Phenomenology and the Problem of Time
Michael R. Kelly Phenomenology and the Problem of Time Michael R. Kelly San Diego , California , USA
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Preface
Th e fi nitude of Dasein in man is more originary than man himself (M. Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics )
Time occupies a central place in twentieth-century continental phi- losophy, especially for phenomenology. Phenomenology’s four primary movements arguably revolve around it: transcendental phenomenology, hermeneutical phenomenology, deconstruction, and phenomenological theology. 1 In 1905, roughly only fi ve years after his Logical Investigations founded phenomenology, Edmund Husserl declared time and the consciousness of time the “most diffi cult” and “most important” of all phenomeno- logical problems. 2 Time would become the bedrock of all intentionality, underlying every issue of signifi cant preoccupation in Husserl’s thought (e.g., subjectivity, immanence, embodiment, intersubjectivity, objectiv- ity, evidence, judgment). 3 One could say that Husserl’s refl ections on time-consciousness develop his view of intentionality so radically that they signifi cantly contributed to his shift from descriptive phenomenol- ogy to transcendental phenomenology. And as Husserl’s followers were to refl ect on his refl ections on time—often under the infl uence of Husserl’s most recognizable student, Martin Heidegger—they would increasingly fi nd reasons, fair or not, to question his theories of time or intentionality
vii viii Preface for their dependence on consciousness (or the subject), even questioning the coherence of phenomenology itself. In 1927 Heidegger published his view of “temporality” as the very structure of the “care” that every “human being in the world” (Dasein) has for itself and its projects and commitments in its engagement with the world. Heidegger’s Being and Time and his view of time therein amount (in spite of its more radical intentions) to a hermeneutical and existential (in spite of Heidegger’s denial of the label) development of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. With his account of time as the key to understanding not only the practical relation between the self and the world, but also subjectivity’s (Dasein’s) very way of being in the world, Heidegger believed a new dimension of intentionality—one that would make shine forth all the brighter the things themselves—had been uncovered but not to his mind clarifi ed. However one interprets his 1927 watershed work, it created a shift in phenomenology’s self- understanding and phenomenology’s tendency to become metaphilosophical in its quest to return to “the things themselves” by rethinking intentionality. Future phenomenologists made additions to the discipline by unpacking or interrogating (or both) Husserl’s and Heidegger’s respective thoughts about intentionality, aff ectivity, embodiment, etc. But when at its most radical, each later phenomenologist’s rethinking of intentionality can be found in—and the radicalness of their developments of phenomenology always amounted to—their rethinking of time. Th at Heideggerian tree, fully grown in 1963, would cast a shadow over phenomenology when French deconstructionist and recovering phe- nomenologist Jacques Derrida reinterpreted the importance of time and temporality by highlighting the notion of the “trace,” or that which never appears and yet makes all appearances possible. More diffi cult than the “most diffi cult” of all phenomenological problems, time becomes a prob- lem for phenomenology. Derrida interrogates the coherence of phenom- enology by interrogating its very notion of intentionality by interrogating its view of the time of the self to whom things appear, the temporality of Dasein “who” cares about its projects. Since the source of intention- ality—the self or subject or immanence—is never fully present to, but always lags behind, itself, Derrida draws a radical conclusion about—or exposes the inner logic of—the very possibility of phenomenology. Yet Preface ix
Derrida’s 1967 Speech and Phenomena may be more eff ect than cause with respect to how time becomes a problem for phenomenology. In what follows, I off er a narrow approach to understanding these major shifts in phenomenology’s self-understanding and its internal cri- tique. Two rather simple thoughts have motivated and guided this work. First, how would the history of phenomenology look if Husserl’s inheri- tors more charitably interpreted his accounts of time-consciousness that they had available to them? Second, how would the history of phenom- enology look if earlier phenomenologists understood Husserl’s theory of immanence otherwise than as a synonym for subjective consciousness (in the shadow of modern subjective idealism)? My approach is to examine the three related notions of subjectivity, time, and intentionality. Examining these three interrelated notions can help us understand how phenomenology establishes its diff erence from modern subjective idealism (Descartes and Kant), how phenomenology developed, and how phenomenology gave rise to movements that declare its passing. Each subsequent and signifi cant phenomenologist of the sec- ond generation provides original insights that move this methodology forward. But in carving out his own unique contribution to phenom- enology, each distances himself from Husserl’s view of phenomenology and intentionality by challenging his views of immanence and time- consciousness. I specifi cally want to present a case for the infl uence of Heidegger’s more radical rethinking of intentionality, subjectivity, and time after Being and Time, most especially as it is found in his other book, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1929). Heidegger’s 1929 book on Kant not only is the start of the radicalization of his phenomenology, but it also is a text that factors centrally—and infl uentially—in the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Derrida as they develop their unique styles of thought regarding these three issues in contrast to Husserl. For exam- ple, when Merleau-Ponty presents his view on time and intentionality in detail—in Phenomenology of Perception (1945) and Th e Visible and the Invisible (1961)—he critiques Husserl under the infl uence and lead of Heidegger, specifi cally referencing the Kantbuch ; likewise, when Derrida questions the phenomenological project—in Speech and Phenomena (1967)—he critiques phenomenology under the infl uence and lead of Heidegger, specifi cally referencing the Kantbuch and the infl uence of x Preface
Merleau-Ponty’s later thought. Following these references to Heidegger will provide a thread—that which should barely be seen but still holds the fabric that is the article together—with which we shall explicate Merleau-Ponty’s and then Derrida’s distance or separation from Husserl; at the same time, this will be a tracing of the movement in phenomenol- ogy from phenomenology and the problem of time to time as a problem for phenomenology. My method for constructing this narrative will be to work with the Husserlian texts most referenced by these inheritors (Heidegger, Merleau- Ponty, and Derrida) in their discussions of his views on immanence (sub- jectivity), intentionality, and time as they formulate their criticisms and alternatives. Th ese texts are, primarily, Logical Investigations (1900–01), Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy (1913), and On the Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness (1893–1917). I also shall work through Husserl’s 1907 lecture “Th e Idea of Phenomenology.” I hope this method suits the theoretical interest of focus and the pragmatic interest of space, and will prove to be a useful way into these complex issues in phenomenology. Th ere is a large and continually growing body of secondary literature that defends (often quite persuasively) Husserl’s phenomenology against its phenomenological critics by appealing to his (then) unpublished writ- ings. 4 Where the thinkers I treat in this work do not reference Husserl’s unpublished work, I do not; and I do this so as to bring hopefully to the fore the philosophical/phenomenological issues rather than have them recede into phenomenological scholasticism. It is my sense that defenses of Husserl thought against these critiques can be found in the very texts that his critics reference. Hence, I propose to follow the arguments that phenomenologists after Husserl make to distinguish their program by reading those texts of Husserl that they critique or from which they draw. If the reader fi nds in this book an implicit defense of Husserl’s phe- nomenology and his views of intentionality, subjectivity, and time- consciousness, I don’t mean to suggest that all good phenomenology comes only from Husserl—or even more ridiculously that all good phe- nomenology comes from (Husserl’s) discussion of time. Rather, I think phenomenology’s changing self-understanding, its rethinking of inten- tionality, can best be brought to light when we examine phenomenologists’ Preface xi rethinking of Husserl’s theory of intentionality and phenomenology according to their critiques of his accounts of time-consciousness and immanence. Th ese metaphilosophical or metaphenomenological narra- tives are valuable to understand, but there’s something scientifi c to this endeavor: as these phenomenologists seek the discipline’s own “foun- dation” or fi nal ground or possibility, phenomenology becomes more insular, esoteric, and distant from everyday experience—and the things themselves. Perhaps, however, one will fi nd that this narrative arch of phenomenology reveals the unfolding of the inner logic of phenomenol- ogy—and it may be that time is the most important and diffi cult of all phenomenological problems because it’s the clue to the germ of phenom- enology in Husserl’s thought.
San Diego, CA Michael R. Kelly
Notes
1 . Th e most sustained account of Husserl’s thought on time in relation to his phenomenology is Nicolas de Warren, Husserl and the Promise of Time (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Th e most sustained accounts of the developments of Husserl’s thought on time are Toine Kortooms’ Phenomenology of Time. Edmund Husserl’s Analysis of Time- Consciousness (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002) and James Mensch’s Husserl’s Account of our Consciousness of Time (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2010). For the infl uence of time on decon- struction see David Wood’s Th e Deconstruction of Time (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1989); Jack Reynolds, Chronopathologies: Time and Politics in Deleuze, Derrida, Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology (Lahmen: Lexington Books, 2012); and David Cozens Hoy, Th e Time of Our Lives: A Critical History of Temporality (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012). 2. E. Husserl, Husserliana , vol. X, Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins (1893–1917) (Th e Hague: Martinus Nijhoff , 1966). E. Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917), trans. J. Brough (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991), 334/346, 276/286. xii Preface
3. Husserl never would stop refl ecting on and testing his theory of time-con- sciousness, although the substance of his thought seems to have reached maturity by 1911. 4. Regarding these materials and to justify further my exclusion of them, I refer the reader to the Appendix in Nicolas de Warren’s Husserl and the Promise of Time . Acknowledgments
It is the case, however often overlooked, that the good work of scholars who came before us deserve thanks insofar as their eff orts infl uence our work. I hope that my references serve as thanks to those from whom I draw but with whom I haven’t had direct conversations about time and phenomenology. Th e list of scholars from whom I’ve learned through more direct conversations is already long enough, and among that com- pany I wish to thank Jeff Bloechl, Richard Cobb-Stevens, Steve Crowell, Neal de Roo, Burt Hopkins, Len Lawlor, Glen Mazis, Heath Massey, David Morris, Anne Ozar, Robert Sokolowski, Bernard Waldenfels, and Chris Yates. Beyond these valuable conversations, I especially wish to thank the col- leagues and friends who spent time reading and commenting on various drafts of several chapters of this book: Chris Arroyo, Nicolas de Warren, Jack Reynolds, and most especially Brian Harding and Jeff Hanson. Brian and Jeff both read the whole project and off ered very helpful feedback. I off er my highest thanks to the two thinkers who’ve had the most direct infl uence over this work: John Brough and John Drummond. Th e clarity of their thought brought me to the hypothesis that Husserl’s notion of immanence and his revision to his theory of time could provide an illuminating foil for understanding the transitions that the phenom- enological tradition underwent. I hope that they fi nd my application of their thought clearly presented—and perhaps even persuasive. xiii xiv Acknowledgments
Th anks also to Grace Jackson and Brendan George at Palgrave for being patient with me as I moved more slowly than anticipated with the project. Grace and Brendan were supportive and kind and fi rm, when fi rmness was required. Lastly, I thank my wife, Sabrina, for encouraging me to fi nish the proj- ect (and to fi nish it with more confi dence and pride). I especially agree with her that someday this book may be a point of pride for our boy, Austin Wallace. Th e following entities permitted me to reproduce some previously published material relevant to this work. Portions of the Introduction fi rst appeared in “Th e Uses and Abuses of Husserl’s Doctrine of Immanence: Th e Specter of Spinozism in Phenomenology’s Th eological Turn.” Heythrop Journal 55 (4): 553–64. Portions of Chap. 3 fi rst appeared in “Th e Consciousness of Succession.” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 83 (1): 127–39. Chapter 5 merges together work that fi rst appeared in both “Th e Subject as Time: Merleau-Ponty’s Transition from Phenomenology to Ontology,” in K. MacLaren and D. Morris (eds), Time, Memory, Institution: Merleau-Ponty’s New Ontology of the Self (Athens: Ohio University Press, ), 199–216, and “L’écart: Merleau-Ponty’s Separation from Husserl, or Absolute Time Constituting Consciousness,” in N. Deroo and K. Semon (eds), Merleau-Ponty at the Limits of Art, Perception and Religion (London: Continuum Press, 2010). Contents
Part I Phenomenology and the Problem of Time 1
1 Time, Intentionality, and Immanence in Modern Idealism 3
2 Th e Imperfection of Immanence in Husserl’s Phenomenology 31
3 Th e Living-Present: Absolute Time-Consciousness and Genuine Phenomenological Immanence 65
Part II Th e Problem of Time and Phenomenology 101
4 Transcendence: Heidegger and the Turn, the Open, “Th e Finitude of Being … First Spoken of in the Book on Kant” 103
5 Th e Truly Transcendental: Merleau-Ponty, un Écart, “Th e Acceptance of the Truth of the Transcendental Analysis” 139
xv xvi Contents
Conclusion: Th e Ultratranscendental—Derrida, Phenomenology, and “Th e Breath in Intentional Animation Which Transforms the Body of the Word intoFlesh” 175
Index 207 List of Abbreviations
BP M. Heidegger, Th e Basic Problems of Phenomenology , trans. A. Hofstadter ) Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982). BT M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1986); Being and Time , trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1963). (Cited by the English pagination then the German.) CPR I. Kant, Th e Critique of Pure Reason , trans, N.K. Smith (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1929). Crisis E. Husserl, Th e Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology , trans. D. Carr (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970). EP M. Heidegger, “ Th e End of Philosophy and the Task of Th inking,” in M. Heidegger, Time and Being, trans. J. Stambaugh (Chicacgo: University of Chicago Press, 1972). HCT M. Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time , trans. T. Kieiel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992). (Cited by the English pagination then the German.) Id I E. Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy—First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology , trans. F. Kersten. (Th e Hague: Nijhoff 1982). Cited according to the Kersten translation followed by the German pagination.
xvii xviii List of Abbreviations
IP E. Husserl, Th e Idea of Phenomenology , trans. L. Hardy (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999). KPM M. Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1991); M. Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics , trans. R. Taft (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990). (Cited by Taft’s translation then the German pagination.) LU E. Husserl, Logical Investigations , trans. J. N. Findlay (London: Routledge, 1973). MFL M. Heidegger, Th e Metaphysical Foundations of Logic , trans. A. Hofstadter (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984). PCIT E. Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917) , trans. J. Brough (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991), Appendix IX. (Cited by English pagination then the German pagination included in margins of Brough’s translation.) PP M. Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1945); Phenomenology of Perception , trans. C. Smith (London: Routledge, 1992). (Cited by the English pagination then the French.) SP J. Derrida, Speech and Phenomena , trans. D. Allison (Evanston, IL, 1973). VI M. Merleau-Ponty, Le visible et l’invisible (Paris: Tel Gallimard, 1961); Th e Visible and the Invisible , trans. A. Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968). An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique and New Beginnings
One of the central and enduring issues in phenomenology, perhaps the central and enduring issue, is its internal critique of its notions of imma- nence and time in the rethinking of intentionality. Despite the diff erent foci of the most recognizable thinkers in phenomenology, each comes back to the issues of immanence and time in his pursuit of clarifying the conditions under which the things themselves may in fact show them- selves from themselves as themselves. On Husserl’s account, immanence captures the basic human experience—intentionality—of which time serves as the “bedrock.” Th is claim no doubt will take many by surprise, since after Heidegger any nuance Husserl gave to the term immanence— for example, that it is not a mere synonym for consciousness or a term tied to that pole of the intentional relation—gets stripped away. Immanence is read by Husserl’s followers after Heidegger as a blanket label for some- thing like consciousness, the only indubitable element of experience. 1 It is no surprise, then, that phenomenology’s legacy is one of a series of new beginnings. Th e issue that runs throughout what follows and which I shall leave each reader to answer for him or herself is whether Husserl’s new beginning is a false start for phenomenology, or whether phenom- enology’s many new beginnings after him achieve what he could not, or whether those new beginnings re-create philosophical problems that he intended phenomenology to leave behind. Immanence, as even the new reader of phenomenology knows, is a polyvalent term within and across phenomenological authors. Most
xix xx An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique… popularly it seems to function as a term of art that denotes (as syn- onymous or at least functionally equivalent to) the subject or conscious- ness or mind. Th is is especially so when phenomenologists starting with Heidegger deploy the term in critiquing Husserl as a thinker who remains within the shadow of modern philosophical views of con- sciousness or subjectivity, such as those found in Descartes or Kant. In phenomenological discussions—in the metaphenomenology that char- acterizes much phenomenological literature in the second period of the twentieth century phenomenology forward—immanence is something of a metonym (for Cartesianism or modern subjectivism) in all the ways Nietzsche reminded philosophers of the place of this forgotten literary device in the discipline that takes the pursuit of truth as its vocation. 2 According to Husserl’s phenomenology, however, the term is most eff ectively understood to denote a new way of looking at the intentional relation between self and other, the agent and the world. Indeed, it is a term that serves as one of the many markers indicating Husserl’s desire and struggle for a new beginning through his phenomenology. Husserl will seek to work with this modern term, to draw strategic distinctions within it, and to develop his theories of intentionality, time, perception, etc., upon a refi ned notion of it. Given that Husserl’s inheritors read immanence in his thought as a symptom of his inadequate understanding of intentionality—an inadequacy that will show itself when Husserl fi rst comes to the issue of internal time-consciousness—we begin with a look at the notion of immanence prior to the phenomenological movement. Th ere is little point in talking about Husserl’s theories of time and intentionality if we cannot fi rst (before moving to these more com- plex issues) reconsider his view of immanence. Phenomenologists from Heidegger onwards seem to insist that Husserl’s view of immanence sti- fl es the themes most central to his new beginning for phenomenology, namely, intentionality and time. Absent of an understanding of Husserl’s account of immanence, I believe, a reader of the phenomenological move- ment can evaluate eff ectively neither the criticisms Husserl levied against modern subjectivist views of immanence, nor the criticisms levied against Husserl’s phenomenological understanding of immanence (often cast as a residuum of Cartesian or Kantian idealism). It must be established as at least plausible that Husserl presents a nuanced notion of immanence and thus a viable alternative to modern subjective idealism’s reduction An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique... xxi of transcendence to immanence. If this can be established, then one can proceed to the more complex account of time-consciousness in light of the question of immanence. Only then can the reader ask a crucial but often overlooked question: Which of the senses of immanence do Husserl’s second-generation phenomenological inheritors have in mind when they criticize him with this blanket term?
Immanence Said in many Ways
Classical thinkers (including the ancient, Judeo-Christian, and medieval world) and modern thinkers (including Descartes, Spinoza, and Kant) advance very diff erent understandings of immanence and transcendence than we shall see Husserl develop. Th e dominant view of immanence and transcendence in the classical world refl ects its vertical, two-world schema. In this ancient or classical view of (what we could call) vertical imma- nence, immanence denotes the realm of human experience and nature. Transcendence, by contrast, on this hierarchical view, denotes the divine or conceptual realm. Th ese realms exist in a hierarchical order with immanence being fi rst, epistemologically, and transcendence fi rst, ontologically. Plato privileges transcendence over immanence, for the former, we learn in the discussion of the divided line, is the cause of things both being and being known in immanence. Transcendence is eminent in relation to immanence in the classical world-view—it exists beyond, above, and as privileged over immanence—as qualitatively higher. Even Plotinus’ perhaps more inte- grated emanation theory retains this qualitative and hierarchical distinction between transcendence and immanence. What emanates, what is created, remains distinct, at least qualitatively, from the creator (or source) from whom (or which) all things emanate; the creator still exists beyond, above, and as privileged over the created, however tightly wound Plotinus would have them. 3 And Aquinas, always fi rst a doctor of the church and second an Aristotelian, preserves the creature/creator or immanence/transcendence distinction that ultimately follows the dominant classical schema. Th is teleological worldview of the classical period, even if we were to force talk of Aristotle’s more hylomorphic “horizontal” conception of (the relation between) immanence and transcendence, falls with the rise of modern science. Aristotle’s direct realism in light of modern science and xxii An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique… technology, the reader knows well, motivated modern philosophy’s skep- ticism and corresponding revision of the classical conception of (what contemporary continental philosophy tends to refer to as) immanence and transcendence in the work of Descartes. With the emergence of mod- ern philosophy, this vertical, hierarchical understanding of immanence and transcendence levels into a horizontal plane that increasingly inverts the order of privilege. Transcendence and immanence, the higher and lower, transform into outer and inner. By way of priority in the modern world, immanence is eminent in relation to transcendence in the modern worldview of (what we could call) horizontal immanence (immanence on this plane, fl attened out, if you will). Descartes’ skeptical epistemology inaugurates a metaphysical dual- ism within the realm of immanence, moreover. Descartes distinguishes between the fi nite, unextended thinking substance—or the immanent and indubitably certain cogito —and all fi nite, extended, material sub- stances—or the transcendent things of which the mind can have no certainty. No longer simply synonyms for natural world and divine/ conceptual world, immanence now refers to a special sphere within the natural world, the unextended sphere of the thinking substance divorced from that which transcends it. Th e meaning of “transcendence,” how- ever, also doubles and becomes equivocal. Transcendence can refer to that which in the natural world exists outside the thinking substance’s thought (immanence), as well as that which in the divine world exists beyond both the unextended thinking substance and the extended mate- rial substance. Th e use of the term, transcendence, can be further con- fusing because it denotes two realms of substance that are transcendent to the realm of certainty (extended material substance and God). Th at Descartes’ thought entails two senses of transcendence comes to light precisely when the problems with his restrictive notion of immanence (understood as the indubitable cogito ) arise and need resolving. Having construed the unextended thinking substance as a punctual, atomistic certainty, the immanent cogito could not go beyond the certainty of the unextended thinking substance’s present moment—never mind refer beyond itself to the external, transcendent world. Descartes’ immanent cogito thus required not only God’s benevolence as an onto-theological bridge to ensure the correspondence between immanence and transcen- An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique… xxiii dence (the immanent ideas in the mind as they mediated access to the transcendent things in the world) but also God’s goodness to unify the unextended thinking substance across the moments of time that tran- scend (are transcendent to) its punctual present on Descartes’ account. A vestige of the classical, vertical notion of immanence and tran- scendence remains in Descartes’ account of horizontal immanence. In an important way, immanence remains shrouded in, or dependent on, transcendence, for the idea of the infi nite transcendence is within me and even prior to my idea of myself (a theory advanced, as we know, by Descartes in his third meditation). But the preoccupation with the world of transcendence over which the moderns wished to become “masters and possessors” created an exclusively object-focused view of the world and all that was in it, including the cogito . As a result, the being of consciousness is never thematized in itself (never itself examined) but always already construed in advance according to the desire for objectivity in a world where all knowing and awareness was thought exclusively as a dyadic relation between knower and known, subject and object. Th e thinking self thus never appears precisely as it is given but only as a “refl ected” sub- ject—a subject only ever given in refl ection and thus—in relation to an object mediated by the subject’s ideas—a perversion of thought thinking itself, if you will. 4 Th is view of immanence construes the self as an object, something purportedly secured by the refl ecting and doubting subject that never appears but only ever gives us a view of the thinking thing as the tag end of the world—the last thing arrived at in a regressive series of doubting. 5 And this is defi nitely diff erent from how Husserl arrives at the subject (at least insofar as he merely attempts to doubt). 6 Descartes’ theory of what I’ve labeled horizontal immanence, cashed out as a divinely constructed relation between two ontologically distinct substances, showed Spinoza a diff erent way to understand immanence. By transposing Descartes’ immanent and transcendent modes of substance (both unextended thought and extended matter) into the one substance, God, Spinoza inaugurated a view of immanence that we may call monis- tic immanence. Th is is possible, of course, because of an obvious ambigu- ity in Descartes’ Meditations on what substance is: the Latin reveals the opening through which Spinoza steps. On a Spinozistic view of monistic immanence, immanence and transcendence are all modes and expressions xxiv An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique… of the one, the only and ultimate (substance), God. Spinozism reconciles immanence and transcendence, as it were, and neither is considered emi- nent in relation to the other. Spinozism’s univocal view of substance, its monistic immanence, does not replay the emanation theory of imma- nence and transcendence characteristic of Plotinus. For Spinozism, we cannot take the one, absolute substance, God as somehow qualitatively above immanence. Rather, all attributes and modes express the one substance, God. 7 Regardless of what one thinks about the Spinozistic position on immanence, Spinoza is interesting because he eliminates all hierarchical relations between immanence and transcendence. 8 Spinozism’s monistic immanence, along with vertical and horizontal immanence, fall to the speculative side of experience of which human thinkers cannot speak in Kant’s critical philosophy. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason introduces a new wrinkle into immanence beyond Descartes’ horizontal immanence, a wrinkle I shall refer to as “mythical imma- nence.” First, however, it is worth noting that Kant’s thought formalizes the doubled- transcendence found in Descartes. For Kant, immanence constructs a mode of transcendence as the realm of phenomenal appear- ances (or what for Descartes was the natural, transcendent world bridged by God’s goodness). Yet beyond the realm of appearances lay the noume- nal realm, which included things more radically transcendent (of which we cannot speak), that is, the things-in-themselves or, roughly, those things as God sees them because he does not intuit but knows them. 9 But immanence too doubles for Kant. Th e immanence that constitutes phenomenal transcendence in his critical philosophy either appears to itself only as a transcendent object or never appears because the condi- tion for the possibility of experience cannot itself be conditioned. In his critical philosophy, the immanence that never manifests and which he terms the transcendental self amounts to a “mythical immanence,” while the immanence that appears and which he terms the empirical self is a transcendent phenomenon. In the latter instance, the predicament is similar to Descartes’. In the quest for objectivity, the world (in) itself does not appear and neither does the subject who constructs the phenomenal realm (of objects conforming to the forms and categories of cognition). Th ese several senses of immanence—vertical, horizontal, monistic, and mythical—provide a rubric for functionalizing the term “imma- An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique… xxv nence” and preliminarily disambiguating its equivocal and largely met- onymic use in contemporary continental phenomenology. Immanence tends to be taken to mean consciousness or subjectivity thought as a thing, a noun, or a box, to take the popular metaphor. But the matter of immanence for Husserl’s phenomenology is not this simple or clear. We must make one more step in the process of clarifi cation and distin- guish these several senses of immanence from Husserl’s own delineation of three modes of immanence.
A New Beginning for Immanence
Let us turn to Husserl’s 1907 lectures, Th e Idea of Phenomenology , in which he distinguishes three diff erent ways to understand the term “immanence.” 10 An outline of these three types of immanence—the arguments for which I defer until Part I—establishes that Husserl’s phe- nomenological notion of immanence diff ers from modern philosophy’s notions of immanence with respect to the manner of givenness of both the self and the things of which it is aware. Simply setting forth these terms will enable us as we proceed to evaluate (i) the viability of Husserl’s claim to have escaped Cartesian and Kantian idealism, (ii) phenomenol- ogy’s internal critique of Husserl’s phenomenology as allegedly confi ned by modern subjective idealism, and eventually (iii) the viability of the alternative views of intentionality, immanence, and time proposed by phenomenologists who come after Husserl. Th e fi rst type of immanence is the most natural and least refl ected upon type of immanence, as it were, and Husserl terms it psychological imma- nence. It is a mode, if you will, of horizontal immanence. According to Husserl in this work, psychological immanence stems from the Cartesian and Kantian view of the subject and “intentionality.” Descartes and Kant seek the subject to anchor the objectivity of experience because the sub- ject provides “the plain certainty of experience.” Both thinkers also take the subject as “object among objects” (Crisis 104). In this type of psycho- logical immanence, where the things in the world are represented “in the consciousness of a person and in a mental phenomenon,” consciousness is like a box containing ideas and concepts and so forth (IP 65). Modern xxvi An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique… subjective idealism’s commitment to objectivity produces a restrictive, dyadic model of awareness (all knowing is a relation between a knower and a known, and all objectivities stem from the subjective workings of the mind). Th is model of consciousness construes the subject only as “interpreting itself … in explicit self-refl ection”; on the modern model of immanence and awareness, the subject turns into an object (Crisis 104–5). Psychological immanence construes the subject as “a little tag- end of the world,” 11 a thinking thing with innate ideas or a conscious- ness with forms of intuition and categories in which all transcendence, all being as objectivity or as objectively secured, resides. Psychological immanence really discloses neither the object nor the subject, but it pre- cludes the givenness of both. Th e subject never appears or is given (except as an object) and the things-in-themselves never manifest themselves as themselves but only as “appearances.” Husserl contrasts to psychological immanence something he calls real (reell ) immanence. Reell immanence denotes what is contained in the stream of conscious life (Erlebnis ) purged of all presuppositions and dogmas, both scientifi c and philosophical, after the phenomenological reduction. Th e label “reell immanence” thus expresses “absolutely evident givenness, … that … moment really contained in the act of knowing” (IP 28). Husserl unfortunately refers to reell immanence here as “the act of knowing” when it really captures any act of consciousness and amounts to the absolute (purely given) life of conscious acts (e.g., perception, memory, imagination) secured through the reduction. Reell immanence focuses only on the activity of consciousness and not the object of which consciousness is aware; this type of immanence denotes neither, for exam- ple, the fi re engine nor the red sense data natural psychology believes we “see” when building up our view of the red fi re engine. But reell imma- nence gives us a little peak into that box: it looks at the structure or form of the box and its contents but it does not claim that the structure and the contents are the intended (perceived) object. Phenomenology secures reell immanence “through … the phenomenological reduction,” and what fi rst appears is “an absolute givenness that no longer off ers any- thing transcendent” (IP 34). If psychological immanence precludes the givenness of transcendence and immanence, reell immanence secures the givenness of immanence, but it does so in a way that methodologically An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique… xxvii disregards transcendence, leaving it under the thumb of immanence; it would be the realization of the Cartesian dream beyond even Descartes’ wildest dream (the pure acts and activities of consciousness no longer construed as an unextended thinking substance ). As John Brough has rightly emphasized, however, as Husserl contin- ues those lectures he declares it a “fatal mistake” to think phenomenol- ogy stops with reell immanence. Husserl’s expression is a little dramatic, but the very notion of intentionality ought to alert us to this mistake and thus the shortsightedness of criticizing him for making the very mistake against which he himself warns. Th e phenomenological view of imma- nence is neither psychological immanence, nor the reell immanence that reduces phenomena or givenness to “absolutely evident givenness, … that … moment really contained in the act of knowing … that no longer off ers anything transcendent” (IP 28, 34). What the reduction ultimately reveals is a new, “broader concept” of immanence or given- ness (IP 65). Husserl thus distinguishes “between real [reell ] immanence and immanence in the sense of self-givenness ” (IP 63). Th e broader view of immanence that Husserl pries open holds that “as far as self-given- ness extends, so far extends our phenomenological sphere, the sphere of absolute clarity, of immanence in the genuine sense” (IP 66). Whatever gives itself—whether other or self, transcendence or immanence—if given within the phenomenological reduction and thus purged of pre- sumption and dogma, gives itself in “evidence” and qualifi es genuinely as immanence, or genuine phenomenological immanence. It is just part of the way of things, part of their being, to appear. Both the self in its awareness of the world and the objects in the world of which we are aware manifest themselves or give themselves in their own distinctive way. And phenomenology can identify and describe their essential fea- tures (eidetic structures). Robert Sokolowski best captures the spirit and intention of Husserl’s notion of genuine phenomenological immanence as I’m recounting it here:
For phenomenology, there are no “mere” appearances, and nothing is “just” an appearance. Appearances are real; they belong to being. Th ings do show up. Phenomenology allows us to recognize and to restore the world that seems to have been lost when we were locked into our own internal world xxviii An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique…
by philosophical confusions. Th ings that had been declared merely psycho- logical are now found to be ontological, part of the being of things … sharing in being and … capable of appearing to their own proper style. 12
I shall develop this insight further in Part I. But, for now, the discussion suffi ces to outline Husserl’s position such that the reader can see, contra the critique of a residual modern subjective notion of immanence, that he seeks a new beginning with this notion of genuine phenomenological immanence understood in the sense of the self-givenness—the manner or way of appearing 13 —of self and other. Th e refi ned, phenomenological view of “genuine immanence” thus denotes the realm of pure phenom- ena, both immanence and transcendence, both self and other, given abso- lutely (and) independently of presuppositions as correlates (co-relates) of lived experience. Th e sense of genuine phenomenological immanence stems from an overcoming of the ontological separation of inner from outer in favor of a description of the interests and signifi cance—the prac- tical meaning structure—of the life of the self in its relation to the world. Phenomenological immanence is intentionality. Genuine phenomeno- logical immanence captures intentionality understood not as a bridge between two islands but as the coextensive ranges of consciousness and being. Th is new view of immanence is accompanied in Husserl’s thought by a developing sense of intentionality characteristic of consciousness’s living experience (Erlebnis ), that is, internal-time consciousness, which captures the self’s self-givenness in its awareness of things in the world beyond a dyadic, third-person account of whether or not the psychic ideas in the mind relate to the represented world. 14 We now have at play seven ways to think about immanence as we look to examine the phenomenological tradition and its eff orts to institute a new beginning for phenomenology (often through its immanent (inter- nal) critique). We have Husserl’s terms: (i) psychological immanence, (ii) reell immanence, and (iii) genuine phenomenological immanence. And we have those terms designed to capture views of immanence in the history of philosophy: (iv) vertical immanence, (v) horizontal imma- nence, (vi) monistic immanence, and (vii) mythical immanence. Since for precision we shall preserve Husserl’s terms, and since psychological and reell immanence can be seen as variants of horizontal immanence, I shall An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique… xxix discard the latter. As phenomenology suspends certain types of meta- physical explanations of experience, we can discard vertical immanence too. But as the monistic and mythical types of immanence may recur in later phenomenologists, I shall preserve these two senses of immanence, thus leaving us with fi ve senses of immanence: what Husserl terms (1) genuine phenomenological immanence, (2) psychological immanence, (3) reell immanence, and what I’ve labeled (4) monistic immanence and (5) mythical immanence. 15 All of this is not to say that the matter of phenomenology’s immanent (internal) critique is as simple as functionalizing this term, immanence. It is not. Th ere are reasons internal to Husserl’s thought that encour- age the persistent critique of it as modernist—even if they stem from uncharitable readings and failures to diff erentiate genuine phenomeno- logical immanence from reell , psychological, or mythical immanence. (No one would charge Husserl with monistic immanence but the term will prove useful in Part II.) And there are, of course, external reasons behind the persistent critique of Husserl’s thought as incapable of escap- ing the shadow of modern philosophy. But if we can use the resources of Husserl’s 1907 distinctions within the term, “immanence,” as a way to refi ne some of the areas of his thought that give rise to the persistent critique, then this will put the blanket critique of Husserl’s theory of immanence on notice.
The Phenomenological Reduction, Immanence, and the Reduction of Phenomenology
What ultimately buttresses the charge that Husserl remains ensnared in the modern, subjective notion of immanence ( reell or psychological, it matters not) is the phenomenological reduction. Th is theoretical device is often (mistakenly) read in conjunction with the famous “annihilation of the world” thought experiment in paragraph 49 of Ideas I and construed as a refl ective and abstracted and detached introspective examination of those a priori structures of consciousness that “construct” the world. As with every caricature, there is some truth to it, but this one is drawn by xxx An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique… the particularly unskilled or uncharitable or sadistically satirical. What is present in the caricature is a mode of refl ection, but one more in line with contemplation than introspection. It is a call to bracket the natural attitude relation to the world. But a quick look closer will reveal that the “reduction” is not a severing of consciousness from the world followed by a peak into the box, not a reduction of the world to consciousness’s thoughts, ideas, and so on. A series of preliminary observations on the manner of the presentation of things with respect to the sphere of the immanent and the sphere of the transcendent motivates Husserl to locate a philosophical technique that enables “secure” access to genuine phenomenological immanence. An examination of experience highlights a distinction between the acts of consciousness and the object intended. While I can experience an object under diff erent acts, for example, perception or memory, the object can- not be reduced to any one of these acts. 16 Correlatively, I distinguish between the object’s appearance and the object of perception. As I intend an object in an act of perception it appears to me “horizontally,” that is, in profi les: side, front, top, bottom, and so on. On the one hand, the object appears immanently to consciousness as one of these perspectival presen- tations. On the other hand, the object as the identical whole outruns the appearing (side of the) object and thus transcends consciousness’s per- spectival grasp of it. 17 Under these circumstances, consciousness enjoys no guarantee that its next positing or perspective will provide a percep- tion consistent with what its current perception conditions it to expect. 18 Husserl concedes that such circumstances make a tenuous ground for explaining conscious activity and the formation of beliefs. As phenom- enology wants to describe and analyze the structures of intentionality without insulating consciousness from the world or leaving a noumenal remainder—a Kantian thing-in-itself rather than an apprehension of the thing itself—the nature of spatiotemporal objects, tasks and projects, and so on, as transcending the profi les given to consciousness, motivates the phenomenological reduction. Not to be taken as an exclusive or solipsistic reduction of the world to consciousness, the phenomenological method advocates a change in atti- tude, a bracketing of our naïve, intentional engagement with the world in the “natural attitude.” We should understand this bracketing claim in the An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique… xxxi context of Sextus Empiricus’ Pyrrhonian uses of the term epoché , which Husserl adapts, rather than Descartes’ methodological negation of the external world. 19 Th e epoché , following Sextus, denotes the restriction of “assent to [any] of the things that are non-evident.” 20 When Sextus and Husserl invoke the epoché , despite many diff erences that exist between them, they mean to put all natural attitude positings, whether affi rmative or negative, out of play, 21 much like a mathematician’s bracketing of (a positive or negative) number. Th e phenomenological reduction off ers a critical device, a reducere , a leading away from and back to. It leads us away from the partial and abstract to the impartial and concrete. Th at is, phenomenology leads the thinker away from presuppositions and back to the things themselves just as they appear, unadulterated, ab-solved and thus given absolutely. Th e “reduction” sets aside uncritically habituated opinions and theories and neutralizes dogmatic scientifi c and philosophical attitudes that attempt to “construct” experience, the things themselves. 22 As Husserl claims,
We put out of action the general positing which belongs to the essence of the natural attitude …, the whole natural world which is continually “there for us,” “on hand,” and which will always remain there according to con- sciousness as an “actuality” even if we choose to parenthesize it. … I am not negating this “world” as though I were a sophist; I am not doubting its factual being as though I were a skeptic; rather, I am exercising the phe- nomenological epoché . (Id I 64/61)
Husserl cannot be clearer. Th e “reduction” does not invalidate, doubt, nullify, or deny natural attitude intentionalities; these remain there for us, and we are led back to them by way of clarifying the intentional relation or correlation—genuine phenomenological immanence—between self and world, knower and known, agent and task, conscious act and intended object, immanence and transcendence. Not merely a critical device, the “reduction” opens onto the realm of transcendental experience, the sphere of genuine immanence, the intentional co-relation. Phenomenological immanence does not denote a severed and secluded consciousness try- ing to escape its interiority to reach again the transcendent world; that would be psychological or reell immanence. Rather, this phenomenologi- xxxii An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique… cal notion of immanence can be understood just as intentionality, the co-relation of self and world, the whole being described in its various dis- tinguishable parts. But, as noted above, immanence is an unfortunately polyvalent term. And the polyvalence is noticeable in Husserl’s thought. To the mode of the givenness of transcendent spatiotemporal objects, Husserl contrasts the mode of the givenness of the sphere of immanence, where occurrences of doubt are essentially “excluded” (55/59). Th at the sphere of immanence be spared the threat of doubt Husserl concludes from the observation that intentional consciousness appears as “something abso- lute which can never be presented with respect to sides or be adumbrated” (Id I82/97). Th at occurrences with doubt are excluded in the sphere of immanence does not imply that we doubt the matters in the sphere of tran- scendence in totality à la Descartes. We can doubt that the subsequent per- ception of the house’s side coheres with its brick front only if that doubt is motivated by some element of the experience (e.g., I’m walking around the grounds of Universal Studios). So, we can doubt (attempt to doubt) with- out doubting and eventually denying the whole external world such that the sun might not come out tomorrow and disappoint Annie. Husserl’s description of the achievement of the reduction again is clear:
Instead … of living naively in experience and theoretically exploring what is experienced, … instead of naively eff ecting the acts pertaining to our nature … we put all of those positings “out of action,” we do not “partici- pate in them”; … Strictly speaking, we have not lost anything but gained the whole of absolute being which, rightly contains within itself, “consti- tutes” within itself, all worldly transcendencies. (Id I94/113)
Th ere is nothing new here in this rehearsal of Husserl’s phenomenological reduction. But I want to highlight that the phenomenological reduction expands or “broadens” (Id I61/68) the fi eld of research to the whole of absolute being, a realm of “broad immanence” wherein phenomenology examines precisely how self and object, immanence and transcendence, appear in co-relation with one another in genuine phenomenological immanence. 23 Despite his Cartesian language in Ideas I, Husserl had already asserted in his 1907 lectures, Th e Idea of Phenomenology , that it is absurd to main- An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique… xxxiii tain that “cognition is given but the object of cognition is not given.” 24 With respect to the meaningfulness of our world, our tasks, commitments, priorities, perceptions, and so on, it is diffi cult to conceive of something given without the one to whom it is given. Again, but in another sense, the doctrine of intentionality reminds us that Husserl does not construe consciousness as a locational term or substance. Intentional conscious- ness is an activity and best understood as a verb rather than a noun. Against the modern rendering of immanence and transcendence as inner and outer, psychical and physical, Husserl distinguishes this pair starting from the premise that intentional consciousness as self-transcending is open to all things. 25 Th at the intended object that presents in an inten- tional act is said to be “immanent” does not mean to say that the object is in consciousness in the psychological sense as really contained in the way, to borrow a Wittgensteinian example, a penny is in my pocket. Instead, Husserl refers to intended objects as “transcendent” rather than “imma- nent,” for the object intended transcends or surpasses in no mysterious or mythical way consciousness’s act of intending it and its appearance. As noted above, each presented object appears in a particular act to which it cannot be reduced and horizontally in spatial and temporal profi les, presenting one side or variation of itself, hiding another, “appresented” side that remains “transcendent.” 26 Examining consciousness’s intentional structures, Husserl neither retreats into the mind by denying the world, nor invokes a noume- nal realm. Rather, he maintains that consciousness intends the intui- tively given object precisely as it is given in its presence and absence. Consciousness, he claims, co-intends the appresented side of the object. Th is co-intended dimension appears associatively as an empty or unful- fi lled intention but it is not given intuitively as a fulfi lled intention (e.g., I believe from past experience that the front of my computer, which is given to me intuitively, also has a backside, which is given appresenta- tively as co-intended). Such co-intentional association occurs passively and depends (or is founded, as Husserl puts it) on memory, which, in turn, depends on previously completed or constituted perceptions, which themselves depend, in turn, on the consciousness of internal time. Th is relation of founding to founded off ers a fi rst glimpse at what it means to say that consciousness is a process—an assimilative center—that “consti- xxxiv An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique… tutes” experience. And it will require an account of time consciousness as the condition of the possibility for these diff erent modes of givenness in the subject and the object. Already with the notions of empty and fi lled intentions, however, Husserl has extended the notion of intuition—beyond Cartesian ideas and Kant’s restriction of intuition to punctual “sense” impressions struc- tured by the intuitions, the forms, of space and time—to a relation denoting the manner of my intentional directedness to the object and the ways in which the object correlatively appears in presence and in absence and across diff erent conscious acts (e.g., perception, memory). Both subjectivity’s activities and the things experienced are within con- sciousness’s reach, but neither is reducible to the other, for “there can be no outside for a being whose structure is to be open to the structures of all things … Consciousness and being belong together. Th eir ranges are co-extensive.” 27 Everything here in Ideas I seems quite “mentalistic,” if you will. Much of the apprehension of the transcendent object occurs thanks to the activity of the “immanent subject” or consciousness. Such tones often discolor Husserl’s depiction of the whole of genuine phenomenological immanence broadly construed, that is, the structure of intentionality that includes both poles, self and world. It thus seems reasonable that some have asked (and as we shall consider again) whether Husserl’s views of reduction, intentionality, immanence, and time consciousness really achieve a new beginning for phenomenology (or are a residuum of mod- ern subjective idealism).
Immanence in Phenomenology and Phenomenology’s Immanent (Internal) Critique: A Primer
Prior to writing Being and Time, Heidegger’s challenge to Husserl’s phe- nomenology and its theory of intentionality targeted specifi cally the notion of immanence in Husserl’s thought. In his 1925 lecture course, “History of the Concept of Time,” which largely forms the basis of his An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique… xxxv
1927 work, Heidegger commented that Husserlian immanence “is said of the region of consciousness, of lived experience” and “implies … to be in another,” that is, that the object is in the mind’s idea or conforms to the acts of consciousness. Having interpreted Husserl’s notion of immanence as a state of one thing being within another, Heidegger identifi es “imma- nence … [as] a relation … between lived experiences themselves, between the refl ecting act and the refl ected” (HCT 103/142). In Husserl’s phe- nomenology, he thus concludes, immanence “does not become a theme. What does become thematic is the entity insofar as it is a possible object of refl ection” (HCT 104/143). Th e entity as an “object of refl ection” is con- sciousness or immanence as that which is “refl ected” upon in the reduc- tion to the secure “space” of consciousness; insofar as immanence on this reading of Husserl’s thought amounts to that which is “refl ected” upon, immanence does not become a “theme” for Husserl’s phenomenology because the “refl ecting act” of the lived subject that takes the “refl ected” upon lived subject remains one step too late, always chasing its shadow. To say that immanence does not become a theme means, moreover, that Husserl does not investigate intentionality radically enough because he does not investigate the being of consciousness in a way that shows that we are not self-enclosed subjects accessed only as objects. Th is predicament befalls Husserl, according to Heidegger, because in Husserl’s thought “all … being, as reality, is only in relation to conscious- ness, that is, relative to it” and given in a refl ective, objectifi ed account of experience (HCT 105/144). Th e motivating insight of Heidegger’s critique, which the reader will have to decide either is defensible or mis- takes genuine phenomenological immanence for psychological or per- haps reell immanence, follows from Heidegger’s belief that Husserl’s thought remains beholden to modern philosophy’s dream of establish- ing a foundationalist ideal of philosophy as a rigorous science rooted in the unshakeable certainty of consciousness’s acts. Heidegger writes, “Husserl’s primary question is simply not concerned with the character of the being of consciousness.” Th e issue is not simply “What does con- sciousness ‘do’?”—to which Heidegger fi rst replies that it pragmatically engages the world and later replies that it is the very transcendence that makes intentionality possible 28—or “What makes this fundamental way of being in the world possible?”—to which Heidegger will reply, time: xxxvi An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique…
Rather, [Husserl] is guided by the following concern: How can consciousness become the possible object of absolute science? Th e primary concern which guides him is the idea of an absolute science . Th is idea, that consciousness is to be the region of an absolute science , is not simply invented; it is the idea which has occupied modern philosophy ever since Descartes. Th e elabora- tion of pure consciousness as the thematic fi eld of phenomenology is not derived phenomenologically by going back to the matters themselves but by going back to a traditional idea of philosophy. (HCT 107/146)
Th is reading maintains that, for Husserl, ontology remained a theory of objects correlated to subjectivity, a theory that gives rise to the tra- ditional question of how we access the latter so we can describe experi- ence. Husserl’s concern with objects and consciousness as becoming an object of inquiry for absolute science rendered his account of intention- ality incomplete insofar as it could not identify the structure of imma- nence except as an object (of refl ection) and never could capture the things themselves because they were also objects for this pure, refl ected consciousness. Husserlian intentionality functions in this reading as a bridge between two islands: “phenomenological research, in its formative period …, operates in a fundamental neglect, and it does so in relation to the phenomenological investigation and determination of that which must be its theme: intentional comportment and all that is given with it” (HCT 115/159). Th is model of an abstracted consciousness over against an object that it constitutes and as itself a possible object, if it is accurate, wreaks havoc with Husserl’s attempt to account for the way the things themselves appear and the way that the self is given in its lived awareness of objects. Ludwig Landgrebe, in what appears to be a Heideggerian moment, clearly captures Husserl’s struggles to meet his own “principle of all principles” 29 with respect to the self:
Husserl … questions the possibility of comprehending [immanence] when he says that “the present which has become objective is objective in an … act that itself is not objectively known.” Th at we presume as the last exis- tent, that primal existent which we assume under the title “primal phe- nomenological present,” is actually a “phenomenon” for us and … is not the most fundamental. 30 An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique… xxxvii
Always awareness after the fact, always refl ectively given under the sign of the phenomenological reduction that will preserve phenomenology as a rigorous science, Husserl’s phenomenology does not maintain pace with what is most fundamental, namely, the functioning or lived self as it appears originally in its encounter with the world. Accounting for the self as (psychological or reell ) immanence only in an act of refl ection, account- ing for the self thus only as an object, which the self certainly is not, Husserl does not present the self precisely as given. Th ere is, on this Heideggerian- styled critique, no genuine phenomenological immanence, just psychologi- cal or reell immanence. Perhaps even worse, a mythical immanence too may haunt Husserl’s theory of the self, for “in the very moment of refl ection the functioning has already become another … it has become the perfor- mance of its act of refl ection, and thus is not objective for itself,” 31 that is, immanence never appears as a phenomenon when all phenomena must be objectively given as transcendence. Immanence, if it appears, appears only as transcendence, and in any event Husserl’s phenomenological method precludes an account of it. Since immanence itself never really becomes a theme in this sense, according to Heidegger, intentionality itself always remains misunderstood and requires rethinking. And the principle of all principles is abandoned, as Heidegger will maintain throughout his career. 32 Husserl thus fi nds himself in the same predicament as Kant, which is fundamentally the same predicament created by Descartes’ restrictive model of awareness as a dyadic relation of knower to known. Rather than examine the meaning of the being of consciousness and thus intentional- ity in full—that is, both the practical form of worldly engagement and subjectivity itself—Husserl abandons his phenomenological principles by joining forces, however unwittingly, with the partial sciences of mod- ern, foundationalist metaphysics and epistemology. Th e obsession with theory, the design for achieving objectivity for absolute science, corrupts not only the view of subjectivity, but also the view of the objects in the world. Playing Husserl’s famous slogan of a “return to the things them- selves” off itself, Heidegger writes,
Consciousness in the sense of absolute means the priority of subjectivity over every objectivity. Th is … absolute being … sets the region of con- sciousness within the order of constituting and assigns to it in this order a xxxviii An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique…
formal role of being earlier than anything objective. Th is determination and conception of consciousness is likewise the place where idealism and idealistic inquiry, more precisely, idealism in the form of neo-Kantianism, enter into phenomenology. Th us this determination of being is also not an original one. (HCT 105/145)
Husserl’s desire to establish philosophy as a rigorous science reduces being to consciousness’s “construction” of it and thus the things themselves are not present but given as things as consciousness constructs them. But what if the absolute is read as intentionality understood as genuine phe- nomenological immanence—the way in which that which gives itself gives itself or appears just as it is—as Husserl intended? Husserlian immanence, from Heidegger onwards, nevertheless remains understood as being within the refl ected, objectifi ed subject rather than the self in its originary state of living experience, being-in- the-world, intentionally directed toward the world and the things themselves. Neither subject nor object—neither immanence nor transcendence— appears in its original state, according to Heidegger’s reading of Husserl. On this persistent reading—this reading of Husserl that persists and endures in the phenomenological tradition—the old subject/object, inner/outer, appearance/reality, meaning/living couplets replay, and with them their accessible, immanent contents versus those inaccessible, transcendent things. Th e modern problem of appearances thus would remain, the character of intentionality itself would remain concealed, and the givenness of the self (or, as the equivocation of the blanket critique goes, immanence or subjectivity) would remain unthematized. Th ese are rather astounding claims with far-reaching implications for phenomenology after Heidegger. 33 Yet one must recall that Descartes’ concerns (along with Kant’s) were not Husserl’s. As the latter declared in a series of lectures given in the Winter Semester of 1910–11, Aus den Vorlesungen: Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie :
Everything the empirical psychologist lays claim to as psychic experience of the human and animal I-consciousness respectively becomes only a cogita- tio in the absolute sense, in the sense of a pure phenomenological given- ness, by way of the phenomenological reduction, and only then is the An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique… xxxix
givenness pure and absolute in the sense that the straightforward positing of a this, of a being, leaves open no possible doubt whatsoever, i.e. would render doubt meaningless indeed. Th is is precisely what was important for Descartes, whereas for us it is not the main thing … What interests us here is not the absolute universal science ( absolute Universalwissenschaft ), but rather science (die Wissenschaft ) within the phenomenological attitude. 34
It will appear that the absolute science which phenomenology seeks is not a totalizing one that will explain consciousness’s relation to the world in the form of a constructed world rooted in certain ideas in the mind. Th e absolute science of which Husserl speaks is, in the literal sense, an ab- solved science, a science that does not depend on other explanatory mod- els but rather a science that itself aspires to a full, exhaustive, explanatory model that is not closed once it is complete like the Hegelian system. Nevertheless, the popular storyline within today’s continental philoso- phy goes as follows. Husserl’s phenomenological reduction—his method of bracketing metaphysical and dogmatic philosophical presumptions at the outset of any inquiry in order to assess without bias how phenomena present themselves as themselves to the apprehending agent—makes him a philosopher of immanence in the modern sense (of reell or psycho- logical immanence). Phenomenology comes into its own, grows up as it were, with Heidegger’s liberation of the things themselves from imma- nence’s grip. Heidegger drew a philosophical line, indicating where he put Husserl’s “cogito” back into the world as Dasein, and he did so by meticulously sweeping away the residue of the modern notion of imma- nence in Husserl’s thought and thus in phenomenology (BT 87/60)—a move he will achieve by focusing on transcendence as the foundation of intentionality, a transcendence founded in temporality. From Heidegger onwards, it seems to me, the language of immanence and transcendence in continental phenomenology blankets the terms, “subject” and “object,” “self” and “other,” “inner” and “outer,” respec- tively. Sometimes continental phenomenologists use the blanket to suff o- cate (philosophical) troublemakers; sometimes they use it to put out their theoretical fi res. In any event, these terms, crucial for evaluating both Husserl’s phenomenology and later phenomenologists’ internal critiques of him, remain too equivocal to answer the question asked about them. xl An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique…
An answer to an old question—whether or not Husserl’s phenomenology rooted in an account of intentionality and internal time-consciousness presents a repackaged Cartesian or Kantian theory of immanence— requires a more conventional start than today’s conventional start. Th at is, rather than reading Heidegger and then Husserl, let us return to a more conventional path; let us begin down the path of chronology, and examine an overlooked matter in Husserl’s thought, namely, his theory of immanence, the strategic distinctions he draws within this term, and (eventually) how the notion of internal time-consciousness establishes a uniquely phenomenological notion of immanence—intentionality. *** What I hope is clear by now is that what follows will be a reading that will invite others to revisit this enduring critique of Husserl’s theory of intentionality, time-consciousness, and immanence. With his notion of genuine immanence in mind, by way of setting his theory of genuine immanence and self-givenness in opposition to Descartes’ and Kant’s the- ories of psychological and mythical immanence, I fi rst hope to demon- strate that Husserl’s account of the consciousness of internal time revises his theory of intentionality in a way that preserves the integrity of both transcendence and immanence, thereby taking phenomenology beyond modern subjective idealism as charged by Heidegger (in the shorthand of “immanence”) (PCIT 334/346, 276/286). But I also want to explore the consequences of the fact that the phenomenologists who came after Husserl and neglected his theory of genuine phenomenological imma- nence—by in one way or another fi nding in his thought a residual Cartesianism of one form or another—actually present alternative views of intentionality and temporality that perhaps could be seen to re-create an increasingly Spinozistic view of monistic immanence. 35 Th e basic narrative articulating the nest of issues I hope to invite readers to consider could be summarized as: (1) Husserl presents many variations of immanence to diff erentiate his phenomenology from modern subjec- tive idealism; (2) his fi rst and immature theory of time- consciousness commits him to reell immanence; (3) his revised and mature theory of time-consciousness realizes his theory of genuine phenomenological immanence and intentionality; (4) his critics seem unaware of (1); (5) his critics believe they substantiate their reading of his theory of immanence An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique… xli by criticizing his theory of time-consciousness or (2); but (6) perhaps their reading of his theory of immanence stems from a failure to appreci- ate—or a bad extrapolation of—the diff erence between the two periods of his theory of time-consciousness or (3); hence, (7) their alternative accounts of intentionality and immanence re-create philosophical prob- lems in the process of developing their new phenomenological begin- ning. Maybe we could say that bad readings of immanence motivate novel but problematic readings of temporality as a way of correcting a “shortcoming” in Husserl’s phenomenology that saddled his rediscovery of intentionality with the same old modern problem of subjectivism and appearances. My presentation thus moves in two directions simultaneously. First, it serves as a systematic analysis of the place and problem of immanence and (self-)givenness in the phenomenological tradition—particularly the intentional relation between the givenness of self and other over time. Second, this analysis moves chronologically in an eff ort to demonstrate suggestively that phenomenology’s revisions of Husserl’s conception of immanence form an increasingly clear trajectory toward a conception of immanence rooted in new conceptions of temporality that re-animate the problem of time for phenomenology such that the reader can con- sider how time becomes a problem for phenomenology. Interested in phenomenology and the problem of time, I shall begin in Chap. 1 with a closer, albeit negative, examination of how phenomenology distinguished itself from Descartes’ psychological imma- nence and Kant’s mythical or psychological immanence. Th is treatment of both Descartes and Kant seeks to establish from a phenomenologi- cal perspective (i) their narrow views of intentionality and immanence and (ii) their corresponding failures to account (or adequately account) for the peculiar mode of self-givenness over time that accompanies the givenness of objects. Th rough these accounts we ascertain certain desid- erata that a phenomenological view of self-givenness and intentionality must honor if phenomenology is to capture genuine phenomenological immanence, that is, describe the ways in which immanence and transcen- dence precisely give themselves. With these criteria established, I move in Chap. 2 through Husserl’s discovery of a novel notion of immanence (and transcendence) that his early theory of time-consciousness stifl es. xlii An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique…
Th is discussion requires a detour through Husserl’s theory of intention- ality as formulated in his Logical Investigations , Ideas I , and Cartesian Meditations. I turn to these texts for two reasons. First, they are popu- larly used in introductions, not only to Husserl’s thought, but also to the view of Husserl’s theory of immanence as reell or psychological. Second, Husserl’s inheritors often work with and against these texts in establish- ing their critiques of him and their new phenomenological beginning. Th e reader then can see that Husserl’s fi rst view of time-consciousness replays a variation of psychological immanence tied to his view of inten- tionality in Logical Investigations and developed in the “Cartesian” lan- guage of Ideas I. I shall turn in Chap. 3 to explain how Husserl broadens his notion of intentionality to include an account of how the self (imma- nence) is given to itself in its relation to transcendent objects by unifying itself in a non-objectifying mode of intentionality that accompanies its awareness of objects across time. Drawing on Husserliana , vol. X, the lectures and writings on time-consciousness (part of which Edith Stein edited and Heidegger published and to which Husserl’s critics primarily appeal), I shall claim that Husserl’s mature theory of genuine phenom- enological immanence emerges alongside his maturing theory of absolute time-consciousness. In Part II, I chronologically consider three critiques from within the phenomenological tradition of Husserl’s notion of immanence— Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Derrida. For reasons of space and focus, I have made a few decisions I wish to declare to the reader. First, I have cho- sen to focus on thinkers who generated watershed movements. 36 Second, given the acknowledged infl uence of Heidegger’s critique of Husserl’s theory of time-consciousness as unsuccessful in its attempt to escape modern, Cartesian immanence and capture the transcendence upon which intentionality (and thus any notion of immanent and transcen- dent rest), 37 I focus on Heidegger’s critique of Husserl from 1925–30 and those thinkers that explicitly develop and build upon these Heideggerian critiques. In this case, I look at those thinkers who have sought to move in their critiques of Husserl’s theory of intentionality, immanence, and time-consciousness in dialogue with Heidegger’s most formulated cri- tique of these themes of Husserl’s from Heidegger’s Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics . Th e reader would not be mistaken, then, to deduce in this An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique… xliii work a play on the title of Heidegger’s second, 1929, book. Th e general concern will be that each thinker challenges precisely Husserl’s theory of intentionality, immanence, and time-consciousness without appreciating the innovation of genuine phenomenological immanence and the shift in Husserl’s thought on time-consciousness. In Chap. 4, I examine Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927) and Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1929) along with his 1925 lec- ture course, History of the Concept of Time, crucial to his 1927 book. Heidegger, until 1927, presents a fundamentally Husserlian view of immanence insofar as his theory of Dasein’s temporality repackages the fundamentals of Husserl’s mature theory of inner time-consciousness. But in 1929, the reader will see, Heidegger shifts from a view of the self as constitutive of time to a view that time, as the very source of immanence’s transcendence, “forms in an original way the fi nite self so that the self can become something like self-consciousness” (KPM 130/183). Th is position marks a shift toward monistic or mythical immanence that (i) raises serious problems for a coherent phenomeno- logical view of genuine immanence and - as I shall argue in the last two chapters - (ii) exerts profound infl uence on (among others) Merleau- Ponty and Derrida (although for a very diff erent reason). 38 Emphasizing the transcendence of the self in a way that develops Heidegger’s posi- tion to another extreme, Merleau-Ponty—being directly infl uenced by Heidegger’s 1929 Kantbuch as evidenced in crucial notes to his Phenomenology of Perception —makes exoteric the monistic immanence implicit in Heidegger’s claim that time constitutes itself and the subject and the object. Merleau-Ponty’s late view of time and immanence in Visible and Invisible , while quite close to Spinozism but perhaps not quite radically (monistic or) immanent, is certainly and avowedly by the author’s own omission “not compatible with ‘phenomenology’” (VI 244). Derrida’s critique of Husserl’s phenomenology in Speech and Phenomena (1967) continues this trajectory, specifi cally taking as its “problem … the historical destiny of phenomenology” (SP 26). His account of intentionality, immanence (self-aff ection), and time- consciousness radicalizes Merleau-Ponty’s Heideggerian insight that the present moment and likewise immanence always succumb to a “trace” or “diff erence,” 39 an experience that, as Leonard Lawlor captures it, “can xliv An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique… never be presented: the irreducible void.” 40 Indeed, like Merleau-Ponty, Derrida’s textually detailed critique of Husserl’s view of immanence and time-consciousness rests on a reading infl uenced by Heidegger’s 1929 book on Kant, but this time we have either the deconstruction of phe- nomenology or a notion of mythical immanence gets introduced. Central both to the epistemological problems that concern phenom- enology and its resolution of modernity’s Cartesian or Kantian subjective idealistic accounts of these issues, Husserl’s phenomenology thinks genu- ine phenomenological immanence as the self’s particular self-givenness in correlation with the particular self-givenness of transcendence, or con- scious acts in correlation with objectivity. Husserl thus does not merely assert and then attempt to chronicle consciousness as intentional and related to objects as its correlates contained in it, as in the case of psy- chological immanence (or even reell immanence). Th e diffi cult matter of genuine phenomenological immanence concerns how things appear, how the self appears, how the fraternal twins of transcendence and immanence always travel together in genuine immanence, and how one accounts for these intentional relations of constitution while honoring the limits presented. Phenomenological inquirers must be a companion of the fraternal twins and not favor or privilege one twin at the expense of the other. Th ey must also not assume that one twin does all the work while the other lurks in (and only through a closer look emerges from) its shadow—a view that emerges both when phenomenologists think Being gives itself before and independently of the distinction between self and other and when they read Husserl’s view as a view of psychological or reell immanence. But mustn’t whatever wishes to call itself phenomenol- ogy always remember—adhering to the principle of all principles that guides an inquiry into genuine phenomenological immanence—to ask three simple questions. What is appearing to whom? How does the what appear to the whom? And to what experience are we pointing, depending on how we answer these questions? Doing something diff erent is not bad; in fact, it may be better. Nevertheless, it is diff erent, and we should say it is diff erent rather than claiming that phenomenology is fundamental ontology if fundamental ontology cannot address these basic phenom- enological questions. An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique… xlv
Notes
1 . Th is blanket critique of immanence thought of as the inner “domain” of subjectivity most recently and forcefully appears in Francois- David Sebbah’s Testing the Limit: Derrida, Henry, Levinas, and the Phenomenological Tradition, trans. S. Barker (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2012). Sebbah writes, “transcendence in immanence: the famous Husserlian schema articulates itself exemplarily and fundamentally as transcendence of appearance in the immanence of subjectivity” (p. 136). 2. F. Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lies in a Non-Moral Sense”, in W. Kaufman, Th e Portable Nietzsche (New York: Viking, 1976) 3. As Deleuze writes, “emanation thus serves as the principle of a universe rendered hierarchical … each term is as it were the image of the superior term that precedes it, and is defi ned by the degree of distance that separates it from the fi rst cause or the fi rst principle” (G. Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza , trans. M. Joughin (New York: Zone Books, 1990), p. 173). Todd May in his very helpful introduction to Deleuze’s thought rephrases the matter quite clearly for our purposes: “God is diff erent from what is emanated, and higher. No matter how close the created comes to the creator, there must remain an ontological gap between them, a distance that allows for the superiority of the creator because of its transcendence” (T. May, Gilles Deleuze: An Introduction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 35). 4. As Todd May writes, “the seeds of God are built into subjectivity to which doubt has reduced Descartes, but God’s being also transcends that subjec- tivity. Epistemologically, the human subject is fi rst: it is the seat of knowl- edge. Ontologically, however, the subject follows in God’s wake, since God both grants and guarantees the experience of the subject,” Gilles Deleuze , p. 28. 5. E. Husserl, Husserliana, vol. I, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, ed. S. Strasser (Th e Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff , 1973). Cartesian Meditations, trans. D. Cairns (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), p. 24/63. 6. Robert Sokolowski notes clearly and forcefully the diff erence between doubting and attempting to doubt as a central diff erence between Descartes and Husserl. R. Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 54. xlvi An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique…
7. In Deleuze’s words, Spinoza’s philosophy “asserts immanence as a principle and frees expression from any subordination to emanative or exemplary causality” ( Expressionism , p. 180). 8 . T . M a y , Gilles Deleuze , p. 34. We shall be on the look out for the reappear- ance of monistic-immanence in later phenomenological views of inten- tionality referred to as transcendence in a verbal sense as characteristic of time’s temporalizing that is consciousness. 9. M. Westphal, “In Defense of the Th ing-in-itself,” Kant-Studien , 59(1) (1968): 118–41. 10. Husserl’s discoveries and analyses have remained badly under-appreciated. Th e most recent and best exception to this fault that I know of is J. Brough, “Consciousness Is Not a Bag: Immanence, Transcendence, and Constitution in Th e Idea of Phenomenology ,” Husserl Studies 24.3 (2008): 177–191. 11. E. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, trans. D. Cairns (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), p. 24. 12. R. Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology , p. 15. 13. J. Brough, “Consciousness Is Not a Bag,” p. 186. 14. S. Crowell, “Phenomenological Immanence, Normativity, Semantic Externalism,” Synthese 160 (2008): 335–354, p. 341. 15. Which form of immanence is being ascribed to Husserl? Or which form of immanence (if any) do Husserl’s phenomenological inheritors introduce as an alternative to the one he fi nds in Husserl? Even if these notions of immanence could use more precision I believe they will prove helpful in assessing phenomenology’s many new beginnings. 16. J. Drummond, “On the Nature of Perceptual Appearances or is Husserl an Aristotelian?” Th e New Scholasticism , LII(1) (1978): 1–22, p. 5. 17. Th at spatiotemporal objects occur in profi les that transcend consciousness’s grasp indicates, in Husserl’s technical terminology, a “certain inadequacy” about the experience of them. Adequacy denotes a kind of evidence when the object is given to consciousness completely or perfectly. Inadequacy denotes incomplete or imperfect evidence. E. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations , §6. 18. Husserl is not making a strictly Humean point. Rather, he means only to suggest that one may be surprised or fi nd something unexpected, in which case one must revise one’s understanding of the object. 19. Husserl declares that we must imitate the spirit of Descartes’ philosophy, but not his execution, for “one can say that [Descartes’] universal attempt at doubt is really an attempt at universal negation” (Id I 109). An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique… xlvii
20. Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, trans. R.G. Bury (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1967), I.7. Cited in R. Sokolowski, “Th oughts on Phenomenology and Skepticism,” in B.R. Wiachterhauser (ed.), Phenomenology and Skepticism: Essays in Honor of James M. Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996), p. 44. For example, phenomenol- ogy brackets the world’s natural, physical causes because they are not intuitively given to me in mundane perception. Of course, when I see a fl ame light the end of a cigarette, I observe natural, physical causality, but I do not perceive the causal interactions of electrons. Each of these man- ners of perceiving fall within what Husserl terms the realm of the natural attitude; the former denotes an everyday perceptual experience, while the latter denotes a more refl ective, scientifi c apprehension of the phenomenon. 21. R. Sokolowski, “Th oughts on Phenomenology and Skepticism,” p. 44. 22. Ibid., pp. 49 ff . 23. R. Sokolowski, Husserlian Meditations (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 164. 24. Husserliana , vol. II, Die Idee der Phänomenologie , ed. Walter Biemel (Th e Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff , 1973). Th e Idea of Phenomenology , trans. L. Hardy (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999), p. 39. Cf. R. Cobb-Stevens, Husserl and Analytic Philosophy (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990), p. 166. 25. R. Cobb-Stevens, Husserl and Analytic Philosophy , p. 170. Cf. R. Sokolowski, Th e Formation of Husserl’s Concept of Constitution (Th e Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff , 1970), p. 159. 26. J. Drummond, “Th e Structure of Intentionality,” in D. Welton (ed.), Th e New Husserl (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), chapter 3. 27. R. Cobb-Stevens, Husserl and Analytic Philosophy , pp. 170–1. 28. On this latter point concerning transcendence, see F. Dastur, Heidegger and the Question of Time , trans. F. Raff oul and D. Pettigrew (New York: Prometheus Books, 1999), pp. 57 ff . 29. E. Husserl, Ideas I , 44/43–4: “Every originary presentive intuition is a legitimizing source of cognition, … everything originally … off ered to us in “intuition” is to be accepted as what it is presented as being, but also within the limits in which it is presented there.” 30. L. Landgrebe, Th e Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl: Six Essays , trans. D. Welton (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981), p. 55. xlviii An Overview of Phenomenology’s Immanent Critique…
31. Ibid. Cf. J. Claude Evans, “Th e Myth of Absolute Consciousness,” in A.B. Dallery, C.E. Scott, and P.H. Roberts (eds), Crisis in Continental Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), p. 39. 32. M. Heidegger, “Th e End of Philosophy and the Task of Th inking,” in Time and Being, trans. J. Stambaugh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), p. 63. 33. R. Bernet, “Husserl’s Early Time-analysis in Historical Context,” trans. E. Behnke, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology , 40(2) (2009), p. 147. 34. E. Husserl, Th e Basic Problems of Phenomenology: From the Lectures, Winter Semester, 1910–1911, trans. Ingo Farin and James G. Hart (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), pp. 41–2. 35. In this way, my project diff ers from Dan Zahavi’s very fi ne and ground- breaking study that demonstrates just how profoundly infl uential Husserl’s theory of immanence or self-awareness is on the phenomenological tradi- tion. Zahavi demonstrates the centrality of the issue of immanence for the identity of phenomenology. But he proceeds to argue for the somewhat harmonious integration of phenomenologists after Husserl with Husserl. I suppose my presentation is a bit more divisive or orthodox or protectionist because I want to open a diff erent kind of question. D. Zahavi, Self- Awareness and Alterity (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1999). 36. Someone such as Levinas, who wants to revive transcendence by criticizing the tyranny of immanence, is omitted from the discussion. 37. F. Dastur, Heidegger and the Question of Time , pp. 57–8. 38. One could see this legacy in Sartre’s works too. Emphasizing the transcen- dence of the self in a way that develops Heidegger’s position to one extreme, Sartre’s Transcendence of the Ego and Being and Nothingness present a view of immanence as no-thing , or transcendence without immanence, or inten- tionality without a subject, a view which presents serious obstacles for a coherent view of the self. As there is little textual evidence of the infl uence of Heidegger’s Kant-book in these texts of Sartre, we can only draw out an argument that there is such an infl uence. In the interest of space rather than focus, I have intentionally omitted a treatment of Sartre. 39. R. Bernet, “Husserl’s Early Time Analysis,” p. 149. 40. L. Lawlor, Husserl and Derrida: Th e Basic Problem of Phenomenology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), p. 173.