, a “renewal” or “recapturing” of the question of Being that was neglected after the great Greek philosophers (p.94). Heidegger does not, however, seek to “reinstate” or “revive” the work of Plato and Aristotle but rather to reexamine the foundation for the understanding of Being.
The first page of this section includes a quote from Plato (in Greek) that simply states Heidegger’s problem with the traditional understanding of being. “We,…who used to think we understood [what you mean when you use the expression ‘being’], have now become perplexed” (p.19). He then states that his project is to “raise anew the question of the meaning of Being” which begins at a reawakening of an understanding of the magnitude of the question.
Introduction, Exposition of the Question of the Meaning of Being
I. The Necessity, Structure, and Priority of the Question of Being
1. The Necessity of an Explicit Retrieve of the Question of Being
This section begins the inquiry into the understanding of the question of Being. The problem with the understanding of Being, for Heidegger, is that the question has been forgotten—it has been neglected because everyone believes they already understand it. He claims that the “departure” from the question of Being began after the work of Plato and Aristotle and ceased to be “a theme for actual investigation” after it fueled their projects (p.21). The work of the Greeks has caused the definition of Being to be taken for granted.
Heidegger identifies three prejudices that are “constantly reimplanting and fostering the belief that an inquiry into Being is unnecessary” (p.22). These are: 1) that Being is the most universal concept; 2) that the concept of Being is indefinable; and 3) that Being is the one concept that is self-evident (p.22-23). These prejudices, however, are not acceptable excuses for neglecting the question of Being. He shows that although Being may be a universal concept it should not be exempt from further discussion and clarification, that the traditional manner of definition cannot be applied to being, and that self-evidence does not eliminate the fact that the meaning of being is “still veiled in darkness” and warrants further investigation (p.22-24).
2. The Formal Structure of the Question of Being
The second section elaborates the structure of the inquiry into the meaning of Being and targets Dasein as an entity that may serve as the primary example to be interrogated. He reiterates that the meaning of Being is already familiar to us but needs further clarification if we are to fully and concretely understand it. He says, “what we seek when we inquire into Being is not something entirely unfamiliar, even if at first we cannot grasp it at all” (p.25). However, the question of Being cannot be investigated in the same way as other concepts. He seeks to target an entity that can be used as an example for this unique method of inquiry. He selects “Dasein” to signify the being that is “transparent in its own Being” or understands that it is a Being being (p.27). Joseph Kockelmans (in A First Introduction…) simply explains Dasein to be “man’s being” because a human is the only being that can “question itself about its own being” (p.14).
Heidegger concludes this section by refuting the criticism that dealing with the question of Being in such a way is circular by claiming that “the issue is not one of grounding something…it is rather one of laying bare the grounds for it...” (p.28).
3. The Ontological Priority of the Question of Being
In this section Heidegger emphasizes the importance of laying bare the meaning of Being in terms of ontological research. Ontological research will remain “blind and perverted from its ownmost aim if it has not first adequately clarified the meaning of Being” (p.31). Other sciences, including mathematics, physics, biology, the historiological humane sciences, and theology, have all experienced a reexamination that adjusted their foundations. Ontology should experience the same in its response to the question of Being.
An ontological examination of the meaning of Being, or, in other words, an examination of the essence or nature of Being must be thorough and extensive in order to lay a firm grounding for the understanding of Being. The ontological priority helps us begin to make progress beyond resuming the traditional means of understanding Being. It is not the only perspective that gives the question priority, however, as we will see in section 4.
4. The Ontical Priority of the Question of Being
This section is primarily devoted to a clarification of the essence and definition of Dasein. Dasein is essentially an entity which is “ontically distinguished” from other entities in that “Being is an issue for it” (p.32). Further, Dasein also “understands itself in terms of its existence” (p.33). Sometimes Dasein chooses its conditions of existence, other times the conditions happen to it.
He further clarifies the importance and essence of Dasein: “Dasein’s understanding of Being pertains with equal primoridality both to an understanding of something like a ‘world’, and to the understanding of the Being of those entities which become accessible within the world” (p.33). The exploration conducted in the last four sections has enabled Dasein to “reveal itself” as the entity that is most suited to be the object of inquiry in the question of Being. Dasein has now been targeted as a being that John Sallis describes as “we ourselves are” but that “is also the investigator (p.93). He further explains that this means that Dasein will “show itself to itself.”
Notes/Questions
How is what Heidegger is proposing to do with Dasein different from what Husserl attempted to do with the epochē?
What are the differences between existentiell and existential? Can they really be distinguished as much as Heidegger seems to think?
Works Cited
Kockelmans, Joseph. “Being-True as the Basic Determination of Being” in A Companion to Martin Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’. Ed. Joseph J. Kockelmans. USA: University Press of America, 1986.
Kockelmans, Joseph. Martin Heidegger: A First Introduction to His Philosophy. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1965.
Sallis, John. “The Origins of Heidegger’s Thought” in A Companion to Martin Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’. Ed. Joseph J. Kockelmans. USA: University Press of America, 1986.
Jessica Rugh
24 September 2008
Context
This section is the first introduction to Heidegger’s exposition of the problems of understanding existence. What does it mean to be? In this introduction he points out problems with the traditional understanding of Being and begins to posit what is needed in order to reconstruct and move forward with a correct understanding. Being and Time was originally meant to be two main parts, each divided into three divisions. He hastily completed the first two divisions of part one for publication. The work earned him a position at Freiburg University. At this point he seems to shift his focus (Kockelmans, in “Being-True…”) and does not seek to complete the remaining sections but develops other concepts in his later works.
John Sallis cites the origin of Heidegger’s thought as influences by Husserl’s phenomenology and Greek ontology. Being and Time is meant to be, according to Sallis, a “renewal” or “recapturing” of the question of Being that was neglected after the great Greek philosophers (p.94). Heidegger does not, however, seek to “reinstate” or “revive” the work of Plato and Aristotle but rather to reexamine the foundation for the understanding of Being.
The first page of this section includes a quote from Plato (in Greek) that simply states Heidegger’s problem with the traditional understanding of being. “We,…who used to think we understood [what you mean when you use the expression ‘being’], have now become perplexed” (p.19). He then states that his project is to “raise anew the question of the meaning of Being” which begins at a reawakening of an understanding of the magnitude of the question.
Introduction, Exposition of the Question of the Meaning of Being
I. The Necessity, Structure, and Priority of the Question of Being
1. The Necessity of an Explicit Retrieve of the Question of Being
This section begins the inquiry into the understanding of the question of Being. The problem with the understanding of Being, for Heidegger, is that the question has been forgotten—it has been neglected because everyone believes they already understand it. He claims that the “departure” from the question of Being began after the work of Plato and Aristotle and ceased to be “a theme for actual investigation” after it fueled their projects (p.21). The work of the Greeks has caused the definition of Being to be taken for granted.
Heidegger identifies three prejudices that are “constantly reimplanting and fostering the belief that an inquiry into Being is unnecessary” (p.22). These are: 1) that Being is the most universal concept; 2) that the concept of Being is indefinable; and 3) that Being is the one concept that is self-evident (p.22-23). These prejudices, however, are not acceptable excuses for neglecting the question of Being. He shows that although Being may be a universal concept it should not be exempt from further discussion and clarification, that the traditional manner of definition cannot be applied to being, and that self-evidence does not eliminate the fact that the meaning of being is “still veiled in darkness” and warrants further investigation (p.22-24).
2. The Formal Structure of the Question of Being
The second section elaborates the structure of the inquiry into the meaning of Being and targets Dasein as an entity that may serve as the primary example to be interrogated. He reiterates that the meaning of Being is already familiar to us but needs further clarification if we are to fully and concretely understand it. He says, “what we seek when we inquire into Being is not something entirely unfamiliar, even if at first we cannot grasp it at all” (p.25). However, the question of Being cannot be investigated in the same way as other concepts. He seeks to target an entity that can be used as an example for this unique method of inquiry. He selects “Dasein” to signify the being that is “transparent in its own Being” or understands that it is a Being being (p.27). Joseph Kockelmans (in A First Introduction…) simply explains Dasein to be “man’s being” because a human is the only being that can “question itself about its own being” (p.14).
Heidegger concludes this section by refuting the criticism that dealing with the question of Being in such a way is circular by claiming that “the issue is not one of grounding something…it is rather one of laying bare the grounds for it...” (p.28).
3. The Ontological Priority of the Question of Being
In this section Heidegger emphasizes the importance of laying bare the meaning of Being in terms of ontological research. Ontological research will remain “blind and perverted from its ownmost aim if it has not first adequately clarified the meaning of Being” (p.31). Other sciences, including mathematics, physics, biology, the historiological humane sciences, and theology, have all experienced a reexamination that adjusted their foundations. Ontology should experience the same in its response to the question of Being.
An ontological examination of the meaning of Being, or, in other words, an examination of the essence or nature of Being must be thorough and extensive in order to lay a firm grounding for the understanding of Being. The ontological priority helps us begin to make progress beyond resuming the traditional means of understanding Being. It is not the only perspective that gives the question priority, however, as we will see in section 4.
4. The Ontical Priority of the Question of Being
This section is primarily devoted to a clarification of the essence and definition of Dasein. Dasein is essentially an entity which is “ontically distinguished” from other entities in that “Being is an issue for it” (p.32). Further, Dasein also “understands itself in terms of its existence” (p.33). Sometimes Dasein chooses its conditions of existence, other times the conditions happen to it.
He further clarifies the importance and essence of Dasein: “Dasein’s understanding of Being pertains with equal primoridality both to an understanding of something like a ‘world’, and to the understanding of the Being of those entities which become accessible within the world” (p.33). The exploration conducted in the last four sections has enabled Dasein to “reveal itself” as the entity that is most suited to be the object of inquiry in the question of Being. Dasein has now been targeted as a being that John Sallis describes as “we ourselves are” but that “is also the investigator (p.93). He further explains that this means that Dasein will “show itself to itself.”
Notes/Questions
How is what Heidegger is proposing to do with Dasein different from what Husserl attempted to do with the epochē?
What are the differences between existentiell and existential? Can they really be distinguished as much as Heidegger seems to think?
Works Cited
Kockelmans, Joseph. “Being-True as the Basic Determination of Being” in A Companion to Martin Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’. Ed. Joseph J. Kockelmans. USA: University Press of America, 1986.
Kockelmans, Joseph. Martin Heidegger: A First Introduction to His Philosophy. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1965.
Sallis, John. “The Origins of Heidegger’s Thought” in A Companion to Martin Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’. Ed. Joseph J. Kockelmans. USA: University Press of America, 1986.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Précis of Edmund Husserl’s Ideas, 171 -210
Précis of Edmund Husserl’s Ideas, 171 -210
Michael Simpkins
September 3, 2008
Part Three: Methods and Problems of Pure Phenomenology
Chapter Two: Universal Structures
In this chapter Husserl will begin to lay the foundation for a more complete understanding of phenomenology. Although great strides have been made in Ideas and his earlier work, the task is still incomplete as to the major themes of this field. Before this process can begin, however, the species of absolute consciousness, or at least the traits thereof, will need to be identified and thoroughly understood. The bulk of this chapter deals with these traits. The closing section offers a glimpse of what phenomenology will ultimately offer. Out of this process will arise the investigation into the function utilized by the noetic, as Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino defines it, “the act through which the Ego bestows meaning upon its object.” What phenomenology will ultimately entail, among other things, is the study of how the noetic functions.
The opening sections of this chapter deal with reflection, or more precisely, the means by which the Ego is able to access and analyze perceptions. By grasping some aspect of consciousness the Ego contemplates the, heretofore unexamined, now. In this way reflection also becomes its own mental process with multiple layers and an object available for inquiry. The now, identified by reflection, is accompanied by the realization that this mental process had to exist before and this can also be extended into the future. And finally, this stream of mental processes, through reflection, can then be made an object for further phenomenological investigation.
Husserl also addresses critics of phenomenology who claim that it lacks a method by which to evaluate, or even ascertain, knowledge of the now without some type of reflection. But he dismisses their objections outright, for there exists no method of any kind to substantiate any cognitions as true, be they reflectionally modified or not. Simply put, this is as foundational a science as can be acquired and he compares it to the way physics is grounded in mathematics.
The next section is an explanation of the necessary reduction done to arrive at the pure Ego. Each act upon the mental process reveals an I; I smell or I taste or I judge, etc. By bracketing out this I the pure subject of the act is revealed and from the essence of the act, by working backwards, the Ego is found. From here a dual nature consisting of a subjectively oriented side and an objectively oriented side should be evident.
Husserl addresses time as well and how phenomenological time differs from cosmic time. Time is unique in the phenomenological context in that temporality belongs to each mental process. Husserl moves on from here to deal with Idea and Intentionality. The former is the classification of that process, after reflection, linking two or more mental processes together. This is invaluable as it provides the basis for understanding “the stream of mental processes as a unity.” Intentionality then completes the understanding of this stream. If reflection is act exercised by the Ego then the term chosen to explain the capability allowing for this regard is intentionality, again to refer to Banchetti-Robino, “consciousness is intentionality.”
§ 77. Reflection as a Fundamental Peculiarity of the Sphere of Mental Processes. Studies in Reflection.
Here Husserl describes both the importance of reflection and how it operates. The Ego, while living its mental processes, is also able to focus on some particular aspect of the process it has just lived. This directing of attention towards some piece of the process is called reflection. Timothy Stapleton clarifies this say that even though “an experience is given absolutely in reflection…Husserl is not saying that an experience so given is perceived in its completeness.”[i] These subsequent reflections become “mental processes and, as reflections, can become the substrates of new reflections; and so on ad infinitum.”[ii] In this way reflections can become object for the Ego. Even more important is the fact that the mental process which became reflected upon offers an understanding of the present. From this it is clear that the mental process was occurring without our regarding it and obviously exists absent the reflection. He goes on to more fully explain this with the example of an individual practicing some course of theoretical thought and unknowingly finding pleasure in their contemplations. At some point the individual awakes to this pleasure and regards it as occurring. Though this regarding just now occurred, it is realized that the joy, the mental process, preceded the recognition. Clearly then, this reflection is a modification that differs from that which is lived.
§ 78. The Phenomenological Study of Reflections on Mental Processes.
In this section Husserl clearly lays out what will be undertaken; “the task of this chapter is to distinguish the different ‘reflections’ and analyze them all in a systematic order.” Reflection is a modification of consciousness and paramount because it includes both the seizing upon of something immanent and the experiencing of something immanent. From here he moves on to how we can arrive back at impressions and the relationship between the stream of mental processes and the ego.
§ 79. Critical Excursis. Phenomenology and the Difficulties of “Self-observation.”
In the following section Husserl addresses some of the criticism directed towards phenomenology. The most important of these objections, Husserl believed, is how an individual would be able to state anything whatsoever about a pure mental process for it is “neither knowledge nor the object of knowledge.”[iii] But Husserl is quick to throw their own argument back at them, saying that no type of reflection could ever provide an absolutely certain truth concerning mental processes. The detractors have no foundation to base their arguments, for one simply cannot doubt the cognitive signification of reflection.
§ 80. The Relationship of Mental Processes to the Pure Ego.
The relationship of the Ego to each mental process is of primary concern in this section. Within this dichotomy the individual, the I, becomes apparent. Aware of this self-recognition the I can be bracketed out and what is left is the cogito and the pure subject of the act. Within the essence of the act is something which acts upon the mental processes, by tracing back from the mental process we arrive at the pure Ego. Here the dual nature of the mental process becomes evident as possessing purely subjective moments of the mode of consciousness and the content of the mental process turned away from the Ego.[iv]
§ 81. Phenomenological Time and Consciousness of Time.
Time is a difficult concept due to the fact that the pure mental process operates in its own category of time, as Husserl calls phenomenological time, as opposed to the time found in the natural world, cosmic time. He compares this distinction to that of an object compared to the sensation of that object on an individual’s mind. Time is also distinguished in that no mental process can escape temporality.
§ 82. Continuation. The Three-fold Horizon of Mental Processes As At The Same Time the Horizon of Reflection On Mental Processes.
Husserl elaborates on the previous section with a more thorough analysis of the Now. By necessity the present cannot have existed without the past and similarly this understanding can be extended into the future. This explains the entirety of temporality concerning any mental processes upon which the Ego can act: Now, Before, and Later.
§ 83. Seizing Upon the Unitary Stream of Mental Processes as “Idea.”
The interpretation of Idea posited by Husserl in this section is rather enlightening. Through reflection the Ego regards some aspect of the mental process and can, in a like manner, move from mental process to mental process. The interesting part of Husserl’s conception is that an individual’s thoughts can never be isolated, they always exist in a stream from which the Ego continually navigates. The result of this, though self-evident, is proven—that no two identical mental processes are possible. Each reflection is determined from the earlier stream of consciousness and therefore to even conceive of two sharing the same processes is impossible, there would be no basis by which to conclude they were distinct and not, in fact, the same mental process.
§ 84. Intentionality as Principal Theme of Phenomenology.
If reflection is the act by which the Ego directs itself to the mental processes, then the quality of the mental process by which this is possible is known as intentionality. It is the “intentional act…in which subjective consciousness synthesizes the sensuous data that is given to it and bestows sense or meaning upon it.”[v] Every mental process conserves this ability and may be acted upon at any time, but not necessarily so, and it would not even be possible to act upon every instance. Frederick Olafson clearly explains the concept intentionality as “the object-referring or ‘objectifying’ function of mental acts, and he made the crucially important distinction between two senses of ‘intentional object,’ namely, between the object that is intended and the object as it is intended.”[vi]
On Terminology
Though this section would be better placed at the beginning of the text, it nevertheless is useful here as it helps to explain why much of the language used in this work is so difficult. Due to the fact that Phenomenology was such a new discipline, at the time of Husserl’s writing, that it was not possible, or even advisable, to devise hard definitions for the terms and constructs he is working to elucidate. The nebulous nature of the terminology will only be corrected as phenomenology advances to a much higher level.
§ 85. Sensuous , Intentive
This is likely the most difficult section within this chapter as the complexity of the concepts matches the terminology. Husserl desired to separate out the sensuous mental processes, the actual sensations that can be observed, from the entire mental process open to intention by the Ego. He terms the former, those immediate perceptions concerning color, touch, tone, et cetera, hyletic Data and the latter as a noetic moment. In short, the noetic is a stratum that bestows sense, giving form to the content of the hyletic.
§ 86. The Functional Problems.
The closing section of this chapter provides deeper insight into what phenomenology offers. The difficulty concerning the noetic is the process by which it operates, its function. Consciousness, here, can best be thought of as neutral. That is, it offers no insight or means by which to distinguish true from false, real from illusion, to the consciousness they are all one and the same. What, therefore, is the process by which an individual can begin separating out these difficulties? This will be the domain of phenomenology. To “make itself master of the essentially unique set of problems which mental processes offer, and offer purely by their eidetic essence, as intentive mental processes, as ‘consciousness-of.’”[vii]
[i] Timothy Stapleton. Husserl and Heidegger: The Question of a Phenomenological Beginning.
[ii] Ideas, 173.
[iii] Ideas, 182.
[iv] Ideas, 191.
[v] Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino. “Ibn Sina and Husserl on Intention and Intentionality.”
[vi] Frederick Olafson. “Husserl’s Theory of Intentionality in Contemporary Perspective.”
[vii] Ideas, 210.
Michael Simpkins
September 3, 2008
Part Three: Methods and Problems of Pure Phenomenology
Chapter Two: Universal Structures
In this chapter Husserl will begin to lay the foundation for a more complete understanding of phenomenology. Although great strides have been made in Ideas and his earlier work, the task is still incomplete as to the major themes of this field. Before this process can begin, however, the species of absolute consciousness, or at least the traits thereof, will need to be identified and thoroughly understood. The bulk of this chapter deals with these traits. The closing section offers a glimpse of what phenomenology will ultimately offer. Out of this process will arise the investigation into the function utilized by the noetic, as Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino defines it, “the act through which the Ego bestows meaning upon its object.” What phenomenology will ultimately entail, among other things, is the study of how the noetic functions.
The opening sections of this chapter deal with reflection, or more precisely, the means by which the Ego is able to access and analyze perceptions. By grasping some aspect of consciousness the Ego contemplates the, heretofore unexamined, now. In this way reflection also becomes its own mental process with multiple layers and an object available for inquiry. The now, identified by reflection, is accompanied by the realization that this mental process had to exist before and this can also be extended into the future. And finally, this stream of mental processes, through reflection, can then be made an object for further phenomenological investigation.
Husserl also addresses critics of phenomenology who claim that it lacks a method by which to evaluate, or even ascertain, knowledge of the now without some type of reflection. But he dismisses their objections outright, for there exists no method of any kind to substantiate any cognitions as true, be they reflectionally modified or not. Simply put, this is as foundational a science as can be acquired and he compares it to the way physics is grounded in mathematics.
The next section is an explanation of the necessary reduction done to arrive at the pure Ego. Each act upon the mental process reveals an I; I smell or I taste or I judge, etc. By bracketing out this I the pure subject of the act is revealed and from the essence of the act, by working backwards, the Ego is found. From here a dual nature consisting of a subjectively oriented side and an objectively oriented side should be evident.
Husserl addresses time as well and how phenomenological time differs from cosmic time. Time is unique in the phenomenological context in that temporality belongs to each mental process. Husserl moves on from here to deal with Idea and Intentionality. The former is the classification of that process, after reflection, linking two or more mental processes together. This is invaluable as it provides the basis for understanding “the stream of mental processes as a unity.” Intentionality then completes the understanding of this stream. If reflection is act exercised by the Ego then the term chosen to explain the capability allowing for this regard is intentionality, again to refer to Banchetti-Robino, “consciousness is intentionality.”
§ 77. Reflection as a Fundamental Peculiarity of the Sphere of Mental Processes. Studies in Reflection.
Here Husserl describes both the importance of reflection and how it operates. The Ego, while living its mental processes, is also able to focus on some particular aspect of the process it has just lived. This directing of attention towards some piece of the process is called reflection. Timothy Stapleton clarifies this say that even though “an experience is given absolutely in reflection…Husserl is not saying that an experience so given is perceived in its completeness.”[i] These subsequent reflections become “mental processes and, as reflections, can become the substrates of new reflections; and so on ad infinitum.”[ii] In this way reflections can become object for the Ego. Even more important is the fact that the mental process which became reflected upon offers an understanding of the present. From this it is clear that the mental process was occurring without our regarding it and obviously exists absent the reflection. He goes on to more fully explain this with the example of an individual practicing some course of theoretical thought and unknowingly finding pleasure in their contemplations. At some point the individual awakes to this pleasure and regards it as occurring. Though this regarding just now occurred, it is realized that the joy, the mental process, preceded the recognition. Clearly then, this reflection is a modification that differs from that which is lived.
§ 78. The Phenomenological Study of Reflections on Mental Processes.
In this section Husserl clearly lays out what will be undertaken; “the task of this chapter is to distinguish the different ‘reflections’ and analyze them all in a systematic order.” Reflection is a modification of consciousness and paramount because it includes both the seizing upon of something immanent and the experiencing of something immanent. From here he moves on to how we can arrive back at impressions and the relationship between the stream of mental processes and the ego.
§ 79. Critical Excursis. Phenomenology and the Difficulties of “Self-observation.”
In the following section Husserl addresses some of the criticism directed towards phenomenology. The most important of these objections, Husserl believed, is how an individual would be able to state anything whatsoever about a pure mental process for it is “neither knowledge nor the object of knowledge.”[iii] But Husserl is quick to throw their own argument back at them, saying that no type of reflection could ever provide an absolutely certain truth concerning mental processes. The detractors have no foundation to base their arguments, for one simply cannot doubt the cognitive signification of reflection.
§ 80. The Relationship of Mental Processes to the Pure Ego.
The relationship of the Ego to each mental process is of primary concern in this section. Within this dichotomy the individual, the I, becomes apparent. Aware of this self-recognition the I can be bracketed out and what is left is the cogito and the pure subject of the act. Within the essence of the act is something which acts upon the mental processes, by tracing back from the mental process we arrive at the pure Ego. Here the dual nature of the mental process becomes evident as possessing purely subjective moments of the mode of consciousness and the content of the mental process turned away from the Ego.[iv]
§ 81. Phenomenological Time and Consciousness of Time.
Time is a difficult concept due to the fact that the pure mental process operates in its own category of time, as Husserl calls phenomenological time, as opposed to the time found in the natural world, cosmic time. He compares this distinction to that of an object compared to the sensation of that object on an individual’s mind. Time is also distinguished in that no mental process can escape temporality.
§ 82. Continuation. The Three-fold Horizon of Mental Processes As At The Same Time the Horizon of Reflection On Mental Processes.
Husserl elaborates on the previous section with a more thorough analysis of the Now. By necessity the present cannot have existed without the past and similarly this understanding can be extended into the future. This explains the entirety of temporality concerning any mental processes upon which the Ego can act: Now, Before, and Later.
§ 83. Seizing Upon the Unitary Stream of Mental Processes as “Idea.”
The interpretation of Idea posited by Husserl in this section is rather enlightening. Through reflection the Ego regards some aspect of the mental process and can, in a like manner, move from mental process to mental process. The interesting part of Husserl’s conception is that an individual’s thoughts can never be isolated, they always exist in a stream from which the Ego continually navigates. The result of this, though self-evident, is proven—that no two identical mental processes are possible. Each reflection is determined from the earlier stream of consciousness and therefore to even conceive of two sharing the same processes is impossible, there would be no basis by which to conclude they were distinct and not, in fact, the same mental process.
§ 84. Intentionality as Principal Theme of Phenomenology.
If reflection is the act by which the Ego directs itself to the mental processes, then the quality of the mental process by which this is possible is known as intentionality. It is the “intentional act…in which subjective consciousness synthesizes the sensuous data that is given to it and bestows sense or meaning upon it.”[v] Every mental process conserves this ability and may be acted upon at any time, but not necessarily so, and it would not even be possible to act upon every instance. Frederick Olafson clearly explains the concept intentionality as “the object-referring or ‘objectifying’ function of mental acts, and he made the crucially important distinction between two senses of ‘intentional object,’ namely, between the object that is intended and the object as it is intended.”[vi]
On Terminology
Though this section would be better placed at the beginning of the text, it nevertheless is useful here as it helps to explain why much of the language used in this work is so difficult. Due to the fact that Phenomenology was such a new discipline, at the time of Husserl’s writing, that it was not possible, or even advisable, to devise hard definitions for the terms and constructs he is working to elucidate. The nebulous nature of the terminology will only be corrected as phenomenology advances to a much higher level.
§ 85. Sensuous , Intentive
This is likely the most difficult section within this chapter as the complexity of the concepts matches the terminology. Husserl desired to separate out the sensuous mental processes, the actual sensations that can be observed, from the entire mental process open to intention by the Ego. He terms the former, those immediate perceptions concerning color, touch, tone, et cetera, hyletic Data and the latter as a noetic moment. In short, the noetic is a stratum that bestows sense, giving form to the content of the hyletic.
§ 86. The Functional Problems.
The closing section of this chapter provides deeper insight into what phenomenology offers. The difficulty concerning the noetic is the process by which it operates, its function. Consciousness, here, can best be thought of as neutral. That is, it offers no insight or means by which to distinguish true from false, real from illusion, to the consciousness they are all one and the same. What, therefore, is the process by which an individual can begin separating out these difficulties? This will be the domain of phenomenology. To “make itself master of the essentially unique set of problems which mental processes offer, and offer purely by their eidetic essence, as intentive mental processes, as ‘consciousness-of.’”[vii]
[i] Timothy Stapleton. Husserl and Heidegger: The Question of a Phenomenological Beginning.
[ii] Ideas, 173.
[iii] Ideas, 182.
[iv] Ideas, 191.
[v] Marina Paola Banchetti-Robino. “Ibn Sina and Husserl on Intention and Intentionality.”
[vi] Frederick Olafson. “Husserl’s Theory of Intentionality in Contemporary Perspective.”
[vii] Ideas, 210.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Precis: Husserl, Ideas, pp.51-104 [Dr. Davis]
Précis of Edmund Husserl, Ideas, pp. 51-104
Dr. Duane H. Davis
August 27, 2008
Context:
This section is preceded by an Introduction and Part One. In the Introduction [pp.xvii-xxiii], Husserl explains his vision for the three volumes of Ideas, and for phenomenology in general. He contrasts psychology, which is a “science of matters of fact” with phenomenology, which he describes as a “science of essences.” [p.xx] Both psychology and phenomenology deal with accounts of consciousness, but there are many differences in these approaches. Husserl was preoccupied with articulating these differences his entire career. In short, psychology, for Husserl, was limited—a “regional” account that has its own orientations and assumptions which allow it to function. Husserl passionately explains that phenomenology, instead, will be a radically new kind of science that entails a radically new way of understanding the world. That is, he thought that phenomenology allows us to cultivate a new attitude or standpoint from which we see things—developing a completely new state of consciousness.
Part One has two chapters: Matter of Fact and Essence; and Naturalistic Misinterpretation. In the first chapter, Husserl wants to distinguish matters of fact from essences as the objects of knowledge that distinguish regional sciences from phenomenology (the science of sciences), respectively. Yet he also stresses that matters of fact and essences are inseparable. The point is to maintain a privileged perspective upon the world that understands it essentially without pretending that essences are other things. The difference is really in the seeing of things—the attitude we approach things with. This chapter is a “logic” that prepares us for the task of phenomenology by providing “a radical classification of the sciences.”
The second chapter, Naturalistic Misinterpretation, must be seen in light of the perceived threats of positivism, naturalism and empiricism as philosophical dogmas. Naturalism obviates the development of phenomenology as an eidetic science, since it denies the possibility of ideas, essences, and cognition. Though Husserl acknowledges the value of skepticism raised by empiricist naturalism against idealistic metaphysical presuppositions, he rejects naturalism for its own biases and theoretical presuppositions—which it fails to recognize itself. At the heart of the matter is a fundamental misunderstanding of experience on the part of naturalism. Naturalism mistakes actuality for experience, properly conceived. And though naturalism fails to recognize this, their notion of experience involves mediation, whereas there is a more fundamental eidetic “seeing” that is immediate intuition of the essence of a phenomenon. We must substitute intuition for what passes for experience in naturalism. This leads Husserl to pronounce “the principle of all principles”: everything offered in intuition must be accepted simply as what it is within the limits of its presentation—the essence of a phenomenon. [p.44] Empiricism and Idealism each obscure these intuitions due to their theoretical standpoints. Phenomenology seeks to disabuse us of the sophistical allure of idealism or naturalism—each of which proceed dogmatically without acknowledging its own dogmatism.
Part Two: The Considerations Fundamental to Phenomenology
Chapter One, The Positing Which Belongs to the Natural Attitude and its Exclusion
This chapter describes the general positing characteristic of the natural attitude of consciousness, demonstrates that it is possible to alter this state of consciousness, and describes the phenomenological epochē as the specific alteration of consciousness appropriate for phenomenology.
§27 Husserl describes the pure description of spatial and temporal presence of the world [with value] to the natural attitude of consciousness.
§28 The relation of the natural attitude (always present) to whatever world my cogito is engaged within is a parallelism rather than a horizon. [but cf. p.52 in the previous section: “an obscurely intended to horizon of indeterminate actuality”]
§29 Others are ego-subjects “like me” (analogues); but I am also “understanding with” others as I posit “in common with them” the factually existing world in which we belong.
§30 N.B.: IàWeàI Husserl adopts the first person singular to offer the pure description of the natural attitude, then adopts the second person plural to do the phenomenological analysis of the natural attitude. The pure description of the natural attitude lacks the ability to unify a world.
We do not need to attend exhaustively to every aspect of the natural attitude through pure description to move beyond it. It is sufficient to note some universal structures of the natural attitude—especially through the “full clarity” of “pure description” in the natural attitude. The main structure Husserl discloses is the “general positing” (“there-ness”) of the world even when I doubt.
Sciences in the natural attitude seek a more reliable understanding of the world (always present) than that of naïve experience. [cf. Hegel’s transcendence from sense-certainty in his Phenomenology of Spirit]
§31 Husserl offers an argument for the possibility of radically altering the natural attitude. The presence, or general positing, of the factual world in the natural attitude is not a particular act of consciousness. It is the total unity of the world, but only an inadequate unity as being simply “there” whenever I direct my consciousness to some particular act. Now Husserl wants us to move from a tacit positing to an explicit positing of another sort entirely. Consider Cartesian doubt as an example of a certain annulment of the general positing. But Husserl says we should not negate consciousness, but transform it. [cf. Hegel’s “determinate negation” in his dialectical logic] We can transform or alter consciousness by suspending the general positing of the natural attitude. [cf. horribly written paragraph on p.59] It is important to note that Husserl insists that his epochē is different from Cartesian doubt. Instead of annulling the positing of the world, Husserl says we should suspend it—put it out of action, disable it, bracket it, etc. The epochē is a suspension of the general positing of the natural attitude. Every such positing of an object is to be suspended.
§32 Like ancient skepticism [from which Husserl borrows the term epochē], we are to cultivate an indifference to the factual existence of the world—but we neither tacitly affirm it [natural attitude] nor deny it outright [skepticism]. Indeed, terminology notwithstanding, Husserl’s position seems at times to have characteristics of Stoicism. [cf. note p.61: “I take from it the force that, up to now, gave me the world of experience as my basis.” We can make use of this suspension of the positing via modifications of consciousness.
Husserl insists that phenomenology’s modification of the natural attitude of consciousness is distinct from adopting idealism’s view from “on high,” and also distinct from positivism’s immanence within experience. [cf. Kant’s critique of dogmatic early modern philosophy in his Critique of Pure Reason, and Merleau-Ponty’s critique of these two positions in The Visible and the Invisible]
Chapter Two: Consciousness and Natural Actuality
Having indicated how it is possible to suspend the general positing of the natural attitude through the phenomenological epochē, Husserl now wants to delineate the structure of the transformed consciousness, as well as the nature of the knowledge it seeks. He begins to reap the amazing benefits of this insight. Chapters Two and Three begin this task in a preliminary way. Phenomenology offers a new model of consciousness that seeks to offer pure eidetic accounts of essences. This can only be described if the nature of the essences with respect to consciousness, as well as the relation of transcendent objects with respect to consciousness, are articulated. In short, Husserl advocates a transcendental consciousness which will contain the truth of transcendent objects. We will highlight some insights from the first sections of this chapter. They will be developed more fully in the fourth chapter, where we can discuss them more carefully in terms of the phenomenological reduction.
§33 Husserl asks the seemingly disturbing question, “what can remain if we suspend the general positing of the natural attitude?” What is the phenomenological residue? Husserl begins with a discussion of the Ego, the consciousness, and the mental processes of the natural attitude. Thinking continues as I suspend the natural attitude’s general positing, but who is thinking? This essential consciousness is not the Cartesian cogito, but “any consciousness whatsoever”—a pure transcendental consciousness.
§34 The final paragraph of this section is remarkable. Note the affinity with James’ model of consciousness as a stream. Husserl wrongly believed that they were allies. [cf. Herbert Spiegelberg’s anecdote about James’ dismissal of Husserl’s work. Cf. also contemporary secondary research about commonalities in their work—esp. Sandra Rosenthal & Patrick Bourgeois.] Every thought in the natural attitude belongs to a stream of thoughts which has its own ownness that can be an object of reflection. This is roughly what Descartes did. Now we can seized upon a pure ownness intuitively “by excluding everything which does not lie in the cogitatio with respect to what the cogitatio is in itself” as well as “the unity of that consciousness.” [p.69]
§35 Husserl give a concrete example to elucidate these structures of consciousness from the experience of the natural attitude. [cf. Edward Casey’s brilliant work on the glance in his The World at a Glance, and compare it with Husserl’s discussion here of “a halo of background-intuitions.” Merleau-Ponty, the true inspiration of Casey’s phenomenology, has much more to say about all of this in his dialogue with Gestalt psychology. Cf. Merleau-Ponty’s The Structure of Behavior.] The main thing Husserl wants us to take from this very complicated discussion is the activities of consciousness exceed the specific acts of consciousness we focus upon. The unity of all of these acts is what he is after, which he thinks can only be disclosed by disabusing ourselves of the natural attitude of consciousness.
§36 Husserl continues the same discussion, but along the way introduces the theme he will develop later in detail in §84: the intentionality of consciousness. All consciousness is consciousness of something. [cf. p.73] That is, consciousness intends something—the object as meant. Consciousness is used in a much broader sense than ever before—including its object. This also leads naturally to the discussion of noesis and noema, which, alas, we cannot include in our readings [§87-127]. Husserl considers the consciousness of a variety of objects and qualities in the following sections
§37 There is an interesting discussion of the distinction of the intentional object of consciousness and that which consciousness “heeds” or “seizes-upon.” [Cf. p.75] The point of all of this is to exclude perception of all sorts as the basis of intentional consciousness. It will be interesting to return tot his when we look at Merleau-Ponty’s The Primacy of Perception. Husserl cannot allow perception to ground our understanding if he wants to achieve his goal of apodicticity.
§38-41 Husserl considers how one can discuss the objectivity of an external object—what the status of the transcendent is with respect to intentional consciousness. The italicized paragraph on p.87 is expands in great detail in Volume Two of Ideas in the discussion of passive synthesis. It is interesting that Merleau-Ponty was greatly influenced by that [at that time] unpublished manuscript, as well as the manuscript of the Crisis.
For the rest of the chapter, Husserl, as any good idealist, is engaged in a defensive discussion of how he is not an idealist, how the fact that phenomenology deals with appearances does not mean that it denies the transcendent nature of physical objects, etc. [Cf. Kant’s refutation(s) of idealism.] But the point in its most general sense here is that phenomenology wants to account for materiality via inwardness—perhaps the inherited legacy of Stoic thought.
Dr. Duane H. Davis
August 27, 2008
Context:
This section is preceded by an Introduction and Part One. In the Introduction [pp.xvii-xxiii], Husserl explains his vision for the three volumes of Ideas, and for phenomenology in general. He contrasts psychology, which is a “science of matters of fact” with phenomenology, which he describes as a “science of essences.” [p.xx] Both psychology and phenomenology deal with accounts of consciousness, but there are many differences in these approaches. Husserl was preoccupied with articulating these differences his entire career. In short, psychology, for Husserl, was limited—a “regional” account that has its own orientations and assumptions which allow it to function. Husserl passionately explains that phenomenology, instead, will be a radically new kind of science that entails a radically new way of understanding the world. That is, he thought that phenomenology allows us to cultivate a new attitude or standpoint from which we see things—developing a completely new state of consciousness.
Part One has two chapters: Matter of Fact and Essence; and Naturalistic Misinterpretation. In the first chapter, Husserl wants to distinguish matters of fact from essences as the objects of knowledge that distinguish regional sciences from phenomenology (the science of sciences), respectively. Yet he also stresses that matters of fact and essences are inseparable. The point is to maintain a privileged perspective upon the world that understands it essentially without pretending that essences are other things. The difference is really in the seeing of things—the attitude we approach things with. This chapter is a “logic” that prepares us for the task of phenomenology by providing “a radical classification of the sciences.”
The second chapter, Naturalistic Misinterpretation, must be seen in light of the perceived threats of positivism, naturalism and empiricism as philosophical dogmas. Naturalism obviates the development of phenomenology as an eidetic science, since it denies the possibility of ideas, essences, and cognition. Though Husserl acknowledges the value of skepticism raised by empiricist naturalism against idealistic metaphysical presuppositions, he rejects naturalism for its own biases and theoretical presuppositions—which it fails to recognize itself. At the heart of the matter is a fundamental misunderstanding of experience on the part of naturalism. Naturalism mistakes actuality for experience, properly conceived. And though naturalism fails to recognize this, their notion of experience involves mediation, whereas there is a more fundamental eidetic “seeing” that is immediate intuition of the essence of a phenomenon. We must substitute intuition for what passes for experience in naturalism. This leads Husserl to pronounce “the principle of all principles”: everything offered in intuition must be accepted simply as what it is within the limits of its presentation—the essence of a phenomenon. [p.44] Empiricism and Idealism each obscure these intuitions due to their theoretical standpoints. Phenomenology seeks to disabuse us of the sophistical allure of idealism or naturalism—each of which proceed dogmatically without acknowledging its own dogmatism.
Part Two: The Considerations Fundamental to Phenomenology
Chapter One, The Positing Which Belongs to the Natural Attitude and its Exclusion
This chapter describes the general positing characteristic of the natural attitude of consciousness, demonstrates that it is possible to alter this state of consciousness, and describes the phenomenological epochē as the specific alteration of consciousness appropriate for phenomenology.
§27 Husserl describes the pure description of spatial and temporal presence of the world [with value] to the natural attitude of consciousness.
§28 The relation of the natural attitude (always present) to whatever world my cogito is engaged within is a parallelism rather than a horizon. [but cf. p.52 in the previous section: “an obscurely intended to horizon of indeterminate actuality”]
§29 Others are ego-subjects “like me” (analogues); but I am also “understanding with” others as I posit “in common with them” the factually existing world in which we belong.
§30 N.B.: IàWeàI Husserl adopts the first person singular to offer the pure description of the natural attitude, then adopts the second person plural to do the phenomenological analysis of the natural attitude. The pure description of the natural attitude lacks the ability to unify a world.
We do not need to attend exhaustively to every aspect of the natural attitude through pure description to move beyond it. It is sufficient to note some universal structures of the natural attitude—especially through the “full clarity” of “pure description” in the natural attitude. The main structure Husserl discloses is the “general positing” (“there-ness”) of the world even when I doubt.
Sciences in the natural attitude seek a more reliable understanding of the world (always present) than that of naïve experience. [cf. Hegel’s transcendence from sense-certainty in his Phenomenology of Spirit]
§31 Husserl offers an argument for the possibility of radically altering the natural attitude. The presence, or general positing, of the factual world in the natural attitude is not a particular act of consciousness. It is the total unity of the world, but only an inadequate unity as being simply “there” whenever I direct my consciousness to some particular act. Now Husserl wants us to move from a tacit positing to an explicit positing of another sort entirely. Consider Cartesian doubt as an example of a certain annulment of the general positing. But Husserl says we should not negate consciousness, but transform it. [cf. Hegel’s “determinate negation” in his dialectical logic] We can transform or alter consciousness by suspending the general positing of the natural attitude. [cf. horribly written paragraph on p.59] It is important to note that Husserl insists that his epochē is different from Cartesian doubt. Instead of annulling the positing of the world, Husserl says we should suspend it—put it out of action, disable it, bracket it, etc. The epochē is a suspension of the general positing of the natural attitude. Every such positing of an object is to be suspended.
§32 Like ancient skepticism [from which Husserl borrows the term epochē], we are to cultivate an indifference to the factual existence of the world—but we neither tacitly affirm it [natural attitude] nor deny it outright [skepticism]. Indeed, terminology notwithstanding, Husserl’s position seems at times to have characteristics of Stoicism. [cf. note p.61: “I take from it the force that, up to now, gave me the world of experience as my basis.” We can make use of this suspension of the positing via modifications of consciousness.
Husserl insists that phenomenology’s modification of the natural attitude of consciousness is distinct from adopting idealism’s view from “on high,” and also distinct from positivism’s immanence within experience. [cf. Kant’s critique of dogmatic early modern philosophy in his Critique of Pure Reason, and Merleau-Ponty’s critique of these two positions in The Visible and the Invisible]
Chapter Two: Consciousness and Natural Actuality
Having indicated how it is possible to suspend the general positing of the natural attitude through the phenomenological epochē, Husserl now wants to delineate the structure of the transformed consciousness, as well as the nature of the knowledge it seeks. He begins to reap the amazing benefits of this insight. Chapters Two and Three begin this task in a preliminary way. Phenomenology offers a new model of consciousness that seeks to offer pure eidetic accounts of essences. This can only be described if the nature of the essences with respect to consciousness, as well as the relation of transcendent objects with respect to consciousness, are articulated. In short, Husserl advocates a transcendental consciousness which will contain the truth of transcendent objects. We will highlight some insights from the first sections of this chapter. They will be developed more fully in the fourth chapter, where we can discuss them more carefully in terms of the phenomenological reduction.
§33 Husserl asks the seemingly disturbing question, “what can remain if we suspend the general positing of the natural attitude?” What is the phenomenological residue? Husserl begins with a discussion of the Ego, the consciousness, and the mental processes of the natural attitude. Thinking continues as I suspend the natural attitude’s general positing, but who is thinking? This essential consciousness is not the Cartesian cogito, but “any consciousness whatsoever”—a pure transcendental consciousness.
§34 The final paragraph of this section is remarkable. Note the affinity with James’ model of consciousness as a stream. Husserl wrongly believed that they were allies. [cf. Herbert Spiegelberg’s anecdote about James’ dismissal of Husserl’s work. Cf. also contemporary secondary research about commonalities in their work—esp. Sandra Rosenthal & Patrick Bourgeois.] Every thought in the natural attitude belongs to a stream of thoughts which has its own ownness that can be an object of reflection. This is roughly what Descartes did. Now we can seized upon a pure ownness intuitively “by excluding everything which does not lie in the cogitatio with respect to what the cogitatio is in itself” as well as “the unity of that consciousness.” [p.69]
§35 Husserl give a concrete example to elucidate these structures of consciousness from the experience of the natural attitude. [cf. Edward Casey’s brilliant work on the glance in his The World at a Glance, and compare it with Husserl’s discussion here of “a halo of background-intuitions.” Merleau-Ponty, the true inspiration of Casey’s phenomenology, has much more to say about all of this in his dialogue with Gestalt psychology. Cf. Merleau-Ponty’s The Structure of Behavior.] The main thing Husserl wants us to take from this very complicated discussion is the activities of consciousness exceed the specific acts of consciousness we focus upon. The unity of all of these acts is what he is after, which he thinks can only be disclosed by disabusing ourselves of the natural attitude of consciousness.
§36 Husserl continues the same discussion, but along the way introduces the theme he will develop later in detail in §84: the intentionality of consciousness. All consciousness is consciousness of something. [cf. p.73] That is, consciousness intends something—the object as meant. Consciousness is used in a much broader sense than ever before—including its object. This also leads naturally to the discussion of noesis and noema, which, alas, we cannot include in our readings [§87-127]. Husserl considers the consciousness of a variety of objects and qualities in the following sections
§37 There is an interesting discussion of the distinction of the intentional object of consciousness and that which consciousness “heeds” or “seizes-upon.” [Cf. p.75] The point of all of this is to exclude perception of all sorts as the basis of intentional consciousness. It will be interesting to return tot his when we look at Merleau-Ponty’s The Primacy of Perception. Husserl cannot allow perception to ground our understanding if he wants to achieve his goal of apodicticity.
§38-41 Husserl considers how one can discuss the objectivity of an external object—what the status of the transcendent is with respect to intentional consciousness. The italicized paragraph on p.87 is expands in great detail in Volume Two of Ideas in the discussion of passive synthesis. It is interesting that Merleau-Ponty was greatly influenced by that [at that time] unpublished manuscript, as well as the manuscript of the Crisis.
For the rest of the chapter, Husserl, as any good idealist, is engaged in a defensive discussion of how he is not an idealist, how the fact that phenomenology deals with appearances does not mean that it denies the transcendent nature of physical objects, etc. [Cf. Kant’s refutation(s) of idealism.] But the point in its most general sense here is that phenomenology wants to account for materiality via inwardness—perhaps the inherited legacy of Stoic thought.
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